Chapter 2920 — A Disciple of the Dark Night Palace; And Liu Tianli Picked Up a Cigarette
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Liu Tianli recoiled as though a scorpion had stung him. In a panic he flung the cigarette to the floor and stamped it out, as if facing a mortal foe.
"I've been played for a fool—played for a fool!" Liu Tianli shook his hand and went back to turning the whole affair over in his mind. How had he suddenly lost his wits like that? How could he have believed what President Lang told him before? Why had he smoked his cigarette at all? And never mind smoking it—how had he failed to notice there was something wrong with the thing?
He thought and thought, and could make no sense of it. In the end, when all was said and done, Liu Tianli concluded that he had simply been too desperate to free the Liu family from Wei Zhao's shadow, too eager to carve out a way forward for the family on his own.
And that was, in fact, the truth of it. Had Liu Tianli harbored no selfish desire, he would never have gone into the cigarette business with Xiao Chunjie in the first place. It was his greed, and his greed alone, that gave the hypnotist his opening.
Merchants chase profit, and Gu Pengzhan's being cheated was at least forgivable—after all, the Gu Group was a diversified conglomerate, and within it Gu Pengzhan answered to no one but himself. His greed had simply been seized upon by the hypnotist, who had found his way in.
But there was no excusing Liu Tianli's deception. At present, every last one of the Liu family's ventures existed for one purpose: to support Wei Zhao's Grand Physician Pharmaceuticals. That was the course Old Master Liu Zhenhu and Liu Jinghan had together charted for the family's future.
It was only that Liu Tianli could never shake the thought: they were leaning on Wei Zhao, and what if one day Wei Zhao fell? Would the Liu family not fall with him? And so his private misgivings got the better of him, and the hypnotist found his opening and put him under, clean and complete.
Otherwise—had the man harbored no selfish motives at all—no matter how formidable the hypnotist, a resolute will would never have fallen for the trick.
Liu Tianli clutched his head, sick at heart, and yet had no idea what to do. With a disaster this great now befalling the company, how was he supposed to tell his family? Above all, how was he supposed to face Wei Zhao?
Wei Zhao... would he kill him? What he had lost was not merely the Liu family's company, but the distributors' payments and the money meant to procure raw materials for Grand Physician Pharmaceuticals! With all that money gone, Grand Physician Pharmaceuticals would likely be plunged at once into a cash-flow crisis. Liu Tianli knew full well how grave the matter was—and the graver it was, the less he dared open his mouth and confess.
"Hah—" Liu Tianli picked up a cigarette at random, put it to his lips, and was just about to light it when it struck him—this was the drug! Yet even realizing what it was, he could not tear himself away. With trembling hands he meant to throw the cigarette from his mouth, but whether because the craving had come on or because, deep down, he still could not resist the cigarette's exquisite lure, he lit it after all, his hands shaking all the while...
He had to think of something now. He had smoked it, and smoked it was; once he had found a way out, it would be soon enough to quit. So Liu Tianli reasoned...
Only he could think of no way out at all. The smoke filled his mouth and brought an indescribable ease, an indescribable release, letting him forget his troubles for a time, forget this whole business...
Liu Tianli floated on air. In that moment, nothing else mattered—only the cigarette.