Chapter 23#
Of all the people Ji Yang had met, Lu Li was the most arrogant and the most fickle.
He had a face that leaned slightly toward the sinister, yet he was inexplicably fond of smiling.
That kind of smile—the kind you could tell at a glance wasn’t because he was genuinely in a good mood. It was a habit, a mask he showed the world. One moment he could respectfully escort Ji Yang into a car; the next, at the airport, he’d kick one of his subordinates who’d messed up so hard they couldn’t climb back off the ground.
“Didn’t scare you, did I, Fourth Young Master?” He’d then turn around and deliberately ask him this.
Ji Yang leaned back in his seat in the VIP lounge, gave the man clutching his stomach on the floor a passing glance, then looked back at Lu Li’s face and shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“How truly surprising.” Lu Li laughed with evident pleasure. “Everyone’s been saying Fourth Young Master has been full of surprises lately. Seeing is believing—and just as I expected.” He sat down next to Ji Yang with the air of a good friend, scrutinizing his face without restraint, then suddenly said in a low voice: “Did Nie Xu slip you some love potion?”
Ji Yang turned his head to meet his gaze and raised an eyebrow. “How did you know?”
Lu Li paused, then pressed the tip of his tongue against the inside of his cheek.
In a tone as casual as small talk: “I’ve known him for quite a few years. Way back in Qianlong Bay, among the batch of us who were selected together.”
Qianlong Bay—where the last trial had taken place. Old Master Ji Yansong had mentioned it in passing.
The Ji family’s various branch families still spoke of it with a certain dread to this day.
He hadn’t expected that Lu Li had also entered the Ji family from that time.
“Oh.” Ji Yang was dismissive. “You’re not going to tell me that from that moment on, you’ve been single-mindedly determined to surpass him? Because you couldn’t stand being perpetually second place, so you opposed him at every turn?”
Lu Li shook his head. “No. He betrayed our will first.”
Ji Yang’s expression was something indescribable.
What exactly was “your will”? To make the Ji family bigger and stronger?
Wasn’t this Lu Li supposed to be above talking to him? Why was he acting so unhinged?
From the moment Lu Li mentioned that he and Nie Xu had known each other early on, Ji Yang had already been able to piece together the general outline of events.
Haicheng was like the tip of an iceberg exposed above the surface—clean and beautiful under the sunlight. The parts that couldn’t withstand the light: from what could be seen so far, some of the power was held in Nie Xu’s hands, and some in Lu Li’s.
Or rather, under Ji Yansong’s deliberate nurturing, it had fallen into Lu Li’s hands.
The core reason these two had ultimately clashed, barring any surprises, would be Ji Chengyi.
After all, in the later parts of the book, the Ji family was gone entirely. In the spoiler where Ji Chengyi was locked in a basement by Nie Xu, Lu Li had committed robbery, murder, and every vice under the sun, all to snatch him back.
Just thinking about this unhinged plot and these unhinged people made Ji Yang feel utterly exhausted.
He scooted over a bit and said: “I don’t care who betrayed whom between you.”
“He’s your assistant now, Fourth Young Master.” Lu Li’s smile widened. “Among that batch of us, when it comes to ruthlessness toward oneself, Nie Xu is absolutely number one. Don’t tell me, Fourth Young Master, that you really believe he willingly served as your bodyguard for two years.”
This Lu Li really knew exactly which pot not to stir.
That dark history—though he had temporarily gotten through it using the excuse of having forgotten—had still happened. All those reckless commands, the whip marks covering a body, none of it was fake.
Ji Yang: “What exactly are you trying to say?”
“I’m not trying to say anything.” Lu Li raised both hands to show his innocence.
Then, still smiling: “I’m just curious. Fourth Young Master dares to say anything—where exactly does that confidence come from?”
Circling back around and around—he still wanted to probe the reason behind what Ji Yang had said at the seminar. Moreover, Lu Li was testing whether there was Nie Xu’s hand behind it all.
“Self-given confidence.” Ji Yang said with a fake smile, answering honestly.
He waved his phone at the man. “Want to give it a try? I can have you on the gossip wall tonight. You’re actually not bad-looking—you’d earn more debuting than you do beating people up for dirty money. Want to consider it?”
Having gotten nothing out of him, Lu Li finally dropped that smiling face.
His mouth, however, said: “That, I’ll pass on.”
He rose from his seat.
Then, completely without warning, kicked the man on the floor again.
Ji Yang heard the muffled groan, and immediately dialled the emergency line for the airport medical centre. “Terminal 3, Waiting Lounge E08. Male patient, experiencing vomiting, conscious, suspected internal bleeding. Get here now.”
For a moment, everyone in the room turned to look at Ji Yang.
The man on the floor reached out, struggling: “F-Four—”
“Stop trying to say Four.” Ji Yang was done.
The man on the floor turned crimson.
Lu Li: “What is Fourth Young Master doing?”
“I was born under the red flag and raised in the spring breeze, and I truly cannot stand seeing the law treated as though it doesn’t exist.” Ji Yang wore a smile remarkably similar to Lu Li’s. “Besides, Lu Li, this is Huizhou, not Fanzhou.”
If they had been at a public boarding gate, Ji Yang wouldn’t have called for an ambulance—he would have called the psychiatric hospital.
Soon, several people in white coats rushed into the waiting lounge, even going so far as to bring a stretcher.
The moment they saw the scene inside, they froze.
Ji Yang urged them on: “Hurry up. I’m the highest authority here—these people won’t do anything to you.”
It took Lu Li a couple of seconds to respond. He gestured for the doctors to go ahead.
Only after the man was taken away did Lu Li speak: “Fourth Young Master is right. This is Huizhou after all. I hope that when you return to the Ji family, your spirit will still be this high.”
Ji Yang turned away. “That’s not something you need to worry about.”
It was a red-eye flight deep into the night. By the time they returned to the Ji family, it was two in the morning.
Ji Yang was taken directly to the main building—to Ji Yansong’s study.
In the Ji family, Ji Yansong’s study was absolute restricted territory. No one dared set foot inside casually.
Yet this day, Lu Li led him upstairs, only to find Ji Chengyi standing at the door.
He seemed to have been waiting here on purpose.
When Lu Li saw it was him, he asked: “Third Young Master, why are you here?”
Lu Li still appeared to be the same as always.
Yet somehow, different.
It wasn’t a question about why Ji Chengyi had ventured into this place—it seemed more that he was concerned about Ji Chengyi himself. A flash of something precious and earnest crossed his eyes, something that absolutely should not have appeared on a person like Lu Li.
“Big brother is working overtime at the company, so Grandpa called me over.” Ji Chengyi showed neither warmth nor coldness toward Lu Li. His gaze swept past Ji Yang behind him, and he said directly: “Grandpa said you should go straight in when you return.”
Ji Yang’s gaze flickered between the two of them. He brushed past and pushed the door open.
His hand had barely touched the doorknob when he heard Ji Chengyi behind him ask: “Why did you admit it?”
“What?” Ji Yang turned around.
Ji Chengyi seemed to be observing him. “You know full well what would benefit the Ji family more. Why did you admit to fabrication, throwing yourself and the entire Ji family into the eye of the storm?”
Ji Yang’s lips twitched. “Because I felt like it. Is that reason enough?”
The corner of Ji Chengyi’s eye twitched involuntarily.
Ji Yang pressed the handle down and walked straight in.
When he gave the same answer to Ji Yansong—and to every Ji family member present in the study, all of them core executives of Haicheng—that he had used to brush off Ji Chengyi, and further declared that he would not issue any clarification or false statement online about the matter, what met him was an inkstone hurled in his direction.
That inkstone was both heavy and hard. Ji Yang dodged, and it barely grazed his temple before crashing behind him, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
His temple throbbed with a dull, burning pain. It was probably bleeding.
Worse still, ink had splashed out in a long streak across the side of his face.
Someone spoke. An elder from a branch family whom he had met before: “Ji Yang, listen to your grandfather properly. He would never harm you.”
“Exactly.” When one person spoke, another followed. “This matter isn’t that complicated. The Ji family needs the influence you have online right now. As a descendant of the Ji family, it’s your duty to follow the family’s arrangements.”
“Damaging the family’s reputation is no small thing. You need to think this through.”
From the moment Lu Li appeared, to when he walked into this study, what Ji Yang had been facing was like a vast, gaping maw of decay swallowing everything.
The rows of unfamiliar old faces before him.
Every word spoken.
It was naked appraisal and scrutiny—not truly the way one would treat a junior, but more like evaluating a piece of merchandise.
The original owner had already been a discarded item long before Ji Yang transmigrated.
Now, in their eyes, he seemed capable of generating some value for the Ji Corporation once more.
Hence: coercion, bribery, appeals to emotion, and appeals to reason.
Ji Yang wiped his face with the back of his hand, looked at the back of his hand smeared with both blood and ink, and smiled. “I was still clinging to the fine traditional virtue of honesty even with a broken leg, yet in the eyes of all you esteemed elders, it seems as though I’ve committed some unspeakable crime.”
His unyielding, impenetrable attitude had truly enraged everyone.
“Old Master, this matter could go either way. If the Lanhai Bay project is affected, that’s bad enough, but regarding the Group’s capital issues…”
“I think with Zhonglin around, there’s no need to worry for the time being. Right now, what absolutely cannot be tolerated is him causing any more trouble.”
“Changshou still doesn’t know how to raise children properly. Old Master, you must take charge.”
Ji Yansong sat behind the heavy pear wood desk.
His eyes, which sloped downward into an inverted triangle, emanated a cold glint as he stared intently.
He spoke slowly: “Since he won’t listen to his elders’ counsel, then he can suffer a little hardship and reflect on his actions.”
Ji Yang’s phone was confiscated, and he was thrown into the warehouse.
Yes, the warehouse.
The very same warehouse where the original owner had once whipped Nie Xu.
The reason Ji Yang could recognize it was because of the two exhaust fans on the diagonal rear wall, identical to the ones in that video.
This warehouse was far from the main building, situated behind the Ji family’s servants’ quarters. It had originally been used to store miscellaneous items. The original owner must have used it before, because it was currently quite empty.
Lu Li had thrown him in at night.
During this season, the daytime was swelteringly hot, but the nights turned somewhat chilly.
The warehouse was locked from the outside.
As Lu Li locked it, he said: “The Old Master has said that for these next few days, no matter who pleads for you, the door won’t be opened. Don’t waste your effort. The moment you learn to bow your head, you’ll be let out. Fourth Young Master, this was a place I personally chose, with the Old Master’s approval. Rather meaningful, wouldn’t you say?”
Ji Yang dragged over the single chair in the warehouse and sat down.
He had been wearing the prosthetic leg all day.
His leg hurt.
He looked around, genuinely curious. “Are you purely here to watch a rich young master get punished by his family, crying and begging? Or do you have some peculiar fetish—returning to the scene of your rival’s crime, savoring the fine moments of his brutal beating?”
Lu Li appeared to lean against the door outside for a moment.
With evident amusement: “I heard about it. I wasn’t in Fanzhou those few days—it’s genuinely a pity I missed it.”
Ji Yang sighed. “Even if you had been there, it would still be a pity.”
“Why?” Lu Li asked.
Ji Yang gazed into the void, recalling that video.
He spoke slowly: “Because… it was very sexy.”
The world outside went quiet.
Ji Yang: “Those serratus muscles were very sexy.”
“Bleeding was very sexy.”
“But someone who, unlike you, would rather stand outside all night feeding mosquitoes than leave, just to hear another man call some other guy sexy—that’s the sexiest.”
It took Lu Li several seconds to respond. By the sound of it, he was gritting his teeth. “If it weren’t for the fact that Nie Xu is stuck in Huizhou untangling the relationships between Shengji and Hengyuan, I’d love for him to hear with his own ears that he’s being fantasized about by a young master like you. I wonder if he’d want to strangle you.”
Ji Yang: He absolutely wouldn’t. That man is far too busy right now.
Whether he was even in Huizhou at all was debatable.
Wind swept in through the gaps in the walls from every direction.
Turning the Ji family in the dead of night into a cage that devoured men.
Lu Li was still waiting for his reaction.
Ji Yang looked through the window above the door at the moon hanging at the edge of the sky, pressed his temple—where the wound could count as a work injury—and hissed in pain. Then, with utter composure, he added: “Oh, then the way he strangles me would definitely be very sexy too.”