Chapter 125.1: Coming and Going in a Haste Part 1
Under the bright moonlight, stars shimmered atop the ocean waves, tides, the sea, and mountains.
A modernist-style manor villa stood atop a cliff, magnificent like a palace. Outside the gates, green grass spread like a carpet, giant trees swayed their branches, and flowers bloomed brightly as if it were a fairyland. If it were daytime, one could imagine just how beautiful the scenery would be. Even in the dead of night, it was still brightly lit, solemn, and profound.
At the entrance, the flawless marble surface was so polished it reflected like a mirror, easily showing the reflection of a broke guy named Ji Jue.
“Don’t be like this, Mr. Ji, don’t you know me well? I’m the most low-key guy there is, truly! This is all my brother’s private property! I’ve never even been here!”
Seeing Ji Jue starting to back out, Chen Yubo immediately burst into tears. He hugged his cats in one hand while gripping Ji Jue tightly with the other.
“Besides, at this point, what’s the difference between what’s mine and what’s yours? What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is still yours! For the sake of brotherhood, please, you’ve got to help me out. Otherwise why would I come back here?”
Without a trusted helper, even the most magnificent palace and villa would be no different to him than a prison cell on death row. He might as well stay under a bridge next to a filthy sewer. Either way, it was all going to end in some disgusting kind of death, so he might as well choose his own and make it cleaner. At least it would be quick.
Looking at the gilded, palace-level villa before him, Ji Jue gritted his teeth so hard it almost hurt. A heart full of resentment toward the rich pounded uncontrollably in his chest.
He has so much money. Seriously, so much fucking money.
“If we can get through this hurdle, we can negotiate everything else!” Chen Yubo had already made peace with it. “I can’t keep it, anyway. I’ll split it with you, bro!”
“No, don’t!”
Ji Jue felt like his conscience was being put on trial. That last bit of it, already standing at the edge of a cliff just like the villa itself, was itching with the urge to commit a crime.
“Don’t talk about money. Just think of it as doing it for yourself. If I slip up even slightly, you’re done for, alright?” Ji Jue asked. “Let’s just take everything that happened as bad luck. We’ll endure these few days, and after that we’ll have a bright future. Deal?”
Chen Yubo hugged his cats and said nothing, tears welling in his eyes. Maybe he was thinking of his brother, whose life and death were still uncertain. Or maybe he was thinking of that fortune he was clearly never going to keep.
If it’s going to go to someone else anyway, might as well let it go to my brother instead, damn it!
Ji Jue’s thoughts started spiralling again. He suddenly felt that Young Master Chen was even more useful than An Ran. The latter was only strong, but the former was actually rich... And money was slowly blinding Ji Jue. Especially since, if you just tied up Chen Yubo and gave him a light squeeze, you could practically get a steady stream of fresh, juicy Fedra out of him.
Ji Jue’s hand had already drifted toward his gun several times without him being able to stop it.
The entire villa was empty. Even the original servants had been dismissed. Only a few of Chen Xingzhou’s trusted Chosen One remained, along with a dozen or so armed bodyguards. It all looked like nothing more than a front put on in the open.
If it really came down to it, staying in the city could actually result in the same outcome. At least in the city, those money-hungry flies probably wouldn’t dare use bombs or other weapons of mass destruction.
If Ji Jue were really here for the money, he would have thought of hauling in a few hundred kilograms of explosives, whipping up a missile, or a suicide truck bomb at the very least, right? Once a line of thought started spiralling, the inspiration for crime just wouldn’t stop. It surged like a spring.
If I bribed an insider here, that would really be something worth watching.
Yet Chen Xingzhou’s trusted subordinates mostly had a lukewarm, indifferent attitude after meeting Chen Yubo. Even if they knew they were supposed to protect their boss’s only remaining family member, they didn’t look particularly invested. Even those who were currently thumping their chests and shouting about “loyalty” couldn’t really be trusted.
Their boss was lying in an emergency room, and beside him was at least a hostage worth forty billion. Who could possibly keep their mind completely pure in a situation like this?
With the internal troubles and external threats, Ji Jue felt like his brain was about to wear itself out. Damn it, why was he working for free? He hadn’t gotten a single benefit, and instead ended up with a pile of trouble.
He was so irritated he could barely hold it in and almost wanted to kick Chen Yubo a couple of times.
There are so many people in the world, so why did your brother have to be Chen Xingzhou? Couldn’t it have been someone less problematic instead?
And what was even worse was that Ji Jue had classes the following day.
He checked the time. It was a little past one in the morning. Professor Ye probably wasn’t asleep yet, so he called.
After stammering for a while, he finally managed to say weakly, “Professor, I...”
The professor immediately understood. “You wanna take leave?”
“Yes.”
“Because of Chen Xingzhou’s mess?”
Ji Jue had nothing to say in response.
“Fine,” Professor Ye replied. “Since you’re involved, I won’t bother you anymore. Just count it as a work assignment this time.”
The corner of Ji Jue’s eye twitched uncontrollably.
The saying went, “When the master has matters to handle, the disciple takes up the burden.” So, if you looked at it that way, he was basically doing extra work on behalf of Professor Ye, wasn’t he? Even if she was handing things off to him, did she really have to do it this fast? At the very least, couldn’t she give him Mr. Ball?
Unfortunately, the professor didn’t mention that at all. She only asked, “How long are you taking leave?”
“About a week?” Ji Jue said uncertainly.
No matter how big the mess was, after a week it should more or less be over. It couldn’t possibly be that a factional internal conflict in the Wasteland Assembly would drag on for two or three years, right? Didn’t people want to live their lives?
Whether the Wasteland Assembly was in internal turmoil or not wasn’t important. Other people’s lives were. If they really couldn’t stop fighting, then everyone wouldn’t mind helping them stop.
So, based on Ji Jue’s estimate, since this had been going on for a week already, the dust would settle in about another week.
“Alright.”
After the professor hung up, Ji Jue’s phone immediately started buzzing nonstop. On his messaging app, several megabytes of PDF scans were dumped in one after another, all of them photocopies of materials from the library archive. Many of them were rare manuscripts. No one even knew when they had been scanned. Everything was transferred straight into Ji Jue’s phone.
If converted into text, it would probably amount to several million words. Unfortunately, this wasn’t some mindless web novel you could skim through. Every single book was professional literature that would make your brain hurt just to read.
Finally, a notification from Professor Ye arrived.
Professor Ye: After you finish reading, write a reflection. I will check it when you return.
Ji Jue felt a headache coming on. He thought, So the alchemy course has been turned into a distance learning class, huh? I don’t even have a moment of peace when taking leave...
But this was exactly how Professor Ye assigned work. You either did it, or you got lost. There was no such thing as half-finished effort earning you a passing grade, and no room for negotiation either.
He could only accept it with tears in his eyes.
Even being a bodyguard required studying now. Wasn’t this job asking a little too much from him?
He sighed and turned off his phone, no longer looking at it. His gaze drifted toward the bay outside the window.
Following Ji Jue’s suggestion, Chen Yubo had given up the master bedroom, the best room in the entire villa, to Ji Jue, and moved himself into the maid’s quarters. It was partly out of Ji Jue’s desire to take advantage of the situation, but at least this way he didn’t have to worry about some giant ship sailing in from the sea and a single sniper round turning Chen Yubo into a mess of flesh and blood.
Ji Jue looked out through the floor-to-ceiling window at the bay, and across it, at the province of Yazhou. Lights blazed everywhere, neon flickering endlessly, hiding no trace of the life-and-death struggles or deadly feuds beneath.
Amid the flashing neon, it almost looked like a burst of fire had risen and then quickly vanished again, like fireworks.
Darkness buried everything equally, leaving only the sound of waves echoing in the silence.
“So lively,” Ji Jue murmured.
No one answered.
In the corner, An Ran was sleeping soundly on the sofa, eyes closed. Within this long, quiet stillness, Ji Jue felt a strange moment of clarity and understanding.
If this were his old self, he would have been utterly confused, unable to comprehend it at all. Clearly, everyone already had more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime, beauty they could summon at will, everything that the broke Ji Jue of the past could only dream of.
And yet they still refused to be satisfied. They even gambled their lives on this irreversible wager, fighting to the death.
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