Wei Qian's reaction was very calm. Whether it was the photo, Wei Zhiyuan's words or the sudden phone call, he had no expression. He raised his hand and pressed it down, motioning Wei Zhiyuan to sit down first, and said to the person on the other end of the phone: "Mr. Wang."

Wang Dongliang sighed and said, "Hey, you guys came all the way to our hometown to participate in our city construction, but what about me? Hehe, I'm not doing very well, and there are only a few people in the local area who recognize me. I barely have some face - I haven't had time to invite Director Wei to dinner yet. I wonder if Director Wei will give me this face?"

Wei Qian sneered softly, not sure whether it was ridicule or sarcasm, then his eyes fell on the corner of his desk and he tapped it lightly with his fingers. Wei Zhiyuan immediately understood what he meant, took the cigarette box, lit one and handed it to him.

"Mr. Wang is too polite."

Wang Dongliang laughed heartily: "No, I've heard of Director Wei a long time ago. He's a talented young man with great abilities... Well, come to think of it, we two brothers have quite a history."

Wei Qian flicked the ash off his cigarette calmly: "What do you mean?"

"You know, your brother Wang, I like making friends. A hero is not judged by his origin. These friends come from all walks of life. Some of them may have made some mistakes when they were young. Haha, of course, they have turned over a new leaf now. There is such a friend among me now. He is nearly 60 years old this year. His last name is Ji, and his name is Ji Xuewen. I wonder if you have any impression of him."

Wang Dongliang, this big gangster, always spoke in a roundabout way. Wei Qian frowned, unable to immediately react to what he was barking about. After hesitating for a moment, Wei Qian cautiously continued his conversation: "I really haven't heard of who your friend is."

Wang Dongliang began his long speech again, lamenting the impermanence of life for a while, and occasionally interspersed with a few lines of Tang and Song poetry, which was so sour that it seemed like sour plum soup that had forgotten to add sugar. Wei Qian took advantage of this gap to smoke three cigarettes... The fourth one was snatched away by Wei Zhiyuan.

Finally, after Wang Dongliang ran around the earth, he returned to the topic.

"Indeed," the gangster said, "so many years have passed, and Director Wei is indeed young, so he probably doesn't remember the earlier things. Coincidentally, this Ji Xuewen was imprisoned the year you were born, and he has a lot of connections with your mother..."

It was only then that Wei Qian's expression changed for the first time.

Wang Dongliang slowly uttered the following words: "No, how can you say that we have a close relationship? Brother Wang is uneducated, and his words are always inexpressible. Don't take it to heart. Although we don't have a normal marriage, but without him, there would be no you. How can you say that? That...blood is thicker than water..."

Wei Qian suddenly interrupted him: "Boss Wang, are you planning to give me a big promotion for the grand opening? Just give me a father? That father is really cheap."

Wang Dongliang laughed proudly, "Boss Wei, why are you so blunt in your words? What's the matter? Didn't the little brother serve you well today? It sounds like you're not in a good mood. But judging from your appearance, Boss Wei doesn't look much like my friend. Boss Wei looks more like his mother. When my friend saw your photo, he was so surprised that he said your eyebrows and eyes are exactly the same. As the old saying goes, 'A son will resemble his mother, and a daughter will resemble her father'... Hahahaha, I've said too much. Of course, I'm just an outsider. If I say too much about your 'family' affairs, I'll be annoying. As I said, you must come some other day. I'll treat you well and ask you to eat the most distinctive food in our area. There is a 'living restaurant' with living people as plates. They are all handsome young men with thick eyebrows and big eyes. Boss Wei will definitely like this. Don't be polite to me when the time comes."

As soon as the words "a son will resemble his mother" came out, the veins on Wei Qian's forehead popped out, and Wei Zhiyuan clearly felt his breathing pause.

However, Wei Qian did not reveal any clues to Wang Dongliang. He patiently listened to his entire meaningful nonsense. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly, and he said with a smile: "Boss Wang has a good appetite. It seems that I must accompany you to enjoy it."

The moment he put down the phone, Wei Qian let out a breath softly. It felt like he had been holding it in for a while, and his breath was trembling. His lips seemed to be frozen, blue and white, without a trace of blood.

Wei Zhiyuan called him softly: "Brother..."

Wei Qian didn't respond. Wei Zhiyuan leaned over across the table and pinched his shoulder: "Brother!"

Wei Qian seemed to come back to his senses. He raised his head and looked at Wei Zhiyuan steadily, then slowly bent down, took out a document from the drawer and handed it to Wei Zhiyuan, saying weakly: "This is a draft of the cooperation agreement for your game by the investment department. The legal department has read it. Please take it and go through it first. If you have any questions, go directly to the manager in charge."

Wei Zhiyuan was stunned for a moment, and just when he was about to say something, Wei Qian lowered his eyes and said, "Go out first, let me be alone for a while."

Wei Zhiyuan frowned, and Wei Qian raised his voice slightly: "Get out."

Wei Zhiyuan saw that he was upset and didn't want to make things worse for him at this time, so he silently picked up the draft contract on the table, turned around and walked out, closing the door gently.

It was already time to get off work, but Wei Qian hadn't come out of his office. Almost everyone in the headquarters had left, so Wei Zhiyuan wandered around and knocked on his door: "Brother? It's time to go home?"

There was no movement from inside for a while. Wei Zhiyuan was about to raise his hand to knock on the door again when it opened from the inside.

Wei Qian's face was extremely ugly. He took out the car keys from his pocket and handed them to Wei Zhiyuan, saying, "You drive."

There is nothing else to say.

"I talked a lot with your department manager this afternoon. It was quite interesting... Oh, by the way, brother, do you have any vegetables at home? Let's buy some on the way. What do you want to eat?"

Wei Zhiyuan tried to bring up a topic, but Wei Qian either simply responded or simply leaned back in the car seat in silence, looking sick.

In the end, Wei Zhiyuan also fell silent. When entering the community, he slowed down to a speed almost the same as a bicycle, slowly drove into the community driveway, and stretched out one hand to wrap around the back of Wei Qian's hand - that hand was cold.

Wei Qian simply opened his eyes, glanced at him indifferently, and closed them again.

He neither protested nor retreated, as if he was just numb and gave up on himself.

Something is definitely wrong, Wei Zhiyuan thought.

When they drove the car to their garage, Wei Zhiyuan finally warmed up his hands. Wei Qian opened his eyes a little, as if his microcirculation had just been restored. He moved his stiff fingers and asked Wei Zhiyuan slowly, "Do you like to touch me?"

Wei Zhiyuan took advantage of the situation and behaved himself, retracting his claws: "Brother, are you okay?"

Wei Qian: “Yeah.”

After saying that, he unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car, walking straight upstairs. Wei Zhiyuan quickly caught up with him: "Brother, about the photo, I think..."

Wei Qian walked in front of him with his back to him, raised one hand and held up two fingers: "Let's talk about this later."

Wei Zhiyuan: “Ah?”

"Let's talk about it tomorrow. Xiaobao is still at home."

Xiaobao and Alex were lying on a coffee table looking at old photos - this was Alex's persistent request, and Song Xiaobao naively agreed to it out of the hospitality of the simple people, but soon regretted it.

The original intention of mean A was to visit the handsome boy in his childhood, but who knew that he soon found something more interesting - the childhood of Song Xiaobao, for whom he launched an inhumane laugh.

"Hahahaha, how could you grow up like this when you were a child? It's too bizarre! Lili, tell me secretly, how many knife operations did you undergo in the country of Simida to obtain your current disguised human identity? It doesn't matter, I won't interrogate you about your purpose in coming to Earth, just tell me."

Song Xiaobao: "What? How can it be so ugly?"

Bitch A showed her white teeth and said seriously: "No, girl, it's not ugly at all, but it's a little tragic by human standards."

Song Xiaobao: “…”

Bitch A came closer and observed her: "You are not nearsighted? Oh, luckily, otherwise you wouldn't even be able to wear glasses because of the door panel hitting your nose when you were a child. You are a little girl, and you tie your glasses to your head with a string all day long, like a patient who just had a brain-damage treatment operation. Tsk, how miserable it must be."

Song Xiaobao glared at him.

Her gaze had no killing power on bitch A. Alex said as he flipped through his family's rare old photo album nonchalantly, "You told me last time that the eldest brother in your family is your biological brother, but the second brother is not, right? Oh, you should be more like your eldest brother... Oh my god, who is this?!"

The last page of the album is a woman.

Due to the times and photography technology, the woman's expression looks a little stiff. She has curly hair that seems very gaudy nowadays, blood-red lips, sunken cheeks, a dull complexion, and she looks at the camera with numb eyes, trying hard to force out an unnatural smile.

Logically speaking, this photo should be very devastating, maybe even Xi Shi could be photographed as a plain girl, but Alex stared at the woman's face for a long time. If Xiaobao didn't know that he was almost dilated, he would definitely think that he fell in love with the woman in the photo at first sight.

"Beautiful..." Alex murmured after a while.

Xiao Bao said in confusion: "Huh? Not beautiful at all, it looks so silly in the photo."

Alex waved his hands: "You don't understand - you see, she is like a wax mannequin, her whole body is stiff, she stands unnaturally in front of the camera, and there is something particularly gray in her eyes, which makes her look dull and her expression is dull. At first glance, she is just an ordinary middle-aged woman, but when you look closely, you will find that this woman is really... beautiful, as if..."

He seemed to be at a loss for words all of a sudden. He gestured for a long time before speaking incoherently, "You know, the kind of dying flower, the outer petals have deteriorated into a dying brown-yellow color, and you can see the shriveled plant veins inside. Only the center of the flower has a bit of broken vitality, with moisture that is about to disappear..."

Song Xiaobao said: "Don't you just want to talk about withered flowers and withered willows?"

"Mao! Do you have any aesthetic sense? If you can't speak, just shut up. I find that you are like a dog that can't spit out ivory." Alex sprayed her unhappily, then he lowered his head and looked at the photo with fascination, whispering, "There is a kind of beauty that is about to be destroyed. When people see it, they will unconsciously imagine what the flower looks like when it is in full bloom... Hey, who is this person?"

"My mother." Song Xiaobao said, pulling out the photo and looking at the date marked on it. "I don't remember what she looks like. My brother said... Oh, she should have started taking drugs at this time. No wonder she was so skinny."

Alex suddenly realized that he seemed to have touched upon Xiaobao's family's sad story. He immediately came back to his senses from his fanatical photography enthusiast state and said awkwardly, "Lili, I'm sorry..."

"It's okay. I don't have any impression of her." Song Xiaobao shrugged heartlessly, and added, "Neither do I have any impression of my dad."

At this time, Wei Qian and Wei Zhiyuan came back. Wei Qian's eyes could not help but fall on the photo in Xiaobao's hand. There was no joy or anger on his face. He just walked over, put away his mother's photo, put it back into the album, and patted Song Xiaobao on the head: "Why not play with photos?"

Although Alex wanted to stay a little longer and look at the handsome guy, he observed Wei Qian's expression and found that he was not happy. So he had to leave within five minutes and went to the hotel where he was staying.

Wei Qian cheered himself up, chatted with Xiaobao for a few words, and returned to the house before nine o'clock.

When he got to his room, Wei Qian closed the door and pinched his eyebrows hard - he had a splitting headache.

Wei Qian just washed up hastily, without even drying his hair, and rolled onto the bed. Soon, he fell asleep exhausted both physically and mentally. Before he fell into complete sleep, his mind raced through the events of the entire day, and finally, it stopped on the old photo that Xiaobao was holding in his hand.

He first had an old dream again in a daze, in which he saw himself as a child leaning on a pregnant woman, listening to her telling stories about the river and children.

Then the woman  and the sound of reading disappeared, and the story seemed to have a sequel.

The woman's plump cheeks were sunken, and the tip of her already tall nose seemed so sharp that it might pierce the sky. Her eyes became more gloomy and numb, and her scarlet lips always seemed to reveal a crazy and dead silence.

Wei Qian seemed to have returned to his youth. When he pushed the door open, he saw the woman standing woodenly in front of Xiaobao's bed, holding the syringe she used for drugs in her hand, staring at the little girl on the bed.

The heartless little girl was sleeping soundly.

Wei Qian's scalp exploded, he took two steps over, pushed the woman away, and stood in front of Xiaobao's bed: "What are you doing?"

The woman was as thin as a bamboo pole in the wind. He pushed her with his hand and she staggered back a few steps and sat down on the ground.

"What am I doing?" She laughed softly, and her hand fell to the corner and happened to touch the storybook that Wei Qian had read when he was a child  . The woman picked it up  and tore through the book page by page leisurely as if for entertainment. She said slowly, "You two little bastards, what are you doing alive? You might as well die early and be reborn into a good family in your next life."

As she spoke, her eyes fell on the torn pages of the book: "Little lambs, little lambs, round and plump. Eat them all in one gulp. Don't let any of them run away... Hahahaha, don't let any of them run away."

Wei Qian: "Mad man."

He didn't want to look at her anymore, so he bent down to check on Xiaobao in the crib. This child had been a little pig since she was young, and even with such a loud noise nearby, she couldn't be woken up.

Her little face was round and plump, and her little paws, like meat balls, were placed at her sides, opening and closing inadvertently, as if she was trying to grab something.

The boy breathed a sigh of relief and gently put the girl's small hand into the quilt, feeling as if she was grasping his fingers affectionately.

But before he could feel the body temperature coming from the child's warm palms, a pair of hands suddenly hugged him from behind. He smelled the nauseating, cheap scent of a woman. The hands were so thin and shapeless, with dry lines on the back of the hands. The fingertips were bloodless, but the touch was extremely smooth, like two cold fish sliding into his clothes. One hand pinched his waist, then moved to his chest, and the other hand touched his lower body and began to rub it teasingly.

The boy's body was still developing, but he had not yet entered puberty. He was confused and had no idea what was going on, and was stunned on the spot.

As a strange restlessness surged into his veins and rushed into his brain with a "boom", Wei Qian finally came to his senses, struggled violently, turned around and slapped the woman.

"Pa", the room was silent for a moment, Xiaobao was finally woken up, and started crying loudly like a bell.

The woman licked her scarlet lips, covered her face with one hand, knelt on the ground, and laughed lightly and intermittently. For a moment, her crazy expression seemed a little cute and naive: "Oh, my dear son, so you still don't understand?"

Wei Qian's blood ran cold. He felt as if the woman's touch was still on his body, as if a snake was wrapped around him. He felt nauseous and began to dry heave, holding onto the table.

The woman stopped laughing and looked at him indifferently: "Don't you men like this kind of thing? Why, you think mom is disgusting? So what? More than ten years ago, the blood on your body was mine. Aren't you disgusted yourself? Huh?"

After saying that, she gathered her hair, raised her chin, and stood up dignifiedly and indifferently, humming softly: "Little lambs, little lambs, round and plump, eat them up in one gulp, don't let any of them run away..."

While humming, she put on her high heels, unbuttoned her collar a little, and staggered out. When she reached the door, she suddenly turned around, opened her eyes wide, her eyeballs almost popped out of her sockets, and looked at Wei Qian steadily, babbling nonsense: "I told you not to cross the river, don't cross the river, but you still wanted to cross it! What happened? Song Dawei is dead, right? You are finished too, right? You are going to be eaten by 'Awoo' in one bite! Hahahaha..."

Her laughter became shriller and shriller, until it sounded like a crow crying in the night with its throat pinched, giving off a kind of heart-wrenching ominous feeling.

Wei Qian woke up suddenly, his heart pounding like thunder.

He forgot to close the window when he went to bed, and the cold wind of late autumn blew in, making him shiver violently. Then he realized that he was naked.

Wei Qian frowned. He was usually under a lot of pressure and rest time was extremely precious. He usually fell asleep immediately and didn't pay much attention to this need. Occasionally he would have some rest every once in a while, but he would just hastily pass it by with his hands.

But that night, he felt a little disgusted. He didn't reach out to touch it. He just leaned against the head of the bed, quietly waiting for the desire to pass. He didn't close the window, letting the wind blow.

It was unknown how long it had passed before his heartbeat and body gradually calmed down. Wei Qian got up and planned to pour himself a glass of water. He struggled out of the nightmare and felt a little ridiculous - both the dream and Wang Dongliang.

He once tried his best to stand up straight, left school, and because of that ridiculous bit of self-esteem, went to work as a thug for Brother Le and earn a lot of money.

But so what? He thought, if he wanted to, if Le Xiaodong's nightclub was still there, he could buy two or three of them for fun. Who could shake his self-esteem?

Money and interests will always weave a huge net, it just depends on whose net is bigger and whose net is stronger.

In just a few days, Wei Qian had figured out Wang Dongliang.

Wang Dongliang's brother-in-law, who was highly regarded by him, killed someone during a demolition incident. He suppressed the matter locally, but he didn't know that the person who was beaten to death had a distant relative in his family with a complicated background. Now, someone is probably preparing to investigate Wang.

There are also the bunch of prisoners under Wang Dongliang. Although they are all supported by him and do things for him, as these people become more and more lawless, it is becoming more and more difficult to restrain them. Wang Dongliang has now been dragged into the water.

He definitely needs money, a lot of money. He is so poor that he is almost desperate.

I heard that he now has a sum of money laundered from Macau, and he urgently needs to find a proper way to flow it back to the mainland. He can hardly find a more ideal way than to transform this square into a residential project.

For the project in City A, Ma Chunming had previously provided a very accurate market research report. The local pre-sale management was not very strict, and it was absolutely possible to get most of the repayments before the main structure was capped, and it was even possible to liquidate the project. If the early operations were done properly, the entire repayment period might not exceed half a year. It was a rare "short, flat, and fast" project with high profits.

Wang Dongliang must get this land as soon as possible. Wei Qian put down the water cup and stared at the water surface that was slightly reflecting a little light. Holding the cup were his long and strong fingers belonging to an adult man. He thought to himself: I must make it impossible for you to get it.

At this moment, Wei Zhiyuan's door suddenly opened.

Wei Qian came back to his senses, glanced at the clock on the wall, and asked in a low voice: "Why aren't you sleeping at this hour? Are you jet-lagged?"

Wei Zhiyuan came over and said, "Well, I was just discussing something with some friends overseas...Brother, I'm a little worried about you."

Wei Qian felt that he was calm at the time - he felt that he was calm when he received Wang Dongliang's call, and the nightmare was just a coincidence that broke his usual biological clock of going to bed late and getting up early - he was just thinking in detail about how to deal with the big gangster, so he should have been rational.

However, at this moment, in such a calm and rational state, the crazy woman's words in his dream involuntarily came to his mind.

Crossing the River…

Cross the river? Just cross it, what?

So what if both parents are not human?

What is homosexuality? What is incest?

"You want to threaten me with something so insignificant?" Wei Qian thought, "Feng Dao Shuang Jian Yan Ru Xue? If you have the guts, bury me. Who am I afraid of? Fuck you."

"Come with me." Wei Qian said neither lightly nor seriously, as if he was planning to talk to Wei Zhiyuan about how to go about the investment procedures.

However, after he closed the door, he suddenly pressed Wei Zhiyuan against the door. Before Wei Zhiyuan could figure out what was going on, he leaned forward and bit Wei Zhiyuan's lips.

Wei Zhiyuan felt his steady heartbeat suddenly skip a beat and he forgot to say "jump".