Chapter 845 — One More Villa

After everyone had chatted for a while, they got ready to head over to Yang Juehuan's villa. Just as they were about to leave, Yang Ce received a call from Chen Shutang!

"Mengyan? What's the situation?" Yang Ce answered the phone.

"The food at home is all ready, and your women are all back!" Chen Shutang said with a laugh. "But Sister Xiao Qing hasn't come back—is she with you, by any chance?"

"You're really something, you know that? She's right here beside me!" Yang Hengye said. "Everyone else is back?"

"Yeah, everyone except Sister Su Ya is back. Liu Huamei came too..." Chen Shutang said.

"What? She came too? For today's occasion, isn't it a bit inappropriate for her to show up?" Yang Jincong gave a little laugh.

"Inappropriate or not, she's already here. You can figure it out when you get back—I've already given my consent on my end, so I'm washing my hands of it," Chen Shutang said.

"All right, we'll be right back!" Yang Jincong smiled and hung up the phone.

As for Yang Juehuan's villa, neither Yang Cheyan and Mother Yang nor Liu Yan and Chu Huifang had ever been there before. After all, everyone was usually busy, and with Yang Yongjin at home, Yang Cheyan couldn't very well just drop by the place where Chen Shutang and the other three girls lived!

Besides, most of the time it was Chen Shutang who brought Lin Yanhe and Zhou Yanning over to visit them—there was hardly ever an occasion when they had taken the initiative to contact Chen Shutang.

"Daming, your villa is quite something!" The car pulled up at the gate of Yang Ce's villa, and Yang Cheyan sighed in admiration.

He had never been here before—he had only heard how nice and comfortable Yang Yanzhou's villa was—but back then he had been reluctant to leave the old neighbors and old friends behind, and there was also a certain attachment to the old house that kept him from letting go. Now, though, seeing Yang Cenbin's villa, he found himself fickle enough to prefer the new to the old!

After all, when he had first become chairman, Yang Cheyan hadn't thought much of it. The residential compound was full of old neighbors and old friends, and he had felt that after all these years of knowing each other, living together and looking out for one another was rather nice!

But as time went on, Yang Cheyan discovered that wasn't the way things were at all. When those old neighbors and old friends in the compound saw that some people had become minor department leaders in the company, they began to feel envious, thinking that given their long-standing relationship with Yang Cheyan, a bit of schmoozing could get them a little leadership post too. Even if it wasn't a manager-level position, surely it could be some minor supervisor's role, right?

And so these people began inviting Yang Cheyan out to meals and giving him gifts. At first, out of consideration for the old-neighbor relationship, Yang Cheyan did arrange some positions for them in the company. But after all, although the company belonged to the Yang family, it was Yang Juehuan's—Yang Cheyan couldn't simply practice nepotism, could he?

What was more, some neighbors who had relatives or children without work would pull strings hoping to get them jobs at Yang Cheyan's company. At first he arranged a few people and helped them out—after all, they had asked him directly and even treated him to meals, so it would have been hard to refuse!

But as the number of such people grew, Yang Cheyan found himself in a bind! The company had its own recruitment systems and requirements, and constantly going through connections was bad for its image. Although he was the chairman and had the final say in the company, Yang Cheyan could see clearly that things couldn't go on like this!

From then on, he stopped attending anyone's banquets, and the gifts people brought over for holidays and festivals were returned untouched, exactly as they had been received!

It was just that, as a result, Yang Cheyan's relationship with his neighbors could never be the same as before. And by then the people in the compound understood as well: Yang Cheyan was no longer the Yang Cheyan of old. He was the chairman now, and it was impossible for him to keep mingling with you old neighbors and old friends all the time, and impossible for him to change the company's personnel system just because of a word from you.

To avoid inviting trouble, Yang Cheyan kept a stern face on his way to and from work, no longer greeting people casually, and treating his subordinates with nothing more than a faint nod...

And so Yang Cheyan found it all rather pointless. In the chairman's seat, it was already impossible for him to maintain the friendships with those old neighbors as he once had! Those people now dealt with Yang Cheyan with reverence and ulterior motives, and all Yang Cheyan could do was avoid them...

So over time, Yang Cheyan grew unwilling to live in that old compound anymore. He had long wanted to move, except that his son was away from home on a mission and hadn't returned safely, so Yang Cheyan had had no heart for moving. But now that he was here and had seen Yang Juehuan's villa, some ideas began to stir in him!

"Dad, why don't you and Mom move over here too? The villa next door is Yanyan's—she's moved in with me now, so her villa is empty!" Yang Ce saw through his father's thoughts and gestured casually toward the villa beside them.

"Yanyan?" Yang Cheyan was slightly taken aback. He didn't know who Yang Yanzhou was referring to, but the name was clearly a girl's, and she had moved in to live with Yanzhou? What did that mean? Yang Cheyan instinctively understood something. He looked at the villa beside Yang Ce, then back at Yang Ce. "You didn't even spare your neighbor? The girl next door, you also—you...?"

"No...!" Yang Ce broke out in a sweat, realizing he had let something slip, but he had no choice but to explain. "That's not it. When I first met her she wasn't my neighbor yet—it was only through a series of coincidences that we ended up together... And she and I actually have a formal engagement. Her family is at Butterfly Castle in Europe, and we've already held our betrothal ceremony..."

"What? An engagement? How come I didn't know?" Yang Cheyan stared at Yang Ce in utter bewilderment, not knowing what he was talking about. "When did you go and get engaged? I'm your father—doesn't anybody tell me anything?"

"Well... it's a long story!" Yang Jincong said with a laugh. "The reason I'm so skilled is that I actually have a master, and my master had an engagement agreement with this girl's family—that his disciple would marry this girl... So..."

Yang Cheyan and Mother Yang listened, utterly lost in the fog. "So you mean... you've got yourself another girlfriend?"

"Yeah... Mengyan knows about it too!" Yang Ce hastily brought Chen Shutang into it, making clear that Chen Shutang had no objections.

"Then, Qingqing, do you know about this too?" Mother Yang looked at Xiao Qing and asked.

"Of course I know. We live together every day..." Xiao Qing said with a smile. "We get along really well. Auntie, you don't need to worry that anything unpleasant will happen!"

"Oh, Daming, even I as your mother can't quite figure you out anymore. It seems that starting from your senior year of high school, you suddenly shot to fame—not only did you get into a good university, but you could make money too, you joined the Secret Investigation Bureau, your skills became extraordinary, and the women around you kept coming one after another, all of them beautiful, refined, and well-educated girls..." Mother Yang shook her head.