They flew back to the capital by helicopter and returned to Cheng Garden together.
The Ruan family steward brought over a nanmu-wood box. Qiuyun carefully removed the jewelry from her body—one hundred million yuan’s worth. Thank goodness she had worn it safely back.
If it had been chipped or damaged, the courtyard house she had worked so hard to obtain from Sir would have to be handed over as compensation!
After changing clothes and removing her makeup, Qiuyun felt relieved now that she had repaid the favor. Just as she was about to take her leave and head home, she saw Pei Cizhou glance around before shutting the doors and windows.
?
Outside, the moon had risen above the willow branches. Qiuyun narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing?”
Pei Cizhou walked toward her step by step, stopping less than two fists’ width away. He reached out.
That morning, when he had said he didn’t like her and told her not to overthink things, Qiuyun truly hadn’t given it any thought.
But that afternoon, he had secretly followed her, then lent her jewelry worth over a hundred million yuan. It was hard not to suspect something!
And now, what was this supposed to be?
A confession?
Just as Qiuyun furrowed her brows, considering how to reject him, Pei Cizhou reached past her and picked up the business card she had casually tossed onto the table behind her. His expression was rather wistful.
“Do you know who left you this card?”
“...”
“What’s wrong?” Pei Cizhou asked curiously. “What kind of expression is that?”
“Ahem. Nothing.” Embarrassed, Qiuyun ran a comb through her hair twice. “Who is it? Some important figure?”
“Very important.” Pei Cizhou pressed a hand to his forehead. “My brother must have invited him here specifically. Even tonight’s auction for the ancient painting was probably arranged just for him. But he travels discreetly and didn’t make his presence known. I’d guess only my brother and I knew who he was.”
Qiuyun took the card. It bore only the name “Yu Wenchuan” and a telephone number.
“Wenchuan is his courtesy name,” Pei Cizhou hinted discreetly. “He usually resides at Chuigongyuan.”
“...”
That certainly made him a very important person.
Qiuyun put away the card. It had to be worth at least two hundred thousand yuan.
Elsewhere, Ruan Siheng stood before the surveillance footage. Seeing the venerable Mr. Wenchuan chatting with Qiuyun with a genial smile, then handing her a business card afterward, he could not help frowning.
His assistant hastily explained, “President Ruan, I-I truly didn’t know. Otherwise, I would have stopped Young Master Cizhou on the spot...”
Ruan Siheng raised a hand to cut him off. “Investigate Qiuyun thoroughly at once. Other than being Seventh Miss Jiang’s assistant, what other identity does she have?”
He had miscalculated.
He had assumed she was merely a country sparrow trying to become a phoenix by relying on a bit of beauty. Yet between her and Cizhou, it was actually his younger brother who had been eagerly pursuing her?
Combined with her astonishing performance that evening, it seemed likely that he had offended her.
—
Although Qiuyun had received the business card, she had no intention of rashly calling the number.
She was not truly an expert appraiser. She had recognized the painting, “Autumn Mountains: Seeking the Way,” because there was one in the Duke’s residence storehouse, and Madam had once taken it out to copy. It was kept right before her eyes, and she dusted it daily with a feather duster, so naturally she knew it well.
But with other works—especially ancient calligraphy and paintings from the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties—she would be completely at a loss.
So it was best to leave things as they were for now. If fate allowed them to meet again someday, she could explain things properly to him then.
Before a person of such standing, one should not pretend to be more capable than one was, only to end up losing more than one gained.
After resting in her new home for two days, Qiuyun accompanied Miss Jiang on the second-to-last day of the National Day holiday for that month’s charity visit to the orphanage.
On the final day of the holiday, Mr. Yihua summoned her to the study in the guest quarters of Bright Moon Tower.
“It was the Third Brother.”
Jiang Yihua’s men had investigated without rest for a week, screening every person who had left the Third Branch over the past year. At last, they had found one suspicious individual, someone who had happened to leave the country a week earlier.
They then followed him abroad, posing as fellow townsmen who had lived in Australia for years. After drinking together one evening, they carefully tried to pry information from him.
The man had been cautious and revealed nothing directly. Yet his words made it clear that he sorely missed his wife, children, and parents back home, and he gave every impression of having been forced to go abroad. That was what allowed them to narrow in on him.
Qiuyun nodded. “That’s no surprise.”
“The Third Brother’s people also tried to mislead us, directing suspicion toward the Fourth Brother,” Jiang Yihua said.
“But I’m guessing Mr. Jiang isn’t innocent either. More than half the marketing accounts stirring things up online probably came from his company,” Qiuyun said.
“Correct.”
Through this incident, Jiang Yihua had also come to recognize the importance of the online public-opinion battlefield. So he had summoned Qiuyun because he wanted to establish a media company under his own name and have her oversee it.
Qiuyun tactfully declined. “Sir, I know my own limits. I can manage the household staff and a few shops, but managing the operations of an entire company is simply beyond me.”
The longer she lived in the modern era, the more she felt that technology and the humanities had advanced at an astonishing pace.
She had never studied finance or the stock market. Taking over something like that rashly would only make a mess of things.
Jiang Yihua had merely been making a suggestion. He simply thought Qiuyun was exceptionally capable and wanted to keep her in his employ.
Then she changed tack. “But if Sir would allow me to study for a few years, then once I have learned enough, I would naturally be willing to share Sir’s burdens.”
After considering it, Jiang Yihua agreed. “All right. After the holiday, I’ll have someone arrange the paperwork at A University. You can sit in on specialized courses as a teaching assistant.”
That was not bad at all, and she happily agreed.
Yet without Qiuyun, most of Jiang Yihua’s people were involved in traditional industries. Their fields were different, and the older generation was unwilling to step outside their comfort zones. He truly could not find a suitable candidate.
“Why not let the Eldest Young Master give it a try?”
Qiuyun offered him a suggestion. “And besides, why should we spend money, connections, time, and effort building an entirely new company from scratch? Isn’t there already a major media company under the group? This matter died down online so quickly not only because you were suppressing the heat everywhere. Old Master Jiang must have helped as well. You suffered the loss for nothing—shouldn’t you ask Old Master Jiang for an explanation, and some compensation?”
Jiang Yihua raised his brows but said nothing.
Qiuyun continued, “Besides, our current strategy is to avoid showing ambition and do our best to turn Old Master Jiang around. You may not be in a position to appear aggressively ambitious, but that doesn’t mean the Eldest Young Master can’t be.”
“That could work,” Jiang Yihua said, finding the idea sound as well. “But the problem is that even if we want it, the Fourth Brother may not be willing to give it up.”
Qiuyun gave a small cough. A mischievous idea came easily to her lips. “Didn’t Sir just say that the Third Branch set things up to mislead our people into thinking Mr. Jiang was behind this? Then we can play along. We’ll assume that Mr. Jiang did it, then righteously demand the company from Old Master Jiang.”
“Hmm. It’s not a bad idea, and it could work.” Jiang Yihua shook his head. “But the Fourth Brother is absolutely not the sort to swallow such a grievance in silence. If things blow up and he flatly denies it, we would still have no way to deal with him—and we might alert the enemy instead.”
“He absolutely won’t,” Qiuyun said with certainty.
Surprised by her confidence, Jiang Yihua sat up straighter and listened intently. “What makes you say that?”
Qiuyun explained slowly. “First, the group owns fifty-one percent of the company’s shares. I’m afraid that long ago, he began siphoning off the profitable businesses within it through means such as outsourcing projects.”
