Chapter 15#

Everyone thought he was just clout-chasing to ride the trending topic. Ji Yang couldn’t have cared less — if it was free traffic, might as well take it.

He hadn’t originally planned on using the account for anything in particular, but when he saw his follower count skyrocketing — mostly from idle onlookers hoping to watch the circus — Ji Yang immediately turned around and ran an ad for Ji Mingyue’s café.

The café was located on a commercial street in the Second Ring of Fanzhou.

Surrounding it were all white-collar elites heading to work.

Ji Yang had a stereotypical impression of rich kids self-starting businesses, the kind seen all over the internet.

“How much money have you lost so far?” It was mid-afternoon, and Ji Yang was sitting under the sunshade on the café’s second-floor terrace, a glass of fresh orange juice in front of him.

Ji Mingyue was sitting across from him, scrolling through her phone. At his question, she glared at him. “Can’t you wish me something good?” She continued, “Your account is absolutely toxic — you even posted photos and still nobody believes you.”

“Just tell me whether it works or not.” Ji Yang glanced around. “Looks like your foot traffic today is pretty good.”

Ji Mingyue flicked her hair. “Not bad. About three times normal, roughly.”

Ji Yang said, “So shouldn’t you pay me an advertising fee?”

“You don’t need that little bit of ad money.” Ji Mingyue didn’t buy it.

Ji Yang nodded. “I do. Who doesn’t want more money.”

After Nie Xu agreed to the affiliation, Ji Yang had roughly informed Peng Jiaying about it, though not completely. The other party only knew that the affiliated entity was Jianyuan — they didn’t know what businesses Jianyuan was involved in, nor did they know who stood behind Jianyuan.

Everything was still in the early preparation stage, right in the thick of burning through money.

In a family like the Ji clan, every child in every branch received a fixed allowance. Two million sounded like a lot — but that was relative to someone like Ji Yang, who did absolutely nothing and just coasted day after day. If you put that in the hands of Ji Chengyi or Ji Mingyue, any small investment they fancied would blow through it in minutes.

Not to mention that the Ji family was doomed sooner or later.

He had no intention of warning Ji Mingyue — after all, that kind of talk was deeply unsettling to hear.

Who could have guessed that the Ji family, which seemed so deeply rooted in Fanzhou, would soon completely exit the city’s commercial landscape?

Right now, everything was still calm and peaceful.

Even the attack on the illegitimate son of the First Branch was enough to whip up a social media frenzy overnight.

Ji Yang had been sitting there for less than an hour, and he’d already overheard no fewer than five groups of people discussing the incident.

Fortunately, their seats were near a corner, with a visual barrier between them and the rest of the terrace, so no one noticed that the “vicious Fourth Young Master of the Ji family” they were gossiping about was sitting less than five meters away.

Ji Mingyue, however, cared more about it than he did — her conscience not entirely gone, she feared he might be recognized and mobbed. She asked, “Why did your driver bring you today? You didn’t bring bodyguards?”

“They probably went to report for duty,” Ji Yang said.

Ji Mingyue frowned. “Report for duty? What do you mean?”

Ji Yang picked up his glass and took a sip — the sweetness was a bit much. He licked his corner of his mouth and said, “At the company. I only have one bodyguard right now, and he’s actually an assistant. You were there, weren’t you?”

The news about the reporting had come from a call to Hai Cheng’s HR department.

Even now, thinking about it, Ji Yang found it funny.

He’d heard that two years ago, Nie Xu had parachuted into the Lanhai Bay project and participated deeply — yet not a single trace of him existed anywhere in the HR system. Now, this assistant title — originally just an unimportant formality — was being handled by HR with such fanfare, as if they were terrified he’d get excited on a whim and forget to show up.

It must have been at Ji Yansong’s instruction.

Nie Xu must have received the notification too. When Ji Yang asked him that morning, he was already at the group headquarters.

Ji Mingyue was speechless. “Before, when you said you were going back to work, I actually thought you wanted to improve yourself. And what do you do? You immediately go and hire yourself an assistant. Plus, the trivial miscellaneous duties at that position of yours — don’t you think it’s a waste of talent?”

Of course Ji Yang wouldn’t say that the assistant title was just a formality. He replied, “I don’t. My assistant — I’ll use him however I like.”

Ji Mingyue laughed out of frustration. “I think you’re just trying to piss off Ji Chengyi. His projects are worth hundreds of millions, and you’re using the person he had his eye on like this — right within the company, no less. Tsk.” She shook her head. “You really know how to make someone mad now.”

Ji Yang: “…” He truly hadn’t thought of that angle.

But after leaving Ji Mingyue’s café, Ji Yang still had the driver take him to the Hai Cheng Group building.

Outside the New Media department, it was livelier than the last time Ji Yang had been there.

Just in the short while he’d been standing there, several people from other departments came and went. Inside, the usual lazy and listless atmosphere had vanished — some were on calls, some were hammering away at keyboards.

“What’s going on?” Ji Yang caught a passing Qian Yitian — the department chatterbox — and asked.

Qian Yitian was holding a stack of documents. Seeing it was Ji Yang, he looked surprised. “Fourth Young Master? What brings you here?”

“Can’t I come?” Ji Yang was just as confused.

Qian Yitian quickly stammered, “Oh, that’s not what I meant.” He scratched his head and explained haltingly, “It’s just that I saw Assistant Nie — handling work like a lightning strike. And since you’d already told the director to fully cooperate, I thought you wouldn’t come in person.”

What Qian Yitian actually wanted to say was that early this morning, the entire company had been buzzing about an analysis of the group’s power shifts, based on the attack on the Third Young Master. Some people even thought that the Fourth Young Master attached to their department would suffer before the entire department did — the department manager’s position might not be safe. But then, as soon as the workday started, everyone in the group knew about the assistant who had parachuted in beside the Fourth Young Master.

It was said that during the morning meeting, President Ji Zhonglin had personally inquired about the matter.

The acting deputy general manager, Ji Chengyi, had also been asking around.

Only then did everyone belatedly realize that this so-called assistant’s background was probably not ordinary at all.

Sure enough, the moment he arrived early in the morning, the people in the department went from initial surprise and curiosity to — within just two hours after a meeting — sitting on pins and needles. This Assistant Nie, from reviewing the past two years of departmental content integration to examining the current progress of everyone’s individual work, seemed to have already probed every single person beforehand. His questions went straight to the vitals.

This feeling of working under the knife’s edge — it had been a very long time.

Ji Yang thought to himself, He might well be your real boss someday. He understood why Qian Yitian was acting this way. He glanced around. “Where is he?”

Qian Yitian pointed toward the manager’s office. “Director Peng said there wasn’t a suitable workspace available, and all the documents that had piled up before were stored in that office, so he let Assistant Nie use it for now.”

Ji Yang nodded. “I’ll go take a look.”

The last time Ji Yang had been here, he’d just casually strolled through this office without a second glance. Now, looking in through the glass wall, he saw that all the blinds had been pulled down. Standing outside the door, he felt an odd sense of having trespassed into someone else’s territory.

It was practically a role reversal.

He knocked.

“Come in.” A voice came from inside.

Ji Yang pushed the door open, and his gaze collided head-on with the man seated behind the desk.

Ji Yang had a sudden feeling that the sunlight outside the window was too blinding, which was why he experienced a momentary visual dizziness.

It was perfectly normal for Ji family bodyguards to wear suits during official duties.

Ji Yang had seen plenty of them.

But this was truly the first time he’d had Nie Xu in one. Perhaps it was the occasion, but Ji Yang felt that everything the identity of “bodyguard” had entangled him with was now thoroughly restrained. The ordinary dark suit fit him perfectly — from the width of his shoulders to the cuffs, nothing was out of place. It even lent him an air of refinement. When he stood, the proportion of his long legs was especially striking.

An assistant with this kind of bearing and background — there was probably no second one in all of Fanzhou.

The number-one male lead in popularity — he was something else, indeed.

Nie Xu’s gaze swept over the wheelchair. “Why are you here?”

“Can’t I check in on you?” Ji Yang recovered, maneuvering the wheelchair closer. He saw several expense approval forms and contracts awaiting signature on the desk, flipped through them, and said, “You never told me you were actually going to work as an assistant.”

Nie Xu turned around, pulled a fresh file from the cabinet behind him, and replied while flipping through it, “I already discussed this with the old master. This is within my duties.”

Ji Yang froze, then clarified, “It’s just the two of us here.”

“So?” Nie Xu looked up from the file.

Ji Yang: “So if you have other things to do, you can totally go handle them.”

Nie Xu placed the file back, his tone flat. “What I’m busy with right now is the most important thing at this moment.”

Ji Yang’s gaze swept over the computer on the desk, taking in the contents on the screen.

“Employee onboarding documents?”

Nie Xu turned back, his own eyes flicking over the screen before settling on Ji Yang.

“I have to see whether this Peng Jiaying has sufficient value, and whether none of the people he wants to protect have any issues.” The words were strikingly cold and ruthless. “Jianyuan isn’t a charity.”

Ji Yang had no doubt that if Peng Jiaying proved useless, Nie Xu would burn the bridge without a second thought.

Ji Yang signaled “I understand” and promptly distanced himself from the desk.

He rolled over to the floor-to-ceiling window on the right. Looking down, a river of cars flowed below, the road stretching out in every direction.

Nie Xu had appeared behind him at some point, looking outside as well. “Hai Cheng is a major landmark in the center of Fanzhou. The top floor of this building commands a panoramic view of most of the city. At night, it’s one of the best vantage points to watch the famous Xingzhui Harbor fireworks.”

Ji Yang felt that this didn’t sound like idle chatter. He turned his head. “The night view is that beautiful?”

“Mm.” Nie Xu glanced at him. “It’s most beautiful when the fireworks go off every Saturday. Do you know how this tradition started?”

Ji Yang was completely unguarded. “How did it start?”

“To celebrate the first anniversary of Fanzhou’s largest transport and trade port’s completion.”

A chill crept up, bit by bit, from the soles of his feet.

Ji Yang’s mind was screaming: Why did he suddenly bring this up???

He didn’t know the specific details of the transport and trade port, nor had he checked whether the book explained it later — but this was one of Nie Xu’s biggest secrets, and a forbidden topic at that. Ji Yang knew this all too well.

Was this a test to see how much he actually knew?

He’d gone mad.

Nie Xu’s previously not-bad attitude had almost made him forget — the bond between them was thin to begin with. Old grudges and new hatred hadn’t disappeared; they’d merely been paused due to a temporary alignment of interests.

Ji Yang decided to play dead completely, pretending he knew nothing. “Really? That does sound quite meaningful.”

“It seems the Fourth Young Master’s medicine really has caused problems.” Nie Xu withdrew the invisible pressure he’d been emitting, his words tinged with ambiguity. “A Fanzhou native through and through, yet speaking of the Xingzhui Harbor fireworks as if you’ve never heard of them.”

Ji Yang said earnestly, “I’ve already sent the medicine for testing through someone. I’ll be the first to tell you when the results come back.”

Knock knock knock.

Someone knocked on the door.

A female colleague from the marketing team walked in carrying two cups of coffee.

“F-Fourth — Manager Ji, Assistant Nie, your coffee.”

Ji Yang let out a sigh of relief and sent her a smile.

The female colleague looked a little embarrassed by the smile. She stepped forward and personally placed the cup in Ji Yang’s hand, then picked up the other one. She glanced at Nie Xu standing nearby, hesitated for two seconds, and then offered it.

“Thank you.” Nie Xu reached out and took it.

This time it was the female colleague’s turn to let out a breath.

Ji Yang truly felt a pang of shared sympathy.

He instinctively lifted the cup to take a sip, but a hand reached in from beside him — it gripped the cup from the rim and, with a turn of the wrist, set it aside.

Ji Yang looked up at the culprit and said, with suspicion, “That’s… mine, I think?”

Assistant Nie: “Young Master. You have phantom limb pain. The doctor’s orders are to avoid tobacco and alcohol — including coffee.”

Ji Yang: “…”

The female colleague looked at one, then at the other.

She thought: the group is buzzing about how the Fourth Young Master’s pursuit of love was unrequited, so he resorted to underhanded tactics against the Third Young Master, forcibly binding the man to his side.

Serving as an assistant to a useless young master who could never amount to anything.

Outraged. Unwilling. Left with no choice.

But looking at this — none of it was true at all.

The female colleague ducked her head and retreated.

“I’ll be heading out now.”

Then she went outside and declared to all the colleagues who had been waiting with bated breath:

Assistant Nie is extremely dutiful.

The whole “vicious young master’s forced love” thing was pure fabrication.