Translator: Deyonna
When Zhou Mushi got out of the car, it was already the wee of the night.
He wrapped his wrinkled clothes with a thin blanket. His legs were still trembling when he got out of the elevator. The bedroom was dark. He stayed in the bathroom for a long time before returning to the empty room.
Fatigue made him sleepy, but it was difficult to fall asleep. The scent of pheromones surrounding the pillows and beddings made Zhou Mushi feel agitated. After opening his eyes for a long time, he sat up, put on a coat, and entered the living room.
He didn’t turn on the light, and stood in front of the french window for a while holding a cup of coffee, unconsciously stroking the ring on his index finger. His eyelashes were drooping. It was unknown what he was thinking.
After a while, Zhou Mushi turned around and paused when he passed the closed door of the study. He opened the door and walked in.
He glanced at the locked door inside, then lowered his head and opened the desk’s drawer, and pulled out a document from the bottom.
He stared at the line-by-line agreement on the paper for a long time, lost in thought as if he was seriously studying it. Then finally stuffed it back into the drawer.
Zhou Mushi didn’t go back to the bedroom. He sat on the sofa in the living room all night. Only after his coffee became cold did he feel sleepy. When he woke up the next day, he didn’t know he had lied down on the sofa at some point, with a blanket covering his body and a washed coffee mug that was placed on the corner of the coffee table.
He sat up, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and subconsciously glanced at the study, then his communicator suddenly rang.
After the call was put through, the secretary said, “The car to the Joint Association Committee is already waiting downstairs, but early in the morning someone made an appointment to meet you…”
“Who?”
“Yu Min.”
Yu Chengshan’s daughter?
Zhou Mushi looked away and asked, “Do I have any appointments in the afternoon?”
“This… it’s already packed.”
“Then I won’t meet her.”
“Okay.”
The secretary was waiting for him to hang up, but Zhou Mushi asked, “Where’s Yu Yuan?”
“Mr. Yu is on duty at nine o’clock in the morning.”
Zhou Mushi hung up the phone.
He didn’t find the person he was looking for in the Joint Association Committee, so he could only take a car to the parliament building to discuss the matters of the election with everyone. He was so busy that the meeting was only adjourned in the evening. A middle-aged member of the parliament who came to listen stopped him and invited him to have a drink. Zhou Mushi tactfully declined because of a weak stomach and low alcohol tolerance.
“Really? It’s a pity. Vice Minister Yu is very good at drinking. You husband and wife are really different, ah.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“You’re joking.”
“Speaking of which, there happened to be an internal exhibition in the Chamber of Commerce that day. Mr. Yu bought a new product at a high price and said he would take it back as a gift to his wife. My wife was there at the time, and she was so envious that she scolded me when we went back home.”
Zhou Mushi was slightly stunned, thinking of the metal box that had been thrown in the study drawer, and subconsciously turned something in his finger. He moved his lips slightly but didn’t say anything.
Leaving the parliament building, he sat in the car to go back and passed the Central Building. He couldn’t help but stare at the glass on the top floor for a while. The secretary stretched her head to inquire, “Mr. Yu has an interview today, do you want to wait for him to get off work?”
Zhou Mushi thought for a moment expressionlessly, then nodded slightly, the secretary was about to tell the driver to turn around when the communicator on her wrist rang.
After she looked down, she informed with some hesitation, “Mr. Liu from the Joint Association Committee invites you to meet at seven o’clock in the evening.”
“哪里？”
“Where?”
“…Margo Casino, it’s a bit far from here.”
Zhou Mushi frowned, looked out of the window again, raised his hand to confirm the time, and finally said, “Go back first, hurry up.”
When the car stopped at the bottom of the apartment building, Zhou Mushi hurriedly opened the door but was blocked by an unexpected person.
The woman was well-dressed but looked sluggish.
Yu Min had obviously been waiting for a long time, being held back by the bodyguards, she still tried to move forward relentlessly, begging Zhou Mushi to save her father.
“Sorry.” His tone didn’t carry any sympathy, he just said coldly, “Your father committed a crime, and I don’t have the ability to get someone out from the Federation.”
“No, he was framed! My dad didn’t do anything! You trust me!”
“These words, you can wait until the day of the trial to say this to the judge.”
“You surnamed Zhou! Are you going to watch my dad go to jail like this?” Yu Min’s make up adorned face was wet with tears. She tightly held his sleeve and accused him. “When you and my brother got married, you took benefits from our family. Not taking me seriously, you won’t even take your husband seriously?”
“It sounds like you have a good relationship with him,” Zhou Mushi said, “Then why don’t you go find him?”
Yu Min was so angry by his indifferent tone that she almost lost her mind, crying even more and more fiercely, but Zhou Mushi had already lost patience, pulled back his sleeve and was about to leave, but while struggling, the other firmly grabbed his sleeve, and the ring on his index finger fell off.
With his eyes turning cold, he bent down and picked up the ring with a handkerchief in his hand. He raised his chin to signal the bodyguards to take her away and then walked into the elevator without turning back.
**
The casino is built underground, and through the long dark steps, there is a completely different world inside. Mountains of chips are piled up on the gambling tables, and in the air is the intermingling smell of money and cigar. It’s a dazzling place and is also used to aid and abet wicked deeds. Zhou Mushi rarely comes to this kind of place but this is not also his first time. He only avoided the crowd, followed the waiter through the VIP hall, and entered a separate box inside.
He sat down and waited for fifteen minutes before the person who invited him came. He unbuttoned his collar and sat across from him, asking, “Long time no see, what would you like to drink?”
Zhou Mushi raised his head, his voice slightly cold, “I didn’t come to drink with you.”
“Fine, you’re still the same, you’re no fun at all.” The man opposite touched his nose, rang the bell to let the waiter get a bottle of schwarzbier, bit off the bottle cap, and took a sip. “Master Zhou especially went to the Joint Association Committee to find me today. Is there anything I can do for you?”
This person named Liu Zhen is Zhou Mushi’s classmate in college. Although their personalities are completely different, they have a little friendship. After graduation, they will occasionally contact each other, mostly through communicator. The number of times they actually sit down and chat could be counted with fingers.
Because they can’t stand each other’s personalities.
With the casino alone as a meeting place, if it were another time Zhou Mushi would definitely not step on it.
But at the moment, he was too lazy to care about these things, so he went straight to the point and said, “What’s going on with Yu Chengshan?”
“Turns out you’re asking about this… what’s the matter?”
“Are all the charges against him real?”
Liu Zhen smiled. “The Federal Prosecutor’s Office attended to the matter personally, how can it be not real? The official trial will be in half a month. In my opinion, he’ll be over this time.”
“Who did it?”
“You don’t know?”
“If I knew, would I be wasting my time here?”
Liu Zhen mumbled. “If I didn’t know you, I would have thought you did it… Lending somebody a knife to kill seems like your best skill.”
Zhou Mushi glanced at him. “Under what grounds do I have to frame him?”
“Really? I thought you were irritated having to look at him for too long. Forcing you to call that old fox father-in-law for so many years, ah pei, father-in-law, isn’t it enough for you to kill him?”
Zhou Mushi corrected him with a cold face. “My father-in-law died a long time ago.”
“It’s pretty much the same anyway,” Liu Zhen waved his hand, then lowered his voice to get back to the topic, “This case is prosecuted oddly. The committee didn’t hear anything about this beforehand, the moment they say they would be arresting people, the person immediately got arrested. I reckon that someone on the top is indeed after that surnamed Yu, whatever the reason is, it’s still unclear, in short, you should draw a clear line from the Yu family as soon as possible, that water is very deep.”
Zhou Mushi tapped his fingers on the edge of the table and fell silent.
“Oh, no, there’s someone surnamed Yu in your family… Then what, when will you and your husband divorce, ah?”
Zhou Mushi raised his eyes and looked at him with a blank expression.
Liu Zhen scratched his head. “What? Could it be that you two are already divorced? Fake marriage? That’s right. I guess no one can think about living with you, Chairman Zhou. I think too much.”
Zhou Mushi sneered lightly, and didn’t bother to talk to him anymore, after inquiring, he planned to leave.
“Ai, you’re already here, won’t you even try to gamble?” Liu Zhen followed behind him, trying to persuade him to stay while leaving the box. “It’s not impossible to play slot machines, Chairman Zhou won’t go out without money, right?”
He babbled for a long time, and after chasing after him for a while, he suddenly realized something was wrong: “Ai, young master, you are going the wrong way! This is not the way out!”
As soon as the voice fell, the person in front turned to a corner but suddenly stopped, staring in a certain direction without moving.
Liu Zhen caught up and followed Zhou Mushi’s line of sight. He saw three gambling tables in the hall. The ones closest to him were men dressed in a suit-styled official uniform, either standing or leaning in a circle. Standing in the center was an alpha, he was tall and lofty, with deep facial features and dark blue eyes which seems to be prominent in the dim light. He was loosening his necktie with one hand, and beside him was a graceful and sexy waitress. She raised her head and handed over a goblet of red wine to the man.
Liu Zhen’s eyes widened, and he let out a “wow”.
His voice was not loud in the room full of people, but the alpha at the other end of the hall raised his head as if he had sensed something. He Zhou Mushi’s cold expression.
A moment of silence permeated the air.
Before He Yu could make a sound, several colleagues next to him had already followed his line of sight and saw the omega. They all showed surprised expressions, however, they had been in the vanity fair all year round knowing how money and power were the most important. They quickly reacted and greeted the two of them enthusiastically.
“Chairman Zhou, what a coincidence, come and play together?”
Liu Zhen is from the Joint Association Committee. He mainly communicates with federal affairs and does not communicate much with the staff of the district government. Therefore, no one at present recognized him, but he was born with an outgoing personality, so he put his arms around Zhou Mushi’s shoulders. He walked up as if he wanted to be good brothers with them, and with a few good words, he got into the game.
Zhou Mushi was standing on the side of He Yu but was separated by Liu Zhen and the waitress. The eyes of the two did not meet again. On the surface, they were partners, but meeting each other, they didn’t even say a word, making the surrounding atmosphere invisibly awkward.
Only Liu Zhen approached him without any scruples. “Is this Vice Minister Yu? I usually see you on TV every day. This is the first time I’ve seen the real person. The appearance is really outstanding, ah.”
He Yu rested his eyes on the hand on Zhou Mushi’s shoulder. His lips curled into a smile. “You are?”
“I’m a college classmate of Mushi. I’m here today to catch up on the old days. I didn’t expect such a coincidence, haha.”
“Really?” He Yu took a sip of the wine in his glass, “Thank you for taking care of my wife. I’ll treat you to a drink another day.”
When he said this, his eyes were fixed on Zhou Mushi, who was silent at the side. When the other person heard the word in the middle, he raised his eyes but didn’t look at him.
Zhou Mushi’s eyes moved to the goblet in his hand. His expression was indifferent, then he frowned and turned his head away.
He Yu didn’t know what he was thinking. But he suddenly lowered his eyes and chuckled, his expression eased up significantly, then he put the glass in his hand back into the waitress’s tray.
At this time, the people around him finished placing a circle of bets. Liu Zhen stared at the gambling table for a while, raised his eyebrows, and asked, “Mr. Yu is betting so many chips, are you not afraid of losing everything you’ve bet?”
He Yu’s gaze rested on the omega beside the table as if answering carelessly, he said, “Since I dare to bet, of course, I will win back my money with a profit.”
Author’s note: All politically-related institutions and positions in the article are only made up by the author, with no logic, and no source, so there’s no need to check and research.
I’m gonna say it again, the plot is created for two people to fall in love, in short, it is brainless and sweet, it cannot withstand scrutiny. There is no need to find bugs, because there are bugs everywhere, no need to embarrass yourself.
I don’t think going to casino is good for one’s political image 🤔
Thank You for the new chapter ♡(ŐωŐ人)