Chapter Ninety-Nine: Caught Red-Handed

Wen Jingxing’s expression tightened. His eyes narrowed slightly as he walked, calm and steady, step by step toward the bed.

Then he slowly crouched down. One hand braced against the floor. After that, he lowered his head little by little and lifted the bedskirt with his other hand.

There was nothing underneath.

Wen Jingxing straightened up, finding it all strangely odd.

Could he have been seeing things?

Outside the door, light footsteps sounded. Thinking Song Wanning had come upstairs, Wen Jingxing opened the door to look. Yet Song Wanning was still on the first floor, and the lights outside were out.

Only the balcony door stood open, wind howling in through the gap and even carrying in several leaves.

“Didn’t I remember closing it?”

A little puzzled, Wen Jingxing stepped forward and pulled the balcony door shut. With a click, it was locked fast.

This door could only be opened from inside, not from the balcony outside, so Wen Jingxing left with complete peace of mind.

Back in the room, after dealing with his work, it was already eleven at night.

Wen Jingxing felt terribly thirsty. He picked up the water on the table and took a sip.

He wanted to go out and see Song Wanning before sleeping.

It had been an hour or two since he had last seen her, and he missed her very much. He simply wanted to look at her once.

But just after drinking, he felt an even greater thirst, and his body grew strangely hot.

His head swelled with a dull ache. Unable to stand steadily, Wen Jingxing staggered and fell, his back slamming hard against the chair.

The solid wood chair was actually shoved a full distance away by him, scraping the floor with a heavy, grating sound.

In the other room, Song Wanning had not slept at all. Hearing the strange noise, she immediately climbed out of bed.

She had only put on a thick coat and not even taken the time to wear shoes. Quiet as a cat, she opened the door and went out.

Outside was pitch-black, nothing visible. She could only hear a rustling sound coming from beyond the balcony.

Curious, Song Wanning walked toward it, and saw a dark figure standing outside the balcony door.

The other person happened to be standing with their back to the light, so Song Wanning could not see their face at all, only sensing that it was a woman with an excellent figure.

But whoever the person was, anyone breaking into a home uninvited was a thief.

By then, discovering she could not get out, the intruder was frantically twisting the doorknob. But at that very moment, the knob suddenly turned on its own, and someone from inside opened the door.

Jian Anan was horrified. In her panic, she tried to climb out onto the balcony.

But the newcomer moved even faster. Before she could even see what the other person looked like, she was punched cleanly out of the way.

Yes, Jian Anan really did fly.

She went tumbling straight from the second-floor balcony onto the thick shrubbery below.

It was only thanks to the dense branches that she had not broken bones from the fall.

Even so, Jian Anan was in no better shape. Her whole body ached terribly. Yet when she saw that Song Wanning seemed about to jump down as well, she was once again frightened out of her wits and bolted without a second thought.

Upstairs.

Song Wanning was about to jump down when she suddenly heard Wen Jingxing calling her from behind.

“Wanning!”

His voice was short and urgent.

Afraid something had happened to him, she forgot all about the thief whose face she had not had time to see and hurried back.

There she found Wen Jingxing wearing only a thin white shirt. The veins on his hands and forehead stood out sharply. One hand gripped the front of his shirt so tightly that the soft fabric wrinkled under his fingers.

Song Wanning hurried over and asked, “Jingxing, what’s wrong? Do you have a fever? Why is your body so hot?”

The skin beneath her hand was scorching.

She quickly touched his forehead as well. It was just as hot.

Her first thought was that Wen Jingxing must have a fever.

But Wen Jingxing knew very clearly that before he drank that glass of water, he had been perfectly fine.

That water was definitely not right.

His mind growing hazy, Wen Jingxing saw Song Wanning so close to him and instinctively wanted to hold her cool, temperature-lowered body.

Meanwhile, the culprit behind it all, Jian Anan, was limping along the path toward the small building.

Jin Jianyi had long since been driven half-mad looking for Jian Anan.

No matter whether he asked the staff or passersby, no one knew where she was.

Now, seeing her in such a disheveled state, Jin Jianyi rushed out from the building at once and seized her arm.

“What happened to you? Where did you go? How did you end up like this?”

Jian Anan immediately put on a pitiful expression.

“I... I was going to the restroom, and it was so dark that I accidentally fell down the stairs. But the place was too out of the way, and I shouted for a long time without anyone hearing me, so I could only make my way back on my own...”

She spoke so plaintively that Jin Jianyi did not bother to question whether it was true. He hurried to soothe her.

“All right, all right, it’s fine now. Let me see where you’re hurt. I’ll get some medicine on it first.”

However foolish Jin Jianyi might be, he could still tell that tonight Jian Anan’s gaze kept drifting, intentionally or not, toward Wen Jingxing.

He could not believe it, and did not want to believe it.

To him, Jian Anan had always been the gentle, flawless goddess in his heart. How could she possibly harbor such thoughts?

It had to be that he himself was too base.

And yet he had truly seen the way Jian Anan’s eyes wandered, and that made his feelings all the more sincere. So when he learned she was missing, Jin Jianyi was indeed very dejected.

But now, seeing her injured, not even bothering to see a doctor before coming to check on him first, his heart was instantly moved again.

It had to be said that people in love were terrifying. They could always invent all sorts of absurd reasons on behalf of the other person.

Still, after this incident, the agitation in Jin Jianyi’s heart was soothed quite a bit.

Jian Anan had originally thought it would be difficult to come up with an excuse to placate this man, yet it turned out to be so easy.

She immediately grew a little smug, leaning back in the chair with her long, seductive legs stretched out, letting Jin Jianyi massage her legs for her.

But when she thought of tonight’s failure, her good mood vanished in an instant.

Why was it that with other men, all she had to do was hook a finger or use a little scheme, and they would bite?

Yet she had gone to such lengths for Wen Jingxing, only to fail to touch even a single hair on his head. Jian Anan was truly unwilling to accept it.

Take tonight, for example. She had finally coaxed Zhou Xiancheng into buying that kind of drug. Determined to make one last attempt, she had planned to drug Wen Jingxing on the final night at the resort.

By then they would already have slept together; let’s see how Wen Jingxing could keep avoiding her then.

Who would have thought that such a perfect opportunity would come tonight? She had used the excuse of going to the restroom, then, while everyone was off guard, climbed up from the railing outside the building to the second floor and hid beneath the bed in Wen Jingxing’s room.

For the sake of appearance, this little building had many decorative features on the outside, so for Jian Anan climbing up was only a matter of a bit of effort.

Ordinarily, no one would think to check there, which was why no one found her the first time they searched.

Later, after Wen Jingxing came upstairs, while he was in the shower, she poured the drug into his water glass. After that, Song Wanning somehow started rummaging through the room as though searching for something, and afraid of being discovered, Jian Anan slipped onto the balcony.

The End