DF Chapter 86

Chapter 86: This is a collaboration between the three of us.

Qupan Source is a newly opened racetrack in Jingjiang. It is said that the boss is rich and powerful. He bought this barren mountain area and built a winding mountain road. After obtaining the government’s permit, this place became the most popular racing route in the entire Jingjiang and even the entire Dongjiang Province. The road is winding and complex, with an extremely high difficulty coefficient, but every night it is brightly lit here, and cheers and applause are everywhere. When records are broken one after another, the screams are definitely deafening.

Just like now, Meng Yeran walked out of the car, surrounded by cheers that almost broke her eardrums, because she broke the fastest record left by the previous racer here.

A woman with black hair and green eyes walked out of the passenger seat. Amidst the noise, she straightened her hair and gave a thumbs up, “Amazing, Meng.”

Meng Yeran took off her gloves and threw them to the waiting waiter. She walked through the crowd towards her lounge. She is a top member here, and her ranking is constantly being updated. According to the rules, the lounge on the top floor belongs to her.

Of course, even if it’s not according to the rules, the lounge might still belong to her. After all, the so-called big boss behind this racetrack is her outdoor and thrill-loving sister. Her listed company in New York in recent years hasn’t lost money at all, and even made the young shareholders a lot of money.

So as soon as her sister returned to China, she immediately bought a mountain in Jingjiang to build a racetrack, mainly because after finally earning money, she especially wanted to splurge and realize her dreams.

As a result, she was scolded by Old Lady Meng again, and Meng Yeran finally came forward to mediate.

Since then, her sister has been so grateful to her that she often invites Meng Yeran to come. Meng Yeran came to play a few times and became a little addicted.

She stepped on the thick carpet and walked through the long corridor, with the woman slowly following behind her.

When she finally entered the lounge, Meng Yeran took a bottle of brandy from the wine cabinet and pried it open. After the high-intensity racing, she felt a little excited and urgently needed something to calm down.

“Icelandic Arniff’s, wanna try?” Meng Yeran poured the wine into a goblet and handed it to the woman, who refused.

“It’s not suitable to drink after racing.” The woman waved her hand, “This kind of behavior easily consumes your life.”

“You want to find Sheng Jia?” Meng Yeran then took a sip herself and said slowly, “She is indeed in Jingjiang recently, but you might be looking for the wrong person to contact her.”

“Why? Aren’t you always on good terms with Sheng Jia?” The woman was a little surprised. She asked, “After the big incident of the real and fake heiress that happened to the Song family five years ago, Song Ningqiu gave up Song Ji’an and let Sheng Jia return to the Song family. Weren’t you very close to her after that?”

“Yes,” Meng Yeran nodded, “I do have some friendship with her, but if she doesn’t want people to find her, then no one can find her.”

The woman showed a hint of suspicion, obviously not believing it.

Then she leaned closer to Meng Yeran and lowered her voice, “Really? But regarding that incident five years ago, I can be considered a friend who has never met her, right?”

Meng Yeran looked at her deeply after hearing this. After putting down the wine glass in her hand, she said slowly, “Go and say these words to her yourself.”

The woman frowned slightly, seeming a little embarrassed. If she could talk to Sheng Jia, then why would she come to Meng Yeran?

Five years ago, infighting within the Opter Group led to a chandelier falling at the Meng family’s auction, and the only injured person was Sheng Jia. At that time, the incident spread like wildfire, and the accusations focused on the Meng family’s venue safety issues.

Later, in order to prove their innocence, the Meng family investigated and found that the temporary staff of the Meng family’s auction house had been bought off by people from the Opter family, who deliberately used sulfuric acid to corrode the chandelier and cause it to fall, intending to disrupt Opter’s plan to enter the domestic market.

After the matter was investigated clearly, the Meng family apologized for what they should apologize for. After conducting personnel rectification, they directly launched a counterattack against the Opter family.

At that time, the detailed process of this auction banquet was made public, and the Opter family made a big joke. Naturally, the plan to enter the domestic market was really disrupted by the culprit.

This culprit was the woman’s foolish cousin—Valma Opter.

At that time, the one in charge of the domestic market was the woman herself—Hilda Opter.

The people of the Meng family are not useless, how could they not completely discover this kind of thing? But the first person to discover this was Meng Yeran. She understood the internal situation of the Opter family. Although the Opter family was filthy rich, in reality, the Opter family did not have the conditions to enter the domestic market at that time, because before that, the Opter family had already invested most of their assets in American financial companies and took a big tumble, getting involved in a large-scale financial fraud case. It was difficult to allocate funds from the financial chain at that time.

Opter kept this matter very secret. Meng Yeran knew about it because the Meng family had many cooperative projects with Opter in foreign film and television production. After in-depth exchanges, although her vision was not that sharp, Old Lady Meng often took her by her side to teach her. Old Lady Meng had a pair of discerning eyes, and through fragmented information, she had already pieced together the whole picture of the matter, and even chuckled at how confused the old lady of the Opter family was in her old age.

The internal conflicts that had accumulated for a long time completely broke out because of this incident. Hilda’s grandmother, who was also the person in charge of Opter, decided to temporarily develop the Chinese market in order to shift the conflicts, and sent Hilda to be responsible.

But Hilda knew that if she wanted to achieve results quickly, it would be difficult to do it solely with the funds that Opter had approved for her. Even what kind of market they were going to develop had not been clarified when she arrived in China, like a child’s play. The headquarters’ financial chain could not be turned around temporarily, and she was sent here by her grandmother to bear the family’s anger. As long as she failed, no matter what family conflicts there were, everyone would only blame her incompetence.

Hilda extremely did not want to do this, but her sister, who had been fighting with her for power for two years, was so angry that her eyes turned red and was extremely jealous because her grandmother had given this matter to her. She had unspeakable suffering, and Valma still had to come in to go crazy and make trouble.

Heaven knows how surprised Hilda was when Meng Yeran put this matter on her desk. She couldn’t wait to grab Valma by the collar and scold her for being sick. Her aunt shouldn’t have named her “a strong protector,” she should have called her “a stupid fool with an empty head.”

But at that time, Hilda’s mind turned very quickly. Valma, this idiot, didn’t know that the person her grandmother truly favored was herself, but Hilda knew. Didn’t she resent it? Of course, she resented it. She definitely couldn’t achieve results here in a short period of time. Her grandmother specially allocated things from her museum for auction to show that she valued this matter very much. Hilda was equivalent to being put on the shelf, bearing the gaze of people from all sides who didn’t know the truth.

But Valma’s actions that time were equivalent to handing her a scapegoat. Hilda didn’t want to enter the Chinese market, so she simply went along with the flow and followed Valma’s wishes to destroy this auction, and finally let the Meng family find Valma, killing two birds with one stone.

So Hilda had a conversation with Meng Yeran that she had been wording for a long time and had thought about how much benefit to cede.

“If you are willing to cooperate with me, I am willing to cede four-tenths of the profits that I can control in the film and television cooperation between the Meng family and Opter next year, and I guarantee that besides the chandelier falling, no one will be injured.” This was the condition she had thought of.

But to Hilda’s surprise, Meng Yeran was only holding a call pen in her hand at that time, and said to her with a smile, “Is it that simple? Nothing happened, only the chandelier fell, what punishment can your cousin receive?”

Grandmother’s favoritism had always been a thorn in Hilda’s heart, and she had a thousand and ten thousand disagreements with Valma in her heart, so she asked, “Then what do you think? I’d like to hear your opinion.”

Meng Yeran turned the call pen and said casually, “Of course, it is to make her chandelier hit the important guests just right.”

She went on to analyze, “The falling chandelier is at most a safety incident. As long as nothing happens to anyone, and our Meng family finds the culprit, we will at most apologize. Your Opter family has not caused serious harm. Even if you know that Valma did it, are you sure that your grandmother will give up on her because of this? At most, she will just demote her, right? If she is a little more biased, then she will just reprimand her a few words and let her reflect.”

She was right. Hilda could even say with certainty that if there were no irreparable losses, her grandmother would at most scold Valma for her stupid actions even if she knew it was Valma who did it.

But if something really happened and injured some VIP, who could bear the responsibility?

Opter had no roots in China. This time, they were not sincerely entering the domestic market, which did not mean that they would not do so in the future. Who exactly should be hit so that it would not affect their entry into the road in the future, nor would it offend anyone?

She also asked her doubts.

At that time, a voice came from the call pen in Meng Yeran’s palm, which shocked her, and she realized that their conversation had fallen into another person’s ears.

“Me.”

The female voice on the other end uttered a word very briefly.

Meng Yeran smiled and handed the call pen to her, “Yes, and I want to say that your only choice is also this one. This is a collaboration between the three of us.”

Hilda did not know who the other side was. When she took the call pen, the other party had already hung up, but she stared at Meng Yeran’s eyes and couldn’t help but take a gamble, secretly signing a contract with Meng Yeran on the distribution of profits in the next year’s cooperation between Opter and Meng’s that she could control. Moreover, Meng Yeran was obviously prepared, and she had no room to refuse.

Facts proved that she was right.

At the auction site, a young girl was hit by a falling chandelier. The Meng family found evidence that the Opter family had manipulated the auction and pointed the finger directly at Valma, but this finger was not publicly announced. Before her grandmother could recover, the Fu family and the Song family also began to put pressure on Opter.

Half a month later, the Song family held a banquet and announced that the girl who was hit by the chandelier—Sheng Jia, was Song Ningqiu’s daughter, and the Song family’s original daughter, Song Ji’an, was a switched child.

This matter caused a lot of discussion, but the Opter family was the most troubled by it.

In fact, it would be troublesome to hit anyone at the banquet, but Valma happened to hit the most troublesome person.

How could Song Ningqiu easily let go of the newly recognized daughter who had suffered such grievances.

The Opter family was far away in Northern Europe, and Valma hardly ever came to Asia. Cross-border cases were difficult to handle, and the evidence was not that clear. Valma was not completely stupid either. At least when checking upwards layer by layer, the clues only broke off at Valma’s subordinate. But in the face of this kind of thing that everyone knew, it was difficult for the Opter family to pretend to be stupid, not to mention that Song Ningqiu was eyeing them like an enraged lioness. In the end, under pressure, her grandmother gave up on Valma, forced Valma to come to China to apologize to Sheng Jia, gave Sheng Jia a lot of compensation, and finally completely abandoned Valma, banishing her and guaranteeing that she would never leave Northern Europe in the future, and all of her phone communications would be monitored by the family. Only then was this matter over.

Of course, the one who was pushed out to take the blame in the end was Valma’s subordinate.

Hilda felt that this was a bit ironic. She couldn’t understand why her grandmother had such a bottomless favoritism for her cousin, but fortunately, after Valma lost power, she was the only one in the family who could be called an heir.

And now, five years have passed, the Opter family has reorganized and is ready to seriously re-enter the Chinese market, but the industry they ultimately decided to enter is extremely in need of cooperation with the Song family.

This is also the reason why Hilda came here to find Sheng Jia.

If Hilda had known Sheng Jia’s identity at the beginning, she would not have agreed to this matter so decisively. But now it was too late to regret.

Song Ningqiu and the Opter family might have originally developed some cooperation. The cooperation that had just begun to show a little sign in the auction was completely aborted after Sheng Jia was hit. Since then, the Song family had already refused to cooperate with the Opter family.

Hilda couldn’t see Song Ningqiu, so naturally she could only find Sheng Jia, who had gradually entered the enterprise.

But unfortunately, she had gone several times, and Sheng Jia would not see her either.

No, it wasn’t that she wouldn’t see her, it was that she couldn’t find Sheng Jia at all, not even her shadow. Her phone calls were also rejected, making it even more difficult to see her than Song Ningqiu.

Hilda still came as the person in charge of entering the Chinese market this time, so she simply came to find Meng Yeran. In order to get closer to Meng Yeran, she, who cherished her life so much, even accompanied this crazy woman to run a lap on the dangerous racetrack.

How could Meng Yeran, who was going to inherit the family business in the future, dare to play such a dangerous activity? What if she died?

Anyway, Hilda didn’t understand. She definitely didn’t want to accompany Meng Yeran to play a second time.

But tonight, it was obvious that she would not have any gains. Meng Yeran had no intention of helping her contact Sheng Jia at all.

Hilda did not stay for long and left the lounge with a bit of anger.

After the person left, Meng Yeran turned around and called Sheng Jia. After two beeps, the other end picked up. She immediately asked with interest, “How did Hilda come to me to find someone? You really don’t plan to cooperate with the Opter family?”

Sheng Jia did not reply immediately. The sound of rustling book pages swept across the other end. After a long time, she said, “Of course, we have to cooperate, but it’s just not the time yet.”

“Then next time she comes to ask me, should I help her contact you or not?” Meng Yeran asked with a smile.

“Do whatever you want,” Sheng Jia’s reply was very casual, “At most, I’ll reject your call next time.”

Meng Yeran raised her eyebrows, “Is that what you call doing whatever I want?”

“Just kidding, isn’t it funny?” Sheng Jia asked back.

Meng Yeran said truthfully, “You should just speak normally.”

However, she was not calling to ask about this matter. “Why did you suddenly return to Jingjiang?”

“To handle something,” Sheng Jia said in a low voice, “Is there anything else? I’m hanging up if there isn’t.”

Meng Yeran did not believe that Sheng Jia had simply come to Jingjiang to handle something. After all, she chose Jingjin University after graduating from high school, and she had not returned here for four years of study. Every year during the winter and summer vacations, she was even pulled into the Song and Fu family companies by Song Ningqiu and Fu Minglang to gain experience, as if they wanted to make up for all the experience that she had never had in the past eighteen years.

Others might think that Sheng Jia was busy, but that did not mean that Meng Yeran also thought so.

Someone like Sheng Jia, if she really wanted to come back to see, she would fly back even if she had to study and work for eighteen consecutive hours and then take a plane. Obviously, she did not want to return to this place in Jingjiang.

If there was nothing extremely important, she would definitely not come back.

But without waiting for her to say anything more, the phone was ruthlessly hung up.

—

On the other end of Jingjiang, Sheng Jia was sitting at her desk, silently turning a pen. She was reading a document, which was a letter of intent for cooperation that Opter had sent in advance via email, but her eyes did not fall on it. Instead, they carried a bit of casualness, as if she was in a daze.

Outside the window was the familiar night view of Jingjiang. She was staying in a hotel at the moment but had no intention of appreciating it.

She had been very busy these past few years. After returning to the Song family, things that should have been done according to her wishes were indeed moving forward according to her wishes. She even began to gradually move towards the interior of the Song family’s enterprise.

Song Ningqiu was very good to her, it was a compensatory kind of good, believing that Sheng Jia had suffered too much in the first ten years or so, and used almost every possible way to be good to Sheng Jia, never refusing her anything.

Sheng Jia truly got what she wanted, but last year, when she graduated, she discovered a very interesting thing.

In these five years, she had been very restrained in contacting Sheng Huaiying, and Sheng Huaiying was also very restrained in contacting her.

The once most intimate mother and daughter tacitly did not want to disturb each other’s lives, which still needed to be readjusted after Sheng Jia returned to the Song family.

But this did not mean that Sheng Jia would not secretly pay attention to whether Sheng Huaiying was doing well. In her attention, it was inevitable to inquire about Song Ji’an’s life.

But in her most recent contact with Sheng Huaiying, she discovered a very strange thing—the few pieces of information she had learned about Song Ji’an did not match what Sheng Huaiying occasionally let slip.

Sheng Huaiying did not often mention Song Ji’an in front of Sheng Jia. She did not know what kind of relationship the two daughters had, but she did not think that they would be very harmonious either, so every time she talked to Sheng Jia, she only talked about her own recent situation and then asked about Sheng Jia’s recent situation.

But the composition of Sheng Huaiying’s life was her and her daughter. Sometimes, it was inevitable to mention Song Ji’an.

After the two of them returned to their respective positions, neither of them chose to change their names. Sheng Jia could sense from the conversation that the atmosphere between Sheng Huaiying and Song Ji’an was actually good, but there was always a bit more politeness. It always took a long time and opportunity for adult mothers and daughters to become familiar with each other again, not to mention that the university that Song Ji’an chose was not in Jingjiang either, and the time she spent with Sheng Huaiying was even less.

But in fact, Sheng Jia’s relationship with Song Ningqiu was the same.

She could not bury herself in Song Ningqiu’s arms and act coquettishly like Song Ji’an, nor could she talk and chat with her so intimately. Song Ningqiu’s pride in her was in her eyes, and she would occasionally respond to her achievements with a hug. After realizing that Sheng Jia was not comfortable with hugs, she would cautiously change her way and change it to patting Sheng Jia’s shoulder hard.

It was not that easy for mothers and daughters with different living environments, personalities, and cognitions to get along well.

And when she found that the information she had was incorrect, she searched for Song Ji’an again but found that she could no longer inquire about her news.

So she hired a private detective to try to see if it was just that her own people could not inquire about it, or if everyone faced Song Ji’an’s information like this.

The result was obvious. Song Ji’an’s information was a blur to anyone who went to inquire about it. Her industry, her traces, the industry she was engaged in, seemed to be artificially concealed and blocked, and could not be found.

Originally, Sheng Jia even suspected that Song Ji’an had entered a national secret agency to work, but obviously not. After all, Song Ji’an’s university information was deliberately blurred. Besides her name and photo, there was not even a social media to be found.

This was obviously someone deliberately helping her to hide.

Sheng Jia couldn’t find Song Ji’an, so she simply went up to find out who was helping her to cover it up.

With this search, she had a new discovery.

—Her mother Song Ningqiu and Song Ji’an, who was now missing, seemed to be hiding a secret from her.

And she had to figure out what the answer to this secret was.