Chapter 247 - Manipulation
Lu Chen was working in his study when Lu Shao entered the room hurriedly that he even forgot to knock on the door. His eyes changed in an instant.
Lu Shao hurriedly gave him a piece of paper containing a report.
"This was pa.s.sed to me by the Madame a few days ago for investigation." Lu Shao reported.
"She wrote in her report all that she thought needed to be investigated so I went with it and this is what we found about that person."
Lu Chen read the report at an unbelievable speed. He immediately understood why Lu Shao was in a rush to give this report to him.
They finally identified the person whom Ying Wan Wan had in contact with within the company.
"Call the Butler and tell him to bring the Madame here."
Xiu Mei arrived shortly after that.
Sensing the weird and heavy atmosphere within the room, somehow made her nervous more than usual. Lu Chen was glaring at the file on the table and her memories of him overlapped with his previous figure in her early years of working with him. Lu Chen would always slump on his chair with his hands together while he narrowed his eyes sharply at her.
Then she who stood stiffly in front lowered her head, her shoulders slightly trembling in fright as she prepared herself to get scolded by the emperor President.
This was the side of Lu Chen that she first got to know of when she was just starting as an intern and even the directors and her other colleagues have experienced this emperor"s wrath as well.
And so, Xiu Mei suddenly got nervous.
Was she going to get scolded ah?
It was already after working hours?
Besides, she was his wife. Even if she did something wrong, can"t he at least wait in the office to scold her? Why do it at home?
"President Lu?" She resumed her persona as a secretary instead of as his wife.
Hearing how she called him, Lu Chen almost chuckled. As soon as he raised his head and saw her frightened expression, she looked like a little rabbit with its ears down and her body trembling in front of him.
He was slightly amused. It seems like his wife had misunderstood his anger ah.
"I didn"t call you here to scold you." He immediately explained himself. Hearing that, Xiu Mei instantly relaxed.
"Then why did you call me over?" She glanced at the two men back and forth. "It seems like you two were discussing something urgent."
A thought popped into her mind. "Ah! Is it related to our company?"
Yeah. She wouldn"t be called in here if it was something about their other job ah.
But...did something arise within the company that made Lu Shao rush over here this late? But why wasn"t she informed ah?
Xiu Mei frowned. Does this mean her skills as a secretary was deteriorating because of all her absences?
Lu Chen flipped the paper on the table upside down. She walked over to look at the contents of the paper and she gasped in shock as soon as she read the report.
She quickly picked it up and read it closely.
"...Albert Chen was also in contact with Yu Ming Xi aside from Ying Wan Wan." She read the words out loud.
Silence fell within the room as the words sunk in.
"T-This… So does this mean we"ve been looking at it at the wrong angle all along?!" Xiu Mei reacted when she finished reading it.
In summary, the report was about the investigation she handed over to Lu Shao days ago.
Albert Chen… hid too deep.
In the Ying Mansion, it was said that the young lady, Ying Wan Wan, had a personal attendant that rarely appeared to other people. The last time they heard about this attendant was that he died before the young lady left the mansion to hide. It wasn"t something new for the people there to hear about someone"s death, because they"ve been working in the Ying mansion for too long to know that there are things that they shouldn"t dare to tell to other people or they will lose their life. For the wealthy, the life of the lowly employees didn"t amount to much and the employees were frightened to open their mouths to outsiders. At least that"s the situation within the Ying Mansion.
According to the report, a few people who had seen the male attendant before confirmed that the dead body they saw was that same attendant. Everyone dismissed it as something normal and went on with their lives.
The person they planted within the Ying Mansion snooped around, showed Albert Chen"s picture, and confirmed that they were the same person.
Now that"s actually the least shocking part. What came after was what made the three people in the room in disbelief.
A separate investigation was done on Albert Chen"s missing past records. The investigation team wasn"t able to further dig deeper given their limited capability, but with Lu Chen"s connections, it became possible.
Albert Chen came from an impoverished family in the eastern part of China. They live in the borders, a place where people who sneak in from the other side go through to enter their country. Amongst the military, it is one of the danger zones that they are guarding with strict restrictions. They tend to a.s.sign different teams across all the borders to keep people from sneaking in, especially from the spies that were sent by other countries.
And that"s where the people who live in those borders come in. The life in those poor villages was too poor, so a handful of people had to make money differently, even if it was illegal.
Albert Chen"s parents were like that.
They get bribed to help people sneak into the country, and that"s how his parents were able to feed him and his siblings.
But they were eventually found out by the military. His parents and the other people who were also involved were taken and brutally killed by the soldiers. A few days later, the soldiers suddenly returned to their village and killed everyone no matter how innocent some of them are.
Albert Chen and a couple of other children were able to escape from the slaughter. They ran towards the borders and crossed the country.
There"s still a missing part on how Albert Chen suddenly appeared in an orphanage. And then the report also contained Albert Chen"s hidden movements. He lived like any other normal student on the surface, but it seems like someone was helping him behind the scenes.
Albert"s influence grew fast, and he eventually built his power secretly. Then he returned to China after getting an offer from the Lu Corporation.
And it seems he was acting as an underling for Ying Wan Wan, when instead, it"s the other way around.
Following their conclusion that Ying Wan Wan, Yu Ming Xi, and Xiu Su Yi haven"t met each other despite working under the same person, they can somehow conclude from there that person"s character. The chances that they haven"t personally seen to whom they are working for was higher.
For Albert Chen"s big influence in the West, it was difficult to imagine that he"ll be willing to work as an underling to someone. So that must mean he had a different agenda why he chose to work under her.
That is to cover up his true ident.i.ty.
Finding out that he and Ying Wan Wan have a connection, people would just conclude that he was only her underling who was following her orders. It may look too simple, but with Albert working in Lu Corporation, and Ying Wan Wan"s grudge against her, people would be convinced that his movements were under Wan Wan"s orders.
Lu Chen, Xiu Mei, and Lu Shao would have believed that as well if they weren"t aware of how much influence Albert had on the west. It wouldn"t make sense for someone so powerful to work as an underling unless he has an ulterior motive, and appearing as somebody"s underling is the best camouflage.
Ying Wan Wan is working under someone that she hasn"t met with before. She only knew that she cooperated with Xiu Su Yi but she hasn"t met him even once at all. So there was a middle man.
And their suspicion is that Albert Chen was the middle man between the two.
"Everything"s a bit confusing, but it does make sense." Xiu Mei commented remembering how she met Ying Wan Wan after she parted with Albert Chen back in City S. That place wasn"t too small for them to b.u.mp into each other and call it a coincidence.
Albert Chen… was manipulating everyone from the very start.