She’d been caught in the act.
The one doing the catching was the current chairman of Rongxing Group; the one being caught was Rongxing’s golden boy—along with a nightclub hostess.
Here’s how it started.
Three months ago, Rongxing’s golden boy Ji Jiayu had “met” a nightclub hostess at an adult party and had been frequently fooling around with her ever since.
Watching her only son sink into wine and women, Ji Jiayu’s mother Gu Shufeng was frantic with worry. But since her son had grown up and they were a respectable distance apart, she was afraid direct intervention would wound his delicate pride.
After thinking it over, she decided to dump the whole mess on her reliable younger brother instead.
So that day, exactly five minutes after Ji Jiayu ushered a heavily made-up woman into a hotel suite, his uncle—Gu Zhi, the impossibly busy chairman of Rongxing Group—made a deliberate detour from his packed schedule, brought a few bodyguards, and used a spare keycard to open the door.
The moment he stepped inside, Gu Zhi saw the two of them already tangled together.
His good nephew was kneeling over the woman, shirt discarded to the side, one hand on his belt, about to undo his pants. The woman was pinned beneath him, her face obscured, though her slender legs were visible, pinned firmly under his weight.
At the sound of movement from the door, Ji Jiayu snatched up the blanket and twisted around in shock and fury to see who it was. He barely managed to stammer out a confused question: “Uncle? What are you doing here—”
“Take him.”
Before he could finish, his usually easygoing uncle didn’t bother with explanations and simply ordered his men to restrain him.
“What the hell—let me go?! Mmmph! Mmmmph!!!”
A bodyguard casually grabbed a towel, crumpled it up, and shoved it in his mouth, delivering an instant manual mute.
Gu Zhi looked down at his nephew’s futile struggles with detached amusement, leaned over and patted his nephew’s face, flushed red with rage. Rather than angry, he smiled: “Getting bold now, are we? Touching trash like this?”
His gaze hadn’t wandered elsewhere at all, yet the woman huddled under the blanket nearby shuddered in terror.
Total duration: five minutes. This scandalous scene concluded with Ji Jiayu bound hand and foot, his head wrapped in a bath towel, and hauled downstairs into a Maybach idling at the entrance. Curtain.
Now, alone in the suite with only two people remaining, Gu Zhi turned his attention toward the lump under the covers.
The spark that started it all—Li Tangli—was still trembling under the blanket from the commotion, with only her bare feet visible.
Once the noise outside faded and she thought everyone had left, she cautiously poked her head out.
The first thing that met her eyes was a pair of leather shoes. Sharp, pointed toes, black surface without a single wrinkle or speck of dirt, the lustrous tips reflecting cold, elegant light.
Li Tangli’s heart stopped for a beat. The next second, she watched the shoe tips pivot toward her.
The owner of these shoes gave her a blunt command: “I don’t think the bed is a good place for conversation, Miss Li. Do you agree?”
How had things come to this?
Li Tangli hugged her bare arms, her mind a complete blur.
Sitting across from her was Gu Zhi, the multibillion-yuan chairman of Rongxing Group.
He usually appeared in public through news reports or on business magazine covers.
And now, Chairman Gu was squandering his precious time, sitting on a single sofa in a hotel suite, studying the flustered woman before him.
His posture was no different from when he was at home—legs crossed. But in front of Gu Zhi in his suit and tie, Li Tangli was the complete opposite.
She wore a black V-neck camisole with cheap lace trim around the neckline. The collar gaped open down to her chest, leaving nothing covered that should be covered, everything exposed that shouldn’t be. Below was a leopard-print mini skirt that barely covered her hips, and her legs were bare. Hastily ordered off the bed without even grabbing her shoes, she stood barefoot on the floor, curling her toes.
Li Tangli was so mortified she wished she could disappear on the spot.
Even though she knew this was a mission world and she was actually playing the role of a cannon-fodder female side character, under Gu Zhi’s emotionless scrutiny, she felt utterly ashamed.
Her hands hung uselessly at her sides with nowhere to go, so she awkwardly tugged at her own pathetically short skirt, barely covering the tops of her thighs, trying to pull it down slightly.
Unfortunately, the skirt was never designed for coverage—the fabric was simply too scarce. Pulling it down only exposed the top, leaving a stretch of skin at her waist and hips brazenly visible. Mortified, she tugged it back up instead.
Gu Zhi, chin propped on his hand, watched her fidget uselessly with an unhurried expression, making no move to spare her embarrassment.
In terms of looks alone, Gu Zhi wasn’t particularly more striking than Ji Jiayu, the supposed male lead. He wasn’t a man overly concerned with appearance—past thirty, fine lines had begun to settle on his face.
Today he’d rushed over straight from two back-to-back meetings after a call from his sister.
His expression carried a slight weariness; when he lowered his head, his deep brow ridge cast a shadowy, somber shade. Narrow face, pale lips, sharp jawline—everything about him radiated restraint and understated composure.
But for Li Tangli, there existed a type of person in the world—though technically the same species, Homo sapiens—that triggered an instinctive warning whenever she saw them. A vague, elusive unease pressed against her nerves, as if they occupied a higher rung on the food chain than her.
She couldn’t sit still, wanted nothing more than to escape.
Gu Zhi was exactly this type.
He scanned Li Tangli from head to toe, inch by inch—practically undressing her with his gaze—yet found no evidence supporting his sister’s claim that she’d “seduced Little Yu and corrupted him.”
And she had the nerve to be timid too, cautious and hesitant, like a high schooler being made to stand in the corner. Not a shred of adult poise about her.
Though, admittedly, compared to him, Li Tangli might as well be a child.
Yet if she were truly as cowardly as she appeared, how could she possibly do something so utterly shameless?
His gaze returning to her heavily painted face, Gu Zhi finally spoke his second sentence: “Would you mind going to the bathroom and washing off that makeup?”
His wording was polite, though it couldn’t mask the condescension and aggression in the words.
Followed immediately by a more direct command: “Don’t close the door.”
Li Tangli frantically nodded, obedient as anything. Just as obedient as when Gu Zhi had wordlessly ordered her out of bed earlier—she hadn’t even dared put her shoes on.
She practically fled to the bathroom, twisted on the faucet, cupped the water in her hands, and splashed it all over her face with a cascade of sound.
Though it seemed she hadn’t realized the bathroom glass was one-way transparent. Bent over like that, her rear end inevitably tilted up, everything beneath the skirt fully visible.
A bath towel lay on the floor from the earlier chaos; she stepped on it and nearly slipped, quickly steadying herself against the sink.
But that slight hip twist and sway, seen from behind, looked practically like she was shaking her ass.
Even though Gu Zhi had no intention of looking, he still caught a glimpse by accident.
He instinctively turned his head away with a soft “tsk.”
Li Tangli, meanwhile, was oblivious to such details.
She shut off the water and looked up at the mirror, confirming most of her makeup was off.
Her heart was still pounding frantically. Even as she mentally berated herself for being so pathetic, she kept patting her face forcefully, trying to compose herself.
It’s fine. It’s all fake. I’m just playing this character. Not shameful. No one knows. Just a mission world.
After spending ages reassuring herself, she gathered her courage and stepped out. The moment her eyes met the man’s sitting on the sofa, her head dropped instantly, and like a balloon punctured by a needle, she shriveled back into her corner.
Gu Zhi, running out of patience, delivered his third sentence: “Lift your head.”
Li Tangli reluctantly obeyed.
Gu Zhi finally got a clear look at her face.
To be frank, Li Tangli’s appearance was neither beautiful nor ugly—just utterly ordinary, nothing worth remarking on. Her features were all quite plain, eyebrows and eyes pale and indistinct, like a few fading pencil strokes on paper that you’d forget the moment you looked away. Thoroughly unremarkable.
Eyebrows shaved thin for convenience in drawing them on, brown pupils.
Probably from scrubbing too hard while washing her face, her lips were red. There was a dark red cut on the curve of her lower lip with a faint trace of blood—whether she’d scraped it accidentally or her nephew had bitten it, she couldn’t say.
The only thing noteworthy about this woman was that her skin was clean, unmarked.
Gu Zhi completely gave up trying to figure out why Ji Jiayu had taken a shine to her. He glanced down at the file on Li Tangli in his hand. A thin sheet of paper that summed up her entire life.
He quickly scanned through it and calmly set it on the table.
“You just turned twenty. You’re not going to school?”
Li Tangli let out a small sound: “No.”
Gu Zhi’s brow furrowed immediately, and he scolded her like she was a child: “When someone speaks to you, you should actually use your voice, shouldn’t you?”
He certainly knew how to scold children.
Ji Jiayu had been a troublemaker from youth, and around seven or eight was particularly insufferable. His mother Gu Shufeng didn’t have the heart to hit or scold him, so eventually the problem landed on Gu Zhi’s shoulders. The boy had snuck into his study one day and made an absolute mess of it.
The moment Gu Zhi got home that evening, he rolled up his sleeves, removed the Patek Philippe from his wrist, seized Ji Jiayu by the collar, hoisted him up, and beat him.
From then on, the fearless young master only feared his uncle. This uncle’s affection was genuine—so genuine that even his own mother pinched her nose at how spoiling it was—and his anger was equally genuine, with no mercy whatsoever.
He would have no trouble taking Li Tangli in hand, never mind that she was twenty years old now.
Actually, Li Tangli was even less capable than a seven- or eight-year-old.
Gu Zhi hadn’t even done anything yet, and already she was quivering like a frightened quail, her voice strained as she squeezed out a few words: “…I dropped out after high school and never went back.”
Gu Zhi gave a cold laugh and didn’t ask such things as “Why do you do this job” or “Don’t let me catch you hanging around my nephew again”—the usual false curiosity or hardline threats.
He wasn’t interested, nor did he deign to threaten Li Tangli. Because his questions came from no desire to understand her.
Only to humiliate her.
“Miss Li is so young. You should be back in school. That’s the proper path.”
His tone was flat, but his gaze was sharp as two daggers pointed at her: “Or do you perhaps prefer earning money this way? Lying on your back?”
Li Tangli’s mind went “whoosh”—she gripped her own skirt tightly as her self-respect was stripped bare, thrown to the ground, and stomped on repeatedly.
Under this barrage of humiliation, even a mud figurine would have three points of spirit left. She finally stirred up a bit of emotion, jerking her head up: “I didn’t—”
She wanted to protest his harsh insult, but the facts were undeniable. After a few words, her voice died.
The man countered: “Didn’t?”
“…”
He’d expected to pierce through her facade, but having said this much, seeing her still with lips pressed shut, adopting an air of wounded shame, Gu Zhi lost patience for further words.
He rarely displayed this much emotional expression. His lack of mercy toward Li Tangli had much to do with his own family history.
Gu Zhi’s parents had once been famous in high society as an affectionate couple.
Until he was in elementary school, when his father’s affair with a nightclub model was exposed by the media.
The harmonious household fell apart overnight. The couple frequently erupted into quarrels, the third party constantly stirring trouble from the sidelines, and their feelings dissolved.
During the fallout from the scandal, his mother was pregnant. She wept day and night, which directly caused Gu Zhi’s younger sister’s premature birth and left her with a weak constitution.
So, though Gu Zhi appeared approachable, his heart harbored serious emotional hang-ups. In A City’s elite circles, he was famous as a paragon of virtue.
He despised his father, who acted like some base creature in heat, and by extension harbored strong prejudice against anyone connected to nightclubs and hostessing.
He couldn’t tolerate such a woman crawling into his nephew’s life and damaging his family once again.
Scheming to seduce a young heir and climb her way to becoming a rich wife—she’d need the ability to do it first. The young master might be brainless, but that didn’t mean his family was equally stupid.
Out of the corner of his eye, Li Tangli saw Gu Zhi stand up. Reflexively thinking he was about to hit her, she squeezed her eyes shut and threw her hands up in defense. But no blow came. She opened her eyes to find he’d already turned and left.
Seeing him exit, Li Tangli finally relaxed.
Gu Zhi’s string of humiliations had clearly taken a heavy psychological toll. Her face had gone pale from fright, and she had to lean against the wall for a while before she recovered.
She deliberately skirted around the sofa he’d been sitting on, her eyes not even daring to glance that way, as if his strong, oppressive aura still lingered there.
First, she fished out her high heels from under the bed where they’d been kicked, slipped them on, and then noticed her phone lighting up on the nightstand.
Two missed calls. The caller was Auntie Chen, her neighbor.
When Ji Jiayu had called her away that afternoon, she’d specifically asked Auntie Chen to look in on her bedridden mother.
Had something happened?
She suddenly tensed up, instinctively biting her finger, and immediately called back.
The moment the call connected, Auntie Chen’s voice came through rapidly: “Oh no, Little Li, what are you doing? I called you twice and couldn’t get through. Your mom Aunt Zhang collapsed! I rushed her to Second Hospital right away! I put down some money first—get over here quick!”
“Collapsed?” Li Tangli panicked. “I’m sorry, thank you so much, Auntie Chen. I’m coming right now!”
“Hurry!”
Hanging up, Li Tangli broke out in a cold sweat. She hastily threw on a windbreaker, steeled herself, and rushed downstairs. The scene from earlier had clearly made quite a stir; ignoring the contemptuous looks from the front desk staff, she trotted out of the hotel, gritted her teeth, and called a cab without hesitation, immediately heading to the hospital.
