107: Chapter 107 A New Child King Arrives at the Orphanage
The operating room lights had been on for four hours.
Li Li sat on the plastic chair in the hallway, his legs stretched out straight, his heels resting on the chair opposite him.
Jiang Rumu's wheelchair was parked to his left, her hands resting on her knees.
She tilted her head to glance at his left wrist; it had actually stopped shaking.
At the three-hour mark, Li Li stood up to get some water.
He walked to the water dispenser, holding a paper cup in his hand, and pressed the hot water button.
The water didn't fill the cup, and he let go.
He pressed it again, then let go.
The water level in the paper cup stopped at one-third full.
Jiang Rumu watched from behind, not calling out to him.
It was the first time she had seen this man lost in thought.
A man who couldn't be rattled by rocket fire was now reduced to a fool repeatedly pressing a water dispenser button because of a stomach cancer surgery.
Four hours and seventeen minutes.
The door to the operating room pushed open from the inside. The lead surgeon took off his mask.
"Family members?"
Li Li covered the distance in two strides, splashing half the water from the paper cup onto the floor.
"The surgery was very successful. The tumor was completely removed, and the lymph node dissection was performed as well. With subsequent chemotherapy and targeted therapy, the five-year survival rate is very high."
The doctor added another sentence.
"Targeted drugs are quite expensive—"
"How much money?"
"One course of treatment is approximately—"
"Whatever the cost, it doesn't matter."
The doctor glanced at him, nodded, and turned back into the operating room.
Li Li stood where he was, looking down at the half-cup of water in his hand, then downed it in one go and tossed the cup into a trash can three meters away.
He turned around to find Jiang Rumu staring at him from her wheelchair.
"What are you looking at?"
"Watching you finally act like a normal person."
Li Li paused for a beat.
"I've always been a normal person."
"A normal person doesn't blink at rocket fire, but presses a hot water button four times—you call that normal?"
He didn't take the bait and walked over to push her wheelchair toward the patient ward.
"Enough nonsense, let's go see your aunt."
The wheelchair rolled over the hallway tiles with a steady sound.
Jiang Rumu leaned back in her chair, looked up at the fluorescent light on the ceiling, her mouth moved, but she held back what she was going to say.
---
Zhang Guifang was transferred from the ICU back to a regular ward and could drink half a bowl of millet porridge while propped up against the headboard.
Li Li contacted a nursing service agency at West China Hospital, signed a three-month long-term nursing contract, finalized the chemotherapy plan, and the first payment for the targeted drugs was deducted from his card.
His balance dropped once more.
He was poor.
But this was the most satisfying money he had spent since he transmigrated.
Teacher Wang wanted to stay and provide care, but he insisted she go back to Mount Qingcheng.
"There are over three hundred children in the orphanage waiting for you, Teacher Wang, don't try to steal my job."
Teacher Wang hugged her ledger, her eyes red as she boarded the bullet train.
After arranging everything, Li Li clapped his hands at the door of the ward.
"Alright, everything is stable here."
He turned to look at Jiang Rumu.
"When is your flight?"
Jiang Rumu stood in the hallway leaning on her crutches, with Lu Cheng supporting her from behind.
"Four o'clock in the afternoon."
Li Li took out his phone to check the time. It was eleven in the morning.
"Still early." He tucked his phone back into his pocket, the words slipping out before he could think. "Do you want to go see the orphanage?"
He paused even after saying it.
What kind of invitation was this? Bringing his contract-based romantic partner home to meet his younger brothers and sisters?
Jiang Rumu also paused for a beat.
Then she tilted her head and pointed to her leg wrapped in gauze.
"Does your orphanage have wheelchair-accessible ramps?"
"Yes, we have quite a few children with disabilities."
"That works."
Lu Cheng grew anxious behind her. "Sister Mu, the four o'clock flight—"
Jiang Rumu didn't even turn her head.
"Xiao Lu, you fly back first. Find three independent third-party financial auditing firms and conduct a self-audit of my income and tax records at Company for the past five years. Don't alert Company while you're doing it, keep it quiet."
Lu Cheng opened her mouth, then took out her phone to start taking notes.
"Then, then Sister Mu, you staying in Mount Qingcheng alone..."
Jiang Rumu took two steps forward on her crutches and tapped Li Li's calf with the rubber tip.
"Isn't there a free bodyguard right here?"
Li Li looked down at the spot where she had tapped him.
"Bodyguards charge a fee."
"Put it on my tab."
---
Lu Cheng flew back to the capital that day.
Jiang Rumu had originally planned to stay for a day or two, just to see the orphanage, and then leave.
But as soon as she entered the courtyard, three hundred and fifty children swarmed her.
"A super pretty big sister just arrived!"
"Is she Brother Li Li's—"
"Whose what?" Li Li stood at the entrance of the cafeteria, holding a rice scoop.
The fourth boy in the third row swallowed the words on the tip of his tongue, his face turning bright red.
"His, his, his friend! Just a friend!"
Fine, not bad survival instincts.
Jiang Rumu was surrounded by a group of children as she was wheeled around the yard—forced into the wheelchair by Li Li—with seven or eight little girls gathered around her.
A little girl with a high ponytail tugged on her sleeve.
"Sister, can you teach us how to draw?"
Jiang Rumu had majored in Art and Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Teaching children to draw was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
"Sure, what should we draw?"
"Draw a house! A big, big house!"
That afternoon, the long tables in the cafeteria were covered with A4 paper and crayons.
Jiang Rumu sat in the middle, three children on her left drawing suns, two on her right drawing clouds, and a chubby boy opposite her drew an unidentifiable lump on his paper and held it up.
"Sister, look! This is Mount Qingcheng!"
It looked like a lump of green broccoli.
"...Hmm, that's drawn very well."
Her facial expression didn't crack, but Li Li noticed the muscles in her face twitch from the side.
One day, two days, three days.
Jiang Rumu didn't leave. Xiao Lu started by calling to ask, but eventually gave up.
Confirmed love-struck.
The teachers at the orphanage cleared out a former teacher's dormitory for her to stay in. It was a single room with a private bathroom. The conditions couldn't compare to a five-star hotel, but it was clean.
She bought a set of bedding, several potted plants, and a small rug online, tidying up the small room with cement walls until it was neat and comfortable.
On the fourth day, she asked Teacher Wang to make a list—what the children lacked, what the teachers lacked.
The list sent to her phone was three full pages long.
Teacher Wang was always an honest person; they really were lacking everything.
There weren't enough cotton coats, two projectors were broken, the basketball hoop was rusted through, the baby formula in the nursery department was running low, and the books in the library were donations from five years ago.
After reading it, Jiang Rumu spent twenty minutes on the phone.
The next day, three trucks pulled up to the main gate.
Two hundred cotton coats, three projectors, two sets of basketball hoops, forty cases of baby formula, and six large boxes filled with picture books, textbooks, and storybooks.
The reaction of the children in the yard when they saw the trucks was like it was the Chinese New Year.
Li Li stood at the window on the second floor of the main building looking down, biting on his pen cap.
This woman's way of spending money was much more generous than his.
---
A week later, the executive team from Jumeirah Hotel Group arrived at Mount Qingcheng.
There were three of them, two men and one woman. The leader was an Arab Senior Vice President who spoke entirely in English.
Li Li spread out the site map, guest room floor plans, and profit-sharing proposals in the conference room. He opened with Arabic, then switched to English to go through the requirements point by point.
The Jumeirah team was a bit bewildered by the young man in a worn-out tank top switching languages, but they quickly got down to business.
When they reached the discussion on the hotel's stylistic positioning, they got stuck.
Li Li's aesthetic system for high-end resort hotels was equivalent to someone who had never eaten French cuisine trying to discuss the texture of foie gras—his reserves were zero.
In both of his lives, the best hotel he had ever known was the Marriott in Shanghai where he went for meetings; he truly had no concept of resort hotels.
Just as he was preparing to bite the bullet and keep making things up, a wheelchair rolled into the conference room.
Jiang Rumu pushed the wheels with one hand and held a stack of printed documents in the other.
"Apologies, I've been listening in for a while." She nodded to the Vice President, her English switching naturally. "You were just saying that the cultural integration plan for Mount Qingcheng hasn't been finalized?"
The Vice President glanced at Li Li.
Li Li leaned back in his chair and made a gesture of "please."
Jiang Rumu distributed the documents.
The fusion of Taoist elements with modern minimalist design.
The application of the Mount Qingcheng bamboo forest, mist, and crane-call color schemes.
The ratio of negative space in the interior decor of the guest rooms.
The circulation paths in the public areas—guiding the visual focus of tourists from the lobby to the natural scenery of the back mountain.
Her four years at the Central Academy of Fine Arts hadn't been a waste.
The Vice President finished flipping through the pages, looked at Jiang Rumu for three seconds, then turned to Li Li and said something in Arabic.
"Your partner is more professional than you."
"Much more professional."
Li Li bit his pen cap, not refuting it.
It was the truth.
He was responsible for acting as the client to propose requirements, Jiang Rumu was responsible for acting as the contractor to create the plan, and Jumeirah was responsible for footing the bill.
Perfect division of labor.
---
Days went by fast.
Both of them had disappeared from the internet. TikTok stopped updating, Weibo stopped updating, no livestreams, no status updates.
The teachers at the orphanage were surprisingly taciturn; no one had posted any information about Jiang Rumu on social media.
The children, however, were bragging to their classmates at school— "We have a big celebrity living in our orphanage!"
No one believed them.
A big celebrity in an orphanage at the foot of Mount Qingcheng? Yeah, right.
Jiang Rumu's fans were going crazy, begging for updates in the super-topic every day.
She contacted her fan club leader and only posted one message: "I am doing well, I am busy with my own affairs, thank you all on my behalf."
The fans cried for a bit, then dispersed.
---
A month later.
Zhang Guifang was discharged.
The first course of chemotherapy had ended, and all her indicators were stable.
Li Li bought a commercial van as a public vehicle for the orphanage, drove to West China Hospital to pick her up, and brought Mother Zhang back to the orphanage.
Three hundred and fifty children stood in two rows at the main gate, holding up the drawings they had made—suns, houses, flowers, Mount Qingcheng, and even that lump of green broccoli.
Zhang Guifang got out of the car and stood at the gate, seeing this scene.
She didn't cry.
After walking three steps, she stopped and held onto the door frame for half a minute to steady herself.
Li Li reached out to support her.
Zhang Guifang swatted his hand away.
"No need, I can walk myself."
Step by step, she walked very steadily.
In the courtyard, Jiang Rumu stood behind the children—her leg was already healed, and the crutches and wheelchair had been returned—holding Jiajia, with the little girl with the high ponytail riding on her shoulders.
Zhang Guifang saw her and paused in her steps.
A month ago, this girl had come to the ward to see her on crutches.
A month later, this girl had taken root here.
Zhang Guifang looked back at Li Li.
Li Li rubbed his nose.
Zhang Guifang didn't speak, entered the courtyard, told the children to disperse and go to class, and then took Jiang Rumu's hand into the bedroom.
The two women stayed in the room for forty minutes.
Li Li stood outside the kitchen door, pricking up his ears.
He only heard laughter. Uninterrupted laughter.
He was relieved—but also not relieved.
When two women shut themselves behind closed doors and laughed like that, it was highly likely not a good thing.
---
Returning to his desk, just as he spread out the latest version of the guest room blueprints from Jumeirah, his phone vibrated.
Caller ID: Director Pei Zhao.
The producer at ByteDance, the general director of the two variety shows, "Brave Blue Friends" and "Busy Roommates".
It was also his only current channel for making money.
He pressed answer.
"Li Li, long time no see." Pei Zhao's voice was filled with professional warmth. "Had enough rest?"
"Just about."
"Three days from now, at the Luohu Fire Brigade in Pengcheng, "Brave Blue Friends" officially starts filming. I've sent your flight ticket and itinerary to your WeChat."
He paused.
"The guest list is attached as well. Call me after you've read it."
The call disconnected.
A PDF popped up on WeChat.
Li Li tapped it open and scrolled down with his finger.
First line: Gu Zeyan.
An acquaintance, a pretentious idol.
Second line: Shen Yu.
Also an acquaintance, the little brother who wets the bed.
Third line—
Qi Wanyin?
His finger stopped on the screen.
People from Company being inserted into a ByteDance variety show he was in was very normal.
Why was this delicate woman Qi Wanyin coming to this show?
My goodness, an artsy-fartsy female singer.
Is she crazy?