Chapter 272: Major Discovery

He suddenly gave a scoff, "What does 'godfather' count for? If he has the guts, let him call me 'Dad'."

That numbness gathered from his limbs to his heart, and the reluctance and unwillingness blended into a sour emotion that melted into his blood.

Once that emotion dissolved and hid away, only a vast desolation remained in Pei Ling's heart.

One slip in a hundred well-laid plans.

As expected, she had discovered it after all.

She wanted a promise from him.

But she didn't know that if it weren't for her, he wouldn't want to guard that disgusting Pei Family for even a single day.

These were things he didn't want her to know.

Guarding her was his own wish.

But guarding her child?

This child did not yet have such great standing.

In the quiet hospital room, Zhu Yuan stared at him stubbornly with her clear, black-and-white eyes.

She would not back down, nor would she bargain with him.

Pei Ling wanted to curse.

Is she taking advantage of the fact that he won't refuse her?

But he just won't refuse her, will he?

With his heart softened to this extent, what else did he have to say?

Pei Ling let out a sigh, reached out, and flicked Zhu Yuan's forehead lightly with his finger.

"I'll wait and see."

Zhu Yuan's gaze trembled, "You said it."

Pei Ling suddenly braced his hands on both sides of her pillow, lowered his head to gaze at her, and his Adam's apple bobbed once, "Don't push your luck."

"Have you forgotten the rules of the Pei Family Bank? I'll agree to you, but what will you exchange with me?"

Zhu Yuan crashed into his complex gaze, her nose feeling slightly sour, "I'll exchange it for my child calling you 'godfather'."

Pei Ling was so angry he laughed, straightening his body, "You really know how to do business."

He turned to walk out, his hand gripping the doorknob, "I said I'd wait and see—I'm waiting for your child to call me 'Dad'."

Hearing this, Zhu Yuan hurriedly got up, "No!"

"I don't care."

Pei Ling twisted the doorknob and walked out, closing the door behind him.

No matter how hard Zhu Yuan tried inside the room, she could not open the door.

He stood outside the door, one hand gripping the doorknob without letting go.

He suddenly remembered a long time ago, when he and Zhu Yuan met at the hospital.

When Zhu Yuan mentioned that she had once gone to the Pei Family Bank wanting to borrow money from him.

He had said that not being able to borrow his money was her regret.

But whose regret was it, really?

The answer was obvious.

He then thought of how later, when Zhu Yuan had a conflict with Sheng Yu, Zhu Yuan had said something in anger.

She said: "Before, I owed him money and he was my benefactor, so I could only submit myself to him. If I had owed you money back then, I would have submitted myself to you—it's the same logic."

Pei Ling lowered his head and curled his lips in self-mockery.

So, that day when they brushed past each other outside the Pei Family Bank, everything had already been destined.

"Pei Ling, you big liar!"

The moment he let go of the handle, Zhu Yuan pulled the door open with force, standing before him, her face serious and angry as she confronted him.

Pei Ling's heart tightened, yet he smiled with a touch of nonchalance, "I'll agree, won't agreeing to you suffice?"

"Agree to what?"

He wanted to reach out and pull her into his arms, but instead, he just extended his hand to brush the hair hanging over her chest behind her shoulder, "To be your child's godfather."

After a long silence, Zhu Yuan's eyes were bright, and she smiled.

Pei Ling leaned against the wall, looking down at her, and he smiled too.

After a night of heavy rain, Jingdu City issued consecutive yellow alerts for rainstorms.

It wasn't until dawn that the alert was lifted.

Since yesterday afternoon, Sheng Yu's chest had been aching faintly, and he hadn't closed his eyes all night; Feiyuan lay by the side of the bed, occasionally propping itself up to look at him.

Later, he simply picked up his phone and opened his photo album.

His album had no other photos, and he didn't usually take pictures; they were all old photos of Zhu Yuan. Previously, when his phone was smashed, he had downloaded the photos back from the cloud drive.

Most of them were photos of her sleeping.

When he missed her, he would open them to take a look.

Sheng Yu felt like he was going crazy again.

Because as he looked at his phone, he remembered the phone case he had seen on Pei Ling's phone that day, and then he remembered the phone Zhu Yuan had taken out when she was paying at the noodle shop on Monday.

The two people's phone cases were identical, just different in color.

One was pink, one was blue.

A color scheme that made one hate it to the point of madness.

Sheng Yu stood up in annoyance, walked to the window, and lit a cigarette, watching the clouds roll and unfurl at the edge of the sky.

It was not until the sky was completely bright that the dull pain in his chest finally vanished.

He returned to his room to take a shower and went downstairs for breakfast; Situ walked into the small building with a faster pace than usual.

"Young Master Sheng, someone really did go to steal your blood sample last night!"

Sheng Yu stopped his steps as he went downstairs and said coldly, "Did you find out who it was?"

Situ also felt extremely shocked by this person.

Because in his view, those matters had no connection to this person at all; otherwise, it would have been impossible for the other party not to know the truth about Sheng Yu "driving to hit" Shen Yijing back then, and they would not have been kept in the dark for so many years.

Situ nodded, "It was one of Sheng Hongyao's people."

Sheng Yu lifted his eyes slightly.

Without a doubt, he had also thought of Situ's question.

Because he was very certain that the incident of driving to hit Shen Yijing was orchestrated by Shen Yijing and the man behind her to frame him, causing him to turn against his father, Sheng Hongyao.

Sheng Hongyao certainly did not know the truth back then.

Then, why was Sheng Hongyao worried about him discovering the drug components in his blood?

He could now conclude that the fact he would forget what happened after his episodes was related to the drugs.

So, did Sheng Hongyao send someone to steal his blood sample because he was worried about him remembering something?

"Did you alert the enemy?" Sheng Yu walked down the stairs.

Situ walked by his side, "No, the other party thinks they stole your blood sample; they don't know the real sample was transferred to another laboratory by Doctor Qiao Mai."

This was what Sheng Yu had instructed in advance.

If the person stealing the blood sample was not the one they were ultimately trying to catch, and they had already deployed a plan to catch them in the act, the person hiding in the shadows would immediately guess that their identity was suspected and would also guess that Sheng Hongwei was just a decoy.

Because of this matter, Sheng Yu had only told one person from beginning to end.

Now they must treat it as an accidental theft.

"But what is Sheng Hongyao worried about you remembering?"

Sheng Yu sat in the dining chair, picked up his coffee, and took a sip, "Do you remember that day when Shen Yijing said she knew a secret of Sheng Hongyao's?"

Situ recalled it and nodded, "It was because of this secret she mentioned that Sheng Hongyao killed her to silence her."

This was enough to show how important this secret was to Sheng Hongyao.

"Mm," Sheng Yu said thoughtfully, "but I think there is another possibility that Sheng Hongyao killed her to silence her, which is that this secret is related to me. Connecting this to him sending someone to steal my blood sample, this hypothesis is basically established."

Situ froze, a chill crawling up his spine.

It was just a pity that Shen Yijing did not have the chance to say that secret that day; they did not even hear the first word she opened her mouth to say clearly.

However, knowing now that Sheng Hongyao has a hidden secret that is related to Sheng Yu is a major discovery.

Stealing the blood sample was out of fear that Sheng Yu would remember something.

And the fragments Sheng Yu would forget were all related to his episodes.

He did not have many episodes; as long as they began an investigation, perhaps they would be able to discover something.

The cold wind whistled through the cracks in the window, carrying with it the faint, lingering scent of snow.