Transmigration; Married to My Ex-Fiancé's Uncle-Chapter 135; Night out (a)
She pressed a hand to her heart for effect, lowered her lashes, and ended the video.
A smile.... sharp as a blade... formed on her lips.
She immediately uploaded the video to her private burner account that she used to leak "public opinion–shifting narratives." It would circulate fast enough.
Then she opened her messages.
LU ZEYAN.
Her thumbs danced across the screen.
SHUYIN:
You should transfer more money.
A pause.
Then another text.
SHUYIN:
I just helped quench your scandal. The least you can do is show appreciation.
She stared at the messages, still smiling. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
Let them think whatever they want.
Let him panic.
Let the world twist itself into whatever shape it needs to.
She leaned back in the seat, gaze cold, amused, and entirely done.
"Three months, Zeyan," she whispered to herself. "Good luck."
LU ZEYAN — OFFICE
The phone vibrated against Lu Zeyan’s desk, a single, innocuous buzz.
He picked it up, expecting routine updates from his lawyers, public relations, or Wang Jing.
Instead, the screen lit up with Shuyin’s message:
"You should transfer more money. I just helped quench your scandal. The least you can do is show appreciation."
His fingers froze over the phone. The room was silent except for the distant hum of the city outside his floor-to-ceiling windows.
Quench the scandal?
His mind reeled.
She... she wasn’t shocked. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t devastated.
She... was laughing at him.
And the video.
He clicked it, almost involuntarily, watching her delicate face contort with performative tears. She sniffled, hands fluttering to her chest, lips trembling. Her words were soft, fragile, vulnerable, precisely the image the public would eat up.
"I’m so lucky... really fortunate... to have a man like him... I hope our future will be meritorious..."
Lu Zeyan’s chest tightened.
The words that should have been warmth, devotion, and tenderness? Poison.
She’s mocking me.
She’s mocking everyone.
A hand slammed onto the desk. Papers scattered. Glass shattered.
"Damn it!" he roared.
Lawyers and assistants froze in the hall, uncertain whether to enter.
He paced the length of his office, each step faster, heavier, more frantic.
Three months. Ninety days.
And now she was playing with him publicly.
The PR team’s voice piped up in his mind, practiced, logical: The video spins the narrative, he’s a devoted fiancé, she’s the innocent, shocked fiancée. We can use this...
He laughed bitterly, short and sharp.
Use this?
No. She had taken control. She controlled the story now.
He typed a reply, hands trembling:
"...Shuyin, this isn’t a joke. Transfer request received."
He stopped. Hesitated. Deleted it.
She wanted him to react. To panic. To give in.
And he... was already falling into the trap.
He sank into his chair, gripping the edge like it was the last thing holding him together.
"Three months..." he muttered, voice barely audible. "Three months to keep her from unraveling everything..."
He thought of Yueling, the pregnancy, the lie, the baby that wasn’t hers...
And then, most painfully, he thought of Shuyin, laughing at his desperation, her sharp, brilliant mind seeing straight through him, twisting the knife with elegance.
"She’s... enjoying this," he whispered. "She’s enjoying every second of it."
The office was silent again, but inside his head, chaos reigned.
The clock started ticking.
Three months. Ninety days.
And now, he wasn’t just racing against time, he was racing against her.
A sharp knock broke through his spiraling thoughts.
"President Lu," his assistant said from the doorway, voice tight with tension. "The board... they’ve convened an emergency meeting. They want you in the conference room. Immediately."
Of course they did.
Of course, this day wasn’t done with him yet.
Lu Zeyan exhaled once, stood, straightened his suit jacket, and forced the remnants of emotion off his face. His expression had to be calm. Controlled. CEO-like.
Even inside, everything was splintering.
He followed the assistant down the hallway.
Every step felt like walking deeper into a minefield.
His executives stood scattered along the corridor, whispering, watching him with a complicated mix of pity, fear, and morbid curiosity.
The glass doors of the executive conference room loomed ahead, tall, imposing, reflective enough that he caught his own face on the surface.
He looked exhausted.
He looked older.
He looked like a man who had just lost something he never expected to lose.
The assistant pushed the doors open.
And the moment Lu Zeyan stepped inside, the room went silent.
Everyone was already seated.
The atmosphere was heavy, restrained, too calm in that dangerous way where every person in the room had already decided something.
He sat in his usual seat.
The air buzzed with tension.
Stock graphs glowed steadily on the central screen, stabilized, but the fallout was still visible.
For ten minutes, no one spoke.
They were waiting.
Judging.
Observing.
And then....
Thirty minutes later, while Lu Zeyan sat rigid in his chair, the room buzzing with cautious optimism after the stock stabilized, the conference room doors opened again.
This time, no one burst in breathlessly...
The six senior board members entered slowly, deliberately, with the weight of decades behind them.
Chairman Zhou Mingwei at the front, seventy-two, silver-haired, suit sharp as steel. Behind him, the other five: three men, two women, all stone-faced, decades of building the company written in their expressions.
The talking stopped immediately. Even Wang Jing straightened, her usual confidence faltering.
Chairman Zhou’s eyes swept the room once, dismissing everyone except Lu Zeyan with that single glance.
"Everyone out," he said quietly. "Board members and Mr. Lu only."
"Sir, if I could just...." Wang Jing started.
"Out."
The word was soft but absolute.
The room cleared in under a minute, leaving Lu Zeyan alone with the board.
Chairman Zhou took a seat directly across from him. The others arranged themselves along the sides, forming a semicircle of authority.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Then the chairman leaned forward, hands folded on the table, expression unreadable.
"Zeyan," he said.
Lu Zeyan forced himself to look up, meeting those sharp, calculating eyes.
