Chapter 43: The Ex-Boyfriend

When this male student turned around, Jiang Ying immediately realized something was wrong.

Before she could let go of his arm, the other person pulled down his mask, raised an eyebrow, and said, "Where on earth did you pop out from like a frightened rabbit? You gave me quite a scare."

Jiang Ying: "........."

She silently withdrew her hand. "I was the one who was startled... Why did you change your hat? What happened to your stylish fisherman's hat?"

"I am a man of fashion, you know. I can't possibly own just one hat, can I?"

Xiaojia and Zhou Anning also walked over. Upon seeing his face, Xiaojia enthusiastically waved at him. "President Meng? What brings you here?"

Meng Shao twirled a shopping bag around his finger and joked, "I just finished a meeting and came straight here to buy snacks as a surprise for these two distinguished ladies. I was just about to head into the park when I got ambushed."

He glanced at Jiang Ying, pulled the hood of her down jacket over her head, and said, "It's freezing outside. Let's get inside the park first."

The group entered the production venue, where various staff members were busy at work. A coordinator holding a stack of papers was bustling about, communicating and making arrangements among photographers, lighting technicians, and wardrobe assistants. The scheduled models were already busy having their hair and makeup done, and everyone greeted Meng Shao with cheerful smiles when they saw him.

"You guys go ahead and make yourselves comfortable in the lounge. The models will rest there whenever they aren't shooting."

As Meng Shao led them to the entrance of the lounge, Jiang Ying pulled him back, saying she had something to discuss with him. The two of them then walked off toward his office.

Once the door was closed, Meng Shao took off his hat and mask.

"Who did you mistake me for just now? You looked utterly panicked."

Jiang Ying sat down on the lazy sofa against the wall and asked gloomily, "It's freezing outside, so why are you dressed so thinly?"

"I get chauffeured everywhere from my apartment to the base, and everywhere is heated. If I wore another layer, I'd melt from the heat."

Meng Shao walked over, pulled up a chair, and sat down. "Alright, spill it. What's on your mind?"

Jiang Ying told Meng Shao about the phone call she received from Lu Zhixi's family in the United States, then asked with a worried expression, "Do you think Lu Zhixi could actually get kidnapped or blackmailed? After all, we're talking about matters of life and death here..."

"Not a chance."

Meng Shao's tone was resolute.

"A kid like him has been trained since childhood on how to handle all sorts of dangerous situations, including kidnappings. His vigilance is way higher than an ordinary person's, so there's no need for you to worry."

Seeing that Jiang Ying still looked doubtful, he added, "The reason his family can't find him, I suspect, is simply because he hasn't left China."

"Do you know something about this?" Jiang Ying stared at him.

It turned out that on New Year's Eve, after Jiang Ying told Meng Shao about Lu Zhixi trying to contact her, Meng Shao had kept it in mind and made further inquiries about Lu Zhixi's situation with people like Lily.

Lily had told him that upon learning Lu Zhixi had gone to China, she had asked her father to contact Lu Zhixi's cousin, Chen Shuhuai.

"The mainland, especially Beijing, is exceptionally safe, and it's a huge hassle for foreigners to enter. Even if media outlets tried to find you before, they were just middlemen. If you run into them, a single report to the police will sort them out instantly."

"The reason Lu Zhixi was able to have people watch over you and block reporters is because his cousin's family has special connections and owns a legitimate security company on the mainland. Since he could spare people to protect you, he definitely has bodyguards around him as well. His family must have been utterly desperate to not find him anywhere else before they finally called you."

Fortunately, Lily was quite familiar with Lu Zhixi and had uncovered some of the tangled webs behind both families, passing the information along to Meng Shao.

"To put it mildly, your ex-boyfriend is extremely smart. He targeted a company listed in Hong Kong. Strictly speaking, it's an act of punishing a relative for the greater good and maintaining financial market order. If anyone really wants to come after him and steal evidence while he's in China, he has legitimate reasons to be protected."

By this point, Meng Shao stopped holding back.

He told Jiang Ying that the kid's life wasn't in danger, nor was he likely to be easily manipulated. However, by pushing this internal family feud to such extreme lengths, he was essentially burning bridges and openly going to war with his father and grandfather. It was a high-stakes game of timing and leverage, where the winner was determined by whose stock prices held up and whose heart stopped first.

"To play such a high-stakes game at his age, he's truly a lunatic..." Meng Shao chuckled. "Still, you should be a bit careful from now on. Let me know whenever you leave campus, and I'll arrange a car to pick you up."

Jiang Ying had only wanted to confirm Lu Zhixi's safety in the first place; as for how he planned to wrestle family assets away from his relatives, it genuinely had nothing to do with her.

After hearing Meng Shao's analysis, she let out a sigh of relief, put the matter out of her mind, and happily went back to the lounge to find Zhou Anning.

When she arrived, two handsome guys who looked identical were sitting on the sofa across from Zhou Anning. They both had double eyelids and high-arched noses, and when they smiled, they looked like pure-hearted, sunny golden retrievers.

One of the twins was asking Zhou Anning, "Are psychology majors really good at observing micro-expressions? Can you easily see through what other people are thinking, almost like mind reading?"

Classmate Zhou Anning nibbled on her milk tea straw, looked at them with a gaze full of fond pity, and said, "Most of that is total nonsense."

"Oh, then what is it that you guys actually do?"

"We use electroencephalograms to record human brain activity and observe people's emotional responses under various scenarios."

Jiang Ying sat down beside Zhou Anning and, seeing the two boys looking utterly perplexed, smiled and said to them, "To put it simply, we could use this equipment to test whether the older brother's brain reacts at the same time when he sees a girl he has a crush on."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Anning understood instantly and flashed an equally mischievous smile.

The older brother sitting opposite burst out laughing, while the younger brother covered his face. "Sister, please spare me. My brother has a girlfriend."

The models they had taken a fancy to a few days prior had arrived one after the other, coming over to chat and greet them.

The youngest among them was only seventeen, named Ji Xun. He had a baby face, but when he lifted the hem of his shirt, he revealed an alluring layer of lean muscle. Jiang Ying gave it a tentative poke and only realized the boy was still in high school when her hand started trembling before she even managed to pull it back.

Then, immediately burdened with the guilt of bullying a high school boy, Zhou Anning reached out and poked it twice more.

The handsome guys were all very outgoing. Knowing that the girls were friends with the boss—and that Jiang Ying was even one of the co-owners—they made sure to crank the emotional value all the way up.

Jiang Ying and Zhou Anning had a blast. Before leaving, they took a Polaroid picture together as a souvenir and created a chat group. Zhou Anning asked with a face full of anticipation whether they could request ab muscle photos in the chat later on, to which the handsome guys generously replied that they could ask anytime.

Consequently, the chat group was christened "The Temple of Male Bodhisattvas."

At eight o'clock in the night, Meng Shao drove them back to campus.

Although there had been food at the shooting base, it consisted entirely of low-oil, low-fat salads, and neither of them was full. They headed straight for the campus cafeteria that served late-night snacks.

"Every circle is just so completely different."

Jiang Ying sat in the cafeteria eating a piping-hot bowl of spicy hotpot while chatting with Zhou Anning about the day's events.

Back at the shooting base today, quite a few people had heard that she was close with Lily—who was also a shareholder—and treated Jiang Ying like a wealthy young lady, jokingly tossing out lines like "Give us a chance, President Ying."

This was an absolute first for Jiang Ying. When Meng Shao overheard it, he covered his face and laughed until his shoulders shook.

People in the fashion industry possessed youthful and beautiful exteriors, and beneath those skins lay a surging vitality and the desire to scheme and climb their way up the vanity fair.

The business world, on the other hand, was another magnificent yet bloodless battlefield.

Thinking about Meng Shao's analysis earlier that day, Jiang Ying couldn't help sighing. By comparison, campus life truly was a remarkably peaceful sanctuary.

"The campus environment is relatively pure, but you still have to grind for academic titles. And that's just the struggle after landing a faculty position; you first have to figure out how to graduate with a doctorate before that. At our university over the past two years, at least one PhD student has jumped from a building every year."

Zhou Anning sighed.

She had already secured several decent Master's offers and was guaranteed a spot in graduate school. There was even a chance she could go to the United States alongside Jiang Ying. However, whether she could find a job after graduation or if she would need to pursue a PhD still left her feeling quite lost.

Having recently finished her undergraduate thesis, Jiang Ying had also begun searching for new scientific research opportunities, submitting her application materials to several places without receiving a response yet.

She was still a senior undergraduate, but the core work of many research groups tended to favor graduate students or those who had undergone more rigorous academic training. Yet, securing new research experience was crucial for choosing a mentor and applying to American graduate programs—it was a real dilemma.

In the past, Jiang Ying probably would have sighed in despair right alongside Zhou Anning. But having weathered countless troubles and crises over the past two years, she felt this wasn't such a catastrophic problem after all.

As it turned out, humans don't actually drop dead from endless cycles of vulnerability and breakdowns; instead, they gradually become as unflappable as an old dog.

She calmly took a large bite of instant noodles coated in rich, spicy broth and comforted Zhou Anning:

"Opportunities will always be there. Relax. If all else fails, the two of us can sell roasted sausages outside the campus gates after graduation. We'll write 'Five yuan each' on the left sign and 'Comes with complimentary psychological counseling' on the right. I heard some law students are already doing that."

A few days later, good news finally arrived.

Jiang Ying received an email—a reply from a professor in the Department of Psychology at Capital Normal University, stating that she had reviewed Jiang Ying's application materials and wanted to chat in person.

The professor, named Cheng Yunyi, had long focused on research regarding Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Her research group collaborated with hospitals, investigating the therapeutic effects of specific intervention techniques by examining the neural mechanisms of autistic individuals.

To screen suitable subjects for her research group, Professor Cheng was meeting with patients' families at a care center today and arranged to interview Jiang Ying at a cafe inside an upscale shopping mall.

On a weekday, the cafe was practically empty, and they sat to talk in a corner.

After Jiang Ying briefly introduced her past experiences, Professor Cheng said to her:

"Having past experience with ASD research projects, working as a volunteer, and participating in clinical-oriented scientific research... from an academic standpoint, your train of thought is quite clear. I would be very glad to welcome you into our research group."

Every academic field is a small circle, and Jiang Ying had heard some gossip about Professor Cheng—for instance, that she had studied abroad in Germany during her youth and had a romantic relationship with a handsome German psychologist, though she ultimately chose to return to China to teach and had remained single ever since.