After Being Targeted By A Younger, Obsessive Tycoon, Mei Qiang Was In A Terrible Predicament - Chapter 10

Qi Xiaolin stared at Yan Qingming, the words squeezed out through his teeth: “Is my house haunted, or is the feng shui wrong? Is that why you hate it here so much? You would rather return to that dog kennel than stay with me?”

Yan Qingming lowered his gaze, picked up his clothes, and put them on. Ignoring the question, he replied, “I am tired.”

Qi Xiaolin could no longer restrain his rage. He shouted, “You are not tired at all! Stop avoiding my questions!”

Yan Qingming did not want to argue with him, so he turned his head to look out the window. However, Qi Xiaolin pressed down on his shoulders, forcing Yan Qingming to face him.

Qi Xiaolin thought about the two years since he brought Yan Qingming back to Qingcheng and the change in Yan Qingming’s attitude toward him. The more he thought about it, the more miserable he felt, and his angry voice was unconsciously tinged with a hint of grievance. “You were not like this before! Why have you suddenly started treating me so poorly? Do you have someone else in your heart?”

“When we were good before, you cooked for me every day, took care of me, and talked to me. How dare you treat me with such indifference now? Asking you to cook a meal for me is like asking for your life, and you are so reluctant when we are intimate.”

“They say a woman’s heart is as deep as the ocean, but you, Yan Qingming, are even harder to please! I must have had eight lifetimes of bad luck to end up with you!”

Qi Xiaolin spoke in a fit of anger, his mind flooded with memories of the past.

When Yan Qingming picked him up and brought him home, he was not yet twenty. He knew nothing, and long-term malnutrition had left him small and frail, looking like a child of fourteen or fifteen. Yan Qingming had protected him as if he were his own younger brother, taking personal care of him. They lived under the same roof, and he was the person who treated him best in his dark life, aside from Qingyan.

He had stayed by Yan Qingming’s side for years, calling him Brother Ming every day.

He had wandered for so long and understood nothing, yet that was the first time he had experienced what it meant to like someone. He kept it secretly buried in his heart, not daring to speak it aloud. Yan Qingming was like a bright, untouchable deity, while he was merely a sewer rat living in the dark, only daring to harbor secret yearnings.

Until, in the end, he slowly dismantled the Yan family and forced that deity he could never reach beneath him.

Yan Qingming pushed away the hands that were pressing him down and said, “You said it yourself, that was in the past. The you from the past would not do the things you do now.”

When they first met, even though Qi Xiaolin was gaunt and sallow, his eyes had been clear.

Qi Xiaolin snorted, seemingly trying to save face. “Hmph, as if you are some precious treasure. How does that phrase go again? Right, a faded pearl. That is what you are now: a faded pearl.”

Yan Qingming gave him a cold look and could not help but correct him, “That is not how you use that idiom, you illiterate brute.”

When he had found Qi Xiaolin, the boy was only a teenager. At an age when other children were reading in school, he had been working in small roadside restaurants to support himself, sleeping on the streets, and scavenging for leftovers.

As a person without official identification, he had to give his all just to stay alive.

When he first met Qi Xiaolin, he felt an indescribable sensation. He always felt that this child was somewhat similar to him, even though he had never wandered the streets himself.

Qi Xiaolin hated it when Yan Qingming pointed out his shortcomings. He roared, “I have already earned a graduate degree!”

Yan Qingming gathered his thoughts and sneered, “You bought it by bribing people through the back door.”

“Yan Qingming! Are you looking for a beating today?!”