“You have to try before you’ll know if it’ll work.”
Lu Zhiling smiled faintly. When the bubbles in the kettle reached the size of fish eyes — the perfect moment for rinsing tea [(a classic Chinese tea-brewing cue — “fish-eye bubbles” mark water around 80°C)] — she began to pour the hot water with steady hands.
“Making money is too hard,” she murmured softly, “and besides, what’s the point of all this?”
Jiang Fusheng looked puzzled.
The Lu family was gone — destroyed overnight. Everyone perished, and she alone was left behind. Now she had to scrape together every bit of money she could, earn more, and then search for the old relics that once belonged to her family — to find them, buy them back, piece by piece. Even thinking about that journey felt like walking through exhaustion itself.
At her words, Lu Zhiling’s eyes wavered slightly. The steam curled upward, and the boiling water scalded her fingertips, burning and stinging her skin.
Yet she didn’t pull her hand back. She kept rinsing the tea leaves, her voice calm — almost too calm.
“Because… I can’t bring people back.”
All twenty-three members of the Lu family had died in that explosion and fire. In the aftermath, even the ashes were mixed together — no way to tell one person from another.
The only things she could still retrieve were those lifeless objects that once carried warmth.
Hearing this, Jiang Fusheng froze, staring at her in silence, at a complete loss for words.
But Lu Zhiling quickly shifted the topic, as if brushing dust from her sleeve. “Alright, enough of that. Tell me about Bo Wang.”
“Huh?”
Jiang Fusheng blinked, caught off guard.
The young master hadn’t returned since the wedding, and Madam Lu never brought him up. So why suddenly now…?
“Tell me everything you know about him — anything, even small details. Anything that might help me understand him better,” Lu Zhiling said evenly.
That made sense.
They were husband and wife after all. To live together, they needed to understand each other.
Jiang Fusheng scratched her head, bit her lip, and after a long moment of hesitation finally spoke up. “You know about the Bo Group’s legal department, right?”
Lu Zhiling nodded. “The Bo family employs more lawyers than any other family in the country.”
Online, people often joked that ‘the Bo family’s legal team is the strongest on earth — if the Bo family’s in a good mood, even an ant crawling past their gate might end up in jail for three years.’ [(a popular internet exaggeration to express how powerful someone’s legal influence is)]
“That’s right,” Jiang Fusheng said, lowering her voice a little, “but our young master’s private legal team has twice as many lawyers as the entire conglomerate combined.”
She held up two fingers for emphasis. “Twice!”
“…”
“The Bo family has so many lawyers because the corporation’s business is vast and complicated. But as for why the young master personally employs that many lawyers… the reason’s very simple.”
Jiang Fusheng looked uneasy, lowering her head as if she dared not say more — silently leaving Lu Zhiling to draw her own conclusion.
“…”
Lu Zhiling stayed silent.
Her mind drifted to that night — the cold glint of a dagger in Bo Wang’s hand as he pressed the blade against the hem of her skirt, his voice low and dangerous, like someone who could cut through her without hesitation.
Yes. A man as ruthless and impulsive as him would’ve long been behind bars if he didn’t have a legion of lawyers shielding him.
After a pause, she asked quietly, “Anything else?”
Jiang Fusheng’s eyes darted toward the door. After confirming no one was nearby, she leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially, “I once overheard the butler reporting to the old master… saying that the eldest young master lost his memory after a car accident when he was five. Later, he was adopted by a butcher.”
Lu Zhiling’s hands stilled briefly. She poured tea into the cup until it was about seven-tenths full — the proper amount for tasting [(in Chinese tea ceremony, cups are never filled to the brim — “seven-tenths full” symbolizes restraint and grace)].
“That butcher didn’t treat him like a human being at all,” Jiang Fusheng continued. “During the day, the young master had to help with slaughtering and cleaning. And at night…” She hesitated, her voice trembling. “Do you know what they do to sheep before they slaughter them?”
“Tell me,” Lu Zhiling said, lifting the teacup to her lips.
“They tie their front legs together, and their hind legs too… and leave them struggling there, bleating.”
Jiang Fusheng swallowed hard. “Every night, that butcher would tie the young master the same way — trussed up like an animal, locked in a dog cage to sleep. In the day, he’d be released to work, only to be fed rotten vegetables and bits of offal boiled in murky water. When winter came, he’d wear sheepskins — fresh ones, just skinned, still reeking of blood.”
“…”
Lu Zhiling’s fingers trembled. The tea that reached her lips suddenly tasted bitter, impossible to swallow.
That was child abuse — cruelty beyond words.
“Years went by like that,” Jiang Fusheng went on softly. “Then one day, a huge fire broke out at the slaughterhouse, burning that couple to ashes. The young master managed to escape.”
Her voice lowered to almost a whisper. “But judging from the butler’s tone… that fire — it’s very likely the young master was the one who started it.”