I was exposed for adding my female boss to my group of female friends.

Looking at Lu Qingxuan's face, which seemed to be asking for inspirational lessons, Chen Ya wanted to laugh but couldn't bring himself to say it.

Why did Gu Yuqing come?

Because he called her.

He asked her to come over to support her aunt's wedding, not to celebrate Old Master Lu's birthday.

What's most infuriating is that the vixen didn't tell the Lu family anything. She only told the old lady that she was there to observe the ceremony, but didn't say whose ceremony it was, which caused the entire Lu family to be in turmoil.

When Gu Yuqing arrived that day and sat in the side hall, wouldn't Great-Grandma have a high blood pressure attack on the spot?

Even Chen Yayuan, far away in the capital, felt a chill run down his spine at the sight of such a wicked woman. What a vixen!

Lu Qingxuan patiently persuaded Chen Ya: "Alright, what I mean by all this is that if you can sit in this seat that day, your status in the family will definitely rise. Think carefully about whether you want to waste this opportunity."

This benefit held no appeal for Chen Ya, who nodded perfunctorily and said, "I'll think about it."

He didn't agree, his attitude remaining ambiguous. But Lu Qingxuan thought she had convinced him.

"By the way, what are you doing here?" Lu Qingxuan glanced sideways at the fireworks and cannons scattered around and asked.

She found Chen Ya at a fireworks shop, which was a mile away from the outer ring of Beijing, so remote that she really didn't know what he was doing there.

"Since it's a wedding, we should set off fireworks as is customary," Chen Ya said.

Upon hearing this, Lu Qingxuan immediately burst out laughing: "You want to set off fireworks on your wedding day?"

“Hmm,” Chen Ya nodded, “I’m not someone who particularly values ​​customs, but without fireworks, it just doesn’t feel lively.”

“I never imagined you had such a… meticulous side,” Lu Qingxuan said, crossing her arms and staring at him. “However, I have some regrettable news to tell you.”

After saying that, she paused for a moment before loudly proclaiming, "In the capital, firecrackers are banned year-round!"

Chen Ya raised an eyebrow: "Really?"

"Yes!" Lu Qingxuan nodded. "Are you silly? The capital city isn't the countryside. Fireworks and firecrackers are banned year-round, especially since the birthday banquet is held within the first ring road, where regulations are even stricter. How could they possibly let you set off fireworks?"

She crossed her arms and stared at Chen Ya, looking at him with a pained expression as if he were so stupid it was heartbreaking.

"I see."

Lu Qingxuan added, "It just so happens that my visit to you is also related to the fireworks. Great-Grandma gave us both a task."

"what?"

"Let's find a spot to set off fireworks," Lu Qingxuan said.

Chen Ya laughed and said, "Didn't you say that firecrackers are banned in the capital?"

“Firecrackers are banned inside the outer ring road of Beijing, but not outside,” Lu Qingxuan said. “Just like you said, it doesn’t feel lively if there aren’t fireworks on the birthday banquet.”

Chen Ya chuckled softly, "So you're also trying to pull some strings to get them to temporarily designate an area where whipping isn't prohibited?"

Lu Qingxuan rolled her eyes at him.

"Are you dreaming? How could you possibly find connections? Even if Aihua were still in the Lu family's hands before, let alone now, we wouldn't have been able to find such connections."

"So what are you going to do?" Chen Ya asked.

"Firecrackers are prohibited inside the outer ring road, so they can be set off outside the outer ring road!" Lu Qingxuan said.

It turned out that the task her great-grandmother had given her and Chen Ya was to find a place outside the outer ring road to set off fireworks.

The building where the birthday banquet was held was quite far from the outer ring road, but fortunately, it was a sunny day on the day of the banquet.

Setting off firecrackers on a clear evening, even from a distance, can add a bit of liveliness.

Chapter 277 Fireworks Soaring into the Sky

The birthday banquet for Old Master Lu was held on the 85th floor of the Mingyue Tower in Beijing.

As we all know, there are few tall buildings in Beijing. The 85-story Mingyue Tower offers panoramic views from within the Second Ring Road, and its number of floors also coincides with the old man's age, making it the best choice for this grand event.

The main hall has a floor-to-ceiling window facing south that overlooks the city. According to the Lu family's plan, during the old master Lu's birthday banquet, looking out of the floor-to-ceiling window through the clear night sky, one can see the fireworks rising into the sky.

Due to the principle of perspective, fireworks seen at this distance appear very small, so the fireworks themselves need to be as large as possible. As for exactly how large, that becomes a mathematical problem.

How to make the rising fireworks cross mountains and rivers and high-rise buildings, so that they are perfectly displayed in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of Mingyue Tower, is also a mathematical problem.

Therefore, where to set off the fireworks, what size to use, how high to launch them... these are all mathematical problems, and these mathematical problems have long been solved by the experts hired by the Lu family, so Lu Qingxuan and Chen Ya don't need to worry about them.

All they had to do was go to the site and personally check it out.

Chen Ya got into Lu Qingxuan's car and sat in the driver's seat, while Lu Qingxuan sat in the passenger seat holding her phone and using navigation.

The car's air conditioning was very warm, and both of them took off their coats as soon as they got in.

The black seatbelt cleaved between Lu Qingxuan's breasts, and the silk lining that clung tightly to her body outlined her alluring curves.

Lu Qingxuan glanced at Chen Ya's profile, which kept turning back to look, and pouted, "What are you looking at?"

"I'm looking in the rearview mirror."

"Oh."

After straightening the car, Chen Ya asked, "Why is there a red mark on your head?"

"Because it hasn't subsided yet."

"?"

Lu Qingxuan changed the subject, seemingly unrelated to the question, secretly feeling a little pleased with herself.

They still stubbornly insisted that they hadn't looked at me.

Isn't this what watching is like?

She glanced at him, using the corner of her eye to carefully examine his profile.

As soon as Chen Ya turned his head, she would immediately look away.

"Wait a moment."

She suddenly reached out and touched Chen Ya's fluffy head. Her fingers dug into the thick, dense hair, her cool fingertips caressing the scalp and hair.

Chen Ya slammed on the brakes, his body stiffening. If those icy fingers were to suddenly strike, transforming into the Nine Yin Divine Claw, he had no doubt that a large chunk of his scalp would be ripped off.

But this time the witch seemed unexpectedly gentle. She didn't take advantage of his vulnerability and just touched him for a moment before immediately withdrawing.

There's something dirty inside.

She held her finger in front of Chen Ya's face, with a small black object stuck to the tip. Before Chen Ya could see it clearly, she withdrew her finger and blew the object away with a "whoosh".

Chen Ya started the car again. After their slightly intimate actions, the atmosphere inside the Audi became uncontrollably intimate and intense.

The air remained almost solid for quite some time. Neither of them spoke. Lu Qingxuan went from being nonchalant to gradually blushing, the color of the sunset spreading across her face like an impressionist painting.

She suddenly didn't know why she had done that. It was as if she hadn't been herself, as if someone else had suddenly taken over her body. Her hand moved on its own, and it had nothing to do with her...

Just as she was feeling embarrassed, Chen Ya spoke casually: "What are you planning to do after your birthday celebration?"

"Huh? Huh? What did you say?"

Chen Ya's tone seemed completely oblivious to the awkwardness of the moment. Lu Qingxuan, lost in thought, didn't hear what he was saying. Chen Ya repeated the question, and Lu Qingxuan frowned at him.

She found the question a bit strange.

"What else can I do but go back to my studies?"

"You haven't graduated from university yet? I see you don't seem to have anything to do all day," Chen Ya asked.

"I'm a senior in college. What could possibly happen in a senior year? Why do you act like you've never been to college?"

"I did not go to university; I dropped out of school after graduating from junior high."

"..."

Lu Qingxuan remained silent for a while, then whispered, "I'm...I'm sorry..."

"Why should I apologize?"

She thought about Chen Ya's question for a while. Chen Ya is now the big boss of a company worth hundreds of millions, so it seems that he really doesn't have anything to apologize for.

She subconsciously mistook Chen Ya for one of those out-of-school children from a poor mountain village, so she casually said sorry.

"Why did you drop out of school after graduating from junior high? Was it because your family didn't have money?" Lu Qingxuan asked.

"The main reason wasn't because we didn't have money, but we really didn't have any at the time," Chen Ya said as he drove.

Lu Qingxuan didn't understand.

Chen Ya continued, "I remember when I was in junior high school, my body developed very quickly. The shoes I bought would be too small in a few months, and I had to change my clothes as soon as I put them on. My sister was so happy."

"Why? What does this have to do with your sister?"

“Because every time I change my clothes, she has new clothes to wear,” Chen Ya said. “I change my clothes quickly, so she has more new clothes to wear, which makes her happy. But she can only wear men’s clothes, and I guess many of her elementary school classmates still think she is a boy.”

"Oh..." Lu Qingxuan nodded thoughtfully. She had never been poor and couldn't imagine such a situation.

"But my mother was really worried at the time. The family was struggling to make ends meet, and half of her hair had turned white—she was only in her thirties then. So she made up her mind to transfer the family's farmland and go to the city to collect scrap, which is basically picking up garbage."

“Back then, she would get up at three in the morning every day, ride her tricycle for four miles to the city, and by the time she got there it would be five in the morning. She said she had to get there before all her competitors to collect the most valuable junk.”

Lu Qingxuan dared not speak.

In her worldview, picking up trash is a shameful thing.

If it were someone else, they would definitely treat their mother's garbage-collecting as something as delicate as underwear and would never let anyone see it.

Regardless, she was happy that Chen Ya told her these things. She felt like she was being treated as someone with whom she had a close relationship.

"Later, I made a lot of money through some method. I thought our family had some spare money. She took us to eat at Wallace once a week. Do you know Wallace?"

Lu Qingxuan hesitated and said, "A...fast food restaurant?"

“Yes, the kind that costs 10 yuan for 3 hamburgers,” Chen Ya said. “I once thought she had used that money, but later I found out that she had saved the money I earned without touching it, and she was working 12 hours a day at a high intensity. She was too insecure.”

At this point, Chen Ya paused for a moment, then continued, "So at that time I decided not to study anymore. Staying at home would only be a burden. I wanted to earn enough money so that she would never have to feel like she didn't have enough money again."

"..."

Lu Qingxuan looked at him silently, feeling that Chen Ya was unusually serious today, more serious than ever before.

"You hadn't even graduated from junior high school yet, how did you earn money? Were you working outside?" Lu Qingxuan asked.

“No,” Chen Ya said casually, “I wrote a few books and earned some royalties.”

"Really? What book is it? You wrote it when you were in junior high school? I've never heard of it before." Upon hearing this, Lu Qingxuan immediately perked up, her curiosity piqued to the maximum.

Chen Ya smiled and simply said, "It was written under a pen name."

"A middle school student can earn royalties from writing a book? Are you a child prodigy?" Lu Qingxuan said. "Oh right, you're very talented, so you must write very well. What book is it? Tell me the title, I might have even read it."

How do you know I'm talented?

Lu Qingxuan fell silent.

Chen Ya was Bai Yujing, the author of issue 520 of the magazine "Weiming". Of course, she knew that he was a literary genius.

But she didn't want him to know that she had secretly investigated him.

After thinking for a moment, she changed the subject and asked, "I remember that your father later came to the capital and married into Aunt Lu Ruixiang's family, right?"

"Ah."

Chen Ya seemed reluctant to talk about Chen Sheng.

“They’ve been married for over 20 years, doesn’t that mean he left when you were seven or eight years old?” Lu Qingxuan was a little surprised.

"Correct."

Chen Ya uttered only one word. The simple note lingered in the air, solidifying into an unchanging attitude.

After a long pause, he continued, "So, I still haven't forgiven him."

This is a topic that cannot be touched upon.

Lu Qingxuan didn't dare to respond.

She now understands why Chen Sheng left his hometown, abandoning his wife and children—of course, this doesn't mean she condones his behavior.

After hearing Chen Ya's story, she personally experienced this gap between the rich and the poor. Chen Ya's casual remarks made her realize a completely different world; she had never known before that people lived such lives.

On one hand, there is the wealth and glory of the Lu family; on the other hand, there is the option of living a hard life in a remote mountain village. No one would choose the latter.

She could better understand why Chen Ya couldn't forgive Chen Sheng. A person abandons their entire family in such a place, making them endure such a painful life, while they themselves run off to enjoy a carefree life—no one would forgive that.