Chapter 11: Noodles and Nebulous Trust
In the cramped hotel room, an oppressive silence descended. Qiu Zhenzhen's fingers clawed nervously at the duvet, her gaze flitting toward Xu Ling before retreating—a trapped swallow unsure of escape routes. The memory of their first encounter, tangled with the raw vulnerability of her current predicament, ignited paranoid scenarios: *Does he have compromising photos? Would he extort money—or worse?* Her eyes darted toward the bedside lamp, its weighted base suddenly morphing into a potential weapon.
Xu Ling observed her furtive calculations with wry amusement. *So this is gratitude,* he mused, the irony bitter on his tongue. Rescuing her from paparazzi-infested chaos only to be cast as the villain. He pivoted toward the door. "You're safe here. The vultures won't find you. I'll go."
A hand seized his sleeve. "Wait—" Qiu Zhenzhen's voice softened into a plea, her earlier defiance crumbling. "Could you... fetch food?" The request emerged in a tremulous whisper, her doe-eyed vulnerability mirroring the stray kitten Yu Mengna had once cajoled him into adopting.
He relented with a sigh, returning minutes later, hauling a cardboard box of instant noodles and a portable electric pot.
"*Convenience-store slop?*" she hissed, her refined accent fracturing into rural Yang County dialect. "If you're broke, just say so!"
Xu Ling ignored her theatrics, scrubbing the pot with monastic focus. "Reporters stake out hotel kitchens. This is discreet." He filled the vessel with bottled water, his movements precise as a surgeon.
As the noodles simmered, their pungent aroma—artificially savoury with MSG—permeated the room. Qiu Zhenzhen's resolve wilted. She edged closer, nostrils flaring at the golden sunny-side egg floating atop the broth, its edges crisped to perfection and crowned with emerald scallions.
Xu Ling ladled himself a brimming bowl, slurping with performative gusto. Though his cultivation allowed weeks of fasting, replenishing spiritual energy through mundane sustenance was thriftier—and far less suspicious.
Qiu Zhenzhen eyed the remaining broth, pride warring with hunger. Finally, she snatched the ladle, filling her bowl halfway. "You're *infuriating*," she muttered, chopsticks clattering against porcelain.
Across the city, Yu Mengna's surveillance feed flickered. Camera #12B captured Li Guangfei pacing his penthouse, a shattered iPhone at his feet. His assistant's voice trembled through the speaker: "*Sir, the Nile Hotel's front desk confirmed a man matching Xu Ling's description checked in with... a companion.*"
Back in the neon-lit room, Qiu Zhenzhen's phone erupted—her agent's wrath incarnate. "*Another scandal?!* "Li Jie's roar could've shattered glass.
The actress deployed her weaponised pout. "*Jiejie*, it's all lies! Don't stress—your *chest* will swell again!" The threat of Li Jie's legendary stress-induced migraines worked its magic, placation achieved through years of practiced manipulation.
Xu Ling watched her performance—the calculated eyelash flutters, the vocal syrup—with detached fascination. *A viper in a kitten's fur,* he noted, yet when her laughter pealed, genuine and unguarded, something primal stirred. The egg yolk's golden rivulets mirrored her hair in the lamplight, and for a heartbeat, masks slipped.
In that fragile truce, between MSG-laden broth and shared chopsticks, an unspoken thread wove itself—neither trust nor desire, but the raw acknowledgement of two predators recognizing mutual utility.
Noodles and Nebulous Allegiances
The first spoonful ignited constellations on Qiu Zhenzhen's tongue. She demolished the noodles with feral urgency, chopsticks clattering like castanets—a stark departure from the camera-ready ingénue who publicly nibbled cucumber ribbons.
"Another round," she commanded, licking broth from her wrist with regal disregard. "Your alchemy transforms peasant fare into ambrosia."
Xu Lng complied, boiling two fresh packets as she sprawled across satin sheets, her robe slipping to reveal the forbidden cartography of a milky thigh. "First genuine meal since my debut," she confessed, fingertips circling her distended abdomen. "Calorie counting turns banquets into funerals."
Their gazes tangled—a momentary truce in their unspoken war—until a jarring ringtone shattered the intimacy.
Qiu Zhenzhen glared at the unknown number. "Persistent cockroach."
"*Zhenzhen, let me fix this!*" whined a reedy male voice. "*My harpy wife overstepped—tell me where—*"
"May your mistress find your prenup loopholes!" She launched the phone against lacquered wood, venom curling her lips. "Spineless titan tethered to a Medusa—thinks bank transfers sanitize gropes."
Xu Ling's eyebrow arched. The screen's porcelain doll now radiated Valkyrie fury—all bared teeth and blazing eyes.
Pounding fists ruptured the détente. Through the fisheye lens loomed Li Chao's bloated visage—entertainment mogul and professional sycophant.
"Identify yourself!" Xu Ling thundered, deepening his baritone.
Li Chao blanched at the masculine timbre. "I know she's—"
The door swung wide. Xu Ling's features melted into boyish awe. "*Li Laoshi*! Do regale *Shiniang* about our chance reunion!"
The tycoon's jowls quivered. Armani silk darkened with flop-sweat at his dragoness wife's mention. "M-merely inspecting properties!"
Qiu Zhenzhen materialized like smoke, draping herself over Xu Ling's frame. "Darling, introduce your... associate?" Her bare foot traced his calf beneath cotton pyjamas.
Li Chao's pupils dilated—terror and prurience warring beneath thinning hair. "M-misplaced room number!" He stumbled backward, Gucci loafers squealing across marble.
As elevator doors swallowed their prey, Qiu Zhenzhen's laughter cascaded like shattered crystal. "That relic taught stoichiometry? Should've lectured on moral bankruptcy!"
Xu Ling caged her against the doorjamb. "Gratitude requires... creativity," he murmured, thumb swiping broth from her Cupid's bow.
Her riposte dissolved as their mouths collided—a supernova of monosodium glutamate and pent-up electricity. Somewhere between the ice machine's arrhythmic growl and the exit sign's crimson glare, façades crumbled like desiccated ramen bricks.
When Qiu Zhenzhen finally broke the kiss at 3:09 AM, her décolletage heaving, the lie slipped effortlessly: "This means nothing." Her fingers already worked his buttons loose.
Beyond rain-lashed windows, monsoon showers baptized the metropolis, indifferent to tomorrow's tabloid salvos and the broken wedding band glinting in a hallway drain.
Entwined in Shadows
Li Chao hovered at the threshold, porcine eyes scouring the room's periphery. "Fetch my towel, dear!" bellowed a sandpaper-rough feminine voice from the bathroom, punctuated by exaggerated splashes. The mogul recoiled—Qiu Zhenzhen's signature velvet purr had been replaced by a tone better suited to dockside haggling.
"Youth's recklessness bears bitter fruit," Li Chao tutted, patting Xu Ling's shoulder with counterfeit commiseration. "Must you court society's dredges?" His retreating silhouette dissolved into corridor shadows, trailing bergamot hypocrisy.
Qiu Zhenzhen emerged from the arid bathroom, eyes blazing nuclear blue. "That fossilized lecher mentored you?"
"Shall I remodel his countenance?" Xu Ling flexed knuckles like gun hammers.
"Leave carrion to the flies," she spat, manicured claws curling into lethal crescents. Their verbal duel fractured as chaos erupted below—paparazzi bloodhounds had unearthed their scent.
"Departure imminent." Xu Ling swept her into a warrior's carry. Their gravity-defying plunge through the window found a soft landing in third-floor topiary—nature's conspiracy swallowing their descent.
Within rhododendron shadows, Qiu Zhenzhen writhed free. "Unmuzzle me, you—"
Their collision became a cosmic jest—her stiletto snaring roots, forcing noses into violent congress. Tears gemmed her lashes as she nursed her cardinal-tipped nose. "Men who presume to touch become landfill ornaments!"
Xu Ling silenced her with a palm across parted lips. Above, a sash window screamed open. "Magnify! Strands of onyx at three o'clock!"
He pressed her against the patriarch oak's gnarled bosom, their silhouettes merging into Rorschach unity. Through layered fabrics, pulse points conducted arrhythmic concertos—his at the carotid, hers beneath clavicular hollow.
"Immobility", he mouthed, breath dislodging the gardenia nestled behind her ear.
Photographic lightning erupted—a supernova in twilight. Xu Ling tilted his crown, casting her visage in guardian shadow. Their tableau crystallized—Michelangelo's Pietà reimagined for the tabloid age.
Qiu Zhenzhen's defiance crumbled as his thumb captured a tear's descent. Somewhere between paparazzo's curse and cicada threnody, facades disintegrated. Her fingers ascended not to wound but to anchor in the tensile landscape of his shoulders.
"Prize secured?"
"Merely mating sparrows," came the defeated snarl.
As the window slammed its verdict, their frozen embrace persisted—danger departed, yet the oak's embrace held dominion.
Qiu Zhenzhen fractured the spell first, laughter vibrating like plucked cello strings. "You're... adequate. For a provincial simpleton."
Xu Ling's riposte perished unborn. Her lips claimed his—a cataclysm of spite and capitulation, umami and monsoon musk. Deep within the hotel's bowels, Li Chao's smartphone convulsed with damning footage, while Yu Mengna's surveillance monitors birthed digital snow—harbingers of gathering tempests.
Webs of Deception and Forbidden Embers
Qiu Zhenzhen's whispered invectives cascaded like poisoned honey, each syllable barbed with serpentine malice. Xu Ling's embrace remained an unyielding fortress, shielding her from the ravenous gaze of telescopic lenses. When her diatribe peaked with "degenerate cad", he extinguished it through primal alchemy—a kiss steeped in MSG's metallic tang and shared desperation.
"Mere paramours canoodling," a cameraman's basso profundo rumbled overhead.
"Squandered reels on provincial exhibitionists!" The lead journalist's epithet faded with retreating footsteps, their hunt collapsing into farce.
Qiu Zhenzhen's wrath reignited with crystalline clarity. Her stiletto's stiletto heel found Xu Ling's instep—a poniard's precision strike. "Craven opportunist!"
He relinquished his hold, observing tear tracks eroding her contoured cheekbones. Even in disarray, her beauty weaponized pathos—a virtuoso performance of vulnerability.
"Local confidantes?" Xu Ling's inquiry emerged softer than intended.
She shook her head, tear-crusted lashes refracting moonlight. "Sanctuary lies in your hamlet." The entreaty hovered—equal parts supplication and gauntlet thrown.
Xu Ling's brow furrowed. Moments prior, her claws had promised flaying; now, wounded gazelle eyes pierced with equal lethality. Yet the ghost of their first night's shattered defences lingered—an Achilles' heel tempering his resolve.
"Agrarian austerity may blister metropolitan sensibilities," he cautioned, forging ahead through cobblestone alleys.
Qiu Zhenzhen trailed, laughter tinkling like windchimes. "Pastoral purity rejuvenates!" Her abrupt collision with his halted form left Cartier's spectacles skewed.
Through labyrinthine byways, confessions unfurled—not Li Chao's vulgar overtures, but Li Guanglong's inexorable hunt. The conglomerate heir, infamous for devouring starlets and influencers like canapés, had marked China's screen goddess as his next conquest.
Xu Ling's cottage materialized at the village periphery, its sagging thatch roof sighing like an ancient sentinel. Qiu Zhenzhen's inhalation held no revulsion but reverence—this crumbling edifice offered asylum from gilded prisons and paparazzi hounds.
"Deliciously... elemental," she exhaled, fingertips tracing sun-baked rammed earth.
Nightfall unveiled unforeseen complexities. The solitary pallet mandated proximity, their shared warmth kindling dormant combustibles. When Qiu Zhenzhen's hand "strayed" across his abdomen during nocturnal water retrieval, Xu Ling's restraint snapped.
"Stage your temptress act elsewhere," he growled, manacling her wrist.
Her riposte gleamed with Ming-dynasty courtesan cunning. "Does rustic etiquette not demand reciprocity?"
Amidst croaking toads and crackling embers, paradigms shifted. The hunter became quarry, the saviour ensnared. Dawn's first light would reveal Xu Ling's resolve in ruins, Qiu Zhenzhen's rouge smudged across his clavicle—their devices blazing with Li Guanglong's fresh ultimatum: pixelated hotel embrace imagery captioned **"Celestial Virgin's Fall From Grace?"
The rooster's clarion announced not deliverance but the inexorable advance of gathering storms.
Pastoral Haven and the Starlet's Allure
Xu Ling's abrupt halt sent Qiu Zhenzhen stumbling into his spine. "Must you ambulate like a wind-up toy?" She protested, rubbing her offended nasal bridge.
"Xu Ling of Xujia Village," he proclaimed, pivoting with ceremonial gravity. "Let this name etch itself upon your memory."
Qiu Zhenzhen inhaled the loamy air through flared nostrils, mastering her temper. "Duly archived. Now cease your theatrical pauses." Her gaze trailed his retreating silhouette—the atlas shoulders narrowing to a topography of lean waist and legs honed by agrarian labour. Not even her silver-screen paramours possessed such raw terrestrial geometry.
Emerging from serpentine alleys into sun-dappled thoroughfares, Xu Ling shielded her visage with a territorial arm. Yet Qiu Zhenzhen's silhouette radiated gravitational pull—the undulant cadence of her stride magnetizing male scrutiny, their combined beauty conjuring a corona of hushed admiration.
"Never coveted a firefly's ephemeral glow till now," Xu Ling muttered, hailing a taxi to flee this ocular siege.
Village urchins materialized like spring shoots after rain. "The poster goddess!" they trilled, recognizing celestial features beneath oversized Dior shades.
"Expedite our retreat," Xu Ling urged. "A single Douyin upload would—"
Qiu Zhenzhen descended into a ballerina's plié, unleashing dimpled artillery. "Shall we conspire against wicked men?" Her fingertip graced a snub nose. "Our arcane pact?"
The children nodded, transfixed by this numinous visitation. Xu Ling's begrudging approval materialized as a raised thumb.
"Rustic souls discern authenticity," she murmured, distributing satin hair ribbons like papal indulgences. "Unlike metropolitan asps."
The cottage emerged through persimmon boughs, chimney smoke curling like ancestral incense. Li Ruoya knelt by the moss-clad well, scrubbing radish roots, while Li Ruoxue dissected scallions with uncharacteristic monastic focus.
"Mā!" Xu Ling's clarion call shattered bucolic serenity.
Wang Huifen materialized, flour-dusted hands suspended mid-kinetic prayer. Her gimlet eyes inventoried the glamorous interloper—Qiu Zhenzhen's Louboutins sinking into loam, Birkin bag discordant against the clucking hen symphony.
"A-Ling," Wang intoned, centuries of maternal suspicion distilled into two syllables. "What manner of jewelled pheasant have you lured to our coop?"
Qiu Zhenzhen executed a Ming-court curtsy, metropolitan poise disarming. "Auntie, I am his—"
"Agricultural consultant!" Xu Ling interjected.
"—humble acolyte of countryside gastronomy," she pirouetted through the lie. "Xu Ling claims your braised pork possesses necromantic virtues."
Wang's flinty demeanour fissured. Culinary vanity proved an ancestral weakness.
As twilight gilded the courtyard, Qiu Zhenzhen exchanged stilettos for woven grass sandals, her laughter harmonizing with brooding hens. Xu Ling observed, torn between reluctant admiration and gathering dread—for beyond the paddies, cumulonimbus armies massed, bearing Li Guanglong's Gulfstream and paparazzi drones.
Somewhere in the mulberry groves, a child's smartphone vibrated—innocent thumbs hovering over "Celestial Goddess Descends Upon Podunk" draft. The fragile armistice balanced on a digital precipice.
Lunar Whispers and Earthbound Truths
"This countenance... it haunts my memory's periphery." Wang Huifen circled Qiu Zhenzhen like a predator assessing quarry, flour-streaked hands fluttering like wounded doves. Recognition erupted with peasant theatricality. "Celestial mercy! The silver-screen deity incarnate!"
Li Ruoxue propelled her wheelchair with Paralympic fervour, eyes blazing with supernova intensity. "Divine Sister! Was Yu Yingdi's rain-soaked kiss truly method acting?" Her whisper carried the fervency of clandestine shrine offerings.
Xu Ling shielded his eyes as the actress transmuted his pragmatic sister into fangirl quintessence. Even Li Ruoya's customarily stoic mien betrayed vestigial mortification.
"I am 'Zhen's True Heart'—your original disciple from the catacomb days!" Li Ruoxue's disclosure detonated twin crescendos of euphoria. The woman's embrace echoed war-torn reunions, stranding Xu Ling in masculine bewilderment.
The evening feast unfolded as agrarian opera—crisp river prawns glistening like amber artefacts, steamed buns swelling like cumulus clouds. Qiu Zhenzhen devoured rustic fare with Bacchanalian zeal. "These crustaceans pirouette on the palate!" Her encomium transformed Wang Huifen's careworn visage into a field of sunflowers tracking daylight.
Postprandial, the starlet commanded nocturnal perambulation. Cicadas conducted lunar sonatas as they traversed paddies silvered like ancestral mirrors. "This shall be my geriatric sanctuary," Qiu Zhenzhen decreed, reclining in wild grasses with aristocratic disregard for couture linen. "Cultivate turnips and incinerate premiere invitations."
The witching hour's return laid bare domestic veracities. The farmstead's triad of chambers gaped in unvarnished candour. "Where lodges the celestial visitor?" Qiu Zhenzhen's arched brow surveyed earthen floors and patched quilts, whispering peasant histories.
Xu Ling gestured toward his sanctum—an anchorite's cell papered with agricultural prophecies. "My pallet awaits. I'll stand sentinel like Forbidden City guardians."
The pepper spray nestled in her clutch like a miniature grenade now reeked of absurdity. As night's loom wove cricket chorales through rice-paper panes, dual cosmoses collided in the protesting bedframe—one redolent of Parisian perfumeries, the other of sun-scorched haylofts.
Beyond the sty's odorous confines, Li Ruoxue's smartphone glowed with damning footage—Qiu Zhenzhen's chlorophyll-stained mirth immortalized for five million acolytes. The "Transmit" icon pulsed like a traitorous carotid, its decisive click tolling the armistice's death knell.
Dawn's Discord and Matriarchal Intrigues
Defying Qiu Zhenzhen's anticipations, Xu Ling's quarters radiated ascetic discipline—no trace of masculine effluvium, bedding regimented into origami-like perfection.
"My thanks," she breathed, mace canister clutched like a sacred relic as she approached the chaste linens.
"Why persist?" Her interrogative arch of a brow demanded justification.
"Anopheles legions besiege beyond these ramparts," Xu Ling proclaimed, collapsing onto the oaken slab. "Morpheus claims his due." Fabricated snores resonated within moments.
Qiu Zhenzhen stood transfixed. Leaning closer, she discerned the metronomic cadence of his respiration. "Does my allure truly falter?" Her murmur carried wounded pride as she inventoried her arsenal—ivory décolletage, limbs honed by metropolitan rigour.
Daybreak's assault arrived via relentless electronic carillons. Qiu Zhenzhen's matutinal temperament manifested fully, swaddled in quilts like a rebellious chrysalis.
Xu Ling, ensnared in a somnolent haze, intercepted the device. "She dreams. Recall lat—"
"WHAT PRESUMPTUOUS CUR ANSWERS MY CHILD'S SUMMONS?" The maternal timbre could've cracked celadon. "ARE YOU ZHENZHEN'S CLANDESTINE SUITOR?"
The "Imperial Matriarch" caller ID scorched Xu Ling's palm like illicit incense. Qiu Zhenzhen levitated from her bed, and her oculars widened to lunar dimensions.
"Years?" The inquisition commenced. "Ancestral provenance? Nuptial stratagems? Familial audiences—"
"Esteemed Mother," Xu Ling interposed with ceremonial gravity, "Your daughter's virtue remains inviolate... presently."
Euphoric ululations pierced the ether. "O filial paragon! Jiangnan's banquet tables groan, awaiting your presence!"
Qiu Zhenzhen crumpled onto the heated *kang*, mental broadsheets screaming: **"Cinematic Divinity Shackled to Agrarian Vows."
"Breach my boundaries anew," she seethed, jade-carved talons grazing Xu Ling's carotid, "and I'll recompose you into avant-garde sculpture."
Beyond rice-paper panes, Li Ruoxue's device vibrated—fresh footage now trending: *"Pastorale Paramour Captivates Nation's Muse."* The digital maelstrom brewed as dawn's cockerel chorus heralded pandemonium.
Tempests of Deceit and Gilded Retribution
The agent's edict arrived as an imperial summons. Qiu Zhenzhen lingered at the village periphery, its bucolic tranquillity clinging to her spirit like gossamer cobwebs, before obligation's manacles wrenched her back to the electric purgatory of urbanity.
Xu Ling escorted her to the Nile Hotel's gilded prison. Their haven fractured before the door's latch clicked—fists pounded oak like tribal war drums, accompanied by a blade-sharp screech: "Vile succubus! Present yourself for divine reckoning!"
Qiu Zhenzhen unbarred the portal to confront a human typhoon—a matron drowning in vulgar gilt, her coiffure resembling an electrocuted bouffant. The termagant lunged, talons aimed at Qiu Zhenzhen's onyx cascade.
Xu Ling intercepted the assault with serpentine precision. "Desist this mummery," he intoned, spiritual energy glaciating the atmosphere. The assailant's venomous tongue petrified mid-curse, bravado crumbling beneath ancestral dread.
"Her paramour?" The harridan revived enough to sneer, jade-bangled fingers sketching obscene glyphs. "You'll contract this harlot's pestilence!"
Qiu Zhenzhen's gaze flickered with arcane warnings. "Parley within?" she proposed, noting the gathering carrion crowd.
The perm-crowned fury morphed into a barnacle adhered to the doorframe. "I'll bellow constabulary oppression!" Her theatrics veiled furtive signals toward a potted areca palm—where a verminous paparazzo crouched, camera whirring like mechanical cicadas.
Xu Ling's cultivation-sharpened perception pierced the subterfuge. He traversed the corridor in three panther strides, aura blazing. "Relinquish your apparatus."
The photographer's sphincter nearly failed. The Leica clattered against Carrara marble as Xu Ling's thunderous imperative dissolved his resolve.
Within the suite's confines, the gilded shrew ululated operatically. "She's hexed my consort! Pilfered his—"
"Pilfered his what?" Xu Ling icily interposed, brandishing damning negatives: the crone accepting cash from Li Chao's factotum outside a rub-and-tug emporium. "Shall we peruse *your* extracurricular portfolios?"
The harridan's bluster collapsed like a soufflé at high altitude. Qiu Zhenzhen observed this unmasking with Sphinx-like poise. "Inform Li Chao his extortion coffers require replenishment."
As the routed conspirators slithered away, Xu Ling noted Qiu Zhenzhen's tremor-suppressed fingers. Aeons of such skirmishes had armoured her psyche, yet each fresh onslaught etched invisible hieroglyphs of weariness.
"Why martyr yourself to this inferno?" he murmured, unanticipated protectiveness constricting his diaphragm.
She traced the skyline's jagged silhouette through ballistic glass. "The loftier the plinth", she whispered, "the sweeter the desecration." Her smile glittered with the razor-edged beauty of pulverised crystal.
Beyond the minibar's lacquered confines, Li Chao's operatives relayed defeat. The campaign for China's cinematic deity had merely inaugurated fresh battle lines.
Illusions of Betrayal and the Sovereign's Verdict
"N-not my design!" The photographer cringed on the Persian rug, perspiration pooling beneath his vulpine features. "Merely a paid pawn! The apparatus is yours—grant me exodus!"
Xu Ling hauled the tremulous man into the suite by his scruff, his aura exuding primal dominance—a jungle monarch toying with cornered jackals.
Qiu Zhenzhen lounged upon the damask chaise, scrutinizing the captives with glacial sovereignty. "Li Chao's marionettes, undoubtedly?" Her tone dripped imperial disdain, transmuting the suite into a hall of judgement.
A renewed percussion fractured the stillness. Through the fisheye lens, Xu Ling discerned Li Chao's porcine smirk, clutching calla lilies like funerary tributes.
Qiu Zhenzhen ascended, barring the portal with regal composure. "Persisting with desiccated blooms and hollow entreaties, *Professor* Li?"
The magnate's grin ossified. "Now, Zhenzhen, my consort, erred! Allow reparations—a Delvaux masterpiece? Goyard's autumn collection—"
"Reserve your mildewed courtship manual for greener prey." Her chuckle resonated with permafrost chill. "Even courtesans scorn such antiquated gambits."
The tycoon's jowls engorged with apoplectic rage. He flourished a platinum card like a crusader's relic. "Two hundred thousand for Twilight's veil! Munificent for seasoned merchandise, no?"
A kinetic blur—Xu Ling's fist cratered Li Chao's paunch. The oligarch accordioned mid-air, trajectory arrested by marble's unyielding embrace three metres hence.
The bouffant-clad spouse observed, bitter vindication contorting her features. "He begrudged my brother's chemotherapy thrice this sum." Her whisper was freighted with decades of perfidy.
Qiu Zhenzhen slid the fallen card toward the woman with a porcelain fingertip. "Your lord's tarnished lucre. The cypher likely commemorates his paramour's nativity."
Xu Ling loomed over the mewling Li Chao. "Vermin". His kick fractured a rib—karmic recompense for the maidens this prowler had defiled.
Qiu Zhenzhen studied her champion's wrath, an unfamiliar warmth blossoming beneath her sternum. The agrarian innocent now personified retributive fury—a paladin swathed in pastoral simplicity.
As Li Chao's stertorous breaths reverberated through the corridor, the spouse secured the card with epiphanic resolve. "Annulment decrees shall grace his desk by matins."
Xu Ling pivoted, intercepting Qiu Zhenzhen's unshielded gaze—a transient fissure in the snow queen's carapace. Betwixt vengeance and vulnerability, a silent pact crystallized.
The Nile Hotel's chandeliers shimmered overhead, their Baccarat teardrops bearing witness to deposed despots and nascent coalitions. The entertainment world's chessboard had toppled its most corpulent pawn.
Elegy of the Orchard and the Tenacity of Roots
Xu Ling's return to Xujia Village was met with a cacophony of village elders and matrons, their voices overlapping in urgent cadence. "Your orchards—pillaged under night's cloak!" one matron lamented, twisting her apron into knots. "A hundred saplings vanished, roots torn from their earthly cradle!"
"Phantom thieves wielding dark sorcery," another interjected, gesturing skyward. "Your mother's voice has echoed through the dawn at the village crossroads."
Beneath the ancient willow's weeping boughs, Wang Huifen stood as a tragic muse—eyes inflamed, shoulders quivering, encircled by a chorus of feigned solace and veiled mockery.
"Mother," Xu Ling murmured, steadying her trembling form. "What blight has befallen our groves?"
Wang Huifen's restraint dissolved anew. "Soulless marauders!" she thundered, voice frayed by hours of righteous fury. "They've ripped our sustenance from Gaia's breast!"
Xu Ling drew her close, his serenity a balm to her tempest. "The soil guards its stolen secrets. Allow me to decipher its silent lament."
As Wang retreated toward hearth and home, dignity partially restored, Xu Ling advanced upon the violated orchards. A murmuring throng parted like reeds before a river's current—some bearing sympathy's torch, others nursing schadenfreude's bitter draught.
Xu Dong slumped against a lichen-stained plinth, a rusted spade across his lap like a fallen standard. "Two harvests' wages—gone with the midnight wind," he groaned, avoiding Xu Ling's piercing gaze. "The irrigation trenches we carved... now are but scars upon wasted earth."
The arrival of a patrol car hushed the crowd; its siren's wail yielded to two officers whose starched uniforms outshone the villagers' threadbare hopes.
"Who summoned the law's hand?"
Xu Dong scrambled forth, presenting Zhonghua cigarettes as votive offerings. "Noble guardians, our plundered saplings—"
The policemen's brows arched at the luxury brand. "Reveal this violated sanctuary."
Their polished boots crunched through ravaged soil. "A surgeon's precision," the senior officer observed, eyeing root cavities sharper than scythes. "No peasant's tool wrought this devastation."
Xu Ling knelt, fingertips grazing a severed radicle. His spiritual consciousness unfurled—the earth's memory pulsed with diesel's acrid breath and avarice's stench.
"They came cloaked in machinery's roar," he proclaimed, rising with pantherine grace. "Three shadows. One reeks of Golden Deer's noxious fumes."
The crowd erupted in susurrus as Xu Dong's eyes kindled. "Old Zhang's progeny! That wastrel stinks of those vile sticks!"
Xu Ling's gaze pierced the horizon's veil. "Harness the tractors. We reclaim our stolen legacy ere dusk descends."
As villagers scattered like sycamore leaves before autumn's breath, the junior officer pocketed his ledger. "This transcends mortal jurisprudence," he confided to his comrade. "That youth communes with terran spirits and mortal souls alike."
The orchards' violated rows seemed to stand taller under Xu Ling's vigil—a sovereign surveying ravaged dominions. Beyond the terraced slopes, engines growled their challenge to the fading light.
Shadows of Deceit and the Serpent's Trail
The enigma gnawed at Xu Ling's intuition—such audacious plunder should have stirred the village's slumbering vigilance, yet the sentinel hounds had maintained conspiratorial silence throughout the fateful night.
Xu Dong lingered at his flank, voice frayed with remorse. "We uncovered the desolation at first light—over a hundred arboreal sentinels vanished as if swallowed by the earth itself. What phantasmal hands could execute such sorcery?"
The constables' fruitless inquiry concluded with bureaucratic evasion. "This matter ascends to higher authorities," declared the senior officer, snapping his ledger shut like a judge's gavel. Their retreating patrol car left unanswered enigmas swirling in its wake.
At the gathering's periphery, Li Goudan's smirk festered—a venomous blossom amidst the communal furor. "Let the golden child posture as investigator," he sneered, edging toward the hamlet's fringe. "His precious grove now graces the magistrate's private Eden."
Xu Hai observed the weasel-faced traitor's furtive departure, his peasant's instinct sounding silent alarms. "I shall track this viper," he murmured to Xu Ling before melding into the mulberry grove's penumbra.
The villagers' conjectures swelled into a discordant symphony of rustic deduction:
"Mechanical behemoths!" Old Chen asserted, labour-worn hands pantomiming industrial claws. "No mortal tools wrought this devastation!"
"Dark arts!" Widow Zhang countered, sketching protective sigils in the air. "Li Goudan was seen trafficking with that sightless seer from—"
Xu Ling's gaze traversed the violated orchard—once regimented rows now gaped like a crone's ravaged smile. His spiritual senses tingled with residual malice, yet the soil's memory remained obstinately veiled.
Meanwhile, Xu Hai's pursuit wound through serpentine footpaths to Li Village's outskirts. The cloying stench of diesel and fresh cambium guided him to a walled demesne where uprooted saplings stood at martial attention, their roots swaddled in Xujia's signature burlap shrouds.
As twilight's mantle descended, Xu Ling's mobile device vibrated—a grainy image from Xu Hai revealed Li Goudan accepting blood money from a bureaucrat's gloved grasp. The caption hissed: *magistrate's retreat requires instant arboreal grandeur.
Xu Ling addressed the assembled throng, his timbre resonating with glacial certainty. "The earth surrenders its secrets grudgingly—yet surrender them it must."
In gathering shadows, Li Goudan's trembling digits stabbed at his phone. "They approach! Remove the evidence ere—"
The connection was severed. Beyond the county's edge, chainsaws snarled to unholy life.
Xu Ling's final pronouncement lingered in the crepuscular air: "In our soil, truth germinates—tonight, we reap justice's bitter harvest."
The village hounds, complicit sentinels of the night's treachery, finally raised their muzzles in an elegiac chorus.
Harvesting Storms and Gaia's Reckoning
Xu Hai's pursuit wove through adjacent hamlets to desolate hinterlands, where Li Goudan conspired with a stooped conspirator beneath barren sentinel trees. The accomplice's claw-like digits gestured toward an untilled expanse—rows of listless saplings stood at attention, their foliage sagging like surrendered pennants.
"By the celestial forge—our arboreal progeny!" Xu Hai stifled his outrage, recognizing the telltale grafting scars adorning each trunk. He chronicled the betrayal through quivering lenses, immortalizing Li Goudan's avaricious parley with Liang Xiaoyong—the magistrate's serpentine emissary.
The return pilgrimage to Xujia Village became an odyssey of righteous fury. Xu Hai erupted into the council chamber, drenched in perspiration and vindictive triumph. "Our grove's essence survives—transplanted in Li Village's purloined earth!"
Xu Ling scrutinized the visual testament—Li Goudan's rat-like visage aglow with cupidity as Liang tallied bloodstained banknotes. "Even carrion leaves its stench," he murmured, spiritual currents coiling like awakened asps.
The village chief's gavel struck teak with apocalyptic resonance. "This sacrilege demands cosmic adjudication!" His wrath sprang not from moral compunction but from the affront of plundered prosperity thriving in rival territory.
Matinal rays revealed Li Goudan manacled within the patrol vehicle's steel womb, his protests drowned by the villagers' derisive chorus. "Contrition purifies the spirit!" Xu Hai intoned through barred windows, savouring karmic symmetry.
The reclamation ritual unfolded with hieratic gravity—commune members disinterred their arboreal kin with mortuary reverence. Twice uprooted in fate's cruel jest, the saplings' trembling leaves whispered arboreal laments.
"Shall autumn's bounty grace these wounded sentinels?" Xu Dong enquired, patting the loam around a quivering trunk.
Xu Ling pressed his palm to the traumatized cambium. "Gaia's offspring bear ancient resilience," he proclaimed, auric filaments mending ravaged rhizomes. "Their blossoms shall eclipse the thieves' infamy."
As the final sapling resumed its ancestral post, horizon-bound thunder growled—nature's ovation for restored balance. Within the county jail's bowels, Li Goudan's interrogation cell flooded with phantom citrus fragrance—an olfactory phantom destined to haunt his carceral nights.
The groves stood realigned, their phalanxes flawless save symbolic gaps where retribution took root. Xu Ling traversed the revitalized orchard at gloaming, his elongated shadow a spectral guardian over reconsecrated soil.
Reckoning's Dawn and the Orchard's Covenant
Xu Hai surveyed the languishing saplings with funereal gloom, while Xu Ling's lips curved in cryptic assurance. "Resignation ill-suits cultivators—dawn may yet resurrect these arboreal warriors."
The villagers murmured in superstitious awe. To them, Xu Ling had transcended mortal bounds—a deity conjuring ambrosial fruits from common soil, bending seasons to his will.
By dusk's gilded hour, Liang Xiaoyong joined Li Goudan in custody. The revelation of their nocturnal heist—aided by eight mercenary villagers—unfolded during a humiliating reenactment beneath the orchards' skeletal remains.
"They came like grave-robbers," Li Goudan confessed, jabbing a finger at the ashen-faced accomplices. "Three hundred yuan per desecrated root!"
The accused elders squirmed under communal glares. "He claimed… temporary landscaping work!" one stammered, crimson staining his leathery cheeks.
"Labour deserves compensation—no crime in that!" retorted the ringleader's son, chin jutted in defiance.
Xu Ling's gaze settled on the defiant youth, eyes flickering with pensive sorrow. Prosperity's mantle, he realized, could not cloak moral gangrene.
Post-interrogation, Xu Ling addressed the throng with a storm-laden visage. "Yu Enterprises inaugurates a new emporium—our orchards' bounty shall grace its crystal displays. I offer saplings and sacred cultivation rites to all…"
A jubilant chorus erupted before he concluded. "Forty yuan per *jin*!" cried a grandmother, calculating on arthritic fingers. "My grandson's bride price secured!"
"…save those who traffic with despoilers," Xu Ling's addendum fell like a headsman's axe.
The excluded clique howled in indignation. "Collective prosperity demands collective inclusion!"
"In my youth, such favouritism warranted struggle sessions!"
Xu Ling's laughter rang cold as temple bells. "I am no practitioner of saintly forgiveness. Let Li Goudan fund your retirement."
As dissenters slunk away, the remaining villagers swore blood oaths of loyalty. Youths kowtowed in symbolic fealty; elders burned juniper branches to sanctify their pact.
Under the gibbous moon's watch, Xu Ling anointed chosen farmers with springwater from the ancestral well. "These saplings bear dual roots—one in soil, one in honour. Betray either, and the earth itself shall disown you."
The excluded faction watched from shadowed eaves, their envy curdling into venom. Somewhere beyond the terraces, Li Goudan's interrogation cell filled with the perfume of ripening peaches—a taunting mirage to accompany his life sentence.
The orchards' violated rows now stood replanted, their gaps filled with saplings staked like votive offerings. Xu Ling walked the rejuvenated groves, his shadow merging with the moon's silvery vigil—a living covenant between mortal ambition and the land's ancient patience.
Scourged Fruits and Arboreal Rebirth
The dissenters' indignation fulminated like a noxious miasma. "By what celestial mandate do you enrich some while condemning others?" Xu Dajiao hissed, his Machiavellian instincts igniting insurrection. "Does a single trespass doom us to perpetual indigence?"
His vitriol infected the guilty coterie. "Are we not equal villagers?" a matron shrieked, emboldened by mob frenzy. "Who anointed you cosmic arbiter of destinies?"
Xu Ling's rebuttal cleaved the discord. "The alchemical accelerant is my hermetic dominion. Replicate it at your leisure—provided your morals match your avarice."
Undeterred, Xu Dajiao fanned embers of dissent. "This despotism fragments our communal tapestry! Who pledges fealty to a capricious overlord?"
"Communal tapestry?" Xu Hai barked mirthlessly. "You auctioned our collective soul for Judas' silver!"
Xu Dong's arctic gaze traversed the malefactors. "Were I steward of these groves, you'd till barren wastes beyond civilization's fringe."
The village chief manifested as an incarnate tribunal, his habitual equanimity supplanted by oracular authority. "Xu Dajiao—your ledger of transgressions haemorrhages! Xu Ling's munificence is not communal chattel for pillage!"
The assembly petrified beneath this hieratic judgement. Agrarians exchanged tremulous murmurs—their meek chieftain now exuded imperial majesty.
"Hearken well," the chief intoned, voice resonating like a jade gavel. "Thwart Xu Ling's vision henceforth, and your lineage shrines shall moulder in oblivion's granary!"
Xu Dajiao's desperation metastasized into delirium. "Blind allegiance grants him elixir's yoke!" His talons snagged at retreating sleeves. "We must revolt—"
"Desist your demented histrionics." Xu Ling's laconic decree petrified the rabble. "Penitence might have salvaged redemption. Instead, you brandish emotional extortion as a cudgel."
Xu Dong interposed himself as a living bulwark. "Our sylvan fellowship brooks no self-engorged asps. You are self-excommunicated."
The cabal's cohesion disintegrated. Vitriolic stares converged on Xu Dajiao as kin recoiled—his sire dragged him by the auricle like an errant urchin.
"Blasted scion!" The patriarch's spittle pearled on Xu Dajiao's ashen cheek. "Your serpent's tongue cost eight bloodlines their gilded inheritance!"
Xu Ling observed the dynastic collapse with an augur's detachment. The culprits—scions of Xu Dajiao's blighted family tree—now thrashed in reciprocal condemnation.
As the disgraced cadre slunk toward oblivion's hinterlands, their elongated shadows clawed at the receding light. Xu Ling turned to the faithful remnant, elevating a jade phial that captured dusk's last radiance.
"At morrow's first light, we consecrate new progeny. Let their taproots intertwine our fates beyond mere consanguinity."
The elected villagers prostrated in spontaneous veneration, brows caressing hallowed loam. Behind them, the expiring sun drowned beneath the purloined orchard's silhouette—a final pyre consumed by the land's eternal covenant.
To be continuous…