Perfect Fiancé Chapter 49

Lu Xi seemed to be having an extremely long dream.

In that dream of his, he was still called Shen Luxi[1].

[1] 沈陆曦 (shěn lù xī) – A witty play on his name, the only difference is 曦 xī, which means early dawn, sunlight, the sun or sunshine. The message behind the word is of great metaphorical meaning, an extremely beautiful wording about the sun and the sunshine; often meaning staying optimistic, individualistic, open-minded. The word 陆 lù here remains with the same meaning as land, sh.o.r.e or continent.

Shen for the Shen family clan, Lu for dry land and Xi for the radiance of the rosy light of day that had been covered by multi-coloured clouds[2]; so he had been named this because of how the Shen Family's grounds had been in a position facing the sun and to signify how he would bear the entire Shen Family's hopes and future.

[2] 卿云郁郁曜晨曦 (qīng yún yù yào chén xī) – Part of a written record from the "Records of the Grand Historian: the Book of Heavenly Government", it was part of a verse of a poem; 'if mist wert not mist, if clouds wert not clouds, they were dense and numerous, coiled in a huge, desolate overshadow. When one peers upon thus, it truly wert like a rosy cloud, an auspicious sign of celebration.' It means that with the multicoloured clouds in the horizons are covering the radiance of the sun, it is like an auspicious sign of reciprocation towards the heart and mind of Buddha, as if G.o.d has a desire for blessing peace and prosperity for the country and its people.

While in this dream state, he recalled how he had been informed of the significance behind the origins of his name and similarly how he had thought himself as a person of such importance as well.

As the eldest grandson of the Shen clan, he had been gifted since he was born and since he was young, he had been the most favoured and talented child; the exemplary model of the entire younger generation of the family.

When he had taken over the family corporation at the age of eighteen, without a doubt within four years, he had expanded the entire Shen Family's influence by double.

At the time he was barely twenty-two years old.

That had been the time of his youth, incomparably magnificent.

In the eyes of his parents, he was the eldest son that made them proud. In the eyes of his peers, he was the idol that they looked up to and in the eyes of the people of the same industry, he was the king of the business world that one avoided like the plague.

Yet all of this, it all ended on the day of his twenty-sixth birthday.

At that time, he was already a huge, important and powerful decision-maker in his business empire. The Shen Family's status had become increasingly stable and as for him, although he wasn't that old, the might that he had already acc.u.mulated was immense. On the very day of his birthday, his clan and some of his peers had gotten together to celebrate.

Due to the extremely outstanding successes that he had achieved since he was young, he and these fellow peers were not bosom friends. When they faced him, all too often, it was with an abundance of respect and fear, but it was not enough to become intimate. Even his own biological younger brother, who was merely four years younger, was the same. Thus, for the first time in many years, they brought up this matter of celebrating for him so he could not reject such an affair.

Due to them being one's own flesh and blood, one's close relatives, he, who rarely drank with others, had drunk a few more gla.s.ses than usual.

Once he had awoken, everything had changed.

In the most VIP patient room in a private hospital, all he could see around him was the harsh and unsightly colour of snow-white.

They had said that he had become drunk and the driver had sent him home. However, during the journey, they had been ambushed and the driver died at the scene. As for him, he had been kidnapped but when they finally found him, the ligaments in both his hands and legs had already been torn apart. Therefore, due to the long duration before recovering him, even if they had reconnected his nerves, it would still have been of no use.

In other words, he, Shen Lu Xi, the most favoured and talented child of the Shen Family had henceforth become a completely useless person.

At the time, when he heard all this, he had almost burst out into laughter

His hand and leg ligaments had been torn apart? Was he filming a wuxia movie? Was this playing a joke with him? Very well, these guys truly were great right, to have actually played this sort of joke on him.

However, no matter how much he had tried right then, he was unable to move even one finger.

His elders, his parents, his siblings, even those peers of his that had come that day to celebrate his birthday had taken their turn to visit him. With their words, they had all been comforting and consoling him to not abandon himself to despair.

Then, once the initial excitement had pa.s.sed, he seemed to have been forgotten.

During those days, it had been empty, lonely, cheerless and cold.

As far as he was concerned, he who had always been living in a brightly coloured and decorated world where everyone had been chasing after him ever since he was young- this was an all too novel experience for him.

As he laid on the bed alone, his mind worked incessantly.

As the gazes of those people flashed through his mind, one after another, there was never a moment where he could not clearly see the emotions that they had revealed in those eyes of theirs till that very day.

Pity.

The sort of gazes that seemed to be looking at a precious piece of porcelain that had been covered with cracks all over.

He had begun to harbour suspicions of their version of events. After the incident, the Shen Family had promoted an elder who took control, and all of his trusted aides had been practically kicked out of the centre of command. However, after controlling the clan for so many years, naturally, he too had cultivated hidden subordinates that were not known to anyone and loyal to him.

Yet when the results had appeared before him after a long wait, the initial grief, indignation, resentfulness and hatred that had filled his heart had suddenly dissipated.

Like boiling water that had solidified into ice in a split second.

Nothing is sadder than a withered heart.

He had thought that it was some peer of his that had been envious of his status and position, who tried to dispose of him on the sly. At most, it could have merely been some elders of his that had secretly supported them from the sidelines. As for his family, well, it was not anything more than him being deceived by them.

Yet who would have thought-

It was actually like the events of the Murder on the Orient Express[3].

[3] The Murder on the Orient Express was a detective novel written by Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The gist of it (spoilers up ahead so avoid if you don't want to know) is that in this murder of the businessman whose name is revealed to be Casetti; every one of the pa.s.sengers, all of whom were discovered to have had a connection to a case that destroyed a family, had all conspired to kill Ca.s.setti together.

That evening, those present to celebrate his birthday were all seventeen of his peers and all of them had been a partic.i.p.ant in that very state of affairs. Yet, the instigator of all this was his very own little brother.

The truth of the incident had been like a splash of ice water falling upon him, and in that instant, he suddenly no longer had an interest in getting revenge.

Would there be any point in it now?

Since he was young, as the eldest son, as the eldest grandson, he had been instilled with the ideology and thinking that the family clan was his priority.

For twenty-six years, from learning his first words until he had rushed headlong into the business world, the efforts that the family had put in to cultivate and raise him, he too had thought it fitting to devote his all into it too.

That's right, it was all because he had been too outstanding.

The Shen Family's Shen Luxi, who had been gifted ever since he was born, who was filled with incomparable tactics and trickery; he had been the literal and figurative shadow that had covered all of the heads of his peers.

Previously, they still had to worry about the bearing of their elders; however, now that the Shen clan's status had been made stable, one more Shen Luxi would be decorating something that had already been perfect. With another Shen Luxi around, it would be unlikely as bad as losing an important limb.

Moreover, the law cannot be enforced when everyone is an offender.

Even after so many probes were completed, they found out that even within some of the elders in the family clan, they harboured these kinds of unspeakable thoughts in their minds.

Since this was the case, what else could he be afraid of?

As a result, with the birthday celebration, with the plan in place, with such a solution, what happened afterwards was the tacit silence from the entire family clan.

As far as the Shen Family was concerned, he no longer had any value.

Therefore, as they looked upon him; in their eyes, they were filled with pity as they looked upon him as if he were a source of entertainment. It was like one had been looking at a piece of porcelain that had once had value but with its worth being slowly chipped away at.

When he finally came around to the facts that had been shed to light about this matter, his heart was like dying embers.

Forget it, all of this, he would just take it as binds that had tied him down all these years.

Anyways, everything that he had earned all these years was enough to safely live on for the rest of his life. Even Shen, this family name of his, he was entirely unwilling to use anymore and he had immediately had his name changed to Lu Xi.

The dry land and the setting sun.

Henceforth, he would be all alone in the world and have a wheelchair as his companion.

A few years later, he had come across an old Chinese medicine pract.i.tioner and had obtained his secret recipe. With that, both of his hands had been nursed somewhat back to mobility. Though in fact, it was merely to a state where he could finally hold onto a pair of chopsticks.

When he was out and about, perhaps it was due to his exceptional looks and his immobile self; when those people first looked at him, in their gazes, it was always filled with pity and sympathy.

The sort of pity that he abhorred.

From that point, he had become even more reticent.

Until he was in Jiangnan, in an extremely ordinary county hospital, where he met a girl.

At that time, it was at the crossroads between autumn and winter. The illness in his legs had relapsed and he was unwilling to stay at home. So, he had randomly chosen to stay in a hospital.

That girl had been a new rookie doctor.

She seemed to be about twenty-four or twenty-five or so, and did not seem too young. Yet for him who was already thirty-six, how could she have not been a little girl?

Thirty-six years old, the age gap between the former Shen Luxi, there was a full ten years age difference between them.

As for him who had similarly faced ten whole years of pity-filled gazes, no one was an exception.

Until he came across her.

The little girl had been doing her rounds along with the main doctor.

Several of the new doctors, when they had met the man who had been sitting upright in his wheelchair, they had all more or less had a flash of slight pity in their eyes.

With distinctly handsome facial features and incomparable magnificence, this sort of person, why was he to be immobile then?

Only her.

With a delicate, upright and pretty face, with those phoenix eyes of hers that were exceedingly beautiful.

The corners of her eyes were slightly raised and her face had been unadorned without the slightest trace of makeup on. Her eyes were distinctly clear and were as calm and gentle as the sea under the moonlight.

He could clearly tell that her eyes were not the type of still waters that had stirring undercurrents beneath them, but truly lacked billows and waves[4].

[4] What he meant here was that he could tell she had no ulterior motives or concealed thoughts as she looked upon him.

For so many years now, there was no one that had been this indifferent when they saw him at first glance.

In that heart of his that had not been moved for ten years, ripples had begun to stir little by little.

Without the slightest hesitation, he had straightforwardly requested for her to be his main doctor.

With this layer of relation between them, the interactions between the two people had gradually increased.

He had not found anyone to investigate her, rather, he had wholeheartedly begun to understand this girl gradually amidst being in close contact with her.

The more he interacted with her, the more he understood her and the more he understood, his interest in her deepened.

What he had discovered from her were indifference and contradictions, pride and willfulness, so much so that even towards him; to this patient of hers, she had begun to show some coldness and detachment.

Even as he had slowly become familiar with her, she still regarded him as a friend. At times, when she was free, she too would chat with him about some things but he could still all too clearly tell that she had erected a fence that had isolated herself inside and kept everyone, including himself, out.

He had no idea how she had cultivated such a temperament and sometimes, he could not help but fear that in this world, there would truly be no one that she would care about.

This notion of his, it had continued until he had his final glimpse of hers.

The last time he saw her.

He had never seen her drink and naturally, had never seen her drunk either.

That day, initially it had been a day that they had made an appointment for a check-up. She had missed the appointment and he had been worried, so he had gone to her home to find her, only to see a little woman who drank until she was tipsy.

Perhaps it was because the two people had been friends for a long time and could be considered as friends who knew each other well, or perhaps it was because she had repressed her emotions for too long.

In short, that day, she had told him a lot.

About the orphanage, Aunt Fu… …

Aunt Fu, that was the first time he had heard about the person that the little girl had cared about.

Yet, she had been drunk because Aunt Fu pa.s.sed away due to an illness.

On the second day, the young woman had sobered up and he had suggested for her to take a trip, a change of pace to drive away her cares.

She had thought for a while before she had agreed to his suggestion.

Then.

Just like that, the heavens had separated them, for all of eternity.

When he had heard the news broadcasts about her plane crash, he had been stunned for a long time before he had finally come to his senses.

That heart of his that had been numb for a long time, what had filled it up was a pain that seemed to tear him apart. Under his panic-stricken state, he had immediately called upon the trusted aide of his that he had left in the Shen Family, and revealed the fangs that he had initially planned to conceal for the rest of his life when he immediately took control of more than half of the Shen Family in order to search for any news of the survivors of that flight.

Before the plane had fallen to the ground and crashed, some of the pa.s.sengers had parachuted to escape.

However, her name was not on the list.

He had kept in his thoughts, even if the person was alive, she was missing and even if she was dead, there was no body.

The entire Shen Family's influence, now in his control, he had used it to search for three whole years and even dig around the one-metre diameter of the surroundings of the plane crash.

After time pa.s.sed, when there were more and more people that were opposed to it, he finally admitted the truth.

She was no longer around.

For him, as far as she was concerned, what was she to him?

Previously, he had thought that they were merely friends, a junior of his at most and could be considered an intimate friend of his. Yet after she had disappeared, only then did he realise that his feelings for her; had they truly been this simple? Only he had been concerned about the state of his body and subconsciously, even having this sort of intent in his mind, he did not dare to even reveal them and could only deeply suppress those feelings in his heart.

Also, there was guilt.

He had always had this thought, truthfully, that if he had not suggested to her to take a trip, then would she have sat on that plane and then would she have met with an accident?

Once such a thought had appeared in his mind, just like wild weeds that had sprouted at the cusp of spring, these thoughts had begun to frantically spread and grow in his mind.

He was unable to remove them and yet at the same time, he was unwilling to tear free from them.

Just like this then, let me use the rest of my life to be in love with and to feel guilt towards you; to engrave you into the bottom of my heart forever in hopes that we would meet once more in our next life.

With such heavy thoughts, it had only been a year, but his body had begun to deteriorate.

Lying on the bed, his thoughts had little by little sunk into the silence of the darkness, unaware of the pa.s.sing of time.

Until a voice filled the air.

It was an icy-cold robotic-like male voice, the other was a female voice that was somewhat hoa.r.s.e.

"Lu Xi-"[5]

[5] This name refers to the one that Shen Luxi had coined for himself; dry land and the setting sun. A name that reflects the state of his lonely heart. The one below is the common one we usually see Su Jin using.

"Lu Xi……"

Translated by Irisu

Edited by Ely

…. Did anyone expect that?

This is the beginning of the tying-up of loose ends, there are three parts to all the secrecy and questions that everyone has had so far! This was a colossal 3261 words chapter, so I can't wait to see all your comments below~ ?

Dedicated to our editor-volunteer/reader: Jehovah Belmont~ Thanks for volunteering and I hope all is well with you~ ?