Chapter 37: From Now On, We Shall Go Our Separate Ways

Your life is in my hands now, and you still expect me to wait for your reinforcements? Do you take me for a fool? Yet, perhaps if it were someone else, they might have truly fallen for Huang Dongcheng’s goading. Fortunately, Chu Fei was the type who listened to reason. Besides, he’d already given the Huang family a chance last night. The fact that he hadn't killed Huang Guojie on the spot was already a great show of leniency toward their family.

But instead of showing gratitude, his father was now aiming a gun—at himself, no less. Should a good man be threatened at gunpoint? If that wasn’t sheer bullying, what was? And then there was Song Yalan, whose behavior was equally appalling. He had just saved her life, yet she showed not a hint of gratitude. If not for the fact she was his fiancée—and rather well-endowed at that—Chu Fei would surely have slapped her!

“Mother, Chu Fei saved us, how could you bite the hand that feeds you?” Guan Ya, having just recovered from her shock, felt compelled to speak up for Chu Fei. She hadn’t seen a dead body before, but compared to Song Yalan, she was much calmer. She understood that if Chu Fei hadn’t intervened today, she and her mother would never have escaped Huang Dongcheng’s clutches!

“He saved us? He’s brought disaster upon us!” Song Yalan pointed at Huang Dongcheng’s corpse. “He died in our home—how are we supposed to explain that to the Huang family? They’ll never let us off the hook!”

“If he truly wanted to save us, he should have surrendered without a fight.”

Chu Fei looked at Song Yalan, unable to suppress a laugh. He discovered that people really did laugh when lost for words.

“And you’ve got the nerve to laugh? Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you’ve brought upon us?” Song Yalan glared at him, convinced he was some kind of curse upon the Guan family.

“How much trouble?” Chu Fei drew a circle with his hands, about the size of a watermelon. “About this much?”

His words rendered Song Yalan’s accusations utterly powerless, like punches thrown into a pillow. She realized that trying to reason with this man was futile—he didn’t think like a normal person at all. The man was utterly illogical!

“Mother, don’t blame Chu Fei,” Guan Ya interjected reasonably. “If he hadn’t acted, who knows what Huang Dongcheng would have done to us!”

Song Yalan might have been foolish, but she wasn’t stupid. Deep down, she knew that even if Huang Dongcheng had killed Chu Fei, he might not have spared her and her daughter. Still, that seemed better than Chu Fei killing Huang Dongcheng—now there was a corpse, and the Huang family would never rest until they had their revenge.

“What’s done is done—forget it,” Song Yalan sighed. “What do you plan to do with these bodies?”

They couldn’t just leave the corpses here.

“That’s easy,” Chu Fei replied, pulling out a small vial as if he were Doraemon producing a magical gadget from his pouch. “Longmingshan’s Secret Bone-Dissolving Powder—the ultimate choice for eliminating bodies and erasing evidence.”

With that, Chu Fei sprinkled the powder over the three corpses. In no time, the bodies began to rot away, until not even a trace remained.

Chu Fei whistled nonchalantly as he completed the grisly task, as though it were something he did every day. Song Yalan’s worldview was on the verge of collapse—who was this man, really?

When he finished, Chu Fei turned to the stunned Song Yalan. “Any other questions?”

Song Yalan was still dazed, but Guan Ya, ever the eager student, raised her hand. “I do! Who exactly are you?”

“What else could I be?” Chu Fei replied with utter seriousness. “I am, of course, a law-abiding citizen. I would never do anything illegal!”

Song Yalan: “...”

Guan Ya: “...”

—Even Luo Xiang would say this guy is something else. Is he planning to commit crimes with Zhang San?

With all traces of the bodies gone, a plan suddenly flashed through Song Yalan’s mind. Meanwhile, Guan Ya seemed far more interested in the relationship between Chu Fei and Song Yalan than in the deaths of Huang Dongcheng’s gang.

Chu Fei glanced at Song Yalan. “It’s not right to keep this from the child. Why don’t we just tell her the truth?”

His tone and demeanor made Guan Ya nervous. She half-expected her mother’s next words to be, “I’m with your Uncle Chu now.”

Thankfully, Song Yalan interrupted her daughter’s wild imaginings with the plain truth. “I have a marriage contract with him. In name, I’m his fiancée.”

“Pfft, that’s all? I thought—you said you’re engaged?”

—From "Did My Crush Become My Stepdad?"

“That’s right. From now on, we’ll just go about our own lives.” Chu Fei chuckled. “I’ll keep calling you Guanguan, and you can call me Dad!”

“What do you mean, ‘go about our own lives’? You want to be my dad? No way!” Guan Ya protested with all her might.

Chu Fei frowned. “Why not? I’m a man, aren’t I?”

Guan Ya nodded.

“And your dad is a man, right?”

She nodded again.

“Well, there you have it. I’m basically your dad.”

Chu Fei looked so young, yet so eager to play the father. Guan Ya was momentarily at a loss, but quickly found her footing. She retorted, “Stop trying to fool me! By your logic, your mom’s a woman, I’m a woman, so I’m your mom?”

“If you want to be, that’s not impossible.” Chu Fei grinned. “I’d be happy to help. I love lending a hand.”

That remark would be scandalous in any stepdad circle.

Guan Ya rolled her eyes at him.

Just as Chu Fei turned to say something to Song Yalan, he saw her plunge a syringe into her own neck and inject its contents.

Chu Fei’s eyes widened. “Where did you get that?”

“I palmed it when you were talking to my daughter,” Song Yalan replied, expressionless, withdrawing the syringe.

Chu Fei rubbed his neck and asked with a smile, “So what is it?”

“Tranquilizer. Enough to knock out an elephant.”

“Is that all? How naïve. You really think a little tranquilizer could take down someone like me?”

He barely finished the sentence before collapsing backward, frothing at the mouth and falling unconscious.

Guan Ya cried out, “Mother, what are you doing?!”

“I’m going to call the Huang family and have them take him away,” Song Yalan replied coolly as she refilled the syringe. “Only then will the Huangs have no reason to blame us. We have no choice—his being alive is nothing but trouble for us!”

Guan Ya shielded Chu Fei. “You think I’ll let you do this?”

“I know you won’t.” Moving swiftly, Song Yalan jabbed the tranquilizer into Guan Ya’s neck as well.

Guan Ya stared at her mother in shock, as if seeing a stranger. In moments, she collapsed beside Chu Fei.

“Have a nice nap,” Song Yalan murmured to her daughter. “When you wake up, it will all be over.”

With those words, Song Yalan called the Huang family’s patriarch, Huang Maohai, and shifted all the blame for Huang Dongcheng’s death onto Chu Fei.