HL 63

Xu Nanxiao was suddenly stunned, his breath caught in his throat.

“Professor Ying… no, Teacher Ying, what made you think to call me at this hour? Your family’s Mid-Autumn Festival banquet must be quite lively and splendid, I imagine,” Xu Nanxiao sneered.

Before his words faded, the cheesy “Lantana” background music came through from the other end of the line.

Wow, so even kids in wealthy families play with those plastic lanterns?

No way.

Xu Nanxiao shoved the window open, and sure enough, he saw Ying Yusheng standing downstairs, silently looking up at him.

Xu Nanxiao could no longer be bothered to ask how he’d gotten his phone number or how he’d found out his address. Ying Yusheng had plenty of formidable methods at his disposal; asking would only bring himself grief.

“You didn’t go home?” Xu Nanxiao asked coldly.

“I want to go home,” Ying Yusheng said through the phone. “But I can’t get in.”

It took Xu Nanxiao a long moment to understand what Ying Yusheng meant. They had spent Mid-Autumn Festival together before. Back then, they had still felt like a family.

But now, Xu Nanxiao only felt disgusted, and his voice grew impatient. “Ying Yusheng, what the hell do you actually want?”

Ying Yusheng was silent for a moment, then said bitterly, “I don’t want anything, Nanxiao. I just suddenly missed you very much.”

“Then go ahead and miss me—miss me from far, far away. I’m about to duo queue with some cute girl, I don’t have time to waste on you here. But Ying Yusheng, you listen to me—this is not your home. Wherever you are, I’m not; wherever I am, you’re not. Don’t think that just because I didn’t run away, I’m giving you a chance. I’m just tired, I can’t be bothered with you. Don’t push your luck.”

With that, Xu Nanxiao was about to hang up when he suddenly heard Ying Yusheng blurt out something seemingly out of nowhere—

“Nanxiao, the moon is so beautiful tonight.”

Xu Nanxiao’s breath caught sharply, the air stuck halfway—neither going down nor coming up, as if Ying Yusheng had hollowed him out with a single sentence.

Finally, he squeezed out two words through gritted teeth: “Fucking idiot.”

After the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Liu Zhuo and Liang Sihua both came back glowing with good cheer—clearly they’d rested well.

But Ye Qiaozi seemed inexplicably troubled. At lunch, she didn’t even reach for the last bite of grilled fish.

“Boss, what’s wrong? You had a holiday—how come you came back all depressed?” Liu Zhuo asked curiously.

Ye Qiaozi thought for a moment, then put down her chopsticks and lowered her voice. “Remember how I told you guys a while back that some strangers had been walking around the street with measuring instruments, taking pictures of the storefronts?”

“Yeah, wasn’t that just routine urban planning inspections?”

“Aunt Liu next door said our area is going to be demolished. A developer wants to build new residential buildings.”

“You believe that? That rumor’s been going around for years.”

“I didn’t believe it either, originally.” Ye Qiaozi bit her chopsticks. “But during the holiday, my uncle from the county government came over for dinner and mentioned that he saw a draft acquisition application in his office. It seemed like our storefront was on that list.”

“There’s hardly any young people around here—who’s going to buy new apartments if they build them? The property market’s not doing well anyway. Just think about it, it’s obviously impossible.”

Liang Sihua’s words comforted Ye Qiaozi a little. She finally broke into a grin and said, “Yeah, why overthink it. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Xu Nanxiao just listened quietly and didn’t offer any opinion.

But not even a few weeks later, while Ye Qiaozi was soaking up some sun outside, a middle-aged man in a button-down shirt and dress pants suddenly showed up.

He came in and, without saying whether he needed a repair or anything else, just looked around the shop.

So Ye Qiaozi couldn’t help but ask, “Hey, what are you here for? Got a car that needs fixing?”

Only then did the man give a slight smile and hand over a business card: “Ms. Ye, I’m a manager from Tianliu Development Company. Our company is very interested in your storefront and would like to discuss acquisition terms.”

Ye Qiaozi took the card, looking a bit dazed, and realized that the rumors were actually true.

Ye Qiaozi and the manager talked for over two hours in the back room. When they parted, the manager still looked quite pleased, but Ye Qiaozi’s smile was strained.

Admittedly, the compensation offered was decent and not exactly unfair. But all the crew knew that this shop was a keepsake left to Ye Qiaozi by her father, carrying immense sentimental value.

Even the phoenix tree at the front door had been planted together by father and daughter. Even back before Xu Nanxiao came, when the shop couldn’t find a mechanic for a while and lost money for months on end, Ye Qiaozi never once said she’d close it.

“Boss, how’d it go?”

“Do you want to sell?”

Liu Zhuo and Liang Sihua were also a bit nervous—not just for Ye Qiaozi’s shop, but also because job opportunities in this small town were scarce. The pay here might not be great, but the work was comfortable and the colleagues got along well. Neither of them really wanted to go elsewhere.

“I don’t know. I definitely don’t want to sell.” Ye Qiaozi’s expression was a little dazed. “But it’s not entirely up to me. I’ll go ask the other shop owners.”

With that, Ye Qiaozi dashed off.

It was evening by the time she came back. Liu Zhuo and Liang Sihua immediately surrounded her, pulled her into the shop, and poured her a glass of water: “So? What did the others say?”

“Business is good on our street, nobody wants to leave. Except Uncle Jiang—his noodle place was already going to be sold off anyway; he’s already signed the contract,” Ye Qiaozi replied. “And it’s not just our street—the old residential area behind it is also going to be razed. Together with our street’s land, they can build a few more buildings.”

“That Jiang guy’s noodles were awful, and the portions were tiny—no wonder he couldn’t keep it going. Since everyone else doesn’t want to leave, I’m relieved. What can the developer really do?”

“Right!” Ye Qiaozi pumped herself up. “The key now is to stay united. As long as we don’t sign, they can’t do much to us.”

Because the old residential area behind had been around for ages, most of the residents were eager for the demolition, so they all signed their contracts without hesitation.

Ye Qiaozi and the other shop owners held out and refused to sign. At first, just as they’d predicted, the company’s people could only try to persuade them politely and raise the compensation—they were truly at a loss.

But after a while, things started to go wrong.

One afternoon, two beat-up vans blocked the driveway in front of the shop, one in front and one behind. A few thugs got out, yelling that their cars were broken and insisting on getting them fixed here.

Liu Zhuo went out to take a look—the engines were rusted solid, and the wiring was a tangled mess.

“This can’t be fixed; it needs a full replacement, and we don’t have the parts here,” he said as politely as he could.

But the leader suddenly turned hostile: “What’s this? Running a business but picking your customers? We’re here because we recognize your skill. Take your time fixing them—we’re not in a hurry.”

With that, the group squatted at the entrance, smoking, laughing loudly, and cursing up a storm, scaring away regular customers who’d come to get their cars washed.

Xu Nanxiao had had enough. He stubbed out his cigarette and was about to go teach them a lesson, but Ye Qiaozi stopped him. She said, Xu Ge, don’t make things hard for her.

It wasn’t worth getting one of their own dragged to the police station and sullied over a few street punks.

Xu Nanxiao held his forehead and sighed, thinking to himself that the girl was still naive. He knew all too well how to deal with thugs—kind words were useless. And as long as these “social idlers” didn’t cause any major incidents, nobody would bother to step in.

Ye Qiaozi walked to the entrance and said to the driver, “Sir, we can’t fix it. If you keep blocking us like this, we can’t do any business.”

Sure enough, the driver just gave her a sidelong glance: “Our car broke down here—if you won’t fix it, we can’t leave either. Unless… you guys cover the towing fee? Then we’ll find another shop.”

This was clearly a shakedown.

Her face flushed red. She turned and went back inside, grabbed her phone, and started recording, aiming the camera at the men and their license plates.

The driver saw her recording but wasn’t scared at all. Instead, he flashed a crude gesture right at the lens.

The standoff dragged on until dusk, when the men finally called a tow truck and had the two broken vans hauled away.

The next day, they showed up again, this time with a rattling truck that clanged and banged. This time, they went even further—they parked it sideways right in front of the door, claiming the transmission was broken. Liu Zhuo checked and found it had clearly been tampered with on purpose.

Three days in a row, the same thing happened.

Different people, different beat-up cars, but the same shameless tactics. The shop’s business was almost completely shut down. Occasionally, an unsuspecting regular customer would come by, only to be scared off by the scene at the entrance.

Ye Qiaozi called the police several times, but when the officers arrived, all they could do was mediate. The other side insisted it was a “repair dispute,” leaving the police with little recourse.

It wasn’t just the repair shop—the other stores were also being harassed relentlessly. The hardware store got reported for safety violations, the grocery store was falsely accused of selling expired food, the barbershop faced fraudulent refund requests…

The shop owners, who had been wavering, were worn down by these repeated “tactics,” and resentment spread. A few of the softer ones, scared further, eventually signed the agreements.

But Ye Qiaozi and the others held their ground, stubbornly refusing to budge.

“Uncle!” The little girl bounced out of tutoring, grinning as she ran toward the repair shop across the street and leaped onto Liang Sihua’s back.

Liang Sihua was in the middle of repairing a customer’s phone and almost threw out his back from the impact. But when he turned and saw who it was, his eyes immediately crinkled with a smile. “Oh, my good little Yuanyuan, what did you learn in tutoring today?”

“We learned how to write essays. I had an exam a few days ago, and my essay score went up by a lot. My mom was so happy.”

“Awesome, awesome, awesome.”

Xu Nanxiao walked out and teased the girl: “You did so well, and your mom didn’t give you a reward?”

“She promised to buy me those little photo cards I mentioned before.” At that, the kid got all excited and started chattering nonstop about her idol.

Those Korean names—Xu Nanxiao had never even heard of them, and he wasn’t interested. But to keep from disappointing the little girl, he smiled and went along with it.

Just then, Ying Yusheng suddenly came out after her, his eyes curving with a smile: “Mu Yuanyuan, you forgot your backpack.”

The moment the words left his mouth, he and Xu Nanxiao locked eyes.

Xu Nanxiao was startled for a second, then was the first to coldly look away. Ying Yusheng’s gaze, however, lingered greedily over him for a moment before shifting to the little girl. “Mu Yuanyuan, here you go.”

The little girl looked up and smiled. “Thank you, Teacher!”

“Oh, look who’s all here today.”

Before they even saw him, they heard the voice—two thugs swaggered over with their hands in their pockets. Today, they hadn’t brought their beat-up car.

Xu Nanxiao was already in a bad mood, and this only made his temper flare. “What do you two want now?”

“What, I can’t take a walk around here? Is this shop yours? Boss Ye hasn’t said anything yet.” The older one deliberately spat a thick glob of phlegm at the shop entrance and bellowed, “Besides, what right do you have to snap at me? You’re a murderer.”

For an instant, everyone froze.

“What did you say?” Xu Nanxiao’s jaw clenched instantly.

“Did I say anything wrong? Didn’t you kill someone a few years ago? It’s all over the internet, you can look it up—you think you can deny it?” The thug’s voice was especially loud, as if he wanted the entire street to hear. “Every time we come, you act all high and mighty, looking down on us like we’re nothing. Who’d have thought—you’re the real animal.”

His lackey immediately chimed in, shouting: “This repair shop employs a murderer! Go ahead and search his name on your phones—Xu Nanxiao! He killed someone! Not only did he kill, but he also cursed in court and beat up the victim’s father!”

This happened right during rush hour, when the street was at its busiest with people leaving work and school. Everyone turned to look, curious. Before long, a sizable crowd had gathered outside the repair shop, and some people actually pulled out their phones to search.

So that was it—they hadn’t come with a car today because they’d found a new angle. They wanted to smear Xu Nanxiao’s reputation and drag the repair shop down with him.

The crew naturally knew Xu Nanxiao’s situation, but the onlookers had no idea. The little girl was scared and even shrank back behind Liang Sihua.

“Come one, come all, take a look! The worker at this repair shop is a murderer! And the boss is harboring a murderer—she’s no good either!”

Ye Qiaozi had had enough. She ran out of the shop in a few quick steps, pointed at the thug’s nose, and cursed: “Xu Ge accidentally killed someone in the ring during a match! And besides, the court already ruled and he served his punishment—what more do you want?!”

“Ruled and punished—can that bring the dead back to life?” The thug swatted her hand away. “Why are you defending him so hard? Oh, I get it—you’ve slept with him! He satisfied you real good, didn’t he?”