Chapter 66: A Minor Stratagem (Part 2)

In the evening when Deng Jiani was leaving, she still had a stern face, blaming him for pushing her away earlier, but Hang Yishao was in a good mood this time, having lost the weird mannerisms of yesterday, and with sweet nothings, he soon calmed her down. "Where’s Yan Wuxu?" Yan Wuxu, who was always following Fei Qing, was nowhere to be seen tonight, and Fei Qing, with a new face by his side who looked somewhat familiar and seemed as if he had seen her before in Daoquan University, joked around with his new girlfriend. Seizing the moment when the few women beside him walked away, Fei Qing punched Hang Yishao. "Aren’t you asking the obvious, buddy? Can there be leftover wine beside us?" As he spoke, Fei Qing’s pager beeped incessantly, annoying him. He pulled out the battery for some peace and quiet. Alcohol and love are alike; the first glass is magic, the second is intimacy, and the third becomes routine. A woman undressed and the alcohol consumed are the same deal: digest them completely by the next day. A man like Fei Qing, who rolls in the "wine pool meat forest," isn’t one to crave more sips—a few tastes, wetting his lips, and his passion fades. "You’ve been pretty comfortable lately," Fei Qing casually tossed the pager aside. "Deng Jiani started cozying up, and Su Ziceng stopped nagging you too; all the good fortune's fallen in your lap." Speaking of which, Su Ziceng hadn’t blasted Hang Yishao with a series of emergency calls for quite a while. Among Hang Yishao’s circle of friends, his pager had a nickname, known as "Su Ziceng’s dedicated pager." "Maybe she’s changed her ways." Hang Yishao wanted to throw some shade her way, but thinking of Su Ziceng’s initiative in saying goodbye tonight, he felt something was off. Maybe she genuinely picked up those prudish Kelly Women’s College routines after all. The saying that nature is hard to change is certainly true; Su Ziceng is still Su Ziceng, just a person used to cell phones suddenly reverting to using a pager, which would dampen anyone’s spirits. After leaving the Hang Family, Su Ziceng left a message for Boss Han and others, contemplating how to present herself before that unscrupulous boss tomorrow. The same night, while Hang Yishao and Fei Qing spent their time among beauties and drunkenness, Su Ziceng racked her brains for her survival strategies. Yan Wuxu stood next to the payphone at Kelly Women’s College, repeatedly dialing on the peeling phone buttons. On the other end of the call, the operator’s voice remained sweet. Yan Wuxu, sobbing, let the phone handset dangle powerlessly in the night, the tangled, twisted phone cord unable to be separated. October came, the weather grew colder, and the sweet-scented Osmanthus fruit hung from the branches. The cold fragrance lingered near people, making the figure huddled next to the phone booth seem even more insignificant. In a hospital in Mo City, Su Ziceng brought a basket of fruit, standing in front of the victim who had just awakened. She disliked the smell of hospitals, the dry scent of disinfectant passing through her nostrils, smelling no better than pesticides. Su Ziguang called the first thirty-five years before his rebirth his first half of life and the undecided seven years after his rebirth the latter half. In her first half of life, she seldom visited the hospital. She was born at home, and later when she went for plastic surgery, she chose private clinics with cloying fragrances. Formal hospital visits were rare for her. The last visit was to bring Su Qingzhang in for emergency treatment. At the time, her mind was still muddled; she clenched a diamond necklace won at an auction, only remembering the emergency room’s red light flickering briefly, almost in the span of a breath, and Su Qingzhang was gone. "The patient has woken up; their condition is more serious than we thought—high-level paraplegia," the doctor thought. She thought she was a family member of the party at fault and, seeing Su Ziceng so young, thought the responsible party was shirking duty by sending just anyone but still informed her of the patient’s condition. On the police side, Boss Han had already clarified things, stating that the other party also insisted that the person who hit him was He Malu. The patients’ faces looked almost the same, a sickly yellow wax color from being worn out, and Su Ziceng thought it better to cut to the chase. "I’m his daughter," she declared her relation, deliberately infusing her voice with an air of importance, not looking directly at the person, glancing sideways at the patient on the bed. Knowing her purpose for the visit, to stand out among the angels in white, Su Ziceng wore a vibrant rose-colored fall coat, its wool studded with custom-made bright beads. She covered her nose and mouth with one hand while leaving enough white in her eyes to show off her strong heiress attitude. Thus, her identity was self-evident. "You," the victim, a man in his thirties who had pocketed plenty of advantages from the wine shop owner and thus sold his conscience, now was very reluctant to see such a visitor looking like this. "My father sent me to give you the last sum of money; don’t come asking for money every so often." Su Ziceng reluctantly opened her opulent Hermes Birkin bag, pulled out a check as if it carried countless germs, and swiftly tossed it onto the victim’s white bedsheet. "One hundred thousand," the man attempted to move using his lower body but was unable to do so, completely numb. "My legs—what’s wrong with my legs?" He beat his legs incredulously. "Stop hitting, or you’ll damage them and then blame my dad again." Su Ziceng’s voice was sharp, her piercing voice like nails scraping against glass, which made even her own hair stand on end. "What are you saying?" The man hurled the IV stand beside him at Su Ziceng, but having anticipated his action, she quickly stepped back, retreating while declaring, "It’s your greedy, shameless old rogue nature that I fear the most." Before she left, she took one more look at the deliberately placed medical report beside the bed. Upon leaving the hospital, Su Ziceng took a deep breath and headed back to the payphone, doing such a thing for the first time and marveling at how adeptly she managed it, and then she dialed another number. After hanging up the phone, Su Ziceng suppressed her excitement; now all she needed to do was wait for tomorrow to come quickly.