"Ah?" Gu Mengyao gazed blankly at her father. "Daddy, were you calling me?"

"Heh, Yao Yao, what's on your mind? I'd like you to toast Xiao Yi. If it hadn't been for him yesterday, Daddy honestly doesn't know whether he'd ever have gotten to see you again..." Gu Pengzhan said with a chuckle.

"Ah... yes, of course..." Gu Mengyao raised her glass out of habit, only to find that the juice inside was already gone.

Shen Yushu hurriedly topped up her glass, and only then did Gu Mengyao lift it once more. She glanced at Wei Zhao, and remembering yesterday could not help a flicker of shyness; she lowered her lashes and said, "Thank you."

"You've said that a good many times already." Wei Zhao found himself momentarily dazzled — he had rarely seen the young lady so bashful, and she was genuinely lovely. If she weren't his employer, he might well have pursued her.

"Mm..." Gu Mengyao gave a soft huff, drained the juice from her glass, and only then said, "I've finished all of mine."

Wei Zhao tossed his back in one gulp as well. It was plain enough that the young lady was not at ease in this kind of social setting; Gu Pengzhan must have seldom taken her to the receptions of the great families before, which was probably also why she had never picked up any of those bad habits.

The young lady was, at heart, exceedingly simple and unaffected. Though she could seem standoffish with strangers, once she grew familiar with you she would genuinely come to care. She might not always say as much, but Wei Zhao could feel it.

Gu Pengzhan had never deliberately set about molding Gu Mengyao into a formidable businesswoman, and this left Wei Zhao somewhat puzzled. Did Gu Pengzhan not intend for her to take over from him one day? Or would he adopt the practice so common abroad, letting Gu Mengyao hold shares in the company and serve as nothing more than a shareholder, with every operation left in the hands of professional managers?

Of course, this was not a question for Wei Zhao to worry his head over. As for his own shares in the Gu Group, he truly did not give them a second thought! He scarcely cared about running his pharmaceutical company, let alone the Gu Group.

The meal passed in a pleasant enough mood. It had been a good while since Gu Pengzhan last sat down to dinner with Gu Mengyao, Shen Yushu and Wei Zhao, and with everything concerning his daughter and the company now behind him, his face was practically glowing.

After dinner Gu Pengzhan still had business to attend to, so he got out at the company gate. The aftershocks of the poisoning incident had not yet died down, and he had to be on site, working alongside the company's legal department to help the police gather evidence.

Just as on the way out, Wei Zhao drove his battered little van while Uncle Qing chauffeured the Bentley with Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu aboard; one behind the other, the two cars returned to the villa. Wei Zhao had not wanted to trouble Uncle Qing and had meant to let the young lady and Shen Yushu ride back with him, but the young lady turned him down in a single sentence: "Didn't I tell you to drive the Five from now on?"

Wei Zhao smiled ruefully, and even wondered whether, once this car of his finally gave out, he would need to buy a new one at all.

The two cars had just pulled up one behind the other before the gates of the villa when a sudden burst of barking erupted from inside — it was Mighty General!

Wei Zhao's nerves snapped taut on instinct. He touched the jade pendant at his breast; the pendant gave its signal, and in that instant he slipped into a state of heightened combat readiness.

Mighty General never barked for no reason, least of all when Gu Mengyao and he were coming home. A stranger, perhaps, might have drawn a reaction — but the point was that everyone present was somebody it knew.

Mighty General knew Wei Zhao, Gu Mengyao, Shen Yushu and even Uncle Qing as well as it knew anything.

When a thing happens out of the ordinary, there is always a strange power at work behind it. Mighty General's wild, unprovoked barking had to portend something — all the more so since the jade pendant at Wei Zhao's breast had likewise responded, as if in warning.

By now Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu had already stepped out of the car, and hearing Mighty General's roaring they too jumped in alarm.

"Don't go in yet. There's danger." Wei Zhao shook his head at Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu.

Uncle Qing, too, had vaulted out of the car. He was a capable man of the Huang tier, and he too had sensed that something was badly wrong.

But before Gu Mengyao could ask a word, another scream rang out from inside the villa — Mighty General's voice — and then there was no more sound.

"Mighty General!" Gu Mengyao started in shock, her heart seizing. With no thought to spare for anything else, she flung open the villa door and was about to rush inside.

Mighty General had, in a manner of speaking, grown up alongside Gu Mengyao — at her side through her early childhood, her girlhood and her adolescence, all the way to the present day, and over those years the two had forged a deep affection. Indeed, before Wei Zhao came to the villa, apart from Shen Yushu, the only friend Gu Mengyao had left was Mighty General.

So Mighty General's sudden shriek filled her with dread; the single thought in her mind was to rush in and see what had happened to it!

Mighty General's shriek also upended Wei Zhao's plan. He had intended to slip into the villa first and scout out the situation for himself, but clearly the circumstances had changed.

Gu Mengyao charged in, and Shen Yushu naturally charged in after her. Her feeling for Mighty General was not as deep as Gu Mengyao's, but neither was it shallow — and in any case, Mighty General had once saved two people's lives.

That time on Twin Swallow Mountain — if it hadn't been for Mighty General, how could Wei Zhao have found Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu so quickly?

The two women had entered the villa, and neither Wei Zhao nor Uncle Qing dared to delay; they went in after them.

Gu Mengyao switched on the hall chandelier. Mighty General lay on the floor with its limbs curled beneath it, the corners of its mouth crusted with blood, and there was no telling whether it was dead or alive. And a short distance from Mighty General stood a man dressed in black!

After leaving Lai Changyi's company, Yu Kun had slipped quietly into Lai Changyi's villa at Qianhua Waterfront. He did not believe a word Lai Changyi said and meant to search the man's residence himself for the fragment of the map.

At Fatty Lai's place, however, Yu Kun came up empty. He was confident enough in his own powers of search — after going through the place he had even found the key to the safe that Fatty Lai had concealed beneath the floorboards — yet still not a trace of the map fragment. Yu Kun could now be absolutely certain of one thing: the fragment was no longer in Lai Changyi's residence.

Still, Yu Kun did not lose heart. His earlier investigations had shown that two other men besides Lai Changyi had been present at the auction that day — one was Wei Zhao, the other Guan Xuemin!

Wei Zhao — the young man he had run into at the door of the pharmacy. For some reason Yu Kun had the feeling that this Wei Zhao was a bigger problem even than Fatty Lai or Guan Xuemin; and it was precisely because of Wei Zhao that the last tailing operation had been exposed.

Wei Zhao might be the youngest of them, but Yu Kun felt that a man who could attend an auction alongside Fatty Lai and Guan Xuemin was no simple character; so once he reached Songshan City, he had set about collecting information on Wei Zhao.

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