After Flirting with the God-Tier Beautiful Tycoon - Chapter 77

Clearly, the sound of the rain was loud, yet Shen Xiaojiang heard the sound of Chen Yi’s high heels instantly.

That sound was far more capable of unsettling one’s heart.

The moment she turned around, the other woman had already approached her.

The distance between them remained at a point where a single step forward would lead to an embrace.

Chen Yi’s chest rose and fell heavily from over breathing.

She kept her eyes lowered, gazing casually at a certain spot, any spot would do.

She held an umbrella, tilting the handle significantly toward Shen Xiaojiang.

Shen Xiaojiang was completely sheltered within the umbrella’s curve, while half of Chen Yi’s shoulder was soaked.

They stood face to face, yet the distance between their hearts felt vast.

The frantic rain fell by their ears, wantonly tugging at every sensitive, fragile nerve.

Occasionally, people without umbrellas rushed past, the splashes of water hitting them, but they felt nothing.

Still, they stood there quietly, facing each other.

Like two statues, silent and breathless.

Looking at the shimmering wetness on Chen Yi’s thin shoulders, Shen Xiaojiang felt a flicker of reluctance in her heart. She raised her hand and slowly moved the umbrella handle back toward the other woman.

But quickly, Chen Yi tilted it back toward her again.

Shen Xiaojiang stopped insisting; it was meaningless.

She looked at Chen Yi’s pale face and eyes stained with mist, letting out a soft, faint sigh. “I’m home.”

Chen Yi bit her lower lip between her teeth, then gently released it.

“I know,” she replied softly.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

It seemed as if Shen Xiaojiang spoke first, yet it also seemed as if Chen Yi did.

They said their goodbyes, yet neither left.

Chen Yi: “You…”

Shen Xiaojiang: “I…”

Both spoke at the same time, and both fell silent at the same time.

Chen Yi lowered her head.

Shen Xiaojiang blinked.

“You,” Shen Xiaojiang said, intentionally avoiding her gaze, her voice carrying the playful stubbornness unique to a young girl. “You go first.”

Chen Yi didn’t rush to speak. She slowly raised her hand, pinching a corner of Shen Xiaojiang’s shirt with her fingertips, rubbing it back and forth.

Shen Xiaojiang felt the tug on her shirt but pretended not to notice.

She let Chen Yi crumple the fabric.

Just then, Shen Xiaojiang’s phone rang.

She hesitated for a moment before taking it out, seeing a familiar number.

Before this, there had already been two missed calls.

After thinking for two seconds, she answered.

“President Bai.”

Chen Yi narrowed her eyes and let go of the shirt corner.

Her fingers gripped the umbrella handle tightly, her knuckles turning white. A chill pried open the skin of her fingertips and seeped into her bones and blood.

White Shuhua began telling Shen Xiaojiang interesting anecdotes about California beaches.

Shen Xiaojiang heard her, but the words didn’t register.

Like an insignificant breeze, it entered one ear and left the other, making no pointless stay.

She stared at the woman in front of her, and the woman in front of her stared back.

A few seconds later, they turned away from each other in unison.

They reached the entrance and went up to the second floor.

Shen Xiaojiang took out her keys, opened the door, and entered the room.

The voice activated lights in the hallway flickered on and then died out.

She stood by the door, leaning her back against the frame, looking out the window sideways.

The guard had returned, the gate rose, and the Rolls-Royce like a beast of the dark night slowly and menacingly drove inside.

The woman holding the navy blue umbrella stood by the car for a long time.

Rain washed over the window glass, and it washed over Shen Xiaojiang’s heart as well.

She withdrew her gaze, sitting on the edge of the bed with a body full of dampness, staring blankly at the empty wall.

It felt as if a transparent barrier had been implanted in her ears, isolating her from all external sounds.

Silent rain, silent room.

As time passed, this feeling of being shielded from all sound sources gradually improved.

“Student Shen, Shen Xiaojiang, are you even listening…”

The phone was lying face down on the warm yellow bedsheet. Bai Shuhua’s voice, tinged with a bit of static, echoed in the silent space.

Shen Xiaojiang’s shoulders flinched. She looked at the face-down phone, and it took her several seconds to remember that the call was still connected.

“President Bai, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you just now. What did you say?” Shen Xiaojiang lowered her eyes, looking at the slippers she had put on the wrong feet.

She shook her head helplessly before swapping them back.

“I said, if we want the scraping speed to be faster, I need to add some new elements,” Bai Shuhua’s voice was full of excitement.

“What do you want to add?”

Ding-dong…

Bai Shuhua: “I just sent you a file. It cost me ten thousand USD to get this. Do your best to finish it if it’s really not possible, it’s fine.”

“Okay.”

Shen Xiaojiang wasn’t one to let romance cloud her mind. She put everything else aside, opened her laptop, and began writing the new code according to Bai Shuhua’s requirements.

The next morning, it wasn’t an alarm clock that woke Shen Xiaojiang, but her obsession with her work.

She washed up and went to the kitchen.

The kitchen was roughly five or six square meters.

However, though the sparrow is small, it has all the vital organs. Everything a kitchen usually has was there.

Since no one lived next door yet, it was quite spacious for Shen Xiaojiang alone.

She boiled two eggs for herself, heated a glass of milk, and with a piece of whole-wheat toast in her mouth, sat back down in front of the computer.

Bai Shuhua wanted to add a set of variables to the initial code to see if they would change the original linear reaction.

As a code enthusiast, Shen Xiaojiang would naturally do her utmost.

She temporarily put all other thoughts aside to focus on the task at hand.

She treated her work with her usual seriousness.

It was true at the pet shop, and it was true now at Wanning Electronics.

The higher the difficulty, the more challenging and rewarding it was for her.

It wasn’t until late at night that Shen Xiaojiang finished the basic code entry.

Perhaps due to the stomach medicine she had been taking recently, while she didn’t feel pain, she didn’t feel hunger either.

Since she wasn’t hungry, she decided to work a bit longer.

At night, the Venus Bar was brilliantly lit inside and out.

This wasn’t just the largest “gold melting pot” in South City it was a paradise for the city’s youth.

In the lounge, Bai Shuhua casually flipped through Chen Yi’s books dense and obscure, she didn’t like them at all.

However, a jar filled with lollipops on the bookshelf caught her eye.

She put the book down, took the jar, and turned it over and over in her hands.

After a while, she let out a soft laugh.

At that moment, the door opened.

Chen Yi appeared in the light of the doorway.

She looked at the jar in Bai Shuhua’s hand, her narrow eyes squinting slightly. The corners of her mouth twitched imperceptibly, and her voice was cold. “Who gave you permission to touch my things? Put it down.”

Bai Shuhua looked at the door, then at her hands, curving a finger as if pointing to the lollipops inside the transparent jar.

She “pfft” and burst out laughing.

Then, she shook her head. “Chen Xiaoqi, I don’t like sweets, you know that. There’s no need for me to fight you for this. I’m not that desperate.”

“Wordy,” Chen Yi walked in, wearing black thin-heeled lace-up high heels. Her ten exposed toes were painted with dark red nail polish, both alluring and sexy.

She wore a dark blue halter-neck qipao that hugged her body, accentuating her excellent figure. Beneath the high slit, the hem of the qipao rolled like waves in the night passionate and surging.

“If you don’t like it, don’t touch it. If you don’t like it, someone else will,” Chen Yi’s voice was icy. She walked with a breeze so cold it made Bai Shuhua shiver violently.

Though Bai Shuhua couldn’t match Chen Yi’s business strategies or her eloquence, she wasn’t a fool. She could hear the hidden meaning in those words.

“Wait, did I offend you?” she asked, looking at Chen Yi’s back.

Chen Yi glanced back faintly but said nothing.

Bai Shuhua crossed her arms, leaning against the bookshelf. “Why do I feel like you’ve swallowed gunpowder? Your words are loaded.”

Chen Yi turned sideways to find the right spot on the bookshelf and put the lollipop jar back.

Then, she picked up a circular fan embroidered with “A Hundred Birds Facing the Phoenix,” waving it slowly and gracefully in front of her face. She teased, “Think too much? Digest it yourself.”

Bai Shuhua, refusing to give up, reached out her hand to grab the jar of candy.

Chen Yi swiftly raised the circular fan in her hand and slapped the back of Bai Shuhua’s hand.

“Hiss!” The victim of the slap winced in genuine pain, her brow furrowing slightly with a flicker of resentment in her eyes.

“Oh my, what kind of treasure is this that one can’t even touch it?”

Chen Yi slowly tilted her chin up, a streak of ruthlessness crossing the corners of her mouth. She squinted, glancing at her with a side-eye: “It is exactly the kind of treasure you are not allowed to touch.”

With that, she turned gracefully and sat on the leather sofa, her elbow propped on the backrest and her fingertips lightly touching her temple. She closed her eyes, ignoring Bai Shuhua. “What do you want?”

“Chairman Chen is truly concise you’ve even skipped the basic pleasantries between sisters.” Bai Shuhua was about to sit down beside her, but she was deterred by a cold gaze from Chen Yi.

“Heh, I’ll sit opposite you then. Happy?” After saying that, she plopped down on a round fabric stool.

No matter how long or large the sofa was, it was perfectly normal for Chen Yi, as the Chairman, to occupy it alone. Nowadays, no one could sit side by side with her without her explicit consent.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know why I’m here?”

Chen Yi didn’t answer. It was as if she were too lazy to respond, or perhaps she was intentionally giving Bai Shuhua the cold shoulder. The mere thought of Bai Shuhua calling Shen Xiaojiang last night regardless of what was said made Chen Yi feel unsettled.

If she were still the “Seventh Master Chen” of the past, she would have certainly taught Bai Shuhua a lesson. However, she had silently vowed to herself that her hands would never be stained with blood again. Otherwise, those hands would no longer be worthy of touching Shen Xiaojiang.

“After all, we are like sisters…”

Before Bai Shuhua could finish, Chen Yi’s eyes filled with hostility: “You and I are not sisters.”

“Fine, fine. Then let’s say we have some history…”

“Bai Shuhua,” Chen Yi sneered, “All the ‘history’ between us is limited to the transactions of the Association. You should know that entering my lounge and touching my things without permission is already a major taboo.”

She spoke the words “major taboo” very slowly, almost syllable by syllable.

Bai Shuhua froze for a moment.

“Oh, right. I should call you Chairman Chen now.” She deliberately elongated the last two words.

Chen Yi’s gaze turned colder.

“I returned to the country representing Wanning Electronics to discuss the tech company merger with you. As a leader in tech enterprises, Wanning is unwilling and should not be excluded from the list of competitors.” Bai Shuhua’s expression became serious.

Chen Yi tapped her temple firmly with her finger, a fake smile playing on her lips. “Am I that bored?”

Bai Shuhua’s shoulders visibly slumped.

Chen Yi didn’t give her a chance to speak, offering a wicked smile. “You want to negotiate with me? Are you qualified?”

Having said that, she turned her head to look at the sky outside, which was gradually turning gloomy.

Bai Shuhua was getting a bit upset too. “Chen Xiaoqi, even if you don’t respect me, respect the elders. My grandfather…”

Chen Yi still didn’t look at her. “Bai Shuhua, the only reason you are still sitting here hearing me speak calmly is because I am giving your grandfather ‘face’.”

The other woman had no choice. “Fine, I’ll report back to the Chairman.”

After Bai Shuhua left, Chen Yi leaned back against the leather sofa. She closed her eyes to feel the wind from the window.

It was the Start of Autumn; the temperature began to drop at night.

Two days later, Shen Xiaojiang returned to school. After a two month absence, she returned to her dormitory, and the familiar feeling washed over her.

“Ginger! It’s only been two days, but I missed you to death!” Sun Jiabao hooked her arm around Shen Xiaojiang’s neck. “Let’s go, come to my house tonight for yellow wine stewed chicken.”

“Hey, hey, watch it, my neck hurts.” Shen Xiaojiang pushed her away and rubbed her stiff, aching nape.

She had spent the entire weekend sitting in front of the computer, maintaining almost the same posture for two days; her cervical spine was acting up.

“Oh, see! This is why we are soulmate besties!” Sun Jiabao made an exaggeratedly annoying face.

“What are you talking about?” Shen Xiaojiang dodged her, sensing something bad.

Sun Jiabao raised her eyebrows. “What a coincidence! My neck hurts too. Yesterday, Chen Xingnan had someone pull a new network cable. The speed is so explosive I played games until 3:00 AM!”

“Jiabao, are you bored…” Before she could finish, Shen Xiaojiang felt a sharp pain in her abdomen.

Recently, her stomach pains had been recurring, and they had been particularly frequent over the last two days. She clutched her stomach, her brow furrowing tightly on her serious face.

Seeing Shen Xiaojiang turn pale and her lips lose their color, Sun Jiabao moved closer nervously, supporting her arm. “Ginger, what’s wrong?”

Shen Xiaojiang wasn’t one to show weakness. “I… I’m fine,” she said, attempting to straighten up.

But this time, the pain didn’t seem inclined to let her go easily. Just as her back straightened, another sharp pang hit her abdomen. This time was different, it felt as if her entire stomach was being churned together. The pain forced her to close her eyes.

“You say you’re fine, but look at you!” Sun Jiabao was panicking it was the first time she had seen Shen Xiaojiang look like this. She pulled out Shen Xiaojiang’s chair and made her sit down to rest.

Then, she went to get a glass of warm water. “Jiang, have some water and see if it helps.”

Shen Xiaojiang took a few gulps. The moment she set the cup down, her stomach felt like an overturning sea. Cold sweat began to bead on her forehead.

“Not drinking more?” Sun Jiabao knew nothing about first aid and looked hilariously helpless.