When all the Lu family members suddenly heard Cheng Xi call out from below, they all felt their scalps go numb. Lu Chenming was the first to regain his senses, and he drew back the curtains and yelled out, "What else do you have to say? I even gave you my blessings, but why did you have to go for my brother? You"re too loathsome!"
As soon as he yelled this out, he started to cry. As he wiped his tears away, he shut the curtains again, ran into his bed, and buried himself in his blankets.
Cheng Xi was speechless. "……"
She swore, she really didn"t do anything!
She earnestly looked up at the window. This time, Lu Chenzhou appeared in front of the window. He looked at her and coolly said, "Come up."
And so, Cheng Xi went upstairs with the cat still in her hands. The housekeeper had clearly heard Lu Cheming"s yell just now, and when she saw Cheng Xi move to go back into the house, she quickly stretched out her hands and said, "Why don"t you give Daggry to me."
Even she was looking at Cheng Xi with a funny expression.
Cheng Xi didn"t have the luxury to care about what the housekeeper was thinking, so she handed the cat over, brushed some remnant cat hairs off of her body, and headed upstairs.
She had to say, the Lu household really was quite large. When she had been walking around slowly just now, she hadn"t realized its full extent, but when she was actively trying to rush back indoors, she felt like she had to walk a very long way.
However, Cheng Xi wasn"t in that much of a hurry. It was just a troublesome issue to clarify; she was certain that she and Lu Chenming hadn"t had any sort of excessive contact, and the only reason why he would think that she had seduced him was that he had some sort of mental conditions brought on by unrequited love. She had seen this sort of patient before; one of the most common symptoms was that the patient would stubbornly stalk the other party, and even extrapolate from any brief encounters with the other party that the two of them were in a relations.h.i.+p. Afterwards, when the patient found out that the other party had a boyfriend or husband, they would feel as if they"d been betrayed, and, in the most severe cases, might even lead the patient to commit murder.
Such patients tended to be antisocial, gloomy, and find holding conversations with other people difficult. As a result, they would push all of their emotion baggage onto their unrequited lover, and Lu Chenming"s personality did indeed seem to match that of such patients…… In the blink of an eye, Cheng Xi had already thought up a few treatment plans. However, she never expected that, when she finally entered Lu Chenming"s room, he really did have evidence of the two"s "romance."
There were rows upon rows of chat logs, all of them kept encrypted within his phone as if they were treasures. There were even some photographs of Cheng Xi, and the backdrop of each photograph was always Cheng Xi"s mother"s house or even Cheng Xi"s own house. There was even one of her in a doctor"s lab coat in the hospital!
Cheng Xi rarely ever posted pictures of herself on social media, so these could only have been sent over privately.
At this point, she really wanted to yell out, When on earth did this happen? Why didn"t I know about this at all?
She glanced at Lu Chenming, who had given her his phone and then retreated back inside his blankets like a turtle, and then asked, "Can I see these chat logs?"
She didn"t get a response.
When Lu Chenzhou"s grandparents saw these things being pulled out, they instantly became mentally and physically weary. Unable to bear it any longer, they stood to the side and didn"t say anything.
Lu Chenzhou walked toward the side of the bed, leaned over, and roughly prodded the blanket. "Come out and unlock your phone. If it"s true, then I"ll return her to you."
Lu Chenzhou"s harsh words rendered Cheng Xi speechless.
Even though she knew that Lu Chenzhou wasn"t an ordinary person, her heart still went cold whenever she heard him say things like this. She took a deep breath, only able to mask her discomfort.
Lu Chenming hesitated for a moment before actually coming out. He first looked at her with eyes as red as a rabbit"s before lowering his head and taking his phone back from Cheng Xi"s hands. He slowly unencrypted the files and then returned the phone to her even as he stole another glance before retreating back into his blankets like a frightened rabbit.
Lu Chenming"s actions also rendered Cheng Xi speechless.
She was really curious about how the Lu family had managed to raise two siblings with such contrasting personalities.
Lu Chenming had evidently built up quite a number of files in this folder, but they were all labeled very cleanly—he had also carefully sorted all the chat logs by both date and topic.
In this aspect, he was somewhat like Lu Chenzhou, neat, tidy, clear, and ordered.
The most recent folder was from February, around Lunar New Year, and the earliest folder was February from four years ago. Back then, Cheng Xi had been getting her Ph.D. under Cai Yi"s direction, and given how much Lu Chenming"s looks and personality made him stand out, Cheng Xi was absolutely certain that she hadn"t met him then.
As she pondered over all this, she opened the first chat log. Originally, she had been calm and composed, but when she saw the log, her face blanched.
Lu Chenming"s chat log had been copied directly from the messaging program, and not only were the chats timestamped, but they even had both parties" IDs.
There were two IDs, one, "smiling_and_proud," and the other, "icey."
The only time Cheng Xi had ever used the moniker "icey" was in a game that had gotten really popular a few years back, "Escape from the Apocalypse." It had been snowing on the day she had registered for an account, and so she had called herself "icey."
The first stranger that she had befriended in "Escape from the Apocalypse" was "smiling_and_proud." The two of them had met on a battlefield, and Cheng Xi had thought that his skills were very good, and he had also thought that Cheng Xi was quite a decent player. So, the two of them had added each other as friends after the battle.
She had never expected that this "smiling_and_proud" who seemed to be lively and cute in-game would actually be the shy and introverted Lu Chenming…… The gap between them was so large that she really couldn"t comprehend it!
The chat logs revealed that the two of them"s conversation was really quite boring. It was mostly them praising each other"s performance in battle, and occasionally, there"d be an, "Are you free today? Let"s team up and join a match."
Cheng Xi flipped through the logs of quite a number of days, and all the content seemed to be the same. She then realized that she had only played this game until May. And then, it had become graduation season and she had gotten really busy, so she had quit.
She hadn"t touched the game since, but there was a period when Cheng Yang was so bored that he had wanted her to help him level up. Since Cheng Xi didn"t have the time to do so personally, she had simply given him her account details.
At this point, Cheng Xi could essentially guess at what had transpired afterwards. Evidently, at first, the Cheng Yang who had taken over her account only responded to "smiling_and_proud" when he felt like it. Then, one day, when "smiling_and_proud" told him that his surname was Lu, the chat logs between the two of them inflated rapidly.
Cheng Xi"s expression suddenly changed.
Lu Chenzhou was watching her quietly, and then he saw her expression change suddenly—even if it was all but imperceptible, he was still able to detect it. His eyebrows raised themselves subconsciously, and his lips tightened.
Cheng Xi continued to scroll through the chat logs for quite a while before hurriedly putting the phone away and asking, "I"m sorry. Perhaps this is a little too inappropriate, but Chenming, can you send me these records?"
As Cheng Xi lowered her head to continue to scroll through the records, the other three members of Lu Chenzhou"s family looked at her. When they saw her calm demeanor, they couldn"t help but feel slightly hopeful, and Lu Chenzhou"s grandmother even asked, trembling as she did so, "It"s all fake…… isn"t it?"
Cheng Xi didn"t reply. She didn"t even know where to start explaining, and she could only give her an apologetic look as she said, "I"m sorry, but I can"t clarify this right now. However, please believe me when I say that I"ll give all of you a thorough explanation for all this." And then she looked towards the blankets and gently said to Lu Chenming, "Chenming, please give me some time to explain all of this to you, alright?"
The person hiding the blankets was silent for a moment, and then finally responded, "Alright. If you can explain everything clearly to my brother, then I…… I"ll forgive you."
Cheng Xi had no response. "……."