My Queen, My Rules - 75
Worry
The moment Cen Sen said those words, the atmosphere inside the car turned solemn.
The driver seemed to finally realize at that moment: this was the Group President from the capital, not the affable old leader he usually chauffeured, the one who enjoyed casual chats with his employees.
He wisely shut his mouth.
Zhou Jiaheng did not dare offer any words of comfort either. He simply kept making calls, staying in constant contact with people on the Xingcheng side.
Just then, an even more sudden piece of news came in. Because of landslides and sections of collapsed roadbed along the Chengshuang route, the entire Xingcheng-Shuangcheng Expressway was closed immediately.
That was exactly the expressway they needed to take to return to Xingcheng.
Things in Xingcheng were even less reassuring. The latest news was that civilian vehicles were now prohibited from the roads, which meant there was no way to send anyone out to look for Ji Mingshu.
No one knew what was going through Cen Sen's mind. After listening to Zhou Jiaheng's report, he got straight out of the car and called Jiang Che.
Xingcheng was Jiang Che's territory. Whether it was finding someone or getting permission to bypass restrictions, it would be far easier and more direct with him involved.
The call was answered after only two rings.
Cen Sen got straight to the point. "I'm on the road from Chengshuang back to Xingcheng. The Xingcheng-Shuangcheng Expressway has been closed. Arrange something for me. I need to get back immediately."
His voice seemed to have been soaked in the night wind, cold and deep, yet crisp and decisive.
Jiang Che was waiting at the airport for a connecting flight. He gave a careless little laugh. "What, rushing back to Xingcheng to check on me? I'm not even there today."
Cen Sen: "Cut the crap."
Jiang Che had been about to tease him again when something suddenly occurred to him. "Don't tell me you left Ji Mingshu in Xingcheng and can't get hold of her?"
He knew Cen Sen had come to Xingcheng on business, and vaguely recalled him mentioning that Ji Mingshu had come along this time as well.
The silence on the other end seemed to confirm his guess. His lazy demeanor vanished at once. After a moment of thought, he calmly began making arrangements. "With the earthquake in Xingcheng, the satellite cities nearby will definitely be sending fire and rescue teams. Send me your location and I'll find someone to take you back. Send me anywhere Ji Mingshu might have gone too. I'll help you look for her."
He paused. "And don't worry about the apartment at Xingcheng University."
After a brief silence, Cen Sen said only one words. "Thanks."
Jiang Che: "Cut the crap."
Cen Sen and Jiang Che had been friends for more than a decade, closer to two.
Jiang Che, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, had never needed to curry favor with anyone. So his personality was a bit rough around the edges and always did whatever he wanted to do.
Cen Sen, by comparison, had been through far more. He had matured early, and his temperament was steady and composed. He was also thoughtful and meticulous in the way he dealt with people.
Over the years, Cen Sen had always been the one most capable of keeping everything under control. Whenever their childhood friends got into trouble and were too afraid to ask their family for help, they would usually go to him to clean up the mess.
When Jiang Che and Chen Xingyu had first founded Jiangxing Technology, they faced numerous competitors. Several times, those competitors had pushed the company into severe cash-flow difficulties. The Jiang family hadn't been particularly supportive of Jiang Che at the time, and it was Cen Sen who had repeatedly provided the capital and kept the company afloat.
This situation, with Cen Sen asking Jiang Che for help, seemed to be a first.
To be honest, Cen Sen hated the feeling. Perhaps the experience in childhood of having his life arranged for him and his fate decided by others had left too deep a psychological scar. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to standing in the position of the one in control, keeping everything firmly within his grasp.
The night wind was cool and sparse. He turned around, one hand gripping the car door handle so tightly that the veins stood out across the back of his hand.
Then, in the next second, he abruptly relaxed his grip, tapping on the window and asked the driver for a cigarette.
The driver hurriedly handed one out and even cupped his hands around it to light it for him.
Leaning against the car, Cen Sen gazed steadily in the direction of Xingcheng. Wisps of smoke slipped from between his fingers, glowing faintly before drifting away into the night.
***
Cen Sen arrived in Xingcheng at one in the morning. By then, news related to the earthquake had already flooded the internet. It was impossible not to know about it.
The strongest tremor, the main shock, had struck at 8:15 p.m. and lasted nearly seventeen seconds. There had still been several aftershocks at intervals up until midnight.
The epicenter was in Fengyang County on the outskirts of Xingcheng, very close to the main urban district. Figures on casualties and economic losses were still being compiled. Based on the information released so far, the damage did not appear particularly severe.
But for Cen Sen, the situation was severe, because he still could not reach Ji Mingshu.
For a long time, Ji Mingshu's phone could be dialed and would ring; it just wasn't answered.
But when he called again after midnight, all he heard was the mechanical female voice informing him that the number he had dialed was switched off.
The hotel security footage had also been retrieved. Based on the time period recalled by the staff, it showed that she had indeed gone out that afternoon.
But she had never returned after leaving. There was no one in her hotel room, and without an accurate time frame, searching through the surveillance footage was extremely difficult.
When Cen Sen arrived at the Junyi Huazhang where they were staying, Jiang Che finally sent over precise information. Ji Mingshu had gone out that afternoon to visit a popular internet-famous café. After leaving the café, she seemed to have... gone straight back to the hotel, and the location of the last call she had answered that afternoon was also at the hotel.
Standing in the hotel lobby, Cen Sen looked at the final location provided by Jiang Che. Suddenly, he understood.
The last time they had come to Xingcheng, Ji Mingshu had been wanting to visit a certain internet-famous café, but because she had been in a hurry to return to the capital for her showdown with Li Wenyin at a cocktail party, she had ultimately never made it there.
This time, she finally went. But the café fell far short of her expectations. She disliked everything about it, from the interior design to the wildly popular desserts to the owner's taste in coffee beans. After drinking half a cup of coffee, she got up and left without even taking a single picture.
Maybe Cen Sen had worn her out too much the night before, she wasn't even in the mood to shop. She returned to the hotel soon after, took two pills she thought were vitamins, and went to sleep.
For Ji Mingshu, it had been a completely ordinary day, so uneventful that it was almost boring.
That was why, when she woke in a hazy daze to being kissed until she could barely breathe, she was completely disoriented.
"What are you doing? It's the middle of the night, can't you let people sleep?"
She pushed Cen Sen's face away while gathering her silk camisole sleepdress around herself. Her voice was soft, sweet, and full of sleepy complaints.
But the only response she received was another kiss, deeper and more relentless than the last.
The kiss was forceful; she couldn't even muster a muffled protest. A chill swept across her skin as the sleepdress she had just tried to gather around her was pulled apart again.
Thoroughly roused by his actions, Ji Mingshu was now fully awake.
Something was seriously wrong with Cen Sen. He had not even showered before demanding her with such urgency, and with such unusual force at that. Most importantly, he kept murmuring "baby" into her ear in that intimate voice.
Had he been drinking something fake?
Then why didn't he smell like alcohol?
Maybe fake alcohol didn't smell like alcohol...?
While her mind wandered through these ridiculous thoughts, Ji Mingshu clung to Cen Sen, biting her lip and enduring his intensity.
At that moment, she was like a salted fish pinned to a cutting board, unable to resist and lacking the strength to resist, left entirely at the mercy of Cen Sen as he turned her this way and that.
...
When everything was finally over, Ji Mingshu lay in Cen Sen's arms, held so tightly that she could barely move. He kept asking whether she was uncomfortable anywhere, and kept kissing her, much more affectionate than his usual post-coital attitude.
Ji Mingshu eyed Cen Sen suspiciously. Pinching the edge of the blanket between her fingers, she cautiously asked, "If you've been possessed, blink."
Cen Sen: "..."
Perhaps to prove that he hadn't been possessed, he simply stared silently at Ji Mingshu for nearly half a minute without blinking. Ji Mingshu herself couldn't help blinking several times, yet he still did not.
Ji Mingshu let out a breath, then couldn't resist asking in a tiny voice, "What's wrong with you? You seem especially weird today."
"Nothing." He didn't elaborate, simply got up and scooped her into his arms, carrying her into the bathroom to bathe.
No one could understand the emotional journey Cen Sen had undergone in those five or six hours.
The moment he saw Ji Mingshu, it seemed that only possessing her could prove that she was truly there, safe and real, still in his arms.
Noticing how unusually quiet Cen Sen was that night, Ji Mingshu did not ask any more questions.
It was only after they had showered and returned to the master bedroom that she picked up her phone and discovered it had run out of battery.
The moment she plugged it in, her phone nearly exploded from the flood of messages rushing in from all directions.
"...An earthquake?"
Ji Mingshu was completely stunned.
"When did that happen? I didn't feel a thing."
Come to think of it, she did vaguely recall feeling the world shaking for a while in her sleep. But that still didn't make sense. A magnitude 5.8 earthquake should have produced fairly strong tremors, shouldn't it? How could she have slept through it so deeply?
She grabbed the vitamin bottle by the bed and looked at it.
They weren't vitamins. They were sleeping pills.
She had taken the wrong medicine!
After the barrage of alarming news sank in, the pieces finally clicked into place. "You thought something had happened to me, didn't you?"
Cen Sen didn't speak, turning off the bedside lamp.
Ji Mingshu refused to let it go. She scooted closer and illuminated his face with the glow of her phone screen, her eyes shining. "You really thought something happened to me, didn't you? Were you really worried about me? Are you stupid? I barely know anyone in Xingcheng. Where else could I possibly have gone? Couldn't you have just sent someone to check the room?"
"I did."
But the employee who come to check on the room had only recently joined the hotel. He couldn't even tell how many rooms their suite had and had mistaken the second bedroom for the master bedroom, leaving three bedrooms unproperly checked. He had also called out her name while searching the rooms, but she'd never responded. Under normal circumstances, who would have imagined that the CEO's wife had accidentally taken sleeping pills and was simply sleeping too deeply to wake?
Ji Mingshu lay on her stomach, cupping her face as she looked at Cen Sen, unable to stop herself from smiling. "You admitted it."
Cen Sen didn't answer, just placed her phone back on the bedside table, closed his eyes, and said, "Sleep."
Ji Mingshu: "I slept too much this afternoon. I can't sleep now."
Cen Sen: "Then I'm going to sleep."
Ji Mingshu reached over and pried his eyelids open. "You're not allowed to sleep!"
Cen Sen: "I'm really tired."
"Where was all that tiredness earlier? Weren't you pretty energetic just now? You get sleepy the moment it's over. Are you seventy or eighty years old? Get up and talk to me. Tell me about the earthquake."
Cen Sen remained unmoved.
"Fine, you don't have to talk. Just call me 'baby' one more time and I'll let you off."
Ji Mingshu swung her lower legs through the air, occasionally leaning over to pluck at his eyelashes, then reaching out to tickle him.
Cen Sen really couldn't take it anymore. After turning over several times without managing to escape her, he finally turned back, pulled Ji Mingshu into his arms, and pressed her head into the hollow of his neck. In a low, deep voice, he murmured, "Baby.”
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