Cinderella Innocent and Boss Charming - Chapter 140

Chapter 140 Let’s Go Climbing
At night, they stayed at S City’s most luxurious Golden Moon Hotel. President Gu felt sorry for his little girl that she suffered a few days. He tried his best to make up for her. After entering the room, he personally prepared Du Xiaoxian a tub of hot water for bathing, and he also dripped a few drops of essential oil for soothing the nerves into the water. Then he ordered someone to deliver a small plate of imported strawberries, and helped to turn on the TV for her. Du Xiaoxian soaked herself in the bathtub while watching TV and having the strawberries, feeling extremely cozy.

The strawberries were placed on a translucent ice tray. Each of them was in the same size and looked very tempting. Du Xiaoxian felt as if she had a stretchy stomach. When she came back from the restaurant, she shouted that she had eaten too much and could not even have a single grain of rice. However, when she saw the red strawberries now, she was mouthwatering again and immediately picked up one and threw it into her mouth. It was sweet and sour, which was an excellent fruit for digestion. Du Xiaoxian kept picking up one and throwing it into her mouth. When she remembered what she had said, she smiled at Gu Nianbin embarrassedly.

Now that the little girl was settled, Gu Nianbin went to the hall outside to make a phone call. Since he had coaxed his beloved little girl back, he naturally had to do something else next. After the phone call got through, however, it was beyond his expectations. Gu Nianbin frowned slightly. Who took action so fast? He had been staying with Du Xiaoxian closely and for 24 hours a day for the past two days. He had put everything aside. But before he could begin his plans, the Xia family had already suffered troubles from inside, revealing the sign of failure.

Gu Nianbin was not someone who would definitely seek revenge for the smallest grievance. But Xia Manyin had tried to harm Du Xiaoxian and stepped on his bottom line, so he had to take revenge. Xia Manyin was relying on the Xia family of S City. As long as he defeated her backer, he could easily take revenge on her. Her death was not the result he wanted. What he wanted was—she would beg him to kill her!

He wanted Xia Manyin to live in pain, to be tortured, and to remorse for her mistakes for the rest of her life!

After that incident, he immediately came up with a counterattack plan. But Du Xiaoxian disrupted his plan. Then, in just two or three days, the Xia family was already in trouble. All sorts of troubles emerged one after another from both inside and outside of the family. Anyone could take the opportunity to crack down on them. Although the Xia family was quite famous in S City, Xia Zude built up the family fortunes by speculation and the family did not have much business in industry. After a financial war or two, the family would inevitably come to a downfall. However, no one should be so bored that take out such a large sum of money to fight against the Xia family. Because although that might hurt the Xia family, it wouldn’t benefit the person behind the scenes. It wouldn’t hurt that person, and it wouldn’t do him any good, either. This person behind the scene was definitely not an ordinary person. Gu Nianbin thought about it over and over again and realized that there was only one person who could have such power. However, he did not understand why this person wanted to help him.

Since that was the case, there was no need for him to interfere. He didn’t want to disrupt the other party’s overall plan. However, he was faintly unhappy in his heart. Someone else had taken avenge for his woman, which made President Gu feel a little annoyed in his heart.

The next morning, the sky cleared up. After a few days of rain, it suddenly cleared up. The good weather made people in a good mood. Du Xiaoxian remembered that Gu Nianbin said he had something to do in S City, so she said, “Are you going out on business today? If so, I won’t go with you. I’ll just stay in the room and watch TV.”

Gu Nianbin stood by the window and looked up at the sky. Hearing this, he turned around and said smilingly, “Why do you want to stay in the room in such a good weather? Let’s hang out.”

His entire body was bathed in the sunshine, his hair glowing with a faint golden light. Gu Nianbin wore a sapphire blue sweater today. He looked exceptionally handsome against the blue sky and white clouds. Du Xiaoxian’s eyes shone as she looked at him, her heart filled with sweetness and pride. This outstanding man was hers!

She walked over and asked, “Didn’t you say you had some business to do?”

Gu Nianbin said casually, “It’s not something very important. So it doesn’t matter to do it or not.”

Standing by the window, Du Xiaoxian saw that the water stains in the middle of the road had been rolled over by the passing cars and turned white. The water stains were completely dry in the middle, but the edges were still wet, looking like a ribbon decorated with black edges. The morning breeze was like a child’s hand, gently brushing her face. Perhaps it was because she was standing in the sunshine, the breeze did not feel cold. There was a moist smell in the air, which soaked into her heart and made her feel more comfortable than usual.

Du Xiaoxian asked happily, “Then, where are we going? Shopping?”

Du Xiaoxian did not really like shopping, but as long as she was with Gu Nianbin, she would be happy to do anything.

Gu Nianbin put his arm on her shoulder and said in a rare light tone, “Let’s go climbing!” He sounded like a college student who had just graduated and looked very energetic. Du Xiaoxian’s eyes lit up and she looked at him. She was so happy that she almost jumped up, “Alright, alright! Let’s go climbing!”

The mountain Gu Nianbin took Du Xiaoxian to climb was not ordinary. It was located in the suburbs of S City and was called Tong Mountain. It was one of the four great Buddhist mountains in the country. Countless people went to Tong Mountain to worship gods and buddhas every day. Gu Nianbin’s mother, Fang Yaru, was a Buddhist. Normally, she would rarely leave the house, but she would come to Tong Mountain several times a year to burn incense to worship bodhisattvas, so as to show her devotion. Every year, on the night of the 4th of January of lunar calendar, the Gu family would all come out to stay on the mountain for one night. Then on the morning of January 5th, they would compete for the opportunity to burn the first incense stick that day, in order to pray for the safety and health of the entire family in the coming year. Tong Mountain was not only a Buddhist temple resort, but also had a beautiful scenery. Every winter when Gu Nianbin came to the mountain, he would find that the scenery was pleasant. He thought that the scenery should be better in Autumn, so he wanted to take Du Xiaoxian to have a look.

At first, Du Xiaoxian thought that Tong Mountain was like the Yuefeng Mountain in City G, and it would take only a day to go up and down the small mountain. After getting off the car and seeing the temples in all scales at the foot of the mountain, she realized that she was mistaken. In the square in front of the temples stood two enormous bronze tripods. The pilgrims were throwing incense paper money into the tripods. Through a row of holes in the upper part of the tripods, one could see the raging fire inside. The white smoke rose continuously and soared into the clouds. Presumably, the smoke could be seen from afar.

This was completely beyond Du Xiaoxian’s imagination. She listened to the voices of people from all over the country, as well as the shouts of street vendors in the distance. Such a lively and noisy scene made her a little confused for a moment. She didn’t even notice that Gu Nianbin had left. She saw pilgrims constantly coming out of the temples, each holding a handful of long and thick incenses, which then were inserted into the golden bronze furnace. Soon after, the furnace was filled with incenses, and some monks took out more than half of the incenses away, making room for later pilgrims to insert their incenses.

The pilgrims talked and laughed. When inserting the incenses, they looked very casual, not as solemn as Du Xiaoxian had imagined. At this time, Gu Nianbin walked over and held her hand, saying, “Come, let’s go up the mountain.”

Du Xiaoxian asked, “Shouldn’t we go in and burn an incense stick?”

“It’s already done,” Gu Nianbin said while pointing to the stall that sold incense sticks and candles in the distance. “Give them your name and pay some money, then they will have some special people to burn the incenses.”

Du Xiaoxian was shocked, “Is it alright to ask someone else to burn incenses for you? Would that work?”

Gu Nianbin laughed heartily and pulled the little girl to walk to the side of the square. “About the things of gods and buddhas, if you believe in them, they might work, if not, they wouldn’t work. If you want to burn incenses personally, let’s go to the top of the mountain to do it.”

When Du Xiaoxian saw him leading her to the direction of the car, she asked, “Aren’t we going to climb up the mountain? Why are you still driving?”

Gu Nianbin laughed again. He opened the car door, protected her head with his hand and let her in. Then, he also sat into the car and said, “It will take at least over half a day to climb up from the foot of the mountain. It would be dark by then.”

Du Xiaoxian was surprised, “This mountain is that tall?”

“It’s not very tall. It’s just big. The mountain road is long and tortuous. You can take a look around later when we go up. This area is covered in the mountain range of Tong Mountain, and the scenery is very beautiful.”

Du Xiaoxian nodded. She had grown up in the mountains and had seen many continuous peaks. However, she only walked around the back of the mountain near her home and sat down in front of her mother’s grave. She did not dare to go far. Now she came up the mountain in a car, and looking in all directions, she only saw continuous mountain peaks. Du Xiaoxian remembered a book she read when she was young, in which there was an ancient poem written by Su Shi: Written on the Wall at West Forest Temple. One of the lines was, why can’t I tell the true shape of Lu Mountain? Because I myself am in the mountain. She felt the same way now. Because she was in the mountain, she couldn’t tell the true shape of Tong Mountain. With quite a poetic feeling, she spoke out in a low voice, “Why can’t I tell the true shape of Tong Mountain? Because I myself am in the mountain.”

Gu Nianbin raised his eyebrows and smiled, “Oh, so you’re a poet? I didn’t see it before!”

Naturally, he was teasing her. But Du Xiaoxian thought he was serious and quickly explained, “No, no, this is a line from Su Shi’s poem Written on the Wall at West Forest Temple. I just changed Lu Mountain to Tong Mountain. I’m not a poet!”

Now Gu Nianbin was really surprised. Almost everyone knew about this line in the poem. Perhaps they also knew that it was written by Su Shi, but there weren’t many people who could tell the name of the poem. Even he didn’t remember it, but surprisingly Du Xiaoxian remembered it so clearly. So he said, “You have a good memory. You still remember the name of the poem.”

Du Xiaoxian said smilingly, “I didn’t spend much time studying, but that’s why I remember this only poem very clearly.”

When she mentioned study, Gu Nianbin remembered that Du Xiaoxian couldn’t go back to school. He believed that in these two or three days, Shao Boqing should have dealt with everything well on the Internet. However, there were truly many people who got to know about the matter. No matter how much he tried to clear Du Xiaoxian’s name, it would still be difficult to keep the public from talking. He couldn’t let Du Xiaoxian suffer any more harm, so he’d just not let her go back to school.

After thinking for a while, he said, “Xian’er, don’t you like drawing? I’ll send you to learn painting when we get back. Then you just need to focus on learning painting well and don’t go to school.”

Du Xiaoxian always obeyed what Gu Nianbin said and she nodded, “Okay, I’ll listen to you.”

Since the little girl was so obedient, Gu Nianbin couldn’t help but lower his head and kiss her on the face. He then raised his head, pointed outside the car window and quickly shouted, “Look!”

The winding mountain road wriggled all the way up to the top. Every time the car turned a corner, they could see large fields down the mountain. At this time of a year, the fields were all withered and yellow. Looking from afar, what lay before their eyes was a large area of square fields with footpaths crisscrossing each other. And from afar, it looked quite spectacular.

“Ah,” Du Xiaoxian said softly, “there’re so many fields! So beautiful!”

Du Xiaoxian looked down the mountain. Gu Nianbin looked at her. The little girl’s eyes lit up. Perhaps it was because of excitement, or because she was blown by the wind, her cheeks were slightly red, like the thin layer of redness on the surface of a juicy peach. Her long eyelashes trembled slightly like a butterfly, and she was so close. Gu Nianbin smelled a familiar aura which was lingering in his nose. It was like the fragrance of wild flowers with dew in the early morning air in the mountains. He buried his face in the little girl’s neck, took a breath almost greedily, and kissed her lightly.

Du Xiaoxian was looking out of the window. She felt itchy and giggled. She dodged around, laughing and playing with Gu Nianbin, leaving behind a series of silvery laughter on the mountain path…