My Queen, My Rules - Chapter 75

Chapter 75

Once Cen Sen said this, the atmosphere in the car turned abruptly solemn.

The driver seemed to finally realize at this moment that this man was the group president from the Imperial Capital, not some old leader he was used to picking up and dropping off, who loved to chat with employees.

He wisely shut his mouth.

Zhou Jiaheng didn't dare to offer comfort either; he just kept making calls to maintain contact with the people in Star City.

Just then, even more sudden news arrived: due to landslides and roadbed collapses on the Chengshuang section, the Xing-Shuang Expressway was immediately closed in both directions.

——The expressway they were supposed to take to return to Star City was precisely the Xing-Shuang Expressway.

The situation in Star City was even less optimistic. The latest news was that civilian vehicles were now prohibited from passing, which meant it was fundamentally impossible to send anyone out to look for Ji Mingshu.

Cen Sen didn't know what he was thinking. After hearing Zhou Jiaheng’s report, he stepped directly out of the car and called Jiang Che.

Star City was Jiang Che’s home turf; whether it was finding someone or getting a green light, his intervention would be more direct and convenient.

The phone was picked up after only two rings.

Cen Sen got straight to the point, "I’m on the road from Chengshuang back to Star City, but the Xing-Shuang Expressway is blocked. Arrange something for me; I need to go back immediately."

His voice sounded as if it had been infused with the night wind—heavy, cold, yet decisive.

Jiang Che was waiting for a connecting flight at the airport and let out a careless, light scoff. "What, are you in such a rush to get back to Star City to care about me? I’m not even there today."

Cen Sen: "Cut the crap."

Jiang Che had intended to tease him further, but suddenly remembered something. "You haven't left Ji Mingshu in Star City and lost contact with her, have you?"

He knew Cen Sen had come to Star City for a business trip and vaguely recalled Cen Sen saying that Ji Mingshu had tagged along this time.

The silence on the other end of the line seemed to confirm his guess. He instantly discarded his lazy demeanor, pondered for a moment, and arranged calmly: "There’s an earthquake in Star City. The surrounding satellite cities will definitely send rescue teams. Send me your location, and I’ll have someone bring you back. Also, send me the places Ji Mingshu might have gone; I’ll help you look."

He paused. "As for the Star Normal University apartment, don't worry about it."

After a brief silence, Cen Sen only said two words: "Thanks."

Jiang Che: "Cut the crap."

Cen Sen and Jiang Che had a friendship spanning over a decade or two.

Jiang Che was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and didn't need to cater to others, so his personality wasn't particularly smooth; he had always only done what he liked.

Cen Sen, relatively speaking, had gone through more. His mind had matured early, his personality was steady and calm, and he was thoughtful and appropriate in his dealings with others.

Over these years, Cen Sen had always been the one more capable of controlling the overall situation. Whenever his friends got into trouble and were too afraid to go to their families, they would basically look for him to help clean up the mess.

Back when Jiang Xing Technology, founded by Jiang Che and Chen Xingyu, was just starting out, there were many competitors. Several times they were driven into financial turnover difficulties by their rivals, and the Jiang family hadn't been very supportive of Jiang Che at the time; behind it all, it was Cen Sen who had been injecting capital to support them.

The current situation, where Cen Sen had to ask Jiang Che for help, seemed to be the first time it had ever happened.

To be honest, Cen Sen didn't like this feeling. Perhaps it was because the period in his youth when he was arranged and decided upon by others had left him with deep psychological trauma; over the years, he had grown accustomed to standing in the position of the leader, holding everything firmly in his own grasp.

The night wind was cold. He turned back, gripping the car door handle with one hand, the veins on the back of his hand protruding from the pressure.

But the next second, he suddenly let go, merely tapping the car window lightly to ask the driver for a cigarette.

The driver hurriedly held the cigarette out, cupping his hands to light it for him.

He leaned against the car, gazing quietly toward Star City, wisps of smoke leaking from his fingertips and drifting away into the distance.

Cen Sen arrived in Star City at 1:00 AM that night. The news related to the earthquake in Star City on the internet was already overwhelming; it would have been hard not to know.

The main shock, which had the strongest tremors, occurred at 8:15 PM and lasted for nearly seventeen seconds. There had been several aftershocks between then and midnight.

The epicenter was in Fengyang County, in the suburbs of Star City, quite close to the main urban area. The data regarding casualties and economic losses were still being tabulated, but from the information already released to the public, it didn't seem particularly severe.

However, for Cen Sen, the matter was very serious, because Ji Mingshu remained uncontactable.

For a long time, Ji Mingshu’s phone could be dialed, but no one answered.

But when he dialed it again after midnight, only a mechanical female voice notified him: The number you have dialed is switched off.

The hotel surveillance had long been checked. Searching based on the time period recalled by the staff, he could see that she had indeed gone out that afternoon.

But she hadn't returned after leaving. There was no one in the hotel room, and without an accurate time frame from the surveillance, it was difficult to investigate.

When Cen Sen reached the Junyi Huazhang Hotel where they were staying, final confirmation arrived from Jiang Che: Ji Mingshu had gone out that afternoon to check in at a trendy cafe. After leaving the cafe, she seemed to... have gone straight back to the hotel. Furthermore, the last phone location she pinged that afternoon was also at the hotel.

Cen Sen stood in the hotel lobby, staring at the final location data provided by Jiang Che, and suddenly understood.

On her last trip to Star City, Ji Mingshu had been determined to check in at a certain trendy cafe, but because she had been in a rush to return to the Imperial Capital for a social battle with Li Wenyin, she never made it.

She had succeeded this time, but the cafe was vastly different from what she had imagined—whether it was the decoration style, the popular desserts, or the owner’s taste in coffee beans, she hadn't liked any of it. After drinking half a cup of coffee, she got up and left without even taking any photos.

Perhaps it was because Cen Sen had been too intense the night before; she hadn't been in the mood to go shopping, so she soon returned to the hotel, took two vitamins, and went to sleep.

For Ji Mingshu, it had been an ordinary day, so calm it was almost mundane.

Therefore, when she was kissed until she couldn't breathe and drifted awake in a daze, her entire being felt dizzy.

"What are you doing? Can’t a person sleep in the middle of the night?"

She pushed at Cen Sen’s face, not forgetting to wrap her silk nightgown around herself, her voice soft and spoiled.

But the only response she got was a deepening, driving kiss.

The force of this kiss was immense; she couldn't even let out a whimper. A chill touched her skin as the nightgown she had just pulled together was torn open.

After being treated this way, Ji Mingshu was thoroughly awake.

Cen Sen was truly acting strangely. He was in such a rush even without a shower, and it was the especially forceful kind. The most critical part was that he kept whispering intimately in her ear, calling her "baby."

Must have drunk fake liquor.

But why didn't it smell like alcohol?

Maybe fake liquor just doesn't have an alcoholic smell...?

Ji Mingshu thought wildly while biting her lip and bearing Cen Sen’s embrace.

At this moment, she was like a salted fish pinned to a cutting board, with no way or strength to resist, only able to let Cen Sen flip her this way and that.

...

When everything was over, Ji Mingshu was held in Cen Sen’s arms, held very, very tightly. He kept asking if she felt uncomfortable anywhere and kept kissing her, much more intimately than his usual post-coital attitude.

Ji Mingshu looked at Cen Sen suspiciously, her fingertips pinching the edge of the quilt as she asked cautiously, "Blink your eyes if you’ve been possessed?"

Cen Sen: "..."

Perhaps to prove he wasn't possessed, he simply stared at Ji Mingshu quietly for nearly half a minute; Ji Mingshu couldn't help but blink herself, but he still didn't.

Ji Mingshu breathed a sigh of relief and couldn't help but ask in a small voice, "What is wrong with you? You seem particularly abnormal today."

"Nothing." He didn't say more, just suddenly got up and carried her horizontally into the bathroom for a shower.

No one could understand the psychological journey Cen Sen had undergone over the past five or six hours.

At the moment he saw Ji Mingshu, it seemed only possession could prove that she was truly, really still in his arms.

Sensing that Cen Sen was unusually silent tonight, Ji Mingshu didn't ask further.

After a shower, when she returned to the master bedroom to play with her phone, she found it had run out of battery.

After plugging it in, her phone was nearly shaken to pieces by the explosion of messages pouring in from all directions.

"...Earthquake?"

Ji Mingshu was completely dumbfounded.

"When did this happen? How come I didn't feel a thing?"

After saying this, she had the fleeting feeling that the whole world had indeed shaken for a moment in her sleep. But that couldn't be right—a 5.8 magnitude earthquake should have felt quite strong; how could she have been sleeping that soundly?

She reached for the vitamins on the side of the bed and took a look.

They weren't vitamins. They were sleeping pills.

She had taken the wrong medicine!

After the impact of a series of forceful messages, Ji Mingshu suddenly realized, "You couldn't have thought I was in an accident, could you?"

Cen Sen didn't speak; he turned off the bedside lamp.

Ji Mingshu wouldn't let it go; she leaned in, illuminating him with the light of her phone screen, her eyes sparkling. "You just thought something happened to me, didn't you? Were you very worried about me? Are you stupid? I don't know many people in Star City, where else could I go? Why didn't you just tell someone to come into the room and take a look?"

"I did call."

But the staff member who came to check the room was new, unable to even distinguish how many rooms were in their suite. He had mistaken the secondary bedroom for the master bedroom and had failed to check all three bedrooms properly. Moreover, the person had been calling her name while searching the room, and there hadn't been a single response. Where would a normal person expect that the CEO's wife had mistakenly taken sleeping pills and was sleeping too soundly?

Ji Mingshu lay on the bed, holding her face in her hands and watching Cen Sen, unable to stop laughing. "You admitted it."

Cen Sen didn't answer. He simply put her phone back on the nightstand, closed his eyes, and said, "Sleep."

Ji Mingshu: "I slept too much this afternoon; I can't sleep now."

Cen Sen: "Then I'm sleeping."

Ji Mingshu reached out to pry his eyelids open. "Not allowed to sleep!"

Cen Sen: "I’m really sleepy."

"You didn't seem sleepy just a moment ago. Weren't you quite capable just then? Sleepy after you're done? Are you seventy or eighty years old? Get up quickly and chat with me, tell me how the earthquake happened."

Cen Sen remained unmoved.

"If you won't tell me, then call me 'baby' one more time, and I'll spare you."

Ji Mingshu kicked her legs wildly in the air, occasionally leaning in to pull at his eyelashes, occasionally reaching out to tickle him.

Cen Sen really couldn't take it anymore. After rolling over several times and failing to shake her off, he had to roll back, hold Ji Mingshu, and press her head into the crook of his neck, calling out in a low, heavy voice, "Baby.”