"Why are you smoking? Didn't I tell you that my mother doesn't like the smell of smoke?"
After settling Aunt Zhuang in to help clean the guest rooms, Wang Chenxi returned to find Gu Yang smoking. She asked with a slight frown on her delicate brows.
Gu Yang exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Your mom offered!"
Wang Chenxi was startled. "No way?"
Gu Yang gave her a sideways glance, but completely missed the mark, landing squarely on her sore spot.
Seeing Gu Yang adopt this exasperated, unresponsive attitude once again, Wang Chenxi pouted her red lips in annoyance. "True, if my mom didn't let you, you wouldn't dare smoke anyway."
She then grabbed a throw pillow and sat down beside Gu Yang, asking curiously, "Gu Yang, which schools did you go to for your freshman and sophomore years of high school?"
Gu Yang stubbed out his cigarette butt in the ashtray. "I never went to high school."
"Huh? You never went?" Wang Chenxi widened her beautiful eyes, looking at Gu Yang in disbelief. "If you never went to high school, how on earth did you score that high?"
Just as Gu Yang was about to speak, Wang Qian walked out wearing a bathrobe. "I'm going to take a shower and turn in. You two should get to sleep early too."
Wang Qian walked over to pick up her red wine glass.
Wang Chenxi immediately stepped forward and hugged Wang Qian. "Mom, I want to sleep with you."
Gu Yang also stood up. "Mom, I'm going to sleep too!"
In an instant, all three of them froze in place.
A blush spread visibly across Gu Yang's face. Wang Chenxi's cheeks turned crimson all the way down to her tiny earlobes.
"Um... slip of the tongue!"
With that, Gu Yang turned and hurried toward the guest room.
Behind him came the silver-bell laughter of the two women, making Gu Yang feel even more awkward. After shutting the bedroom door behind him, he let out a heavy sigh of relief.
Late at night.
In the master bedroom, Wang Chenxi hugged Wang Qian, resting her head against her. "Mom, do you think he likes me?"
Wang Qian narrowed her eyes, her voice hazy with tipsiness. "It sounds more like you're the one who likes him, you silly girl."
"But Mom, he just called you 'Mom'! If he didn't have that on his mind, how could he have slipped up like that?"
Wang Qian's heart skipped a beat. She could naturally tell what kind of look Gu Yang had been giving her earlier. Now, with her daughter pressing down on top of her, she felt rather uneasy. She gave her daughter's head a gentle push. "He just made a mistake, you really are a hopeless romantic."
Wang Chenxi looked discontentedly at Wang Qian, who had turned away to go to sleep, and curled her lips in secret while keeping her large, beautiful eyes fixed on the ceiling. "I don't like him anyway—you can't pry a single word out of him even if you beat him with a stick. I don't like such a dull blockhead!"
Wang Qian was taken aback for a moment, then murmured softly, "Your father... was a blockhead too!"
Wang Chenxi froze. Remembering her late father, she quietly fell silent.
The next day.
Chengshan Amusement Park in Jianghuai City.
Gu Yang was dragged around by Wang Chenxi to play for the entire day. Roller coasters, haunted houses, bumper cars—you name it.
Wang Chenxi and Wang Qian either shrieked with excitement or screamed in terror. Gu Yang, by contrast, quietly accompanied the mother and daughter the whole time, serving as their personal assistant.
On the drive back, Gu Yang drove while the two women rested in the back seat, completely exhausted.
"You silly girl, did you have enough fun this time? My poor lower back can't take you tossing it around like this."
Wang Chenxi's head bobbed up and down as she fought off sleep; she hadn't caught a single word of what Wang Qian had said.
Just then, the car's alarm systems started blaring continuously.
Gu Yang frowned and glanced at the SUV rapidly closing in on his left side.
Wang Qian sat up from the backrest and looked out. "We didn't hit it, did we?"
Gu Yang shook his head. They were right at the highway exit ramp, and he had been following the vehicle ahead closely within the marked lane. The SUV on the left had merged from a different lane, so it wasn't even in their lane.
The car moved forward a bit more, and Gu Yang inched forward to keep pace.
However, the alarms inside the car began to wail incessantly.
At that point, Wang Qian realized they had indeed collided. She sat up and checked the car's monitor, which clearly showed the very same SUV from beside them.
Gu Yang opened the door and got out. He checked the spot where the other car had collided with theirs—it was right at the rear door of the driver's side. Needless to say, it was entirely the other driver's fault.
Since Wang Qian was seated on that side, she hurriedly got out from the other door.
A woman stepped out of the other car as well, holding up her phone and chattering away. Meanwhile, the man in the driver's seat refused to get out, sitting inside and watching Gu Yang with a smug smile.
Gu Yang frowned, pulled out his phone, and immediately dialed the emergency services.
To his utter astonishment, the woman rushed over and slapped the phone right out of his hand.
"Family, look at this! He drives a Land Rover, and right away he's calling for backup. Folks, are rich people really this arrogant? Everyone look, the noble Land Rover owner is about to hit someone!"
Gu Yang watched as the woman kept talking into her phone—though when she had reached out to knock his phone away earlier, she hadn't even been facing his direction.
Wang Qian walked over to Gu Yang's side and looked down at the shattered phone scattered across the ground. "What's going on?"
"I was trying to call the police, but this woman knocked my phone away."
"Family, family, look at this! She's actually framing me for slapping his phone away!"
Seeing that the woman was live-streaming, Wang Qian frowned slightly and said, "You crashed your car, why aren't you dealing with the situation instead of running a live stream?"
"Family, family, did you see that? This is the character of a Land Rover owner..."
By now, people from other nearby vehicles had stepped out to check the positions of the two crashed cars. They pointed at the live-streaming woman and whispered among themselves.
Some even pulled out their phones to take pictures and record videos.
Seeing that the other party had no intention of handling the matter and was only focused on streaming, the veins on Gu Yang's forehead throbbed.
At that moment, an elderly woman stepped out of the vehicle and walked over with a beaming smile. The onlookers immediately began pointing at her.
"Isn't that the internet celebrity Xu Jiuyue?"
"Right, that's Xu Jiuyue from Wulian!"
"Tsk... Now they're in trouble. The Land Rover was driving properly, and she insisted on cutting in..."
"Ain't that the truth? Once she posts her edited video later, nobody else will know what really happened."
"... "
Gu Yang and Wang Qian listened to the murmurs of the crowd.
Wang Qian immediately pulled out her phone to call the police, but... *Slap!*
The woman reached over again and knocked Wang Qian's phone to the ground as well.
Gu Yang forced himself to endure. He felt as though he was about to lose control. Trembling, he took a bottle of pills from his pocket.
However... *Slap!*
Seeing the pills scatter across the ground, the woman immediately turned to her camera and announced, "Family, family, look at this! They're trying to pull a scam. Eating pills and everything—what kind of medicine does a young man like that need?"
Wang Qian stared in shock at Gu Yang, whose condition was clearly deteriorating. "Xiaoyang, what's wrong with you? What kind of medicine is this?"
With a flushed face, Gu Yang said in agony, "Calmative pills!"
"What?" Wang Qian was dumbfounded.