DLRAS Chapter 78

Chapter 78: I’ll stay with you until it’s over.

By the time they finished their meal, it was past three in the afternoon. It was about time to head back to the city, lest they hit traffic.

Chen Wengang went to Luo Suwei’s room to check on Jiang Cai.

Luo Suwei sat on the sofa with her legs crossed, mouthing that Jiang Wanxia had gone out with the lawyer again.

He handed Jiang Cai a business card. “If you need anything, you can call my number.”

This weekend had been turned completely upside down.

Luo Suwei had calmly observed the entire process. The drama of a wealthy family recognizing a long-lost child might be rare, but she was a woman who had seen the world. Missing persons finding their families, ethical disputes, domestic farces—these played out regardless of wealth or status; put them in any family, and they were more or less the same.

Jiang Cai was brimming with negative emotions. She threatened, “I have legs, I can run away myself. You can’t keep me locked up forever.”

Chen Wengang said, “I have no intention of locking you up. I’m not on their side either. Your mother even tried to use me before. But I’m offering you help because you’re still a minor. Once you come of age, you’ll have to take responsibility for yourself.”

Jiang Cai made a show of tossing his business card into the trash can. “I don’t even want your help right now.”

Chen Wengang raised his hands in surrender. “Then you can go to Eden. But she’s very busy with work, so if you trouble her, remember to have a grateful heart.”

After a thought, he added, “Also, it’s not like physically turning eighteen means you can immediately control your own life. If you don’t like the life you’re living now, you have to become independent before you can have freedom.”

He had wanted to add a line telling her to stop being so willful because it wouldn’t solve anything, but he held it back.

No matter how unreasonable her biological mother was, Jiang Cai still had the capital to act out in front of her. But once she entered the Huo family, that might not be the case anymore.

Beneath the Roman-columned arched gates, the Huo family’s cars left separately in twos and threes.

The driver opened the car door for Huo Niansheng and asked where he planned to go.

Huo Niansheng let Chen Wengang get in first. “Yunding Mansion.”

Chen Wengang had no objections. On the way back, he kept his head down, texting Uncle Lin to explain that he wouldn’t be coming home to sleep tonight either.

Suddenly, he heard Huo Niansheng ask teasingly, “Dealing with a large family isn’t as interesting as just the two of us, is it?”

Chen Wengang snapped back to reality and turned to look at him.

Huo Niansheng was also looking down at his own phone, having asked the question casually.

“During the meal, I almost thought your Third Uncle was going to throw out the phrase ‘an eldest sister-in-law is like a mother’.” Chen Wengang let out a snort of laughter. “And then forcefully dump Jiang Cai onto me.” It was obvious the other party thought he was entangled with Jiang Wanxia and her daughter, and wanted to bind them all together.

What “bridge”? To put it bluntly, if Jiang Cai pulled any stunts, they wanted him to be the guarantor.

Huo Niansheng still didn’t look up. “Don’t pay it any mind. It’s a common failing of old men. They all think they can devise strategies from a command tent.”

Chen Wengang smiled. He didn’t care much about Third Uncle Huo, either.

Glancing at the driver, he asked in a low voice, “What do you think of your Second Uncle?”

Huo Niansheng raised an eyebrow. “His personality is very similar to Huo Jingsheng’s: ambitious but cowardly. But overall, he’s a bit bolder than Huo Jingsheng. He has some businesses with questionable origins, so I suggest you keep your distance from Huo Yingfei. Even if he hits on you, ignore him.”

“Nonsense.”

“Hasn’t he?”

Chen Wengang stopped talking and looked idly out the window.

After a while, Huo Niansheng leaned over again and asked lackadaisically, “What are we eating tonight?”

Chen Wengang pushed him gently. “How is it time for dinner again?” He checked the time and realized it actually was; they had been driving for quite a while. “Let’s just eat whatever.”

Yunding Mansion was located in the central CBD area—a bustling location, but lacking a strong residential vibe. The nearest shopping district and large supermarket were a twenty-minute walk away. Huo Niansheng called for the driver to stop, and they ordered two bowls of Zhajiang noodles at a small shop at the base of an office building.

There was, however, a restaurant on the street that had opened a display window at its entrance. Right in the middle of summer, the window was selling all flavors of crawfish.

The bright red crawfish swimming in red oil were incredibly appetizing; even after just eating, they felt unsatisfied.

On a whim, Chen Wengang said, “Let’s buy some more to take back.”

Huo Niansheng’s footsteps paused, following his gaze.

Neon lights danced colorfully across their faces.

This was yet another thing Huo Niansheng rarely ate. He had just started to imagine the feeling of peeling shells with greasy hands when he felt a tug on his clothes. Chen Wengang urged him, “If we don’t eat them now, summer will be over…”

If he could eat at an open-air barbecue stall, there was no reason he couldn’t eat crawfish.

When they returned home, Chen Wengang was carrying two catties—one catty of five-spice flavor, and one catty of garlic flavor. He set the crawfish down in the entryway and went to change his clothes.

The central air conditioning maintained a comfortable temperature. At times like this, it made one want to sigh and say, “It’s good to be home.”

Huo Niansheng opened a bottle of red wine at the bar, brought over two goblets, and placed them on the coffee table.

Pairing red wine with crawfish was certainly unique. They had food and drink; now all they needed was a bit of entertainment. Chen Wengang crawled on the floor, reaching out to turn on the home theater’s sound system. He liked this rug in the living room; when Huo Niansheng wasn’t around, he had even curled up on it and slept by the window once.

Abandoning the sofa, the two of them sat on the floor, watching a movie while peeling crawfish.

An indie French film was playing on the screen. Chen Wengang glanced at it a couple of times before looking down to pinch the head off a crawfish.

He peeled them skillfully, eating two himself and feeding one to Huo Niansheng.

His fingertips grew hot as his fingers were enveloped along with the food. Huo Niansheng held his fingers in his mouth, slowly sucking the flavor clean off them.

The movie’s plot seemed to take on a five-spice flavor. The takeout boxes were left with nothing but piles of shells, which Chen Wengang sorted and tossed into the trash.

“I made an appointment with a doctor,” Huo Niansheng suddenly said, watching his movements. “I’ll take you to see him tomorrow.”

“Me?” Chen Wengang stopped his hands, laughing in surprise. “What illness do I have that needs checking out?”

Huo Niansheng coaxed him to behave. “Look, don’t you have trouble sleeping? I just found an old doctor to help condition your body a bit.”

Chen Wengang realized what this was about. He pressed his lips together, but after hesitating for a moment, he actually didn’t dare agree immediately.

Huo Niansheng assumed he was just hiding his sickness to avoid treatment, but in reality, he was remembering the endless soups and brews from his past life, which made him feel a bit traumatized. Huo Niansheng had found so many doctors for him back then. It wasn’t that they lacked skill, nor that the treatments were ineffective, but after all, it was traditional Chinese medicine—the taste wasn’t just sour, nor was it just bitter. It was the kind where you thought one prescription was foul enough, only for the next one to reach a whole new level of disgusting.

Back then, he had felt as numb as wood, downing them without blinking an eye. Now that times had changed, the foul aftertaste had finally caught up to him.

But Huo Niansheng said it so nonchalantly. Every single doctor he found was on the level of a nationally renowned, veteran TCM practitioner. Chen Wengang couldn’t be unappreciative of the gesture, so he just asked one extra question: “Which doctor? Do I absolutely have to take medicine?”

Fortunately, Huo Niansheng said, “There’s no need to take so much medicine when you’re perfectly fine. This one specializes in acupuncture.”

Chen Wengang agreed. Thinking about it, he breathed a sigh of relief and began searching his memories to figure out which doctor it was.

Upon meeting the old doctor, he had greying hair but a hale and hearty spirit, and a very amiable attitude. “Surname Chen? So am I. We can consider ourselves of the same clan.”

Chen Wengang had an impression of him. Resting his wrist on the pulse pillow, he felt a faint, inexplicable sense of familiarity.

In his past life, the old Mr. Chen had greeted him with the exact same sentence the first time they met.

The old man was highly renowned. After retiring, he had been rehired by the hospital and didn’t leave his post until he was well into his eighties. He no longer took outside appointments now. He hadn’t stopped treating patients, though; he just did it from his own home, provided you could actually get him to agree.

After taking the pulse on both wrists, the diagnosis was emotional stagnation; he needed to soothe his liver and regulate his Qi.

Old Chen had Chen Wengang sit on the exam bed, then turned around to grab a box of disposable acupuncture needles, affixing a label to it. “This box will be for your exclusive use from now on.”

Without waiting for instructions, Huo Niansheng was already unbuttoning his clothes.

Chen Wengang swatted his hand away, shot him a glare, and took off his shirt himself.

He lay face down on the bed while Huo Niansheng watched Old Chen administer the needles from the side. On his slender shoulders, covered with a thin layer of muscle, his shoulder blades prominently protruded and then relaxed with his movements. The needles sank halfway into his snow-white flesh, the other half quivering outside, rising and falling with his breath.

Everything before his eyes gave Huo Niansheng an indescribable sense of déjà vu.

Finally, Old Chen pressed a moxibustion box against his lower back. “Alright, I’ll come pull the needles in a bit. When you’re at home with nothing to do, you can use moxibustion on your ‘Mingmen’ acupoint yourself. Right here—it houses your innate Qi and tonifies the kidneys to consolidate the foundation.”

The room was filled with the smoky scent of burning mugwort, which wasn’t unpleasant. The old room had a natural, dim yellow hue to it. Sunlight streamed through the glass windows, and outside, the wind blew the clouds swiftly along, casting racing shadows on the floor and illuminating half of Chen Wengang’s shoulder.

Chen Wengang was also a bit dazed himself. In his past life, he had actually only been here once. Most of the time, it was Old Chen who did the traveling, politely escorted by bodyguards to the mid-levels villa to administer acupuncture in that sunless bedroom of his.

Huo Niansheng stood up, one hand in his pocket, looking down and studying the needles on his body intently.

Chen Wengang suddenly asked, “Are you going to wait here the whole time? It’s pretty boring; you can go out for a walk.”

Huo Niansheng smiled and said, “It’s fine, not boring at all. I’ll stay with you. It’ll be over soon anyway.”

With that, he sat back down.

It was a cheap red plastic chair; sitting on it wasn’t exactly comfortable.

After finishing the acupuncture session, giving medical advice, and scheduling the next appointment, the old doctor even gave them the moxibustion box before they left, along with a complimentary box of moxa sticks, noting that the ones bought outside wouldn’t be as high quality.

Huo Niansheng drove the car over. “How do you feel?”

Chen Wengang felt it out. “Much more relaxed, that’s for sure.”

He was studying the box of moxa sticks in the passenger seat when he suddenly remembered, “Should we go buy a lighter?”

There was a convenience store right on the street. Hearing this, Huo Niansheng pulled the car over to the curb. “Go ahead.”

Only when Chen Wengang stepped out of the car did he realize where they had ended up. By sheer coincidence, it was the convenience store he had worked at in his past life.

As if strange stares and a faint pain were piercing him all at once, his newly relaxed body and nerves suddenly felt like they were weighed down by lead.

Inside the glass doors looked like an unknown parallel universe.

But those were already distant memories from a lifetime ago. Chen Wengang steadied himself and pushed the door open to walk inside.

In truth, it was all in his head; nothing bad happened.

He didn’t see a single colleague he recognized, though the store owner was the same. Back then, the owner had been soft-hearted enough to give him a job, only to have him bring a lot of trouble to the store’s business in return. Chen Wengang lingered by the shelves and picked up two extra boxes of beautifully packaged chocolates. “Check out, please.”

Completely oblivious, the owner took them and scanned the barcodes.

Returning to the car, Huo Niansheng continued driving forward.

This riverside road wasn’t wide, and there weren’t many cars. Yet Huo Niansheng never sped up, cruising slowly along the curb as if he were looking for something.

Chen Wengang turned to look at him.

Huo Niansheng gazed out into the distance for a while and asked, “I remember there being some kind of bridge near here, an abandoned one, right?”

Chen Wengang’s heart skipped a beat. He pointed toward the back of the car. “It’s in the other direction. We already drove past it.”

Huo Niansheng nodded, letting out an “Oh.” “I thought so. I must have remembered wrong.”

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