The Art of Teasing - Chapter 77

Chapter 77

Wen Zhengyu went back to her bedroom and carried a chair over, then sat beside Wen Shishu. She asked a few more questions about Old Master Wen. Once she knew he was well and that Lian Xin and Ye Ling had both sent people over, she finally felt at ease and thanked Lian Xin and Ye Ling.

Ye Ling explained the situation to Wen Shishu from start to finish, detailing the current state of affairs, what was still in progress, and what needed further follow-up. She said, "Judging from Zheng Dongsheng's reaction, the only thing I'm sure of is that he's found a new patron. Who that new patron is, I can't say for certain yet. Still, there aren't many people who could involve themselves in this, so there are a few suspects we can investigate."

Wen Shishu nodded. Her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID and answered.

Wen Zhengyu was sitting close to her second aunt and heard a man's voice come through the line: "Sis, it's done."

Wen Shishu said, "Good. I'll treat you to dinner tomorrow."

The man laughed. "I'll treat you, sis."

Wen Shishu replied with a smile, "Alright."

The man went on, "Sis, you're busy. I won't keep you."

Wen Zhengyu shot a glance at her second aunt. The way he kept calling her "sis" sounded far more affectionate than how Wen Shiyi ever did.

Wen Shishu hung up and said, "That second branch of the Ye family… a guy called Ye Che came over here. I don't know what kind of mess he got into, but he was dragged out to some wasteland and got both his legs broken."

Wen Zhengyu: "…" She stared wide-eyed at her second aunt, then turned to look at Ye Ling.

Ye Ling's expression was guarded, giving little away.

Lian Xin held his teacup, sipping unhurriedly, as if pondering something.

Lian Ye said to Ye Ling, "CEO Ye, your family's affairs really are…" Before he could finish, Lian Xin gave him a stealthy kick under the table. Lian Ye cut a glance at Lian Xin, suppressed his rising temper, waved his hand, and said nothing more—just drank his tea.

The matter concerning Ye Che would naturally be handled by Ye Ling.

Lian Xin mulled for a moment, then said slowly to Ye Ling, "Your second uncle's business… if you need any help, just say so."

Ye Ling nodded to Lian Xin.

Lian Xin said, "Let's not drag other things into this for now. We'll keep talking about Zheng Dongsheng." He went back to assigning the tasks he hadn't yet dispersed.

Once the tasks were assigned, Lian Xin said to Ye Ling, "CEO Ye, your side has the heavier load."

Ye Ling replied, "Only to be expected. Then I'll get to work."

Wen Shishu stood, saying, "I'll be off, too. Yu'er, I've taken your room, so you'll stay here at your grandmother's place."

Wen Zhengyu acknowledged this. She grabbed Wen Shishu's arm and pulled her aside, whispering, "I won't see you off. Grandmother flew into a rage today and made me reflect on my mistakes in the study. She's still downstairs, so I don't dare go out."

Wen Shishu pinched Wen Zhengyu's ear. "You still have the nerve! Don't you know to pay more attention to your own safety? The three elders are all in their seventies or eighties. If something happened to you, how would they bear it? Even if you don't think of the elders, think of yourself. Those drug addicts will stop at nothing. With that delicate way of yours—never having endured a speck of hardship—you really…" She jabbed Wen Zhengyu's forehead forcefully. "Never mind whether anyone's thinking about you; just the jewelry you're wearing on the street is enough to get you mugged ten or twenty times over."

Wen Zhengyu looked down at herself. She was dressed plainly. Aside from her ear studs, the jade pendant on her necklace, and a ring on her pinky, she wore nothing else. The valuable jewelry she'd once owned had been sold. These few pieces weren't worth much even put together. She cast a sidelong glance at the safety jade pendant hanging from Wen Shishu's neck and the pair of bracelets on Wen Shishu's wrists and silently withheld comment.

Wen Shishu could certainly read the meaning behind that glance. She seized Wen Zhengyu by the ear again and gave her another round of scolding.

Wen Zhengyu held her tongue. If she hired bodyguards, her expenses would skyrocket again. A twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week, full-time female bodyguard from special forces like Wen Jing—not to mention other costs—would demand a salary of several hundred thousand a year just in wages, and that didn't even include room, board, and daily expenses.

Wen Shishu saw how Wen Zhengyu just stood there silently. "I agree with Grandmother. Making you reflect is the right thing to do. Stay in the house." With that, she left the study, joined Ye Ling, who had been waiting outside, and closed the door behind her.

Ye Ling and Wen Shishu said goodbye to Old Master Lian and Grandmother, then left the residence together with the Lian brothers. Ye Ling slipped into Wen Shishu's car and remarked, "It's not Zhengyu's fault. She's short on money."

Wen Shishu gave Ye Ling a sideways look. "Lian Ye wasn't wrong. Why are you dragging your family's wretched business onto Yu'er?"

Ye Ling asked Wen Shishu, "Where was Ye Che dumped?"

Wen Shishu said, "Why? Thinking of going over and having someone bury him?"

Ye Ling said, "I'd like to."

Wen Shishu said, "All right, stop sitting in my car. Right now the sight of you annoys me. Get out."

Ye Ling got out. From Wen Shishu's words, she understood: Ye Che had been tossed into some remote corner to savor what it felt like when no one answered your cries and no one came to your aid.

Her phone rang. She pulled it out and saw her brother was calling. She got into her own vehicle before answering. "Brother."

Ye Zhan said, "Second Uncle is here with me. He says Ye Che was kidnapped over on your end."

Ye Ling said, "Is that so? I'm busy at the moment. I don't have time to file a police report for him. Tell Second Uncle to figure it out himself."

Another voice came through from Ye Zhan's phone: "Ye Ling, if something happens to Che'er, you and I are through."

Ye Ling shot back scornfully, "Second Uncle, how amusing you are. Ye Che is a man in his late thirties. You still want me to babysit him? I'm not his parent. If something's happened to him, go find his father and mother." With that, she hung up. Then she called 110 and reported that her second uncle said Ye Che was missing.

The 110 operator asked her the missing person's age, how long he'd been missing, how long he'd been out of contact with his family, and personal details like that.

Ye Ling professed complete ignorance. She said the name was Ye Che, the age was probably in the late thirties, intelligence was normal, mental health sound, no psychiatric condition, and he had full autonomy. His family was in Beijing; he wasn't local. She didn't know when he'd arrived, didn't know what he'd come to do, and even less idea when contact had been lost. All she knew was that Second Uncle said the person was missing, so she called 110 to report it.

The officer asked, "Are you a family member?"

Ye Ling said, "No, only a relative."

The officer went on to explain the standards for a missing person case and told her that if she was sure he was missing, his family should bring their identification to the police station and file the report.

Ye Ling thanked them, hung up, and sent the recording to Ye Zhan's phone so Ye Zhan could play it for Second Uncle: I already called the police for you. I don't know anything about Ye Che's situation and I couldn't make anything clear to the police. Whatever the matter is, go report it yourselves.

Ye Ling assigned her own tasks one by one, then went to the kitchen to check on the fish she'd been keeping in fresh water. She wondered whether she'd ever get the chance to cook those fish for Wen Zhengyu.

Her phone rang again. The bodyguard brought it in. It was another call from her brother.

Ye Zhan said, "They're gone. How's your side?"

Ye Ling said, "It's okay. What's the story with Ye Che? How did he show up here without a word?"

Ye Zhan said, "I just checked his itinerary. He took a detour to come over and didn't tell anyone."

Ye Ling told Ye Zhan about the Zheng Dongsheng affair and that Zheng Dongsheng had found a new patron.

Ye Zhan caught on. "Got it." He paused, then asked about Wen Zhengyu.

Ye Ling gave him a brief rundown.

Ye Zhan asked, "I heard the Qi family also lent a hand on this matter?"

Ye Ling said, "That group of kidnappers—Qi Wei personally caught them and handed them over to the Public Security Bureau. Qi Wei has a strong relationship with Old Madam Zhang, so I thought maybe the old lady was uneasy about Zhengyu and asked Qi Wei to keep an eye out."

After exchanging information with Ye Zhan, she hung up.

Ye Che wanted to prop up Zheng Dongsheng to come after her. Judging by the current situation, that would require a large amount of capital. If it was Ye family money, her brother would have caught wind of it beforehand. The source and movement of those funds still needed investigating.

Ye Ling ended the call feeling both sick at heart and unable to suppress her fury.

Who could have imagined that these brainless fools would try to kidnap Wen Zhengyu—and use drug addicts to do it?

Wen Zhengyu's temper wasn't one for stirring up trouble; she wasn't in anyone's way. She looked gentle and weak, easy to bully, but above her stood three elders, and beneath those elders was a host of children and grandchildren, none of whom were pushovers. Pull a stunt like this, and with the slightest misstep, those with white hair would end up burying those with black. Any family on the receiving end couldn't stomach it and would never let the matter drop.

Every time Ye Ling thought that Wen Zhengyu had nearly been harmed, a stifling tightness lodged in her chest and refused to ease.

Today, when Wen Zhengyu left the house, if she hadn't been meeting Qi Wei—had it been anyone else—no one would have cared whether she had bodyguards with her or not.

Ye Ling went to the storage room and selected two valuable gifts, placing them in brocade boxes to deliver to Qi Wei the next day.

After she finished preparing the gifts, she returned to her room, washed up, and, having received no other news, sent Wen Zhengyu a text message: "Asleep yet?"

Wen Zhengyu replied: "Not yet."

Ye Ling asked: "Still in the study?"

Wen Zhengyu replied: "Yes."

Ye Ling asked: "When will you go back to your room to sleep?"

"Grandmother had someone bring me a small blanket."

A pang of tenderness shot through Ye Ling. She texted: "Go back to your room and get a pillow."

About two or three minutes later, Wen Zhengyu's message came back: "Don't worry. Get some rest."

Ye Ling stared at the message for several seconds, then replied: "Okay, you too."

Wen Zhengyu sent: "Good night."

Ye Ling sent: "Good night."

Wen Zhengyu put down her phone and lay down on the sofa to rest. She was tired but couldn't fall asleep. Her mind swirled with everything they had discussed. At first she'd thought that since someone wanted to kidnap her, the best thing was to hand over the people tailing her to the Public Security Bureau and give the police whatever leads she had, letting them investigate. Only after listening to their meeting, their analysis, and the assignment of tasks did she realize she had oversimplified the matter.

She thought of Ye Ling and felt that things really were hard for her. Today, when Wen Shishu mentioned Ye Che, the atmosphere in the study plunged to freezing. Lian Xin had held Lian Ye back; otherwise Lian Ye would have taken his anger out on Ye Ling right there. Nobody said it aloud, but surely everyone privately blamed Ye Ling. Still, when you thought about it, no one wanted relatives like that.

Wen Zhengyu tossed and turned, unable to sleep. She sprawled on the sofa and called Wen Shishu to dig for gossip about Ye Ling's family.

Her second aunt told her the saga of the Ye family.

Last year, when the Old Master Ye passed away, the old woman of the Ye family wouldn't let Ye Ling and her brother enter the mourning hall, cursing them as unfilial and irreverent, refusing to acknowledge them as Ye family. Ye Zhan had called on his father-in-law to ask the elders to intervene. In the mourning hall, Ye Ling publicly aired the family's dirty laundry—and that laundry tore the face of the Ye family matriarch, along with several uncles and cousins, straight down to the floor. Ye Ling declared that her family was dead, leaving only her brother and herself, and that she, having already died once, didn't mind dragging her enemies with her to die another ten or twenty times. Her step-grandmother had arranged for her eldest aunt to be married off far away—what kind of family, what kind of man, and how she died—Ye Ling tore it all apart. Her youngest aunt had died in the same way when the old woman pushed her into marriage. As for her and her brother, the two siblings received a combined total of seventy-two thousand yuan a year for all their living expenses, doled out month by month. Meanwhile, her male cousins casually spent millions on luxury cars and tens of millions on houses for the little starlets they kept. Ye Ling exposed this and added a congratulations to that cousin for being about to become a father before he was even married. At the time, the cousin's fiancée was at the funeral, but the one carrying his child was not the fiancée. She aired a whole basketful of the Ye family's scandals. The Ye matriarch was so infuriated she lunged to claw and hit, and she pointed at Ye Ling, screaming that she was a homosexual deviant. Ye Ling dodged, then shot back coldly, "Still better than your eldest grandson's stunt. Want to see the photos? I've got plenty—there's even live footage. Your grandson messing around with a bunch of middle- and high-school boys: high-definition on-site filming, both video and audio, three hundred sixty degrees with no blind spots. Would you like to take a look?"

Wen Zhengyu: "…" She paused, then asked, "Second Aunt, a porn video?"

The line went silent for a moment. She called, "Second Aunt?"

Wen Shishu gave a muffled "Mm." "A porn video," she said. Then, "Aren't you going to sleep?"

Wen Zhengyu said, "I'm not tired."

Wen Shishu sighed. "That family of hers—never mind how they look on the surface. Inside, the core is rotten through. After Ye Ling spilled everything at the old man's funeral last year, anyone with a shred of decency has avoided all contact with them." She paused. "As for Ye Ling, when people talk about her airing the family's dirty laundry, no one has a good word, either. There's a saying: don't slap a person's face, and don't expose a person's shame when you argue. And then there's her own matter of liking women. Living that way in private is one thing, but shouting it in public is another."

Wen Zhengyu muttered under her breath, "Even a rabbit will bite when cornered."

Wen Shishu said, "Show me how you'd bite someone."

Wen Zhengyu: "…" She said, "I'm not a rabbit."

Wen Shishu retorted, "A rabbit has at least two more teeth than you."

Wen Zhengyu: "…"

Wen Shishu sighed again. "Out of the whole Ye family, Ye Zhan is the only one people can't fault at all. But any clear-eyed person knows that whenever there's something Ye Zhan can't handle or words he can't say, it's Ye Ling who steps up. The older brother stands there in spotless splendor while the younger sister deals with all the filth. How is that any better?"

She sighed once more. "Seeing how Ye Ling kicked up that storm last year, she really does have that drive to drag those uncles and cousins with her through death ten or twenty times. As for you, I'd say it's best if you keep things strictly to business with her. For anything else… tread lightly. All right, if you're not sleeping, I am." And she hung up.

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