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

Great-Grandma frowned. She had a lot of headaches dealing with Chen Ya's unruly personality.

She waved her hand and said, "Don't worry about him. If he doesn't want to come, then he doesn't have to. I'll have someone make the arrangements. You all go and take your seats."

Lu Qingxuan and Liu Ruying then took their leave and returned to their seats. After a long while, they both asked each other at the same time:

"Whom are you marrying?"

Where did Chen Ya go?

Both of them paused for a moment, and then Liu Ruying answered first: "Judging from Aunt Lu Ruixiang's family's intentions, I am going to marry Chen Ya."

Fortunately, Lu Qingxuan was sitting; otherwise, she would be unable to stand.

She forced a smile and said, "I'd heard about this arranged marriage from childhood. I was wondering who would have such a romantic, drama-like life experience. Turns out, it was you. By the way, does Chen Ya know?"

“He knew,” Liu Ruying nodded, “but he didn’t take it to heart.”

At this point, Liu Ruying still felt a little resentful.

In her opinion, Chen Ya didn't care about the marriage, nor did he care about her.

After meeting Chen Ya, she had the kind of erotic dreams that only young girls have for a few days—after all, Chen Ya's appearance was still quite attractive.

However, her erotic dream was quickly shattered by Chen Ya's clueless and straight-man behavior.

Lu Qingxuan bit her lip, her smile forced: "So, you knew from the beginning that you were each other's fiancés? I only found out today, you two are quite... strange."

Looking at her expression, Liu Ruying suddenly asked, "Do you have strong feelings for Chen Ya?"

"Huh?" Lu Qingxuan suddenly sat up straight and immediately turned to look at him, "What are you talking about? Why would you think that?"

"No?"

"No," Lu Qingxuan composed herself, "I just feel like I've been tricked."

Liu Ruying watched her silently. Her reaction couldn't be clearer; how could she not know what she was thinking?

You can fool me, but don't fool yourself.

Liu Ruying said, "Now it seems that my marriage is no longer important, and the old man himself may have forgotten about it. In the end, no one will mention it again."

Lu Qingxuan stared blankly for a while, then finally shook her head.

The relationship between the Lu and Liu families is well-known, and she doesn't believe that Old Master Lu didn't take this marriage seriously.

On the bright side, even if Old Master Lu takes it very seriously, the two of them may not necessarily get married.

After all, we live in a society governed by law. If neither of them is interested, no one can force them to get married.

“By the way, Chen Ya hasn’t shown up these past few days,” Lu Qingxuan said. “Have you been in contact with him?”

Liu Ruying hesitated for a moment, then said, "He asked me to help him with some things."

"What? He's still in contact with you?" Lu Qingxuan's eyes lit up.

"I don't know what the purpose of what he made me do is. All I know is that it's related to that recent rumor about the Taimei Group."

Lu Qingxuan frowned: "Are you talking about that thing involving the CEO of Taimei Group? That thing seems pretty absurd, it probably isn't true, right?"

The "affair" the two were referring to about the CEO of the Thai-American Group was a recent rumor that had trended on social media but was quickly taken down.

Zuo Wenzong, the head of the Thai-American Group, has been arrested on suspicion of "treason".

This news briefly caused a huge uproar within the Lu family, because the Lu family is, after all, a major shareholder of Taimei Group and has important financial ties with it.

Sure enough, after the news broke, the stock price of Taimei Group immediately began to fluctuate and decline, but this decline was only temporary and it quickly rebounded.

Therefore, the Lu family also believed that this was just fake news.

After all, the word "treason" sounds too shocking.

When Lu Qingxuan first heard the word "treason," she almost instinctively thought it was a rumor and waited for it to be debunked.

After all, such rumors are laughable – how could Zuo Wenzong, the CEO of a company, be associated with words like treason?

Even if Zuo Wenzong did possess some important national information and used it to defect to external forces, what does that have to do with Chen Ya?

Chen Ya is at most just the boss of another company, and his size may not be comparable to that of Tai Mei. What does Zuo Wenzong's matter have to do with him?

Lu Qingxuan said, "Is he planning to use this rumor to make a quick buck and try to gain some benefits?"

“No,” Liu Ruying said, her eyes fixed blankly on the direction of the main hall entrance, “He asked me to gather some information, and I have a feeling that it’s someone from a government department asking Chen Ya for help…”

"Hmm?" Lu Qingxuan felt that what she was saying was getting more and more outrageous.

"Hey, Miss Lu, School Beauty Liu, it's been a long time!"

Nearby, the Witch Lord came over, cracking melon seeds, and sat down next to the two.

Despite his appearance, the Witch Lord is actually a legitimate scion of a prominent family; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to easily mingle with people like Young Master Xu and Xia Yingji.

However, this scion of a prominent family is quite different from others. He considers himself a geek and never wears a suit and tie. Even on this formal occasion, he is only wearing a windbreaker.

Although his windbreaker was worth tens of thousands of yuan, it still looked very tacky.

"You're here quite early," Lu Qingxuan nodded to him.

"Since there's nothing to do at home, coming over early can give you some fun," the Witch Lord said.

Seeing the Witch Lord's face, Lu Qingxuan suddenly remembered something and whispered to Liu Ruying:

“I remember now. A while ago, I had a chat with Chen Ya, and he told me something that I found very interesting, and I can share it with you.”

Chapter 281 (Thanks to Young Isaac, the Alliance Leader)

"Information? What information?"

The sorcerer, standing nearby, subtly approached, wanting to hear what Lu Qingxuan had found out.

“Chen Ya talked to me about his childhood before. He said that his family was very poor when he was a child. He made a lot of money by writing books, but when I asked him what kind of books he wrote, he refused to say.”

After Lu Qingxuan finished speaking, Liu Ruying and Wuzun fell silent for a few seconds.

"Making money by writing books? Writing books? Are you talking about novels?" Liu Ruying opened her mouth slightly.

"He didn't say what genre it was. It might be a novel, since he said he made money from it. A kid of ten or so can't possibly make money from self-help books, right?" Lu Qingxuan said with a light smile.

Liu Ruying thought for a moment and said, "This is very important information. A teenage prodigy making money by publishing novels—this should be in the news."

“That’s right,” Lu Qingxuan said, “so I used a search engine to look it up.”

What was the result?

“I didn’t find any relevant information,” Lu Qingxuan shook her head. “I searched for keywords such as ‘child prodigy’ and ‘young writer’ and only found one child who claimed to have written a fantasy work at the age of 8, but that child is definitely not him.”

The sorcerer beside him interjected, "How did you determine that?"

Lu Qingxuan said, "That child is from Beijing, so the location doesn't match up. Secondly, according to the interviews, the child's parents are both highly educated, and their novels seem heavily packaged and hyped. Chen Ya probably doesn't have those kinds of connections."

The Witch Lord said thoughtfully, "Could it be that Chen Ya is also promoting himself? After all, it's a bit shocking that someone so young is making money by writing books... Oh right, Chen Ya is the author of 'Bring in the Wine'. Never mind, never mind."

The two girls ignored the witch and continued their previous discussion.

“If we can’t find any information, there are only two possibilities,” Liu Ruying said. “The first is that the books Chen Ya wrote when he was a child were not well-known, so they can’t be found online now.”

"Hiss—" Lu Qingxuan felt that this guess was very rude to Chen Ya.

The Witch Master nodded and said:

“Very likely. You see, you asked him what book it was, and he didn’t answer, right? That means he might not want to lose face… But he wrote ‘Bring in the Wine’ without telling anyone… Never mind, never mind.”

Lu Qingxuan once again ignored the Witch Lord's internal struggle and said:

"This guess is not very reasonable. If a child that young really wrote a novel, the publisher would definitely spare no effort to promote and hype it up. It would be impossible for it to leave no trace online."

Liu Ruying nodded: "That's what I think too, so I'm more inclined to the second possibility."

"what?"

"At the time, nobody knew that the author was just a child. The publisher didn't know, so naturally they didn't promote him; the readers didn't know, so naturally no one hyped him up."

Lu Qingxuan fell silent.

After a while, she said, "But that doesn't make sense either. If he wanted to publish it, he would definitely need an ID card, right? How could the publishing house not know he was a child?"

“There are many ways to circumvent this, for example, he could use his mother’s ID.”

Lu Qingxuan shook her head: "I don't really believe there wasn't a single rumor about this. With the internet so developed now, it's very strange that you can't find any related information."

Liu Ruying said, "But sometimes such things really do happen. For example, Jin Yong and Gu Long. If it weren't for that accidental exposure, who would know that these two people are the same person using different pseudonyms? And so many works were written by this person."

Lu Qingxuan tilted her head and asked, "What happened to Jin Yong and Gu Long? What's this all about?"

Liu Ruying's eyes widened slightly: "You don't know?"

“I spent the last few years abroad, and the information channels in China were not very smooth.”

"Do you know Gabriel García Borges?"

Lu Qingxuan nodded: "I know, what's wrong?"

"He is actually a pseudonym for Kim Yong and Kolong."

"Huh?" For a moment, Lu Qingxuan thought she was joking with her.

Liu Ruying then asked, "Do you know Hemingway, Faulkner, Kawabata Haruki, or Tolstoy?"

Lu Qingxuan said with a smile, "Don't tell me these are all pseudonyms."

“Yes, these are all pseudonyms, specifically Jin Yong and Gu Long pseudonyms,” Liu Ruying said. “You didn’t know? These writers are quite famous abroad, aren’t they?”

Lu Qingxuan was taken aback: "When did this happen?"

"It was probably about half a year, less than a year."

“I haven’t seen any related news abroad… or maybe there was, but I ignored it.” Lu Qingxuan broke out in a sweat.

“Information cocoon,” the Witch Lord suddenly said. “This is the information cocoon effect. No matter how popular something is, there will always be people who have never heard of it.”

"What is an information cocoon?" Liu Ruying asked him.

"The information cocoon means that in the information society, there is a massive amount of information. In the process of receiving information, people will wrap themselves up like silkworms spinning silk to form cocoons, only receiving the information they prefer, creating a semi-isolated situation."

Wu Zun continued, "For example, Liu Xiaohua knows this story very well, while Miss Lu knows nothing about it. I am somewhere in between. I only knew that there was a very powerful and mysterious writer. I didn't know that the mysterious writer also used the pseudonyms Jin Yong and Gu Long."

The Witch Lord stared at Lu Qingxuan and said, "This is probably why we can't find Chen Ya's whereabouts; everyone is trapped in the cocoon."

Liu Ruying lowered her head and pondered for a while before saying, "Speaking of Jin Yong and Gu Long, I also remember that the mysterious writer also started writing at the age of twelve or thirteen. People at that time did not know about this. Perhaps our judgments are inaccurate. The gimmick of 'child prodigy' may not have as much vitality as we imagined."

"The mysterious writer actually started writing at the age of twelve or thirteen? This is the first time I've ever heard of this. The power of the information cocoon is truly astonishing," Wu Zun exclaimed. "As expected of Liu, the campus belle of the Chinese department, she knows so much about this."

Liu Ruying smiled and shook her head: "I don't know this so clearly because I majored in Chinese literature. I know it because that mysterious writer's girlfriend is my sister!"

The Witch Lord slapped his forehead: "Oh, right! The Liu Ruyan who wrote about overstepping boundaries and living together is from the Liu family, she's your cousin!"

Lu Qingxuan had no idea what they were so excited about, and was a little confused. She waved her hand and said:

"We've gone off on a tangent. Weren't we supposed to be talking about Chen Ya? How did we end up talking about some mysterious writer? Let's get back to the main topic."

Liu Ruying smiled wryly: "Even if we get back to the main point, we don't have any more clues now."

Lu Qingxuan was speechless because Liu Ruying was right.

Perhaps, as Liu Ruying said, the gimmick of "a child prodigy who writes novels" did not have as much vitality as they imagined. Either it was not hyped up at the time, or the information from that time has not survived to this day.

She was now at a loss for what to do next in the investigation, yet unwilling to give up on this lead. Just as she was hesitating, she saw a commotion at the entrance of the main hall, and a figure in a pure white gauze dress drifted by.

With a thought, Lu Qingxuan said goodbye to the people at the table, put down her handbag, and walked in the direction where the skirt had disappeared.

As she passed through the corridor, she bumped right into Lu Ruixiang.

"Aunt Lu Ruixiang, you're here!"

Lu Qingxuan greeted her, but for some reason, she felt that this woman, whom she called "Auntie," looked somewhat embarrassed.

She turned her head and saw Chen Sheng, Lu Qianzi, and Chen Hai standing behind her, all of them carefully dressed up. Chen Hai was even dressed in a suit and tie, looking like an insurance salesman.

She immediately understood why Lu Ruixiang looked somewhat embarrassed—Chen Ya still hadn't come with them.

"Still haven't found Chen Ya?" Lu Qingxuan asked, tilting her head, as if she wanted to bring up something she didn't want to talk about.

"I...I couldn't find it," Lu Ruixiang said awkwardly. "But it's such a big event as Grandpa Lu's birthday, he shouldn't miss it. He may have a peculiar personality, but he's not so ignorant of etiquette."

Lu Qingxuan nodded, knowing that Lu Ruixiang was powerless to help in this matter, and bowed to Chen Sheng beside her, saying:

"Uncle Chen Sheng, has Chen Ya's aunt, Chen Chi, arrived as well? Where is she?"