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But those days changed completely after they met Chen Guilan.
Chen Guilan would deliberately stir up conflicts between Zhou Gang and Zhou Qing. She often fabricated baseless accusations against Zhou Qing and then whispered in Zhou Gang’s ear, claiming that Zhou Qing was targeting her.
Over time, her brother, who had once loved her dearly, changed. That look of disgust and impatience began to appear frequently in his eyes.
At first, Zhou Qing was terrified. He was her only remaining family member left, and she couldn’t understand why things had turned out this way. She tried to talk to her brother, but Chen Guilan would interrupt each and every time.
Zhou Qing then grew increasingly silent. With each instance of favoritism, her disappointment deepened. Eventually, she found a job at a hotpot restaurant, planning to leave for good. But to her surprise, they actually locked her up.
Seeing Zhou Qing remain silent, Chen Guilan felt unsatisfied and kicked her twice more. Zhou Gang stopped her, saying, “Enough. She’s still my sister, after all.”
Chen Guilan snorted coldly and walked out of the room.
“…Brother…” Zhou Qing’s rang out hoarsely voice in the darkness. “Do you… really hate me that much?”
Hearing her voice, Zhou Gang seemed to hesitate for a moment. He remembered how much he had once loved his sister, but at some point, she had become less likable. Every day, after returning from his missions, he would be exhausted, yet he had to listen to Chen Guilan complain about what Zhou Qing had done.
He grew more and more irritable, not even bothering to find out the truth of the matter.
In truth, he didn’t know why things had turned out this way. But Chen Guilan was carrying his child, and he had to ensure the continuation of his bloodline.
He glanced back at Zhou Qing but didn’t answer her question. Instead, he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.
At that moment, Zhou Qing’s heart completely died. She closed her eyes, allowing her body temperature to slowly drop.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when, just as she thought she would leave this world, the door to the room opened again.
Zhou Qing looked over hazily and saw two figures standing at the door. One of them spoke, and the voice was unexpectedly familiar. “This is what you call recuperating?! If I hadn’t come to check, I wouldn’t have known my employee had been left lying on the floor, neglected and uncared for!”
It was Boss Jiang’s voice, filled with anger. However, to Zhou Qing’s ears, it sounded unusually warm.
Then came the voices of her brother Zhou Gang and Chen Guilan, along with a few other familiar voices, all seemingly flustered and trying to explain something.
Zhou Qing only felt a source of warmth approaching. Someone helped her up. “Are you okay? Zhou Qing, can you hear me?” Zhou Qing nodded faintly, and then felt herself being moved onto a broader back.
At that moment, the base leader, following behind Jiang Ci, glared fiercely at Zhou Gang and Chen Guilan. If this incident caused Boss Jiang to have a bad impression of their base, just wait and see how severely he would punish these troublemakers!
Zhou Gang and Chen Guilan stood behind, also looking worried. Although they had indeed wanted to snatch away Zhou Qing’s job, they hadn’t intended to offend Jiang Ci either. How could they have possibly known that such a powerful boss would personally come over and check on a mere employee?
“Boss Jiang, we really didn’t know about this. If we had, we would have intervened immediately,” the base leader whispered to Jiang Ci, trying to explain.
Jiang Ci nodded. “I understand. This is a personal matter after all. I won’t hold it against the base, you don’t need to worry.”
With Jiang Ci’s assurance, the base leader finally breathed a sigh of relief and enthusiastically arranged a vehicle to take them away. Now that they were taking an extra person back, it was indeed inconvenient for Jiang Ci, so she boarded the vehicle used by their base to transport supplies naturally.
This vehicle only had a passenger seat and a back row for people to sit in. The cargo area was used for hauling goods, and at the moment, it was cluttered with miscellaneous items, making it impossible for anyone to sit there.
Song Jinchuan placed Zhou Qing in the back row and then volunteered to sit in the cargo area.
Jiang Ci scooted over and patted the empty space beside her, “The journey back isn’t that far, let’s just squeeze in together.”
Song Jinchuan hesitated, wanting to verbally refuse, but his body had already honestly sat down.
The two were sitting very close, with Song Jinchuan even able to catch a faint scent emanating from Jiang Ci. He tried to straighten his body and lean against the door, not letting himself touch Jiang Ci, but his heart was already pounding uncontrollably.
*
Zhou Qing felt as if she had been in a very long dream. The content of the dream was somewhat blurry, but at the beginning, it had been cold and dark. Gradually, however, her body felt as if it soaked in a warm spring, so comforting that it made her want to cry.
When Zhou Qing woke up, she was no longer in that cold, dark little room but lying on a bed, covered with a clean blanket that smelled of sunshine.
Upon seeing the familiar room, Zhou Qing immediately knew it was the bedroom of the hotpot restaurant.
She belatedly remembered that before she completely passed out yesterday, she seemed to have heard the voice of Boss Jiang. So, it turns out that hadn’t been a hallucination before her death.
At that moment, the bedroom door opened, and Mao Qianqian walked in. When she met Zhou Qing’s gaze, a smile appeared on her face, “You’re finally awake.”
“Sister Qianqian,” Zhou Qing, who was younger than Mao Qianqian and had joined the restaurant later, usually addressed her respectfully as “Sister Qianqian.”
“You’ve been asleep for a whole day. When Boss Jiang and Brother Song brought you back, you really gave us a fright since you were completely drenched in blood,” Mao Qianqian went out for a moment and came back with a bowl of congee.
“You’re in luck! This is the congee Brother Song made for our boss. She heated it up and brought it over. She said you just got injured and shouldn’t eat anything too heavy. Originally, Boss Jiang was here keeping watch, but something came up outside, so she left.”
As Mao Qianqian spoke, she recalled Jiang Ci’s treatment of Zhou Qing, which was somewhat different from the abilities of other healing attribute ability users. Boss Jiang’s white light seemed purer and even brighter somehow.
Jiang Ci had placed her hand over the gruesome wound, and it quickly stopped bleeding, then scabbed over.
The speed of this healing left Mao Qianqian dumbfounded, especially since Jiang Ci mentioned it was her first time using this ability. Such a rapid healing speed was hard to achieve even for high-level healing attribute ability users.
Sure enough, Boss Jiang was no ordinary person. Thinking of this, Mao Qianqian became even more excited. Sure enough, she hadn’t chosen to follow the wrong person!
“This is your own unit. Boss Jiang unlocked it up for you. She asked me to explain that it was a choice made in a moment of emergency. Under normal circumstances, she definitely wouldn’t just unlock our doors like this, so she hopes you don’t mind,” Mao Qianqian added.
Zhou Qing shook her head, “How could I? I owe my life to Boss Jiang.”
“It’s fine,” Mao Qianqian said, understanding Zhou Qing’s situation well, as she also had troublesome relatives. “Keep working hard here from now on. Boss Jiang will definitely treat you well.”
Zhou Qing nodded. She sat up from the bed, took the warm congee from Mao Qianqian’s hands, and began to sip it slowly. Her heart, which had been frozen cold and hurt by her family, gradually warmed up.
*
pls do not share this anywhere or u will always stub ur toe when u walk past a door frame !! this translation has been stolen from mioscorner.com, pls only read there i’m begging u :kneels:
Meanwhile, Jiang Ci and Song Jinchuan were standing outside the hotpot restaurant, looking at the dense crowd in the darkness, feeling like she was about to have another headache.
The large group of people across the street had come under the cover of night, intending to loot the place. Perhaps they had heard that this place wasn’t easy to deal with, so they had arrived in full force—with over a hundred people, three vehicles, and a significant amount of firearms.
Song Jinchuan mentioned that among them were about a dozen ability users. Quite the extravagant display.
Fortunately, the restaurant was already closed, and there were no customers inside anymore. Jiang Ci had also found an excuse to send the employees back to their staff dormitories.
Now, only her, Song Jinchuan, and Hui Hui remained to guard the place.
Jiang Ci glanced over and noticed a man with a buzz cut, dressed in black, sitting casually on the hood of one of the cars. Judging by the setup, he was likely the leader of this group.
Jiang Ci was actually quite eager to test her new abilities. After all, it wasn’t often that she encountered such overconfident people. In all the time she’d been running the restaurant, the number of troublemakers she had run into could only be counted on one hand.
She decided to use these people to try out her new ability, specifically the black energy orb she still hadn’t figured out how to use.
As usual, Jiang Ci cast a protective shield over Song Jinchuan and Hui Hui. Then, she casually grabbed two stools and sat down in front of the restaurant, watching the crowd across the street.
She looked completely at ease.
This relaxed demeanor clearly angered the opposing side. After a loud shout, the hundred or so people charged toward Jiang Ci and Song Jinchuan.
Song Jinchuan stepped forward, a fireball forming in his hand. With a swift motion, he hurled it toward them, forcing the charging survivors to retreat. However, a stream of water soon shot out from the opposing side, enveloping Song Jinchuan’s flames.
Seems like they had done their homework and knew about Song Jinchuan’s abilities.
However, the water didn’t last very long and was quickly evaporated by Song Jinchuan’s flames.
At that moment, a blue light flashed in Jiang Ci’s hand. A pure water sphere suddenly appeared above her head. As she moved, the sphere grew larger and larger. In the next second, it detached from her hand and hurtled toward the survivors.
When the water sphere hit the ground, it didn’t disperse like water usually did. Instead, it began to envelop the survivors.
It was like a bouncing ball, rolling around and enveloping anyone it touched.
“Since when did the boss have abilities? I thought she only had spatial powers!” The buzz-cut man was shocked, but everyone else was also too stunned to answer him.
Seeing that nearly half of their ordinary ability users had been taken out without even reaching the hotpot restaurant, the buzz-cut man had no choice but to deploy his own ability users.
He called out the fire and lightning users, instructing them to focus on dealing with Jiang Ci.
When the two men charged over, Jiang Ci was still directing the water sphere, thoroughly enjoying herself.
That’s right, in the eyes of onlookers, she was simply playing around. Moreover, her ability had been released for so long, yet she could still accurately control its trajectory. Just what kind of ability was this? It was simply unheard of.
Both of these ability users were high-level, which was why the buzz-cut guy dared to bring people over to challenge her. They did have some strength, but unfortunately, they managed to run into Jiang Ci, who had a cheat.
what do u even say when someone passes the most difficult hurdle yet still falls when crossing the easiest path? maybe bc i also have a sibling but ZQ’s story seriously makes my heart ache
