16 Shocked Speechless Part 2
"Third Brother, please excuse me as well. I still need to get some business matters taken care of." Li Fang stood up and Aunt Mei followed suit.
The two bowed respectfully and Li Wei stood to leave with them. The gaze with which the girl looked at Qing Yue was complex, filled with complicated emotions that couldn't be named, before following behind her parents.
"Brother-in-law, we'll take our leave as well. Mu'er still has to study for his college entrance exams. Qing Qing isn't going to college, right? Oh! Look at me. I forgot Qing Qing didn't attend public school. How would she go to college?" Aunt Si smiled apologetically as she looked at Qing Yue.
"Qing Qing, Auntie didn't mean to mention the topic of school. You don't take it to heart."
"Don't worry Aunt Si, I didn't take it to heart. I wish you a safe journey." Unaffected and Unbothered by the elder woman's subtle jab, Qing Yue sent them off with an amiable smile.
"Hmph! Li Mu, Li Wang, let's leave." Aunt Si wasn't as polite as the other two and scoffed coldly. Li Wang felt alarmed by his wife's open dissatisfaction and grabbed her arm.
"Third Brother, we'll take our leave. We wanted to stay for dinner, but since everyone arrived early, leaving early is inevitable. But since we had breakfast together, it could be considered as a replacement for the dinner arrangement. Let's hold a real family gathering sometime in the future!" Tightly pinching Aunt Si's arm, Li Wang excused himself with Li Mu following behind.
"Ha, that ended well." Sometime during the Aunts and Uncles' departure, Yan Su had slinked to Qing Yue's side and grabbed her arm.
"Qing Qing, how about we go upstairs and finish discussing the rest of our topic...?"
From the girl's glowing gossipy eyes, Qing Yue was certain she was up to no good.
"I'll have to pass, Yan Su. I still haven't received my gift from Uncle Wei." Walking around the girl, Qing Yue ignored her cries of protest and stopped beside her Uncle Wei.
"Uncle Wei, my present?" Her outstretched hand and innocent expression made the man laugh in delight. Before today, he didn't know whether to give her the gift or not. But after seeing her face, he felt an intense urge to hand the stone over to her.
"Qing Qing, here is Uncle Wei's gift. This is an heirloom of the Yan family's passed only to the eldest daughter of the family."
"If it's only passed to the eldest daughter of the family, then shouldn't it be handed over to Yan Su?"
"Haha...in the Yan family, there's no patriarchal rule. Since you're a year older than Yan Su, that makes you the eldest daughter of the Yan family even if your surname is Li." Uncle Wei grabbed Qing Yue's hand and dropped a grey stone pendant with moonlight swirling in the center in her palm.
The moment the stone touched her skin, Qing Yue froze like a statue. Calm and cool, emitting a faint silvery glow, the stone shown with an unnatural beauty.
But what caught Qing Yue's eye wasn't its enchanting glow, but its shape and texture that was eerily familiar to her.
The stone pendant was the same size, shape, and color as the pendant she wore before her death.
*
Long Tian walked through the dim corridor of the nightclub in a daze, the dull thuds of his footsteps barely audible over the loud music. The jubilant and wild cheers of men pulling their female companions onto the dance floor echoed through the wall.
But as if deaf to everything around him, Long Tian's cold expression didn't crack an inch. He continued walking and arrived before a private room and opened the door.
"Haha...Ji Ren, stop! Haha! Fu Ji Ren...stop!" Inside Fu Ji Ren and Ouyang Gu were entangled in a deadlock. Ouyang Gu gripped the arms of the other behind his back, while Fu Ji Ren tickled with him with his fingers.
Long Tian froze and frowned. Then he walked past the two because he didn't want to get involved in whatever weird bet they had set. The little energy he had was long spent, seeped by the trek he made recalling yesterday's event. Still, he came to meet them, to share the greatest event of his life.
He sat in a corner, like usual, and unbuttoned two of his dress suit's black buttons, just to lessen the feeling of suffocation.
The act barely evened his shallow breathing though, so Long Tian leaned back on the backrest and closed his eyes until the heavy feeling in his heart receded.
"Tian Tian, are you okay?" Fu Ji Ren and Ouyang Gu had ended their little wrestle as soon as Long Tian arrived. Sensing the grim and gloomy aura surrounding their friend, Fu Ji Ren knit his brows and asked in concern.
"Your color looks a bit off today. Did something happen?" Ouyang Gu was usually the careless and insensitive fool of the group. However, even he noticed the strangeness in Long Tian.
"Tian Tian, did you and Lu Jin quarrel?"
The silent Long Tian instantly stilled, his fist clenching at the mention of Lu Jin's name. His relaxed features harden and sharp, cold dark-blue eyes slightly cracked open and sent chills down the two men's spine.
"Tia...Tian?" Fu Ji Ren stammered, the piercingly cold glare awakened fear and anxiety in his heart.
"From now on, don't mention that girl's name again. After the 20th inauguration of the New World Formation, Great Commander Long is going to announce my engagement with the daughter of his friend."
"Y...your engagement!?" Ouyang Gu gaped in shock.
Long Tian and engagement? That too, with someone other than Lu Jin?
"Man, are you serious!? You and engagement? With someone aside from Lu Jin?"
"Ouyang Gu, didn't you hear me say never mention that name again?" Cold and emotionless, the words resounded in the private room.
"That...you..."Ouyang Gu didn't know how to respond. How could he ask if anything happened between them if he couldn't even take the other person's name?
But Fu Ji Ren remained silent. For the entire duration from Long Tian's ban of Lu Jin's name to the announcement of his engagement, he hadn't said a word. His unwavering gaze remained locked on his friend, scrutinizing his cold expression, grim eyes, and soulless voice.
After a long period of silence, his deep sigh resounded in the quiet room.
"You found out about Lu Jin's reality, right? Long Tian, I'll be honest. Every time I saw you hanging on to that girl's words, I felt disgusted and disappointed in you. I couldn't understand why you, who was always cold and suspicious, mistrustful of women, trusted her. Why you couldn't see through her deception was beyond my understanding. But later, I realized you liked her. And because you liked her, you ignored all the signs of her deception."
Long Tian didn't speak, his cold silence causing Ouyang Gu to tremble in trepidation. His gaze went back and forth between the two men, the confusion in their depths slowly turning to enlightenment when he heard Fu Ji Ren's words.
Lu Jin...was deceiving Long Tian?
Huuuu...
No wonder Fu Ji Ren never liked her. The man must've already sensed her bad intentions.
Ouyang Gu looked at Fu Ji Ren in admiration, amazed at his keen insight.
Unaware of his friend's fervent gaze, Fu Ji Ren continued his rant.
"But Long Tian, even though I realized the reason why you turned a blind eye, I wasn't taken with your method. On the contrary, I despised you even more because of that. Because friend, no matter how beautiful a deception might be, at the end of the day, it's nothing but an illusion, a fake. And fakes never last. They have no future, no happy ending. Dispersing with the light of dawn is their nature."
Fu Ji Ren sighed and ran a hand over his face. He felt bad for his friend, he really did. But he couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for him, because the man had brought it on himself. At that time, instead of turning a blind eye and ignoring the signs of disloyalty, if he had gotten to the bottom of the matter, then maybe today, he wouldn't be hurt so deep...
"For what it's worth, at least you haven't married her. In a way, you can still be considered lucky for opening your eyes before it was too late. Come, let's celebrate to opening your eyes and a new dawn."
Long Tian felt the heaviness return. To his horror, he found the idea of his impending marriage nauseating...
The only girl he had ever trusted turned out to be fake. The girl he met and liked for her straightforwardness and simplicity, turned out to be more fake than any he had ever met or known.
Now, another girl was going to enter his life, that too, as his wife.
What's more, he didn't even know whether she was another Lu Jin or another superficial and shallow heiress.
The heaviness in his heart increased, and Long Tian unbuttoned two more buttons, sweat dripping down his forehead as if he were in a sauna.
Long Tian liked Lu Jin. Even with her shrewish behavior and standoffish attitude, he felt she was more real and alive than any heiress he knew. The blow he received from her betrayal was more than heartache.
It was a mental blow that crushed his belief and wiped from his mind and heart the possibility of trustworthy and honest women ever existing.
From his marriage, he held no expectations. He expected betrayal and disloyalty, and long lost the heart to care.
"Haha...Long Tian, congratulations on your impending nuptials. Since this girl is chosen by Uncle Long, I'm sure she'll be much better than that two-faced hypocrite."
"Yes, Tian Tian. To forget the bad, you need something good to look forward to. Have you met your fiancé? What's her name? How does she look? Since Uncle Long chose her, she won't be from any ordinary family."
Long Tian ignored them and continued laying his head on the backrest and concentrated on controlling his breathing until the heaviness receded.
By the time the three left the nightclub, Long Tian no longer felt as stifled and suffocated as when he first arrived. With his hands in his pockets and his midnight black hair flowing in the night breeze, he walked towards his black hover in a relaxed manner.
It's just marriage. Since he expected nothing, he won't be disappointed when he received nothing but another betrayal.
At most, he'd sigh and turn to leave...
"What did you say? Three students fell ill and were diagnosed with an unknown virus?"
"That's what I heard from the TeleSearch. From the symptoms and finds, the virus resembles the Cornea from the 20s. Only..."
"What? Only what?"
"Whoever contracts it starts puking blood and if the symptom isn't treated within 24 hours, the skin of the victim peels off..."
"What!? What the he**! What sort of virus is this!? And how did they even contract it!?"
Long Tian paused and frowned.
Virus?
There was a virus going around?
As far as he knew, there were signs of unknown diseases spreading through contact with metals. But this problem was easily resolved through handwash. As long as one thoroughly washed their hands after using any heavy metal items, then the chance of acquiring the metal-related disease would be slimed. Sanitized clean warm handkerchiefs did the rest.
So what disease were those guys talking about?
As the only son of the Great Commander, consciously and unconsciously, Long Tian paid attention to the problems and issues of the public without intention.
And this matter that concerned public safety was too serious to ignore.
"I need to find out their source of information."
He decisively turned and walked towards the group of three.
But right at this moment, an accident occurred...
"Someone help! Anyone, help me! My husband fainted!" The miserable wail of the woman was like a banshee, trailing ominous cold fingers down his back as he turned and dashed.
