Chapter 83#

The Disabled Big Shot’s Stepson#

Lin Xiaodong stood by the window for a while without getting a response.

He couldn’t help but ask again: “What’s wrong with you, why are you not talking?”

Lin Pei shielded his eyes from the overly dazzling sunlight and tightly closed his eyes which were stung by the light.

“Pull it!” He forced himself to ignore the slight, almost imperceptible touch in his heart just now, and said gloomily, “I hate the sun.”

“No,” Lin Xiaodong said flatly. “You are a living person, not a mushroom, and you don’t have any disease that causes you to die as soon as you are under the sunlight. Why don’t you bask in the sun?”

He could understand those girls who were fully armed to go out all year round because they were afraid of getting tanned, but Lin Pei’s condition was obviously different from them. The man’s skin was already so pale that the purple blood vessels under the surface of the back of his hand were clearly visible. The whole person exuded an oppressive and dark temperament, a bit like the shut-ins Lin Xiaodong had seen on the news before, who crouched at home for several years and didn’t go out.

But for some reason, as soon as he associated Lin Pei with a shut-in, he wanted to laugh a bit.

“I think Mr. Ye and the others are just spoiling you too much. It’s not bad to bask in the sun.” After Lin Xiaodong finished speaking, he remembered that he still had to be punished with three laps of running, and his face immediately fell.

“By the way, how about I push you down and we walk around the artificial lake together?” He suddenly thought of a way. If he used Lin Pei as an excuse, even Ye Shiyuan wouldn’t be able to say anything, right?

Lin Pei, who had barely adapted to some sunlight, lowered his hand and let out a cold laugh.

“Sure.” Unexpectedly, he actually agreed.

But before Lin Xiaodong could be happy that he had escaped a disaster, he saw the black-haired man in the wheelchair crossing his hands, curling his thin lips, and saying slowly: “But there’s no need for you to push me. I can control the wheelchair myself. As for you, just run beside me.”

Lin Xiaodong: “…………”

You’re ruthless!

But the youth gnashed his teeth and suddenly laughed again. Lin Pei noticed that when he laughed, two shallow dimples appeared on his cheeks: “You look a bit more energetic when you are pitting people. How about this, I’ll make a bet with you, what do you think?”

Lin Pei lowered his hand and asked unconsciously following him: “What bet?”

“Just bet on whether I can finish three laps within half an hour.” Lin Xiaodong tilted his head and glanced at the artificial lake below. This lap was at least a thousand meters. He was really going all out this time. " I am a person who always ranks last in running a thousand meters at school. If I can finish three laps completely, you let me sit in your wheelchair once, how about it?"

“…………” Lin Pei couldn’t understand his brain circuit, “What’s so good about sitting in a wheelchair?”

“Don’t worry about it, or you can take me to race in the wheelchair, but you must personally deliver it.” The youth persisted, “Bet or not?”

“Bet my ass!” Ye Shiyuan had just walked to the door when he heard this sentence. He immediately flew into a rage, stepped forward, grabbed Lin Xiaodong’s ear, and was about to drag him away. “Good, I was wondering why I couldn’t find you everywhere, and there was no figure in the surveillance. It turns out you were hiding here!”

With his authority, it was naturally impossible to have the surveillance footage of Lin Pei’s bedroom. Lin Xiaodong had considered this point, which was why he sneaked over after being ‘killed’ to slack off and take a nap.

“It hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts…” Lin Xiaodong’s ear was pulled red by him, and he pleaded with tears in his eyes, “Mr. Ye, have mercy!”

“It serves you right to let you have a long memory!”

Looking at this one big and one small playing around in front of him as if no one were there, Lin Pei’s hand on his knees slowly tightened, and he only felt a wave of inexplicable annoyance rising from the bottom of his heart.

The man attributed this to Lin Xiaodong’s noisiness, so he said coldly: “Get out.”

Ye Shiyuan’s movement stiffened, and he secretly said that he was really carried away, and had actually forgotten that this was in front of the head of the family.

He hurriedly pulled Lin Xiaodong to apologize to Lin Pei together: “Sorry, head of the family, we will leave immediately.”

“Leave what? I’m not leaving!” Lin Xiaodong was very stubborn, staring at the man in the wheelchair without blinking, and persisted, “Also, you haven’t answered my question just now, do you dare to make this bet?”

System: “I thought you would first test whether Lin Pei is Gu Xi or not.”

“Does this still need testing?” Lin Xiaodong said with certainty, “Definitely not!”

The system was silent for a moment, and didn’t tell Lin Xiaodong that it had actually discovered familiar spatial fluctuations on Lin Pei’s body, and could basically determine the man’s identity. It recalled Lin Xiaodong’s performance in the previous world and couldn’t help but ask: “Why are you so sure?”

Lin Xiaodong: “Because he has no abs.”

System: “…………”

It didn’t know for a moment whether Lin Xiaodong was joking or sincere.

For Lin Xiaodong’s behavior, which could be described as offensive, Ye Shiyuan took a deep breath, but a trace of imperceptible smile appeared in Lin Pei’s eyes: “Bet with me? You are very brave.”

“Okay,” he calmly accepted the challenge, “three laps, not a meter less. If you can persevere and finish, I will leave the castle and give you a ride in the wheelchair. However, if you lose, you must promise me one request.”

Lin Xiaodong asked: “What request?”

“I haven’t thought of it yet,” Lin Pei said. This time it was his turn to ask Lin Xiaodong back, “Do you dare to bet?”

Ye Shiyuan’s eyes widened: “Head of the family, but this…”

“No need to say more, this is my decision.” Lin Pei glanced at him. Ye Shiyuan opened his mouth and soon bowed his head sensibly.

Lin Xiaodong snorted: “It’s a deal!”

Isn’t it just three kilometers? He doesn’t believe it can really kill someone!

However, the sky was not in his favor. When he was in Lin Pei’s room, it was still clear outside, but he had just gone down and run for less than two hundred meters when it suddenly rained heavily, and a downpour instantly soaked Lin Xiaodong through.

The other children who had been caught had already entered the castle to hide from the rain. Ye Shiyuan stood by the lake with an umbrella and shouted to him from afar: “Are you still running?”

In the pouring rain, Lin Xiaodong couldn’t even open his eyes, but he still made an “OK” gesture to Ye Shiyuan and persisted in continuing to run.

The consequence of not exercising regularly was that before half of the long-distance run was over, a fishy sweetness began to surge in his throat, and his two lungs, like broken bellows, desperately squeezed out the last trace of air. Lin Xiaodong didn’t dare to let the system block his pain perception, although his whole body was in stinging pain—if there was no pain perception, he was afraid that he would accidentally overexert himself and faint in the heavy rain on the spot.

One lap… two laps… by the last lap, Lin Xiaodong had already started to see stars.

His two legs were as heavy as a thousand catties. He thought he was running quite fast, but in Ye Shiyuan’s eyes, the distance of each step the youth took was only half of what it was before, not much different from the speed of an ordinary person walking.

The rain was so heavy that holding an umbrella was of no use at all, but Ye Shiyuan still persisted in standing by the lake and watching Lin Xiaodong finish the three laps.

Suddenly, probably not noticing his feet, the youth’s steps swayed, and he fell to his knees on the wet lawn with a thud, and couldn’t get up for a long time.

Ye Shiyuan’s heart instantly rose to his throat. Just as he was about to put down the umbrella and rush forward to help the person up, a hand stopped his movement.

“Don’t go,” Lin Pei said, “let him stand up himself.”

“Head of the family, you…” Ye Shiyuan looked at the man who appeared in the heavy rain with an umbrella just like him in shock, but soon hurriedly wanted to help Lin Pei push the wheelchair, “No, your body cannot be in the rain! I’ll take you back!”

“No need!” Lin Pei shouted, “Just stand here for me and watch carefully!”

The man’s stern face was somewhat blurry in the heavy rain. Ye Shiyuan was helpless and could only give up the thought of going forward to help, and also sighed in his heart that the head of the family’s heart had indeed become increasingly cold lately.

But he didn’t notice that the black-haired man’s pitch-black eyes had been staring fixedly at Lin Xiaodong in the distance from beginning to end, and the pale back of his hand on the armrest even had veins popping out because of excessive force.

Under the call of the system, Lin Xiaodong looked at the finish line not far ahead in a daze, coughed twice, crawled up from the muddy water with difficulty, and continued to stumble forward.

He could no longer run; every step was extremely difficult, and even breathing became an exceptionally painful thing.

The system kept cheering him on: “Go for it! Only three hundred meters left!”

But it was these mere three hundred meters that, for the current Lin Xiaodong, were as long as a lifetime.

“If I die,” he said to the system intermittently, “remember to help me engrave a line of words on my tombstone, just, just engrave, life lies in stillness…”

Lin Xiaodong was simply regretting it to death.

He just wanted to let Lin Pei leave the castle, why did his brain twitch and come up with such a self-harming provocation!

In the heavy rain, the youth’s body swayed again.

Lin Pei, who had been acting very calmly before, suddenly changed his face and pushed the wheelchair forward quickly. After a short daze, Ye Shiyuan also reacted immediately and shouted in the direction of the castle: “Doctor! Come here quickly!”

When Lin Xiaodong fell again, he knew it was over.

Every muscle in his body was screaming on the verge of collapse. He still wanted to struggle, but he could no longer control his body at all. The youth coughed twice. In a daze, he saw Lin Pei sitting in a wheelchair appear in front of him, but because the rain was too heavy, he couldn’t see the expression on the man’s face clearly at all.

He smiled tiredly and asked in a hoarse voice: “…How come you are here?”

“I… cough cough, I haven’t finished running yet…”

Lin Pei didn’t help him.

The black-haired man just looked down at him. In the short few seconds before the doctor and Ye Shiyuan arrived, he quietly held an umbrella for the youth lying in the rain.

“You did very well,” he said softly.

A hundred times better than he had imagined.