Chapter 160: I’ll Forgive You (2/2)

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. “…….”