Previously, when Li Yan and Wang Junlang arrived, she had acted superior and looked down on him with utter contempt. Yet the moment he became the master of Qiao Jiangbei Hotel, she had lunged at him like a rabid dog.
Lin Hao could only say that his disappointment in the woman before him had reached its absolute limit. The few fond memories he had left of her had vanished into thin air, leaving behind nothing but utter disgust.
"Lin Hao, what on earth do you want? I've already apologized! Haven't I just made a mistake that any woman could make? Do you have to keep harping on it like this?"
"Don't think you're so amazing just because you've become the owner of this dump of a hotel! So what if you're a billionaire now? I know you inside and out—you're so used to being a simp, who else would ever want you besides me?"
Seeing that her trump card wasn't working, Li Yan's patience ran out. In an instant, she dropped the act and reverted to her true colors, pointing imperiously at Lin Hao as she cursed him out.
Lin Hao was utterly and completely speechless. Had this woman lost her mind or something?
Toads with three legs might be hard to find, but beautiful women with two legs were a dime a dozen!
Just as Lin Hao was losing his restraint and preparing to break his own rule against hitting women—intending to haul Li Yan up and throw her straight out the door—
A sweet, slightly sultry voice suddenly drifted in from outside the doorway: "Honey, I'm late! The traffic was a bit jammed, you wouldn't blame me, would you?"
Hearing this, Lin Hao felt as though he were listening to heavenly music. He spun around, caught a whiff of fragrant breeze as it rushed toward him, and the next second, a stunning figure threw herself right into his arms.
Seeing that Xu Wei had finally arrived, Lin Hao felt a sudden wave of relief.
If he had been forced to keep tangling with Li Yan, Lin Hao felt he would have gone completely insane.
After greeting Xu Wei, Lin Hao willingly let her hug his arm. Feeling the soft warmth against his arm, Lin Hao felt a quiet thrill of satisfaction.
Li Yan had just declared that apart from herself, Lin Hao would never be able to find a girlfriend as pretty as her.
Yet in the blink of an eye, a woman had thrown herself into Lin Hao's arms.
Looking at the breathtakingly gorgeous woman holding Lin Hao's arm and calling him honey, Li Yan suddenly felt a twinge of inferiority.
It was simply because the woman standing before her was absurdly, outrageously beautiful!
Today, Xu Wei was wearing a rice-pink long dress and a pair of milky-white low heels, which set off her tall figure to rival that of an international supermodel.
Dressed like this, Xu Wei looked precisely like a noble princess. Combined with her peerless, exquisite looks, she seemed like a celestial fairy descended to the mortal realm.
Without comparison, there was no pain. Compared to Li Yan at this moment, Xu Wei was nothing short of a dimensional strike.
"Lin Hao, who... who is she?" Watching their intimate display, Li Yan felt a prickle of jealousy, though her tone of voice had already lost all its previous confidence.
Xu Wei immediately snapped back: "Are you deaf? Didn't you hear me just call Lin Hao 'honey'? Obviously, I'm Lin Hao's girlfriend!"
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
In Li Yan's mind, even if Lin Hao had somehow become a billionaire, he was still nothing more than a dirt-poor loser. How could he possibly land such a stunning girlfriend out of nowhere?
She didn't believe it—not in a million years!
"Honey, she doesn't believe I'm your girlfriend. Why don't we prove it to her, hmm?"
Xu Wei cast a playful glance at Li Yan, hugging Lin Hao's arm tighter as she spoke with a coquettish pout.
As Xu Wei gently swayed her body, the soft pressure against his arm penetrated right to his bones, giving Lin Hao a rush of intense pleasure. Without missing a beat, he asked, "How should we prove it?"
Xu Wei's pretty face flushed red. Suddenly, she stood on tiptoes and planted a sweet kiss right on Lin Hao's cheek, then turned a triumphant look toward Li Yan: "How's that?"
Lin Hao never expected Xu Wei to go to such lengths just to help him out of a tight spot, and he felt a sudden surge of warmth and gratitude.
"I don't believe it! Lin Hao, don't think you can crush me just by hiring some random person to put on an act with you!"
Even now, Li Yan refused to believe that Lin Hao could find another girlfriend—let alone one far prettier than her.
"An act?" Xu Wei let out a giggle, then looked at Li Yan with utter disdain. "Do you really think that as a vice president of the Xu Group, I have so little to do that I'd waste my time playing along to fool a gold-digger like you?"
The moment Xu Wei finished speaking, Li Yan instinctively staggered back two steps.
She couldn't fathom why Lin Hao—who had clearly been nothing more than a broke loser—had not only suddenly acquired immense wealth, but even had a vice president of the Xu Group falling over herself to be his girlfriend.
Could it be that Lin Hao possessed some kind of special identity? Otherwise, why would even the head of the Dong Family personally gift him a hotel worth a fortune, just to ingratiate himself with him?
Such an incredible, outstanding man had once treated her with absolute sincerity, only for her to kick him to the curb.
At that moment, Li Yan genuinely wanted to slap herself across the face.
She was so stupid—truly, unbelievably stupid.
Li Yan's guts were practically turning green with regret.
"It's all that bastard Wang Junlang's fault! If he hadn't come sniffing around to seduce me, how could I have done such a stupid thing? Wang Junlang, you've ruined my entire life! I will never share the same sky with you!"
Li Yan roared furiously in her heart.
Yet Xu Wei still had no intention of letting her off the hook. "To be honest, I really ought to thank you. If you hadn't been so brainless, how could I ever have found such an exceptional boyfriend as Lin Hao? What's your name? Leave your contact info, and I'll have someone treat you to dinner sometime."
Lin Hao: "......"
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Chapter 31: It's All Fake
"Ah......" Xu Wei's words hit Li Yan like a heavy blow, pushing her to the brink of hysteria. "So what if I like money?! Money gives me happiness! Money gives me a sense of security! Do you think every woman is born into a silver-spoon family like you? I just wanted to live the life of a rich person, is that such a crime?!"
Then she turned and shrieked at Lin Hao: "Not only did Wang Junlang buy me a 100,000-yuan Diannan jade pendant, but he also bought me a designer Louis Vuitton bag worth tens of thousands, plus miscellaneous clothes and cosmetics that add up to over 100,000 yuan! After following a good-for-nothing like you for four years, what did *I* ever get?!"
Lin Hao was once again left speechless. This woman was completely unreasonable.
According to her logic, everyone should just go sponge off wealthy men and women. What would even be the point of the bitter struggles and hard work put in by countless predecessors and ambitious youths?
Lin Hao never imagined that Li Yan had hidden her true nature so deeply. Just imagine if he hadn't obtained the inheritance of Xianyimen and had foolishly ended up marrying her—wouldn't he have been walking around with a green hat on his head every single day?
At this thought, Lin Hao couldn't help shivering slightly. He let out a deep sigh and said, "Alright, what's the point of saying all this now? There's not a single penny of relationship left between us. I don't want to look at you anymore. Get lost, and stop making a fool of yourself here."
"Fine, you're ruthless! Just you wait!" Realizing at last that her dream of becoming a billionaire's girlfriend was utterly shattered, Li Yan spat out a fierce threat, whipped around, and prepared to storm off.
"Hold on!" Xu Wei suddenly called out to stop her.
Li Yan spun back around and glared at Xu Wei with venomous hatred: "What else do you want?"
"Nothing much, just wanted to remind you: when you go out into the world, you need to keep your eyes open. Don't let yourself get scammed with a pile of fake junk without even realizing it, while acting all smug thinking you've scored a huge bargain."
With that, Xu Wei stepped forward, pointed at the emerald-green jade pendant hanging around Li Yan's neck, and said:
"This pendant of yours is obviously a modern glass industrial product soaked in chemical solutions. It's completely worthless! Walking around wearing this every day, being constantly exposed to the radiation from the chemical soak—if you keep this up long enough to give yourself heart disease, you'll really be done for."
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible! You must be lying to me!" Hearing Xu Wei trash the pendant she so frequently flaunted in front of her girlfriends, Li Yan instantly blew her top.
The very first time she betrayed Lin Hao, she had been drawn in by this pendant that Wang Junlang gave her. The certificate for the pendant was still hidden away at her house; no matter what, she refused to believe it could be fake.
Xu Wei said with a sneer, "What would I possibly gain by lying to you? As a woman, I'm simply pointing it out to you out of the goodness of my heart, so you don't end up being sold and still helping the other person count the money!
Part of the business run by my Xu Group is the jade industry. Do you really think I can't tell the difference between a real pendant and a fake one?"
Hearing Xu Wei's words, Lin Hao immediately channeled his spiritual sense to probe the pendant on Li Yan's chest.
He discovered that this thing genuinely was a glass product, merely coated on the surface with a brownish-green substance—doubtless the chemical soak Xu Wei had mentioned.
"If you still don't believe me, take the pendant off and I'll prove it to you," Xu Wei said.
Li Yan's resolve was already beginning to crumble, so she unclasped the pendant from her neck and handed it over to Xu Wei.
Taking the pendant in her hand, Xu Wei immediately grabbed a small soup spoon from the private room's table and began scraping hard against the surface of the pendant.
Within moments, under Xu Wei's scraping, a layer of brownish-green powder was easily shaved off the pendant's surface.
"Ah... Wang Junlang, you bastard!" At the sight of this, Li Yan flew into a rage. Screaming, she snatched the fake pendant out of Xu Wei's hand and hurled it fiercely against the floor.
The pendant instantly shattered into a heap of tiny fragments, looking exactly like a smashed beer bottle. That settled it—there was no doubt left that it was made of ordinary glass.
At that moment, Xu Wei turned her gaze toward the clothes Li Yan was wearing and the Louis Vuitton bag she was holding.
With a look of gentle pity, she said, "Sigh, I might as well be thorough and do a good deed to the end. To tell you the truth, everything you're wearing and holding is completely fake as well. Open up Taobao, take a picture, and upload it for a comparison—you can buy piles of them for a few dozen yuan!"
Before Xu Wei could even finish speaking, panic had already overwhelmed Li Yan. She was now standing right on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
You had to know that back then, in order to please Wang Junlang and get him to buy her these luxury bags and clothes, she had agreed to so many unreasonable demands...
With trembling hands, Li Yan frantically fished her phone out of her bag, opened Taobao with shaking fingers, and took a picture of the Louis Vuitton bag.
Within 0.1 seconds of uploading the photo, dozens of links for identical products popped up on Taobao.
Refusing to give up, she snapped a photo of the clothes she was wearing and uploaded that too. The result was exactly the same...
"Aahhhhh—Wang Junlang, I'm going to kill you!"
The moment she realized she had done so many humiliating things just to acquire a pile of cheap fakes, Li Yan's mindset completely imploded.
By now, she had completely lost face and could no longer bear to stay in front of Lin Hao. Let out a despairing shriek, she bolted out of the room like a crazed little heifer.
She had thought she was latching onto a rich second-generation heir and getting everything she wanted, only to discover in the end that it was all an illusion—and in the process, she had blown her chance of becoming a billionaire's girlfriend.
For any materially obsessed woman, this kind of psychological blow was simply unbearable.
Looking at Xu Wei, Lin Hao said with a helpless chuckle, "Did you really have to provoke her like that? You stripped away every last shred of her dignity."
Xu Wei raised a dainty fist and gave a playful, fierce wave. "That woman acted so despicably just to show off in front of you! I was just getting revenge on your behalf. Not only do you not thank me, but you're lecturing me instead? Hmph!"
Lin Hao laughed heartily. "Then how would you like me to thank you? By offering myself to you body and soul? Hehe..."
"Buzz off! Who wants you to offer yourself body and soul?!"
Seeing Lin Hao's burning gaze locked onto him, and recalling how she had found herself thinking about him repeatedly over the past two days—not to mention impulsively stepping forward to bail him out just now, and even bestowing her own sweet kiss upon him—
Xu Wei instantly flushed crimson with embarrassment, the tips of her ears burning hot.
Seeing that Lin Hao remained silent and just kept staring at her, Xu Wei chided coquettishly, "What are you looking at? Keep staring and I'll gouge your eyeballs out, hmph!"
Lin Hao grinned broadly. "I'm betting you couldn't bear to."
Xu Wei gave him a light pinch. "I'm not talking to you anymore!"
After the two of them playfully bickered for a while, Xu Wei asked, "By the way, Dong Tiande was even willing to gift you a five-star hotel. Could you possibly be his illegitimate son?"
Lin Hao ruffled Xu Wei's hair. "What nonsense are you dreaming up? The day you crashed into me, I was on my way to save his son..."
Lin Hao proceeded to recount the events that had transpired earlier at Jiangbei Hospital to Xu Wei.
When he finished, Xu Wei stared at Lin Hao in astonishment. "You actually possess such incredible medical skills?!"
Lin Hao said smugly, "That's right! There isn't a single illness in this world that I can't cure!"
"Would you die if you didn't brag?" Xu Wei rolled her eyes at him, clearly skeptical of Lin Hao's claim.
At that moment, Lin Hao's phone suddenly rang. It was a call from Liu Zhaoliang, the head of the Jiangbei City Health Bureau.
After answering, Lin Hao said, "Hello, Director Liu."
"Doctor Lin, are you free right now? You did me a huge favor the other day, and I'd love to treat you to dinner to properly thank you in person," Liu Zhaoliang said happily.
"Director Liu, you're too polite. That was just my duty!" Lin Hao replied. "However, I'm a bit tied up at the moment. Would tomorrow work? I'll play host tomorrow and treat you to dinner, Director Liu."
"Alright then. Since Doctor Lin is busy tonight, let's lock it in for tomorrow without fail." After making arrangements with Lin Hao, Liu Zhaoliang hung up the phone.
Although Liu Zhaoliang, as the head of the Municipal Health Bureau, was showing him great respect by inviting him to dinner, Lin Hao had a date with a beauty tonight—he certainly wasn't about to let some old man come and ruin the mood.
Seeing Lin Hao turn down Liu Zhaoliang, Xu Wei felt a sweet warmth well up inside her.
With no one else to disturb them, the private dining room was soon filled with a variety of delicious dishes, and the two hungry souls dug in with gusto.
After finishing their meal with Xu Wei, Lin Hao returned to his own residence.
Just as Lin Hao finished taking a cold shower and prepared to head to bed for some cultivation—
A sudden commotion sounded from the doorway.
Lin Hao's spiritual sense stirred; it turned out that Wang Xuewen from next door had returned home.
Tonight, Wang Xuewen looked somewhat intoxicated. Her delicate cheeks were flushed red, and her eyes had a hazy, distant look to them.
After stepping inside, Wang Xuewen absently wiped her mouth. Most of the lipstick on her lips was smeared off in one go, leaving smudges across her chin and the corners of her mouth.
Arriving by the shoe cabinet, Wang Xuewen steadied herself with one hand against the wall, bent over, and extended her other hand to take off her high heels.
Her slightly dreamy gaze happened to sweep past the shoe cabinet.
When she caught sight of the neatly placed shoes that Lin Hao had taken off, her gaze instantly froze.
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Chapter 32: Long Night, Sleepless Desires
The moment Wang Xuewen caught sight of Lin Hao's shoes, her drunken haze instantly evaporated by a few fractions, and her mind cleared up considerably.
Her long, slender legs, tightly encased in seductive black silk stockings, instinctively squeezed together a bit closer.
In the unlit room, Wang Xuewen's breathing inevitably grew a bit more rapid.
Straightening her alluring posture with wide-open eyes, Wang Xuewen could feel her heart hammering violently against her ribs.
Ever since she had witnessed the Tang Family members bowing and respectfully escorting Lin Hao away the day before yesterday, she had spent day and night restless and distracted, wondering what on earth Lin Hao's true identity was.
She thought and guessed, shifting from annoyance to regret...
And then suddenly surging with excitement and anticipation...
During her commute home from work, she had half-expected that once Lin Hao's identity was exposed to a certain extent, he would surely choose to pack up and move away.
Yet to her utter astonishment, Lin Hao had actually returned here.
"The opportunity is here!"
Wang Xuewen's breathing grew ragged. She clenched her dainty fists tightly, her eyes shining so brightly they seemed capable of illuminating the entire dark room.
Suppressing her breath, Wang Xuewen bent down once more to change out of the low-heeled shoes on her delicate feet.
Usually, her next routine action would be to slip into a pair of house slippers.
Yet this time, she did nothing of the sort!
Instead, she reached into her own shoe cabinet, took out that pair of wine-red high heels that Lin Hao always lingered a second look upon, and gently slipped them on.
The moment she switched into this pair of wine-red high heels, her already slender legs appeared even more seductive and graceful...
Wang Xuewen didn't bother changing out of her clothes. Although she was still wearing her work uniform, she knew this particular outfit was designed to instantly excite many men—and Lin Hao would be no exception!
Taking a deep breath, Wang Xuewen summoned her courage and nervously walked toward Lin Hao's room.
Her lotus steps swayed gently, accompanied by the sexy click of her high heels striking the wooden floorboards, producing a delightful melody.
It made the pitch-black night of the living room feel suddenly romantic and enchanting.
Wang Xuewen's every move was, naturally, perceived by Lin Hao's spiritual sense.
A curve played at the corner of his mouth; he wanted to see just what this little vixen was up to this time.
Wang Xuewen stood frozen by the doorway for a brief moment, then suddenly turned around and hurried back to her own room.
This unexpected move left Lin Hao momentarily baffled. He had already guessed roughly what Wang Xuewen was planning.
He had been sitting quietly, in full anticipation and waiting...
Yet just as Lin Hao thought "good things" were about to happen, the target had actually turned tail and walked away.
Just as Lin Hao was feeling puzzled, Wang Xuewen's graceful figure reappeared in the living room.
She emerged from her room carrying an opened bottle of high-end-looking red wine, while holding a crystal wine glass in her other hand.
This time, Wang Xuewen looked as though she had regained a measure of confidence. She approached Lin Hao's doorway once more.
Then, she gave a light, crisp tap against Lin Hao's door: "Tap, tap, tap."
Hearing the knock, a smirk tugged once again at the corner of Lin Hao's mouth.
Imagining the scenes that were about to unfold, Lin Hao's breathing inevitably grew heavier, and his long-neglected "little brother" began to stir into restless action.
Sensing the physical changes within his body, Lin Hao found himself growing inexplicably excited for what was to come.
After all, it had been quite a while since he and his little brother had joined forces in a united front for battle!
As the second round of knocks sounded, Lin Hao rose from the bed and walked over to sit at the desk.
"Come in."
Though his heart was churning with excitement, Lin Hao's face remained as calm as an ancient well, without a single ripple of emotion showing through.
The door pushed open, and Lin Hao turned his head to look.