The CEO is domineering, the devil Boss is addicted to pampering

Chapter 1279 Yunrui's sincerity: public, private, emotional and rational

Lin Xu stood at the abandoned dock, stroking his photo on his passport repeatedly with his frozen fingers.

The phone vibrated in his pocket. It was a message from the last contact: "Don't contact me again. They say you are a spy." A dull chime came from Big Ben on the other side of the river. He looked at the dark river and suddenly remembered who had said that the secrets of the Middle Ages were hidden under the ice of the Thames.

As the first rays of morning light pierced through the clouds, an old woman walking her dog spotted the passport floating among the reeds.

The gold-plated letters on the cover shone coldly on the ice, and the photos on the inside pages were blurred by the river water, with only the two words "Lin Xu" in the name column still vaguely visible.

The police wrote in the report: "It seems that he fell into the water accidentally, but no clothes or personal belongings were found at the scene..."

At this moment, Gu Yunqian was attending a merger and acquisition meeting in New York when a push notification suddenly popped up on his personal mobile phone.

He stared at the news on the screen about "Sword Student Falls into River and Missing", his emerald cufflinks swaying in the reflection of the conference table.

When Lin Junze asked whether he needed to pay attention to this matter, he simply placed his phone upside down on the document and continued to circle the acquisition terms with a pen, as if the figure who had confronted him in the warehouse had really disappeared forever in this cold winter like the broken ice of the Thames.

The morning light shines through the blinds, casting mottled shadows on Gu Yunxi's desk.

Her fingertips slid across the screen of the tablet, and before she could read the headline of the news, a push notification suddenly popped up - "An unknown person fell into the Thames, suspected to be a Chinese student."

Her heart suddenly shrank, as if being grasped by an invisible hand. Gu Yunxi repeatedly magnified the blurry photo of the scene in the news. The floating ice on the river surface shone coldly in the morning light, and the yellow cordon on the shore was so dazzling that it made her eyes sore.

There was clearly no directional information, but the two words "Thames" and "Chinese students" were like two keys that unexpectedly opened the floodgates of her memory.

Before Lin Xu left for England, he came to her with a map of Cambridge and said, "Professor, this place is very close to the Thames. When I get to England, I will take beautiful photos every day and make them into postcards to send to you."

The light in his eyes at that time was brighter than the sunlight outside the window, and the arc drawn by his finger on the map now overlaps with the warning line in the news.

"Professor Gu?" The graduate student knocked on the office door and handed in a signed research project application. "You don't look well. Do you want to take a rest first?"

Gu Yunxi forced a smile, but when she took the document, she realized her fingertips were shaking. "It's okay," she said in a faint voice, "I just didn't sleep well last night." But only she knew that since she saw the news, her chest felt like it was blocked by a ball of wet cotton, and every breath she took was heavy and painful.

She seemed to have lost her soul all day. She pretended to be calm while teaching students, but her writing on the blackboard was crooked; she stared at the salad on her plate at lunch, and the fork made a harsh sound when it poked the porcelain plate;

At the academic meeting in the afternoon, she stared at the formula on the projection screen, but what appeared in front of her eyes was Lin Xu squatting in the laboratory to organize data - he always liked to ruffle his hair, saying that this would make his thinking clearer.

When she returned to the staff dormitory in the evening, the light in the entrance was broken and she kicked the shoe cabinet in the dim light.

As she bent over to rub her ankle, her eyes fell on the unopened package in the corner - it was a Cambridge souvenir sent by Lin Xu. She had just received it last week and had never been willing to open it.

At this moment, when my fingertips touched the cardboard, I suddenly felt an inexplicable panic, as if once I opened it, I would see some ominous sign.

The phone vibrated on the sofa. It was a video call from Gu Yunqian. On the screen, he had just finished a dinner party, with his tie hanging loosely around his neck: "Mom asked if you would come home for dinner this weekend."

Gu Yunxi stared at the glittering banquet hall behind his brother and suddenly asked, "Brother, have you heard any news about Lin Xu recently?"

Gu Yunqian's smile froze for half a second, then returned to normal: "He's just a student, why would I pay special attention to him? I'll ask you later, what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," she avoided her brother's gaze and looked at the darkening sky outside the window, "I just suddenly remembered that he said he would publish a paper this month."

After hanging up the phone, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock.

Gu Yunxi walked to the French window and looked at the busy traffic downstairs, feeling nervous. She opened the ticket booking software and typed "fly to London", her finger hovering over the confirmation button and not daring to put it down.

What if she went? What if the person in the news wasn't him? Wouldn't it be too abnormal for her to go there rashly?

But if it was really him... As soon as this thought came to her mind, she suppressed it with force, and her eyes turned red.

Late at night, she tossed and turned in bed, and finally got up and opened the dusty package.

Inside was a pebble from the Thames River, polished to be smooth and round, and a postcard with Lin Xu's elegant handwriting on the back: "Professor, this stone feels like the leaves of the green ivy in your office. When you come to England, I'll take you to pick more beautiful ones."

Gu Yunxi put the stone against her cheek, and the cold touch made her shiver.

She recalled the first time Lin Xu came to her class, sitting stiffly in the first row, with dense notes in his notebook;

She remembered how he argued with his senior classmates over a point of view at an academic discussion meeting, and finally apologized with a red face; she remembered how he said to her when he gave her the ginkgo leaf necklace, "Teachers are like ginkgo trees, calm and full of vitality."

These tiny fragments, like scattered beads, are suddenly strung together by an invisible thread.

She couldn't explain what kind of feelings she had for Lin Xu. Was it the care of a mentor for her student, the love of a sister for her brother, or was there something deeper?

But the strong feeling of uneasiness in her heart at this moment made her extremely certain - she could not lose this boy who had brought her so much joy.

When the sky was turning pale, Gu Yunxi finally called his assistant: "Please book me a ticket to London as soon as possible. Also, please help me check the detailed report of the recent drowning incident in the Thames River."

After hanging up the phone, she walked to the mirror and looked at her haggard face. The person in the mirror had a firm look in his eyes, as if he had made a decision that he had been thinking about for a long time.

Regardless of whether the person in the news was Lin Xu or not, she had to go and see. Yu Gong, she was his mentor, and she couldn't just sit back and watch when her student got into trouble in a foreign country;

Yu Qing, the boy who once left a warm mark in her life, she wanted to know if he was safe.

But she didn't know what kind of vortex this sudden worry would drag her into.

And the Thames River in the UK hides many unknown secrets...

Just as Gu Yunxi hung up the phone, the intercom in Gu Yunqian's office rang. Lin Junze's voice was a little anxious: "Sir, I just found out that the young lady asked her assistant to book a flight to London. The earliest flight will take off tomorrow morning."

Gu Yunqian was reviewing a cross-border merger and acquisition case in front of the computer screen. Upon hearing this, his fingers paused on the keyboard, and then returned to normal.

He twirled the pen between his fingers, the ink-colored pen body glowing coldly under the light: "Got it."

"Do you want to..." Lin Junze didn't finish his words, but the meaning was self-evident.......