Chapter Ninety-Two: Loving the Aura of the President of the Corporation

Please entrust my son to your care. Then... if there is a chance, I will thank Miss Mai in person again.

The woman’s lips were as red as blood. Her skin was smooth and taut, as if a single pinch would draw water from it. Yet every word she spoke was impeccably courteous, and that only made Mai Xijun feel all the more oppressed.

“If you have matters to attend to, then please go ahead, Madam. Leave this to me and Xiaomai; you needn’t worry.” Before Mai Xijun could say anything, Yu Wensi stepped forward first to see the guest out.

“If anything happens to Lie, let me know at once,” Shen Qian reminded him thoughtfully several times before turning to leave.

“Yes. I will.”

Watching Shen Yiling and Shen Qian depart, Mai Xijun turned back into the bedroom and began caring for Shen Yanlie.

Yu Wensi closed the door behind him. His thoughts drifted far away, then were hastily drawn back.

There were some things he felt he ought to tell Mai Xijun. Only then, to some extent, would she take Shen Yanlie into greater consideration in the future and not be so stubborn in her ways.

“Ahem.” Yu Wen deliberately covered his mouth and coughed lightly. “Um, Xiaomai, I’d like to talk to you alone.”

“I don’t have time right now.” Couldn’t you see? Mai Xijun shot him a glance. Her expression, the words practically written on her forehead, seemed to say: You’re clueless, Yu Wensi.

She did not even bother to distinguish the situation. Shen Yanlie was ill, and his fever had run so high. His body was like a furnace. It was all her fault—her carelessness. If she had believed him sooner, if she had realized earlier that he was not well, she would have taken him to the hospital. He would not be suffering this much now.

And she had also done something heartbreaking and disappointing, something infuriatingly deserving of a beating... though between her and Nian Yuchen, there had been nothing at all.

“You have to have time. It’s about Lie.” Yu Wensi refused to yield, his voice unconsciously turning heavier.

Mai Xijun’s hand, which was tucking the blanket around Shen Yanlie, paused for a moment. Then her movements remained light as she carefully lifted his arm and placed it back beneath the cool summer quilt, covering him properly.

Every gesture was far too tender. So tender that it made it seem as though they were an old married couple, supporting one another, the closest of people, with no secrets hidden between them at all, only mutual understanding and shared devotion.

Yu Wensi sat down on the sofa in the living room after leaving the bedroom. Mai Xijun gently pulled the door nearly shut. She did not want their conversation to disturb Shen Yanlie or affect his rest.

“No need to pour water for me. Don’t bother being polite. If I’m thirsty and you don’t give me water, I’ll get up and find some myself.”

Before Mai Xijun had even reached the refrigerator, Yu Wensi seemed already to have guessed exactly what she was about to do and spoke first.

Mai Xijun paused slightly, no longer entangling herself with him over it, and went to the sofa instead, sitting down opposite him.

Her gaze shifted from the half-closed bedroom door to Yu Wensi.

This man was too bewitching, possessing a face of exquisite beauty and that habitual air of revelry and insolence, as though he feared nothing more than an unsettled world. Yet the sudden gravity and solemnity in him made the matter all the more unfathomable; and at the same time, it conveyed his earnestness. Unlike his former teasing and arrogance toward her, it made her have to reassess him and prepare herself to face him in earnest.

“No matter how much you know of Lie, on the surface or in truth, I have to tell you this: if you are only approaching him with a playful attitude, I advise you to stop now while you still can.”

Mai Xijun almost laughed. The corner of her mouth lifted in a faint curve, but the smile never truly surfaced. She rested a hand against her forehead, then swept the hair that had fallen along one cheek back up and away, brisk and decisive.

“I don’t want to let go.”

Shen Yanlie was too good, and too bad. Like poison, yet fatally attractive, impossible for her to escape and impossible to quit. She wanted to let go, but that was no longer possible.

Yu Wensi silently nodded after hearing this, neither objecting nor fully agreeing, and moved on to the point.

“Twenty-three years ago, your uncle and aunt divorced. Later, Lie was raised by your uncle, while Brother Qian was brought up personally by your aunt. Ten years ago your uncle passed away, leaving Eurasia to be borne by Lie, who was only sixteen or seventeen then. You can never imagine how he got through it all on his own.

“Perhaps to everyone else he seemed like a king, high above the rest. But no one truly knows what he has endured. He is not as dazzling as he appears. He has suffered pain that ordinary people cannot bear, and he has seen the rawest warmth and cruelty in human relations. If someone treats him well, he feels it; if someone treats him badly and uses every method against him, he will spare no cost to trample those who toyed with him beneath his feet.”

Yu Wensi’s tone was calm. Mai Xijun listened in silence, not interrupting him once.

She very much wanted to know, wanted to know about his past. Although she had long ago learned that he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was not at all like those typical idle rich heirs and wastrels. In his legendary half-life, there was too much weight upon his shoulders, so much so that the present him seemed made of steel.

“Why did the person who inherited Eurasia not turn out to be him?”

Mai Xijun lowered her head slightly, her eyelids half-lowered, her brows drawn together.

Yu Wensi naturally knew whom Mai Xijun meant by “him.” So he pressed his lips together, somewhat restless.

“Because that person didn’t like it. Because that person didn’t want it.”

Because Shen Qian’s dream was to become a qualified, outstanding physician. He did not want to give up his dream; it was the desire of his whole life. He would not yield to it. Once he stepped into the abyss of inheriting the family business, there would be no road back. The dream of his entire life would only drift farther and farther away, until in the end it could only remain in his heart, spoken to himself and listened to by himself, when no one else was around.

Mai Xijun suddenly felt her throat go dry, her eyes blur.

Now she understood. She understood why Shen Yanlie had chosen to love her. His dominance over her had gone so far as to make one drink poison to quench thirst, to fish the pond dry. What else could she say? She could only hide beneath his broad wings while using her own not-so-strong strength to shield him as well. She would love him alone, unto death, as her repayment...

“In truth, as long as you know him even a little, you should understand this. Lie bears his mother’s surname. When your uncle and aunt divorced, Lie went with your aunt. It’s just that your aunt favored one person too much, so Lie could only be the one who was not favored...”

As he said this, Yu Wensi himself was moved. He knew those years too well; those scenes were still vivid before his eyes. He had seen with his own eyes how Shen Yiling pushed Shen Yanlie away, thrusting him toward a place that seemed prosperous on the surface but was in fact bottomless. Back then he was far too young, too young to resist, too powerless to resist.

Mai Xijun lifted a hand and passed it beneath her eyelids, but the traces of moisture left behind did not escape Yu Wensi’s eyes.

For a moment, Yu Wensi too fell into deep thought. Shen Yanlie had long been burdened outside with the reputation of being cold, heartless, and ruthless. Yet when the true Shen Yanlie he knew was laid bare before himself and others, he found himself inexplicably moved by him.

He was not a sentimental man. It was simply that the real Shen Yanlie valued loyalty and affection too deeply. Otherwise, he would not have been hurt so badly by Xie Yunting back then. Otherwise, he would not now be telling the woman Shen Yanlie loved about the secrets buried deepest in Shen Yanlie’s heart. As his best friend, the brother he had stood by most loyally in this life, he truly could not bear to see him hurt again in any way.

Shen Yanlie had never liked having his family affairs mentioned. Nearly every time Yu Wensi brought them up, he would be the one to take the blow. But he felt that if the woman before him was truly sincere, then the best thing he had ever done in his life was to tell her these secrets.

Mai Xijun sniffed lightly. She did not know when it had begun, but she had somehow become so sentimental. She had always believed herself to be more rational than emotional, above everything else.

“I think this is quite good,” Mai Xijun said with a smile.

For a moment, Yu Wensi seemed not to understand what she meant. After a sudden pause, his face darkened. “Mai Xijun, has your conscience been eaten by a dog?”

He imitated the way Shen Yanlie often said that line, his eyes blazing with fury as he glared viciously at her. What was she doing? Acting foolishly? Why on earth did he have the illusion that she should not be such a person?

Mai Xijun only smiled and said nothing. She smoothed her hair and let out a soft breath.

“Of course I think it’s good. Otherwise, without his Eurasia background, he would not have had such a coincidence of appearing in Italy. He would not have appeared at the jewelry exhibition, and even less would he have appeared in my world. I like him precisely because his brilliance makes me look at him; precisely because his dominance and wild arrogance make every moment of my humiliation and embarrassment instantly raise all my vanity in love to its peak.”

Precisely because he was a man rich enough to rival a nation, able to do whatever he pleased to her, she had been forced to yield beneath his overwhelming power.

If he had not been the president of Eurasia, he would not have been hunted. He would not have hidden in her room in Venice to avoid suspicion and climbed into her bed.

If he had not been the president of Eurasia, merely an ordinary, unremarkable man, he would not have appeared at the jewelry exhibition where she was. There would have been no second meeting between them at all.

It was because he possessed that identity that they had so many unexpected intersections. She loved him, loved everything about him, the good and the bad, the cool and the proud, the tender and the savage.

If Eurasia were the fate from which he could never escape, then she would fall in love with the halo of his status as president. Even if it meant descending into hell, she would accompany him all the way, never abandoning him.