Chapter 395 - 203: Surprise Inspection?
Chapter 395: Chapter 203: Surprise Inspection?
Shen Yuan forced himself to break free from his momentary petrification. His mind raced, fueled by a wild surge of adrenaline.
The next second, Shen Yuan blurted out, "You answer the phone, I’ll hide! Just say this is your room! Don’t let the camera see me!"
As soon as the words left his mouth, Shen Yuan quickly gathered his backpack and test papers.
Li Zhi understood instantly.
Li Zhi felt like her heart was about to pound out of her chest. Her fingers were cold and trembling.
’This feeling of getting caught doing something bad by your parents is just something else...’
Li Zhi took a deep breath to calm herself down.
The girl quickly composed herself, then pressed the green answer button.
Xu Chan’s smiling face immediately appeared on the screen, but her eyes were like searchlights, scanning through the screen as if trying to pierce through the small camera and see every corner of the room.
"Hello, Mom?"
Her voice was deliberately raised a pitch, tinged with a forced casualness. But because of her nervousness, the end of her sentence inevitably carried a faint, dry tremble.
"Zhizhi," Xu Chan’s voice sounded quite gentle. "What are you up to? Why’d it take you so long to answer? I’ve been calling for a while."
"Huh? Oh! N-nothing!" Li Zhi’s pupils constricted as she rushed to answer, her speech unnaturally fast, as if she were buzzing in for a quiz show.
"I-I was just in the bathroom. I just got up when you called."
Lying made the girl’s cheeks burn, and she could only try her best to look innocent.
"In the bathroom, huh..." Xu Chan drew out the words, her gaze sweeping over the background behind Li Zhi. She clearly wasn’t buying the excuse so easily.
But soon, Xu Chan changed the subject.
"Oh, how was your day out today?"
Hearing a question about her day out, Li Zhi immediately had something to say.
The girl in the video immediately rolled her eyes. "Mom, you have no idea. That dumbass Shen Yuan’s plans were so moronic. We were walking and biking all day long. I’m exhausted!"
Hearing her daughter’s complaint, Xu Chan chuckled lightly.
"Alright, alright. So what are you doing now?"
Li Zhi immediately picked up the test paper on the desk. "Doing homework."
And at the moment the test paper blocked Xu Chan’s view, Li Zhi’s gaze immediately shot over to Shen Yuan.
The pretty girl quickly motioned to Shen Yuan. He got the hint, grabbing his backpack and scurrying to the entryway.
Just then, Xu Chan’s voice suddenly came through the phone.
"Zhizhi, how’s the hotel room?"
Shen Yuan, who was just about to sneakily open the door and slip out, froze.
"It’s... it’s great!"
After replying, Li Zhi, forcing herself to stay calm, immediately moved the phone’s camera away from her face.
Then she aimed the camera at the mirror in front of her.
"Mom, look. West Lake is right across from us. You don’t even have to go outside to see it..."
Li Zhi trailed off, her words stopping abruptly.
She saw the reflection of the room in the mirror...
But to Li Zhi’s relief, Shen Yuan was gone.
The figure by the door, petrified just a moment ago by the killer question about seeing the hotel, had now vanished without a trace.
Only the crack of the door, which seemed to have frozen for a few seconds, clicked shut with an extremely faint sound that was almost completely swallowed by the carpet.
The girl’s heart was pounding.
But the rear-facing camera couldn’t capture what the girl looked like right now.
Otherwise, Xu Chan would have definitely noticed something was wrong with Li Zhi.
「In the hallway outside.」
Shen Yuan leaned back against the cool wood of the door, feeling as if he’d just been pulled out of water. A patch on the back of his T-shirt was soaked with sweat, clinging tightly to his skin.
One hand was clamped tightly over his mouth, the other pressed hard against his chest, as if that could stop his frantically pounding heart from bursting out.
He gasped for air, taking huge, silent breaths, greedily drawing in the slightly stuffy air of the hallway with every inhale.
Every exhale carried the subtle tremor of his narrow escape.
Those few short moments just now had been more exhausting than running for his life.
’Oh, wait. I *was* running for my life.’
’If Old Li found out he was doing homework in Li Zhi’s room—no, that Li Zhi was doing homework in *his* room...’
’Ah, whatever. Either way, I’d be dead.’
But after his narrow escape, Shen Yuan subconsciously pressed his ear against the door. He could faintly hear Li Zhi’s voice from inside, trying hard to sound casual and natural as she gave her tour.
Once he confirmed that he was completely out of the camera’s range and that Li Zhi had successfully started showing off the room, Shen Yuan’s nerves, stretched to their absolute limit, finally relaxed.
The suffocating pressure vanished in an instant, replaced by an exhaustion that bordered on collapse, yet it was mixed with the immense relief of having survived.
Shen Yuan slowly lowered the hand covering his mouth.
A long, almost exaggerated exhale escaped from deep in his throat, dissipating into the long, quiet hotel corridor.
The hand that had been pressed so hard against his chest dropped limply, coming to rest on the doorframe. His fingertips were still tingling slightly from the excessive force.
"Holy shit..."
A hoarse, almost soundless whisper was squeezed from Shen Yuan’s throat, thick with lingering fear and relief.
Inside the room, Li Zhi’s tour continued.
"See, Mom? The room is great! It’s very clean!"
Li Zhi forced her voice to sound cheerful, trying to hide her guilt.
But her arm was trembling slightly, causing the screen to shake almost imperceptibly. It was a minor issue, though, and didn’t really matter.
The camera finally panned over the soft main light, the tidy desk, and the spotless carpet, before settling on the view of West Lake at night outside the window.
On the other end of the screen, Xu Chan seemed to watch carefully for a moment. Then, her gaze, which had made Li Zhi’s heart pound with anxiety, softened, and a small smile appeared on her face.
"Hmm... it does look quite nice,"
Xu Chan’s voice held an obvious note of relaxation. "Clean and bright, and the view is good. Very nice. You picked a good place to stay."
The tension in Li Zhi’s heart eased a little. She quickly decided to strike while the iron was hot. "Yeah, yeah, of course! A good environment helps me focus on my studies! Mom, if there’s nothing else, I’m gonna hang up, okay? I’m only halfway through my test paper!"
"Wait, Zhizhi!"
Xu Chan suddenly stopped her, the easy tone in her voice gone, replaced by her usual admonishing one. "I almost forgot the important thing. You and Shen Yuan are out there by yourselves, so you have to be careful, you hear me?"
The heart Li Zhi had just managed to calm leaped back into her throat. Her fingertips unconsciously tightened on the edge of the desk. "I know, I know. Does that even need to be said?"
As the words left her mouth, Li Zhi saw that Xu Chan was looking at her intently.
Li Zhi’s heart skipped a beat, but it was immediately followed by a wave of immense shyness that flooded her cheeks.
"Mom—!!"
Outside the door, Shen Yuan froze.
’Huh?’
’Did Smolder just use his ult?’