Chapter 2022 — Replace

Upstairs, Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu were taking a shower together.

"Yaoyao, do you think that Wang Xinyan could become Brother Arrow's first wife?" Shen Yushu asked.

"How would I know?" Gu Mengyao shook her head.

"If she becomes the first wife, won't she push us around? Yaoyao, we have to think of something!" Shen Yushu said, a little anxious.

"Then what do you suggest?" Gu Mengyao frowned. "The problem is, Tang Yun is already gone from Wei Zhao's heart, and his union with Feng Xiaoxiao came entirely out of sympathy for her at first; affection grew over time, and Feng Xiaoxiao lets him go looking for other women, which leaves Wei Zhao with no sense of guilt at all. What can we do? Even if we stopped him from being with Wang Xinyan, he would just be with someone else! Besides, could we really stop him? Back then, with Yunyun, did we manage to stop him?"

"Well..." Shen Yushu thought for a moment, then said, "That's true, but there are plenty of candidates. I think Han Jingyi and Sister Shihan are both quite nice, and even Sister Yiyi would do—she's a star after all, and she's a bit older than us, so her being a big sister would work..."

"Han Jingyi? She's guileless enough, a bit silly, but Wang Xinyan's temperament is probably quite good too—not the competitive sort, a rather quiet girl," Gu Mengyao said. "As for our two star sisters, I say let it go. How could women like that possibly share their love with anyone else? That was just joking around earlier; they wouldn't really move in here."

"That's true..." Shen Yushu nodded. "So were we just overthinking it?"

"We were overthinking it from the start. The initiative in this matter really rests with Wei Zhao. All we can do is keep an eye out and help where we can, as long as we live up to what we promised Yunyun..." As she said this, Gu Mengyao felt somewhat conflicted...

Sometimes Gu Mengyao wondered whether she herself wanted to take Tang Yun's place. And before Tang Yun had parted from them, her words, both spoken and implied, had actually hinted at exactly that. But Gu Mengyao always felt that if she did take her place, wouldn't that be a bit too... as if she were taking advantage of another's misfortune? So a young lady with such a thin skin as hers could never bring herself to do such a thing...

The night passed without a word—or rather, without a word from Wei Zhao.

When the young lady, Xiaoshu, Xu Shilan, and Cheng Yiyi got up, they all had dark circles under their eyes; clearly they had talked all night and hadn't slept well.

Still, Cheng Yiyi's relationship with the young lady and Xiaoshu had clearly improved a good deal.

"What time is your flight? If there's nothing else, I won't see you off," Wei Zhao said. "I still have to go to school today."

"Mm, no need. Brother Feng is coming to pick us up in a bit," Cheng Yiyi said. "Those robbers saw how formidable you are—they probably won't dare come back!"

"Right, there's been no sign of them these past two days. Clearly they've given up," Xu Shilan agreed with a nod.

"By the way, what exactly happened yesterday?" Wei Zhao asked as he ate breakfast. "Yesterday it seemed like your headache flared up as soon as you saw that woman in the black trench coat?"

"Exactly! Last night when we got back, we talked about all sorts of other things. If Wei Zhao hadn't brought it up, I really would have forgotten to ask!" the young lady said, nodding. "Sister Shihan, what was going on yesterday?"

"It's nothing, really. My headaches... Wei Zhao is right, they're probably caused by some psychological scars from my childhood," Xu Shilan said with a bitter smile. "But I don't want to bring those things up, and I've never told anyone... So yesterday must have been a coincidence..."

Wei Zhao nodded. He had examined Xu Shilan's headaches before and knew she wasn't ill—the symptoms resembled neurosis but were caused by psychological issues. Even he didn't know the specific cause, so how could an outsider?

"Yeah, I was puzzled by yesterday too. Even I, Shihan's best friend, only knew that she had some psychological scars from childhood that could trigger her headaches—I never knew it was because of a woman in black," Cheng Yiyi said with a nod. "Seems like yesterday really was a coincidence..."

Though Wei Zhao felt yesterday's events were unlikely to be such a coincidence—the woman in black had appeared too abruptly, and precisely during Xu Shilan's performance. What was more, and most crucially, if this person was supposed to be a performer, then no program featuring that kind of costume appeared again until the freshman gala ended, which struck Wei Zhao as very strange. It was as if this person had appeared simply to show up at that moment and nothing more.

But Xu Shilan had also said this was a scar from her childhood, something private she hadn't even told Cheng Yiyi—Cheng Yiyi only knew the general outline—and Wei Zhao, as a doctor, didn't know either. So how had Zhang Duopan come to know?

Still, this could only remain a mystery; Wei Zhao had no good way to investigate further.

After breakfast, Feng Sanhuang arrived driving the business van, carrying Xu Shilan and Cheng Yiyi off to the airport. Matters here had come to a close.

Han Jingyi and Han Xiaochao had been waiting at the door since early morning. They had probably been given some psychological burden by last night's events and were afraid Wei Zhao might forget them again.

"You don't have to wait out here like this. I'll call you when it's time to go..." Wei Zhao said, a little embarrassed as he looked at the pitiful pair of siblings.

Who would have guessed that these two were actually rich, living in a villa and driving a BMW? People who didn't know might even think the two couldn't afford bus fare and were waiting here for that reason. In fact, Wei Zhao found it strange himself.

Only, as for Han Jingyi's intelligence, Wei Zhao no longer cared to ask. He had asked and asked and never gotten a clear answer as to why, and in the end he would only invite Han Jingyi to turn the question back on him—which would be borrowing trouble for nothing.

At school, after Wei Zhao parted ways with the young lady and the others, he headed toward the biology department with Han Jingyi.

As she walked, Han Jingyi was still fiddling with her tablet, as if completely absorbed in it. Walking along the main road was fine, but when they reached a narrow path, she carelessly stepped on the edge of a manhole cover; her body pitched forward, and she was about to fall headfirst...

"Ah!" Han Jingyi let out an instinctive cry of alarm. Wei Zhao was somewhat speechless, but he couldn't just let Han Jingyi fall like that—for one thing, who knew whether the tablet would break, and for another, Han Jingyi herself would take a nasty tumble.