Chapter 406: Your Brother Is a Heaven-Blessed Genius!

Chapter 406: Your Brother Is a Heaven-Blessed Genius!

Wu Jiao stared at him again.

He had admitted it.

If Wu Chen alone had claimed it, she wouldn’t have believed a word. But it hadn’t come from him. It had come from An Menglan herself. Outrageous as it sounded, that made it extremely credible.

Wu Jiao thought back.

Morning Mist’s voice, his timbre… really did sound like her brother.

The song was full of falsetto and had an opera-style vocal passage, but there were parts sung in his natural voice too.

Chen Xue had already pulled out her own phone and opened her music app. The last thing she’d been playing was “Antidote for the Soul,” on repeat, so she simply hit play.

They listened.

Her earphones were still plugged in from before.

She leaned forward and tucked one earbud into Wu Jiao’s ear.

They listened together.

And stared at Wu Chen together.

Before, hearing it blind, Wu Jiao might only have thought the singer sounded like her brother. Now she was certain.

It was his voice.

Her brother was Morning Mist.

In truth, she had believed it the moment An Menglan said so. An Menglan had no reason to lie to her. It was just so hard to take in that she needed to confirm it again and again.

“Your brother has more musical talent than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s as if he was born for music…” An Menglan’s voice came from the phone.

She had been watching Wu Jiao’s reaction over the video the whole time and judged that she could speak now.

Wu Jiao came to and looked at the screen.

“R-really…?” she stammered.

“Really.” An Menglan smiled. “That’s why I asked him to write songs for me. Oh, right… Miss Wu, don’t you live in Donghai?”

“Huh?” Wu Jiao didn’t know why she’d suddenly asked that, but answered anyway. “No. I live with my parents down in the county. My brother works in Donghai. I came to see him today…”

“That explains it.” An Menglan seemed to understand, and smiled again. “I was still in Donghai at noon today. I had lunch with your brother and only went back to Modu this afternoon… Maybe he just hadn’t had a chance to tell you. If you’d come to Donghai a couple of days earlier, we might even have met.”

She was also helping explain, on Wu Chen’s behalf, why he’d never mentioned something this big to his family.

“You were in Donghai at noon, Miss An? Having lunch with my brother?” Two questions in a row.

“Yes.” An Menglan smiled.

For the next few minutes, Wu Jiao, having recovered somewhat, peppered her with questions, mostly about Wu Chen. An Menglan gave her the simple version: she had been in Donghai for several days, Wu Chen had written eight songs for her, and so on.

“…Miss Wu, the details of my new album are still confidential, so it’s best you don’t share them,” An Menglan remembered to add.

“Definitely, definitely.” Wu Jiao nodded like a chick pecking at grain.

Five minutes later.

“…Miss An, when are you coming to Donghai next?” Wu Jiao was still asking. She wanted to meet her idol in person.

“Hmm…” An Menglan considered, then smiled. “Hard to say. I don’t have any plans yet.”

“That’s enough now. Miss An still has to eat,” Wu Chen said suddenly, giving his sister a look.

“Then…” Wu Jiao glanced at him, then back at the screen.

“Then I’ll let you go, Miss An. I’m so happy I got to talk to you. Really, really happy. Thank you… and sorry for keeping you so long.” Her face went red again. She really was a considerate girl.

“Not at all. It was no trouble,” An Menglan said with a smile.

“Do you… want to say a few more words to my brother…?” Wu Jiao held the phone out to Wu Chen.

Driving one-handed, Wu Chen took it, tapped “switch to voice,” and lifted it to his ear with a smile. “Thanks for that, Miss An.”

“You’re still saying that to me?” An Menglan said softly, a little reproachful at how polite he was being.

They had slept together only yesterday, and today he was this formal. She knew he was putting on an act in front of his sister, but she couldn’t resist saying something.

“Ha.” Wu Chen laughed.

“Your sister’s very pretty. Quite adorable, too,” she said.

“Her? You just haven’t seen how cheeky she gets with me.” He laughed.

They traded a few more idle lines and hung up.

The moment he lowered the phone, Wu Jiao, who had been staring at him the whole time, opened her mouth. She wanted to ask something, but for a moment nothing came out.

There was far, far too much to ask.

A few seconds passed.

“Bro! You and An Menglan… you… Is that how you made your money? Writing songs? Is that why you have money now?” She went straight to the most important question.

Exactly what Wu Chen wanted.

In fact, he could easily have kept An Menglan out of it. He could have let his sister assume it was just someone with the same name, and none of this would have happened.

But he had deliberately told her it really was An Menglan.

So that his sister would know how he’d come by his money.

Coming from him, something this outrageous wouldn’t be very convincing.

But once An Menglan herself said they were working together, there was no problem at all.

Far too much of Wu Chen’s life wasn’t fit for his family to know. Ding Ruilong, the Li family, the attempt on his life, the tens of millions and hundreds of millions people had handed him… If his family knew any of that, they’d be worried sick.

His work with An Menglan, though, was exactly the kind of thing it was best for them to know. That money was “clean.”

“That’s right. I wrote eight songs for Miss An, and she paid me eight hundred thousand,” Wu Chen said with a smile. “And that’s just what I’ve been paid so far. There’ll be more from working with her later on…”

“Bro, since when can you write songs? How did I never know?” Wu Jiao asked.

“I only found out this year myself. Your brother’s a heaven-blessed genius. I just never noticed before,” Wu Chen said, half joking.

To her surprise, Wu Jiao found she had no comeback.

He had only just started writing songs and was already working with a superstar of An Menglan’s caliber. If that wasn’t heaven-blessed genius, what was?

Besides, talent didn’t take years to build up. If he said he was a genius, there wasn’t much she could question.

Three minutes later.

South District, the Jinhui Manor villa community.

Wu Chen was driving Li Ruobing’s Bentley, so the barrier at the gate lifted automatically. He drove in, went down to the underground garage, and parked in one of Villa No. 26’s spaces.

Villa No. 26 had three adjoining underground spaces. Behind them stood the villa’s basement security door, which led straight inside.

Wu Chen didn’t have a key to Li Ruobing’s house.

But he knew the code for the fingerprint lock.

Out of the car.

Laden with bags, Wu Chen led the two girls into the villa. All the way, Wu Jiao kept firing questions at him: “What’s An Menglan like in private?” “What’s it like having a meal with An Menglan?”

Before long.

Wu Chen had given the girls a tour of the villa and picked out a room for them.

There were plenty of guest rooms, but the two of them wanted to share. They had grown up together and often slept over at each other’s houses. Best friends sharing a room was perfectly normal for them.

The guest room at the end of the second-floor hallway.

“This one’ll do. You two can stay here tonight.” Wu Chen stood in the doorway and gestured inside.

The girls were already in, tossing their bags onto the bed and looking all around. The guest room was twice the size of the master bedroom in either of their homes. Enormous. It had its own bathroom and a small walk-in closet. The decor ran to cool tones, but it still looked remarkably luxurious and refined.

Not a speck of dust anywhere.

Li Ruobing had hourly cleaners come in regularly.

“Bro, shouldn’t you check with Sis-in-law first? Is it okay for us to just stay here without asking?” Wu Jiao turned back suddenly. She was being considerate, worried Li Ruobing might not like it.

“It’s fine. If you didn’t stay, she’d be upset,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

Since he put it that way, Wu Jiao relaxed.

“Jiaojiao, come look! There’s a walk-in closet in here too…” Chen Xue called.

Wu Jiao started toward her.

She had gone only a few steps when—

Ring, ring…

The phone in her bag.

She stopped, dug it out, glanced at the caller ID, and answered at once. “Mom!”

“You little brat, do you know what time it is? Still not home? Having too much fun to bother, are you?” Zhang Xiujuan was angry from the first word. It was nearly six, and Wu Jiao hadn’t come home or even called.

“Mom, I’m not coming back tonight.”

“Not coming back? Staying at your brother’s? Then why didn’t you call and tell me? You girl…”

“I forgot. Oh, right, Mom, I have to tell you something.” Wu Jiao’s voice suddenly brimmed with excitement. “Mom, guess what! My brother—”

She was about to drop another bombshell about her brother on their mother.