Chapter 43: The Teasing Women of the Magic City, and Ruan Liuzheng's Broken Defense

Qiao Yingzi quickly contacted her best friend, Huang Zhitao, and explained the situation. Huang Zhitao naturally agreed without any hesitation.

After easily settling the matter, Qiao Yingzi glanced at He Chen in the backseat through the rearview mirror, then quickly looked away, placing her hand on the car window and pressing her fingertips against her temple to hide her embarrassed and annoyed expression.

Fortunately, they soon arrived at the residential complex. He Chen and the two girls got out of the car. Qiao Yingzi responded to Ruan Liuzheng's thanks and farewell, asked her father's designated driver to drive the car directly into the Shuxiang Yayuan complex, and pulled up right downstairs from Huang Zhitao's apartment. She politely declined Uncle Zheng the driver's kind offer to help carry the box upstairs, waved goodbye as Uncle Zheng drove away, and then joined her best friend who had just walked out to jointly carry the large box upstairs.

"Your uncle is really good to you!"

Looking at the gift worth over eight thousand yuan, Huang Zhitao could not hide her envy.

"What's between us? My dad is your dad, and half of this gift is yours!" Qiao Yingzi hugged her best friend and giggled.

"Get out of here!" Huang Zhitao curled her lips. "This was bought specially for you, your favorite Star Wars Lego set. If half of it really belonged to me, I'd be even sadder!"

She wasn't the type to wallow in excessive melancholy. Seeing her best friend about to comfort her, she quickly changed the subject. "You said you ran into He Chen and Ruan Liuzheng for dinner tonight?"

"Yeah, they went to Jingge to celebrate too..." Qiao Yingzi recounted what had just happened, sighing with considerable annoyance, "He Chen's brain is really sharp. No wonder he remained silent until he made a splash, jumping straight to 28th place in the entire grade! Why didn't I think of that from the beginning?"

"How could his brain not be sharp? Look at how he roasted Teacher Li, Fang Yifan, and Ji Yangyang." Huang Zhitao wasn't surprised at all that her best friend hadn't thought of it, whereas He Chen had thought of it immediately.

"Alright, I'll leave my baby in your care." Qiao Yingzi nodded repeatedly in agreement. Noticing her phone vibrating again, and seeing that it was predictably another message from her mother urging her to come home, she hurried toward the door.

"The Empress Dowager is urging again. I have to rush back to finish tonight's two sets of test papers, and then make time to prepare for tomorrow's planetarium lecture."

"Then you should hurry back." Huang Zhitao knew Qiao Yingzi's situation and didn't try to make her stay, walking her out.

Her best friend Qiao Yingzi loved astronomy and had been a docent at the planetarium since the first term of senior high. There was a major event at the planetarium tomorrow, something her best friend had been looking forward to for a long time.

Only, she wasn't very optimistic about whether her best friend could actually get the Empress Dowager's approval.

When He Chen and the two women returned home and were about to head to their respective rooms, they were stopped by Ruan Lu. "You have a delivery forwarded from Shanghai. I signed for it on your behalf, take a look."

"A delivery from Shanghai?" Ruan Liuzheng, who was also preparing to return to her room, paused her steps and looked over with curiosity.

He Chen had always been frugal, rarely spending money and never shopping online, let alone having his mother speak in such an unusual tone when mentioning a package.

He Chen was also slightly surprised. He walked over, and seeing that neither Ruan Lu nor Ruan Liuzheng showed any intention of avoiding the scene, he opened it right in front of them.

"Books?" Ruan Liuzheng simply leaned in closer. "More Taoist scriptures? Have you finished reading all the books in the library? Now you're starting to buy Taoist scriptures for yourself?"

"I didn't buy them." He Chen shook his head and began to flip through them.

"Oh!" Ruan Liuzheng suddenly let out a startled cry, her tone instantly turning somewhat sour. "So it was bought for you by some girl! When did you make friends with a girl from Shanghai? She does write in a delicate and pretty hand, and she's quite good at drawing too!"

A scene from the library during summer break flashed through He Chen's mind.

At that time, he was standing in front of a bookshelf, picking up a copy of a Taoist scripture to browse. The books on the shelf suddenly had a few gaps, revealing a pretty face as fresh and pale as a chrysanthemum. She held a book and pretended to read it, acting as though she hadn't noticed He Chen, while constantly glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

He Chen was long used to this kind of pickup routine, but when he took the book and left the bookshelf for a nearby table, he still glanced back at her familiar face.

As soon as he sat down, the girl had already taken a book and sat opposite him. At first, she tried to imitate He Chen by burying herself in reading, but Taoist scriptures were hardly something ordinary people could maintain the patience to read through.

Later, she simply rested her chin in her hands and stared straight at He Chen without speaking, as if waiting for him to speak first.

Yet He Chen completely ignored her, reading for two and a half hours straight. Once he finished the Taoist scripture and put it back on the shelf, he picked up another one, checked out a few books, and left the library.

Two weeks after that, when he went to the library, he ran into her again. Still, neither of them spoke a word.

However, when He Chen was flipping through the Taoist scripture this time, he found an extra bookmark tucked inside, with a poem written in delicate handwriting.

He Chen took the Taoist scripture away, left the bookmark behind, and wrote a critique on the back of it: "Not an enlightenment poem, bad review! Putting random leaves inside library books shows a lack of care for books and no public morality!"

The Taoist scripture sent this time bore the same handwriting: "Training the body to resemble a crane, not fearing palace maids wrapping cords around the neck. I come to ask the Dao without further words, is the maiden of public morality weak or not?"

Not only was there an 'enlightenment poem', but an illustration was also attached to the side, depicting Emperor Jiajing practicing crane qigong, surrounded by 16 palace maids. Some were holding ropes, others holding belts, and they were strangling Emperor Jiajing's neck.

In the illustration, Emperor Jiajing's face was clearly He Chen's face, and the 16 palace maids each had distinct features. After Ruan Liuzheng examined them closely, she pointed at the illustration and cried out again.

"This is going too far! What kind of person have you met? How can you just watch her slander and mock me and Mom?"

It turned out that among these 16 palace maids in the illustration, one had two eyebrows slightly furrowed like misty smoke and a pair of affectionate eyes that seemed to smile yet held no joy. It was clearly drawn based on the artistic conception of Lin Daiyu, while using Ruan Lu's facial shape.

What made Ruan Liuzheng completely lose her composure was that there were another seven or eight palace maids who felt very familiar to her. Upon closer inspection, they were clearly her own face.

One of the palace maids facing forward and holding a rope even had a cheeky smile, which stung her eyes all the more.

This Shanghai girl who could write and paint definitely knew them, and her intentions were extremely vicious and meant to sow discord.

Half of the 16 palace maids had her face, and they were even given frontal close-ups, smiling cheerfully as they did the most vicious things to He Chen. It was blatantly targeted at her!

"This drawing isn't you." He Chen glanced at Ruan Liuzheng and appeased her.

"Not me?" Ruan Liuzheng laughed out of anger. She took the Taoist scripture, held it next to her own face, and pointed at the frontal close-up of the palace maid. "Say that again?"

"This isn't you!" He Chen said earnestly. "It just looks somewhat similar."

"Enough!" Ruan Lu suddenly interrupted. "If He Chen says it's not you, then it's not you!"

"Mom!" Ruan Liuzheng felt such deep grievance.

That was unmistakably her!

Seeing that her mother's attitude was firm and He Chen had no intention of comforting or explaining further, she lifted her chin to keep her tears from falling, turned around, and ran into her own bedroom.

"How do you know her?" Ruan Lu asked He Chen only after hearing the heavy slam of Ruan Liuzheng's bedroom door.

He Chen recounted what had happened, then looked at the thoughtful Ruan Lu, waiting for her explanation. However, upon hearing the story, Ruan Lu simply nodded, told He Chen not to associate with strange people, and dropped the matter entirely.

Knowing her temperament, He Chen didn't press further since she didn't want to talk about it. He took the Taoist scripture back to his room, looked at the illustration that had caused Ruan Liuzheng to break down, thought of the girl in the library, and felt a quiet emotion inside: "Ruan Liuzheng, this really isn't drawn of you."

This was clearly the library girl smiling brightly as she held a rope in a subtle retaliation against him.