บท 9: Phone Call
บรรณาธิการ: EndlessFantasy Translation
"You're Gu Xijin's dog, don't come near me." Gu Xiqiao placed the dog outside of her room and pointed at its nose.
The dog was locked outside the room, but it didn't give up, instead starting to scratch at the door with its small claws.
Gu Xiqiao sat on her bed for a while, and hearing that the dog didn't give up, she went over and opened the door with a chilly expression, and the dog immediately ran into the room.
And so, the dog continued to play around by her legs as she studied for her exams, and the scene was quite harmonious.
After a few hours, someone knocked on her door louder than necessary, and Gu Xiqiao impatiently put down her pen to open her door. Outside was a middle-aged female servant, and upon seeing Gu Xiqiao, the former threw a bunch of clothes onto her face and said, "Here are your clothes!"
Gu Xiqiao tilted her head as she looked at the servant. This servant was an unimportant servant that was only in charge of simple chores that couldn't even hold a candle to the experienced servants of the Gu family, but even such a servant could raise her voice against her.
Gu Xiqiao smiled, and coupled with her clear gaze and pretty face, she looked positively innocently and harmless.
Coming from a backwater countryside and settling into this bustling and advanced city was anxiety-inducing for Gu Xiqiao, and she took a long time to get used to life here. Thankfully, Su Wan'er didn't mistreat her on the surface level.
The outsiders all praised Su Wan'er as the generous matriarch of the Gu family that even took an illegitimate daughter under her wing.
In her past life, Gu Xiqiao thought so too. Su Wan'er didn't treat her shabbily in terms of food and clothes, and she had once believed that if she worked hard enough, Su Wan'er would accept her existence one day. She wasn't the one that destroyed their family directly after all, and so she always endured them silently.
But these cold-hearted people never acknowledged her efforts, instead taking them for granted and saying that she should have done so in the first place!
She suddenly stopped smiling and leaned closer to the servant, whispering into her ear with a dismissive tone, "As low as my position may be, I'm still a member of the Gu family that Grandfather brought back, while you're just a servant. If you don't want to work here anymore, I can go tell Grandfather. Let's see who gets kicked out!"
After that, she stepped back and slammed the door in the servant's face.
The servant was stunned by Gu Xiqiao's display of defiance and was on the brink of shouting in anger.
Who did she think she was?!
Did she think she's afraid of her?
But after that, she came to her senses, and her face paled considerably in fear.
Servants lived on the good graces of their masters after all, and the person that was in charge of the Gu family at the end of the day was still Master Gu, Gu Xiqiao's grandfather. Su Wan'er still had no right to control everything in the family, and the one that called the shots was still Master Gu. Gu Xiqiao was brought back personally by Master Gu, and even though she wasn't that likable, but no matter how much she didn't have the favor of the other members of the Gu family, a direct descendant accepted by Master Gu wasn't someone that she could compare to as a servant. Master Gu had always valued his blood relations, and so he couldn't and wouldn't leave Gu Xiqiao to the wolves completely.
After the servant thought all of this through, she patted her chest in fear and breathed deeply.
She and the other servants had been misled by Lady Su's attitude towards Gu Xiqiao for these past few days and had been deluded into thinking that it was alright to take advantage of Gu Xiqiao.
As the servant stared at the door that had been slammed in her face, she started reconsidering the rumors that the second daughter of the Gu family was foolish. Could she have been acting dumb all this time? If that were the case, this illegitimate daughter probably had a few tricks up her sleeve…
The servant had seen her fair share of upper-society drama, and after thinking about all the twists and turns thoroughly, she shuddered and decided not to provoke Gu Xiqiao anymore.
And so, the arrogant servant retreated to the servant's quarters with her tail tucked between her legs.
Gu Xiqiao took out the school uniform she was going to wear the next day and arranged her textbooks, and then silently lay on the bed after everything was arranged well.
Meanwhile, the dog lay down below her bed.
As faint streaks of moonlight filtered in through the curtains, she opened her eyes. She didn't have any drowsiness and rolled around the bed futilely before reaching for the phone in her bedside cabinet. She slowly scrolled through it and stopped as she saw the finance applications that had been installed.
For her, earning money wasn't a hard thing to do. In fact, she was undecided about what to do first.
Buy stocks, futures or spots?
Of course, she had no intention whatsoever of contending for the position of the heir to the Gu family with Gu Xijin. She didn't care about the meager bit of property that the Gu family had in the slightest, and instead of hoping for the Gu family's pity, she'd rather spend her time raising a pet dog.
The Gu family had become what it was in her past life because of her help, and she wanted to see who the Gu family was going to find to help them reach that degree of success.
The system analyzed her emotions and started to brag again. [If you do more missions and let me level up, it wouldn't be a dream to become a billionaire!]
A raise of an eyebrow and a scoff. "You say that as if you can make money out of thin air."
[...What are you planning to do then?]
"I have my plans."
Seeing as its mistress was hard to deceive, the system crouched in a corner of a room and drew circles on the ground.
The phone screen that had darkened suddenly lit up and Gu Xiqiao squinted as she stared at the screen that said that Jiang Shuxuan had sent her a message.
'Brother Jiang: Is it alright to call you right now?'
Gu Xiqiao practically jumped up on the bed and read the message a few times, and after confirming that she wasn't seeing things she put on her indoor slippers and came to the window. After she pushed open the curtains, she pressed on the dial button after a slight hesitation.
The person on the other end picked up the call in a few seconds.
A low and attractive voice rung out from the phone, and even though the cold voice was purposefully suppressed and wasn't all that gentle, it calmed down Gu Xiqiao's irritated emotions instantaneously. She hung up and stood by the window for a short while, and the moment she lay back on the bed, she immediately fell asleep.
In another mansion, Jiang Shuxuan gracefully stood by the windowsill. The dim moonlight cast a silvery halo on him, and it made him seem ethereal.
In his hand was an unfinished cigarette, and the flickering embers were especially noticeable in the dark.
After a while, the mobile phone in his hand rang again and Jiang Shuxuan extinguished the cigarette in a glass ashtray as he looked at the person who called him. It was the eldest son of the Yin family, Yin Shaoyuan.
"Brother Jiang, I thought you had already arrived at Imperial Capital! No wonder everyone told me you hadn't gone back yet." Yin Shaoyuan had always been fickle and somewhat impolite even when talking to his father, but that wasn't the case for when he talked with Jiang Shuxuan.
He and Jiang Shuxuan were classmates in university, and the way they met was quite dramatic.
Yin Shaoyuan was known as the small tyrant in N City and was used to having his way. He couldn't shake away this habit even when he went to Jing Capital and got into trouble with another local rich kid, and he thought that no one would dare to hurt him because of his background. That night, he was stabbed through the gut in an alley and was saved by Jiang Shuxuan.
More importantly, was the way that the bunch of snobby rich kids all turned into mice that dug themselves into the earth when they came face to face with Jiang Shuxuan.
Because of that, Yin Shaoyuan blindly idolized Jiang Shuxuan.
The scene of him defeating a dozen crooks at once immediately converted him into a die-hard fanboy of Jiang Shuxuan. Even his grandfather thought that he was way too lucky to become a friend of Jiang Shuxuan's.
"Do you have the info?"
The cold voice made Yin Shaoyuan gulp slightly. "Honestly I didn't have to check, because there's only one Gu family that lives in the Shanhe Manor Area, but I still got my hands on some detailed data on them. I already sent them to your email, so check it out. It's only a small family, so if they've offended you I have a hundred ways to make them have a bad time…"
"Thanks."
"No, it's my pleasure to work for you…"
Jiang Shuxuan didn't wait for him to finished his sentence and immediately hung up, walking up the stairs step by step.
He saw the email that Yin Shaoyuan sent him and wanted to click it open, but his gaze swept over to a document that should have been lost on his desktop, and his pupils shrank slightly.
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