Chapter 567: Boarding Your Pirate Ship

Chapter 567 -333: Boarding Your Pirate Ship

Outside the cabin, waves rolled one after another under the night sky.

Inside the cabin, An Yunzhi rested against the glass window, gazing out at the pitch-black night, a sense of ineffable bewilderment washing over her.

Pleasure mingled with pain, as if she had just downed a jar of potent liquor. All the memories of the past, all her recent frustrations—it felt as though everything had come pouring out at once.

‘This isn’t how I imagined it would be.’

‘I’ve never even been in a real relationship my whole life.’

The reason was simple.

She had never found any of the age-appropriate young men around her to be worthy of a second glance.

From middle school onward, there had been an endless stream of boys confessing their feelings for her. Over the years, there had to have been at least a hundred. Some of them were exceptional, and some were truly sincere. But most of them were only interested in what she represented.

And once she got to college, it happened even more often.

A young woman possessing both beauty and a prominent family background was a true princess, blessed with the greatest fortune.

Until… the edifice crumbled.

And then, all those who had once professed their sincere and ardent affection for her vanished one by one, like smoke in the wind.

It was like waking from a beautiful dream.

And now…

‘To be honest,’ she thought, ‘I’ve always seen Lin Chu as nothing more than a… scoundrel.’

‘Businessmen aren’t held in high regard to begin with. He might have a bit of money, but that means nothing.’

‘On top of that, he’s sleazy, unfaithful, and a total scumbag. And his business ventures are nothing special either.’

‘But times have changed, and now, I’ve actually sunk to this level.’

Her mind drifted, and a historical anecdote quietly surfaced: the story of Little Empress Zhou. According to unofficial histories, Emperor Taizong of Song, Zhao Guangyi, once forced himself upon Little Empress Zhou. Afterward, she would return to her own palace, weep bitterly, and curse her husband, the deposed emperor Li Yu, so loudly that her cries could be heard outside.

But the sensations in her own body forcefully dragged her thoughts back to the present.

The waves crashed rhythmically.

Until the storm subsided.

His animalistic passion receded like the tide, and Lin Chu gradually calmed down. He sat on the sofa, lit a cigarette, and gently draped a bathrobe over her.

Exhaling a long plume of smoke, his eyes met hers for a fleeting moment. An Yunzhi’s face flushed slightly, and she instinctively averted her gaze.

Dried tear tracks still marked the corners of her eyes, yet her face was flushed, as delicate as a begonia after the rain.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

She said, a hint of exhaustion in her voice, and walked barefoot with quick steps toward the bathroom.

Watching her graceful figure retreat, Lin Chu smiled faintly. He poured a glass of liquor and downed the fiery liquid in one gulp, a feeling of deep satisfaction blooming in his chest. His eyes gazed absently out the window, where the fog of her breath had condensed into tiny droplets on the glass.

‘Now this is what life is all about!’

‘Enjoy life to the fullest when you’re on top, and when you’re down… well, you should enjoy it even more!’

Tonight, he had finally fulfilled a small “fixation” of his—one that had taken root back at the golf course.

‘In the end, no regrets were left behind.’

‘When it comes to this sort of thing, you have to hand it to the literati, with their sayings like, “To die amidst the peonies makes even a ghost’s existence worthwhile.”‘

‘And as for me, a businessman, it’s only normal for my moral standards to be a little lower than a scholar’s, right?’

Shaking his head with another smile, Lin Chu stood up and followed her into the bathroom.

…

“So, what exactly is your situation? How did you end up in the news like that?”

The night had grown deep, the time for quiet, late-night conversations. An Yunzhi asked softly, her eyes filled with a complex mix of emotions.

Although her ingrained way of thinking still made her feel a sense of grievance, for the most part, she had resigned herself to it.

‘In the great torrent of this era, I’m just a speck of dust, too.’

‘I never used to think so.’

‘But now, I am.’

Lin Chu glanced at her, shaking his head with a small smile. “I was set up. There was no other way out. I had to rely on the Metarules—on brute force.”

“But now, for me, it’s actually a relief. It’s like a weight has been lifted. I don’t care about anything anymore.”

An Yunzhi’s brow furrowed slightly. “Set up by who?”

This sort of thing was quite common for domestic businessmen trying to expand internationally; she had heard plenty of stories.

But judging by Lin Chu’s current state, he seemed to be handling it well.

“Have you heard of him? Liszt.”

At the mention of that name, An Yunzhi’s eyes widened slightly. Her expression suddenly turned a bit strange as she gave a slight nod.

“Hm?”

“You’ve heard of him?”

She nodded again. “Yes. He’s done quite a few things in the past. Back in the eighties, he was in the country adopting many orphans. The official procedures for that sort of thing weren’t fully established back then, but he went through all the proper channels. That route was eventually closed off.”

“He also recruited a lot of people from within the country, all of them related to traditional culture. At first, everyone thought he was planning to make a push into the world of collectibles, but later they realized something was off. It seemed like he was getting into things like traditional Chinese medicine, traditional martial arts, and metaphysics—all that mystical stuff.”

“I heard my elders talking about it. The authorities had taken notice of him before, but didn’t consider him a major concern. His base of operations is what’s really interesting, though. It’s in the Solomon Islands, an island nation with a considerable amount of land and territorial waters. He built a massive underground facility there. As for what’s actually inside, that’s not clear.”

Hm?

Hearing this, Lin Chu looked at her with surprise, a strange feeling stirring within him.

‘A starved camel is still bigger than a horse,’ he thought. The An Family had indeed fallen, but the amount of confidential information they must have possessed about the upper echelons back in their prime had to be substantial.

Lin Chu suddenly realized something. This, perhaps, was her greatest value.

“Tell me more. Is there anything else?”

Lin Chu watched her with a leisurely air, his eyes filled with interest.

An Yunzhi licked her lips. “Um… he’s supposedly an anarchist and a pacifist, something of a visionary madman like Musk. But the fields he researches are even less grounded in reality.”