Chapter 5  : Going Home

Jiang Shuxuan had the skill of face reading, and so he promptly observed her face to check her fortune.

Her brow bone was slightly raised and her forehead was wide, while her eyes and eyebrows were well proportioned. Her lips were plump and when she smiled it showed two shallow dimples. Normally, this sort of person would be righteous and have great fortune, and could be said as a child blessed by the heavens, but for some unknown reason, his face reading showed that her life would come to an abrupt and horrible end.

Jiang Shuxuan frowned as he contemplated on why this was the case.

 He didn’t bring her back because of a simple whim, but because of…

 Gu Xiqiao didn’t know what Jiang Shuxuan was thinking about but replied to all the questions that he asked afterward honestly.

 Seeing how carefully she was replying to the questions and glancing at him from time to time to see his reaction, his heart immediately softened.

 ‘She is really a child,’ he thought.

 And as she talked, the last bit of hesitation in her eyes disappeared.

 Gu Xiqiao was a likable girl—Good looking, with a clear and intelligent demeanor along with a fresh air to her like a fairy that made her way into the human world. Mrs. Zhang had already been grateful to her for prescribing medicine for her, and now that they had interacted she liked this girl even more.

 In a mere two days, Mrs. Zhang had started regarding Gu Xiqiao as her daughter.

Gu Xiqiao could finally have a good night’s sleep, and the next day she was woken up by a bright light. Her long eyelashes fluttered slightly before she opened her eyes, and as she saw her whereabouts she hid away the instinctive coldness in her gaze.

 The light had come from the curtains that Mrs. Zhang had drawn open, and the elder gave her a bright smile when she saw her stir. “Good morning Miss Gu, get yourself all cleaned up and downstairs for breakfast. Master Jiang has been waiting for you.”

 Gu Xiqiao raised her eyebrows before finally reacting, saying good morning to Mrs. Zhang too.

 She hadn’t had the chance to have such an uninterrupted sleep for such a long time that she almost forgot what it felt like. In the last moments of her past life, even sleep became a luxury for her while when she was in the virtual space, she didn’t even need sleep. To be able to sleep in such an unguarded state was once unimaginable for her.

 Downstairs, Jiang Shuxuan was sitting by the table with a laptop, and when he saw her come down he asked his servant to bring them their breakfast.

 [Ding! Daily Good Deed Mission activated: Jiang Shuxuan has been bothered by hackers and has lost a piece of secret data. Help him reclaim it!]

 [Mission completion reward: 10 Points]

 “This is out of my depth…” Gu Xiqiao stared down the bowl of noodles, before registering the system’s voice in her head.

 Be a hacker? This was not her area of expertise.

 The system spirit made a proud expression. [This system is the strongest virtual system in the universe, and the technology of Earth is merely child’s play in my eyes. All the strongest firewalls in the world are useless in front of me!]

 Suddenly, it thought of something that Gu Xiqiao would be interested in.

 [Beauty Qiao, look at this!]

 A semi-transparent screen appeared in front of Gu Xiqiao, and there was a Weibo web page on it with a bunch of densely packed words along with some pictures, and it scrolled itself too. Gu Xiqiao looked at it and realized that they were pictures of Gu Xijin’s torn up clothes. The ones that posted about it were all well-known accounts, and there were a lot of heartless comments by the people that came by it.

 Gu Xiqiao only glanced at the whole page cursorily before her mood was lifted greatly. She narrowed her eyes lazily, but it still couldn’t hide her mischievous smile.

 The pictures of the banquet had probably been leaked, and even though the faces of the people in the pictures were censored, there were quite a number of people that knew the truth nonetheless. Now that these pictures were leaked, Gu Xijin became the laughing stock of everyone on the internet!

 The peacock was probably going mad with anger from getting her feathers plucked!

 Jiang Shuxuan looked up just in time to catch her smiling expression, and while he was confused about why she was so happy just from eating breakfast, this scene brightened up the simple act of eating breakfast itself.

 After finishing, Gu Xiqiao successfully snuck into the study with the help of the system.

 She sneakily switched on the computer for the system to scan it, and the document was recovered quickly along with an easy ten points.

After she finished, she went downstairs and started using the spare laptop that Jiang Shuxuan had borrowed her to browse finance websites. Mrs. Zhang came closer and took a look, but she couldn’t understand anything other than the reds and greens of the website.

Jiang Shuxuan did the same, and he knew what she was trying to do. “Are you buying securities?”

 Once Gu Xiqiao heard his voice, she closed the laptop and looked up at him. “Brother Jiang, I have to go home today.”

 “Today?” Jiang Shuxuan had already sat down on a sofa with a magazine, and once he heard this he looked over at her with a cool gaze.

 “Yes, I have to go to school tomorrow…” She definitely had to return to the Gu family sometime or other, so she decided it was just the right time to go back.

 May the fifth was the day that the Xia family would visit the Gu family.

 Su Waner had always liked Xia Zijun, and so she would probably be too ecstatic at his arrival to care about Gu Xiqiao at all. Hence, she probably wouldn’t do anything other than making complaints to Gu Zuhui.

If it were the past, Gu Xiqiao was still concerned about getting on their good graces in hopes of a sliver of familial love, she completely threw away those concerns this time around.

 It was also the truth that she had to go to school tomorrow, and she would have to go home to get her textbooks anyway.

 After thinking over this for a while, there was no better time to go home.

 Jiang Shuxuan wanted to refuse when he saw her frail visage, but then again who could refuse her request to go home?

 He didn’t try to stop her anymore and stood up to get a jacket and his car keys. “Alright.”

 “Where do you live?” Jiang Shuxuan asked as he started up his car.

 Gu Xiqiao was silent for a bit before replying, “Shanhe Manor Area, no. 16.”

 This reply made Jiang Shuxuan raise his eyebrows in surprise. The Shanhe Manor Area was one of the most expensive areas in N City and was famous for housing some of the most influential people in the city. Even though he wasn’t from N City, he knew this much, at least.

 Very quickly, they arrived at the destination.

 “I’ve saved my number here, so if anything happens, call me okay?” When the car stopped, Jiang Shuxuan got out of the car and went over to help Gu Xiqiao open the car door on her side, before taking out an intricate small box. After staying with her for two days, he already knew that she was the type to refuse the goodwill of others, so he just stuffed the box into her hands without giving her a chance to refuse.

 The day before, he had asked her about her phone number, but she said that she had no phone of her own. Gu Xiqiao hadn’t expected him to gift her one, and so quickly too.

 She spaced out a little as she looked at the pink box in her hands.

 Hey, did he think that she accepted his goodwill because of his money?

 And so she felt another headache coming on and massaged her temples with her fingers as she gave Jiang Shuxuan a sidelong glance, the refusal in her eyes quite clear. She didn’t buy a phone purely because she had no one to call with it, and not because she couldn’t… But would it be rude to refuse it directly?

 Seeing her movements, Jiang Shuxuan knew that the girl was spacing out again. Smiling softly, he nodded encouragingly. “Take it, think of it as a meeting gift from me.”

Gu Xiqiao dumbly nodded and got down from the car, before looking up at the tall man.

 “Thank you, Brother Jiang.”

 The girl’s face seemed like a piece of luminous jade under the morning sunlight without even a single flaw. Her hair cascaded down the back of her head, swaying slightly with the breeze and accentuating her already pale skin.

 After that, what attracted his attention next was her almost overly thin figure.