Chapter 560 - 483: Love at First Sight
Chapter 560: Chapter 483: Love at First Sight
After a mix of coaxing and persuading, he finally got Yang Liu’er to go back to her room to rest. Lu Jianguo let out a long sigh of relief.
He could tell Yang Liu’er was determined to get away from the Lu Family, which made him secretly anxious. When he got anxious, he couldn’t think clearly and feared his words would fail him. If they kept talking, he still wouldn’t be able to convince her to stay. Not only would Weiwei be devastated, but he himself would be filled with endless regret. It was better to coax Liu’er back to sleep for now. ’Tomorrow,’ he thought, ’I’ll definitely come up with a better way to make her stay.’
Lu Jianguo wasn’t afraid of Bai Junfan or the Bai Family behind him. So what if they were rich and powerful? Beijing was teeming with influential families, all keeping each other in check. Rival families who despised one another were especially eager to find leverage and bring their opponents down. If the Bai Family wanted to blatantly oppress an innocent citizen—especially a local family like the Lus, who had lived in Beijing for generations—they would have to think twice before acting.
Lu Jianguo had been running the streets since he was sixteen or seventeen and had made quite a name for himself back then. Though times had changed and he no longer spoke of the past, he still had a deep well of loyalty and connections from those days. If he ever found himself in trouble, there would always be people ready to help.
So, he really didn’t think the Bai Family was much of a threat.
Yang Liu’er, however, made his heart ache with anxiety.
This was all Jianling’s fault. There was a considerable age gap between them; Lu Jianguo was already seven or eight when his parents had his little sister. As the older brother, he had doted on her from a young age and spoiled her rotten. When it came to messing with him, she was never afraid to stir up big trouble. She was the type to dig a pit for you to fall into and not even bother filling in the grave.
Lu Jianguo was thirty-one this year. He was constantly on the move for work and rarely came home. Old Lu wrote letters urging him to get married and have children, but he’d always say he’d think about it after he turned thirty. Worried his family line would die out, Old Lu took drastic measures. Seven years ago, during one of Jianguo’s rare visits, the normally lenient father used a heavy hand to arrange his son’s marriage.
Weiwei’s mother was an acquaintance introduced by Lu Jianguo’s aunt—Old Lu’s sister—so her background was well known. She was beautiful and had a quiet, gentle temperament, with a high school education. Old Lu had been so desperate for a grandson that the bride price he paid was said to have been the highest for any newlywed on their entire street at the time.
But it had been a rushed marriage. Lu Jianguo had to leave only a week after the wedding, giving them no time to develop any real feelings. Weiwei’s mother was educated but didn’t care for writing letters. Hers were always brief, just a few sentences to say the money had arrived, that she, his father, and his sister were all fine, and that he should take care of himself. ’Don’t worry,’ she’d end it...
Even so, Lu Jianguo was ecstatic when he heard his wife was pregnant. He treated his coworkers to a big drinking session and planned to return home when she was due to take her to the hospital. But unexpectedly, Weiwei’s mother had an accidental fall that triggered premature labor. She was rushed to the hospital, but they couldn’t save her, and she died from massive blood loss.
The baby lost his mother the moment he was born, and Lu Jianguo was devastated. He was consumed by guilt toward his wife. ’She was so young, and she died giving me a child. If only I had come home a month earlier to be with her, this wouldn’t have happened.’
With her gone, all Lu Jianguo could do was send his parents-in-law an annual stipend for their retirement and cover the schooling for his wife’s younger brother and sister.
As Weiwei grew older, Old Lu was satisfied with having a grandson and stopped pestering his son about marriage. Lu Jianguo himself had too much on his plate and no time for such thoughts. Besides, the Northwest Region was a vast, barren land. Sometimes his construction team was stationed in a place so remote there wasn’t another soul in sight. Even if he wanted to get married, there was no one to marry.
It was around this time that Lu Jianling tucked a photograph into one of her letters to Lu Jianguo. It was a picture of Yang Liu’er with her arms around Weiwei. In the photo, they looked as close as mother and son, their smiles radiant as blooming flowers.
Before he even read the letter, Lu Jianguo was utterly captivated by the photo. He stared at it for a full twenty minutes.
And to stir the pot, Lu Jianling lied in her letter to her brother: "This is the new wife Dad found for you. She’s staying with us right now, waiting for you to come back and marry her! Your son absolutely adores her. He’s glued to her side all day, every day, and cries his eyes out if he can’t see her for a second!"
A fire ignited in Lu Jianguo’s heart. He scrambled to call Beijing and have a friend relay a message to Lu Jianling: He agreed to the marriage! He asked that Old Lu discuss a date with the bride’s family, promising he would make time to return at once.
He hadn’t even managed to make the call when a second letter from Lu Jianling arrived. Only after opening it did Lu Jianguo realize his sister had been messing with him.
Jianling explained that the young woman, named Yang Liu’er, had saved Weiwei’s life. What was truly remarkable, she wrote, was the incredible bond between them. They were so compatible it was as if they had been mother and son in a past life; they were inseparable. Yang Liu’er was currently staying with the Lu Family. "There’s just one little thing," she added teasingly, "she’s already got a fiancé, you know! And he’s from the powerful Bai Family of Beijing, so don’t you go getting any wild ideas, Brother!"
Reading the part about her having a fiancé, Lu Jianguo’s heart sank into an abyss. It felt like he had just lost his most precious treasure. A cold sweat beaded on his forehead, and his limbs went ice-cold.
Lu Jianling had messed with her brother countless times before, but this time, she had hit him right where it hurt.
It was, as the saying goes, "love at first sight." That was exactly what had happened to Lu Jianguo.
He had become completely bewitched by a single photograph.
It wasn’t just that Yang Liu’er was as stunning as a peach blossom in full bloom. Lu Jianguo had been traveling since he was sixteen, and he’d seen more than his share of beautiful women. But no one had ever affected him like Yang Liu’er. Her features, her expression—it was all so familiar, as if he’d known her his whole life. Her incredibly kind and gentle smile had seized his heart in an instant.
And on top of that, his own son adored her.
’Could this really not be fate?’
Lu Jianguo refused to believe it. He couldn’t accept it.
Lu Jianling’s next letter bore Yang Liu’er’s touch—she had been teaching Weiwei how to write. He had written: "Hello, Papa. Weiwei misses Papa. Papa, you have to eat well and get enough rest. Take care of yourself and don’t get sick, okay? Weiwei will be a good boy and wait with Grandpa and Auntie for Papa to come home."
Lu Jianguo was so moved his nose stung and his eyes burned, and he almost burst into tears.
From then on, all the letters from home were written by Yang Liu’er and Weiwei. Yang Liu’er’s writing style was poised and natural, without any of the affected mannerisms common in young women. In fact, some of her phrasing was even more straightforward than his sister’s. But Lu Jianguo could always perceive a subtle difference in her words. He just knew that this Miss Yang, who addressed him as "Brother Lu," was far more considerate and gentle than his own sister.
However, Lu Jianguo was also soberly aware that Miss Yang genuinely saw him only as an older brother and harbored no other feelings for him.
He wasn’t sad or disappointed. ’Everything has a beginning, a process, and an end,’ he mused. ’He and Yang Liu’er were just at the beginning. They still had to go through the process to see what the ending would be, right?’
He pushed down the budding feelings in his heart and put on the air of a wise, all-capable big brother. He continued to exchange letters with Yang Liu’er, getting to know her thoughts, encouraging her to be brave, and promising to solve any difficulties she faced. His goal, in short, was to make her trust and rely on him completely. Of course, his ultimate hope was that she would leave her fiancé from the Bai Family and turn to him instead.