Page 156
"Are your parents faculty members?" Qiu Lan asked curiously, frowning.
"Well, not my parents, but... just think of them as my aunt." Li Tao said, wiping the cold sweat from the tip of his nose.
"Send me your class schedule."
Li Tao wiped his hands with a towel, added Qiu Lan as his friend, and sent her the class schedule.
"Didn't you see that seven or eight classes this semester are club activities?" Qiu Lan looked at him with lowered eyebrows.
"Well, I haven't had a proper class yet, so I don't know what I'm doing during this time."
"From 12 to 2, and from 4 to 6, Monday to Friday, you have to stay in the flower shop," Qiu Lan said without question.
Li Tao rubbed his hands and said in embarrassment: "This time is a bit long. It will delay my work-study program. My family is poor~"
"The poor students at Luma University are all poor in qualifications." Qiu Lan exposed him without giving him any face.
"Indeed~ Then this can be considered as..."
"You want me to pay you points, right?"
"Oh, how can I do this? After all, the burning of this flower shop is closely related to me."
"Forget it then." Qiu Lan crossed her arms and pretended to leave. Li Tao certainly couldn't let this rich woman go.
"However, I think if I don't take the points, it will be bad if it gets out. People will think that Sister Qiu is forcing and exploiting me, a freshman..."
Qiu Lan looked him up and down, unable to understand why Su Xuefu would like this kind of guy.
"Then I'll give you 10,000 points a month. I'll come back occasionally, and you have to help me take care of the flowers and plants. If one dies, I'll cut off one of your fingers."
Li Tao's fingers were numb, but with these 10,000 points, he and Aunt Liu's life wouldn't be too miserable.
"make a deal!"
He checked his phone and it was already 12:10. He and A-Cha had agreed to meet at the Lotus Pond at 12:30.
Li Tao looked around and found that the house was much cleaner and as spacious as a bare house. It was just waiting for professional decorators and flowers to be brought in.
"Manager, I have something else to do, so I'll leave first?"
"The lotus pond is far from here. Your car is overturned near the medical school. How do you get there?"
"Yeah...wait, how did you know I was going to the lotus pond?"
Li Tao looked at Qiu Lan in horror. Could she also read minds?
"Get in, I'm on my way." Qiu Lan walked past Li Tao and got directly into the sea-blue sports car.
Li Tao frowned but still sat on it.
"Why do you know I'm going to the lotus pond?"
Ps: You can create a group. I always save my drafts and post them on schedule. If they are deleted by the system and affect the plot, it would be helpful if someone can remind me.
Chapter 159: Heavy Rain in Lotus Pond
After arriving at a marble-paved square, Qiu Lan slowly stopped the car.
Li Tao noticed from the corner of his eye that she not only pulled the handbrake, but also turned off the engine.
Is she getting off here too?
"What are you doing here?" Li Tao asked curiously.
Looking at the fountain at the entrance of the square, Qiu Lan was stunned and said, "No one is stopping by the pool to watch. It's a bit of a waste..."
Qiu Lan answered the question irrelevantly. Of course, Li Tao never thought that this woman would seriously answer his question from the beginning.
But as a gentleman, Li Tao continued her words politely: "It's too hot, and everyone is in class at this time. Although the design of this fountain is indeed beautiful..."
Li Tao said as he opened the car door and got out.
The weather was indeed very hot, and the scalding ground made him feel refreshed.
"I don't have to go to the flower shop at four o'clock this afternoon. After all, the decoration will definitely not be completed and it will only cause trouble if I go." Li Tao turned around and bent down, asking while hooking the car door with one hand and supporting the car frame with the other.
Qiu Lan glanced at him absentmindedly and said slowly, "You have to go today. I will be very busy in the next week and will not have time to watch over the flower shop. In order to prevent those decorators from messing up the style of the flower shop, you have to supervise it."
Li Tao's face fell immediately. He still had a lot of troubles to deal with, and Qiu Lan was even more exploitative than the capitalists.
"I will send you the design drawings of the flower shop later. When I have time to inspect the flower shop, if you fail to satisfy me, you will be beaten." Qiu Lan urged like a parent educating a child.
"Okay, okay, I understand."
Li Tao closed the car door, turned around depressedly and walked towards the stairs going down.
Qiu Lan's gaze fell on the fountain again. There was a circle of water nozzles around the pool. The water streams, as thick as arms, rose from the ground at a 45-degree angle. They finally touched in the center of the pool and then fell together.
"Water forms a cage, locking up people's emotions, so is it really beautiful..."
The park encompasses a huge artificial lake, and the lotus pond is located on the south bank of the lake.
When Li Tao walked over, he saw a familiar figure standing by the pond.
"A-Cha, have you eaten yet? When I just came down, I saw a vegetarian buffet. The prices shouldn't be too expensive."
It was past half past twelve and time for lunch. Although Li Tao didn't know what Ah Cha wanted to talk to him about, he felt that talking while eating would not affect anything.
Ah Cha, with her back to him, did feel a very strange feeling.
Hearing Li Tao's words, Ah Cha clenched his fists and then unclenched them, saying with a sense of distance: "You are late."
"I didn't eat much, and I didn't even have lunch?" Li Tao said in confusion.
Ah Cha's back was visibly twitching. After a moment of silence, he turned to face Li Tao and repeated coldly, "You are late."
Li Tao was stunned for a moment before he realized that he had heard it wrong just now, because he would not think that A Cha would say this to him due to conditioned reflex.
"I got entangled with a troublesome woman on the road, which delayed me a little." Li Tao touched his nose and explained.
After taking a deep breath, Ah Cha's eyes still couldn't help but turn red: "Where did you go during those days of simulating the war?"
"I?"
Li Tao pointed at himself and suddenly realized. He thought A-Cha was jealous because she was worried about him, so he walked towards A-Cha with some emotion and wanted to put his arm around his shoulder to comfort him.
"Snapped--"
Li Tao just raised his hand but it froze in the air. The back of his hand gradually became red in the sunlight and the mark of half of his palm slowly emerged.
"Nothing is left, and now you want to show up?!!!"
A Cha yelled hysterically. He was less than two fingers away from Li Tao's ear. Li Tao's mind went blank and a buzzing sound expanded in his ears.
"I..." Li Tao looked at him in confusion.
Ah Cha clenched his fists tightly, trying hard to stop his voice from shaking, but his words still trembled.
"Marcy...is dead..."
Li Tao's brain froze, his pupils shrank into needle shapes, and his hands, which were frozen in mid-air, began to tremble.
"How could she...?"
"Where are you! Where have you been hiding!!!" A Cha pushed the dazed Li Tao away fiercely.
The marble floor was obviously very flat, but Li Tao was pushed by A Cha, and he staggered, with his forehead falling heavily on the ground.
The forehead, which was originally broken in the car rollover, suddenly opened up a big gash, and sticky blood flowed all over the scalp.
"She asked you for help. She begged you for help. Ugh~"
Ah Cha covered her face and cried bitterly. The originally dazzling sun gradually dimmed.
The dark clouds that formed were like black spots gradually growing in the blue sky. The light was infected and rotted in a moment, becoming black and sticky, and the sky seemed like an abyss.
"I don't know why...why would she..."
"enough!!!"
A'Cha's voice was like a night owl. He looked at Li Tao who fell to the ground, and seemed to want to rush over and beat him up.
"She begged you for help from the beginning. Someone was torturing her. You said at the time that you saw something was wrong with her, but you pushed her to me and asked her to come to me for help. But she still begged me to come to you. I also told you that I begged you to help her..."
"right?"
A Cha stared at Li Tao. He raised his hands and dug into his neck, the gaps between his fingers constantly filled with his own flesh and blood.
“But as soon as the simulated battle started, you took Li Manzi and ran away, and never showed up again!!!” A-Cha stomped his feet hysterically, stomping his feet madly.
Pale arcs of lightning flashed in the dark clouded sky, cutting the darkness into pieces like a spider web.
"Don't do this, it's me...I shouldn't..."
Li Tao felt extremely uncomfortable when he saw the bloody scratches on Ah Cha's neck. He only knew that Fang Yueji and Duanmu Rong were dead, but no one told him that Ma Qian was also dead.
"Boom——"
The first thunder roared like the sound of shaking the heavens.
A Cha looked at Li Tao and kept shaking his head, as if expressing his disappointment.
Ah Cha turned around and stumbled into the shallow bank of the lotus pond. It was full of mud and he was buried up to his knees.
"To her, this school is a quagmire, a man-eating swamp!"
"That's how I feel now, sinking deeper and deeper, unable to pull myself out, but there's no one around her, just like these lotus leaves and plants, they are heartless and can only watch indifferently."
"Ma Xi was tortured to death by those three beasts! She couldn't even commit suicide!!!"
Li Tao's forehead was bleeding very quickly, and the car glass cut a big hole along his hairline, as if his scalp was torn open.
The blood loss had turned his lips white and his vision blurred, but he still twisted his thigh hard, letting the pain regain control of his body.
A Cha in the mud looked like a ghost, and the scratched neck was bleeding.
The dark sky was split by lightning again.
"Boom——"
The muffled thunder finally brought heavy rain, and raindrops as big as fingernails fell from the dark clouds.
Li Tao staggered towards the mud pit, he wanted to bring A Cha out.
A-Cha's horrified expression suddenly disappeared. He raised his head expressionlessly, closed his eyes and used his face to catch the rain.