My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 119
by Little PandaDisguise
“Ningning, don’t misunderstand your parents. They really are deeply worried about you, and they’ve frequently sent people out to search for your whereabouts. Otherwise, how would they know you’re at Nanhai Base?
“As for why they only had us come to Nanhai Base to pick you up so late, it’s because Ning’an Base wasn’t peaceful at all back then. Your parents had just arrived at the base, and nothing had settled down yet. They were afraid that if they brought you to Ning’an Base too early, you’d have to suffer with them, too. Besides, a long-distance journey was incredibly dangerous back then. None of us were strong enough, and we couldn’t guarantee we could escort you safely to Ning’an Base. That’s why it’s been dragged out until now.
“Ningning, I know you must’ve suffered a lot these past few years, and you have grievances against your parents. So here, on their behalf, I’ll say sorry to you. Can you… can you forgive them?”
Zhou Zhilong’s voice suited his refined, elegant appearance well, sounding both steady and gentle. His brand of gentleness was different from the gentleness Ren Chenxi showed when she was playing the role of Ren Muhui. His voice possessed a low, magnetic quality unique to men, making the surrounding crowd of female onlookers feel as though their ears were getting pregnant1.
Yet, of all the women present, only Mu Ning and Ren Chenxi looked displeased.
Ren Chenxi forced down the sour, bitter feeling welling up inside her. She tried not to look at Mu Ning beside her, and struggled not to think about what kind of relationship this man, who was so gentle with Mu Ning, actually had with her.
Mu Ning, meanwhile, continued to stare coldly at Zhou Zhilong, a sarcastic smile curling the corners of her lips.
“So…” Mu Ning’s lips curled. “You only worried about whether you could safely escort me to Ning’an Base. You didn’t worry at all… about whether I, with no one to escort me, would be in danger out here?”
“…”
Heh, they really hadn’t thought about that.
The crowd behind Zhou Zhilong exchanged looks. In particular, his two younger cousins had impatient looks on their faces. They were just about to scold Mu Ning, complaining that everyone was family and asking why she had to be so petty, when Zhou Zhilong’s gentle, magnetic voice rang out once more.
“I’m sorry, Ningning. It’s my fault. I didn’t manage to convince your parents to let me come look for you right away. They were very worried about your safety, but they also didn’t dare let me take risks. I… I… anyway, it’s all my fault. Even if everyone opposed it back then, and even if my esper level wasn’t high, I still should’ve put my fiancée first…”
The moment the word “fiancée” came out, Ren Chenxi reflexively whipped her head around to look at Mu Ning. But seeing Mu Ning’s cold profile, her brows knitted tightly, and she turned her face back.
This woman! This woman! She clearly had a fiancé! Then what on earth did all her past pestering count as? Was she just playing around? Clenching her fists in anger, Ren Chenxi constantly told herself not to get worked up, to calm down. First of all, Mu Ning herself hadn’t even acknowledged this “fiancé” yet! Second, Mu Ning and she were practically strangers now anyway. What right did she have to care about her relationship with this guy?
While Ren Chenxi was struggling to soothe her emotions, Mu Ning’s two younger cousins seemed to receive some sort of signal. Putting away their impatience, they eagerly began telling Mu Ning how devastated Zhou Zhilong had been during her absence. They described how he had begged his own parents, as well as her uncle and aunt, day after day to let him go out and search for her. When the elders refused to let him take the risk, he had supposedly spent a massive number of crystal cores hiring other espers to look for news.
In short, in the two cousins’ description, Zhou Zhilong was a devoted, deeply affectionate man who hadn’t been able to reach his fiancée’s side in time due to the sudden disaster, and was subsequently separated from her, living every single day in worry and regret.
However, Mu Ning didn’t believe a single word of her two cousins’ claims. Don’t forget, she had grown up surrounded by all kinds of hypocrisy and lies. And Zhou Zhilong was merely one of those back then who had been extremely skilled at disguising themselves to please her.
Why had she been so repulsed and disgusted by Ren Muhui’s wild boasting backstage when she first ran into him? Wasn’t it because she already had the example of Zhou Zhilong before him?
Before the apocalypse, the Mu family in A City had started out in real estate, later investing in various industries. Their momentum was soaring, even briefly making them the richest in the country. Therefore, back then, so many families in A City had wanted to form a marriage alliance with the Mu family. Among her many suitors, Zhou Zhilong was the one who disguised himself the best, and the one who won over Mu Ning’s parents the most.
If one of Zhou Zhilong’s lovers hadn’t run to Mu Ning in a jealous fit one day to provoke her, playing a recording of Zhou Zhilong saying that pursuing her was only due to the family’s marriage alliance demands and that he didn’t have any feelings for her, Mu Ning would never have seen the hypocrisy hidden beneath his deeply affectionate facade.
Mu Ning hadn’t taken the recording to her parents to expose his true face. After all, she understood that what her parents were satisfied with wasn’t his hypocritical love for her, but the Zhou family behind him.
Mu Ning didn’t have any feelings for Zhou Zhilong’s series of gentle offensives, and she had no feelings for the man himself either. Thus, after the college entrance exam2, Mu Ning planned to escape her family’s control, choosing to attend a university in distant S City all by herself, where she subsequently ran into Ren Muhui. With Zhou Zhilong as a precedent, her disgust toward Ren Muhui, who treated his pursuit of her as bragging rights, was only redoubled. Yet, Mu Ning never expected that while she could guard against Zhou Zhilong’s gentle offensives, she would fall into Ren Chenxi’s trap of tenderness.
What was laughable was that Ren Chenxi’s gentleness toward her, just like Zhou Zhilong’s, also hid the deception she loathed most. What was even more laughable was that she couldn’t bring herself to be ruthless toward Ren Chenxi, this emotional fraud. Lately, as she watched the distance between herself and Ren Chenxi widen until they became complete strangers, far from feeling the slightest bit of relief, her entire being felt as if her heart were being tightly bound, squeezing tighter and tighter.
Mu Ning regretted it. She deeply regretted saying she’d try to stop liking Ren Chenxi, and she regretted normally disguising herself with coldness, completely walling herself off from her. But if she didn’t, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to control her feelings again, and would want to fiercely bind Ren Chenxi to her side forever!
But… that wouldn’t do.
Ren Chenxi already hated her for pestering her. If she did anything even more out of line, she feared she’d only be able to live in Ren Chenxi’s hatred for the rest of her life. She didn’t want that, nor did she want to keep living in pain and torture every day. In that case… she might as well just leave Nanhai Base.
Leaving Nanhai Base, leaving Ren Chenxi—if she did that, perhaps her already battered heart would slowly break free from the shackles of this relationship one day.
Zhou Zhilong’s group was still trying all sorts of ways to persuade Mu Ning to leave with them, boasting about how good the conditions at Ning’an Base were. Mu Ning remained silent, neither agreeing nor refusing.
Seeing that this group was dead set on taking Mu Ning away—and worse, that they even wanted their Boss to fulfill her engagement to some fiancé—Zhang Tongqi, Chen Gu, and the others grew frantic. They burst into a chaotic uproar on the spot, clamoring all at once, though after all their arguing, the general idea was simply begging Mu Ning not to abandon them.
As the core of their squad, Zhang Tongqi and the others truly felt they couldn’t do without their Boss. It wasn’t just a reliance in daily life on their captain’s abilities; more than that, it was a psychological dependence on her. They felt that as long as their Boss was there, they could bravely face any danger. But once their Boss was no longer there…
Seeing the girls grow increasingly worked up, with Wu Tong’s voice even cracking and carrying a distinct sob, Mu Ning finally waved her hand coldly, and only then did the group stop their clamor.
Before Mu Ning could speak, however, Zhou Zhilong beat her to it, using his mild, polite, and highly deceptive tone to say to Mu Ning in a very considerate manner, “Ningning, since we’ll be getting married upon our return to A City, you’ll also need your good friends to attend our wedding. If they’re willing, they can come back to A City with us. What do you think?”
Zhou Zhilong had observed them carefully. Most of the people following Mu Ning were espers, and their esper levels weren’t low either. If they could return to Ning’an Base together, it would add a significant amount of combat power to his side.
Because of Zhou Zhilong’s words, Zhang Tongqi’s group, who had been highly emotional just moments ago, suddenly froze. Go to Ning’an Base with their Boss? They only hoped their Boss wouldn’t abandon them, but they’d never thought about leaving Nanhai Base, where they’d already lived for over two years! If they really had to leave with their Boss…
Zhang Tongqi and the others looked around, taking a serious look at the base they had lived in for so long—a place they had almost come to treat as their own home. For a moment, a thick wave of reluctance welled up in their hearts. Meanwhile, Qi Sheng, who hadn’t left because he was worried these visitors from Ning’an Base might do something threatening or coercive, watched his expression turn even uglier upon hearing them impolitely trying to take away even more espers.
Only Mu Ning cast a sarcastic glance at the posturing Zhou Zhilong, asking very directly, “Can your RV hold this many of us?”
“Uh…” Zhou Zhilong hesitated for a moment, then smiled and asked, “Ningning, how many friends do you have in total?”
“Twenty-one.”
“…” Twenty-one. No matter how large their RV was, it couldn’t possibly hold them all! Traveling thousands of miles to Nanhai Base to pick her up, they’d brought ten of their own people. Squeezing in another twenty-odd people—even if there were physical space to cram them in—would certainly make the journey back incredibly uncomfortable.
Zhou Zhilong really wanted to refuse taking along that bunch of burdens—especially since several of those twenty-odd people were just ordinary humans! But in order not to ruin Mu Ning’s impression of him, Zhou Zhilong could only cast a pleading look toward her two younger cousins. The two cousins received Zhou Zhilong’s distress signal and hurriedly stepped forward to reject her tactfully.
“Biaojie, our RV really can’t carry that many people…”
“Yeah, Biaojie. If your friends really want to come back with us, let’s see… how about they ride back in this bus?”
When Zhou Zhilong first learned that Mu Ning had gone to the beach and hadn’t returned to the base yet, he had still insisted on waiting at the base’s main entrance to maintain his devoted persona. However, they’d actually waited inside their comfortable armored RV, while poor Qi Sheng and the others could only stand enviously outside the RV to keep them company as they waited. So when Mu Ning and the others returned, Zhou Zhilong had naturally seen Mu Ning get off the bus.
Unfortunately, Chen Gu and the other men weren’t very pleased with the proposal of Mu Ning’s two cousins.
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