The Vanishing Beauty - Chapter 3 - 3

Chapter 3 - 3

After a good long while, Zu Liangcai suddenly added Yu Meng on WeChat. His profile picture was a fighter jet against a bright, shimmering blue sky.

Yu Meng was secretly delighted. Play hard to get!

Naturally, she couldn't accept the request immediately. Otherwise, she would look too much like an idle person who cared about him far too much. Dragging it out for a full day, Yu Meng finally tapped accept late at night, maintained her politeness, and proactively sent a smiling face over.

"Let me ask your advice on a question." That was how Zu Liangcai opened the conversation. Not abrupt. A question prompts an answer. Smart enough. He was clearly an old hand at this. With a bit of back-and-forth, he might even be able to hook a dinner out of it.

"Please go ahead." Yu Meng feigned coldness, while remaining thoroughly courteous.

Zu Liangcai sent over two pictures of clothing, both girls' outfits, specifically dresses.

"Which one is better?"

"For your daughter?"

"It's a little girl's birthday."

Yu Meng randomly picked one and provided a justification. It was quite thorough. This was her specialty; she could talk the dead back to life—and of course, she could turn a mediocre choice into a brilliant one.

Quite naturally, Liangcai expressed his gratitude and asked, "Are you busy the day after tomorrow?" Yu Meng said she was a bit busy, as she had an appointment with someone to discuss business.

"What about the day after that?" Liangcai asked again. He still possessed some patience.

Yu Meng couldn't refuse to give him face any longer, so she said, "I have things to do that day too, but I can push them aside. I can't possibly deny Teacher Zu the face he deserves." She appended a blushing, giggling smiley face.

Liangcai finally asked, "What kind of business do you mainly do?"

Yu Meng panicked; she had no real business to speak of, but with the question thrust right before her eyes, she had no choice but to answer. "I used to run a teahouse, but it was too tiring. Later I did import-export agency work, but the market was too poor, so I had no choice but to do culture and the arts." Accompanied by a playful expression.

Zu Liangcai sent a smiling face and said he would send her his address later.

During the first round, Yu Meng focused her mind, unable to sleep. She ruminated over her conversation with Zu like a cow chewing its cud. First of all, she felt deeply gratified by her own charm. As long as Yu Meng was willing to cast a hook, she could catch fish. Her seasoned blade had not lost its edge.

Crucially, this fish wasn't bad either. He belonged to the official elite, several tiers higher than ordinary wealthy men.

However, he had started off by asking her to help choose clothes for his daughter. This amounted to releasing a signal: he had a daughter. This indicated either that his relationship with his wife was poor or that they were already divorced. At the same time, it was laying the groundwork for her—if she wanted to become a stepmother, she would first have to get along well with the daughter. Yu Meng hadn't mentioned that she had two sons. The timing wasn't right yet; she was afraid that bringing it up too early would scare the man away completely.

Asking her what business she did was an attempt to sound her out. Nowadays, wealthy men didn't want to marry poor women either. It all came down to social strata and the way society operated. Just two or three sentences were enough to pigeonhole someone, simple and efficient. What kind of person you are determines how you are treated, thereby saving the time strangers spent getting to know each other.

Very well, the battle begins. Gather your resolve!

What clothes to wear—Yu Meng considered this for a full twenty-four hours, even dreaming about it. In the end, she opted for safety: wearing black, black inside and out, with pale pink on her feet and atop her head. Pink high heels. A pink wide-brimmed hat.

Liangcai was dressed in sportswear, his jacket even of the hooded variety. His casual attire made Yu Meng's dressed-up appearance seem a bit overly dramatic. Fortunately, it was a western restaurant, and the ambiance and style matched the occasion.

Yu Meng sat down. The dishes had already been ordered. He asked Yu Meng if she had any dietary restrictions, and Yu Meng smiled, reservedly stating that she didn't eat tuna because she was allergic. Liangcai turned his head and instructed the waiter accordingly.

Then came the wait for the food. This period of time had to be filled with conversation.

"How did you get to know the Xin family?" Zu Liangcai asked directly, like someone engaged in espionage, smiling merrily the whole time. Yu Meng suspected he had known all along and was merely seeking confirmation, so she couldn't afford to lie, though she could add a little embellishment.

She didn't see anything improper in that. During the period when Weng Yue was away, she and Mrs. Xin had become good friends, and she had even accompanied Mrs. Xin to take glamour portrait photos, where the new Mrs. Xin played Bai Suzhen while Yu Meng played Xiaoqing. Zu Liangcai lavished praise on Mr. and Mrs. Xin, and then brought up some of their family's deep roots and influence in Jiangcheng.

These were things Yu Meng had heard Mrs. Xin mention before—

"Come to think of it, he even recognized our old patriarch as his godfather," Mrs. Xin had drawled, savoring the old flavor, her languor a form of aristocracy itself, before recalling and adding, "Though later on, after the old patriarch passed away, he didn't mention it much anymore." Finally, she added a postscript: "Don't you go talking to him about this."

A jolt had gone through Yu Meng's heart at the time. Could Mrs. Xin have already anticipated that she and Zu Liangcai would end up in contact?—At that time, Zu Liangcai hadn't even added her yet. Having finished discussing their historical connections, Yu Meng deliberately steered the conversation toward political and economic current events. Liangcai immediately opened the floodgates, speaking with eloquence and a continuous flow of words. Men of this age all possessed a set of their own views on society and life, most of which leaned toward cynical detachment.

Yet since Liangcai held an official position, his opinions still carried a measure of constructive insight. Yu Meng simply sat there quietly listening, offering a two-sentence commentary or smiling and chiming in from time to time. Her experience told her that at times like this, a woman should keep her mouth shut and let the men perform freely—she had previously received a slap from Luan Chengyun precisely because she refused to keep her mouth shut.

She would remember it for a lifetime. Her hatred burned deep!

It wasn't until the dishes were served that Zu Liangcai smiled and remarked that he had been talking too much.

"I enjoy listening," Yu Meng said, holding her fork. "Teacher Zu is a man of wisdom."

Zu Liangcai replied, "What wisdom? When you reach my age, you just accumulate a bit of experience."

"What do you mean, old? You're still so young."

"You flatter me."

"A man is in full bloom at forty-one," Yu Meng continued, acting her part.

Zu Liangcai chuckled. "I've already reached the age of knowing the mandate of heaven."

Yu Meng was stunned for a moment before pretending to react. "You don't look like it, truly not at all."

"You're young too."

"My son is already in university." Yu Meng dropped the revelation at the opportune moment.

Liangcai's expression didn't change in the least; he simply continued eating his food. Naturally, a man like him had seen all kinds of storms and waves; her son wasn't going to startle him. Liangcai continued, "I always remind myself that when chatting with ladies, there are three things one must never touch."

Yu Meng feigned interest, nodding to encourage him to go on.

"Never openly talk about sex, never reminisce about the past, and never try to lecture people on how to behave." He swallowed a mini-hamburger. "Otherwise, it's just too greasy."

Yu Meng let out a tinkling laugh like Lin Chi-ling.

"With a lady like you, it's even less necessary," he added.

"Are you mocking me for being too mature?"

"Maturity is a form of wealth," Zu Liangcai analyzed. "Effortless, tacitly understood, decorous, sensible, knowing when to advance and when to retreat. These are all gifts bestowed by time. Young girls don't understand these things."

At first hearing, it sounded like a compliment; listening closely, it also felt as though he was leaving himself a tactical retreat.

"Are you saying women like us are easy to trick?" Yu Meng called his bluff, maintaining her smile.

"A misunderstanding."

"Men certainly don't want a woman who understands more than they do," Yu Meng said with a cheerful smile.

This round consisted purely of dining; nothing else happened. The lofty mountains and flowing streams, the zheng and se playing in harmony, seeking one's soulmate to the ends of the earth. Both sides felt comfortable. When Weng Yue returned, Yu Meng went to pick her up, and the two of them chatted about the Xin family's events. Yu Meng mentioned that she had served as a receptionist and greeted so-and-so. She casually slipped Zu Liangcai's name in among several others, asking Weng Yue about the background of each person.

This served as a smoke screen.

After a few rounds of probing, she roughly figured it out: Zu Liangcai was divorced, and had been for many years. He used to be a university teacher, making professor before hitting forty, and later drifted upward through a twist of fate. He hadn't remarried all these years.

Weng Yue added a concluding remark at the end: "My older brother even mentioned wanting to see you."

"Enough of that!" Yu Meng slapped her playfully.

Having bypassed that pitfall, Weng Yue now treated Weng Yang as a running joke, bringing him up from time to time to self-deprecate. Yu Meng turned around and comforted Weng Yue, "Don't always try to push people away." She left half her sentence unsaid.

Weng Yue had no children. Her first marriage ended early, and through all the subsequent years of chasing career success, children simply slipped right past her. Yet Yu Meng felt she was light-hearted and unburdened without kids. Still, she needed to guard against loneliness in old age; therefore, wouldn't it be nice to have a brother and niece keep her company? Having someone willing to eat your food and use your things was both a burden and an eternal bond. You had to look at things from both sides; don't be too absolute. Everything changes, and just as there are lucky times, there are also unlucky days. Always leave yourself a few backup plans.

Weng Yue felt that Yu Meng was the well-fed person who didn't understand the hunger of the starving.

"I went out for a stroll, and my ears were being flooded the whole time—gossip."

"What gossip?"

"Stop playing dumb," Weng Yue pinched Yu Meng's ear. "Just how many people are stirring and getting restless over you?"

"Let them stir all they want; my heart is as still as stagnant water. I've already signed up for the Shuiyue Temple, ready to move in at a moment's notice." The more the wind blew and the more her heart stirred, the more Yu Meng insisted on saying the opposite. She wanted to cultivate the aura of being in high demand.

For now, everything was under control.