Chapter 40

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Lift‌ ‌Not‌ ‌The‌ ‌Mysterious‌ ‌Veil‌ ‌(2)‌

The next morning, they sat down as a family for breakfast. Jiang Yu lightly dabbed her mouth with a napkin and asked her daughter, “What time have you and Huo Cheng arranged to meet?”

“Eight-thirty. He’s coming to pick me up,” Shen Wanying replied.

The corners of Shen Qian’s brows twitched involuntarily. He looked at his daughter and stated, “In which case, I’ll walk you out later.”

Shen Wanying: “Okay.”

At eight twenty-five, Huo Cheng sent her a message letting her know that he had arrived. After reading the text, she turned to her father. “Dad, Huo Cheng is outside.”

“All right.” Shen Qian rose from the sofa and followed his daughter out of the house.

When they came out, they saw the chauffeur had stopped along the road outside the house. Huo Cheng wasn’t sitting in the car but standing next to it, his posture ramrod straight. The last time Shen Qian had seen him, he had been but a fresh-faced seven-year-old boy. He was still a fresh-faced youth, but at seventeen, he could see that Huo Cheng had grown up considerably.

Shen Qian knew that Huo Cheng had always been more serious than his peers as if he had an old soul. Even so, he couldn’t help but feel as if the boy before him was far more mature than he remembered; he had the unparalleled composure one would expect from an elite business professional.

However, he expected nothing less from a child born to the Huo family.

“Hello, Uncle Shen.” Huo Cheng greeted respectfully when he saw the older man walk through the door after Shen Wanying. “The desserts you gave me the other day were really good, thank you.”

Shen Qian laughed and said, “Those were prepared by Jiang Yu. I was afraid you wouldn’t like them.”

“I really enjoyed them,” Huo Cheng said.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Shen Qian noted that although this boy looked a bit dull, he knew his way around people. “That was a little gift from us, to thank you for helping Wanying when you did.”

“I only did what was right.”

Shen Wanying waited for them to finish greeting each other, then said, “I’ll be leaving, then, Dad.”

“All right. You take care now.” Shen Qian didn’t insist on remaining outside in a barefaced show of paternal protectiveness and walked back into the house. Only when her father had left did Huo Cheng turn his attention to Shen Wanying.

She wasn’t wearing her uniform. Her choice of attire was a long, brick-red dress and a white sweater over it, with an exquisite retro brooch pinned to the chest. She wore her hair like she always did, in a half ponytail, only this time with an elegant flower attached to it.

“What is it?” Shen Wanying asked, looking at him.

He shook his head and opened the car door for her. “Let’s go.”

“Okay.”

She sat in the back seat, bag in hand. Huo Cheng waited until she had seated herself, then entered from the other side.

They drove towards the outskirts of the city. Shen Wanying was curious but kept her questions to herself. Huo Cheng had only said one sentence to her during the whole journey: “It’s a little far, we’ll take a little over an hour to get there.”

“Oh…!” That was indeed a bit far. “You’re not secretly thinking of selling me, are you?”

Huo Cheng chuckled and picked out a snack from one of the storage compartments for her. “I had Aunty help me prepare this last night. If you’re bored or get hungry, you can eat something to pass the time.”

She hadn’t expected him to be so meticulous and thoughtful as to prepare snacks for her. She didn’t usually have the chance to eat such things. “May I crack some melon seeds?”

“Mmhm.” Huo Cheng retrieved them for her, along with the small dustbin in the car.

“Thanks.” She opened the bag. This is really happening, I’m eating melon seeds in Huo Cheng’s family car!

She truly had no reservations around Huo Cheng now. Although a little disappointed in herself, she continued eating. Shen Wanying usually didn’t get to eat melon seeds; when it came to small tidbits and the kinds of things one indulged in over New Year’s, she wouldn’t dare eat them in the presence of her mother.

Watching her happily snacking, Huo Cheng couldn’t help but crack a small smile. It had been like this in his previous life after he had stumbled upon her sneaking instant noodles in the storeroom. She had also slowly opened up to him after the discovery.

She was probably under too much stress and had comfort foods that were incompatible with the elegance that she was supposed to have, such as instant noodles, melon seeds, and crayfish–specifically crayfish washed down with beer.

With the snacks, the long journey was made a lot shorter. After just over an hour, they reached a villa in the mountains.

“We’re here.” Huo Cheng got out of the car with Shen Wanying and looked over at the villa. “My father bought this villa a long time ago. When my mother took ill, she lived here for half a year to recuperate.”

She hesitated a little, looking around. They were nestled somewhere halfway up the mountain; the air was crisp, the scenery beautiful. It was pleasant and quiet, everything one would expect a place of healing to be.

“This is the secret base you were talking about?”

“Mmhm.” Huo Cheng nodded. “When Mom got sick, I was still in grade school. I couldn’t see her every day, but on the weekends I’d drive out here with my dad to visit her.”

The corners of Shen Wanying’s mouth twitched. She wanted to say, you must miss your mother very much, but the words just wouldn’t leave her mouth.

“Let’s go in.” He looked at her. “I may not have been here for a while, but the butler is still here to keep things in order, so it’s very clean.”

“Mm.” Shen Wanying nodded and followed him into the villa.

The butler had been informed that they were coming, and was already at the door to greet them. “Master Huo Cheng, welcome back.”

“Mm. This is my classmate, Shen Wanying.”

The butler looked at her, smilingly. “Hello, Miss Shen. Do come in.”

“Please excuse the intrusion.” Shen Wanying spoke as she followed Huo Cheng through the door.

“What would you both like to drink? We have red tea, milk, and orange juice,” the butler asked, standing aside.

Huo Cheng turned to Shen Wanying. “Are you thirsty?”

“I don’t need a drink right now, thank you,” she replied.

The butler then looked at Huo Cheng. Seeing as he didn’t need a drink either, he said, “If you both need anything, feel free to call on me anytime.”

“Mm.” Huo Cheng made an affirmative noise, gazing at Shen Wanying. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“Okay.”

The villa had an elevator, so Shen Wanying followed him in and up to a room on the third floor.

“This was where my mother used to stay.” He cast a glance around the room. “It looks exactly as I remember.”

It was a big room. Aside from the bed, there were several bookshelves and a desk. Three windows allowed light into the room, two of which faced the villa gardens; the scenery was gorgeous. Next to the windows were several easels set up as if in the past someone often stood there to paint. And on the walls below the windows, there, leaned a few oil paintings, carefully covered with a white cloth to protect them from dust.

Among the oil paintings, Shen Wanying noticed the painting of the orange orchard she had seen on the school trip. So Huo Cheng had had the painting delivered here.

“Every time I came here as a kid, I’d look for my mom here.” Huo Cheng walked to one of the bookshelves and studied the titles stacked on it. “Sometimes she’d read with me, sometimes she’d teach me oil painting.”

As he spoke, he picked a book out of the bookshelf. It was the same book he had been reading in the reading room- Maugham’s “The Painted Veil”*William Somerset Maugham was an English writer who wrote the novel The Painted Veil. (synopsis here) The novel’s title was inspired by a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, titled Lift Not The Painted Veil. The name of this chapter is a play on this, switching out Painted for Mysterious.. “I think this was a gift from my father to her. I saw it by her bedside a lot when I visited.”

He gently flipped open the cover of the book. Inside, on the title page, was written the words “Lift not this mysterious veil”.

Shen Wanying stood by the bookshelf, listening. Finally, she broke her silence, something her own mother said she should never do concerning Huo Cheng’s mother: “You said before, that your mother had recovered. How did she pass away?”

Huo Cheng pursed his lips lightly, returning the book to its place on the bookshelf. “My mother recuperated here for a year, slowly regaining her health. At the time, my father told me that once summer vacation started, she could come back to live with us. I was so happy that I’d get to see my mom every day again. But when summer vacation began, she suddenly met with a car crash before we could even go to pick her up.”

Shen Wanying was shocked. “A car crash? Was it an accident?”

“Mm.” Huo Cheng nodded, almost imperceptibly. “They said it was because she had just recovered, and was in no shape to be driving. She probably felt unwell halfway during the drive, and that’s what caused the accident.”

She said no more. Words fell flat in the face of that kind of revelation. He walked over to her, changing the subject to something more lighthearted. “Do you want to see the oil paintings I did back then?”

“Okay.” Her face broke into a smile.

The paintings done by Huo Cheng in his childhood were all kept with his mother’s belongings. When he asked the butler for them, the older man produced a cardboard box from the cabinet.

The box was full of art he had done as a child. When it came to painting, he didn’t have his mother’s talent, but what he lacked in ability he made up for with the rich imagination only a child had. His wild ideas, coupled with the texture of oil paint, made his work look fairly outstanding.

“This looks very Impressionist,” Shen Wanying teased.

Huo Cheng couldn’t help but laugh, reaching into the box to retrieve another painting. As he bent down to pick it up, he noticed something glinting. He shifted the painting on top curiously and discovered a lighter.

It was a perfectly ordinary lighter, the plastic kind you could buy at convenience stores and roadside booths. It looked to be quite old, bearing marks of years of use. He frowned and picked it up.

This wasn’t his father’s lighter. Sure, he hadn’t seen his father smoke much, but the lighter he carried around with him was expensive and branded. His mother didn’t smoke, so it definitely didn’t belong to her, either.

How had a cheap lighter like this ended up here?

He turned it over. There was a daisy printed on the back of it. He stared at the flower silently, reeling.

Once, in his previous lifetime, he had gone to visit his mother’s grave to pay respects on her death anniversary. There had been a bunch of daisies placed before her tombstone.

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T/N: Ooooooh the plot thickens!!! If you didn’t click on the link to the synopsis of The Painted Veil, you should have a look, it seems like it might be telling~ That being said, though, I’m reading this together with y’all, so I don’t know what happens next either. Am I onto something with the book, or am I thinking too much? Let me know what you think in the comments! And at the same time, let us know if you’d like exclusive access to advance chapters– we’re listening 👀

E/N: Lovely readers, you have no idea how many smiles were deleted up to this point~ If I took a shot every time SWY smiled, I’d have permanent alcohol poisoning XD Just assume that our little wifey always has a smile on her face. Like the Joker, only less homicidal……or maybe not >.>

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