A Star Reborn: The Queen’s Return

The conclusion of the article was that Li Lei did not love her as much as he appeared to.

Xia Ling sat down on the wooden floor, the setting sun shining through the window reflecting her dim mood. She closed the webpage as she rebutted the arguments it expounded in her heart. No… that wasn’t right… Li Lei loved her dearly, more than anybody else in the world. This emergency incident was just an accident, and it was too sudden, so he merely did not think things through too thoroughly?

The doorbell rang.

She snapped herself back from her reverie and asked, “Who is it?”

“Hotel staff, delivering room service.” The voice outside the door replied.

She peered carefully through the peep-hole and saw that it was indeed a staff with room service. However, she said, “I didn’t call for room service.”

The hotel staff responded, “A Mr. Pei instructed us to send room service up and specially requested that I cut the apple horizontally, and for us to add walnuts to the vegetable salad. There’s also steak and shellfish that you like.”

These were to her tastes in her past life.

Xia Ling opened the door and the staff placed the tray of food on the table before leaving the room.

Xia Ling saw that there was a slip of paper by the plate on the tray. She could see the familiar scrawl with the writing: Don’t be afraid. I’m here.

This was signed off with a butterfly.

It was indeed that man. There was only one man in the world that would do this for her. She looked down at the table full of treats and suddenly felt that things weren’t so unbearable or cold anymore. She slowly finished all the delicious morsels on the plate.

Pei Ziheng was considerate. He knew that she didn’t want to see him and, hence, all he did in the next few days was to quietly instruct the hotel staff to send her three meals a day. He, on the other hand, never appeared in front of her.

Xia Ling would speak with Li Lei over the phone every day.

The phone connection where Li Lei was was bad, and their conversations were frequently interrupted after a hurried two sentences.

She could tell that the situation on his end wasn’t good, and his voice grew hoarser day by day. She was sensitive to sound, so there was no way for him to hide that fact from her.

However, he was oblivious to her worry and told her, “I’m very good. I have sufficient food and sleep every day. All I need to do is delegate the work to the people here to carry out.”

She would laugh in response without revealing his lie.

She would tell him, “I’m very good as well. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

Li Lei said, “Sorry for dragging you into the incident. It will get much better after a while after all the talk has blown over.”

She lowered her head thinking about all the curses directed at her over the past days. His nonchalant attitude towards all of it made her feel wronged all of a sudden. She quashed her unhappiness and replied, “Yes, I understand, I’m fine.”

Li Lei reminded her to take care of herself before hanging up.

He cocked his head as he stared out of the window of the helicopter to the endless forestland beneath him, his expression mildly depressed. The Li Family was in critical danger this time. Li Feng had overturned many key locations of important gangs in the world, offending all of them. His brother was a lunatic and was thrilled when he made enemies, not caring if they could get things under control.

He rubbed at his temples, feeling weary. When would he be able to clean up this huge mess and return to China?

Next to him, Su Tang was dressed in a spaghetti-strap top and denim shorts with a white scarf draped across her shoulders. She asked gently in concern, “Young Master, you’ve only had three to four hours of sleep over consecutive days. At this rate, your body won’t be able to take it. We’re still a distance away from our destination, why don’t you take a rest?”

However, Li Lei responded, “Give me the strategy defense map.”

He wanted to use the travel time to analyze the current situation for the Li Family, as well as for Xiao Ling.

Su Tang did not move. “Young Master, you must take care of your body…”

Li Lei glanced coldly at her, his gaze steely with unspoken authority.

Hence, Su Tang kept quiet and handed the canvas strategy defense map to him.

He was in a bad mood and, coupled with his lack of sleep, it wasn’t long before he was exasperated looking at that map. He shut the map with a “swoosh” and rubbed at his temples again.

Su Tang carefully said, “First Young Master is really troublesome.”

“I think Grandfather is also much cause for concern.” Li Lei laughed coldly. When he returned to the headquarters, he found out that the first time Grandfather called him back, nothing had happened at home. He had just used the ruse of “Li Feng has gotten into trouble again” to force him to leave Xiao Ling. Despicable.

When he found out about the lie, he wanted to return to China immediately but was stopped by Grandfather, who locked him up at home again. He found a way to escape and the boat had already left the docks when he received abrupt news that Li Feng had now really gotten into trouble again.

That lunatic brother said, “Didn’t you say that I’ve offended the world? Then, I’ll do just that! Xiao Lei, you can stay obediently in the headquarters to clean up after me. I, Li Feng, don’t take on false accusations! Hahahahahahaha…”

Old Master Li almost blew his top.

Li Lei was also furious. “Brother, I want to go back to helm Skyart. You can clean up after your own mess.”

“Really?” Li Feng laughed comically. “Then, you can just wait and see the Li Family get burnt to the ground… Pang!”

He laughed hysterically while leaving the room.

Li Lei wanted to just leave everything behind, but he couldn’t bring himself to. That lunatic brother had done just enough such that everyone needed to be present to solve the problem. If just one important person was away, they would truly be swallowed whole by the other gangs and disappear from the face of the Earth.

Li Feng’s bet was that Li Lei would stay out of responsibility.

As expected, he was right. Li Lei stayed to helm the fort at home.

As for Skyart Entertainment? He could only manage the matter from a distance.

Li Lei couldn’t bring himself to stare at the strategy defense map, thus, he rang Tan Ying instead. “How’s the situation in the mainland? Is Xiao Ling okay?” Even though Xiao Ling had said that she was fine over the phone, he could not set his heart at ease without confirming things with Tan Ying.

Tan Ying replied, “The situation in the mainland is stable. The police said that the de-worming incident is just an accident and, hence, the public’s outcry is slowly quietening down. However, there are still some random curses being hurled here and there. Nothing serious.”

“Is Xiao Ling alright?”

“There are still many fans supporting her, don’t worry.” Tan Ying skirted over the issue. In fact, the situation was much more serious than that. Xia Ling was in the center of all the flak from the netizens and couldn’t even leave the house. However, Boss was busy with matters in the headquarters, and Tan Ying didn’t want to burden him with these small matters. Moreover, he didn’t approve of Boss being together with Ye Xingling.

Ye Xingling was too innocent for him.

Yet, Li Lei didn’t think too much of it and thought that Xia Ling was indeed doing well. Hence, he didn’t take matters too much to heart.

The day for the second concert of Xia Ling’s world tour came along.

She was now in the best location in another city, and the location was large. Originally, before the de-worming incident was reported, her concert tickets were snapped up. However, after the incident, there were many fans requesting refunds, and the concert venue was only sparsely populated.

There were also many activists walking around nearby, holding all kinds of signs and chatting away.

The security guards could not keep all of them away.

Xia Ling did her best to ignore all of them as she got onstage and prepared to perform to her best of her abilities. Her aim was to ensure that the concert would run smoothly from start to finish.

However, an accident occurred mid-way through the concert.