"I'm more pleasing to the eye, like a living person." He tugged at his tie and simply unbuttoned the top two buttons: "Yes, I used the fleet to block the English Channel - because my girlfriend is in London, and I don't want her to be injured by stray bullets." The elders gasped one after another. The third elder stood up suddenly, and the clan token on his waist hit the edge of the table: "Nonsense! The clan fleet is used to protect the trade route, not a tool for you to talk about love!" "But the end of the trade route is a harbor where the family can eat in peace, isn't it?" Lin Aotian's voice suddenly became softer, and he took out his mother's sailing log. A dried freesia fell out between the yellowed pages. "My mother wrote in the log that her father opposed her marrying my father because he was afraid that 'a dragon would be played by shrimps when entering the shallows.'" He looked at the suddenly stiff back of the first elder, "but she would rather break the dragon's wings in exchange for an ordinary childhood for me. "
The clock in the meeting room struck twelve. Lin Aotian's phone vibrated again, this time it was Su Qing's voice: "The scallion pancakes are getting cold, don't fight with the old antiques!" Her voice had a coquettish ending, mixed with the smell of kitchen smoke, which suddenly relaxed the tense nerves. He suddenly stood up and grabbed his suit jacket: "Sorry, I have to go to an important appointment - as for the fleet," he shook the log, "when you finish reading my mother's nautical chart, you may understand that some "abuse" is to make the dragon scales shine forever."
The scallion oil aroma wafting from the kitchen of the old house hooked Lin Aotian's footsteps. Su Qing was tiptoeing to reach the chili sauce in the cupboard. Her coral fleece pajamas were a little short, revealing a faint scar on her ankle - that was left when she blocked a knife for him in the alley three years ago. He suddenly hugged her from behind, and the oil on his suit stained her apron.
"It's so dirty! " Su Qing smiled and struggled, but she stuffed a piece of freshly-made scallion pancake into his hand, "Try it, it's more delicious than the one you bought at the roadside stall that year."
Take the first bite, the crispy dough wrapped with hot chopped green onions made his tongue numb. He remembered that in college, in order to buy her scallion pancake, he lined up in the cold wind for half an hour, but was finally smashed to pieces by his second uncle's bodyguard. The temperature of his palm at this moment is exactly the same as the hand warmer she handed over that year.
"Accompany me to Zhou Group in the afternoon." He suddenly spoke, and the crumbs of the pancake fell on the front of his suit, "Zhou Mingxuan attended the board meeting for the first time after being released from prison. I'm afraid he will make a fool of himself again."
Su Qing turned around and turned off the gas stove. The eggs in the pot were sizzling with oil: "Didn't you say that businessmen should learn to leave a way out for their opponents?" She suddenly turned back, with a mischievous light in her eyes, "Or are you actually afraid that my old love with him will rekindle? "
Lin Aotian almost choked on the crumbs and coughed to retort: "I'm afraid he will blow up Zhou's conference room - have you forgotten the AK47 in the London warehouse?" Although he said so, he couldn't help but stare at the jade bracelet she put on her wrist again. The golden dragon pattern flowed in the morning light, just like the freesia hairpin swaying in her hair.
In the afternoon meeting room of Zhou Group, Zhou Mingxuan did not "disappoint" people. He walked into the meeting room in a flowered shirt and a pair of flip-flops. Amid the gasps of the elders, he slapped a document in front of Lin Aotian: "Patriarch Lin, I want to apply for the person in charge of the West Coast project. "
Lin Aotian scanned the crooked signature on the document and noticed that the Buddhist beads on his wrist had been replaced by an electronic watch with a photo of Su Qing in college on the dial. He suddenly chuckled and pushed over a "Pre-job Training Plan": "Go to Huading's grassroots for three months of rotation, and then we'll talk about it after you pass the test - but," he pointed at Zhou Mingxuan's flip-flops, "You are not allowed to wear this to work."
Zhou Mingxuan was about to explode when Su Qing pushed the door open with a document in her arms, holding a bag of milk tea in her hand: "I brought afternoon tea for everyone, pearl milk tea with three-tenths of sugar, Zhou Mingxuan, yours is bubble milk tea, less ice. " Her familiar tone made the elders look at each other in bewilderment, but reminded the two former rivals of the club gatherings in college, when they would fight for the last piece of cake.
As dusk drifted into the conference room, Lin Aotian looked at the hustle and bustle outside the window, and the logbook in his suit pocket hurt him. Su Qing suddenly came over and ran her fingertips across the wrinkles between his eyebrows: "Don't frown, Zhou Mingxuan just secretly said that your scallion pancake skills are better than mine."
He suddenly turned around and looked at her hair tips dyed red by the sunset: "Do you know why I insisted on retaining Zhou's independent finances today?" Without waiting for her answer, he took out a yellowed photo from his pocket, "This is the bloody handprint left by Uncle Zhou when he blocked the knife for me at the dock 20 years ago - some things are more important than financial statements. "
Su Qing's fingers gently stroked the bloody marks on the photo, and suddenly remembered the words in her mother's diary: "The reverse scale of the dragon is not wealth or power, but the softness hidden in the heart. " She looked up at Lin Aotian and found that his suit was still stained with biscuit crumbs from lunch, but she felt that he looked more like the real dragon guarding the world than ever before.
Late at night in the old house, Lin Aotian sat alone by the lotus pond in front of Long Yutang. The moonlight reflected on the water, stretching his shadow very long. Turning over his mother's logbook, the latest page had a line of small words added at some point: "Aotian, Su Qing's wrist injury, remember to change the bandage for her every day." The handwriting was Su Qing's, crooked but warm.
The phone vibrated, and Chen Mo sent a message: "The Southeast Asian consortium suddenly canceled the cooperation, citing 'fear of the expansion of clan power'." He looked at the words on the screen and suddenly chuckled - it turned out that even if he left a way out everywhere, there would always be people who were afraid of the dragon's breath. His fingertips slid across the address book and stopped at the name of "Zhou Mingxuan". After hesitating for a moment, he sent a message: "Accompany me to Malacca tomorrow to see the cargo ship that your father almost sank that year. "
The night breeze from the lotus pond brought the fragrance of water lilies, mixed with the aftertaste of scallion pancakes from the distant kitchen. Lin Aotian touched the fragment of the jade bracelet in his pocket and suddenly realized that the so-called dragon walking in the shallows was never a humiliating hibernation, but letting the scales get close to the fireworks of the world, and letting the dragon's roar carry the sound of firewood, rice, oil and salt. When the first ray of sunlight in the morning shone on the plaque of Long Yutang, he finally knew that what he had to protect was never the cold family tree, but the girl who would fry scallion pancakes for him and leave oil stars on his suit, and the imperfect but warm road they walked together.