Chapter 743 - 257: Elope to the Qiao Family

Li Rui froze for a moment, then smiled. "Of course."

He had paid for the few pills Jie Jingchen gave him. They were incredibly expensive—over a thousand each. At first, he’d been skeptical of their efficacy, but after giving one to someone in need, he found the effects were simply astounding.

The listless Qin Mei instantly perked up, got to her feet, and ran upstairs.

"Jingchen, from the looks of it, I don’t think your wife needs to go to the hospital," Li Rui teased. One second she was deathly ill, the next she was full of life.

Jie Jingchen ignored Li Rui, his gaze fixed on the top of the stairs.

"Jingchen, will the Qiao Family be mass-producing this medicine?" Li Rui changed the subject. Xiangjiang had no shortage of wealthy people. If this medicine were mass-produced, the Qiao Family stood to make a huge fortune.

"No," Jie Jingchen said with certainty. The Qiao Family wouldn’t touch that kind of medicine. He only got involved because he didn’t want Qin Mei getting any funny ideas. Just as Qin Mei had said, rarity creates value. If the Qiao Family were to mass-produce it, the price would plummet.

Li Rui wasn’t exactly a saint, but compared to others, he was a safe choice. At the very least, he wouldn’t harm Qin Mei, which was why Jie Jingchen had introduced him to her.

The medicine Qin Mei refined was sold to Li Rui. As for how much Li Rui charged those rich playboys, that was his business.

Li Rui breathed a sigh of relief. It was good that the Qiao Family wouldn’t be mass-producing it.

"Jingchen, you have great taste. Your wife is very beautiful," Li Rui praised.

"Better taste than you." Jie Jingchen’s implication was clear: Li Rui’s wife wasn’t as beautiful as his.

Li Rui wasn’t bothered. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the more he looked at his own wife, the more he loved her. "Jingchen, how about I introduce my wife to yours? Maybe they’ll hit it off and become the kind of friends who can talk about anything."

"We’ll see," Jie Jingchen said, neither refusing nor agreeing.

"My wife is completely trustworthy." Li Rui was desperate for his wife to build a deep friendship with Jie Jingchen’s.

Jie Jingchen raised a thick eyebrow, a flicker of emotion in his amber eyes. His voice was as cold as ice. "Li Shuyu provoked my wife."

"Your wife didn’t get the short end of the stick." Li Rui thought of his niece’s miserable state. His older brother and sister-in-law treated her like the apple of their eye, yet when she was beaten by Jie Jingchen’s wife, they didn’t dare show up at his door. They could only suffer in silence.

Jie Jingchen was already married, but his niece still hadn’t given up. Even Sister Yan Qiu refused to acknowledge the childhood engagement, yet his brother’s family still wanted to use it to marry their niece to Jie Jingchen.

This was Xiangjiang, not Huaxia. With the Qiao Family’s power, it would be normal for Jie Jingchen to have three wives and four concubines.

He had overheard a few words of what Sister Yan Qiu said to his sister-in-law at the Li Family home. Sister Yan Qiu’s meaning was obvious, but his sister-in-law tried to use their friendship to pressure her. When Sister Yan Qiu didn’t yield, his sister-in-law compromised, suggesting Qin Mei could be the main wife and Shuyu the junior one. But Sister Yan Qiu still righteously refused. His sister-in-law was so furious she almost had a falling out with her.

"If my wife *had* gotten the short end of the stick, do you think your Li Family would still be so peaceful? Do you think Li Shuyu would have been able to return to the Li Family unscathed?" Jie Jingchen’s icy tone held unconcealed rage.

’Trying to frame Qin Mei for pushing the old nanny down the stairs... Never mind that Qin Mei didn’t do it—so what if she had?’

’Does Li Shuyu really think the Qiao Family is like her Li Family? That she could successfully sow discord with just a few words? Qin Mei was merciful. If it had been me, I would have crippled Li Shuyu on the spot.’

Li Rui, ever the pragmatist, was ready to throw his own family under the bus. "Jingchen, as long as you let my wife get close to yours, I can have my wife cut all ties with my niece."

"Cutting ties isn’t sincere enough." The anger in Jie Jingchen’s heart subsided a little.

Li Rui’s heart skipped a beat. He asked tentatively, "Then what would be sincere enough?"

"For example..." Jie Jingchen made a vicious gesture, drawing a finger across his throat.

Li Rui’s mouth twitched. He stopped pushing. "Forget it. My wife isn’t worthy of a deep friendship with yours."

Li Shuyu was his niece, after all, and the apple of his brother and sister-in-law’s eye. To sacrifice his niece just so his wife could get close to Jie Jingchen’s... forget his brother and sister-in-law never forgiving him, his own conscience wouldn’t be clear.

Li Rui was very clear-headed. Private matters were private, business was business, family was family, and friendship was friendship. He would never mix them up.

Hearing footsteps, the two men tacitly fell silent.

Qin Mei handed the medicine bottle to Li Rui. "Here."

Li Rui took it and examined the bottle, his heart sinking. It was just a standard-issue medicine bottle from a hospital, with the label torn off.

’This bottle is so perfunctory.’ Li Rui opened the cap, poured all the pills into his palm, lowered his head to smell them, and then began to count.