[Qinghua University, West Gate Park — September 17, Wednesday, ~5:00 PM]
The bench was starting to feel like a punishment.
Long Tian hadn't meant to sit here this long. He'd stopped after the morning — just to think, just to let things settle — and then the afternoon had gone somewhere without him. The light was different now, softer and lower, and the students moving past on the path were heading to dinner rather than class. He watched them go. Everyone with somewhere to be.
Two days.
Central Plaza kept replaying in his head whether he wanted it to or not. The path splitting, a man stepping to the side to let him pass — silver hair, that particular kind of stillness that took up more space than it should.
His system had tagged it immediately: Minor Villain. Low Threat. Background Character. And Long Tian had thought, yes, fine, that tracks. He'd seen enough of the type. Rich family, bad reputation, no real substance. He'd walked on.
But his gut hadn't agreed. And he'd been trying to reconcile those two things ever since.
Yesterday at Cloud Nine, Long Tian had felt like he was being watched and told himself he was just being paranoid. But he still assigned Su Qingxue to spy on Lin Feng.
He'd felt in control.
This morning, however, had not been kind to any of that.
The hooded figure in the lecture hall rising from the seat beside Lin Feng. "I'm the woman who sleeps with Lin Feng."
He'd built the explanation fast — escort, cosmetic surgery, not flagged by the system, therefore not real. The explanation had held for almost an hour.
Then the hood came down in the corridor and the videos were everywhere before he could think, and a face like that wasn't surgery, and the explanation didn't hold anymore.
The system still called Lin Feng a background character.
Long Tian leaned forward on the bench, elbows on his knees. The evening air had picked up slightly, cutting through his jacket at the collar.
He hadn't eaten since this morning and he could feel it now, a hollow awareness in his stomach that he kept pushing aside.
Then his phone went off.
Zhang Yuting. Long Tian picked his phone up.
She was already mid-sentence when the call connected — not quite crying but close to it, words coming out faster than she was breathing between them.
Zhang Tingting was gone. Not just not-in-her-room gone but everything gone, the dorm stripped down to empty shelves and bare hangers, not a single thing left behind. She'd only come in for the afternoon practical.
Also, there had been a woman who seemed to be following her — all black, sunglasses, hands at her sides, someone had said she didn't move once for two hours.
And then the moment class ended, Zhang Tingting had walked straight out with her luggage and that was the last anyone had seen of her.
"She wouldn't just leave," Zhang Yuting said on the phone. "Tingting wasn't like that — she tells people when she's going somewhere, she always tells someone, and I've been calling her repeatedly and she's not — she's not picking up and her stuff is just—"
She stopped herself. He could hear her trying to steady her breathing. "Brother Tian. I think it was Lin Feng. I think Lin Feng took her."
The name.
The system notification appeared so fast it startled him even though he'd been half-expecting something.
[Purchase Location Hint: Zhang Tingting — 25 CP]
Long Tian accepted it. He was still listening to Zhang Yuting breathe on the other end, short unsteady breaths, when the answer came back.
East gate area. Hint expires: 5:32 PM.
"Okay," he said in a steady voice. "Okay, breathe Yuting. You said Lin Feng?"
"Yes! And she would never go with him on her own. Never. I think he threatened her family — they don't have anything, if he used that against her she would just—" Her voice fractured and she stopped again.
"I'm going to help you find her." He stood from the bench. His knees had stiffened from sitting so long and he straightened them as he walked. "Where are you right now?"
"I'm at the dorm. Qingxue is with me right now. Room 403."
"Meet me at the east gate. Can you get there in fifteen minutes?"
"Yes. Yes we can."
"Okay…" He paused. "We'll find her, Yuting. I promise. Just get to the east gate."
He ended the call and kept walking.
His balance had dropped to 3,875.
Twenty-five CP, gone between one second and the next, and he hadn't even really decided to spend them — the notification had appeared and his thumb had moved and that was all it took.
Qinghua University – East Gate.
Long Tian then turned his head towards the campus, his fist clenched.
"Don't worry Tingting, I won't let Lin Feng take you away and kidnap you! Wait for me!"
"As for you Lin Feng, just you wait! I will definitely make you suffer!"
-----------------------
[Lin Group HQ, Basement Parking — 5:11 PM]
The elevator opened onto concrete and cold air.
Basement garages always had that particular smell — engine oil and cement dust and something stale underneath both, the smell of a space that never saw daylight.
Their footsteps came back to them off the pillars. Both women flanked him — Xiao Yue on his left, Lin Weiwei on his right — and neither had spoken since the doors of the conference room had closed behind them.
The fury was still there, just redistributed. Contained but present, like pressure looking for a seam.
His shins ached. The brass seal sat in his inside pocket and weighed approximately as much as everything that had just happened upstairs.
Lin Weiwei pulled her arm free and walked ahead without looking at him.
"My car," was all Lin Weiwei said, still fuming, already moving across the parking lot.
Lin Feng followed her silently along with Xiao Yue.
Xiao Yue had taken the passenger seat. Lin Weiwei looked at her for a moment — Xiao Yue looked back, unhurried — and then Lin Weiwei got in without a word.
Lin Feng got in the back and was pulling the door shut when he noticed the screens.
Around him, multiple monitors mounted in custom housing between the front seats, cables running into the dash in a way that was too clean to be improvised. A computer unit under the center console.
And there between the motherboard connectors — he recognized what looked like the RF receiver module, the telescoping antenna collapsed small and bracketed tight against the door panel. Lin Weiwei's software architecture running on Xiao Yue's signal hardware.
He sat with that for a moment.
So this is how they found me then. No wonder they managed to track my location so quickly and eavesdrop on me and Tingting yesterday.
He didn't say anything. He wasn't sure what he would even say.
Lin Weiwei started the engine and the sound of it came back at them from the concrete walls. The doors shut and whatever the conference room had contained stopped being contained.
"I have never," Xiao Yue said, "witnessed anything that shameless in my life."
"You grabbed both of us." Lin Weiwei's voice was controlled in the way that meant it was costing her something to keep it that way. "In front of Big Sister. In front of the entire floor. Through glass."
"What were you thinking?"
They'd said it at the same time. Neither of them acknowledged it.
Lin Feng thought about his answer. He thought about several answers actually, sorted through them, and landed on the only one that didn't make things worse.
"At least you both stopped fighting."
He watched Lin Weiwei's hands tighten on the wheel. Xiao Yue looked out the passenger window at the concrete wall passing beside them.
Sigh…
I guess this is not the right time for me to pick up Tingting after all.
Maybe we should head back to the penthouse.
Lin Feng looked up at the low ceiling of the garage and thought about Zhang Tingting. Earlier that afternoon, he tasked someone to guard her at all times and help her collect her belongings.
Yeah… Big Sister's people should be able to handle that.
Maybe I should just leave Tingting to those agents after all…
Deep in thought, all of a sudden, his phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen. It was Chen-47.
[Chen-47: Target. Last confirmed: west gate park. Currently moving east toward campus east gate.]
[Chen-47: Earlier, the target was speaking with someone on the phone. The phone call has caused distress in the target and he is now moving with urgency into the campus.]
Lin Feng's thumb was moving before he'd finished reading it.
Long Tian is in a hurry? What's the rush?
By chance, did the system give him some information?
Is he looking for Zhang Tingting?
Is she near the east gate right now?
If that's the case—
Lin Feng looked for Zhang Tingting on his contacts and texted her.
[Lin Feng: Move to South gate. Look for somewhere to hide. Stay hidden with the agent. We're coming.]
Lin Feng sent it.
After that, he sat for a second with the phone in his hand.
"Weiwei, let's go back to Qinghua, to the south gate entrance," he said.
Lin Weiwei looked at him in the rearview mirror. A moment passed. From the rearview mirror, Lin Feng could still see the mixture of jealousy, anger, irritation and affection in her eyes.
Then she pulled out of the basement parking lot and back into the road outside.
-----------------------
[Qinghua University Campus, Near East Gate — 5:13 PM]
They were close enough that Zhang Tingting could see the gate through the gaps between students.
The path was crowded at this hour — dinner traffic moving in both directions, groups breaking apart and reforming around slower walkers, someone's bicycle cutting through and making everyone shift.
Zhang Tingting's roller luggage clicked over the pavement behind her, catching on every small irregularity in the stone. Liu-23 moved through the crowd without touching anyone, which should have been impossible given how many bodies were between them and the gate, but she managed it the way she managed everything — precisely, without apparent effort.
The ringtone went off like an announcement.
It wasn't subtle.
She'd set it for him — the little melody — and she had never changed it, and now it was going off in the middle of the crowd and nearby heads were coming up.
Zhang Tingting had her phone out and lowered the volume before she'd finished deciding to do it. Her face was already hot.
Liu-23's sunglasses had turned toward her and it didn't matter because she was already angling the screen the other way.
[Lin Feng: Move to South gate. Look for somewhere to hide. Stay hidden with the agent. We're coming.]
She read it. Read it again. The heat in her face didn't go anywhere.
She stopped walking.
"Change of plans," she said. "Let's go to south gate."
Liu-23 stopped. The gate was maybe ninety seconds further — visible from where they stood, students moving through it, the security post, the street beyond. "The pickup is east gate. I wasn't notified of a change, and the car is already routing here."
"I know. But we need to go to the south gate."
"I need a reason to deviate from a confirmed plan." Her voice stayed even. "If there's a security concern—"
Liu-23 didn't finish her statement.
Something had settled in her posture — weight shifted somewhere it didn't want to move from.
Her eyes, behind the sunglasses, were pointed at the gate. "The gate is right there," she said, and it came out less like an argument and more like something she was saying to herself.
Zhang Tingting looked at her. She tried to find the words for what she wanted to say and couldn't find them because they didn't really exist — she'd stopped walking before she'd decided to, and now she was standing here unable to explain why to someone who needed an explanation.
"It was Lin Feng," she said. "He sent me a text message just now."
Something moved in Liu-23's expression. Not resolution — more like a rope going slack.
In the end, it was Lin Feng's name that moved her. She turned south, jaw set. She didn't say anything else.
Zhang Tingting followed, her luggage wheels loud on the pavement behind them.
The crowd moved around them, indifferent. A group cut across their path toward the cafeteria. Zhang Tingting's phone was in her hand and she put it in her pocket.
She almost took it out again.
Behind them, the east gate got smaller and then disappeared into the crowd.
-----------------------
[Qinghua University, East Gate — 5:15 PM]
The gate was packed — students pushing through in both directions, the light gone flat and grey.
Long Tian reached the east gate faster than he'd meant to. His jacket had come open along the way and the evening air was cool against his collar. He stopped and scanned the crowd.
What he had was a description: Zhang Yuting's cousin, culinary department, woman in all black and luggage.
Except…
Half of the crowd was moving luggage — duffel bags, instrument cases, rolling suitcases.
He looked around for the woman in black. Dark clothing in a crowd where everyone wore dark clothing, the flat evening light washing everything the same tone.
Nothing.
Tingting must have moved.
The system notification sat unchanged at the edge of his vision — East Gate area — cooldown at 5:32, seventeen minutes.
He waited and watched the gate and let a minute pass.
Zhang Yuting came through the student crowd from the direction of the dorms, her bag swinging against her hip with every step.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and already moving before she'd reached him — face to face to face, every girl with luggage, every figure in dark clothing.
None of them were Zhang Tingting.
"Did you find her? Is she here?"
"I just got here," he said. "I haven't seen her yet."
She kept going. Past him, into the crowd at the gate, head turning.
Long Tian watched her search and checked the cooldown at the same time — 5:32, fifteen minutes — and watched her come back with nothing, her eyes redder than they'd been thirty seconds ago, and checked it again.
Where Zhang Yuting searched the crowd, Su Qingxue read the space around it — paths, gaps, exits. The way someone trained to think about where people go rather than where they are.
Zhang Yuting looked at him. She'd run out of faces to check.
"She didn't go through any gate," Long Tian said. "She's still here somewhere." He turned toward the campus interior and started moving. "She can't have gone far."
Zhang Yuting fell in behind him with her phone in her hand, thumb resting on Zhang Tingting's name.
The cooldown ticked. Fourteen minutes.
-----------------------
[Qinghua University Campus — 5:17–5:32 PM]
The cafeteria was the obvious first stop. It was close, it was large, and at this hour it was the most populated building on campus — which meant if Zhang Tingting had gone anywhere to wait, this was where she'd have gone.
The dinner rush had the place running at full volume — trays scraping across the metal rails, the clatter of dishes, the particular wet heat of a kitchen feeding five hundred people at once.
The smell of cooking oil hung in the air and didn't move. Long Tian worked through the rows slowly enough to scan each table, asking two students near the entrance if they'd seen a girl with luggage and a woman in black. One of them shrugged without looking up from his phone. The other thought about it for a second and said no.
Zhang Yuting was pressed against the wall near the entrance, calling. He could tell from the way she was holding the phone — too tight, screen facing out, thumb ready to end the call the moment it went to voicemail so she could immediately call again.
It went to voicemail.
She called again.
5:20. Twelve minutes.
The student lounge was quieter. A few people on the couches, someone at a study table with headphones on, the vending machines humming in the corner.
Long Tian checked the alcoves and the hallway toward the bathrooms while Zhang Yuting went to the front desk. He could see her from across the room — the way she leaned forward when she asked, like closing the distance might change the answer.
The person at the front desk shook her head. Zhang Yuting stayed at the counter for a moment after, one hand flat on the surface, before she pushed off and came back.
Su Qingxue hadn't followed them inside. She was at the lounge entrance when they returned, her back to the room, watching the path outside.
5:25.
The north gate was the opposite end of campus — a long walk through the central quad, past the library, past the administration building with its row of bulletin boards nobody read anymore.
The gate itself was nearly empty. A few students heading out toward the residential streets beyond, the low sound of distant traffic, the security guard in his booth with the window cracked. The air smelled like car exhaust.
Nothing.
He watched Zhang Yuting scan the empty gate area.
Zhang Yuting had stopped calling. She was standing with her phone gripped in both hands, knuckles pale, staring at the screen. The string of unanswered messages below the unanswered calls. She didn't look up.
5:28.
"Stay with me," Long Tian said. Not a number. Just: stay.
She lifted her head. Her jaw was set.
5:32.
He bought it without breaking stride — twenty-five CP, the purchase happening faster than a conscious decision. The answer came back immediately.
South gate.
He kept walking and let the words arrange themselves into something that sounded like deduction.
"We've covered east, center, north." He turned. "South is the only direction we haven't tried."
Something came back into Zhang Yuting's eyes. Not hope exactly — something harder and more functional. She straightened her bag on her shoulder.
Su Qingxue was already facing south.
They turned and walked.
-----------------------
[Qinghua University, South Gate Guard House — 5:20 PM]
The guard house was small and smelled like instant noodles and the particular accumulated warmth of a space that had been occupied continuously for years.
There was a plastic chair, a small desk with a monitor showing four camera feeds, a thermos that had been sitting on the corner of the desk long enough to leave a ring in the surface.
The security guard — a man in his fifties with reading glasses pushed up onto his forehead — had looked at Tingting when she came in, then at Liu-23, then back at Tingting, and asked no questions.
He'd gestured at the plastic chair and gone back to his monitor. The monitor hummed. Through the window, she could hear the distant sound of the campus settling into evening.
Liu-23 was standing by the gate.
Not inside. Not sitting down. Standing, in full view, at the edge of the south gate where anyone coming from the interior of campus would see her immediately.
Zhang Tingting had suggested she come inside and Liu-23 had said she was fine, and then she'd positioned herself exactly where she was most visible, hands at her sides, and that was that.
Zhang Tingting watched her through the glass for a moment. She didn't understand it. They were supposed to be staying out of sight.
She looked down at her phone instead.
[Lin Feng: Move to South gate. Look for somewhere to hide. Stay hidden with the agent. We're coming.]
She'd read it enough times that she could probably recite it. She read it again anyway. Then she put the phone face-down on her knee. Picked it up. Read it again. Put it face-down.
She'd been in this chair for ten minutes and the plastic was already making her back ache, and outside the light was going and the campus had gotten quieter.
Zhang Tingting smiled as she remembered the first time the two of them met.
Back then, Su Qingxue was still a nobody. Just the regular pretty girl in a decent neighborhood. And she, Zhang Tingting, was still a nobody too, her father owning only a noodle stall back then.
Su Qingxue crossed the road while she read something funny on her phone, not thinking that the walk light was already flashing. The lighting on that side of the city was bad, not to mention it was an accident-prone area.
When she crossed the street, when the headlights of the truck illuminated her, she froze.
Then someone leapt from a car at the roadside and tackled her to the ground.
The boy began to reprimand Su Qingxue, telling her to watch where she was going.
That was the first time Zhang Tingting met Lin Feng.
What came next was a storm of events. The hospital visits for Su Qingxue after Lin Feng brought her there. Then the friendly meet-ups, with Lin Feng asking if she was alright. Then Lin Feng falling in love with Su Qingxue — alone in that.
Then the matchmaker deal between Zhang Tingting and Lin Feng. The weekly meetings that sometimes became daily.
There were times that Zhang Tingting had spent more time with Lin Feng than Su Qingxue ever did. All the dinner meetings, the cooking lessons and sometimes the late night strolls.
But if the last four years was a storm, the last two days were something she didn't have a word for yet.
Su Qingxue suddenly fell out of favor, Lin Feng dumping her, and all of a sudden she had this Long Tian who happened to become her cousin's boyfriend too.
Then Lin Feng becoming manly out of nowhere, hooking two goddess-level girlfriends at once.
The restaurant, the cafe, the park, and now…
Zhang Tingting even shared a roof with Lin Feng.
She sat with that for a moment.
She picked her phone up. Read the message. We're coming. There was something about the plural that she noticed and then immediately tried not to notice, which didn't work — we, not I, which meant he wasn't alone—
"Miss."
She looked up. The security guard had turned in his chair and was looking at her over the top of his reading glasses with an expression that was professionally neutral but not quite.
"You're smiling," he said.
She looked down at her phone.
She was.
"Yes… Yes I am."
Outside, Liu-23 stood motionless by the gate, watching the campus paths with no particular expression.
-----------------------
[Zhang Tingting] ★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (1-Star Heroine)
├─ Previous: 0
└─ Current: -10 (-10▼)
-----------------------
[5:42 PM]
The south gate was quieter than the east had been.
Fewer shops on the street outside, fewer reasons to come this way — a handful of students moving through, a delivery driver waiting on a scooter, the gate itself catching the last of the daylight at a low angle that made everything look slightly more tired than it was.
Even the ambient noise of the campus felt thinner here, like it hadn't bothered to follow them this far.
Long Tian was still arranging the logic in his head — west covered, east covered, center covered, north covered, south is what's left, this is deduction — when Su Qingxue stopped walking.
Not slowed. Stopped.
Her eyes had gone to the gate, and more specifically to the figure standing beside it.
All black, hands at her sides, back straight, facing the campus interior with the particular stillness of someone who was not waiting but watching.
The same description Zhang Yuting had pulled from Zhang Tingting's classmates three hours ago.
Zhang Yuting saw Su Qingxue stop and followed her gaze and went rigid.
"That's her," she said. Her voice came out very quiet. "That's the woman from the classroom."
Long Tian looked at the figure by the gate. Then at the small structure beside it — the guard house, a light on inside, a shape visible through the window. Seated. Still.
The system activated.
-----------------------
[NEW HEROINE REGISTERED]
Zhang Tingting — Heroine #18★☆☆☆☆☆☆
Affection: -10
Rewards: +1,000 CP / +¥10,000Balance: 4,850 CP / ¥69,680
-----------------------
He read it twice.
-10.
Every heroine he'd registered had started at +61. All five of them — the moment they crossed into range, the moment conditions aligned, the notification would come through and the number would be there, always the same. +61.
Zhang Tingting had started at -10.
He stood at the edge of the south gate path and looked at the number.
System! What is the meaning of this!
A UI then appeared on the edge of his vision.
[Ding! Host encountered a new heroine. Encountered heroines operate differently compared to listed heroines. Would the host like to see what the affection points mean?]
Yes please!
-----------------------
[Host, not all heroines begin at +61. Encountered heroines have no guaranteed starting affection — their points reflect their current state, not the system default.]
[Redacted -100 <——0——> 100 Complete conquest.]
[Host requires System Level 2 for a full explanation on the affection system.]
-----------------------
Neutral Zone:
└─ -10 to +10: Strangers
Affection Scale (Positive):
├─ +11 to +30: Normal acquaintance
├─ +31 to +60: Friends
├─ +61 to +70: Hidden affection/crush
├─ +71 to +80: In love
├─ +81 to +90: Deep love
├─ +91 to +95: Obsessive love
├─ +96 to +98: Total love
├─ +99: Total submission
└─ +100: Complete capture (requires physical consummation)
Affection Scale (Negative):
├─ -11 to -30: Dislike/Annoyance
├─ -31 to -60: Active Opposition
├─ -61 to -70: Redacted
├─ -71 to -80: Redacted
├─ -81 to -90: Redacted
├─ -91 to -95: Redacted
├─ -96 to -98: Redacted
├─ -99: Redacted
└─ -100: Redacted
-----------------------
[Available Targets:]
[★★☆☆☆☆☆ Su Qingxue - The Campus Goddess (Affection: 72)]
[★☆☆☆☆☆☆ Zhang Yuting - The Class President (Affection: 80)]
[★☆☆☆☆☆☆ Wang Xiaoling - The Coffee Shop Girl (Affection: 66)]
[★☆☆☆☆☆☆ Liu Meimei - The Library Assistant (Affection: 61)]
[★☆☆☆☆☆☆ Chen Ruolan - The Art Student (Affection: 61)]
[★☆☆☆☆☆☆ Zhang Tingting - The Culinary Student (Affection: -10)]
-----------------------
Yes, that must be the case. It was because I encountered her, and because of that, she wasn't included like the first five.
That might be the reason why she has such a low affection point. And besides, -10 might mean neutral. She doesn't hate me or anything.
Perhaps to her, I am just a stranger.
I can work with that.
Long Tian nodded, satisfied.
Meanwhile, Zhang Yuting's hand tightened on his arm. He looked at her with a gentle gaze. Her unease subsided.
Long Tian looked back at the guard house window. Through the glass — faint, small — the seated figure had her head bent over something. A phone, maybe. Her shoulders were completely relaxed.
"She's in there," he said. "Let's go."
He started walking toward the guard house. Zhang Yuting followed, and Su Qingxue fell into step beside her, and the three of them crossed the last stretch of path in the thin evening light.
Inside the guard house, Zhang Tingting sat with her phone in her lap and a smile she hadn't noticed yet.
Outside, Liu-23 stood without moving, watching them come.
-----------------------
[End of Chapter]