102 Just an Ordinary Man (Fourth Update)

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Xu Maoyan did not leave the Mu household until two hours later. He had, in the end, mustered all his hardness and only said three words: “I don’t know.”

At that moment in the parlor, no one in the Mu family seemed surprised at his reaction.
Mu Qingcheng kept her face unreadable, still sitting there with her chin in her hand, her features slowly showing the fatigue of recent illness.

Grandfather Mu glanced at her with concern.
“Qingcheng, go up and rest.”

She really was a little tired, but before she could even rise, steady footsteps sounded behind her.
Then another voice followed, firm and calm:

“Qingcheng, drink your bird’s-nest before you sleep.”

It was Si Qingchen after all. He came forward in person, carrying a bowl of warm bird’s nest, and walked to her side.
With indifference to the fact that he was at the Mu house, where a crowd watched from around them, he bent one knee and simply squatted in front of her.

“Si Qingchen, stand up!”

Qingcheng looked at him in surprise; one hand instinctively reached for his arm, but he seized her wrist in return.
“Take it.”

Si Qingchen had always been a man unconcerned with small courtesies, with no fuss about anything.
He had slept on grass, rolled down sandbanks, and endured every kind of hardship in the unit before.
His nature had only grown colder with time, and with the Si name to uphold, the world had hastily wrapped him in an aura of aloof nobility.

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In truth, he was only an ordinary man.
For the woman he loved, he could set everything else aside.

Now he gave a faint, careless smile, as if nothing were amiss, unconcerned.
Yet when he saw her little face flush bright with embarrassment, something stirred in him.

A deep, amused light flashed in Si Qingchen’s eyes; he purposely leaned close to Qingcheng’s face and said in a low voice,
“Or should I feed you?”

“Stop teasing and stand up. Grandfather is still watching us.”

“We?” He lifted an eyebrow, clearly pleased by her neat summation.

When she took the porcelain bowl from him, he briefly smoothed the wild ends of her hair with his hand, then finally rose and moved to sit off to the side.

A soft cough from Grandfather Mu drew his attention away.

Yet the man’s open and upright manner made Grandfather Mu feel all the more at odds in his chest.
He wanted to ask a question, but no words would come.
In his mind flashed the saying about beating the two lovebirds apart.

In the end, he stiffly changed the subject.
“Qingchen, you’ve waited so long. It must have been hard.”

“It’s all right. It’s simply what I ought to do.”

Grandfather Mu wanted to shout in his mind, What exactly do you mean by “what I ought to do”? How did that become your duty?
But bound by status and family ties, he kept only his usual composure.

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He nodded, but could not, by any means, bring himself to smile.

Mu Qingcheng drank her bird’s nest in silence and watched the two men’s strange exchange. In her heart she thought,
How strange—one trouble meets another. I’d just dodged Third Brother, and now comes Master Si. Grandpa’s fate truly is hard.

Just then, she suddenly remembered the scene in the hospital parking lot where she had bumped into Mu Jingchi.
She hoped he and Si Qingchen would not run into each other.

At that same moment, urgent brake screeches sounded outside.
Within two seconds a servant entered respectfully and said,
“Master, the Third Young Master has returned.”

Mu Qingcheng merely looked on, saying nothing.

****

This side

Hospital

Xu Maoyan had only just returned to his office, and it had taken him all his strength to calm his racing heart.
What had just happened was far too perilous.
Especially that illegitimate daughter of the Mu family, whose face looked as though she would devour a man to the last bone, who wore an ominous coldness and menace in every word and in every silence. The cold sweat on him had never dried since he stepped through the door.

At that very moment, the phone on his desk suddenly vibrated.
The screen showed a trending-topic notification. Xu Maoyan tapped it open, and then… a faint smile tugged at his lips.