Chapter 034: I Don’t Want to Die the Same Year, Month, and Day as You

Chapter 034: I Don’t Want to Die the Same Year, Month, and Day as You

This was the real reason Wu Chen had pulled Lu Guangnian aside for a private word.

Otherwise there was nothing left to say. He’d already told him what needed telling; the rest, Lu Guangnian could dig up on his own. One more paternity test with the boy would lay the truth bare—Wu Chen didn’t need to say another word about it.

He’d come out here for one reason alone: to tell Lu Guangnian that his line hadn’t ended after all.

The injury that had left him unable to father children had happened when he was twenty-six. Before that, he’d been a strong, healthy man. Of course he could have had a child.

Across a thousand years of looping, Wu Chen had investigated more people than he could count, uncovered more secrets than any one man should know, learned the full weight of more private histories than he could number. It left him, often, with the same quiet thought: fate really does love to play tricks on people.

Lovers who turned out to be siblings separated at birth.

A hit-and-run driver who killed someone in the middle of the night, only to discover the victim was his own father.

Babies switched at the hospital, so that the child meant for poverty grew up rich, and the child meant for wealth lived worse than a dog.

Too many cases like that to count.

One thing was worth noting, though.

He hadn’t found Ma Huifang through Lu Guangnian at all.

Wu Chen had spent so long mapping people’s relationship networks that, over time, those separate webs had begun to overlap—strangers linked to strangers through some shared connection, until it all became one enormous net.

He’d found Ma Huifang because of her son, Ma Jiawei.

Ma Jiawei was thirty-two, held a master’s degree, and worked at Donghai Shanguang Technology Group as head of the technical department.

Shanguang’s owner, Zou Hai, was fifty—one of the country’s earliest programmers, a former hacker, a genuine heavyweight in the field.

Wu Chen had come across him during a stretch of time he’d spent studying programming, back when he considered his own skills sharp enough to go looking for someone to test himself against.

He’d sought out Zou Hai first.

And that was how he’d discovered the real prodigy working under him: Ma Jiawei. His skills had already surpassed his mentor’s—which was exactly how he’d become an executive at a listed company by thirty-two.

Wanting to meet him within a single day, Wu Chen had gone digging.

What he found surprised him: Ma Jiawei carried his mother’s surname. No father listed anywhere.

While tracing Ma Huifang, Wu Chen worked backward from the boy’s birth date, subtracting the ten months of pregnancy to pin down when she’d conceived.

Eventually, from an old neighbor, he got the name of her first boyfriend—Lu Guangnian.

The name of Lu Guangnian, chairman of Juli Group, wasn’t the kind of thing an ordinary person would recognize easily.

To most people, the wealthy they could actually name were either the country’s top handful of tycoons or whoever ranked first in their own city. Even second place rarely registered.

People knew company names, not the men behind them. There were simply too many rich men in the world, and the ordinary person could name only the ones who kept turning up in the news—a small handful.

Stop someone on the street and ask them to name the ten richest people in their own city, and most couldn’t manage even one.

But Wu Chen had already finished investigating Lu Guangnian long before this. At first, hearing the name again, he’d assumed it was simple coincidence.

Digging deeper, though, he found it wasn’t a coincidence at all.

Ma Jiawei’s biological father was Lu Guangnian himself—the real estate magnate of Donghai.

…

“I… she… a son… you…” Lu Guangnian stared at him, stunned past speech, unable to string together a single full sentence.

“Your granddaughter turns five this year,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“She—is this true? You’re not lying to me? Xiaofang, she had a child, back then, she—” His breath came hard and ragged, as if he couldn’t quite pull in enough air.

It was the sound of a man on the verge of coming apart with feeling.

“Why would I lie to you?” Wu Chen kept his smile easy. “Your son turned out well. Very well. His mother raised him right. And your granddaughter’s a sweet kid too—you’ll probably like her the moment you meet her. She’s right at that troublemaking age.”

Lu Guangnian pressed a hand to his forehead and dragged it back through his hair.

He paced a few steps, breathing harder now, caught somewhere between disbelief, wild excitement, dread, and the fear that none of it was real.

Wu Chen pulled out his phone and typed quickly with one hand.

“What’s his name? What’s my son’s name?” Lu Guangnian stepped toward him again.

“Ma Jiawei. Took his mother’s name,” Wu Chen said, eyes on the screen as he hit send.

Ding.

Lu Guangnian’s phone chimed. He didn’t seem to hear it—and wouldn’t have looked even if he had.

“She never married? All these years?” Lu Guangnian pressed, tense.

“No. She raised him alone after he was born. You hurt her badly enough that she stopped trusting men altogether, it seems, and never let anyone else in… It was hard on her, those years. A woman raising a child by herself, working while she raised him, taking whatever looks people gave her, sometimes juggling more than one job at once. But the hard years are behind her now.”

Wu Chen went on. “Your son makes good money these days, so Ma Huifang doesn’t have to struggle anymore. She’s finally living well.”

“Where are they? Where is she?” Lu Guangnian pushed a step closer.

“Right here in Donghai,” Wu Chen said. “Check your phone—I just sent you both their address and number. Go find them if you want. But prepare yourself first.”

Lu Guangnian could barely wait long enough to pull his phone out and open the message.

“Ma Huifang never left the city. There may have been a stretch of time when she didn’t know where you’d gone, but once you made your name, she knew—everyone knew you were getting richer by the year. And still, she never once came looking for you.”

He lifted his eyes slowly from the screen.

Wu Chen held his gaze. “Whatever you two once felt for each other, she hates you in equal measure now. You have money, plenty of it, but their lives aren’t hard anymore. They don’t need anything from you.”

Lu Guangnian’s eyes drifted out of focus, as if he’d sunk into some memory.

“Boss Lu, we should head back in. Everyone’s waiting.” Wu Chen checked his watch.

Lu Guangnian came back to himself.

Wu Chen had already turned toward the restaurant.

Lu Guangnian hurried to catch up, dropping his voice. “Brother—brother, don’t go yet. Tell me more—”

“You can find out the rest yourself. Once you see them, most of what’s still bothering you will answer itself,” Wu Chen said without turning around.

They walked back into the restaurant together.

Lu Guangnian headed upstairs; Wu Chen turned toward Li Ruobing’s table.

The moment he stepped inside, he noticed two middle-aged men standing beside her, apparently exchanging pleasantries. It seemed that in the short time he’d been gone, another pair had stopped by to say hello.

“Boss Lu, I’ll head over there,” Wu Chen said, about to walk off.

But Lu Guangnian caught his hand and pulled him close, leaning in as if to whisper something private—the sort of gesture that made onlookers assume the two of them shared no ordinary bond.

“You’d better not be lying to me. You know what happens if you are,” Lu Guangnian murmured. He was too afraid, still, that it might not be true.

“And if I’m not?” Wu Chen asked back, faintly amused.

“Then you’re my sworn brother—the kind men burn yellow paper for,” Lu Guangnian said.

“Ah.” Wu Chen gave a short cough. “Let’s not. You’re getting on in years. I don’t want to die the same year, month, and day as you.”

Lu Guangnian finally let go and hurried upstairs.

Wu Chen straightened his jacket and walked toward Li Ruobing. A few steps in, he stopped short, a little surprised—the two men at her table were somewhat… particular.

One was Mu Sihai, chairman of Mu Biopharmaceutical Group, the reigning name in Donghai’s pharmaceutical industry.

The other was Wan Jianmin, chairman of Donghai Wanmin Biochemical Group—a supply partner of Huancai Fashion.

In other words: Mu Qianqian’s father—and the father of Wan Li, that little traitor of a best friend of hers.

What made it particular was that Wu Chen had slept with Mu Qianqian only yesterday.