Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu

Leaving the two brothers all alone, there was a period of awkward silence at first. Jun was actually taking comfort in Ai's company, but she straight away ditched him without any remorse.

Jin sneered. "Peace will prevail now."

Jun wasn't sure if he should be happy or sad. "Just what happened between you two that day?"

His gaze increasingly turned icy. "Nothing. She is too annoying. I should ask just what happened to your taste in women?"

Jun stared at him and coughed. "She is actually nice if we don't piss her off."

He sneered again. "Nice try. Wasn't Shui also very nice for you? Look how she turned out."

He recalled the woman in white from the card from whom he saw two strings visible from his shoulders. "That's why I wanted to meet you. Something was terribly going wrong in our past life."

"How do you know that?"

"Because it seems that Cai Guiying is somehow related to all this."

He quickly gave his account of the conversation he and Ai had with the elderly woman at the carnival. "I know you might feel this is stupid that we are relying on some cards. But it turned out to match our circumstances very well and the fact that her brother, Cai Lingyun, worked for me as a sort of my butler shortly after I was thrown out."

Jin blinked. "That man who tried those stupid things in Shanghai?"

"Yup."

"He worked for you?"

"Yes," he quickly told him about how he met him.

"So, you see. I don't think this is a coincidence that her brother worked for me. Ai also told me that he was never bad financially or lost his job, that he would have to work as a butler for anybody. The thing is, this all happened after Shui's birthday. Or somewhere around that. I thought you might know something."

Jin was silent for a long time as he fixed his gaze at him. Listening to all the accounts, he seemed to be thinking hard about something.

"You say you didn't know Cai Guiying, but how is that possible?"

"What do you mean? I never met her."

"How? She was right there at Shui's birthday party."

Jun stared at him hard. "Sorry, what?"

"Cai Guiying. She was at Shui's birthday party."

It was as if thunder struck him hard. It came so direct that even Jun wasn't prepared to hear this.

"She was at Shui's birthday party!? Who invited her?"

"Shui herself. Who else? It was her birthday. She was the one who invited everyone who was supposed to be there."

This made his jaw drop even further. "Shui...knew her?"

He tilted his head, trying to remember the birthday night in more detail in his mind. "Yes. I had seen Shui and her together from a distance before the cake cutting. Shui seemed to be thrilled to meet her and so was she. In fact, before Shui met you and you proposed to her, she said to me that she wanted to introduce you to somebody. I am sure it was Cai Guiying. But I don't know how or where they met."

Jun stiffened.

Introducing Cai Guiying to me?

Not even in his dreams did he think that Guiying was related to him through Shui.

"Did Shui not say anything more about her?"

"Nothing really. The only thing I remember is that before her birthday, she told me that there was somebody else who she was going to invite. A man. She didn't say much about him as per his wishes and would reveal about him after she met him. But I didn't see her meeting any strange man in the party who I didn't recognize."

​ Jun widened his eyes. "Could she be talking about...Cai Lingyun?"

Jin was about to agree when he stopped suddenly, recalling a certain memory. "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"In Shanghai," Jin looked in a trance, "When she stopped me from beating up Cai Lingyun, she didn't recognize him. But she said that she came to Shanghai to meet a man. Something about an online friend and a chat."

Online chat? Wait, is he talking about...

"Which reminds me. Weren't you and Shui part of some forum? Reading Point, right?"

He stiffened. "Yeah. This means that either Cai Guiying or Cai Lingyun or both are in Reading Point too..."

Jin frowned, now increasingly finding these coincidences bizarre too. "But if the man she was supposed to meet was Cai Lingyun, then how did she not recognize him? She came to Shanghai precisely to meet him."

Which suddenly gave Jun the flash of conversation in his mind he had with Shui when they were stuck in the elevator.

'How are you in Shanghai?'

'I...Actually, Warlord and some other members from Reading Point invited me here.'

'Warlord? That goofy guy? He is here?'

'Yeah. He insisted that I come with you. In one previous chat, I told him that you and I were friends, so he was excited to meet you too.'

Jun slowly widened his eyes. "Warlord..."

"Who?"

Jun snapped out of his daze. "Warlord. He is one of the members of Reading Point. In the elevator, Shui said that...Warlord insisted that she come to Shanghai. He was excited to meet me too because I am her friend."

Jin rapidly blinked. "Hold on. This doesn't make sense. If he wanted to meet you, then why would he humiliate you like that in front of everyone? He cannot be Warlord."

His brows tightened further. "Maybe by that point, he didn't know who I was from Reading Point. But even later..."

"He wasn't really amiable towards you. Shui should have met him by some point, but she didn't. She didn't even look all familiar with him."

"Cai Lingyun doesn't really seem to fit Warlord. So then...is Cai Guiying Warlord? But why will she assume a male identity..." he was mumbling to himself.

Jun slowly tilted his head. "You said...you didn't see the strange man in her birthday party Shui had invited. But if she was talking about Warlord and Warlord is Cai Guiying, then it makes sense, right? She cannot meet a man in the party when that person was actually a woman."