Chapter 24: This game was played by Zhaoping.(part 2)

After practicing throws with her Jiu-Jitsu coach a few times, she saw the exhausted coach off and went to shower.

While washing up, she noticed the white paper bag sitting on the counter.

She opened it and pulled out a small square box.

It looked quite high-tech.

It seemed to be a watch both the strap and the face had a sleek, vintage yet minimalistic design.

Inside was a manual explaining its features.

It was a unique smartwatch, equipped with the usual health tracking, sleep monitoring, and disease risk assessments.

But it also had a rare feature: stress level detection.

Designed for high-stress business professionals.

Gu Zhaoping raised an eyebrow.

This actually seemed quite useful for her workouts.

And surprisingly, the design matched her aesthetic taste.

She lifted the watch for a closer look.

The moment the screen lit up, she noticed something.

The time displayed on the watch matched the exact time on her own wristwatch.

At that moment, as if sensing something, she picked up her phone.

@InfiniteGoodWriting, exclusively at Jinjiang Literature City

There were a few unread WeChat messages from a few hours ago.

But since the sender had been polite and restrained, without spamming her with texts, she hadn’t noticed them earlier.

She opened them.

The messages were from Chu Yanze, sent after he got home.

[Hope I get to see you 15 minutes earlier than I should.]

Back at the mall, Chu Yanze had asked her for the time.

She had casually told him the time displayed on her watch.

What he didn’t know was that she had a habit of setting her watch 15 minutes ahead.

A small way to “outrun the world” and give herself extra time to prepare.

Chu Yanze had noticed.

And he remembered.

The finely crafted watchband dangled from her hand.

Gu Zhaoping’s impression of Chu Yanze improved yet again.

Shen Yifeng returned to the Shen family home.

The car was parked in the underground garage.

The driver sat quietly in the dark, while Shen Yifeng remained in the back seat, resting his chin on one hand, staring blankly ahead as if lost in thought.

He didn’t know where he had gone wrong.

According to his own logical reasoning, he hadn’t made any incorrect decisions.

That meant the variable must be the other party.

Logically speaking, a person doesn’t suddenly change overnight.

After spending so many years with Gu Zhaoping, he knew exactly what kind of person she was.

And yet, his understanding of her had just been shattered.

Gu Zhaoping’s words kept replaying in his mind, over and over, piercing his thoughts.

Shen Yifeng had lived for almost thirty years, and no one had ever spoken to him like that before.

Gu Zhaoping… Gu Zhaoping.

As the surge of inexplicable anger faded, all that remained was the feeling of sitting in the darkness, completely lost.

He knew he shouldn’t care about whatever young boy was appearing around Gu Zhaoping.

From a conventional standpoint, what happened earlier had been humiliating.

But if it helped divert Gu Zhaoping’s excess emotional energy and desires, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

He shouldn’t be angry.

He should have handled it with more dignity.

So why did he suddenly feel that surge of anger?

Shen Yifeng took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead, exhausted.

Was Gu Zhaoping serious about this?

He hadn’t come to a conclusion yet.

He wasn’t sure.

If she was truly planning to break off the engagement, what would happen next?

How would the process unfold?

What would their families think?

Who would come to him, and what would they say?

When he was the one in control of the situation, everything had seemed acceptable and predictable.

But now that the control had shifted to someone else, he realized just how much it disrupted his carefully laid-out plans.

If the Shen family elders heard the news of the engagement being called off from the Gu family, they would be shocked.

Then they would come to him and ask what had happened between him and Gu Zhaoping.

For elders who had grown up in a time with less rigid moral standards, it wouldn’t be a deal-breaker if Gu Zhaoping played around with male models or even went looking for love in the entertainment industry like Gu Zhaoye.

Sure, it might not be respectable, but it wouldn’t be enough to break an engagement over.

As the Shen family’s carefully cultivated heir, Shen Yifeng was supposed to share that same pragmatic mindset.

He shouldn’t be bothered by these things just as he hadn’t been in the past.

But somehow, at some point, an invisible thorn had embedded itself deep in his heart.

Shen Yifeng felt more conflicted than ever.

Unavoidably, his thoughts drifted to one particular question.

If he had been the one to initiate the breakup…

How would Gu Zhaoping have reacted?

…

He sat in the car in silence for a long time.

He couldn’t even summon his anger anymore.

There was only a deep sense of confusion at the fact that he had started to empathize with Gu Zhaoping’s feelings.

If she had been the one receiving the news of the engagement being called off…

Then perhaps the shock and difficulties she would have faced would have been even worse than what he was experiencing now.

Shen Yifeng pressed his lips together.

He didn’t want to think about it any further.

Eventually, he rubbed his temples and told the driver to stop the car.

When he returned home, his father immediately called out to him, making his heart clench.

Had the Gu family already spread the news?

Was the engagement about to be called off right now?

But as he stood there, slightly stiff, under the maple tree, his father finally spoke his next words.

“It’s not that, Yifeng! You need to take a closer look how exactly was this chess problem solved?!”

“Your Grandpa Gu refuses to say anything! He just keeps showing off, saying it’s been solved, and even brought over a recorded video to flaunt it!”

“I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure it out, but I still can’t understand how it was done!”

“You! You’re better at chess than me.

Tell me how it was solved!”

Shen Yifeng froze.

Then, he let out a helpless chuckle.

So this was what his father was so worked up about?

The elders in their families had a long-standing obsession with chess due to their early years of friendship.

Among them, Grandpa Gu had always been the most skilled virtually unbeatable among his peers.

Shen Yifeng had studied chess before, but he never found it particularly interesting.

He considered deep study in the game to be a waste of time.

He understood the game, but he didn’t have any remarkable talent for it.

Spending excessive effort on it wasn’t worth the cost.

Realizing that this wasn’t about the engagement, Shen Yifeng sighed in relief.

Perhaps he was just being paranoid.

Calling off an engagement was a major event.

There was no way the two families would finalize such a decision overnight.

Even if Gu Zhaoping had suggested it, the Gu family would likely hold emergency meetings to discuss it thoroughly.

For now, he needed to focus on something else.

Calming his thoughts, he sat down to watch the video his father had brought over.

He had a decent understanding of chess, so he examined it carefully.

Then, as he continued watching, he noticed something.

The hands moving the chess pieces in the video…

They looked familiar.

Those hands moved across the board with ease, adjusting the pieces naturally, as if every move came instinctively.

As if every strategy had already been mapped out in her mind.

Shen Yifeng’s brows furrowed unconsciously.

The more he watched, the stronger his sense of unease grew.

While Shen Yifeng focused on analyzing the game, his parents casually chatted nearby.

“I heard Zhaoping’s been making waves again showing up in the news constantly.”

They had watched her grow up, so they could only shake their heads in exasperation.

“She’s a good kid, but why can’t she ever settle down?”

“Playing around with young men was one thing when she was younger, but shouldn’t she be ready to calm down by now?”

Shen Yifeng’s heart skipped a beat.

As if he had heard a critical keyword, his actions slowed.

His fingers interlaced under his chin as he stared even more intently at the chess game on the screen.

“And this whole giveaway thing she did it stirred up such a fuss!

And that celebrity what’s his name? Chu Yanze?

She got involved with him, and now it’s an even bigger mess!”

Shen Yifeng’s father held up a tabloid newspaper, adjusting his glasses as he read aloud.

Shen Yifeng wasn’t sure why, but he suddenly turned to look at the paper.

On the back page, there was a photo of a young man’s side profile sharp features, an air of defiance, not yet fully tamed by the glamor and chaos of the entertainment industry.

It was too much of a coincidence.

Shen Yifeng’s pupils contracted slightly.

He recognized him.

That was the boy from the mall today.

So he wasn’t a male model he was an actor?

Then what did it mean when people said Gu Zhaoping was “supporting him”?

Male models were fleeting indulgences, mere playthings.

But a young man with a real career…

Shen Yifeng couldn’t help but recall how Gu Zhaoye had completely abandoned his own fiancée for Ruan Nian.

And suddenly, for the first time, he realized

Gu Zhaoping wasn’t joking about breaking off the engagement.

The chess game on the screen became impossible to focus on.

He paused.

Just as he was about to stand up and inform his parents, his father suddenly received a message.

His expression instantly changed.

“What the ?!”

The usually refined Shen father was so shocked that he nearly knocked over a chair.

“Zhaoping was the one who solved this chess problem?!”