"Hello."
"Ah Zhi, I'm back."
"Oh, sorry, I forgot, I shouldn't call you that... Anyway, I'm almost downstairs. I was afraid you'd worry, so I wanted to let you know."
Cheng Jinyang hung up the phone, hearing Cheng Xinnan, who was driving beside him, asking with a smile, "Does Xing Yuanzhi usually manage things very strictly?"
"Not really," Cheng Jinyang smiled awkwardly, "it's just when living together, at least you should say something."
"I see," Cheng Xinnan nodded and casually said, "In that case, I envy her a bit, having such a good fiancé like you."
Cheng Jinyang perked up his ears: Hmm, Green Tea Quotation?
But Cheng Xinnan didn't continue on this topic. She just brushed her hair behind her ear and continued, "Take a good look at the algorithm I gave you when you get back. It's not very peaceful in Jiankang City lately. If you can stay indoors for the next few days, it's better not to go out."
Cheng Jinyang's expression changed slightly as he asked, "Not peaceful? Sister Xinnan, are you referring to..."
"It's the same old problems," Cheng Xinnan looked ahead at the road, sighed, and said, "Refugees, gangs, aristocratic families, spies... When has it ever been stable?"
The car stopped by Cheng Jinyang's residential building. Cheng Jinyang opened the door and saw Xing Yuanzhi standing at the entrance of the building, arms crossed, looking over.
She was angry but then smiled, "You finally came back?"
"Cough." Cheng Jinyang felt a bit embarrassed, "Today I ran into a cousin from the family, and she took me shopping for clothes."
"Then why didn't you answer the phone?!" Xing Yuanzhi exploded in anger, stomping over, about to unleash her fury, but then she noticed Cheng Xinnan getting out of the car ahead and forcibly suppressed her anger, saying gently, "You can't do this next time, Jinyang. Do you know how worried I was all day?"
Cheng Jinyang: ???
"Is this the cousin you mentioned?" Xing Yuanzhi looked towards the elder sister walking towards them and asked with a smile.
Her smile was warm and familiar to Cheng Jinyang. By the way, last time that Wang Wanrou seemed to like to fake smile like this.
Is this the standard skill for young ladies from prestigious families?
"You must be Ah Zhi, Jinyang's fiancée?" Cheng Xinnan greeted her with a smile.
Xing Yuanzhi: !!!
She smiled at Cheng Jinyang, her eyes filled with icy coldness, as if saying "Ah Zhi?"
Cheng Jinyang quickly intervened: "Ahem, let me introduce. This is my cousin, Cheng Xinnan, Ah Zhi, you can call her 'Sister Xinnan'; and this is my fiancée, Xing Yuanzhi, Sister Xinnan, you can call her 'Yuanzhi'."
"Sorry about that, Yuanzhi." So Cheng Xinnan apologized with folded hands and blinking eyes, "Today, I took your Jinyang to buy clothes."
"It's okay," Xing Yuanzhi replied politely, "I'm just angry that he didn't answer my calls all day."
"How about Sister Xinnan come up and sit for a while?" Cheng Jinyang timely extended the invitation, "It's not very comfortable standing here."
'No need!' Xing Yuanzhi thought in her heart.
"Sure." Cheng Xinnan smiled brightly.
Xing Yuanzhi: ...
Damn it. She couldn't help but curse in her heart.
Cheng Jinyang carried bags of clothes and took the two girls back home. He put down the clothes and kindly brought slippers for his cousin.
Meanwhile, Xing Yuanzhi patted his shoulder and said with a smile: "Jinyang, I've already prepared the clothes for you to change in the bathroom~"
Being looked at with such gentle eyes by her, Cheng Jinyang felt a little uneasy, and turned to Cheng Xinnan, saying: "Sister Xinnan, I'll go take a shower first, you two chat outside."
"Okay," Cheng Xinnan blinked.
So Cheng Jinyang went to take a shower. In the living room, Xing Yuanzhi opened the fridge and asked, "What would you like to drink, tea? Yogurt? Coffee?"
(Author's note: In this world, yogurt is a type of boxed room temperature yogurt.)
[T/N: Hmm, yeah. The Author wrote that in the raw.]
"Just regular tea is fine," Cheng Xinnan replied, "Thank you."
Xing Yuanzhi took out some tea leaves, brewed her a cup of tea, then sat down beside her.
"Sister Xinnan, are you from the Cheng family in Shendu?"
"Yes," Cheng Xinnan smiled unchanged.
"Well," Xing Yuanzhi also smiled and said, "At noon today, because I couldn't reach Jinyang, I asked a friend to check."
"After he checked, he told me that Jinyang was shopping with you around Xincheng Street. I didn't know who you were at the time, so I asked my friend again, and he said..."
Meanwhile, Cheng Jinyang was showering in the bathroom when he suddenly heard the conversation outside and couldn't help but quietly approach the door to eavesdrop.
"...he said that there is no female member named 'Cheng Xinnan' in the genealogy of the Cheng family in Shendu," Xing Yuanzhi said slowly.
Cheng Xinnan's expression remained unchanged at the words, she just used the lid of the tea cup to brush away the tea leaves on the surface of the water, calmly took a sip, then smiled and said:
"Yuanzhi, the friend you mentioned, is it [Diwang(Ground Network)]?"
Xing Yuanzhi's face changed slightly.
Although the Cheng and Xing families were closely related, and the intelligence from the Diwang was also shared to a limited extent on the Cheng side, ordinary family members shouldn't have access to this level of information.
"It's quite normal," Cheng Xinan continued casually, fiddling with the cup lid. "Diwang is the largest information dealer in Jiankang, but not the strongest. Many pieces of information are classified internally. For example, if you were to inquire about the core members of the Cheng family in Shendu, you wouldn't find anything."
"I know all the core members of the Cheng family in Shendu," Xing Yuanzhi replied nonchalantly.
"Oh? Do you also know members of Tianluo?" Cheng Xinan asked with a smile.
Xing Yuanzhi was slightly startled.
If Xing's Diwang was a sanctuary for smugglers and information dealers, then Cheng's Tianluo was a gathering place for assassins and loyalists.
Back when the divine capital Luoyang had not yet fallen, the Tianluo Diwang jointly established by the Cheng and Xing families had even more influence in the underworld than the Emperor's Dongxi Factory, serving as an important counterbalance to the imperial power for the noble families.
Nowadays, with other families like the Wuxing also establishing their own intelligence agencies and assassination teams, the reputation of Tianluo Diwang has declined somewhat. However, for those fourth or fifth-ranked families, it is still a terrifying presence capable of silencing crying children.
"Are you... from Tianluo?" Xing Yuanzhi was momentarily stunned, whispering, "Why are you looking for Jinyang? He's only ninth-grade..."
"I'm not here for official business," Cheng Xinnan shook his head.
"I'm just here to check on him out of gratitude for his deceased parents' kindness. But you... Xing Family's Qingfeng, why don't you annul the marriage?!" She looked at Xing Yuanzhi with a cold smile, her malice undisguised, causing Xing Yuanzhi's face to pale slightly.
"Why should we annul the marriage?" She gritted her teeth, returning Cheng Xinnan's gaze. "This is a betrothal agreement made between Uncle Qinghe and my father before his passing..."
"Once upon a time, when Cheng Qinghe was expelled from the Cheng family and Xie Guyan cried at your Xing family's door for several days, but you remained indoors, the bond between him and your Xing family was already severed!" Cheng Xinnan said in a cold voice, his gaze seeming to contain a thousand sharp knives, "How dare you, after the death of my uncle and aunt, come here with the audacity to fulfill this long overdue engagement?!"
Xing Yuanzhi remained silent upon hearing this. She only knew that Uncle Cheng Qinghe was expelled from the family because he married a commoner against the family's wishes.
However, according to Cheng Xinnan, there seemed to be another hidden story... If Aunt Xie Guyan was truly just an ordinary commoner, she wouldn't have been able to come to the Xing family's door crying for help without being chased away by security guards.
The fact that the Xing family chose to stay indoors indicated their refusal to help Cheng Qinghe, yet they couldn't directly explain this to Xie Guyan. So what was the identity of this aunt that even the Xing family had to refuse to meet?
Of course, Xing Yuanzhi would remember these things and investigate further when she returned to her family's territory.
However, as the fiancée of Cheng Jinyang, she couldn't afford to show weakness when faced with this challenge from an unknown cousin.
"If we're talking about severed ties, isn't it more ruthless for the Cheng family, which expelled his father, than for the Xing family, which simply didn't provide assistance?" she asked pointedly.
This time it was Cheng Xinnan's turn to fall silent.
"True," she said with a malicious smile, "The Xing family of Hejian... and the Cheng family of Shendu, are not exactly good people."
"Miss Yuanzhi, let me give you a piece of advice: if you truly want to stay by Cheng Jinyang's side in the future..."
"...then you must be prepared to sever ties with your family, just like... his father did."