Chapter 15: What A Big Pot Of Dog Blood

Ye Zhen walked far away without looking back, but she knew that Rong Cheng Jue was still there.

It made her remember, as if in a trance, that this person had been like this many years ago. Whenever she turned and walked away, he always stood in the same place, as if determined to wait for her to look back.

But she didn’t, not even once. The dim lights in the old-fashioned corridor remained the same, but he was truly gone.

A shadow loomed over her as she walked, “Why do you look so weak when you walk? Have you been working too hard at the office, or have you not been eating well? Tell mom about it.”

“Mom,” Ye Zhen looked up and forced a smile, “there’s nothing wrong. I just spaced out for a moment. There’s a program I have to code.”

“Why do you need to code in a film and television company?” Ye Zhen’s mother, Su Tao, couldn’t understand.

Ye Zhen took out her keys, opened the door, and casually replied, “Yes, I need to develop software related to film and television.”

As Su Tao brought in the food and household items, she said, “It’s good that you’re also doing software development. It’s not like you’ve completely abandoned your field. By the way, I saw Professor Lin a few days ago. He’s waiting for you to return to the Academy of Sciences. He asked me how long you plan to stay in your current job. Besides,” Su Tao looked around, closed the door, and continued, “Be honest with your mother, are you still holding something back from me?

“What could I be hiding from you?” Ye Zhen lowered her head, opened the thermos containing the fish soup, and looked for a spoon. “Mom, have you been watching too many TV dramas?”

Seeing Ye Zhen’s evasive attitude, Su Tao put down the things she was carrying and went straight to the bedroom. She checked the bed, rummaged through the closets, and even checked the bathroom. Ye Zhen sat quietly sipping her soup until her mother came out. Only then did she ask, “Mom, what are you looking for?”

What could Su Tao be looking for? She didn’t use the Internet and didn’t believe in those online rumors. However, there were always people making vague jokes about her daughter being in love with a rich man, and since her daughter did not come home often, she felt the need to come over for a surprise inspection.

After thoroughly inspecting the house and finding only her daughter’s belongings, not a single strand of a man’s hair, Su Tao was satisfied with the results. 

Not bad, not bad. She said to herself. My daughter has always been well-behaved. How could she get involved with just anyone? It must be others’ jealousy of her excellence that’s spreading these baseless rumors!

Since there was nothing wrong, Su Tao naturally didn’t want to reveal everything she had in mind, lest her daughter think she was being overly intrusive. So she casually grabbed the vacuum cleaner and said, “I wasn’t looking for anything, I just noticed that you live alone and the cleaning might not be thorough enough. I thought I’d help you clean up a little.”

“……Oh.” Ye Zhen suppressed a smile and continued to drink the soup with her head down.

Su Tao continued to vacuum the floor, feeling a little uneasy. She was thinking about how to discreetly probe her daughter further when suddenly the doorbell rang.

Ding—-

Ye Zhen got up to open the door, but Su Tao turned off the vacuum cleaner and said, “You sit down, I’ll open the door.”

Apart from the delivery man, Ye Zhen didn’t think anyone else would knock on the door, so she sat back down and continued to sip her fish soup.

However, to her surprise, when Su Tao quickly opened the door, the last person Ye Zhen expected to see, someone she had just said goodbye to and thought she would never see again, appeared before her eyes: Rong Cheng Jue.

He really knows how to join in the fun…

Outside the door, Rong Cheng Jue was also taken aback for a moment. He looked past Su Tao and saw Ye Zhen inside, confirming that he hadn’t come to the wrong place. Then he bowed politely to Su Tao and said, “Hello, Auntie.”

Su Tao asked cautiously, “What’s the matter?”

“Uh, Ye Zhen accidentally left her bag in my car, so I came to give it back to her,” he said, holding up the bag in his hand.

“Oh, thank you,” Ye Zhen stood up again and reached out to take the bag. “I’m sorry for the trouble of taking your car and having you return the bag for me.”

“No, it’s, um—” Before Rong Cheng Jue could finish his sentence, the bag was snatched away from the middle by Su Tao, and Ye Zhen was also pushed back to the table. “???”

Ye Zhen didn’t know how to explain the situation in front of her, so she could only shake her head at him and glanced outside, gesturing for him to leave quickly.

Rong Cheng Jue instinctively didn’t want to leave. He thought it would be better to stay since the situation was unclear. Just as he was hesitating, Su Tao put the bag on the table and said, “Are you the one from a wealthy family who is involved in a scandal with my daughter?”

“Yes, it should be me.” When it comes to wealth, he’s definitely the one!

“Mom, you said it was just a rumor,” Ye Zhen interrupted carefully, “These things on the Internet can’t be taken seriously. Whatever you want to ask, I’ll explain it to you. Please don’t keep questioning him like this. Spare your daughter’s face, okay?” After saying that, she quickly turned to Rong Cheng Jue and said, “I still need to discuss something with my mother, so I won’t keep you any longer. Seeing him still lingering, even though Ye Zhen had a good temper, she couldn’t help but want to throw a slipper at him to make him leave.

“Uh, oh.” Rong Cheng Jue obediently took two steps back.

“Stop!” Su Tao’s voice was strong and powerful as she turned to her daughter. “Why are you sneaking around? What are you hiding from me? Does he have some shady identity that I can’t see?”

“Mom, where are you getting those ideas? There’s nothing—”

“—What’s your name?”

“Rong Cheng Jue.”

Su Tao’s voice suddenly became sharp, “Say it again?!”

“……Rong Cheng…… Jue.” After living for so long, it was the first time that Rong Cheng Jue said his own name with such innocence and a lack of confidence. It was mainly because Su Tao looked so terrifying.

Her face turned pale, and she clutched the vacuum cleaner tightly, her hand shaking uncontrollably as she stammered, “Go away, get out!—-“

“????” He couldn’t figure out what he had done wrong to make his sweetheart’s mother dislike him so much!

“Mom, please don’t scare me,” Because of the romantic relationship between Rong Cheng Yue and Ye Yi, Ye Zhen guessed that her mother would mind if she had a scandal with Rong Cheng Jue, but she did not expect her mother’s reaction to be so strong. She quickly grabbed her mother and said, “Mom, listen to me, I really didn’t go out with him, all those things on the Internet are lies—”

“Let go!” Su Tao didn’t know if it was anger that made her want to push Ye Zhen away, but her hand holding the vacuum cleaner swept across the table, knocking over the thermos flask. As they watched the pot of hot soup spill onto Ye Zhen’s face, both mother and daughter were stunned. However, it was Rong Cheng Jue who reacted quickly. He rushed forward and shielded Ye Zhen, using his back to push the thermos away.

“Bang—” The entire room suddenly fell silent, with only the sound of soup dripping from the table and Rong Cheng Jue’s stifled groans.

“What is this?” After a long time, Su Tao let go of the vacuum cleaner in her hand, seemingly laughing and crying at the same time. “Ha, what is this? Do I have to be the one who beats the mandarin ducks with a stick*…”

*This idiom comes from a classic Chinese story in which two Mandarin ducks, representing a happy and loving couple, were separated by a man who hit them with a stick, causing them to fly off in different directions. In modern usage, the idiom refers to the disruption or breaking up of a couple, usually by a third party.

Ye Zhen broke away from Rong Cheng Jue’s embrace and helped him lie face down on the sofa. “Let me go and calm my mother down first. You must not follow me,” she said calmly.

After that, she took the keys and her mom’s bag, dragged her mom out of the room, and locked the door behind them. She led her mom all the way down to the small garden downstairs, where she called her dad to come and pick her up. Finally, she let go of her mother’s hand and asked, “Mom, Mom, what’s wrong with you?

Although her mother had a strong personality, she still had her own principles and order in her actions. It had been many years since Ye Zhen had seen her mother act so out of control. The last time was when she was a child, and her mother had a big fight with everyone in the Feng family over her decision not to have another child.

Su Tao smiled with a distant look in her eyes. “Ye Yi returned to the entertainment industry, divorced me, and abandoned both of us. It was because of the Rong Cheng family… They all said that I wasn’t worthy, that I hindered his future…”

“The entanglement between her family and the Rong family was like a big pot of dog blood, and for a moment, Ye Zhen didn’t know what to feel. Actually, when she thought about the timing of Ye Yi joining Rong Cheng Entertainment, it fit perfectly. She had just never considered this possibility before. “Mom, it’s all in the past now.”

“Then listen to your mom and go back with me.”

Ye Zhen’s fingers instinctively tightened, but she still replied, “All right, Mom, wait for me to finish the project in my hands.”

“Really?” Su Tao’s eyes immediately lit up. “Have you come to your senses, my daughter? You’re not going to make a fuss anymore? Do you really have nothing to do with that boy from the Rong Cheng family? Then how did he…”

“He is him and I am me. How should I know what’s going on inside his head?” Ye Zhen said casually. “He comes from a wealthy family, and maybe he’s just fooling around because he has nothing better to do. But we ordinary people can’t afford to be tossed around by him.”

“Right, right, right! We should concentrate on living our own lives and not try to climb the social ladder by relying on others,” Su Tao held her daughter’s hand and began her usual chatter, “Look at me and Old Feng, it was hard, but we managed to raise you well. Now we have a house in Beijing, a car, and our noodle shop is doing well. No one can look down on us anymore……”

Heh, she really thought he would disappear lol.