Hidden Marriage - S01 E158

Story 2 years ago

Hidden Marriage - S01 E158

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 158

Where Are Your Hands Going

Zhang Jiang’s first reaction was to beg for forgiveness, “I don’t want it, I don’t want it! My great ancestor, please spare me! In the past, I wasn’t enlightened so I spoke some nonsense. How could I even dare to ask for your money?!”

“Who said that I’d give you money?” Ning Xi threw a kick.

After rolling over and standing up, Zhang Jiang wore an innocent expression, “But didn’t you just say…”

He was about to go crazy from all the abuse he was getting from this person’s mood swings.

Ning Xi cast him a cold glance, “Stay at home and wait for me to contact you. As long as you cooperate with me, there’ll be money in it for you. Otherwise…”

Ah? She still wanted to contact him? Hadn’t he already give her everything she wanted? Weren’t they agreed on never crossing paths again? Why was she still hounding him?! He didn’t want any money! He preferred to stay alive!

Zhang Jiang had a lot of unspoken complaints, but all he could do was agree to her demands and thank Ning Xi a thousand times for her kindness and grace as he sent her out.

After going downstairs, Ning Xi put on her helmet and started up the engine before speeding straight towards the Lu residence.

When she arrived at the Lu residence, she was actually an hour earlier than the time she had agreed on with Lu Tingxiao.

When she entered the living room, Lu Tingxiao was just as she had left him. He was still sitting on the living room couch, looking as if he hadn’t even budged at all.

Ning Xi didn’t think much of it. She asked immediately, “Lu Tingxiao, I’m back! Did Darling Little Treasure wake up?”

“He hasn’t.”

“Alright, that’s good. I’m going up to check on him!”

“Hold on.” Lu Tingxiao suddenly called out to stop her.

“Uh, what’s up?” For some reason, Ning Xi felt like Lu Tingxiao’s mood wasn’t quite right.

“Where did you go?” Lu Tingxiao’s tone was calm and even, yet it felt like there was something dark hidden beneath the surface.

Ning Xi instinctively sensed the danger and responded hastily, “I went out to handle some personal matters, that’s all. Everything’s already been settled! I’ll be going upstairs now!”

She tried to slip away right after she finished speaking, but an arm suddenly reached over. A second later, caught off guard, Ning Xi’s body was pulled with some force and she fell onto the couch.

More accurately, she fell into Lu Tingxiao’s embrace.

Ning Xi was shocked. What surprised her even more was, “Lu Tingxiao! Y-You… What are you doing? Where are your hands going?!”

Lu Tingxiao completely ignored her and continued to touch her all over.

“Hey, I’m going to fight back if you continue like this! You can’t blame me if I hurt you then!”

“Then do it.”

Ning Xi’s nerves were practically about to collapse, “F***! Lu Tingxiao! What are you trying to do? You’ve already figured out that I can’t make a move against you, haven’t you?”

Lu Tingxaio stared at her expressionlessly, “Why can’t you make a move against me?”

“I… Because…”

That’s right! Why? If it was anyone else, her first reaction would have been to dole out a generous beating…

While Ning Xi was racking her brains to come up with a reply to that question, Lu Tingxiao’s hands landed dangerously upon an object behind the waistline of her pants.

Ning Xi’s eyes immediately flashed. She wanted to stop him, but it was already too late. The gun that was hidden behind her waist appeared in Lu Tingxiao’s hands in an instant.

Lu Tingxiao immediately threw the gun onto the coffee table in front of them. The usual exceedingly gentle expression he used towards her had turned as cold as frost. He spit out a word like he was shooting a blade of ice, “Explain.”

Ning Xi immediately felt like she had been caught red handed cheating on a test by the teacher. Her face paled and she fiddled with her fingers. With great effort, she put on a carefree expression and spoke, “Hehe, it’s just a fake! It’s a toy gun that I bought to play around with!”

“Is that so? Does a toy gun need a silencer?” Lu Tingxiao cast her a sideways glance and picked up the gun. He pointed it directly at a palm-sized, white jade flower vase sitting in the corner and opened fire.

The flower vase immediately shattered into tiny pieces.

The calm expression that Ning Xi had been using all her strength to keep on her face also shattered… just like the flower vase…

Her Flattery Failed

The air was dead silent.

After a long moment, Ning Xi swallowed with great difficulty and tried to change the topic by running her mouth off, “Haha… Big Boss, your shooting skills are amazing! Impressive, impressive! You’re just a little too wasteful! That vase must have been pretty expensive, right?”

Lu Tingxiao’s eyes were cold: “If you don’t want to speak of it, you don’t have to.”

Ning Xi’s head drooped downwards in a disheartened manner, “But you look like you’re going to break off all ties with me if I don’t confess everything, you’re not being honest at all…”

Other than confessing everything, was there a second option for her?

Ning Xi sighed and could only choose to explain the sequence of events to him, “Didn’t I tell you before that something went wrong with the prop and I accidentally hurt Ning Xueluo? Right now, the prop master is insisting on saying that I bribed him to switch the props. Isn’t that forcing me into a dead end? If he sticks to his confession, it won’t just be my career that will be ruined, I’ll even have to go to jail!”

Lu Tingxiao looked at her calmly, “So?”

Ning Xi coughed lightly and stalled, “So I went to force that guy to speak the truth!”

Seeing her nonchalant attitude, storm clouds were gathering on Lu Tingxiao’s face, “Ning Xi, do you know how dangerous it was for you to do that? As a girl…”

Ning Xi covered her head and said, “I know, I know! But wasn’t I forced into it? You don’t know what that Zhang Qiang is like, he’s a scoundrel! I can only use simple violence to deal with that kind of person!”

“I’ve said before that you can look for me if you need any help. You chose to use such a dangerous method, before even coming to ask me for help?” Lu Tingxiao’s eyes were filled with grave disappointment.

That gaze unexpectedly made her heart clench in pain.

This was the first time Lu Tingxiao had gotten so angry with her. Ning Xi’s face was full of anxiety, “No, it’s not like that! I…”

Finally, feeling like she was going to have a headache, she sighed, “I’m just used to it…”

Used to solving everything by herself. Used to not relying on others.

The two of them sunk into silence again.

“Um, but, how did you know that I had a gun on me?” Ning Xi abruptly recalled this matter and asked suspiciously.

“The smell.” Lu Tingxiao answered coldly.

“Uh, so that’s how! Was it the smell of gunpowder? I didn’t realise that even your sense of smell is so strong, Big Boss! Hehehe…”

Lu Tingxiao’s expression remained as cold as ice, the kind that had been frozen for a thousand years.

Her flattery had failed.

Ning Xi had an expression of complete helplessness, “Lu Tingxiao, it’s not that I didn’t want to ask you for help. There’s just no need for you to personally take action for small matters like these. Isn’t it like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly? However, right now, I do have something that I really, really need your help with! You really have to help me this time, please please please! I kept thinking about it, and you’re the only one I can turn to for this! So even if you’re not willing to help me, I’ll definitely keep disturbing you!”

This time, although his expression remained frosty, he finally looked her in the eye, “Speak.”

Ning Xi heaved a sigh of relief and hurriedly spoke up, “It’s like this! Although I finally got Zhang Qiang’s confession, and the emails and bank transfer details from the mastermind, all this evidence can only clear my innocence, but I won’t be able to find the mastermind.”

“It wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me if I didn’t take revenge for this grudge. Letting the mastermind off so easily would be such a waste! So I was thinking, is there any way that you could decode the mastermind’s account details and IP address?”

“Big boss, it must have been thanks to your genes that Darling Little Treasure is already so clever at such a young age! So Big Boss must be even more impressive at computers and such. I’m sure you have some way to do that, right?”

Move Further Away From Me

.

“Right, right?” Ning Xi put her hands together in a pleading pose, a hopeful expression on her face and stars in her eyes. On one hand, it was to butter up Lu Tingxiao. On the other hand, she really did need his help.

Lu Tingxiao remained silent for three seconds before finally speaking the golden word: “Yes.”

“Really? You really have a solution?” Ning Xi was so excited she almost jumped into the air, “Then how long do you need?”

“One…” Lu Tingxiao was about to say one hour, but he suddenly changed his mind, “One night.”

“That fast?! That’s great!” Ning Xi was delighted over the great news and hurriedly pulled out a laptop from her bag, “This is the laptop I took from Zhang Qiang. Do you need anything else? I’ll help you prepare them!”

“There’s no need.” Lu Tingxiao stood up and headed upstairs while speaking.

Ning Xi eagerly followed closely after him.

Upon reaching the study, the perceptive Ning Xi ran to help Lu Tingxiao pull out his chair, then placed the laptop on top of the desk before Lu Tingxiao. She then jogged off to pour a glass of water for him.

Lu Tingxiao shot a casual glance at her before sitting down in the chair.

He then took out his own laptop and brought out a cable to connect the two laptops. After skimming over the evidence she had mentioned, he opened a file and entered a string of complicated-looking code into a window on his laptop screen.

Ning Xi leaned on the desk and moved closer to look out of curiosity, but of course, it looked like gibberish to her. She held a completely dazed expression. Although she couldn’t understand any of it, whatever he was doing still seemed pretty awesome.

While Lu Tingxiao was typing, he heard light breathing near his ear, so he abruptly stopped moving his fingers and started frowning.

“What happened? Is anything wrong?” Ning Xi immediately asked tensely.

Lu Tingxiao’s tone was slightly cool: “Move further away from me.” She was leaning too close, it was affecting his concentration.

“Okay…” Ning Xi shrivelled up like an eggplant in winter and lowered her head. In a sad and dismal manner, she shifted to the furthest corner of the room and sat on the sofa there.

Seeing the girl’s pitiful appearance, Lu Tingxiao almost spoke up to comfort her, but he held back in the end.

Ning Xi hugged a cushion in her arms and quietly watched Lu Tingxiao’s face from the side profile as he was working seriously. She inwardly savoured the sight; it was true that men were the most handsome when they were working earnestly!

Momentarily, only the quiet sound of fingers tapping on the keyboard could be heard in the study.

Ning Xi sat there and struggled with her thoughts for a long while before she finally couldn’t resist and spoke up, “Lu Tingxiao… Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why… Why didn’t you ask me?”

“Ask what?”

Ning Xi’s fingers clenched into fists, “Ask about that gun! You’re not going to ask why I have a gun? Don’t you think that I’m not like what you expected at all, that I’m… very scary?”

Lu Tingxiao: “Not at all.”

Ning Xi: “Oh…”

Lu Tingxiao didn’t continue questioning her, but Ning Xi felt extremely sorry in her heart. He had always treated her like a friend and helped her without holding back. However, she kept hiding and concealing every little thing about herself.

Thus, even though Lu Tingxiao hadn’t continued questioning her, Ning Xi took the initiative to speak up, “You know how the public order in America isn’t very good, and how having a gun is legal there? I learned how to use a gun when I was there.”

“However, it’s not legal to have guns back here in China. This gun was smuggled in through illegal channels. I don’t know how it was done exactly, it was given to me by a friend, the one who taught me how to shoot. It’s for the sake of self-defense only when I absolutely need it. Since I’ve come back to China, I’ve only used it just this once!”

Lu Tingxiao stopped all movement: “What kind of person is that friend of yours?”