GBT Chapter 7
by VolareJiao Bai put on a jacket over his shirt and trousers. The material was stiff and the length dragged to his feet. The hood was large, covering his entire head. His hands were tucked into the sleeves, and he wore sunglasses and a mask, completely covered from head to toe.
This strange attire provoked the displeasure of those around him.
It was like seeing a small rat in a smelly ditch, making you feel dirty from a distance.
Jiao Bai stood in front of Shen Ji, facing the piercing coldness in his eyes, and heard him question, “Who allowed you to dress like this?”
The cliche, melodramatic CEO dialogue and atmosphere made Jiao Bai’s adrenaline soar. It was an old habit; he just liked this kind of thing when reading comics. He slowly exhaled. When the original Wang Chuqiu first came to South City, it was the hot summer. He took protective measures, but the Shen family thought it was weird and embarrassing, and didn’t let him do that. From then on, every time the original Wang Chuqiu came to the Old Home, he had to wear clothes prepared by the old housekeeper. He couldn’t decide what to wear that day.
Unfortunately, the Old Lady liked natural scenery and held family banquets on sunny days, in the front garden with direct sunlight.
The original owner suffered. After a family banquet, his exposed face and neck would be red, swollen, itchy, peeling, and covered with a dense layer of blisters.
Jiao Bai didn’t want to suffer that. Just thinking about it was terrifying. On the way, he forced the Driver to stop and hurriedly bought this outfit.
Shen Ji’s tone was icy cold: “Go back and change before coming over.”
Jiao Bai ignored him. As soon as a friend came online, the account automatically logged in. He stared at the Pikachu avatar ranked second on his friend list. Pikachu was actually alive… alive, moving, and breathing fire at him.
Don’t ask why Pikachu had the skills of a fire spirit; just assume it was due to illness.
The fire seemed to materialize, and Jiao Bai felt his whole body heat up. He impulsively retorted, “I won’t change.”
Shen Ji didn’t expect the dog to resist, and was stunned for a moment. His face darkened, and he raised his right hand. Jiao Bai quickly dodged to the side.
At the same time, that hand was stopped by another force.
Qi Yi Liao frowned: “Old Shen, how can you start hitting people without asking what’s going on?” He put down Shen Ji’s hand, lowered his head slightly, and looked at Jiao Bai with a very friendly expression. “Xiao Li, do you have a cold? Are you sensitive to cold?”
Jiao Bai: “…”
If you didn’t call me Xiao Li, I might touch your head.
“I don’t have a cold. I have photosensitivity,” Jiao Bai pushed up his sliding sunglasses.
“Photosensitivity,” a look of understanding appeared on Qi Yi Liao’s face. “Then you need to wear more clothes.”
“Old Shen, have you taken Xiao Li to the hospital?” Qi Yi Liao tilted his head. The sunlight brushed past his temples and cast a golden halo on his straight nose. He stood there like a compassionate savior.
Shen Ji exhaled a mouthful of smoke: “No need.”
Qi Yi Liao sighed: “You should still go to the hospital for a checkup.” He smiled at Jiao Bai. “Old Shen doesn’t have time, so go by yourself, little friend.”
Jiao Bai looked at Qi Yi Liao’s avatar. He wondered if the white cat was about to be strangled to death.
The white cat was like an inanimate object, which made the Pikachu still breathing fire downstairs seem particularly comical. They were clearly two different styles.
Jiao Bai gave a perfunctory greeting and walked alone towards the main hall of the Old Home. He ignored the two gazes behind him, walking quickly, wanting to get to a place without light as soon as possible.
Shen Ji said lightly: “The person is still the same, but the temperament has changed.”
Qi Yi Liao flicked the ash of his cigarette: “Do you know what he was like before?”
Shen Ji narrowed his eyes. He didn’t even care about that kid from the Qi family, let alone Wang Whatever’s little dog: “Asked the old housekeeper.”
Qi Yi Liao held the cigarette to his pale lips. He freed his hand and elegantly straightened his suit cuffs: “Old Shen, that child looks like a withered, fragmented weed, but has an incongruous resilience. He was different just now than he was last night, changing like a kaleidoscope. Isn’t that rare? You should spend some time taking care of him.”
Shen Ji’s fingers twitched, and half a cigarette was pinched off and crushed. Just a dog.
Jiao Bai drank an anti-allergy medicine he had brought. He threw the empty bottle in the trash can, sat in a corner, took off his coat, sunglasses, and mask, and applied ointment to his face and neck. He had applied it before leaving, but now he needed to apply some more. He wasn’t reassured. After he got through this period, he would see a Chinese medicine doctor and definitely cure this dermatitis.
The front garden was sunny and fragrant with flowers. Jiao Bai leaned against the wall, taking advantage of the cover of his position to secretly observe the guests attending the birthday banquet. Most of them were from the Shen family, a few were long-time partners of Shen’s, and some were childhood friends and acquaintances of the Shen family head.
He didn’t see Shen Er An, the young master of the Shen family. He heard that he had already returned to school because he had exams.
Jiao Bai wasn’t surprised. Shen Er An was the product of Shen Ji’s youthful indiscretion one night. His mother was a tea picker from Cheng Mountain who gave half her life bringing him into this world, and used the other half to send him to the Shen family.
Shen Er An’s arrival indirectly led to the death of Shen Ji’s beloved, so Shen Ji didn’t like him and didn’t care about him.
The father and son didn’t live together, rarely ate at the same table, and met like strangers.
The Old Lady had a hard time with both of them. She intervened a few times and then stopped. Her youngest son only had one heir, and even if they weren’t close, it couldn’t change their blood relationship.
Jiao Bai yawned. The original owner had no presence, no friends, and didn’t need to exchange pleasantries, so he was relaxed. Just as he was about to fall asleep in the corner, a large cloud passed over the front garden, blocking most of the sun, and the Old Lady came out.
Today was her eightieth birthday, but no one could tell. She was vegetarian and recited Buddhist scriptures, so her appearance hadn’t declined much, and she was quite energetic.
The Old Lady sat in a wheelchair, pushed towards the hall by her most promising youngest son, the head of the family, Shen Ji. She held a string of Buddhist beads in her hand, dressed plainly, and the birthday banquet wasn’t extravagant.
The process was simplified, and it was all vegetarian food, as it was every year.
Jiao Bai clicked his tongue and scoffed. This kind-faced old woman was the one who tied people up like dogs.
Regarding this matter, because it didn’t involve the main characters, the “Broken Wings” comic didn’t directly explain it, nor was it detailed and comprehensive. It was pieced together from the perspectives of several people.
A few years ago, Shen Ji suffered a strange illness, and his life was on the line. Experts at home and abroad were helpless. The Old Lady went to the temple to pray for him and was instructed by a Master to use family resources to find two people whose horoscopes would benefit Shen Ji in the place of his birth and upbringing, namely the original owner and Qi Shuang. They ate and slept in the hospital room with Shen Ji for half a month, and Shen Ji miraculously survived the danger.
The Old Lady firmly believed in the theory of horoscopes. She arranged for the two of them to live in Qin Lin Garden in Lake Dong, thinking that after Shen Ji recovered, he would pick one to marry into the Shen family.
This was also something the Old Lady couldn’t help. If it wasn’t the Master’s intention, she would have just treated it as Shen Ji raising two little things. Even the Qi family’s little darling wasn’t qualified to enter the Shen family’s door.
However, two years had passed, and the position of Madam Shen was still vacant. Shen Ji didn’t believe in the theory of horoscopes at all. He frequently changed the people he kept outside, but didn’t touch the two in Qin Lin Garden. It seemed that as long as he touched one of them, he would be connected to the horoscope, entering a strange cycle where his fate wasn’t his own.
He wanted to stabilize his wealth and glory, wanted a lifetime of peace and prosperity, and actually had to rely on the destiny of others. It was a joke.
Without Shen Ji choosing anyone to serve him in bed, the original owner and Qi Shuang lived in Qin Lin Garden, and the two were at peace.
Until Shen Ji took the original owner to meet friends, the balance was broken…
Jiao Bai recalled the plot, and thought of the original owner’s adoptive parents. They took a sum of money from the Shen family and let the Shen family take the original owner away, saying to the outside world that he couldn’t continue his studies and had to go to work in another place, telling him that he was lucky to have met a benefactor and hoped that he would go to a big city to receive a better education.
In reality, they were going to use the money from selling him to send their precious daughter abroad.
Jiao Bai really loved this comic’s chaotic mix of cliches. Even a tool person who went offline early could be so melodramatic. He sighed, adjusted his expression, walked out of the corner, passed through a dazzling area of designer clothes, and walked in front of the Old Lady.
“Xiao Qiu, why aren’t you following A Ji? There are many people today, don’t run around,” The Old Lady took Jiao Bai’s hand, put it in Shen Ji’s palm, and patted it.
It felt like a wedding scene.
Jiao Bai pulled his hand away and wiped it on the clothes behind him.
Shen Ji bent down to tidy up the hair at the Old Lady’s ear, and his angle just happened to catch Jiao Bai’s actions.
The Old Lady, who cherished her hair, suddenly had her hair pulled by her youngest son, and her heart was about to fail: “A Ji?”
“It’s nothing,” Shen Ji let go of his hand and smoothed the Old Lady’s silver-white hair.
Jiao Bai looked at the Old Lady’s few hairs, wondering why they weren’t pulled out completely. Did Shen Ji not eat? His strength was so weak. He suddenly noticed that Qi Yi Liao in the wealthy group was looking at him, and the mischievousness in his eyes disappeared instantly.
Jiao Bai turned his face away nonchalantly and met Qi Zi Zhi’s gaze.
Why are you two looking at me? Are you sick?
Jiao Bai brought up his account and looked at his friend list. Qi Zi Zhi was ranked below Shen Ji, and his avatar was blank, with nothing on it, which was very abrupt.
The three friends who were online at the moment, Qi Yi Liao, Shen Ji, and Qi Zi Zhi, all had an activity level of 0. Get lost, you guys.
Under the many contemptuous and disdainful gazes, Jiao Bai congratulated the Old Lady on her birthday, and then he found an opportunity to slip into the washroom, and then slipped into the back garden through the passage next to the washroom. As soon as he found a place where the light didn’t shine and he could feel the natural breeze, Qi Shuang’s call came.
Qi Shuang didn’t speak immediately after the call was connected. His panting was deliberately light, and a bit strained. His people had given him the message that the address was a family’s home, inhabited by a mother and son.
That was the Master’s wife and children.
Qi Shuang’s face was pale in the hospital room. The Qi family’s connections hadn’t even found that information. How did this country bumpkin know? It was too evil.
“That mother and son have already been monitored by my people. Is that what you mean? Is that what you want me to do?” Qi Shuang said softly, “Chu Qiu, I misjudged you. I thought you were someone who would bow and apologize even for stepping on an ant.”
Jiao Bai bent his legs comfortably: “Likewise.”
The original owner also thought Qi Shuang was a cute younger brother without any young master’s disease.
When Jiao Bai was following the comic, he thought the Master was just a con artist. Later, as he read on, he realized that the author had logically resolved it. The original owner died, and Qi Shuang married into the Shen family in the winter of the same year. In fact, it could be considered that the horoscope theory was realized. Qi Shuang benefited the head of the Shen family, but it just wasn’t Shen Ji.
The day Shen Ji took a wife was the Little New Year’s Eve.
There were still a few months left.
Jiao Bai confirmed the next plan with Qi Shuang and laughed: “Young Master, I wish you success.”
Qi Shuang trembled without backbone when he heard his laughter. He really should have crashed to death.
They couldn’t be friends now, but they absolutely couldn’t become enemies.
Jiao Bai guessed that Qi Shuang wouldn’t dare to play tricks in front of him from now on, but he didn’t think that the road ahead was smooth and bright. After all, he couldn’t temporarily get revenge on that old thing, Shen Ji.
Alas, the road to turning over for a small character was difficult. A rich son like Qi Shuang, who was so stupid but self-righteous, was a rare species. It was his blessing to have met him, and he had to take good care of him.
When eating, Jiao Bai sat on the Old Lady’s left, in the position of the future daughter-in-law. Qi Shuang wasn’t there, so he was alone, becoming a target for many eyes to glare at him.
“Xiao Qiu, I heard that that child Shuang Shuang was hospitalized with allergies?” The Old Lady asked.
Jiao Bai looked at the pile of vegetarian dishes and answered weakly, “Yes.”
There were only two outsiders at this table, one was Qi Yi Liao and the other was him. Even Qi Zi Zhi wasn’t arranged to come over.
And Qi Yi Liao was right across from him, directly opposite him, so he could be seen as soon as he looked up.
At this moment, Qi Yi Liao joined the topic, he drank a spoonful of lotus seed soup: “The Qi family’s youngest is allergic? How come the physiques of today’s little friends are so sensitive?”
The Shen family at the table all assumed that what Director Qi said “all” included a certain lover around him, which was inconvenient to ask about.
But if no one responded, it would seem that Director Qi was being neglected.
A few seconds later, the Old Lady asked in a chatty manner.
“Xiao Zhang.” Qi Yi Liao pointed to Jiao Bai opposite him, in a tone that implied elders caring for younger generations, “Xiao Zhang also has allergies.”
Jiao Bai: “…”
Sometimes he’s called Xiao Li, sometimes he’s called Xiao Zhang. What’s up? Does my body carry all the surnames?