Chapter 39: Xing Ye's Past

In the third year of university, Xing Ye lost his parents in an accident. Back then, he was only twenty years old. Xing Shuo, his little brother, was only fifteen and had just entered high school. The two brothers had both only ever focused on their studies. With their pillar suddenly lost, it was like the sky was falling down.

If their circumstances had allowed for it, Xing Ye probably would’ve sunk into depression, wandering through his days. However, he couldn’t. Even though his parents had left the world, life still had to go on. Somebody had to manage the company and somebody had to look after his underage brother. The board of directors were waiting for him to make a youthful mistake and their business rivals were watching him like a tiger eyeing their prey. Nobody would be kind to him just because he was young. Rather, all they wanted to do was to suck all his blood.

During this period, Xing Ye gained a profound understanding of what ‘rats leave a sinking ship’ meant.

In front of others, he pretended to know everything, but behind their backs, he was frantically trying to learn everything, doing all that he could to preserve the company. He couldn’t lose the project his parents had left him.

If he couldn’t get the company’s project to succeed, the whole company would fall into a crisis.

He dropped a lot of courses at school, but Xing Ye still didn’t feel like he had enough time. He was just about to apply for a temporary leave from school when a girl contacted him.

Her parents were old friends of his parents. They founded the company together and grew it rapidly.

The two families always had a good relationship. When Xing Ye and Xing Shuo were young, they had often studied and played with her.

Xing Ye wasn’t wary of her in the slightest and followed her to her apartment.

After entering the room, she began frantically confessing, stripping and hugging Xing Ye, refusing to let go. However, there was no way Xing Ye could be in the mood to start a relationship now. He was so busy everyday that he almost even forgot what he looked like.

He tactfully rejected her, saying they had grown up together and for her to please not act like that.

Xing Ye didn’t say anything like ‘even if we aren’t lovers, we can still be friends’ but in the end, their families were still business partners. In the future, they would definitely meet again so it was better to make sure things weren’t awkward.

Even if she wanted to confess, she should at least consider the timing, right? It hadn’t been long since Xing Ye’s parents had passed away.

Xing Ye wasn’t totally sure what happened afterwards either. He remembered her furiously tearing her clothes apart before dashing out of the apartment, holding her torn clothes and crying for help, saying Xing Ye wanted to force himself on her.

Xing Ye was taken away by the police. Accusations like this had always been hard to defend yourself against, but fortunately, there was no actual physical harm done. The police couldn’t file an actual case and just put him under detention until Xing Ye’s lawyer came to release him on bail.

When Xing Ye came out of the police station, the woman’s father, one of his parents’ good friends, and somebody he had always thought of as a kind uncle, instigated the board of directors to remove him from his post.  

The school also happened to choose that time to expel him. The school stated that even though Xing Ye had an outstanding academic record, they couldn’t allow such an uncouth person to ruin the school’s reputation.

The whole world seemed to be going against Xing Ye at that moment. Even the company’s stock plummeted.

The project was shelved and the shareholders called for him to be dismissed one after another. Xing Shuo watched his older brother with worry, never mentioning how he was being bullied at school.

At that time, Xing Ye didn’t know that because of the rape scandal, Xing Shuo was pushed away by his classmates.

Xing Shuo understood and silently bore everything. He didn’t tell Xing Ye anything and would even comfort him. As a minor, that was all he could do.

Xing Ye had to force himself to go to the company like nothing happened. As long as he could acquire the funds to push forward with the project, then no matter how that old codger instigates the shareholders, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. The whole reason for everything was that he simply wasn’t strong enough. For the board of directors, a groundless and undecided court case wouldn’t be enough to influence their decision. What was truly pushing their decision was Xing Ye’s young age. They were worried they wouldn’t be able to make money. In that case, it’d be easier to just find somebody they knew to run the company instead.

Some business talks that were just about to succeed had all ended up fizzing out. Somebody must’ve been trying to hamper him.

Xing Ye didn’t get discouraged. He went everywhere, but he couldn’t find somebody to invest before the time limit was up. Every day, the project was flushing money down the toilet. Without somebody to provide more funds, it was likely to fall through and the company would be pushed towards bankruptcy.

At this moment, another old bastard took away their investment and called for his abdication.

The mirror listened quietly. He never interrupted him while he was talking, making Xing Ye feel like he was talking to himself. Unconsciously, he started to tell the mirror everything he was feeling as it all happened.

When he stopped, the mirror couldn’t help but ask, “Then what’d you do next? Did you abdicate and let some bad person get away with it, or did you win?”

“It doesn’t matter who’s good or who’s bad, everything depends on your own ability. Back then, I was too young. I had no experience in the dog-eat-dog business world and fell into their schemes.

“In fact, even if he didn’t frame me, just his resources would’ve been enough to pull me down and ruin my reputation. It’s just human malice; he wanted to completely crush my little brother and I until we could never crawl back up.

“That was when I started to truly see the world. It was hard, and I slowly started to go askew. At that time, I was thinking, if they could play foul, then I could too.

“At that time, I only found one investor that could contend against him and wasn’t within his connections. However, there was no way to meet him. Back then, he went abroad with his wife for vacation and it was unknown when he would return.”

At that time, Xing Ye discovered his little brother was being bullied at school. He was furious and wanted to help him take revenge.

But back then, Xing Ye was just a 20 year old youth, unversed in the ways of the world. All he could think of was paying some hoodlums to beat up his little brother’s bullies. However, who would’ve thought that the person they ended up blocking wasn’t a bully, but a little young master.

That young master was actually the son of the investor he had been trying to reach.

Xing Ye had researched the investor extensively earlier and knew his family situation clearly.

The son was a freshman and was an especially beautiful, delicate young master. He was also the only one who didn’t bully Xing Shuo and even spoke up for him.

At that time, Xing Ye was in a dark place. He thought about directly having the hoodlums beat the young master up. Then, he would pretend to be passing by and save him. That way, the young master could directly call his parents and he would get a chance to schedule a meeting with the investor.

He had the hoodlums distract the young master’s bodyguards and took the rest of the gangsters to gang up on him. However, just as they were looking for a corner to beat him up in, a van stopped in front of the young master and pulled him into the car.

Without even thinking, Xing Ye ordered the hoodlums to quickly call the police while he rushed over to the van. He had studied martial arts in university, but the gangsters’ van had secretly been altered, making it incredibly fast.

“At that time, I knew there was no way I’d be able to beat them, so I just got on my motorcycle and drove in front of the van. I got hit off the motorcycle, but my luck was good and I only got minor injuries. It ended up popping their tire so they couldn’t move.

“The young master seemed to have fainted so I went up and tangled with them for a while. I got seriously injured, but managed to drag the young master back to the bodyguards and police.

After that, I fainted. When I woke up, I was in a hospital ward with my little brother taking care of me. Public opinion of me changed from a sexual harasser to a youth that stood up to injustice. The investor also rushed back from overseas and agreed to invest after seeing my project.

I also saw the beautiful young master in the hospital. He even said “Brother, get better soon.”

That was the first time Xing Ye felt kindness since his parents died. It also gave him a big warning.

Thank goodness he didn’t harm him. The little young master was the same age as his little brother, how could he have gotten somebody to harm him for money?

“You.... that young master who you just called foolish-looking, like a big steamed bun just waiting to be eaten, what was his name?” The mirror suddenly ashed while Xing Ye was thinking of the past.

“Lu Mingze,” Xing Ye answered, “I heard after the kidnapping, Lu Dong sent him to study abroad in order to protect him. I haven’t seen him for nine years.”

“Oh…” The mirror’s tone was very strange, “At the start, you actually wanted to find people to beat up Lu Mingze, but then people just so happened to kidnap him, preventing you from going down the wrong road of hiring thugs to hurt somebody?”

Xing Ye sighed, “It’s also because I had people draw away his bodyguards, giving the gangsters a chance to kidnap him.”

“Yea.”

The mirror’s surface turned black, not reacting no matter how Xing Ye poked him.

What happened? He didn’t ask any prohibited questions, right?

Xing Ye opened his phone to check the mirror’s status and found the two’s intimacy level had unexpectedly changed to 0.

Intimacy Points: 0. The mirror doesn’t want to talk to you. His curses have been censored by the system.

Xing Ye: “...”

Why did their intimacy points suddenly fall to zero? He was just talking about his past, how did that happen?

He thought back to the weird tone the mirror had at the end and suddenly thought of something. He poked the mirror’s black surface and asked, “You aren’t Lu Mingze, right?”

A very beautiful hand appeared on the mirror’s surface, giving Xing Ye the middle finger.