Grandma looked at her son, who had aged rapidly over these past few years, and said nothing for a long time.

Jin Zhao stood quietly outside the door. Even her breathing seemed to lift and grow incomparably light. Her fingers unconsciously tightened around the solid wooden doorframe.

Grandma’s silence was like the last straw—either to be picked up, or to press down on her completely.

In this family, anyone could betray her, but Grandma could not. After her mother passed away, she was the one who had given her the most warmth in this household.

She would rather have never drawn warmth at all than have the warmth of the past turn into a blade stabbing her in the back.

Time seemed to pass for a very, very long while—so long that Jin Zhao felt she was almost suffocating to death.

Finally, she heard Grandma let out a long sigh. “Your father and I still have 100,000 here. Take all of it. For the remaining 100,000, I’ll go and ask Lingling to lend it to me. I’ll say I was injured and need rehabilitation, an emergency for the moment. I think she should lend it to me. But you must absolutely not let her know that I’m lying to her.”

“Pa!”

The fruit in Jin Zhao’s hands fell to the ground.

The apples tore through the plastic bag and scattered all over the floor. The early-summer watermelon smashed apart, its flesh exploding messily, juice splashing dirty across the hem of Jin Zhao’s skirt.

Jin Zhao stood outside the door, her eyes red, and said softly, “But I already know.”

She did not remember when the rain began to fall. By the time she noticed it, the rain was already out of control. A torrential downpour—raindrops dense and relentless slammed against her face, hitting until her face hurt, until her whole body hurt.

Jinjue Town was not big. She walked all the way back to the hotel. Yet along this stretch of road, it felt as though she had walked for a very, very long time.

From sixteen to twenty-six.

She thought she had grown up, that she would no longer have her former obsessions—clinging to right and wrong, clinging to gain and loss. But in the end, she realized she was wrong.

She was still obsessed with right and wrong, still obsessed with gaining and losing.

It turned out that deep in her heart, her longing for warmth had never changed.

And the reason she thought she was no longer obsessed was only because she had been numbed by the appearance of warmth. She thought she had obtained it.

But that kind of warmth did not belong to her—never had.

No, perhaps it had belonged to her for a brief moment. But she stood too far back in line; at the slightest disturbance, it shattered so completely that not even the dregs remained.

It could not withstand maternal or filial affection, could not withstand the obsession with continuing the bloodline… yet at the same time, it still had to be kidnapped.

Supporting parents. Filial piety. Repaying kindness.

She walked through the heavy rain all the way back to the hotel. There was not a single person on the road.

Perhaps it was because the long-stay hotel she used was not in the central scenic area, or perhaps because the rain was simply too heavy.

Jin Zhao lifted her head, looking at the dark, oppressive clouds overhead. The rain crashed down at her like sand and gravel spilling loose from a line. She closed her eyes.

The water at the corners of her eyes also streamed like threads, rolling down to her temples.

The world was so vast, yet there was only her.

At this moment, and in all those past years as well.

It had always been.

It had always been only her alone.

She had no family, no allies, no one she could confide in. All these years, she had fought alone, turning an unspeakable loneliness into a blade that pressed relentlessly forward.

She seemed to have lived quite resiliently. At least these years, she was physically and mentally healthy. Everything she wanted, she obtained through her own efforts.

But only she herself knew—there would suddenly be moments when she desperately wanted to have a family member, someone who truly belonged to her, who shared her blood, who would never be taken away by anyone else.

She pushed open the hotel’s main doors in a daze, startling the front desk.

“Heavens, Miss Jin, why did you come back drenched in the rain? Why didn’t you find somewhere outside to take shelter first?”

“Crack—!”

Outside, a peal of thunder answered, blinding lightning tearing through the darkened sky and casting a bleak white across Jin Zhao’s face.

Another front-desk attendant was startled by the thunder, still shaken as she said, “What a loud thunderclap. Looks like it’s going to be a heavy storm—coming back quickly is good. It’s even more dangerous outside; there could even be landslides.”

“Miss Jin, hurry, go back to your room and change clothes! Why is so much water dripping off you? Don’t get yourself sick.”

“It’s not water dripping off her—it looks like it’s dripping from her bag… My god! Your bag is full of water!”

Jin Zhao heard the exchange between the two of them and stared blankly at her bag.

The rain was truly heavy. It had already flooded into her bag, and her phone had been soaked as well.

At the same time, two other guests ran in from outside. They had driven over, but even just from the entrance to the hotel, they were drenched like drowned rats.

Storms came earlier in the mountains. At the same time, the rain in Suiyi was still manageable—planes could even land steadily.

Meng Yanxi had not been able to reach Jin Zhao before boarding. The moment the plane landed, he immediately turned on his phone.

Jin Zhao did not reply to his messages.

He immediately called her again on video.

Video, voice, phone… none of them could get through.

Zhuang Yu came to pick him up. While taking his luggage, he smiled and said, “President Meng really has good luck—landing right on time. In another half hour, it’ll be pouring.”

“A downpour?” Meng Yanxi.

Zhuang Yu said, “Yeah. The weather forecast says there’ll be an extremely heavy rainstorm tonight. I was worried the plane wouldn’t be able to land.”

In the car, Meng Yanxi made several more calls to Jin Zhao in a row. None were answered.

Jin Zhao had gone back to Jinjue Town. He didn’t know whether it was raining there.

A new update appeared on his Moments. Meng Yanxi tapped in with a long finger. The latest post was from Wang Nan.

Wang Nan was a counselor. Unlike teachers, she couldn’t take an early holiday. At this moment, she was driving back to Jinjue Town.

The road was already deeply flooded.

Wang Nan casually snapped a photo and posted it to Moments, with the caption: When things happen, don’t panic—post to Moments first.

Meng Yanxi’s brow twitched. He said to Zhuang Yu, who was driving, “Go to Jinjue Town.”

Lu Jingyue, who had been looking at his phone beside him, turned his head at the words, his eyes full of “what madness are you at again?”

Even Zhuang Yu froze for a moment. “Now?”

Meng Yanxi said, “Immediately.”

Lu Jingyue: “……”

Meng Yanxi turned to look at him, his face full of merciless, knowing indifference. “Are you coming too?”

Lu Jingyue: “……”

The car pulled over to the side of the road, then quickly sped away again.

By the roadside, Lu Jingyue stood in the light rain, his face numb in the wind.

The rain in Jinjue Town was too heavy. Along the way, the sound of rain was deafening. Just as Meng Yanxi’s car arrived, Jinjue Town was sealed off.

Meng Yanxi had not been able to contact Jin Zhao the entire way. His heart was in turmoil, anxious beyond measure. Fortunately, he knew the hotel Jin Zhao most often stayed at. He called over; the front desk said she was in her room. She had likely soaked her bag on the way back, and her phone had been ruined by the water.

Only then did Meng Yanxi let out a breath.

It didn’t matter if the phone was ruined. As long as she was safe.

Only when he saw Jin Zhao did he realize he was wrong.

It was hard to say that Jin Zhao was fine.

Recently, temperatures had surged sharply. It was only the end of April, yet it had already reached thirty degrees at times. Even after the rain, a trace of restlessness still lingered in the air. In the room, the air conditioner ran at a low speed, its sound drowned out by the violent rain outside.

Jin Zhao sat on the bed with her knees drawn up, wearing a thin nightgown. The nightgown was deathly pale; her face was deathly pale as well. Only her eyes were red. Tears kept falling down her face, yet she made no sound.

Meng Yanxi felt as though someone had viciously clenched his heart.

He walked to the bedside, sat down in front of her, and asked very softly, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Jin Zhao lifted her tear-soaked eyes and stared at him blankly through the tears.

Suddenly, she let out a sob and hugged him tightly.

“Meng Yanxi…”

She had only managed to call his name when she completely lost control and finally cried out in grief.

Meng Yanxi had never seen Jin Zhao this fragile.

In his impression, she always seemed resilient. No matter how difficult the situation, she would not reveal too much emotion—at least never in front of others. He didn’t know whether she was deceiving others, or deceiving herself.

This was the first time Meng Yanxi had seen her cry like this, as if she were trying to cry out all the suppressed resentment, grievance, and sorrow of these past years.

Meng Yanxi held her tightly, soothing her.

Later, under his deliberate guidance, Jin Zhao finally told him, in broken fragments, what had happened.

When he heard that she had stumbled upon the entire process of the Jin family gathering together to calculate her, a wave of inexplicable pain and guilt surged through Meng Yanxi’s heart.

Lu Jingyue’s words had become a prophecy.

He had collapsed the Jin family’s roof beam—and in doing so, accidentally struck the person he cared about most.

“I still gave Grandma the money,” Jin Zhao said, curled up in his arms. She had stopped crying, closed her eyes, and tears fell in sheets. “I returned to her the money she helped me with when I was in England.”

She murmured, “After giving it back to her, I have neither love nor money.”

“You still have me,” Meng Yanxi said, kissing her brow. “I have money.”

Jin Zhao lowered her eyes and said nothing.

Meng Yanxi lifted her chin, making her look straight into his eyes, and repeated solemnly, “Lingling, I have money too.”

Jin Zhao’s gaze shifted slightly.

Meng Yanxi’s pitch-black eyes fixed on her. “Lingling, do you know the full meaning of that sentence?”

Before holidays, Jin Zhao would take 1119 to watch movies, and sometimes Meng Yanxi would join them.

Because it hadn’t been that long since she’d seen it, Jin Zhao still remembered. It was a line from Gone with the Wind, when Rhett proposed to Scarlett—“I have money too. Why don’t you marry me? You’re going to get married anyway.”

Jin Zhao’s heartbeat stopped abruptly as she stared straight at him.

Meng Yanxi also stared straight back at her. His fingers hooked under her chin. As he leaned down to kiss her, he said in a hoarse voice, “Besides money, I can also give you the loyalty of someone who has never had faith.”

…

Outside, the rain poured down in torrents. The sky was like it had split open, rainwater cascading down in a catastrophic deluge, like the end of the world.

The two people in the hotel room were also as if at the end of the world.

Mountains collapsing, seas surging, ice and fire entwined—an all-consuming, to-the-death entanglement and frenzy.

In the searing heat of sweat, Meng Yanxi rose to take a condom from the bedside.

Jin Zhao grabbed his arm.

His forearm was scorching and hard; her palm was hot and damp.

He heard her trembling voice as she whispered softly, “No need—just inside.”