Chapter 141: Afraid of Losing Her

"Tch, what kind of trick is he trying to pull?"

Fu Yanyan stood in the hospital's monitoring room dressed in casual wear. On the massive surveillance screen, hundreds of feeds rapidly merged into four distinct displays.

The monitors clearly broadcasted every single movement inside the ward. The man wearing a duckbill cap walked up to the woman, first gently caressing her cheek with his hand, then slipping something into her mouth and whispering something into her ear. After completing all this, he purposely flashed a cunning smile at the security camera—part provocation, part malice. His deep blue eyes looked like a ghost materializing on the low-resolution footage.

Guan Yujing seemed to know that Fu Yanyan would deliberately engineer this gap in security and wait for him to arrive.

Yet, he couldn't quite figure out... why Fu Yanyan was waiting for him...

"President Fu, it's been verified. The thing placed in her mouth was a candy."

"A candy?"

"Yes. Furthermore, the Guan family has already released news that they are launching a venture capital project here in the capital. Strangely enough, this doesn't fit his style at all. He shows no inclination whatsoever to compete with us for this ten-billion-yuan project. This completely contradicts his usual character of holding grudges, fighting aggressively for dominance, and trading everything for profit."

Fu Yanyan's eyes were filled with elaborate calculations and schemes, yet they completely crumbled the moment he saw the man in the surveillance video caressing the woman's cheek.

If he played this game without involving any emotions, he could stir up winds and clouds, playing everyone in the palm of his hand, and even factoring the person pulling the strings from behind the scenes into his plans.

However, he hesitated. All the trials and tribulations he had walked through over the years, the indomitable, steely armor he had forged, and every single painful memory now transformed into the face of Zhong Huayan... He could not control himself. Looking at the Buddhist prayer beads on his wrist, he forced himself to think of restraint, of her dreams and wishes. In this mortal life, one cannot have the best of both worlds. Fu Yanyan moved the prayer beads from his right wrist back to his left.

"Assistant Li, sometimes I truly wish Guan Yujing were competing with me for projects rather than competing with me for a woman."

"President Fu, you make a valid point. Previously, there were no cameras in the stable, so we still don't know what happened. But in my view, Guan Yujing is not a creature driven by genuine affection for a woman. Rather, he deliberately chose Madam precisely because he intends to go head-to-head with you."

Fu Yanyan stood alone in the spacious monitoring room. Just looking at his back conveyed an intense aura of having conquered all rivals, leaving no opponents left. Even when simply sitting on a nearby chair, his mastery and strategic command were self-evident.

"Logically speaking, Ah-Hua and I had a ghost marriage; we are already husband and wife. Do you think Ah-Hua will ever acknowledge this?"

The assistant was struck speechless.

He looked at his boss's eyes, which burned with an almost crazed yearning, resembling a demon crawling out of a temple rather than a Buddha.

He had originally thought that once they found his beloved, such obsessive delusions would subside. Why were they still so severe?

"President Fu, we can wait until she finishes college, and then hold a proper, glorious, and legitimate wedding. But I'm afraid of attracting too many covetous eyes. Once people find out, she will become your soft spot."

Fu Yanyan's fingers were distinct and well-proportioned, yet as white and flawless as jade. He gently massaged his temples. Recalling the words of mockery Guan Yujing had flung at him days ago, no matter how calm and eloquent he appeared on the surface, he could not deny that he genuinely cared about this illegitimate and unacknowledged status.

"Assistant Li, I don't want anyone to know she exists at all. It would be best if she were only ever seen by me! No matter how powerful I am, I cannot shield her from my own deep tenderness and pity! I refuse to let Ah-Hua be harmed in the end by so-called selfishness, greed, and competitiveness.

The people around me are like wolves and tigers, dying to drag me down into the abyss of damnation. Even those withered bones crawl out from hell, attempting to pull me down from my high position! Yet at this critical moment, I cannot even conceal my love for her! Nor can I openly declare it to the world!

All these worries stem from the fact that I am too terrified... I have been freezing cold for too many years... I cannot bear the thought of losing her again... I am even afraid that if we were to die together, I would end up in hell while she ascends to heaven!"

Only the sound of his own murmuring filled the quiet, suffocatingly empty room. After he finished speaking, the more he thought about it, the more unbearable the prospect became.

"President Fu, you are a truly benevolent man. Back when the Fu Group faced a dual crisis of policy and finance, you shouldered the pressure to send tens of thousands of impoverished orphans to college and saved countless infants from cancer... You won't go to hell."

"Assistant Li, good deeds and bad cannot cancel each other out. I have ruined plenty of lives myself; those withered bones are almost piled into a mountain..."

A splitting headache seized Fu Yanyan. Deciding to cut off the conversation, he strode directly into the hospital ward.

Inside the room, the woman was still covered by a quilt, lying quietly on the bed while a light, sporadic drizzle began to fall outside.

Yellow apricot leaves, dampened by the rain, drifted in through the window.

Fu Yanyan knelt on one knee, his gaze fixed entirely on her.

At that moment, a sudden pain pierced the back of Zhong Huayan's head. As she drifted groggily back to consciousness, the first thing that met her eyes was a pair of blood-red eyes. They evoked the image of some fierce beast, yet the moment she opened her eyes, the gaze of the person before her trembled slightly.

Her initial sensation was the sweet taste of candy lingering in her mouth—a very, very sweet candy, not particularly large, but quite hard against her teeth. Zhong Huayan subconsciously assumed that Fu Yanyan was the one who had slipped it into her mouth.

"This candy is really sweet, A-Yan."

Fu Yanyan was momentarily caught off guard by her sweet smile. Unnoticed by anyone, his hand gripped the edge of the bed so tightly that his knuckles turned white before he forced out a trace of gentleness.

"Ah-Hua, if you like eating candy, I'll buy you more."

Privately, Fu Yanyan swore a silent oath: he would chop off Guan Yujing's fingers one by one!

Yet on the surface, keeping a smile that never reached his eyes, he said unsmilingly, "Ah-Hua, while you were dreaming, did anyone say anything in your ear?"

Beneath his hypocritical smile lay a probing curiosity as he continuously calculated and weighed her reactions. His jade-like fingers slowly twitched the prayer beads, yet his expression remained utterly tranquil.

This subconscious action immediately caught Zhong Huayan's attention.

She knew Fu Yanyan's minor habits very well.

Whenever his mood grew unstable and he began scheming, he would involuntarily start twirling his prayer beads.

"No."

"Hm?"

"A-Yan, I didn't hear anything in my dream."

Zhong Huayan knew she was lying. In her dream, amid a pink, snow-covered landscape, there had been a large snowman and an older brother wearing a down jacket whose face she couldn't clearly see. He had walked over and whispered something very sweet and ambiguous into her ear. At first, she hadn't paid it any mind, assuming it was just a regular dream. But Fu Yanyan was pressing the matter relentlessly, specifically bringing up such an incomprehensible question.

His hand was still spinning the prayer beads, and the faint, oppressive aura radiating from him caught her off guard.

One glance told her this was far from a simple dream.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. A-Yan, I want to eat candied haws and sugar-roasted chestnuts from this place."

Today, after finishing her antique appraisal livestream, Zhong Huayan had accidentally stumbled upon a post by a local Changchun food blogger and screenshotted it. Bringing it up now served to change the subject while also satisfying her craving for delicious snacks.

Upon seeing the location of the sugar-roasted chestnuts on the phone screen, the assistant let out a silent, inward sigh.