As soon as Cen Sen spoke, the atmosphere in the car instantly grew tense.
It seemed only then that the driver finally realized this was the group CEO from the capital, not the old leader he usually drove around who loved chatting casually with employees.
He wisely fell silent.
Zhou Jiaheng also didn’t dare to offer any comforting words, only making continuous phone calls to stay in touch with people in Star City.
Just then, even more sudden news arrived: due to landslides and roadbed collapses along the Chengshuang section, the Xing-Shuang Expressway was immediately closed in its entirety.
—The expressway they needed to take back to Star City was precisely the Xing-Shuang Expressway.
The situation in Star City was even more grim. The latest update was that civilian vehicles were now prohibited from entering, which meant there was simply no way to send anyone out to search for Ji Mingshu.
It was unclear what Cen Sen was thinking. After listening to Zhou Jiaheng’s report, he got out of the car directly and made a call to Jiang Che.
Star City was Jiang Che’s territory. Whether it was finding someone or pulling strings, his involvement would be more direct and convenient.
The call was answered after just two rings.
Cen Sen got straight to the point, “I’m on the road from Chengshuang back to Star City. The Xing-Shuang Expressway is closed. Arrange something for me—I need to get back immediately.”
His voice seemed filled with the night wind—deep, cold, yet sharp.
Jiang Che was waiting at the airport for a connecting flight and chuckled carelessly, “What, are you rushing back to Star City to check on me? I’m not even there today.”
Cen Sen: “Cut the nonsense.”
Jiang Che had been about to tease further when he suddenly remembered something, “You didn’t leave Ji Mingshu in Star City and now can’t reach her, did you?”
He knew Cen Sen had come to Star City on business and vaguely recalled Cen Sen mentioning that Ji Mingshu had come along this time.
The silence on the other end of the line seemed to confirm his guess. Instantly shedding his lazy demeanor, he pondered briefly before calmly arranging, “Star City had an earthquake. The surrounding satellite cities will definitely send fire and rescue teams. Send me your location; I’ll have someone bring you back. Also send me any possible places Ji Mingshu might have gone—I’ll help you look.”
He paused briefly, “And don’t worry about the Star Normal University apartment area.”
After a short silence, Cen Sen only said two words, “Thanks.”
Jiang Che: “Cut the nonsense.”
Cen Sen and Jiang Che had a friendship spanning over a decade or two.
Jiang Che was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, never needing to cater to others, so his personality wasn’t particularly smooth. He had always only done what he liked.
Cen Sen, relatively speaking, had more life experience, matured early mentally, possessed a steady and calm temperament, and handled people and situations with thoroughness and tact.
Over the years, Cen Sen had always been the one more capable of controlling the overall situation. When their childhood friends got into trouble and didn’t dare to turn to their families, they would usually seek his help to clean up the mess.
Back when Jiang Che and Chen Xingyu first founded Jiangxing Technology, they faced numerous competitors and were pushed into financial difficulties several times by rivals. The Jiang family wasn’t very supportive of Jiang Che at the time, and it was Cen Sen who consistently provided funding and support behind the scenes.
This current situation, where Cen Sen was asking Jiang Che for help, seemed to be a first.
To be honest, Cen Sen really disliked this feeling. Perhaps the deeply ingrained psychological shadow from his childhood experiences of being arranged for and decided by others had left its mark. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to standing in the dominant position, keeping everything under his control.
The night wind was sparse and cold. He turned back, gripping the car door handle with one hand, the veins on the back of his hand bulging from the force.But the next second, he suddenly let go, only lightly tapping the car window and asking the driver for a cigarette.
The driver hurriedly handed over the cigarette, even enthusiastically cupping his hands to light it for him.
Leaning against the car outside, he gazed calmly in the direction of Star City, the faint wisps of smoke escaping from the flickering ember at his fingertips drifting far into the distance.
Cen Sen arrived in Star City at one o'clock in the morning. News about the earthquake in Star City had already flooded the internet, making it impossible not to know.
The strongest main tremor occurred at 8:15 p.m., lasting nearly seventeen seconds, with several aftershocks continuing until midnight.
The epicenter was in Fengyang County, a suburb of Star City, very close to the main urban area. Casualty and economic loss figures were still being tallied, but from the information already released, the situation didn’t appear particularly severe.
Yet for Cen Sen, the situation was serious, because Ji Mingshu remained unreachable.
For a long time, Ji Mingshu’s phone could be dialed, but no one answered.
However, when he tried calling again after midnight, only an automated female voice responded: "The number you have dialed is powered off."
Hotel surveillance footage had already been reviewed. Based on the time frame recalled by staff, it showed she had indeed gone out in the afternoon.
But after leaving, she never returned. Her hotel room was empty, and without an exact time frame, it was difficult to trace her movements through the surveillance.
When Cen Sen arrived at the Junyi Splendor where he was staying, Jiang Che finally sent accurate information: Ji Mingshu had gone out in the afternoon to visit a trendy café. After leaving the café, she seemed to… head straight back to the hotel. Moreover, the last phone call she received this afternoon was also traced to the hotel.
Standing in the hotel lobby, Cen Sen glanced at the last location provided by Jiang Che and suddenly understood something.
The last time they were in Star City, Ji Mingshu had been eager to visit a certain trendy café, but because they were in a hurry to return to the capital for the battle at Li Wenyin’s banquet, they never made it there.
This time, she finally went, but the café fell far short of her expectations. Whether it was the decor, the popular desserts, or even the owner’s taste in coffee beans, she disliked them all. After drinking half a cup of coffee, she got up and left without even taking a photo.
Perhaps because Cen Sen had exhausted her the night before, she had little interest in shopping and quickly returned to the hotel, took two vitamins, and went to sleep.
For Ji Mingshu, the day was utterly ordinary, so uneventful it was almost boring.
So when she was kissed breathless and woke up groggily, she felt completely disoriented.
"What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night, can’t you let me sleep?"
She pushed Cen Sen’s face away, still clutching her silk slip nightgown, her voice soft and petulant.
But the only response was a deep, invasive kiss that grew even more intense.
The force of the kiss was so strong she couldn’t even whimper. As a chill swept over her body, the nightgown she had just clutched was torn open.
With this, Ji Mingshu was fully awake.Cen Sen was really acting strange. He didn't even shower before getting so urgent, and it was the particularly forceful kind. Most crucially, he kept affectionately calling her "baby" in her ear.
Had he drunk fake alcohol or something?
But why was there no alcohol smell?
Maybe fake alcohol just doesn't have any smell...?
While letting her thoughts run wild, Ji Mingshu hugged Cen Sen, biting her lip as she endured.
Right now, she was like a salted fish pressed against a chopping board—unable to resist and powerless to do so, only letting Cen Sen flip her left and right.
...
After everything ended, Ji Mingshu was held tightly in Cen Sen's arms, very tightly. He kept asking if she was uncomfortable anywhere, kept kissing her, much more affectionate than his usual post-intimacy attitude.
Ji Mingshu looked at Cen Sen suspiciously, pinching the edge of the blanket with her fingertips, cautiously asking, "If you're possessed, blink twice?"
Cen Sen: "..."
Perhaps to prove he wasn't possessed, he quietly stared at Ji Mingshu for nearly half a minute. Ji Mingshu couldn't help but blink, but he still hadn't.
Ji Mingshu sighed in relief, then couldn't resist asking softly, "What's wrong with you? You seem especially abnormal today."
"Nothing." He didn't say more, suddenly getting up and carrying her horizontally into the bathroom to bathe.
No one could understand Cen Sen's emotional journey over the past five or six hours.
The moment he saw Ji Mingshu, it seemed only possession could prove that Ji Mingshu was truly, genuinely still in his arms.
Sensing Cen Sen's unusual silence tonight, Ji Mingshu didn't ask further.
Only after returning to the master bedroom to play on her phone did she realize her phone was dead.
After charging it, her phone nearly exploded from the flood of messages pouring in from all directions.
"...An earthquake?"
Ji Mingshu was completely stunned.
"When did this happen? How come I didn't feel anything at all?"
After saying this, she vaguely remembered feeling like the whole world had indeed shaken for a while in her sleep. But that didn't make sense either—a 5.8 magnitude earthquake should have been quite noticeable. How could she have slept so soundly?
She picked up the vitamins by the bed and looked at them.
They weren't vitamins at all—they were sleeping pills.
She had taken the wrong medicine!
After this series of powerful message shocks, Ji Mingshu suddenly understood, "You didn't think something happened to me, did you?"
Cen Sen didn't speak, turning off the bedside lamp.
Ji Mingshu stubbornly leaned in, using her phone screen's light to illuminate him, her eyes sparkling, "You did think something happened to me, didn't you? Were you really worried about me? Are you silly? I don't know many people in Star City, where else could I go? Couldn't you have had someone check the room?"
"I did."
But the staff member who came to check the room was new and couldn't even distinguish how many rooms their suite had, mistaking the guest room for the master bedroom, and didn't properly check three of the bedrooms. Moreover, while searching the room, they called her name, but there was no response at all. How could a normal person think that the CEO's wife had mistakenly taken sleeping pills and was sleeping too soundly?
Ji Mingshu lay on the bed, cupping her face as she looked at Cen Sen, unable to hold back a laugh, "You admitted it."
Cen Sen didn't answer, only placed her phone back on the bedside table, closing his eyes as he said, "Sleep."
Ji Mingshu: "I slept too much this afternoon, I can't sleep now."
Cen Sen: "Then I'm going to sleep."
Ji Mingshu reached out and widened his eyelids, "You're not allowed to sleep!"
Cen Sen: "I'm really tired.""Weren't you wide awake just now? You seemed pretty energetic earlier. Now you're tired right after finishing—are you seventy or eighty years old? Get up quickly and chat with me. Tell me how the earthquake happened."
Cen Sen remained unmoved.
"If you don't want to talk, that's fine too. Then call me 'baby' one more time, and I'll let you off."
Ji Mingshu's legs flailed in the air as she leaned in to pluck his eyelashes one moment and tickled him the next.
Cen Sen truly couldn't take it anymore. After tossing and turning several times without shaking her off, he finally rolled back, wrapped his arms around Ji Mingshu, and pressed her head into the crook of his neck. In a low, deep voice, he called out, "Baby."
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