She really had thought so. But upon deeper consideration, Huo Shaoheng had spoken the actual reason.
No matter how useless or useful Special Assistant Yang was, he had been the head of the Secretary of the Senate for many years already. Just like Secretary Cao’s position beside General Ji, and Yin Shixiong and Zhao Liangze’s positions beside Huo Shaoheng, Special Assistant Yang had an important position beside Speaker Long.
That was not to say that he was Speaker Long’s only confidante, but he was certainly one of them.
Gu Nianzhi followed Huo Shaoheng into the elevator and sighed. Reaching out to press the button to the first floor, she said, “I know now. I’ll be careful.”
Huo Shaoheng gave her a sidelong glance. “This is you being careful?”
She had been so careful that she’d ended up getting her face beaten swollen on her first day of work…
Gu Nianzhi rubbed her right cheek somewhat sheepishly and said nervously, “Actually, I was most worried about it healing too quickly.”
“As if you have to worry about that…” Huo Shaoheng averted his gaze. “Is that not the truth?”
Gu Nianzhi was so angry that she puffed up her face. “Huo Shao, you just always have to be angry with me, don’t you? I’m an injured patient!”
Huo Shaoheng ignored her coquettishness, calming himself down before finally saying, “If I don’t make you feel indignant, then other people can’t do it either. There are many ways to vent your frustration, so why do you have to choose this method?”
From the way Huo Shaoheng saw it, harming her own body to attain a goal was completely beside the point.
What was the point of killing 1,000 enemies by injuring 800 of his own soldiers?
Gu Nianzhi averted her gaze guiltily. “The situation was urgent at the time, and I had no idea that they were planning this kind of thing. I assumed that the spokespeople from the Office of the Prime Minister would have some shame…”
“You absolutely cannot make that assumption while working at the Senate.” Huo Shaoheng gave her a half-smile. “Some people’s lower limits are continuously expanding, so you will never be able to wait for a day when you can reach their bottom line and see them deflect.”
“I understand.” Gu Nianzhi glanced at Huo Shaoheng again to ensure that he still didn’t know her true motive for doing this. She finally sighed quietly and took out her phone to play with.
…
He Zhichu had returned after spending Lunar New Year at home. He’d planned to stay in the Huaxia Empire from then on and focus solely on pursuing Gu Nianzhi in order to win back his fiancée. However, he’d then discovered that Gu Nianzhi was already married.
This shock came nothing less than out of the blue.
He’d tried very hard to not lose his composure in front of Gu Nianzhi last night and had fought with Huo Shaoheng afterward in order to slightly assuage the grief in his heart.
But when he’d returned to his professor’s building, he couldn’t stand it anymore and started to burn with a fever.
After he’d sweated it out and woken up from his deep sleep, he’d discovered that the sky was still dark outside.
Just how long had he slept for?
He Zhichu picked up the watch from his nightstand to glance at. “8:00 in the evening?”
It appeared that he’d slept nearly the entire day.
He remembered that it had been 2:00 in the morning when he’d gone to bed.
It was now 8:00 in the evening, which meant that he’d slept for an entire 18 hours.
His entire body was completely soaked with sweat as he climbed out of his blankets. Rubbing his forehead, he discovered that he didn’t have a fever anymore. However, he was feeling a bit dizzy.
His stomach was feeling very hungry.
Actually, he hadn’t eaten for 24 hours.
He was so hungry that his stomach began to hurt.
He Zhichu finally got out of bed and went to the bathroom to take a hot shower. When he came out, he saw that his kitchen was completely empty. There weren’t even any instant noodles!
He had no choice but to pick up his phone and order a luxurious delivery for himself.
Setting down his phone, he sat on the couch and picked up the remote to finally turn on the wall-mounted curved TV on the opposite wall.
“…Mr. Lin, what do you think of this incident? This morning, spokespeople from the Office of the Prime Minister’s Office caused trouble at the Senate and even assaulted a female Senate personnel member.”
He had turned on a news channel that had brought on a political scientist guest to discuss the day’s current affairs and politics.
“…Mr. Niu, what do you think of the incident of the assault at the Senate building today?”
What on earth was going on?
Both channels were airing this incident.
Was a fight breaking out at the Senate a strange thing?
In fact, wasn’t it stranger if no fights occurred at the Senate?
He Zhichu grumbled in his heart as he scrolled like a rolling marble to change all the TV channels.
Aside from channels airing immature animated programs for children, nearly all the other ones were broadcasting news of the female senate personnel member who’d been assaulted by spokespeople from the Office of the Prime Minister at the Senate building.
However, all the news channels had already entered the second stage of their stories… political analysis.
Various guests and TV hosts were debating furiously, viewpoints from both parties clashing hard.
He Zhichu shook his head, then picked up his phone to scroll through Weibo.
As he expected, Weibo also had overwhelming coverage of this news.
The difference was that the netizens on Weibo were focussed on different elements of the story than the proper news channels.
Eight of the top ten searches were related to this incident.
The top searches looked something like this.
#Recover the image of the side profile of the assaulted female Senate personnel member
#The assaulted female Senate personnel member has legs 2 meters and 8 inches long
#The assaulted female Senate personnel member is allegedly an intern
#Top law student from the B university – I know the assaulted female Senate personnel member
Even though He Zhichu was indifferent after reading the first few top searches, his hand froze when he later saw the two search terms of “intern” and “top B University student.”
There was a negative association in his head.
How many top students from the B University of Law had joined the Senate as interns this year?!
He Zhichu quickly clicked on all the Weibo posts related to this incident.
When he saw the dynamic screenshot of the assault being broadcasted by the national television channel, he instantly recognized that the assaulted female Senate worker in it was none other than Gu Nianzhi!
They had only been separated for less than a day, how had she been injured already?!
He Zhichu watched the videos on Weibo and saw that, aside from the number one ranking dynamic screenshot of the assault, the number two ranking photo was of Speaker Long and Huo Shaoheng escorting the swollen faced Gu Nianzhi into an ambulance.
Seeing Huo Shaoheng accompanying Gu Nianzhi, He Zhichu finally sighed in relief.
He leaned back against the corner sofa and draped one arm over his forehead. Gritting his teeth hard, his expression was so repressed that it appeared somewhat twisted.
He tried hard to calm himself down before picking up his phone to call Gu Nianzhi.
At that moment, Gu Nianzhi was resting in the suite at her Hepingli apartment.
After returning home in the afternoon, she washed up before going to bed.
She hadn’t been awake for very long yet.
Huo Shaoheng had made dinner for her and left it in the fridge so she could have it after heating it up.
She received a phone call from Huo Shaoheng as soon as she woke up. He asked to video chat so he could watch her have dinner.
Gu Nianzhi had no choice but to agree and chatted with Huo Shaoheng while eating.
“Huo Shao, what are you doing?”
“I’m still at the Senate.” Huo Shaoheng had already eaten dinner but was worried that Gu Nianzhi would oversleep, so he’d called her.
He observed her condition was improving. The red and extremely swollen skin on her face had recovered completely.
It appeared fair, delicate, and luminous as ice porcelain. Because she’d slept the entire afternoon, her ice porcelain-like skin glowed with a light pink hue. It looked like several dashes of delicate pink drawn on ice porcelain by brushstrokes, reminiscent of osmanthus in the autumn and ten miles of peach blossoms.
It didn’t look like she had been beaten that morning at all…
If the people from the Office of the Prime Minister saw Gu Nianzhi like this, the sky would surely storm…
Huo Shaoheng stared at her for a while before ending the video chat and putting on his Bluetooth headset to chat with her.
Gu Nianzhi turned on her speakerphone and chatted intermittently with Huo Shaoheng.
When He Zhichu called her, she finally said, “I have a call coming in, I’m hanging up now.”
She ended the call with Huo Shaoheng before taking He Zhichu’s call.
As soon as the call connected, He Zhichu said, “Nianzhi, why were you assaulted at the Senate today? I saw the dynamic screenshot and think that you should have been able to dodge it! What on earth are you plotting?”
Gu Nianzhi didn’t respond.
She could have indeed dodged it, but how could she continue the drama if she had?
Gu Nianzhi had waited a long time but still hadn’t received a phone call from that person.
They sure could hold themselves in!
But she wasn’t worried. The person would call her sooner or later.
If they didn’t call, she could just push things along once again…
She’d never forget her true motive for interning at the Senate… She would stop Cai Songyin from suing.
