At tonight’s card table, Meng Yanxi won against three people all by himself, with Lu Jingyue losing the most miserably.

Luo Heng was right—any game that involved money, Meng Yanxi had never lost. He really was born with excellent luck in this regard. Even for something purely dependent on luck like scratch-off tickets, he could scratch six or seven wins out of ten, with winning odds over half. Let alone games like cards and mahjong that also required thinking.

But Meng Yanxi had never been greedy since childhood; he was always very restrained. For instance, even though he knew scratch-off tickets were easy to win, back when his allowance was not considered much even by his own standards, he still rarely bought them. Precisely because of this, Meng Huai had always been especially fond of him since he was young. Among the younger generation, Meng Huai liked Meng Yanxi the most, regardless of gender. Every time Meng Shixu scolded his son for being a good-for-nothing, Meng Huai would speak up in his defense. Meng Shixu would say that this was simply indulgence across generations, and Meng Huai would laugh and tell Meng Shixu not to be blessed yet not know it.

Meng Yanxi had never won money like this before, even though he could have. But tonight, the more he looked at these three people, the more displeased he felt, and he showed no mercy at all.

In truth, Lu Jingyue was also quite good at using his brain, but when it came to financial luck, he was indeed a bit worse than Meng Yanxi. It was hard to say whether it was because he had been too smug at the start, chasing after Jin Zhao and pressing his advantage—retribution had come far too quickly.

In the end, even after losing all his chips, the God of Wealth was still not satisfied. Lu Jingyue’s mind worked fast; he quickly admitted defeat and said with a smile, “Let’s stop playing. If we keep going, people will be falling asleep, and then it’ll really be like wearing brocade while walking at night. How about this—one more round. If I lose, I’ll go into the kitchen and make osmanthus cake for you. You can take it up and let Jin Zhao have a taste.”

Luo Heng and Zhao Yu were moved to tears by Lu Jingyue’s proposal.

There was no helping it—just now they had been aiding wrongdoing by ganging up to bully a newbie, and now the God of Wealth had descended to crush them dimensionally. If they kept playing, they would practically go bankrupt.

Meng Yanxi, however, was not very satisfied. He lifted his eyelids slightly. “Is what you make even edible?”

Lu Jingyue raised his brows and asked back with tacit understanding, “Is that the point?”

Mm. Indeed it wasn’t.

The God of Wealth understood at once, and in the end finally showed great mercy and nodded.

You had to admit Lu Jingyue was sharp. He didn’t know how to make osmanthus cake at all. Before dinner, he had just heard Feng Chi mention wanting to eat glutinous rice cake, and guessed that the kitchen had made extra. When the group finished playing cards and went to check, sure enough there was some left. The only thing Lu Jingyue did was go outside and snap off a branch from the osmanthus tree, sprinkle a few petals on top, and the glutinous rice cake instantly turned into osmanthus cake.

Meng Yanxi looked down on Lu Jingyue’s “pre-made dish.” Lu Jingyue cheekily asked back, “Then should I steam it for you now?”

That steaming would take at least an hour. Jin Zhao would definitely be asleep by then, and someone would lose a golden chance to take credit.

Unexpectedly, just as the devil rose one foot, the Dao rose one yard. Meng Yanxi said, “Fine. Steam it now.”

Saying the cruelest words, his hands smoothly took the plate of “pre-made” osmanthus cake.

Lu Jingyue was so angry he laughed. “You’ve already taken it over, what am I steaming for?”

“I’ll eat it when I get back.” Meng Yanxi walked out of the kitchen with an arrogant expression, not forgetting to provoke Lu Jingyue. “A bet’s a bet.”

Lu Jingyue: “……”

Outside, a fine rain had begun to fall. Feng Chi hurried after him attentively and said, “The food box has already been sent out, Brother Yan. Wait a moment, I’ll have someone bring one over right away.”

Someone couldn’t wait and said, “No need. Just get me an umbrella.”

“The big umbrellas have all been taken upstairs. There are only small ones here. Brother, I’ll hold the umbrella for you to cover the osmanthus cake.” Feng Chi eagerly opened a small umbrella.

Meng Yanxi said, “No need.”

He opened the small umbrella himself and stepped into the rain.

The umbrella sheltered the osmanthus cake in his hands, while the rain drifted down onto his broad, hard-lined shoulders.

Feng Chi was being outrageously sycophantic, and still worried enough to shout from behind, “The road’s slippery in the rain, Brother Yan, please be careful!”

Compared to Feng Chi’s groveling, Lu Jingyue was especially punchable, dragging out his words as he said, “That’s right, you really should be careful—careful not to be triumphant at the gambling table and disappointed in love.”

Meng Yanxi: “……”

Lu Jingyue’s mouth was probably cursed—like a crow’s—his words became prophecy the moment they were spoken.

Meng Yanxi stepped along the bluestone path up the hill, his mood good the entire way, even though the fine rain soaked through his back. The osmanthus cake was still warm, safely protected beneath the umbrella, and when he arrived, it was still giving off billowing white steam.

He folded the umbrella and set it aside, just about to knock, when Jin Zhao’s voice came from inside the door: “I didn’t go abroad. That year, I only transferred schools.”

The rain outside wasn’t heavy, but the wind seemed to have grown strong, blowing against him. The rain-soaked shirt clung to his back, pressing right against where his heart was, waves of cold seeping in.

The door was only loosely shut. Meng Yanxi pushed lightly, and it opened soundlessly at once.

The living room was decorated overall in milky-white raw stone, clean and plain. Jin Zhao and Si Tian sat on the sofa with their backs to him, a floor lamp lit beside them. Warm light fell across her fair face; one elbow rested on the back of the sofa, her head tilted slightly as she looked at Si Tian, her profile beautiful and quiet.

Meng Yanxi suddenly felt that he couldn’t understand her.

He had thought that he understood her very well.

He understood her hardships, understood her resilience, and understood even more the compassion and strength with which she danced atop ruins.

But at this moment, he felt that perhaps he had seen her wrong.

She was not compassionate and strong—she was cold and hard-hearted.

He had always remembered that year, when he rushed out of school to look for her, reckless and heedless, climbing over the wall right in front of the dean. In the end, though, he stopped short because of her single sentence about being busy catching a flight.

The next day, he received the skirt she had mailed back to him.

For a very long time, he had been angry with her.

It was his own wishful thinking. If they didn’t meet, then so be it. He withdrew all his sincerity, for an entire autumn.

Until the day of Start of Winter, when he learned from her neighbor that her stepmother had miscarried and that she had nearly been transferred to No. 9 Middle School, he immediately forgave her again.

He was innately sensitive when it came to human nature. At once, he guessed what she must have faced during that summer. In the end, she didn’t go to No. 9 Middle School. Though she had been thrown to a foreign land at such a young age, this was probably already the best outcome she had fought with all her strength to secure for herself.

Compared to going to No. 9 Middle School, going abroad was fine. When she came back, her situation should be much better.

He first beat up Ji Haoxuan.

Although it had nothing to do with Ji Haoxuan—everything was the evil his mother had done—but who told her to stop at nothing, obsessing over keeping her son in Class A? For someone so heinously guilty, the more they wanted something, the more he would destroy it.

Of course, the price was that he himself also lost his guaranteed university placement.

In those years, housing prices were soaring, and there were especially many people flipping properties. The Jin family’s house, because it was close to the school, sold quickly despite the school not being a very good one. The new owner rented it out. Meng Yanxi struggled with himself for several days, then contacted the owner.

In order to rent the place to him, the owner talked it up to the skies: “The family who lived here before were all intellectuals. The grandfather was an inheritor of intangible cultural heritage, the aunt was a teacher, and the father ran his own business and made a lot of money. Their daughter had the best grades—she started out in Class A at Sui University Affiliated High School. You know Class A there, right? Prime Tsinghua-Peking material! But the girl had lofty ambitions, she didn’t even look twice at Tsinghua or Peking. She’s abroad now, doing extremely well!”

Meng Yanxi asked, “Where did she go abroad to?”

The landlord spared no effort in boasting on Jin Zhao’s behalf, lying through his teeth: “The UK, I think. Oh, I’ve seen the girl—she’s very well-behaved looking, gentle and soft-spoken, said she plans to study at Cambridge in the future.”

Alright then. Meng Yanxi believed it completely and transferred a full year’s rent in one go.

He himself never lived there, treating it merely as an intelligence fee.

Still, he went there often, casually fishing for information from the grandpas and grandmas who went on daily walks. Everyone said she had gone abroad.

Perhaps people who truly belonged to two different worlds really wouldn’t meet. In that entire year, Meng Yanxi didn’t run into Wu Nian even once, nor did he discover in time that he had bought “fake intelligence.” Though, come to think of it, even if he had run into Wu Nian, she might not have told the truth.

After all, that past wasn’t something to be proud of. Even Jin Zhao herself was unwilling to tell him the truth, lying to him that she had gone abroad.

Only at this moment did Meng Yanxi realize how ridiculous he was.

Someone as intelligent as him, as proud as him—he had always been the one to toy with others in the palm of his hand, yet he had been deceived by her single lie for so many years.

He traveled back and forth to the UK, moving among major universities. When he couldn’t find her in the UK, he was then tricked by the landlord into going to the US. The US was so vast, with so many universities—whenever he had a break, he would pick a few to visit. In this lifetime—no, in several lifetimes, even in eighteen lifetimes—he had never loved schools this much.

He felt like a joke, like a fool, being spun around by the cold-hearted Jin Zhao and the boastful landlord. Most infuriating of all was that these two hadn’t even met each other at all.

In the end, it turned out she had been at No. 1 High School in the neighboring city all along, less than three hundred kilometers away from him in a straight line. About the same distance as from Suiyi to here.

Such a short distance, yet it separated them by nine years.

No wonder she knew how long nine years were—she simply didn’t care. If she had cared even a little, she wouldn’t have said so calmly and coldly that if she had a child, nine years of compulsory education would already be completed.

That was the funniest joke he had heard all year. Not only was the logic absurd, it was utterly heartless.

Fine, give birth, go ahead. From now on, even if she gave birth to Nezha, it would have nothing to do with him. Meng Yanxi thought.

He glanced at Jin Zhao indifferently. She had clearly not expected him to appear so late, or perhaps hadn’t expected that with the rain outside, he would still brave it to bring her osmanthus cake. She looked so flustered, remaining half-turned on the sofa, staring at him blankly.

The light fell from the side onto her face, every slight tremor of her eyelashes clearly visible.

Meng Yanxi ignored Si Tian, who awkwardly greeted him, did not enter, and coolly set the osmanthus cake on the cabinet by the door.

“There was some pre-made osmanthus cake left in the kitchen. See if it’s edible. If not, throw it away.”

With that, he turned and stepped back into the wind and rain, not looking at Jin Zhao again.

The wind rushed in through the open door, leaving behind a lingering chill in the air.

The last bit of remaining warmth from the osmanthus cake on the cabinet was blown away.

-♥︎ ྀི◟ ͜ ◞♥︎ ྀི◟ ͜ ◞♥︎ ྀི

The rain stopped in the latter half of the night, but Jin Zhao didn’t sleep at all. She got up before six the next morning.

She got ready and went to the dining hall. There was no one there; only the kitchen staff had just changed into their uniforms, preparing to start work.

She sat alone at the dining table. In her ears were the morning birdsong and the clinking sounds of porcelain being arranged. A staff member came up and asked what she wanted to eat. She gently shook her head and said she wasn’t hungry yet, that she would wait for everyone to come down and eat together.

She really wasn’t hungry. There was no feeling in her stomach. Not just her stomach—her whole body, in fact, felt nothing at all. She seemed numb all over. In her mind there was only one thought: she wanted to see Meng Yanxi.

Back then, she was the one in the wrong. She had left in too undignified a way; at the very least, she shouldn’t have lied.

She had wanted to explain the moment they met, but he seemed unwilling to listen. She thought he was still angry about her mailing the skirt back that year.

After all, he had said it himself back then—sending the skirt back meant she planned never to see him again, right? Yes. So she sent it back.

She sent it back, and he should have taken it as tacit consent that she had no intention of seeing him again.

Meeting again was an accident. If not for his younger sister getting into trouble, they might never have met again in this lifetime. But an accidental meeting didn’t mean they would meet again in the future. She didn’t know whether he still wanted to see her; if there was no need to see each other again, then there was actually no need to explain anything. If he did want to, then she could explain it then.

She just hadn’t expected that he would first overhear her conversation with Si Tian.

For lies, being exposed isn’t frightening—at least it shows there was still a trace of sincerity. What’s frightening is being exposed from a third-party perspective.

Utterly devoid of sincerity.

Both Jin Zhao and Si Tian were stunned last night, unable to react for a moment. By the time she chased after him, Meng Yanxi was already far away.