Chapter 26 Incoming Call

[Hey, are you not going to do anything? She's definitely plotting something!]
"If she's so determined to bring herself to an end, you can't stop her even if you tried." Gu Xiqiao stuck one hand into her pocket while the other held the papers that she had rolled up, walking slowly and calmly as if she didn't care about what happened to the oil painting in the slightest.
Gu Xijin had used her paintings to become celebrated in the art scene in her past life, and damned if she let her do so again! If she did so…
Hm, a phoenix that had its feathers plucked out came to mind.
When she returned to the art studio, Gu Xijin had already left, leaving the art studio untouched as if no one had ever come in. Seeing this, Gu Xiqiao smirked and packed up her art equipment to leave, when her phone rang again, and it was Jiang Shuxuan this time.
"Brother Jiang?" Jiang Shuxuan hadn't come back to the mansion after a whole week, so he had probably encountered something difficult to solve.
Even the system couldn't scan who that person with a red danger level was, so they were hard to deal with and totally out of her depth. The only thing she could do was pray that Jiang Shuxuan could deal with it quickly and safely.
Meanwhile, Jiang Shuxuan had been talking and quickly guessed that the other zoned out again, seeing as she wasn't responding to his words at all. He was somewhat angry but wanted to laugh at the same time, and she was the only person that dared to space out while they were talking with him. He raised his voice, "Gu Xiqiao!"
Gu Xiqiao blinked and came back to reality. "…Say it again?"
Jiang Shuxuan rubbed his temples with a sigh, but his demeanor became noticeably warmer, and patiently repeated what he had just said—Drink the healthy soup that Mrs. Zhang brewed every day, not to eat less than one bowl of rice a day, and to drink milk every morning…
Even though his tone was strict, but his ink-black pupils were tinged with warmth and care.
As he was talking on the phone, another young man was looking at him as if he had seen a ghost.
This young man was a descendant of the servant line of the Jiang family and had grown up together with Jiang Shuxuan, so he knew the latter's cold personality better than anyone. Even Master Jiang, his father, couldn't do anything about this personality of his, and for Jiang Shuxuan to say something so motherly like "Eat on time", and this young man felt like he might be daydreaming.
Gu Xiqiao sounded like a girl's name, and added with the fact that Jiang Shuxuan had delayed his original plans to go back to Jing Capital to deal with matters for quite a few days, and that he even had plans to move his base of operations to N City…The young man felt like he had caught onto a dangerous thought.
As soon as he thought all this, however, Jiang Shuxuan hung up and swept his gaze over to the young man, and his back practically bent over from the pressure, making him put a brake on his thoughts immediately.
He was probably pushing his luck, gossiping about Jiang Shuxuan like that!
The next day, Gu Xiqiao went out with her maths papers in hand, first walking around at the center of the city, before taking out some money from the ATM.
She was invited for a meal at Xiao Yun's place, so she thought it was only polite to bring a gift for them, but what? She had gotten a basic idea of Xiao Yun's family conditions in the past few days. Even though the other girl looked cold and aloof, but she had surprisingly low reservations once you became acquainted with her, and Gu Xiqiao knew all about her family within a few conversations.
Her sister was in line to inherit the family business, and the other family member she had was her grandfather who was sickly and liked antiques. She didn't bring up her parents at all and figuring that it was a touchy topic for her, Gu Xiqiao didn't ask more about them.
After walking around the shopping center, Gu Xiqiao found nothing that she could gift them, so she decided to discuss it with the system spirit.
[Beauty Qiao, you can't be too stingy!] The system spirit replied while watching anime in the void.
"I'm not being stingy, I'm just putting in thought, what do you know?" As she was talking, the system issued a mission, and Gu Xiqiao quickly grabbed the shoulder of an honest-looking young man that was walking by, and silently took the wallet that was in his pocket and placed it back into its original owner's bag.
Her movements were so fast that even the young man couldn't see all of it happening properly, and he was so scared by Gu Xiqiao that he wanted to escape right away, but was held in place with an iron grip that was so tight that he couldn't even shake it off!
She had been practicing ancient martial arts for the past couple of days, and she was quite satisfied with her current level of strength, and she didn't have to spend points to buy Master status from the system shop for the time being.
She dragged the young man into a corner, and before she even started talking the young man started to tear up. "Miss, I didn't have a choice! I'll never do it ever again, so please let me off the hook!"
"Why are you crying already, are you even a man?" Gu Xiqiao leaned back on the wall, amused by his reaction.
The young man stopped crying immediately, looking up without a single tear on his face and asked carefully, "Are you… Forgiving me?"
"You look like you're just in high school, why are you pick-pocketing like this? If you got caught and sent to the police, it'll leave a bad record on your name! Those people that don't have any hands or feet can even sit on the ground with a bowl, and from the looks of it you're not disabled, so why don't you look for a decent job?"
"...I didn't want to do that either." The young man looked over to the opposite direction in shame.
This was the first time he did something like that and was caught in the act by a girl too, and if anyone knew this happened, he would be too embarrassed to live!
Gu Xiqiao stood to face him and grabbed at his collar, pulling him close. "I don't care, just tell me if you're going to do that sort of thing again?"
Her gaze was clear and her thin, red lips contrasted with her porcelain skin, and upon seeing this flawless face, his cheeks dusted with a blush and turned to look away. "I won't do it anymore…"
He didn't do this sort of thing for a living anyway.
Gu Xiqiao let him go in satisfaction, before taking out the money from her backpack and giving it to him. "This world isn't all that bad…Find a good job and be a decent person in the future, alright?"
That young man was stunned, holding the money in his hands dumbly before he grabbed onto Gu Xiqiao's sleeve a second later. "…Number."
Gu Xiqiao wanted to kick him away, but upon seeing his tearful eyes, she held her forehead with a sigh and signaled for him to speak.
"Uhm… Can I have your phone number to get in touch with you in the future?"
Gu Xiqiao smiled, pat her sleeves and turned around to continue shopping. The young man was about to say something, but when he looked up, he realized that she was gone.
He stood there for a long time, and if it weren't for the cash in his hands he would have thought that it was all a dream. Where… was she?
Gu Xiqiao who had already left the shopping center used three points to buy a ginseng root from the system as a gift for Xiao Yun's grandfather. What kind of ginseng root was it anyway, to cost her so many points?