<h4>Chapter 1159: She Thought of Him as a Friend</h4>


    Silence fell in the room.


    He Xiyan focused on eating the pizza on her te. She knew that the man seated across her was staring at her and had been staring at her for some time.


    After she finished the pizza, she heard his voice, that sounded hoarser than before, say, “Have you... been well?”


    He asked the question that he would always ask each time they met.


    He Xiyan pulled out a piece of tissue, wiped her mouth, and shot him a small smile. She looked at his haggard face and could even see the dark circles that rimmed his eyes. She couldn’t help but say, “I’m doing well! And you?”


    He Xiyan looked at him calmly. After many years had passed, her love and hatred toward this man had faded and she now treated him like a friend.


    “I’ve had trouble sleeping over the past few days and haven’t been sleeping well,” Ye Hao said as he cast his eyes downward. A sh of disappointment crossed his eyes as he looked down.


    He Xiyan poured a cup of fruit juice for him.


    “You should take a break if you’re too tired,” she said. After all, he was no longer a young man.


    Nheless, she did not verbalize her thoughts. She thought that it must be extremely tiring to be him. He had been managing the Ye conglomerate for 10 years, had been kept busy every day, and faced huge amounts of pressure.


    He didn’t wear sses in the past but over the past two years, she realized that he was now wearing contact lenses. She guessed that his frequentte nights had led to his eyesight deteriorating.


    Ye Hao pursed his lips and smiled before he downed a ss of fruit juice she had given him.


    Then, he took out a small box from his pocket. It was a ck box that was the size of his palm.


    He handed this box to He Xiyan who frowned in confusion before she said, “There’s no need to give me such expensive gifts.”


    She could tell at a nce that it was a jewelry box.


    “Why don’t you open it?” Ye Hao said with a small smile as he stared at He Xiyan. His gaze never moved away from her.


    She hesitated for a moment before she opened the box.


    She saw that it wasn’t a ne or a bracelet, but it was an oddly shaped...


    She took out the item in the box and saw that it was a gem that was crystal clear. Oh wait, it was probably amber and this amber wasn’t very clear and had a lot of impurities.


    She raised the amber stone up and examined it closely under themplight.


    She froze in surprise. There weren’t any impurities inside the amber stone but what was preserved inside the good quality amber was a butterfly.


    This was the first time she had seen such a beautifully preserved insect in amber. Moreover, the butterfly in the amber was perfectly preserved and she could even see the patterns on its wings.


    “Do you like it? I’ll give it you,” she finally heard Ye Hao’s masculine voice after she stared at it for a while.


    She looked up and looked at Ye Hao who smiled widely.


    “Did you buy this? Was it expensive?” she asked. She didn’t like gemstones but she was interested in exotic stones and even collected a few books on the subject.


    “Someone else gave it to me, so I decided to give it to you,” Ye Hao said with a smile. He didn’t tell her that he had bought it at an extremely high price at an auction in Paris not too long ago. It was a natural amber stone that was formed 120 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period and the butterfly inside the stone was part of an ancient extinct species.


    He could buy all kinds of gemstones if he was rich but such rare and exotic stones were extremely hard toe by.