Chapter 456

Chapter 456 A Complicated Woman

This knock gave the two people in bed quite a fright, but fortunately, after hearing what mom asked, Lin Aoxue felt relieved.

“Okay, I’ll call him right now and ask if he wants breakfast.” Lin Aoxue replied.

But just as she finished speaking, she suddenly felt Su Rui snickering and pinching her on the butt.

And so, she couldn’t help but let out a startled yelp.

Wei Shuling had already been about to leave, but when she suddenly heard her daughter’s cry, she quickly turned back and kept knocking on the door: “Aoxue, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m getting up right now, I’ll be downstairs for breakfast in a second, go on ahead.” Lin Aoxue called out.

Wei Shuling’s brow furrowed slightly, then the corners of her mouth curled up, revealing a knowing smile.

She walked to the staircase landing, hid her body behind the wall, and secretly peeked at Lin Aoxue’s bedroom.

“What are you doing?”

Lin Fuzhang’s voice suddenly came from behind Wei Shuling, startling her.

“Shh, don’t move, I’m observing.” Wei Shuling said mysteriously.

“Observing what?”

“Our daughter is acting a little off.”

“You’re the one who’s off.” Lin Fuzhang said irritably.

“Still don’t believe me? Let me tell you in detail.” And so, Wei Shuling gave Lin Fuzhang a vivid and animated account of what had just happened.

“Are you losing your mind? What’s so off about that?” After hearing Wei Shuling out, Lin Fuzhang genuinely felt his wife was overthinking things — could it be that menopause had come early?

“You’re the one losing your mind.”

Wei Shuling swatted her husband and said: “Think about it, this is totally not our daughter’s style. If she wanted to brush me off, she’d just say ‘it’s nothing’, but instead she said ‘nothing, I’m getting up right now, I’ll be downstairs for breakfast in a second, go on ahead’ — think it over carefully, isn’t our daughter acting a little off? When has she ever said that many words?”

Lin Fuzhang listened to his wife’s analysis and nodded thoughtfully, saying: “That’s actually a pretty good point.”

Wei Shuling had a look of pure gossip on her face: “Then come watch with me, maybe there’ll be a surprise.”

Lin Fuzhang waved his hand and turned to walk away: “You think I’m like some woman? I’m not interested.”

Wei Shuling shot her husband a look, then continued staring intently at Lin Aoxue’s bedroom door.

At that moment, the door suddenly opened and Su Rui walked out.

Lin Aoxue, still in her pajamas, followed right behind him.

Wei Shuling could see the dark circles under both their eyes from halfway down the hallway.

She quickly pulled herself back behind the wall and said cheerfully: “Ah, to be young.”

By the time Su Rui appeared in the dining room, Lin Fuzhang had nearly finished eating, but when he saw this “future son-in-law”, he decided to slow his pace down a little.

Lin Fuzhang was aware of Su Rui’s arrest, but hadn’t been able to offer any meaningful help. Afterward, the simultaneous intervention of several ministerial-level heavyweights had thoroughly shaken Lin Fuzhang, and made him regard Su Rui in an even more different light.

After all, Qin Zhizhang, Li Zonghan, Luo Yunlu — the combined force these people could unleash together was nothing short of earth-shattering.

But the next second, Lin Fuzhang forgot what he had been about to say, because he noticed the dark circles under Su Rui and Lin Aoxue’s eyes.

Those panda eyes were just too obvious — there was no way he could miss them.

“Did you two not sleep last night? Why are your eyes so dark?” Lin Fuzhang asked directly.

Wei Shuling, meanwhile, wore a gossipy smile and said nothing, as if waiting for her daughter and “son-in-law” to answer.

Su Rui and Lin Aoxue exchanged a glance, finally realizing where the problem lay. The latter lowered her head with a red face, averted her eyes, and said: “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Su Rui then said: “It’s not just last night for me — I haven’t been able to sleep properly for several days.”

Lin Fuzhang nodded in agreement. Given the power of those major families in the capital, if they could take Su Rui away, they certainly wouldn’t have made things easy for him — as for sleep, that would have been completely out of the question.

“Now that you’ve finally gotten free, come back and rest properly, recharge yourself, then think about everything else.” Lin Fuzhang said with concern.

Wei Shuling gave her husband a deeply contemptuous look — with his powers of deduction, if he ever became a detective, he’d guaranteed go his whole life without solving a single case.

Telling Su Rui to recharge himself — at the rate things were going between him and Aoxue, sooner or later every last bit of his energy would be drained away.

“Looks like I’ll have to take a harder approach.”

In fact, Wei Shuling had hinted many times, both directly and indirectly, hoping Su Rui and Lin Aoxue would hurry up and get married so she could hold a grandchild sooner, but this young couple had always been evasive and never given a straight answer.

Glancing at her husband, Wei Shuling’s brow creased as a plan came to mind, and she said with a smile: “Su Rui, Aoxue, I heard from Wang Yuan that you two came back together last night?”

“Uh.”

Hearing this, Su Rui instinctively glanced at Lin Aoxue, but she didn’t look up at all, focusing entirely on the millet porridge in her bowl.

Even so, though Lin Aoxue gave no reaction, a flush of red had already crept up onto her delicate earlobes.

“We did come back together after dinner last night.” Su Rui answered. He glanced at the smiling Wei Shuling and suddenly had a bad feeling — this old lady was up to something today.

“So where did you sleep last night?” Wei Shuling continued to ask with a smile, and no one could tell what this gossipy old woman was really thinking.

“I slept in my own room.” Su Rui’s heart skipped a beat as he answered.

Lin Aoxue finally looked up: “Mom, what are you trying to do?”

But her tone was nothing like the icy coldness of before — there was even a faint hint of a young girl’s charm in it.

“You really slept in your own room?” Wei Shuling pressed relentlessly, the smile on her face unchanged.

With Su Rui’s intelligence, he finally realized that the news of him and Lin Aoxue spending the entire night alone together had most likely reached the old lady’s ears.

“Of course, auntie, where else would I sleep besides my own room?”

Afraid that what happened last night might come out — otherwise he wouldn’t know how he could keep staying at this estate — Su Rui said with conviction: “Auntie, are you misunderstanding something? I didn’t go to Aoxue’s room until five o’clock, to teach her some yoga.”

“Teach her yoga?”

Wei Shuling’s eyes immediately lit up: “You actually know yoga?”

Lin Fuzhang shook his head and sighed from the side — after decades of marriage, he still couldn’t follow his wife’s train of thought.

“Of course.” Su Rui had no idea he had accidentally sparked the old lady’s interest. Eager to clear up what had happened the night before, he put down his chopsticks and struck a jaw-dropping pose.

Standing on his right foot, he extended his left leg high behind him, swept his right arm through the air in an arc, and impossibly grabbed his left ankle.

At that moment, Su Rui’s body displayed the most extreme flexibility.

“You’d have to practice yoga for many years to pull off a move like that, right?” Wei Shuling said. “Even my yoga instructor can’t do a high-difficulty move like that!”

“Actually, for me, this kind of move is pretty simple.”

Su Rui was telling the truth. After so many years of grueling training, if he couldn’t even manage a flexibility move like this, there was no way he could have escaped from his enemies so many times.

Watching Su Rui’s movements, Lin Aoxue also wore a faintly mesmerized expression — the man she had chosen was just this exceptional, capable of anything.

The dazzled Wei Shuling seemed to have completely forgotten her earlier purpose, all her attention now fixed on yoga, her face full of excitement: “Su Rui, will you teach me yoga? Judging by your moves, you must be even more professional than the well-known yoga instructors in Ninghai!”

Seeing that he had successfully redirected Wei Shuling’s attention, Su Rui let out a long breath: “Auntie, it’s not that you can’t practice yoga, but at your age, it’s better to stick to aerobics or square dancing and the like. Yoga may look nicer, but for someone with your bone age, it could cause irreversible damage to your joints and tendons.”

“Then teach me square dancing!” The moment she heard it could be harmful to her body, Wei Shuling immediately gave up on her beloved yoga.

By this point, she had completely forgotten that just ten minutes ago she had been planning to interrogate Su Rui.

Su Rui’s face fell the moment he heard that — being made to go square dancing with a bunch of middle-aged ladies was worse than just killing him outright.

Beside him, Lin Aoxue lowered her head, smiling like a flower.

…………

It was the weekend, so Su Rui didn’t need to drive Lin Aoxue to work, but after breakfast, he was shooed out by Miss Lin.

“What is this, what is this!”

Su Rui drove through the streets and alleys, thoroughly sulking.

Because the reason Lin Aoxue had kicked him out was incredibly simple, incredibly direct, and incredibly unbelievable.

This woman had actually told Su Rui to go find Qin Yueran.

“What on earth is she playing at?” Su Rui said with a long face. “We just spent the night together, and she turns around and sends me off to find another woman — what is she thinking?”

Su Rui racked his brain and still couldn’t figure out what Lin Aoxue was really thinking.

He would rather face a hail of enemy blades and arrows than play mind games with the world’s most complicated creature.

If he’d known feelings would be this complicated, he never would have gotten involved.

At that moment, Su Rui deeply envied certain carefree fellow men — those guys who only played with bodies, not hearts, and bore no responsibility. They were truly role models, unlike him, stuck in such a miserable situation.

After circling the third and fourth ring roads of Ninghai several times in agonized indecision, Su Rui finally turned the car around and headed toward the Junlan Kempinski Hotel.

There was no use running from some things — sooner or later, there would come a day to face them.

Spotting Qin Yueran’s figure from a distance, Su Rui’s foot trembled and he nearly hit the gas instead of the brake.