Back Then, I Adored You

A pang of shock seized Xu Wennuan’s heart, and she immediately ran to the door, pushed it open, and approached Lu Bancheng on the floor. As she got closer to him, she then noticed that his face was terrifyingly pale. His eyes were closed, and he laid motionless on the ground as if he’d lost consciousness.

“Lu Bancheng?” She dashed over frantically and called out his name in a low voice before she squatted down and touched his forehead. It was scalding hot.

As he was too heavy, even after Xu Wennuan exhausted a great amount of effort, she did not manage to help Lu Bancheng up from the ground. She then searched for a phone inside the house, called reception, and asked them to call for an ambulance.

……

Once in the hospital, the nurse put Lu Bancheng on an IV drip and left. Xu Wennuan sat beside his bed, where he laid with closed eyes fast asleep. She stared at him for a moment before shifting her gaze to the view outside the window. Xu Wennuan stared into the pitch-black night sky while the earlier exchange she’d witnessed between Lu Bancheng and Wu Hao played out in her mind.

So… Wu Hao had fought with Lu Bancheng earlier, and I never knew that… So, the injury at the corner of his lips as well as those blue and black bruises on his face that I saw earlier during dinner were all inflicted by Wu Hao… But how did Wu Hao know about the things that happened between Lu Bancheng and me?

Xu Wennuan frowned and pondered for a moment before she eventually remembered that she had called the radio station on her first night in Lijiang.

In this world, only Wu Hao knew that I loved to listen to that nightly radio station… But it’s been such a long time since we broke up. Why would he still listen to that station?

Xu Wennuan suddenly was amused. She could not resist her lips from twitching, and she shook her head twice in silent laughter before her eyes landed on Lu Bancheng’s phone.

Is he really Zero?

Xu Wennuan could not shake the idea that this was too much of a coincidence. She had fantasized about Zero numerous times, but the only thing that she had never considered was that he would be the person whom she had least expected.

She acknowledged that her current hatred toward Lu Bancheng was no longer as intense as what it had been a year ago; however, she also had not prepared to have anything to do with him, because her letting go had not equated to forgiveness.

Xu Wennuan’s thoughts ran wild for some time before she couldn’t restrain herself and picked up Lu Bancheng’s cell phone. She pressed his thumb on the biometric sensor and clicked on the game after his phone was unlocked. What she saw was a name that she was more than familiar with: Zero Degrees.

So he really is Zero…

Zero had contacted someone to save my father. If he really was Zero Degrees, the one who saved my father was…

As this thought crossed Xu Wennuan’s mind, her eyes suddenly drifted over to Lu Bancheng’s face.

His bone marrow was compatible with my father’s. Such fate in this world is truly a miracle. Back then, I had thought it was a miracle but, now that I think about it, it was actually a double miracle! I am even more amazed now.

No wonder he looked so pale when I had seen him a week after my father’s surgery… And his wrist had obvious signs of having had a recent IV drip. He wasn’t ill; he’d just had surgery on behalf of my father…

He had been so relentlessly unyielding when I had visited him to plead with him to help my father. Why did he secretly help me behind my back and keep me in the dark about it?

And the spa facility… Zero was the one who hooked me up with that job. I’ve never really figured out who the investor is behind the spa, but now that I think about it… It’s probably him!