Chapter 135

Chapter 135

Qin Ying had no intention of blowing this up.

After dating Feng Mu for five years, she knew exactly what kind of man he was: a textbook businessman.

Making a small scene was one thing, but if they pushed it too far, Feng Mu would definitely fly into a rage out of embarrassment.

He had money and power. There was no need to go toe-to-toe with him.

Qin Ying leaned in and whispered a few words into Granny Shi’s ear.

Granny Shi waved her hand. “All right, that’s enough. Everyone, disperse, disperse.”

The people doing Villain Hitting and the onlookers were all shooed away by her. Then Granny Shi and her little gang returned to the mahjong room.

The driver, who had been blocked in, visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

Feng Mu also let out a breath and followed Qin Ying into the front courtyard.

The courtyard gates closed behind them, cutting off all those curious stares. As he walked, he loosened his tie.

Then he wiped his face in disgust, unable to shake the feeling that there was a faint, lingering stink of old saliva on him.

If this had happened anywhere else, Feng Mu might have lost his temper completely.

But in front of Qin Ying, he didn’t dare complain about her neighbors.

He wanted to go inside and wash his face, only to be stopped at the door.

“If you have something to say, say it here.” Qin Ying crossed her arms and blocked the doorway.

Letting Feng Mu set foot within three feet of her front door was already a mercy. And he wanted to enter her home?

Feng Mu’s expression froze. He looked at Qin Ying and immediately read the meaning in her face.

He was so angry he almost laughed. “Do we have to be like this?”

He took a step forward.

Qin Ying said coldly, “If you don’t want a kick to the crotch, you’d better not try that grab-my-wrist routine in front of me.”

“Was last time not enough of a lesson?”

The last time their talk had fallen apart, Qin Ying had headbutted Feng Mu hard enough to break the bridge of his nose.

At that, Feng Mu did indeed stop. He subconsciously touched his nose.

His face dark as ink, he halted two meters away.

After a long while, he took a deep breath. “Let’s talk properly.”

“Am I covering your mouth?” Qin Ying looked at him, finding him utterly baffling.

“Didn’t I just tell you to say what you came to say and then get lost?”

Seeing how completely unreceptive she was, Feng Mu raked a hand through his hair in frustration. “With me, can you not be so sharp?”

As if they were enemies.

Qin Ying’s head hurt. “If this is the kind of nonsense you came to say, then you can turn around and leave.”

“You’re busy, and so am I. Don’t waste both our time.”

“We are not in the kind of relationship where we need to reminisce.”

Her rejection was clear and cutting. Feng Mu’s lips trembled.

In the end, he took a deep breath, as if conceding. “If I give up the arranged marriage, can we get back together?”

On the way here, he had rehearsed what to say over and over in his mind.

He had thought about what negotiating tactics he should use when he saw Qin Ying, how to persuade her without lowering his head in a way that was too humiliating.

But after all those countless scenarios circled to the tip of his tongue, what came out was a plea for peace.

“Let’s each take a step back, okay? Pretend none of this ever happened.”

He looked utterly wretched as he stepped forward, wanting to take Qin Ying’s hand.

“No. There’s no going back.”

The answer in his ears was still Qin Ying’s merciless style. Standing on the steps, the young woman lowered her eyes to look at him.

Her pale eyes were as cold as inorganic glass beads.

Her full, beautifully shaped lips moved, and the words she spoke were cruel enough to wound. “Spilled water cannot be gathered up again.”

“And,” Qin Ying paused, glancing into the distance, “your mother, Ms. Feng, threw a fifty-million-yuan check at me and told me not to hold you back.”

Feng Mu stood frozen for a long time before he finally came back to himself. Before he could speak, Qin Ying raised a hand and cut him off. “I accepted it.”

“That very day, I dragged your mother off to sign a gift agreement, and with a lawyer as witness, we completed the transfer of assets.”

Qin Ying gazed sentimentally at the clouds in the sky. “I even paid the twenty percent tax in accordance with the law.”

The tax had been so high.

“I can’t take someone’s money and not do the job.”

She wasn’t that lacking in principles.

Feng Mu’s face was livid. For a long while, he couldn’t say a word. It was impossible to tell whether he was angry at Qin Ying or at his mother.

“No backing out after the bet is placed. If you gamble, you accept the loss. You taught me that, Feng Mu.”

At the thought of the nice round number in her bank balance, Qin Ying finally revealed a genuine smile.

Feng Mu was speechless.
Reason told him that clinging to her was useless, but the longer time dragged on, the more his heart refused to let go.

“All right. We can talk about all that later.” He forced an easy smile. “I came this time because I heard something happened to you. Now that I’ve seen you’re fine, I feel much more at ease.”

Feng Mu spoke quickly and pulled something like an envelope from his pocket.

“This is an invitation for a cruise ship. It sets sail from Hong Kong in October.”

“There’s an auction being held in international waters, and it has something that can treat your eyes.”

Perhaps afraid Qin Ying would refuse, Feng Mu turned and left in a hurry.

Before he went, he left only one sentence behind. “Don’t use your own body to spite me.”

Qin Ying’s motion to tear up the invitation paused.

Something that could treat her eyes?

The invitation’s design and wording were perfectly ordinary.

But…

Qin Ying ran her fingers over the decorative edging.

The border was made up of vine patterns and a few simple line-drawn animals.

The style was very similar to the Zheng symbol she had once seen at the dogfighting pit.

After a moment of hesitation, she ultimately put the invitation away.

The ship would not depart until October. She still had plenty of time to decide whether she wanted to take that risk.

Qin Ying carefully tucked the invitation into her bag.

When she opened the door, a whole pile of little plush things rolled out from inside.

The lot of them had been pressing their ears to the door to eavesdrop on gossip, and now they all tumbled out in one heap.

Wangcai was at the very bottom, with Thunderbird on top.

Han Lie had probably been crouching on Wangcai’s head. When Wangcai fell over, inertia flung him out.

Curled around his tail, he rolled across the floor twice and happened to land right in front of Qin Ying’s toes.

“Are you all right?” Qin Ying hurried to pick him up, then busied herself herding this whole nest of little things back inside.

Fuzhu reacted the fastest and led the charge back. The crowd of Hou that had come to watch the show followed after it.

One after another, they bounced back into the apartment like beans.

The scene was only slightly less dramatic than the great wildebeest migration. The only difference was that wildebeests crossed rivers, while these guys were hopping over a door threshold.

Thunderbird flapped its wings and took off, sidling up beside Qin Ying’s face.

Wangcai, perhaps because it had eaten too much, kicked its four little paws for ages without managing to get up.

Qin Ying scooped it up, tucked it under her arm, and carried it back inside.

“All right. Tell me what you were trying to do.”

After kicking off her shoes and dropping her bag, Qin Ying folded her arms and sat down in the middle of the sofa.

A row of fluffy creatures sat neatly on the coffee table.

Han Lie knelt at the very front, his tail swaying uneasily behind him.

After transforming into a Monstrous Beast, he could not hide a single thought or feeling.

Only thick-skinned Thunderbird kept flying around, trying to muddle its way through the matter.

Qin Ying irritably waved it away, and that was when she noticed some shredded scraps of non-woven fabric on the coffee table.

Those definitely had not been on the table before she left.

Qin Ying could not help leaning closer. “What are these?”

Seeing that she was no longer pursuing the earlier matter, Han Lie’s tail, which had been anxiously patting the tabletop behind him, finally settled down.

He raised his head and replied, “Reporting to Supreme Deity, I am making clothes.”

Then he demonstrated how he did it.

First, he took out a needle he had found in some obscure corner while cleaning.

Then came a non-woven takeout delivery bag.

Just as Qin Ying thought Han Lie was about to show off his sewing skills with a needle almost as tall as he was, Wangcai walked over with obvious reluctance.

Its tongue curled around the needle tip and held it in its mouth, and the smell of sulfur seeped out from between its teeth.

In just a short while, the needle tip was heated until it turned blue, then red.

Han Lie hugged the needle that Wangcai had heated with its fire and pressed it onto the non-woven fabric.

Using the heat of the needle tip and the properties of the non-woven fabric, he forcibly burned out an adorable miniature vest.

Han Lie held up the little vest between his two paws and showed it to Qin Ying with great delight. “Please wait a little, Supreme Deity. Once my skills are more practiced, I will make one for you.”

His enthusiasm left Qin Ying stunned for a second before she burst out laughing.

She had thought Han Lie was only saying it for fun. Who would have guessed that the next morning, after staying up all night practicing his craft, he would carry over a huge pile of dresses that looked stiff as boards and lay them out one by one before Qin Ying?

Qin Ying checked the almanac and found that today was suitable for travel.

No time like the present. She began trying to enter the World in the Box.