Chapter 579: Ulterior Motives

Shi Youxuan had seen enough of the diamonds, so she opened those paintings one by one.

She commented on them as she looked!

It was just that she didn't understand paintings at all, so she opened Baidu and looked while searching.

She could have just looked at them herself, but she didn't!

She read out all the information she found, her tone rising and falling with emotion!

Lady Qi's face turned pale, and she was so distressed she nearly had a heart attack.

Others might not know, but she knew.

These few paintings were her husband's life; after making the decision to give them away, Qi Xiansheng locked himself in the room for a whole day without eating or drinking, and his hair had turned quite gray by the time he came out of the Study.

Lady Qi said, "Mrs. Sheng, please rest assured, these are all authentic works. This one, and the one in the Museum, are fakes; the authentic ones are here."

She was not lying; it was indeed the case.

Shi Youxuan stopped teasing her.

She carefully and cautiously rolled up the paintings and returned them to Lady Qi along with the diamonds: "These gifts are too precious; I cannot accept them. I like the dried meat and bird's nest very much, thank you."

Shi Youxuan wouldn't accept them?

Lady Qi panicked, and just as she was about to speak.

Shi Youxuan said with a smile: "Lady Qi, I still don't know your given name? Could you tell me?"

Only then did Lady Qi realize that the reason the form of address between her and Shi Youxuan was unequal was because she had never told her her given name.

"My name is Ji Meiqi; Xuanxuan, you can call me Meiqi."

Shi Youxuan said: "Alright, Meiqi. There is a saying in Jiangzhou that a gentleman does not take what others love. Although I don't understand the value of what you brought, I can tell that these are treasures that you and your husband consider of the utmost importance."

"You brought these treasures to give to us, so there must be something you want to say later. If I accept these treasures and cannot fulfill your request, then you would have suffered a great loss."

"If I can do it, I would help you even if you didn't give these treasures. People in Jiangzhou value the friendship between people; often, money cannot represent everything... If I cannot do it, accepting such heavy gifts from you would also put me in a difficult position."

She spoke very directly, without any beating around the bush.

Her attitude was clear, and her stance was firm.

Shi Youxuan said a great deal, and the central idea was one sentence: say what you need to say, don't do useless things.

Lady Qi indeed had something to say, but since she wouldn't accept the gifts, it was truly hard to bring it up.

Now she regretted it a little; she regretted that she shouldn't have given such precious gifts on the first meeting.

The ulterior motive was too obvious and had been seen through; Lady Qi and her husband had never expected that Shi Youxuan would refuse!

They felt that no one should be able to refuse when seeing so many good things.

But now she had been refused, and what should have been an active situation had become passive.

Lady Qi's face turned beet red, and she stammered for a long time without saying it!

Shi Youxuan didn't press her; the harder it was to say, the more difficult the matter was to handle.

"Meiqi, what do you think of my tea?" She picked up her teacup, changing the subject without leaving a trace.

Lady Qi hadn't tasted it at all just now; her attention hadn't been on the tea.

Now that she was asked, she picked up the teacup, took a sip, tasted it carefully, and looked surprised: "Good tea, fragrant and elegant, the leaves are straight, mellow but not heavy."

Just from these few words, one could tell she was an expert.

Shi Youxuan instructed the housekeeper: "Zhang Ma, go and pack up all the remaining Longjing tea in the house and give it to the people Meiqi brought."

The kind of Longjing the two of them were drinking had an annual production of less than ten jin in all of Jiangzhou, and it couldn't be bought on the market at all.

She accepted the dried meat and bird's nest brought by Lady Qi and used the tea as a return gift, which wouldn't seem slight at all.

At the same time, she indicated that it was just what her family had left over, not something specially prepared; if Lady Qi refused, it would mean she was looking down on it!

"How could I be so embarrassed? This kind of tea is more precious than gold, and we are people who have fallen on hard times..."

Lady Qi had just started when she was interrupted by Shi Youxuan: "Hey! Meiqi, if you belittle yourself like this, it's no fun." She had no choice but to shut up.

She couldn't give away the precious gifts she had brought, and she had accepted a return gift of great value from the other party, so the words she wanted to say became even harder to utter.

Shi Youxuan would not let the atmosphere go cold.

"Meiqi, why didn't you bring your Qi Heng?"

Mentioning the child, she immediately opened up the conversation, telling Shi Youxuan that her son was at home hiring a tutor to practice the Jiangzhou dialect.

She didn't know how long they would stay in Jiangzhou, so the child's studies could not be delayed.

But the education in L Country and Jiangzhou was very different; the progress of second-grade primary school here was the standard of fourth or fifth grade in L Country, so they had to study intensively.

Shi Youxuan suggested that it would be better to send the child to school to learn.

Communicating and playing with other children at school was the fastest way to improve language skills.

As for the studies not keeping up, that was not a problem; repeating a grade for a year and starting over would allow the progress to catch up.

Lady Qi thought this was a very good method; for many days, besides worrying about the situation, she and her husband were most worried about the child's schooling.

The schooling was settled, but Lady Qi still had many worries about which school Qi Heng should go to.

She worried about her son's safety.

She worried that the child would be discriminated against at school because of his language and accent...

Shi Youxuan told her that these worries were all unnecessary.

Public security in Jiangzhou was particularly good, especially in schools; the kind of things that happened in kindergartens in L Country could never happen here.

The possibility of the child being discriminated against was indeed real, but he could go to her own school.

Shi Youxuan was the Chairman of the school; she couldn't guarantee other schools, but the atmosphere of her own school was absolutely the best. In addition, the software and hardware facilities were also first-class. If Qi Heng went, he would be in the same school as Shi Ran, and he could adapt faster.

"Thank you, Xuanxuan. How can I thank you? You have really helped my family a lot..." Lady Qi was particularly moved and couldn't help but hold Shi Youxuan's hand, gripping it tightly.

Ever since something happened to her family, she had seen too much of the warmth and coldness of human relationships and the fickleness of the world.

Friends who used to get along very well had even blocked her phone number.

Even relatives avoided them as much as they could, terrified of being implicated; absolutely no one would extend a helping hand to her family.

Everything she endured taught her, who was originally somewhat straightforward, how to be hypocritical.

Shi Youxuan had been genuinely looking out for her just now, not minding the trouble, not avoiding suspicion, and even refusing her expensive gifts; all of this moved her deeply.

Shi Youxuan gripped her hand back and said with a bright, charming smile, "We are friends, aren't we?"

"Yes, we are."

……

Lady Qi stayed at the house for over two hours before saying goodbye and leaving.

She had stated her purpose—Qi Xiansheng wanted to gain the support of Sheng Hanyu and his wife to make a comeback and return to L Country!

This matter was indeed very significant.

But it was much as Sheng Hanyu and Shi Youxuan had once guessed.

The two of them were wealthy, with riches rivaling a nation.

Moreover, many of Sheng Hanyu's businesses were in L Country, even though the richest man in L Country on the surface was currently Wang Yong.

But the person truly behind the planning and capital operations was Sheng Hanyu; others might not know this, but as an important figure in L Country, Qi Xiansheng could not possibly be unaware.

Sheng Hanyu was his only hope for a comeback, and a large part of the reason he had taken refuge in Jiangzhou this time was because of this.

But Qi Xiansheng could not go to find Sheng Hanyu in person; his status was special.

Every move he made might be under someone else's surveillance, and furthermore, having been forced by the pressure of Zhu Yiwen in the past, he had signed documents to suppress Sheng Hanyu, and Qi Xiansheng was afraid of being held in resentment.