Chapter 22#
The Self-Deceiving Liar#
They spent a full two days exploring the ancient city.
Gu Xi could see that Lin Xiaodong really liked this place.
The scenery was beautiful, the air was pleasant, and there were small bridges and flowing water right outside the door, far from the hustle and bustle of the big city. Especially in the early morning when there were few tourists, the sun shone on the earth, the hazy mist reflected colorful light, and the tender green seedlings in the terraced fields swayed with the wind. It was simply a dreamlike scene like a fairyland on earth.
“If you like it, we’ll buy a house here so we can come and stay often when we have time in the future,” he suggested.
Lin Xiaodong declined with a smile: “There’s really no need to spend that money.”
“Why?”
The youth thought for a moment and said: “Probably because for some places, coming once in a lifetime is enough.”
After a day of resting well, the group set off again to visit the local waterfalls and caves. Lin Xiamian was clearly very annoyed by the fact that he had slept until early morning, and this annoyance reached its peak when he saw Gu Xi and Lin Xiaodong come out of the same room the next day.
Since Lin Xiaodong had left his luggage in his room last night, when the youth went downstairs for breakfast, Gu Xi proactively offered to take the room card to Lin Xiamian’s room to help him get his things back.
Lin Xiamian watched coldly as the man packed the backpack in the room, and when finished, he even looked around as if searching for anything left behind. He suddenly asked out of the blue: “Are you feeling very proud of yourself right now?”
Gu Xi withdrew his gaze.
The man gave him a faint glance but did not answer.
“Even if you don’t say it, I know,” Lin Xiamian maliciously speculated about him. “You must be thinking that. But let me tell you, Gu, as long as I’m alive in this lifetime, I will absolutely not give up. You also know what a soft-hearted person my brother is, don’t you? No matter what, I am his biological brother. We are connected by blood, which no one can sever!”
“No one wants to sever you,” Gu Xi said indifferently. “But precisely because you are biological brothers, Lin Xiamian, you have no possibility with him in this lifetime. I advise you to give up on that idea early.”
He hit the nail on the head.
Blood relation was indeed Lin Xiamian’s reliance, but also his biggest weakness.
The youth’s face immediately turned ugly.
He stared fixedly at Gu Xi’s profile, his gaze churning with thick, gloomy malice: “So what if we are biological brothers? My obsession with my brother is not half a bit less than yours. We survived the hardest times together. Gu Xi, who the hell do you think you are?”
Just as he was speaking, a strange noise suddenly came from the door.
Both men whipped their heads around.
Lin Xiaodong had appeared at the door at some unknown time.
He stared at them blankly, the breakfast bag in his hand falling to the floor.
An egg rolled to Lin Xiamian’s feet.
All color drained from his cheeks at a visible speed.
System: “Your acting is a tiny bit fake.”
Lin Xiaodong: “Nonsense, I’m a Best Actor. Haven’t you seen that this kid is already scared half to death?”
After a long time, Lin Xiamian finally said with a trembling voice: “Brother, I…”
“Xiamian,” Lin Xiaodong suddenly interrupted him, “enough. Don’t say anything more.”
He turned and left.
“Brother!”
Lin Xiamian hurried to catch up. He cornered Lin Xiaodong in the washroom at the end of the hallway. The youth was propped up in front of the sink, his face covered in water, his head bowed so his expression couldn’t be seen, as if he couldn’t accept this fact.
Seeing this, Lin Xiamian hesitated and stopped.
After the initial panic, he now felt a sense of relief instead. He slowly walked behind Lin Xiaodong and tentatively reached out to hug his waist, just like before.
“Brother, I’m sorry,” he whispered, wanting to press his face against the youth’s back. “But I don’t regret it.”
“Take your hands off him.”
Gu Xi stood behind him, his voice so cold it could almost freeze.
The man grabbed his collar and threw Lin Xiamian directly against the side wall. Lin Xiamian clutched his shoulder, let out a cry of pain, but his eyes still stared unblinkingly at Lin Xiaodong’s back, his gaze carrying a hint of certain expectation—
Brother would never be angry with him, right?
But the youth did not turn back as he expected.
“Xiamian,” after a moment of silence, Lin Xiaodong straightened up with his back to him and said in a calm tone, “you probably don’t know yet where Gu Xi and I met.”
Lin Xiamian was puzzled. Did this have anything to do with their current problem?
“Right after you left Wanxiao, I went to find the manager there,” but Lin Xiaodong still continued on his own. “He told me that you had made a mistake you shouldn’t have made there and offended someone you shouldn’t have offended. The only solution was for me to replace you and accompany those difficult guests.”
Hearing this, Lin Xiamian’s breathing immediately became heavy and ragged.
Beside him, one of those “difficult guests,” Gu Xi, wisely chose to keep his mouth shut and said nothing.
“I agreed,” Lin Xiaodong said.
“And then I met Gu Xi.”
“He helped me leave that place. I followed him willingly and decided to repay him as much as I could. Eventually, we got together. It’s as simple as that.”
Lin Xiamian felt a wave of dizziness.
If everything Lin Xiaodong said was true…
No, he thought despairingly, Brother couldn’t lie to him, so this must be true.
—So, it was actually he himself who had pushed his brother into Gu Xi’s arms?
Hearing the sound of the youth slumping to the floor behind him, Lin Xiaodong said nothing and turned to leave calmly.
From beginning to end, he didn’t give Lin Xiamian a single backward glance.
Gu Xi followed him without hesitation.
“Repay?” the man said while walking, his voice low but seemingly dissatisfied. “That’s how you think of it?”
“What,” Lin Xiaodong glanced at him, “marrying you isn’t enough?”
Gu Xi’s footsteps paused.
After a short while, he stood in place, watching Lin Xiaodong’s nonchalant departing back, a trace of a smile slowly appearing in his eyes.
Lin Xiaodong walked to the lobby downstairs, where colleagues were surrounding a fortune teller and exclaiming in wonder. He walked over curiously to listen for a few sentences and found that this person was purely a charlatan, his words all ambiguous—things like “I see you may have a water calamity in the next three years.” Drowning counts as a water calamity, and being peed on by a puppy like a telephone pole while walking in the neighborhood also counts as a water calamity. What does that prove?
He soon lost interest, but to his surprise, as soon as the fortune teller saw Gu Xi coming down from upstairs, he cried out: “Extraordinary! Extraordinary!”
“What’s wrong?” The colleagues immediately became excited. Usually, they didn’t dare gossip about the boss, and having finally found an opportunity, how could they not ask for clarification? “This is our big leader. What’s up with him?”
“I see your eyes are dim, with dark circles underneath, and there seem to be little ghosts circling around you. This is an ominous omen,” the fortune teller said, swaying his head. “In these few days, avoid gold and water, avoid fire, avoid tailoring, avoid going to high places, avoid traveling and breaking ground, or else there may be a great disaster.”
Hearing such blunt words, everyone’s expressions were a bit awkward.
But Gu Xi himself was quite calm: “According to what you say, I should just lie in bed and go nowhere?”
“Avoiding bed setup is also recommended,” the fortune teller said with a straight face.
Lin Xiaodong was speechless for a few seconds and asked: “Then tell me, is there anything he shouldn’t avoid?”
And that “dim eyes and dark circles”—wasn’t that just lack of sleep?
The fortune teller counted on his fingers and said with certainty: “Suitable for burials and weddings.”
Essentially meaningless.
Seeing the surrounding people looking skeptical and about to disperse, the fortune teller quickly stopped them and said: “But actually, it’s not like there’s no way to break it. Look, I see this boss’s facial features—one look and he’s a man of great wealth and nobility, parents with longevity and friends and relatives like clouds, turning misfortune into good luck in everything, always with noble people helping to dissolve and ward off disaster—”
“My parents both passed away when I was sixteen,” Gu Xi said coldly. “And I have never believed in these supernatural matters. You may leave.”
The fortune teller was instantly speechless.
“A fraud, as expected.” Everyone was greatly disappointed. Just then, the tour guide came over to call everyone to assemble, so they all returned to their respective groups.
Lin Xiaodong was sitting on the sofa in the lobby, playing SpongeBob Pop to pass the time, when he suddenly heard a retch nearby. He couldn’t help but turn off his phone, frowned, and looked over.
It was a girl from his office.
She and a young man from another department were a couple, and they had come out together this time, though that young man was paying out of his own pocket. Lin Xiaodong walked to them and asked: “What’s wrong?”
the boy was patting the girl’s back with a worried face. Hearing Lin Xiaodong’s question, he looked up with a grinning smile, his expression full of uncontainable happiness: “Manager Lin, my wife is pregnant.”
“Really? Congratulations,” Lin Xiaodong was also very surprised. “But since she’s pregnant, why did you bring her out? We’re supposed to go mountain climbing today; just waiting in line will take several hours. How can a pregnant woman stand it?”
“I only just found out myself,” the boy rubbed his nose awkwardly. “We haven’t registered our marriage yet, so we definitely weren’t prepared to have a child, but it was an accident. we only found out last night too; before that, we thought the vomiting was from motion sickness.”
“Give it a rest, look how happy you are!”
The nearby colleagues couldn’t help but tease, and a crowd gathered around, making him blush furiously. But teasing aside, Lin Xiaodong looked at the girl’s pale face and still felt this matter had to be handled properly.
“I came by car; I can take her to the high-speed rail station,” Gu Xi said.
The boy waved his hands in a panic, about to speak, when the girl couldn’t help but let out another dry heave into the trash can. The refusal at the tip of his tongue immediately became impossible to say.
“Then, then I’ll have to trouble President Gu,” he said gratefully. “I’ll do the driving.”
“You get lost!”
That girl was also quite fierce, directly slapping a hand onto his face: “You just stay here in the mountains and don’t come back! I don’t want to see you right now!”
Everyone couldn’t help but laugh. the boy didn’t dare talk back and could only coax her gently. Lin Xiaodong also laughed for a while, but he still told Gu Xi: “I’ll take her. You don’t drive.”
During the time in the Gu mansion, he had also found time to get his driver’s license, which could be said to be very diligent.
“Why?” Gu Xi was puzzled.
“Didn’t that fortune teller say you should avoid traveling lately? Besides, this girl is my subordinate,” Lin Xiaodong made up an excuse. Lin Xiamian, standing not far away, had been watching this way. He took a quick glance and then withdrew his gaze. “And you know, I want to go out and clear my head alone. Don’t worry; the high-speed rail station isn’t far from here, only a three-hour round trip.”
The man frowned, but in the end, he couldn’t win against him and agreed.
Lin Xiaodong was delighted as soon as he stepped out with the car keys. It was actually a Phaeton: “Whoa, 66688? This license plate is quite conspicuous.”
Gu Xi sighed: “I didn’t plan to drive this car out, but the secretary already prepared it, so I had no choice. Just make do with it.”
Make do? Listen to that—is that even human speech!
Lin Xiaodong rolled his eyes at him, then immediately pulled open the car door and sat in the driver’s seat, fondling the steering wheel lovingly. Gu Xi stood outside, repeatedly instructing him: “There are many mountain roads here; remember to be careful, hear me?”
“I know.”
Seeing the girl get in the car, Lin Xiaodong reminded her to fasten her seatbelt. But after driving only a few meters, he stopped again, rolled down the window, and beckoned to Gu Xi: “Come here.”
“What is it?” Gu Xi didn’t understand but still walked over.
Lin Xiaodong stretched out a finger, hooked his chin, and gave a loud smack of a kiss on the man’s beautifully shaped thin lips.
“A kiss for this young master,” he said with a straight face. “I’m off. Don’t miss me too much.”
Gu Xi: “…………”
The soft touch on his lips was like a dragonfly skimming the water. after the initial daze, his gaze darkened: “I’ll wait for you to come back.”
Lin Xiaodong naturally heard the underlying meaning—he’d “settle accounts” with him when he returned.
“That’s not for certain,” he said half-jokingly and half-seriously. “I’m someone who loves to play. If there’s no navigation, maybe I’ll get lost while driving.”
“Then park the car by the roadside.”
“What?”
“If you really get lost, just park the car by the roadside, or in the emergency lane,” Gu Xi said calmly. “I will come find you.”
Lin Xiaodong was slightly stunned for a few seconds and then involuntarily curled his lips.
“Okay.”