111 Reunion (Third Watch)
“...Second Master?”
Each of the Mu family brothers had a specific title corresponding to their birth order within the clan.
Mu Qing was the second eldest, so naturally, the outside world addressed him as the Second Master.
At this moment, observing Xia Wan’s face—still expressionless yet clearly startled—Mu Qing’s brow furrowed even deeper. He repeated once more,
“What’s going on with your forehead?”
“My forehead?”
Xia Wan seemed oblivious to it at first.
Only after Mu Qing’s repeated reminders did she finally take out her phone and glance at it.
It turned out that there was a sizable swelling right on her forehead.
‘It must have happened when I bumped into that assistant’s desk just now.’
At the same time, Mu Qing also noticed something else.
Xia Wan was using an outdated phone, one so old it was practically extinct in the market.
Yet she clearly attended the same school as Qing Cheng and Ran Siya!
...
Just as Mu Qing was perplexed, his gaze fell upon several obvious finger marks on her wrist.
“What’s going on? How did you get so many injuries?”
Without hesitation, Mu Qing grabbed Xia Wan’s wrist.
The sudden movement startled both of them, and they quickly stepped apart.
A suffocating, wrenching sensation rose in his chest, leaving him breathless and uneasy.
Mu Qing didn’t quite understand why he felt this way, but seeing the bruises on Xia Wan’s wrist and forehead was painfully jarring to him.
“We should get these treated first. You can’t just carry them around like this.”
---
After a moment’s hesitation, Mu Qing decided he had to personally watch over her while the wounds were being treated before he could feel at ease.
It seemed this was the conclusion he arrived at after much inner struggle.
“I didn’t—”
Xia Wan was about to refuse, but when she caught the faintly chilling expression flickering across Mu Qing’s mesmerizing face, she decisively fell silent.
...
In the end,
Mu Qing impulsively brought her back to his hospital room.
There, Xia Wan sat quietly on the sofa while a nurse attended to her wounds.
Perhaps because the room was a VIP ward, the nurse kept her head bowed low the entire time, working quickly and gently.
Once the treatment was neatly finished, she stood up of her own accord, turned around, and addressed Mu Qing briefly.
“Alright, thank you.”
Mu Qing nodded in acknowledgment, maintaining his usual cool and aloof demeanor.
After the nurse left, his gaze returned to Xia Wan’s face.
She was looking down at the gauze wrapped around her wrist.
Inside was an anti-inflammatory ointment; it only needed to stay on for a day.
But she seemed a little uneasy, poking at it as if wanting to remove it.
“Xia Wan,”
Mu Qing’s soft voice made her pause, and she immediately lifted her head.
“How did you get hurt?”
“...I bumped into something.”
“...”
“Accidentally bumped.”
“...”
In Xia Wan’s eyes shone a glaring refusal.
It wasn’t hesitation or reluctance—just a pure, straightforward denial.
This brutal honesty struck Mu Qing as oddly fascinating.
After all, it had been a long time since he’d met such a guileless young girl.
Mu Qing stepped down from the bed and sat beside her.
His pale golden hair cascaded over his shoulders, naturally drawing Xia Wan’s gaze along its flow.
After a while, she murmured softly,
“It’s really beautiful.”
Mu Qing was left speechless.
Such a compliment caught him off guard; he froze briefly, then broke into a genuine smile.
Just then, his phone vibrated on the table.
A message appeared in the Mu family brothers’ group chat, sent by Mu Jingchi:
“Meet at the XX hotel; someone is plotting against Qing Cheng.”
Soon after, three identical replies followed: “Received!”