Chapter 26: Warmth
The news that Yin Xigui had taken over the Yin family spread through the entire business world within three days.
First, the personnel changes at the old residence leaked out. The security system was replaced down to the last man, the finance department sealed every account from the past three years pending a fresh audit, and the operating rights to the assets under Yin Zhengsong's name were transferred to Yin Xigui within a single morning.
The signature on the seal-handover documents was clean and decisive—utterly unlike the Yin Xigui people so often gossiped about behind his back as "the good-for-nothing illegitimate son."
The next day, one headline dominated the front page of the financial news: "Yin Family's Young Master Takes Over in a Bloodless Coup; Yin Zhengsong Believed to Be Retreating Behind the Scenes."
The accompanying image was a long-range candid shot: Yin Xigui walking out through the gates of the old residence, his long pink hair lifted by the wind, the hem of his coat swirling, the lines of his profile sharp and clear in the morning light.
The comment section blew past a hundred posts in no time, from "Is that the Yin family's illegitimate son?" to "How could he possibly handle Yin Rui?"—the discussion rising and falling without pause.
Then more news leaked out.
The projects of the property companies under Yin Rui's name were suspended pending investigation, and someone dug up traces of several gray money channels being cut. People in the industry quietly began to change how they referred to him—from "that little young master of the Yin family" to just the three characters of his name, Yin Xigui, with no embellishment at all.
Yin Xigui himself made no response to any of the reports.
He shuttled between the old residence and the villa without pause, his schedule packed airtight. Every morning at seven, Zhou Ling delivered the documents requiring his signature to the coffee table in the villa's living room, and came back in the evening to collect the approved stack.
The injury to his right shoulder only began to hurt badly on the second day.
It was the blow from that rod the night they stormed the warehouse. At the time it hadn't seemed like much; overnight it swelled, the whole shoulder blade mottled dark purple with bruising. Lifting his arm to sign pulled at that muscle, and every stroke of the pen on paper came with a hidden, dull ache.
He didn't have anyone treat it and didn't mention it to anyone. Only each morning, when putting on his coat, his movements were a touch slower than usual—the pause as his left hand tugged up his right sleeve, a beat no one noticed.
Zhou Ling took note of it. On the afternoon of the third day, during a document delivery, he set a tube of ointment beside the coffee table and left without a word.
When Yin Xigui saw the ointment, the pen paused for an instant at the edge of the document he was signing. Then he finished the last character, closed the file, set it in the to-be-processed tray, picked up the ointment, looked at the label, and slipped it into his coat pocket.
He applied it himself the next evening after his shower. Facing the bathroom mirror, he pulled the fabric at his right shoulder down and saw the bruising had spread wider than the day before, its edges shading a dull yellow.
When he squeezed the ointment onto his fingers and touched the swollen flesh, the pain made him draw a sharp breath.
In the mirror he watched his own face crease slightly and then relax, and he went on spreading the ointment evenly.
Early the next morning, Zhou Ling came to deliver documents and passed the bathroom. Through the half-open door he glimpsed the opened tube of ointment resting on the edge of the sink; the smear at the tube's mouth had been smoothed flat by someone's finger—perfectly neat.
The first thing Yin Xigui did after taking over was clean up the loose ends Yin Rui had left behind.
The property projects Yin Rui had used for money laundering were audited one by one, and the problems surfaced faster than he had anticipated.
He froze the accounts that should be frozen, halted the projects that should be halted, and intercepted several sums of untraceable money halfway through their transfer.
The whole process took him four days.
The old residence's finance director came to the villa to report, his expression impossible to fully contain as he pushed open the door. He had personally handled that stack of ledgers for over a decade, and no one had ever managed, in so short a time, to pull out the ends of every hidden thread the way Yin Xigui had.
"Family Head, once these are settled, Yin Rui's funding channels will basically be severed."
The director set the reports on the coffee table, hesitated, and added, "But some of the people under him may push back."
"Those who push back," Yin Xigui said, flipping through the reports without looking up, his voice soft but clear, "deal with directly. Zhou Ling has the list."
The director nodded and withdrew. When the door closed he stood in the corridor blank for two seconds before slowly turning to leave.
Afterward, Yin Xigui received a group of people in the villa's living room.
They were old subordinates Yin Rui had left on his various lines over the years, brought over by Zhou Ling, their manner ranging widely—some wary, some probing, some with smiles stacked on their faces.
Yin Xigui sat on the sofa and listened to them talk, offering little reaction throughout, only a nod or a low "Mm" at the end of each speech.
Only when the last one finished did he speak, briefly laying out the plan for taking over the key positions under Yin Rui's name, his tone flat and steady, like someone stating a matter already decided.
As those people left the villa, a few of them glanced back once at the closed door.
It was an ordinary white wooden door, same as when they'd come. But in their eyes now, the person sitting behind that door was no longer the weak, bullied illegitimate young master of two months ago.
The news kept fermenting.
The financial section's headline changed to "Yin Xigui Takes Over Seven Subsidiaries of the Yin Group; the Yin Rui Faction Faces Full Liquidation," and the photo changed to one of Yin Xigui meeting with several core executives in the old residence's courtyard.
In the frame he stood amid a crowd, pink ponytail tied cleanly back, his frame thin but his spine ramrod straight, head lowered over a document someone was passing him.
The reports began using the phrase "the youngest person ever to hold power in the Yin family's history."
The comment section shifted from shock on the first day to scrutiny on the second, and by the sixth day people were asking, "Exactly how much has he been hiding these two years?"
It was at night that Lin Zhi saw the news.
He hadn't contacted Yin Xigui in all that time, but the push notifications on his phone couldn't be turned off.
He sat on the sofa of his apartment, looking at the photo on the screen for a long time. The Yin Xigui in the photo stood angled from the camera, jaw tight, eyes bloodshot but razor-sharp—like a stranger who happened to share a name with that soft-smiling person in his memory who used to call him "Zhizhi."
He dialed Yin Xigui's number and was hung up on. He called a second time; it rang twice and was declined.
Lin Zhi looked at the words "Call Declined" on the screen, set the phone on the coffee table, leaned back into the sofa, and closed his eyes.
Li Nian's message came later.
She sent a very short text, only four characters: "You did it." It was a long while before Yin Xigui replied with a single "Mm." Li Nian asked nothing further, only sent back a thumbs-up emoji.
On the morning of the seventh day, Sheng Linyou woke.
He had been unconscious for a very long time, surfacing twice in between in a half-dreaming state, remembering only that someone had fed him water and changed the towel on his forehead.
The last time he woke, the daylight leaking through the gap in the curtains was brighter than before. He propped himself up in bed, every muscle in his body aching.
The bedroom was empty.
On the nightstand stood a glass of cooled boiled water and a small dish of washed grapes, condensation beading on the glass, water still clinging to the grapes—they had clearly been set out not long ago.
He got out of bed slowly. His bare feet on the floor sent an aching pull through his ankles; steadying himself against the wall, he made his way step by step to the bedroom door and opened it.
Thick stacks of documents were piled on the coffee table in the living room downstairs, several separate stacks, their corners neat.
Yin Xigui sat on the floor beside the coffee table with his back to the stairs, a thin coat draped over him, his long pink hair hanging loose down his back, head bent over a stack of papers in his hands.
An open laptop lay spread beside him, dense tables filling the screen. The fabric of the coat at his right shoulder bulged faintly, and beneath it the mint scent of ointment mingled with the morning air.
His page-turning was slow, left hand supporting the bottom of the page, right index finger tracing the text line by line.
After turning a page, he picked up the pen from the corner of the table and quickly wrote a few words beside some column, the nib whispering across the paper.
Sheng Linyou leaned on the second-floor railing, watching him.
As if sensing the gaze at his back, Yin Xigui turned his head. Their eyes met across the distance from living room to second floor. Yin Xigui's pen paused in midair, then came down.
"Brother, you're awake."
Sheng Linyou walked down the stairs slowly, and only when he reached the living room could he make out what the documents on the coffee table were.
Share transfer agreements, financial audit reports, staff placement plans—every cover page stamped with the Yin family's official seal, and in the signature column, Yin Xigui's signature, the strokes fluid and practiced.
"You—" Sheng Linyou began, his voice still hoarse.
Yin Xigui tilted his face up to look at him, the corner of his mouth curving.
The smile was faint, different from those soft, pliant smiles of the past—carrying the quiet ease of something settled at last, like a person who had run a very long way and finally sat down to catch his breath.
"I've taken the Yin family," Yin Xigui said, his voice low.
Sheng Linyou stood beside the coffee table, looking down at him.
Sunlight poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, gilding the ends of Yin Xigui's pink hair with a soft gold.
He sat amid a heap of officially stamped documents, the right shoulder of his thin coat slightly raised, that patch of dark purple bruising hidden beneath the coat and fabric.
Sheng Linyou sat down beside him. Half an arm's length lay between them; on the coffee table, the corner of the document stack lifted a little in the breeze and settled again.
Sheng Linyou reached out and slowly touched Yin Xigui's right shoulder. Through the coat's fabric, his palm paused an instant over the warmth of that skin.
Yin Xigui's shoulder flinched faintly, then relaxed again.
"Does it hurt?" Sheng Linyou asked.
"Not anymore."
Sheng Linyou looked at him.
Heavy shadows of exhaustion floated beneath Yin Xigui's eyes, his lips paler than usual, but his gaze met his steadily, that quiet curve still at the corner of his mouth.
Sheng Linyou looked at him for a long time, then withdrew his hand.
"These past few days—"
"All spent on this." Yin Xigui glanced down at the documents on the coffee table and closed the topmost one, setting it aside. "There are still some loose ends to deal with, but the bulk of it is done."
The living room went quiet for a while.
The daylight moved slowly in from outside. Sheng Linyou's peripheral vision caught the opened tube of white ointment in the corner of the coffee table, its mouth smoothed perfectly flat, nearly used up.
He said nothing. He simply reached over, picked up the tube, unscrewed the cap, and squeezed a little onto his own fingertip.
"Take off your coat."
Yin Xigui froze a moment and turned his head to look at him.
Sheng Linyou wasn't looking at him. He just set the ointment on his own knee and waited.
After two or three seconds, Yin Xigui slowly took off the coat, draped it over the sofa arm, and turned sideways to pull the fabric at his right shoulder down.
The bruise was more striking in daylight than he had imagined, spreading from the peak of the shoulder down to mid-shoulder blade, its edges shaded a dull, stale yellow.
Sheng Linyou's breath sank a beat; then he reached out and applied the ointment.
When his fingertips settled on the swollen skin, he could feel the faint heat beneath. Yin Xigui's body tensed lightly, then let go.
Sheng Linyou spread the ointment slowly, each circle gentler than it needed to be.
Yin Xigui sat with his side to him, his expression out of view; all that could be seen was the hand hanging at his side, its fingertips curling slightly.
Outside, wind billowed the curtains up and let them fall. The edges of the document pages rustled faintly in the moving air.
When the ointment was done, Sheng Linyou drew the coat back up over Yin Xigui's shoulders.
As his fingertips brushed the thin fabric, they caught the sharp ridge of the collarbone just above it, beneath the coat.
Yin Xigui turned his head to look at him.
Their gazes met in midair, very close.
Sheng Linyou looked at the shadows beneath his eyes and the chapped lines of his lips, then reached out and brushed his lower lip with his thumb.
"Don't do this to yourself again." Sheng Linyou's voice was still a little hoarse.
Yin Xigui suddenly smiled at that, the curve small, but when the corner of his mouth bent, all the marks of exhaustion on his face faded for an instant.
He pressed his forehead against Sheng Linyou's shoulder and slowly breathed out.
Sheng Linyou lifted his arm and wrapped it around his back, palm resting against the warmth of his spine.