Chapter 58
Inside Room 2520, things were heating up fast.
Meanwhile, back at the venue, Lin Zhiqiao and the others were still squeezed behind that little folding screen. Even though they were packed in so tightly they were practically toppling over each other, not a single one of them was willing to leave.
Lin Zhiqiao held a handful of melon seeds and cracked them one by one, all while running a live broadcast in his head through 888.
[And there we see Jiang Ling pounce and shove Tao Qianran down. The two of them tumble onto the soft carpet, and Tao Qianran lets out a cry of pain—]
[Hm? Why’s it already hurting when they haven’t even started doing anything yet? Oh, right, he smacked his head.]
[Good thing the carpet’s thick and soft enough. Otherwise, bleeding right at the opening and dying before the campaign even begins would be no fun at all.]
Everyone nodded in perfect unison.
The tiny screen wobbled dangerously twice. Almost at the same moment, everyone looked up and saw Ning Qiu and Pei Ning walking in.
“Well, well, everyone’s here?” Ning Qiu tucked her hair back. “It’s already this crowded, so two more won’t make a difference. Why not squeeze a little more?”
Ji Ran and Tang Zhou, who had each claimed one of the sofa’s armrests, exchanged a glance and voluntarily got down to sit cross-legged on the floor, giving up their spots for the two ladies.
Lin Zhiqiao only spared them a hurried glance. His whole heart was sunk into the urgent business of eating gossip, so he did not say anything.
[Jiang Ling’s got Tao Qianran pinned down tight and is now kissing him all over at random. While he’s doing it, he’s even calling him baby, my true love… hahaha, is he a dog or what? He’s literally gnawing on him!]
[Tao Qianran is shouting in horror: President Jiang! Calm down! Let go of me!]
A small handful of peeled peanuts appeared in front of Lin Zhiqiao. He accepted them on instinct.
[Go on, scream all you want. Even if you scream your lungs out, nobody’s going to save you, hahaha!]
Pei Ning leaned against one side of the sofa armrest, her delicate brows lowered slightly so that no one could read the emotion in her eyes.
A hand suddenly reached over from beside her and lightly poked her arm.
Pei Ning turned her head and saw that the hand had opened in front of her palm-up. Inside it was a small pile of shelled melon seeds.
It was Ning Qiu.
When Pei Ning did not move, that hand shook twice in a little urging motion. Only after Pei Ning reached out and took the seeds did it withdraw.
Holding that little pile of seeds, Pei Ning suddenly felt both amused and helpless. The faint irritability in her chest, however, unexpectedly lightened.
She raised her eyes and met Ning Qiu’s smiling gaze.
The other woman blinked at her, still holding a handful of pine nuts in their shells, painstakingly cracking them open with her manicured fingers.
Behind the little folding screen, the crack crack crack of shells being split never stopped.
Pei Ning withdrew her gaze, quietly took a deep breath, and slowly let it out.
Lin Zhiqiao’s “live broadcast” was still going. At first, Pei Ning’s emotions had been tangled and hard to name, but now…
She suddenly felt completely at peace.
Jiang Ling ending up in this situation was nothing more than the result of his own actions.
Pei Ning was not exactly heartbroken. She knew very clearly that most of what she had once felt toward Jiang Ling had been gratitude.
But now, the things she had been grateful for were false, and Jiang Ling’s feelings for her had also been false.
She had no reason, and absolutely no intention, to keep letting herself fall into emotions tied to him.
Ning Qiu had been secretly watching Pei Ning’s expression the entire time. Only when she saw Pei Ning finally start eating the melon seeds one by one did she relax, and even the curve of her lips softened.
*
Elsewhere in the venue, behind another more secluded folding screen, Fang Xinnan and Song Fengshi sat facing each other.
Compared to the cramped little corner Lin Zhiqiao and the others had been squeezed into, this place was much roomier.
Behind this screen, it was quiet. Neither of them spoke, but both knew exactly what the other was doing.
Their location was not that far from Lin Zhiqiao’s, so they could also hear the “special live broadcast” from Room 2520 quite clearly.
Song Fengshi lowered his eyes and took occasional sips of the juice in his hand.
Fang Xinnan glanced at him and could tell that, despite his taciturn friend’s silence, he was actually in quite a good mood.
So he said with a grin, “Still think a banquet like this is boring?”
Song Fengshi lifted his eyelids and shot him a cool look, saying nothing.
Fang Xinnan was already used to this and had no expectation of getting a response. “Things should be about to get chaotic out there, right?”
Song Fengshi knew exactly what he meant. There were absolutely more people than just them who could hear this “broadcast” in the venue.
He lowered his gaze slightly and, rather rarely, muttered inwardly—
What a giant sieve.
“It won’t get chaotic,” Song Fengshi said.
Fang Xinnan caught the meaning in his words and knew Song Fengshi intended to clean up after a certain “giant sieve,” so he snorted a laugh. “You really do spoil him.”
Before the sentence had even fully landed, the man across from him stood up and walked out from behind the screen.
Fang Xinnan followed after him. “Where are you going?”
Song Fengshi replied with a question of his own. “What do you think?”
Understanding dawned on Fang Xinnan at once.
A gossip eater lives for gossip. Naturally, one had to go to the place closest to where the gossip was happening.
*
Lin Zhiqiao and the others did not stay in the banquet hall the whole time.
Ji Ran had somehow gotten the keycard for Room 2521, directly opposite 2520, and so the whole group grandly relocated there.
[The people Jiang Scumbag arranged should be arriving any second now, right?]
Lin Zhiqiao muttered inwardly, [I just wonder what kind of expression they’ll make when they push open the door and discover that the arranged catching-them-in-the-act scene has switched leading actors at the last minute.]
It was definitely going to be hilarious!
Lin Zhiqiao was anxious and expectant, unable to stop pacing back and forth behind the door.
In the room across the hall from them, only a door and a corridor away, the two grown men were still going at it with explosive intensity.
[Jiang Ling’s attacks are fierce. Tao Qianran can’t fend him off at all. He tries to resist several times but fails every time, so in the end he just gives up and lies flat.]
[Ah, that surrender was way too fast! I thought you two would battle it out for at least three hundred rounds and refuse to quit until there was a winner!]
Lin Zhiqiao made who-knew-how-many-th time comments: [Seriously, can’t I get a visual version of the live broadcast? This kind of thrilling gossip, and I only get the pure text version? What a waste!!!]
The others piggybacking off his broadcast all nodded too. Every last one of them found it a pity.
[Honestly, just how strong was the drug Jiang Scumbag picked? Once it kicked in, he couldn’t even tell gender apart anymore?]
[Sigh, but really, you can only blame yourselves. You brought this on yourselves. Would it have killed you to behave like decent human beings? You just had to stop being human. Well, now look at you. In not much longer, you’re going to die a social death.]
Lin Zhiqiao patted his pocket. It was bulging with a whole stash of melon seeds he had stuffed in there on the way out of the venue.
Before long, faint noisy sounds came from outside the room.
Lin Zhiqiao’s eyes lit up: [They’re here, they’re here, they’re here!!!]
Outside, several people approached, chatting and laughing.
If Lin Zhiqiao had opened the door right then, he would have discovered that these were all journalists and photographers he had seen at the banquet earlier.
They had all been hired by Song Qingwen for the event, but what Song Qingwen did not know was that one of the reporters—namely the bespectacled one currently walking at the front—had long since secretly colluded with Jiang Ling.
“2520…” The bespectacled reporter stopped in his tracks and glanced down at the room card in his hand. “This is the one.”
The first half of the banquet’s job was already done. The next phase would not begin until near the end of the banquet, which meant these reporters and photographers had a long break in between.
The bespectacled reporter quietly sucked in a breath and swiped open the door to Room 2520 in one motion.
The instant the door opened, the chaotic scene inside the room was laid bare in front of everyone.
On the carpet, two overlapping figures were tangled up with each other, while shredded, disheveled clothing and trousers lay strewn all over the floor.
The scene was chaotic to an almost absurd degree.
The people behind the glasses-wearing reporter all cried out together, “Holy shit!”
Then, in perfect unison, they lifted their phones and cameras and immediately started recording, not hesitating for even a second.
Every one of them had the sharp intuition of a professional journalist, and all of them knew at once that this was definitely going to be a huge story.
The bespectacled reporter did not stop them. He looked as though he had been stunned speechless by what he saw behind the door, standing frozen for a long time.
That, naturally, gave the others more than enough time to gather evidence.
Everything was going so smoothly that the glasses-wearing reporter instinctively assumed the two people tangled together inside were the very two central figures originally planned.
He had already begun fantasizing about the benefits President Jiang had promised him after the job was done—enough that he would never have to worry about food or money again for the rest of his life.
Only then did a hoarse male voice come from inside the room: “Help me—quick—get this lunatic off me—”
Someone behind him let out a shocked gasp. “Isn’t that… isn’t that President Jiang?!”
The bespectacled reporter snapped back to himself. He looked carefully, and at last truly saw the faces of the two people entangled on the floor.
One of them was not Pei Ning, the woman who had been part of the plan.
It was his employer, Jiang Ling.
