CH 26

Chapter 26

Although Lin Zixi had no intention of recognizing his ancestors and returning to his clan, and Gu Zecheng's net worth had nothing to do with him either, when he thought about his high-priced, custom-made, only-worn-once stud earring being auctioned off to his own dad for five times the price…. Young actor Lin just had the feeling of suffering ‘a huge loss’.

He comforted himself by chanting in his mind, "It's all for charity, it's all for charity" while watching his prodigal dad invited to the stage by the host to give a charity testimonial.

After Gu Zecheng said a few official and positive energy words briefly, Lin Zixi picked up the Boshen Charity Night’s donation certificate presented by Miss Etiquette and handed the fancy-wrapped certificate to him with both hands.

Dad Gu took the certificate with one hand as young actor Lin seized the opportunity to lean towards him and whisper, "Let’s talk when the charity night is over, okay?"

The man he asked pondered for a moment before replying, "Okay."

Gu Zecheng only said one word, but it soothed Lin Zixi's heart, which had been inexplicably distressed and irritated lately. He winked and said in a non-threatening and cheerful tone, "Well then, don't stand me up later."

Dad Gu nodded. Then he and young actor Lin looked towards the camera at the host's suggestion, posing for a photo of the man who donated an item—that could be regarded as produced and sold by himself—to the charity night auction and the man who won the auctioned item.

The two of them then stepped down and returned to their respective seats.

All the things to do on the charity night had been completed, so Lin Zixi was now waiting in vain for the event to end. He watched the performances on the stage, ate what was on the dinner table, chatted with other stars around him, took photos with other people (especially a certain daughter of a big boss and a certain upper-class woman), and took a selfie for himself…. When he looked at the mobile phone again, there was actually still almost an hour before the end.

Young actor Lin sighed deeply, swearing in his heart that even if Boshen paid him money next year, he would not come again—others wanted money, while this charity night apparently not only wanted money but also his time on earth.

He glanced backward at the business celebrities table and saw that Gu Zecheng was having a good conversation with other big bosses. During this period, there were male and female, popular and not popular stars moving close to that table. He could not help but rejoice that luckily, a wealthy, handsome, and considerably young elite like his dad was a little old-fashioned, ah, no, it was upright, otherwise he might have had a few little mothers in the circle.

Lin Zixi was sighing with emotion and was caught by the object of his flight of fancy, whom suddenly turned his gaze around casually. He immediately made a gesture to remind the other party not to forget to wait for their appointment after the event ended. Gu Zecheng nodded, took his gaze back, and continued talking to the business figures at his table.

Young actor Lin finished the cocktail in front of him, got up, and walked out of the venue where the charity night was held—he needed to take a breath of fresh air and relieve himself after being shut indoors for almost three hours. As a result, he met another person he wanted to talk to at the doorway of the toilet. 

"President Feng, may I have a minute of your time?" Noticing that there was no one else around, Lin Zixi stopped Feng Yuan, the boss of Fengcheng Group, and asked.

The legendary gold master of Qiu Lianyi agreed after some consideration, and Lin Zixi went with him to the room that had been used as the VIP lounge previously.

Unlike Gu Zecheng, whom started out in heavy industry and was reserved and low-key, Feng Yuan, a young tycoon who was born as a rich second-generation and rose abruptly from the IT industry, had always been commented as ‘arrogant’. However, it might be because Dad Gu had once called him for the sake of young actor Lin, he actually didn't seem impatient, only detached, and he replied quite politely, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

Lin Zixi himself had nothing to be helped with, mainly "It’s about Qiu Lianyi..."

After he uttered the words ‘Qiu Lianyi’, Feng Yuan's expression visibly changed, and he quickly tried to cover it up, interrupting young actor Lin's words with a tone of voice that sounded calm, "He’s experiencing life for the sake of a movie. Are you looking for him for something?"

That’s enough, okay!

It had been almost two months since he learned the news about Qiu Lianyi's disappearance from Chen Yunyun. Although the fan circle still kept their cool, all kinds of speculations had long been flying around within the industry—a popular star suddenly disappeared from the public eye for almost four months; for all one knew, he either went crazy suddenly and quit the entertainment industry, or he did something and was sent to prison—preparing for a movie or something was clearly just an excuse for fans.

Anyway, Lin Zixi did not feel good, so he exposed Big Boss Feng in his face and followed along with his words, saying, "Actually, it's not a big deal. It's just that he has replied to my WeChat several times since we attended the S TV celebration together, but there's no more news now, so I'm a little worried about him."

In fact, Lin Zixi was not sure whether the man in front of him and young actor Qiu, who was a fierce and vicious dragon in his opinion, were really in a relationship like people said, and he also didn't know whether his information would be of any help with regards to finding Qiu Lianyi. But since Feng Yuan was the first high-level person of Fengcheng he had come into contact with in this period of time, he still said those words regardless of his uncertainties.

As for whether the other party cared about the information in his words or not, it was not something he had to worry about.

And the fact proved that Feng Yuan still cared about it.

He grabbed Lin Zixi's wrist and stopped covering it up, questioning closely in a high-pitched and stern voice, "Tell me, when was the last time he replied to your message?!"

"It was very late at night a day after the celebration, about half past twelve" Lin Zixi’s hand hurt a little being subconsciously gripped by the other party, but seeing his anxious and frantic appearance, he put up with it and did not get free. Instead, he took out his mobile phone, "But we didn't chat much. He ignored me afterwards."

Feng Yuan let go of Lin Zixi's hand but took his mobile phone and quickly called up the conversation between him and Qiu Lianyi. It took Feng Yuan less than 30 seconds to read the pitifully short conversation between ‘LianXi Fufu’, but he stared at the phone screen for several minutes, as if he could see some hidden information in it.

Young actor Lin stood by and waited for a long time, starting to be in a daze. It was not until the man beside him suddenly began to make a call that he was awakened and regained his spirit.

"Jack, it's me. Aqiu left his mobile phone at home, but he used another mobile phone to log in to WeChat…. Well, I saw his message to others in the wee hours of the 4th…." Feng Yuan said to the person on the other end of the phone.

After hearing how Big Boss Feng called a certain artist from his subsidiary company, Lin Zixi felt that it might not be suitable for him to continue listening to the other party's call.

Although Feng Yuan had no time to deal with him for the time being, young actor Lin was always a man of tact. After waving his hand, he turned around and went out of the room—before he left, he closed the door for the other party very thoughtfully.

As a result, when he finished relieving himself in the toilet and wanted to take out his mobile phone to check the time, he finally remembered that he had actually forgotten to get his mobile phone back from Feng Yuan.

He sighed and turned back to the VIP lounge.

Because the lounge was on the upper floor, and the stairwell was next to the toilet, Lin Zixi did not bother to take the elevator and went straight up the stairs.

When he came upstairs and was going to open the stairwell door, someone opened the door from the other side.

It was a staff member dressed in a suit with a name tag lanyard supporting a man in a casual suit, and the latter was obviously already half-conscious and could barely walk just because he was being held up.

The average-looking man who was estimated to be 27 or 28 years old noticed Lin Zixi's curious gaze, smiled friendly, and said in a somewhat helpless tone, "Fortunately, I went upstairs to deal with something, otherwise I don’t know how long this man would lie down in the corridor…. Being able to get drunk when attending our charity night, how high is his alcohol tolerance, ah."

Lin Zixi did not know if the alcohol tolerance of ‘this man’ was high or low, but a certain man totally had had no sign of getting drunk before. He was certain of this.

Young actor Lin casually glanced at Feng Yuan, who was unconscious for some reason, and then said in a perfunctory and uncaring tone, "You staff are also working hard."

After Lin Zixi said this sentence, he pushed the door to get out of the stairwell.

He naturally didn't believe the words of this person who seemed to be a Boshen staff member. On the contrary, he was sure that he happened to witness a kidnapping case.

And the kidnapped person was Feng Yuan, who was still talking with someone on the phone about the long-missing Qiu Lianyi just a moment ago.

But young actor Lin, who had followed a certain ‘boss’ for a period of time and fought with people off campus during his high school years, did not dare to expose the other party rashly—to be precise, it was because of such ‘black history’ that he could sense an indelible danger and bloody aura from the seemingly urbane and smiling man in front of him.

This feeling was extremely similar to the uncomfortable feeling he had when he first saw Qiu Lianyi, but it was even stronger.

Although the other party was covering it up intentionally, Lin Zixi could still sensitively perceive that kind of bone-deep viciousness and instantly made an accurate judgment that "he definitely couldn't beat him".

Therefore, he would cooperate with the other party's performance—also, speaking from his conscience, the kidnapper's acting skills were perfect, his lines skills were profound, and he was obviously better than a bunch of young actors/actresses—because he wanted to find a helping hand to stop the other party immediately after going out from here.

However, from the fact that the four hundred thousand yuan stud earring was bought by Dad Gu for two million, we could clearly see that young actor Lin's Mercury retrograde not only did not change for the better but also seemed to be strengthened by the ancestral buff….

So, just when he was stepping out of the door with one foot and thinking he had escaped a disaster, the man behind him grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the stairwell with a force far stronger than that of ordinary people.

The hairs on Lin Zixi's whole body stood on end in an instant. He lifted his foot and kicked it sideways and backwards, but his ankle was easily captured by the other party, and he was thrown on to the ground with a flip. When he was about to get up, the man stepped on his chest.

"You're Qiu's other lover, aren't you?" The kidnapper who pretended to be Boshen’s staff member patted Lin Zixi's face, still with a smile across his whole face, "Unfortunately, there’re too many surveillance cameras here, so it's not convenient for me to bring two people with me. Otherwise, I'll take you too and see which one Qiu Er will choose to save."

Qiu? Qiu Lianyi?

"Cough...you know there’re surveillance cameras, but you still dare...to mess around...cough..." Lin Zixi felt that his sternum was about to break. Coughing, he said with difficulty, "The way of Heaven is fair, but the guilty will not escape...cough…. Stop it, okay...cough…. Just treat me like I didn't see anything..."

But the other party laughed heartily with no trace of politeness as if he had heard a big joke and only stopped after quite a while. Then he leaned over Lin Zixi and whispered in his ear, "I don't mind if you tell the SWAT, as long as..."

"You live to tell them." The man said while putting away all his smiles. Then, without any warning, he cut a bloody opening that was neither deep or shallow on the neck of the prey under his feet with a butterfly knife. 

Lin Zixi's eyes widened in horror for a moment, but the other party did not use his knife again. Instead, in a seemingly kind way, he pulled Lin Zixi's hand to his neck to cover the wound.

"You have to work hard to stay alive." The man waved his hand as if to encourage Lin Zixi and then left while supporting the unconscious Feng Yuan with an arm.

Lin Zixi felt his blood and life slowly flowing out between his fingers, which were pressed down hard on his neck. He tried with all his might to stand up but was unable to move because of the pain in his chest. He wanted to shout loudly but was afraid that it would work to no avail and only speed up his death instead. He wanted to use his mobile phone to cry for help but, in despair, he remembered again that his mobile phone was still in that place where Feng Yuan was kidnapped.

God indeed wanted to cut my life short….

Lin Zixi wondered desperately and a little self-mockingly if the topic #Lin Zixi was murdered and died# would stay on the hot search for a few days.

If he had known earlier that he would die so young and in such a ridiculous way, he should have done more meaningful things before.

For example, participating in a play that could make his name immortalized.

For example, finding someone to madly fall in love with regardless of society’s gaze and judgment.

For example, being able to justifiably call his biological father, Gu Zecheng, "Dad" when facing him.

However, there were no ifs in life, and he could only wait quietly with these regrets for the things that he failed to achieve in an unoccupied corner on the other side of the noisy dinner party.

Waiting for salvation, or waiting for death.