“I know you plan to send those relatives home after breakfast. Do you think they will leave?” asked Ye Zhen after she had put Zhouzhou’s little scarf on him.

  “You heard?”


  “Of course. Why else would I make up an excuse to have them fetch you?” Ye Zhen sighed. “They are, after all, relatives from grandpa’s generation. I figured…… from this point forward……”


  Ye Zhen was short of calling them blood-sucking vampires.

  This group of people was able to leech off of the Lu family the entire time simply because they shared the same surname. Back when Old Master Lu was alive, they were able to take everything for granted without contributing anything. Perhaps, even Old Master Lu realized that Lu Beichuan would never have the patience to deal with these people, so he figured he would just give them a portion of the family assets and that would be that.

  Unfortunately, it was difficult for one’s nature to change. As the adage goes, when you help someone during their most difficult times, they will always be appreciative of that favor; if you give them too much help, they would become dependent and expectant of it. And withdrawing that help afterward will only bring about resentfulness. It was always easier going from rags to riches than the other way round. They would probably continue to try to leech off of Lu Beichuan.

  “You don’t need to worry about this. I will take care of it.”


  Zhouzhou enjoyed his porridge without a care but asked out of the blue, “Mommy, can I go look for Great-grandpa in a little bit?”


  Ye Zhen paused a little before she turned, fetched a tissue, and cleaned up some of the porridge that was on the corner of his mouth. “Great-Grandpa went to a very faraway place and Zhouzhou wouldn’t be able to see him recently. If Zhouzhou will be a good boy, Mommy will tell you where Great-Grandpa went, okay?”


  “Okay!”


  ***

  Lu Beichuan sent all the remaining relatives away that same day. Lu Shaoyan, too, left without a word. The immense old estate quieted down all of a sudden. It was so quiet that one could almost hear snow falling off the branches in the courtyard. Lu Beichuan packed and got ready to move back into the city after 7 days.

  Butler Lu became very dispirited since the passing of Old Master Lu and looked more and more so as time went on. He spent a lot of time in his room alone. Lu Beichuan wanted to ask Butler Lu to come with him so he could take care of him, yet Butler Lu rejected his offer adamantly and insisted on staying at the old mansion.

  Lu Beichuan did not insist on it. He merely told the servants at the ancestral home to contact him immediately if anything was to happen to Butler Lu.

  The New Year’s feel began fading away by the time they returned to the city. Everybody was returning to work at the beginning of the year and Ye Zhen, too, received notification on the start date of Qinhuai River the first day she returned to the office.

  It was scheduled for the end of April, two days before the long weekend in May.

  Many movies had chosen to launch over this 3-day weekend and wanting to get on the top of the box office was no small feat.

  Naturally, the quality of the movie mattered a lot. The movie itself was what would determine its box office standing.

  Ye Zhen had a long discussion with Direction Ning Yang and finally decided to launch at the end of April. Nevertheless, in less than a week, Ye Zhen found out online that the launch date of Shen Weiyin’s movie, The Ultimate Warfare, had been decided.

  On the same day as them.

  Ye Zhen had no idea whether it was a coincidence or intentional. Let it be the fame of the director, the cast, the production team, or the magnificent post-production, all of them were leaps and bounds ahead of Qinhuai River.

  The director of The Ultimate Warfare was asked about his thoughts on being launched the same day as Qinhuai River. He replied that he was pleased to see new directors joining the field and hoped that the young directors could remain neither arrogant nor frustrated and keep up with the good work.

  Many others did not have high hopes for Qinhuai River and many fans of the cast of The Ultimate Warfare felt that Qinhuai River launching on the same day as The Ultimate Warfare was very bad news and that Qinhuai River would do terribly on the box office end on launch day.