The Heart of a Smith

Chapter 2: The Naming

It was a Friday, so Li Yan had to go home for a family dinner. He brought the incident with Lu Shang up at the dinner table and as expected his dad did not reprimand him for his actions. Instead, his father praised him.

“When you do business with him, you have to be extra careful.” Li JinYao, Li Yan’s father reminded him.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Always think before I act. Right, you’ve said that so many times already.” Li Yan irritatedly grumbled.

“You damn kid. How dare you think I’m annoying?” Li JinYao said furiously, “Lu Shang’s father’s death had a lot to do with us. With how useless you are, I won’t be surprised if you were sold by Lu Shang one day.”

Li Yan hated feeling inferior, but seeing that his father was in a bad mood, he just replied, “Yes, I understand.”

Li JinYao had his son at an old age, so naturally he pampered him a lot. Li Yan was still very young and he was protected by everyone in the family. He never encountered any hardships in his career, neither had he ever lost to anyone. He was very proud and had no respect for others at all.

“Also, for that Sun Mao guy, watch him carefully, okay? Don’t let him get in our way.”

Li Yan said yes to his father’s warning but then he suddenly thought of something and asked, “Hey, wasn’t Sun Mao pretty great back in the day? How did he become like this?”

Li JinYao flipped the newspaper open and gave a weird scoff, “There are two things in this world that people should never do. One is drugs and the other one is gambling. Once you get into those things, even if you have a mountain of gold and silver, you’d eventually lose all of them. Sun Mao used to be really rich, but last year someone took him to Macau. After that, he barely spent a day back home. Who knows how much money he actually lost.”

“Who took him there?”

“Meng XinYou.”

If the wise and beautiful noblewomen on television were to become a real-life person, then it would be someone like Meng XinYou. Even if her intelligence was ignored, her family background was stunning enough. Her family had high military achievements for three generations straight; so high achieving that they could be listed in history books. Others were all high officials, such as her grandfather who was the chief of a major company. This woman knew a lot of people; she had all kinds of friends. It was quite natural that she was able to get Sun Mao to Macau, but there was one thing that not many people knew…… she was Lu Shang’s god sister.

Li Yan didn’t need a lot of brain cells to understand what role Lu Shang played in this whole incident. He couldn’t help but frustratingly curse in a low volume, “Fuck.”

It was nine in the morning when the returned loans arrived on time in the books. Lu Shang listened to Uncle Yuen’s report and nodded, “Send a letter to Mr. Sun, also pick up a present for Meng XinYou for me.”

Uncle Yuen replied yes and suddenly remembered something as he was about to leave. He turned back and said, “The kid you brought back yesterday, the doctors found drugs that would drive a person insane in his system. They cleaned all of them up and there are none left in the boy now. It seems like the Li family is really doing deals with prohibited drugs in the dark. Also, as you ordered, the doctor did a full body check-up on the boy. Here’s the report.”

Uncle Yuen handed the report to Lu Shang, “The doctors think that he must have been abused for a long period of time. There were a lot of wounds and scars on the boy; some new, some old. He is also malnourished; he most likely needs to stay in the hospital for a while.”

“Let him stay in the hospital.” Lu Shang took the report and put it aside, not looking at it. “Get a copy of the drug sample, then go find Dr. Ng in the west district to make an official record of his wounds. Remember to take pictures of all his wounds. Get the surveillance tapes in the car repair factory, exchange it for something different, and save a copy of the fight.”