Chapter 50 (Part 1)

"What?! Zhang Yufen is no longer in her previous hotel? She can’t be found?!"

Mr Zhao’s backlog of anger erupted like a volcano for a whole day. Every strand of hair was filled with mania and anger. “Why can’t you find her? She is just a nanny, is she hard to find?! Isn't all the contact information she provided when she came to work before registered? What about her phone number and emergency contacts? Where’s her address?! Are you guys just sitting around, waiting to get paid?!”

The people below him were trembling, afraid to speak.

Most of the time, Zhao Hongzhi was a reasonable boss who would treat his subordinates generously. Their salaries were also high enough. But this time, things may have gotten way out of control.

Zhao Hongzhi's reputation will be ruined if Zhang Yufen is not found.

There were indeed cheaters among their circle of friends, but there has never been one who has been affected this badly— especially if it was an affair with an old nanny which resulted in an illegitimate daughter being raised at home for 18 years.

Therefore, the consequence of Zhao Hongzhi being so angry that his blood pressure soared was expected.

"The address she filled in is the address of a remote mountain village, close to the mountain near Tongcheng. We have sent additional staff to find her. As for her phone, we couldn’t get through to her. I’m afraid she might have thrown away the phone card and escaped.”

"Can't get through?! Let me try!"

After a few beeps, there was an artificial voice explaining the call could not be connected.

Mr Zhao smashed the phone in anger. It broke apart on the opposite wall and fell to the ground.

Everyone in the living room trembled subconsciously.

"Ran off." Mr Zhao, like a fighting beast in a cage with nowhere to vent, gritted his teeth and said these two words.

"Very well, you’ve escaped."

Every time it was read, the blood pressure of the Zhao family members who were present went up a bit. A seed of anger spread in everyone's minds.

If Zhang Yufen was not guilty, this was just a misunderstanding and it was just a method of framing that one of the Zhao family's enemies came up with, then why should Zhang Yufen abscond with the fear of having committed a crime?

Now that she has escaped, this means that Zhao Yuan's comments on the school forum are infinitely close to the truth.

Mr Zhao furiously ordered, “Then keep looking!”

Zhao Zhanhuai also gave an ultimatum to the security company. “She must be found within three days.”

Otherwise, after three days, things may have reached the point of irreversibility and everyone would have the impression of his father messing around. This was what they meant with the proverb ‘a rumor only requires one word, but to stop a rumor requires one to exhaust all of one’s energy.

After the security company's people left, Mr Zhao was still anxious.

When Zhao Zhanhuai saw that he was about to have high blood pressure and might be hospitalized, he quickly poured him a glass of water. “Why not get some rest? I will take care of everything else."

"How can I rest?" Mr Zhao rubbed his eyebrows. He could only feel his vision going black. “Everything has gone wrong recently. You’ve lost two or three projects and I’ve also become messed up here! The shareholders have blown up my phone with their incessant calls and I have to attend a meeting tonight.”

Although he really didn’t want to doubt her, Mr Zhao had already been tossed madly by the recent events. He retracted his gaze and murmured to Zhao Zhanhuai, “Zhang Yufen is a nanny who has stayed in our house for more than 10 years. She only knows how to buy groceries and take care of the house. Her mobile phone is still an old model with only 2G available and she is not very tech savvy. Did someone tell her about it? How else would she know that such a big thing had happened and escape in time?”

Mr Zhao's voice was not loud, but he was very angry, so Zhao Yuan naturally heard it.

It was undeniable that after Mr Zhao inherited the family business, the fact that he could earn snowball the profits made meant he still had a bit of acumen.

Zhao Yuan wiped her tears and did not speak, knowing that it would all be over as soon as she spoke.

Madam Zhao, who was sitting on the sofa, saw it and she couldn't bear it. After all, Zhao Yuan was raised by her own hands, and there is no way she could sit idly seeing Zhao Yuan cry.

She said to Mr Zhao, “Enough, stop suspecting everything. Who in this family can tip off Zhang Yufen? Besides, it's not confirmed whether Zhang Yufen is Yuanyuan's biological mother or not. What if this is a complete rumor created by one of your business competitors? It is possible for the other party to be buying some time by moving Zhang Yufen away just to prevent you from proving your innocence.”

Mr Zhao was not in the mood to deal with Madam Zhao. He waved his hand in annoyance and said, "Both you and Zhao Yuan should go upstairs."

After that, Mr Zhao stared at Zhao Yuan. “You will stay at home for a few days and study by yourself.”

Zhao Yuan nodded tearfully. She stood up from the sofa, looking like a weak willow branch trembling in the wind.

Mr Zhao and Zhao Zhanhuai watched her as she went upstairs. They could see that she had lost a lot of weight recently, but they couldn’t be bothered about it anymore.

…

Zhao Yuan returned to her room, closed the door and leaned against it. Her mood has dwindled into a pot of porridge.

After returning from the training camp, things have moved in a completely unforeseen direction.

Before the training camp, the family members were acting a little distant with Zhao Yuan because Zhao Mingxi ran away from home and because they heard about Pu Shuang and the others' harsh treatment towards Zhao Mingxi.

She thought she could win another round.

But she never expected that such big news would break when she returned from the training camp.

Zhao Yuan didn’t believe that it was Mr Zhao’s business competitors.

The posts on the forum were all aimed at her.

And that person was good at finding her most sensitive spots— letting the Zhao family know that she was Zhang Yufen's daughter was more ferocious than telling the whole school that she was just a fake daughter.

Zhao Yuan really couldn't think of anyone else except Zhao Mingxi and Fu Yangxi who would do things like this.

And the biggest question was, was she related to Zhang Yufen?

Zhao Yuan was so scared that her blood went cold.

…

She hugged her shoulders and sat on the ground for a while. She gritted her teeth, took out her phone and wanted to send a message to Zhang Yufen, asking her to get as far away as possible.

But the moment she took out her cell phone, she immediately realized that she couldn't send it anymore. People from the security company said that Zhang Yufen's cell phone could no longer be connected. If she sent a text message now, she might be found out.

Thinking of this, Zhao Yuan immediately cleared all the messages between them and blocked and deleted Zhang Yufen's mobile phone number with shaky hands.

It was not enough. She fearfully restored the phone to the factory settings until she left no clues.

*

The circle was not big, let alone Fu Yangxi was also paying special attention to this matter.

News reached his ears in the evening.

"She ran away?" Fu Yangxi stopped eating his apple. He threw the apple into the trash can and frowned. "Did someone tip her off?"

The person on the call said, “Young Master Fu, do I need to check with the three telecommunications companies?”

"Check, of course you have to check." Fu Yangxi thought for a while, then said, “Also, check the nanny's history for the past 50 years, her place of origin and whether she has any other criminal record which will help to increase the sentence in the future. All aspects must be checked. Then check her bank card consumption records in the last few days. If she wants to run, she must first withdraw a sum of money. Doesn't she have a passport? She should still be in China, so she can only use the high-speed rail or long-distance transport services. She can’t be far. You will find her the day after tomorrow at the latest.”

"What happens after we find her?"

"Send her to the Zhao family. I want to see what the Zhao family will do."

Fu Yangxi said, “Also, has Lawyer Gao gone abroad recently? Ask him to come back quickly and wait with the team of lawyers. After she is found, it will be a matter for the court.”

Fu Yangxi was very calm on the surface today. His tone was also calm, but internally he couldn't wait to end the nanny’s life.

The caller answered, and after a while, it seemed that he had managed to contact the Zhao family. He said to Fu Yangxi, “Young Master Fu, we have sent some information to Zhao Zhanhuai. Zhao Zhanhuai called and wants to thank you.”

"It's not him I’m helping. I don't want to talk to him, it's bad luck." Fu Yangxi said coldly and hung up the phone immediately.

After hanging up the phone, the anger in Fu Yangxi's heart was finally dispersed.

He lay on the sofa, crossed his leg and clicked on the WeChat dialog with Zhao Mingxi. He didn't know if she was asleep now. He wanted to send something, but he racked his brains and didn't know what to say.

He stayed on the WeChat page until this morning. Zhao Mingxi asked him what he was eating. He turned the breakfast he had eaten to a better angle, took a photo and sent it. Then the two chatted casually about when they were going to school.

Fu Yangxi flipped through the WeChat chat history and found that since some time ago, the two people had been using WeChat to chat more frequently, and the conversations began to increase.

Zhao Mingxi would also take the initiative to ask him about other things— For example, during the training camp, she asked what to do if the washing powder could not wash off the oil stains on her clothes.

Damn it, how would I know such a thing?

I’ve never washed my clothes personally!

So that day, he jumped up quickly and almost turned on his computer to check Baidu for an hour. He summed up all the methods and sent it to her in a Word document. He even began considering whether to ask someone to send washing powder to her or use this as an excuse to go there in person.

But while he was thinking about it, Little Mask said, “Thank you so much. I will wash it tomorrow. I’ll go off to sleep first.” and beat him back into the winter wind.

"..." His face immediately went hot. His head felt warm with the urge to run over in the middle of the night. Will this scare her?

In short, Fu Yangxi was not so slow. He was able to notice that the messages Zhao Mingxi sent to him now were no longer the kind of messages that he received when she first changed classes. It had no substance in them, as if he was used as a robotic account to be tested with three full stops.

She usually wakes up early in the morning, and if it rains, she will send him a message, asking him to bring an umbrella.

If she saw any funny posts on Weibo or saw interesting things on the way, she would share them with him.

Fu Yangxi was happy, but at the same time he did not dare to think too much about it for fear that it would be the same situation as last time.

It was more uncomfortable to fall from heaven to hell than to never have owned her love.

At this moment, Fu Yangxi was holding his phone, typing two words in the WeChat dialog box and then deleting them. The degree of entanglement was no less than that of Zhao Mingxi over there.

Mingxi was sitting in front of the desk lamp. She was planning to send him a message, but she saw that he was constantly in the state of ‘the other party is typing’.

Mingxi wanted to see what he wanted to send, so she waited for 10 minutes.

While waiting, she completed another set of questions, but he hasn't sent it yet.

So Mingxi went to wash her hair and blew it dry. After blowing her hair, she couldn't help but pick up her mobile phone to take a look.

The other party was still typing!

???

Is Fu Yangxi going to deliver a presidential election speech?

Mingxi glanced at the alarm clock on the desk. It has been an hour yet he is still typing??!

Fu Yangxi was still thinking about how to comfort her when Mingxi's WeChat jumped out unexpectedly.

Zhao Mingxi: “What happened?”

Fu Yangxi was startled. As his phone was not held firmly, it fell off the sofa with a "crack".

He also fell over. He stretched out his hand to grab his phone, his face all flushed.

After picking up the phone, he was afraid that Zhao Mingxi's next sentence would be "I’m off to sleep. Good night.", so he didn't care about wiping off the dust on the phone and hurriedly replied: “Why haven't you slept yet?!”

Over there, Mingxi felt that Fu Yangxi was particularly obsessed with "sleeping". Last time, she planned to send a message, but he immediately asked her to go to sleep.

She thought that Fu Yangxi was going to remind her like an old father again, so she quickly said: "I'll go to bed soon, good night."

Fu Yangxi: “...”

See? Every time I look for her, she’ll immediately say that she wants to sleep.

Fu Yangxi felt bitter.

He suddenly wondered jealously that if Shen Liyao sent her a message, would she say that she wanted to sleep within five seconds?

Although Mingxi said she was going to sleep, she still checked every second if Fu Yangxi sent a message.

In the next second, her phone lit up. Fu Yangxi sent a message.

Mingxi’s heart throbbed immediately and the corners of her mouth curled up involuntarily. She hurriedly opened the message.

"About what happened recently, don't you have anything you want to say?"

Fu Yangxi had just frantically searched a bunch of ways to comfort people on Baidu. He learned that the three most important steps were to listen and empathize. First, listen to the girl's pressure and grievances, and then solve the problem from her perspective.

He intended to be a mature man first and listen to Little Mask’s complaints and grievances.

On the other side, Mingxi's hand which was wiping her hair paused for a moment. She stared at the line of words that Fu Yangxi sent over and her eyes went wide. Her face felt inexplicably hot— What do you mean? ‘What happened recently’? What has happened recently?! I merely gave him a small hair tie and couldn't help but stare at him during class.

Could it be that he found out that I have a crush on him?!

Mingxi's heartbeat suddenly quickened. She sat on the bed weakly, staring at the phone at a loss.

Because of the failed experience of chasing Shen Liyao last time, Mingxi didn't dare to confess rashly.

Just before Mingxi responded, Fu Yangxi's next message jumped out.

"I mean if you have been facing something unhappy, it will be much better to talk about it. Don't keep it in your heart."

“...”

Mingxi’s "What do you mean? Did you guess something? Can you just clarify what you mean?" which were typed out on the dialog box were deleted instantly.

Does this person know that my heart jumped to my throat just now!

Mingxi exhaled a long breath. She slowed down ehr heartbeat and felt a feeling of excitement, like riding a roller coaster.

She wished to beat Fu Yangxi up: "Can you finish typing in one go?"

Fu Yangxi: "? Why, do you think my typing is slow?"

It took him a lot of effort to stumble and spell out this sentence. He has never been so gentle before.

Yet here she was, disliking his slow typing.

So Shen Liyao typed quickly. That damn octopus.

Mingxi knew that Fu Yangxi was also worried that the Zhao family’s affairs would affect her.

She thought for a while, and then seriously said: “Xi ge, I'm really alright. I'm fine. The sun will rise tomorrow as usual and the birds will still chirp tomorrow. There is nothing wrong so long as I have you guys.”

Fu Yangxi looked at her practically self-defeating remarks and only felt that she must be in a bad mood. All her reassurances were lies to him.

But she doesn’t want to tell me!

What should I do?

There will definitely be many things like this in the future, but he was simply the worst at comforting people.

Fu Yangxi really wanted to take up a class on 'how to comfort people' immediately in the middle of the night.

Fu Yangxi stood up impatiently and walked twice around the 200-square-meter apartment.

Then he stopped, and inspiration flashed.

As a mature man, he transferred some money to Mingxi via Alipay.

Mingxi over there saw a message pop up on the phone. Her eyes widened in disbelief. She clicked on it and repeatedly counted the number of zeros.

After she finished counting, she took a deep breath.

“???”

Mingxi was shocked: "Why did you send me half a million yuan?"

Fu Yangxi: "There’s too many zeros in my bank account. I find it annoying. Why don't you spend it on my behalf?”

Mingxi: “...”

Sorry, I was not angered by the Zhao family during the day, but my fist is itchy at night because of your words.

=========

*

The next day, the topic about the true and false daughters Zhao Yuan and Zhao Mingxi did not disappear. Instead, it intensified.

Fortunately, one of the parties to the matter, Zhao Yuan, took a week off and didn't come to school. Otherwise, there would be a large group of people coming to see how Zhao Yuan was feeling now.

And it was this group of people in the Evergreen Class who felt very shocked.

Everyone had finally come back to their senses.

"According to Zhao Yuan’s father— no, now he is her adoptive father. Her adoptive father’s assistant said that their family brought Zhao Mingxi back two years ago, and the whole family, including Zhao Yuan herself, had already learned that she was not their biological daughter. Yes, Zhao Mingxi is the real daughter. Then why could Zhao Yuan listen to our praises of her as if nothing had happened in the past two years? Last time when I praised her that new bag was beautiful and that her family must have given her a lot of pocket money, there was no expression of guilt on her face at all!"

"There are more instances than that. Didn't our class also spread the rumor that Zhao Mingxi was an illegitimate daughter? Zhao Yuan heard this and didn’t even deny it. Where did the rumor that slandered Zhao Mingxi come from?"

"Also, there was E Xiaoxia's previous School Beauty voting incident against Zhao Mingxi. Didn’t she also say that Zhao Yuan was two-faced? It's just that everyone was on Zhao Yuan's side at the time."

The girls were gossiping and deliberately figuring out more details.

Some boys still held onto their affection for Zhao Yuan and felt that the girls were too sensitive.

But it's not easy to say anything, because in fact, Zhao Yuan was also completely selfish toward the boys— the last time Lu Ye helped her, he was beaten up by his father.

Although it was said that the ‘help’ ended up as a failure, she shouldn’t have immediately torn up Lu Ye's movie ticket, right?! She didn’t give him any respect at all?!

From start to finish, Lu Ye looked like a humble licking dog. He fell into a bout of depression for several days.

At that time, because Zhao Yuan was the daughter of the Zhao family, no boys dared to criticize her. They only felt that it might not have been intentional and that the rich were naturally arrogant.

But now they just found it funny. Since she herself knew that she was a fake, where did she get the confidence and arrogance to do so?

Listening to the discussion of these girls in the class, E Xiaoxia only felt a sense of satisfaction.

God knows how she has been practically isolated by Zhao Yuan in class for the past two to three months!

No one wanted to recite English words with her! No one wanted to eat with her! In fact, except for Miao Ran, none of the boys and girls in the class would say anything to her!

Even no one wanted to get matched with her for the mandatory volleyball group in the physical education class! When the teacher asked in a strange way, there was no one to help her. She could only stand on the spot and curl up her toes tightly. Did Zhao Yuan think of her feelings?!

E Xiaoxia took a deep breath and walked over to the few girls who were talking quietly. She tried to restore the previous relationship with them and said hello, “What are you guys talking about? Can we talk together?"

In the end, the few girls who saw her still acted as if they had seen some poisonous scorpion. They quickly packed up their textbooks and left the classroom.

E Xiaoxia: …

For f*ck’s sake, why?