Chapter 1168: Chapter 362: Wen Qianyi’s Transformation
Chapter 362: Wen Qianyi’s Change
Li Yan really hadn’t expected Yurong to have such thoughts; this went way beyond what he had imagined. Maybe... just like she said, after going through so many things, people do grow up and compromise with reality.
Her making such a decision wasn’t completely impossible either. Putting aside nobility, selflessness, sympathy, friendship and all that, if you analyze it purely with a calculating mindset: at least compared to Yu Xiaodi and the others, Yue Yao is a girl who’s familiar, easy to get along with, friendly, respects her, and won’t threaten her—and she even took the initiative to bring it up. She’d be giving Yue Yao a huge favor, completely different from other love rivals.
Thinking of this, Li Yan also let out a breath of relief. No matter what, this was a very good breakthrough point for solving the problem with Yue Yao.
But he still couldn’t tell Yue Yao right away now, nor could he take the chance to let something happen between them. He had to give everyone time to adjust. Maybe after getting used to it with Yurong first, then telling Yue Yao in the end would be better, so she wouldn’t feel guilty toward Zhang Yurong and run away.
After that, Li Yan continued calling back to the company, going over some things with Jiang Xueyin on the phone that required his confirmation. Next were the few he still hadn’t contacted: Huang Ying, Li Jie, Qiao Huanxuan, and Wen Qianyi; as for Hai Fu, although she’d come by last night, they hadn’t actually met.
Among these women, the ones Li Yan felt more at ease about were Huang Ying and Qiao Huanxuan. Qiao Huanxuan knew all about his relationship with Zhang Yurong, and Huang Ying also knew he had a wife. But the others had been completely in the dark before, and Wen Qianyi and Hai Fu were even familiar with Zhang Yurong...
After hesitating, the first one he called was Hai Fu. Hai Fu’s mindset was the hardest for him to grasp, because she was at an age where she was very rational—once she decided on something, she would immediately act on it. And her relationship with Zhang Yurong was much deeper than ordinary people’s. From Yue Yao’s words, he could tell the two of them seemed to have talked quite well last night, but who knew how Hai Fu really felt?
Hai Fu was at work; her private phone rang for quite a while before she picked up. "You’re awake..."
Hearing the tiredness in her voice, Li Yan knew she was still very conflicted at the moment, and sighed. "Yeah. You already know?"
"I know..." Hai Fu said, a bit bitterly. She would rather not know such a truth! Back when she didn’t know, being with Li Yan—even if it was as lovers, or even just a purely physical relationship—she could accept it. But now, the burden was too heavy; she could no longer be relaxed with him.
"I..." Li Yan wanted to explain a bit, but didn’t know where to start.
Hai Fu also understood. When he couldn’t go on, she sighed and said, "You don’t have to say it, I get it. It’s precisely because of this relationship that you didn’t intend to go any further with me. I understand."
She’d realized feelings had grown over time; when he told her to "fight for it," she’d joked about fighting for him instead, and Li Yan hadn’t answered that question at the time. Now the answer was obvious—it was because he was married, and Zhang Yurong was better than her in every respect.
"It’s not that I didn’t want to go further. I actually wanted to have all of you at the same time, it’s just that you all would obviously find that hard to accept, so I didn’t dare say it first." Li Yan said honestly.
Hai Fu was angry at first. It was bad enough that he was a playboy with a foot in several boats, but he actually wanted to have multiple women at the same time! That was too much! But when she thought of her own status, she felt this right to be angry should probably be reserved for Zhang Yurong instead.
"Let’s all just calm down. As long as you’re okay. I’m hanging up, I have to work."
After hanging up, Li Yan felt a bit desolate. He shook his head and went on to call Wen Qianyi—someone he found hard to face. Calling her put some pressure on him, but he couldn’t avoid it.
What surprised him was that not only did Wen Qianyi pick up very quickly, her tone and attitude weren’t any different. "You’re okay now? What happened this time?"
"Uh, something happened; I was in a coma for a day and woke up last night."
"Hmph, nice of you. When you went missing, that woman of yours called me looking for you, and I helped ask around for you. Now that you’re fine, you didn’t even call to say you’re safe." Wen Qianyi sounded a bit displeased.
Li Yan let out a wry laugh. "You can probably guess what kind of thing I ran into. It was beyond what I expected... and while I was unconscious, a lot of things happened too, made everything kind of... a mess."
Wen Qianyi went quiet for a bit. She could certainly guess what had happened. In fact, after Zhang Yurong called, she’d been worried that maybe he’d killed someone locally and gone into hiding, or that someone had tried to kill him and he’d gotten hurt. As for the chaos after he fell unconscious, she could also guess—probably all the concealed relationships getting exposed.
"So... she is your...?" she hesitated and asked the question.
When Zhang Yurong had called earlier, she’d spoken rather implicitly, just saying that she and Li Yan had been living together for a long time, and that because of their identities, to avoid too much impact and the pressure of outside opinion, they’d kept it a secret. Nowadays, boyfriends and girlfriends living together is normal; you can’t conclude they’re married just from cohabiting, so Wen Qianyi wanted to ask further.
Li Yan didn’t know this. He’d only heard from Yue Yao that Yurong had contacted everyone yesterday, and even Hai Fu knew about their relationship, so he assumed Qianyi already knew about him and Yurong, just found it hard to believe. So he didn’t hide it anymore and admitted, "Yeah, she’s my wife. We got married before I joined Paradise Group, it just wasn’t convenient to make it public for various reasons."
Married! Wen Qianyi couldn’t help snapping, "Then you still..." She almost blurted out, "Then you still flirted with me," but changed it at the last moment: "...still said Yu Xiaodi was your girlfriend! Isn’t that lying to people?"
"..." Li Yan said nothing. Right now, letting her vent was best; any explanation would come off as quibbling.
Wen Qianyi didn’t keep going; instead she calmed down a little. "Sounds like even though you married her, you two don’t have much of an emotional foundation, and just got together for some reason, right?"
"Uh..." Li Yan had to admit that Wen Qianyi knew him fairly well; she was observant and good at analyzing.
He didn’t deny it, so Wen Qianyi took it as him defaulting. Her saying that didn’t come from guessing from Yu Xiaodi’s or her own perspective, but from how Li Yan had acted before: he’d never mentioned his wife, and often went drinking with friends until very late. All the signs pointed to him living more like a single man. Even if he was married, it might be due to some unavoidable reasons. And of course, the difference in status between the two of them was another suspicious point.
"Does she know who you really are?" This was what she cared about. Previously she was the only one who knew his secret; even Yu Xiaodi didn’t know. If Zhang Yurong didn’t know either...
Li Yan said calmly, "She didn’t before. But now she basically knows. What happened the night before last... made her realize my identity. She just hasn’t directly confronted me about it yet, and I haven’t personally admitted it."
This answer pleased Wen Qianyi quite a bit. No matter what, it meant she knew his secret long before Zhang Yurong did. Even though she’d discovered it first, he hadn’t tried to dodge it and had personally admitted it to her.
From a competitive standpoint, she’d managed to claw back a bit in her rivalry with Zhang Yurong!
"What about Hai Fu then? She should know about you and Zhang Yurong by now too, right? I could tell something was off about her when she came to work today." Yesterday afternoon, after Li Yan was brought home, Zhang Yurong had called to tell her a bit. Now Wen Qianyi guessed that Hai Fu and Yu Xiaodi also knew.
"They..." Li Yan had just started to say more when he suddenly remembered that this was all information from Yue Yao. Technically, he was supposed to still be "unconscious" and shouldn’t know so much, so he quickly changed his wording. "...they should all know about each other by now."
"You’re screwed! Serves you right for playing with flowers everywhere and leaving bits of your heart all over the place. Let’s see how you deal with it now." Wen Qianyi said gloatingly, then hung up.
Her attitude left Li Yan completely puzzled. No wonder they were born on the same day—both Wen Qianyi and Zhang Yurong’s reactions were beyond his expectations. Because of what happened between him and Qianyi before the New Year, she’d been deliberately avoiding him, more or less, since they came back. But this time, the change was obvious: not only was she not avoiding him, she’d said much more, and her attitude had almost reverted to how it used to be.
This made it hard for him to figure out what Qianyi was thinking. Logically, once she knew he’d been hiding the fact he had a wife, she should despise and look down on him even more and ignore him altogether. Could it be that after she found out, she realized she could threaten him with telling Zhang Yurong, so she no longer needed to avoid him?
Planning to go back to being just good friends?
Could they really go back?
Next, both Huang Ying and Qiao Huanxuan were relatively easy to deal with; he just told them he was fine now. Other than Huang Ying being pretty shocked that his wife turned out to be Zhang Yurong, they didn’t have any other reactions. But Li Jie... didn’t answer his call.
Clearly, she was very angry that Li Yan had concealed being a married man while seeing Yu Xiaodi at the same time. There was nothing Li Yan could do; he could only wait for her to cool down.
After making so many calls, Li Yan sat for a while longer. Figuring Yue Yao should have finished tidying up, he went back to stand outside her door again. He was planning to discuss the Killer from Li Country issue with her, using work matters to smooth over the awkwardness between them just now, so that when Yurong came back, she wouldn’t notice anything different and get suspicious.
He knocked, and after a moment, Yue Yao opened the door and let him in.
She had already changed clothes, and the torn clothes from before had been put away. But when she saw Li Yan, she still blushed a little. (To be continued. For what happens next, please log on to www.qidian.com. More Chapters available. Support the author, support legit reading!)
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