[Qinghua University, South Gate — September 17, Wednesday, ~5:45 PM]
[Timer Remaining: 0:02]
One tick.
One more tick and you are free from Lin Feng.
Long Tian watched the timer through the interface overlay, the numbers bright and steady against the dim guard house interior.
Zhang Tingting sat in the plastic chair with her hands in his and her cousin's grip, her head tilted at that perfect angle of compliance.
Affection: +60.
The threshold was +61.
One point. One second.
The most expensive 710 CP he'd ever spent, and it was about to pay for itself a thousand times over.
Then the timer didn't tick.
0:02 held. The colon between the digits stopped blinking. Then the display shuddered — and for the first time since activation, Long Tian saw a word he had never seen the system produce.
-------------------------
[ERROR.]
[SKILL EXECUTION: INTERRUPTED ]
[Cause: External interference — UNIDENTIFIED ]
[Affection adjustment: CANCELLED]
[Reverting to baseline]
-------------------------
The number moved.
+60. +58. +41. +22. +9. -3. -10.
Seventy points in the time it took to blink. Like watching a progress bar erase itself — hundreds of precious points, dissolving backward to nothing while the conditions still read green.
Long Tian was still holding her hand. The contact hadn't broken. The skill's conditions were met — proximity, touch, duration, all green. But the effect was dead. The system had never errored. Not once. Not on anyone.
What could cause—
As if answering his question, a flash of headlights flooded through the guard house window. The sound of an engine cutting dead.
He looked up.
-------------------------
Zhang Tingting was almost gone.
The warm nothing had been so complete.
Like slipping into a bath that was exactly body temperature — no boundary between self and water, no sensation of entry, just being in it.
The name had been dissolving. Two syllables. She couldn't remember what they'd meant. Something about a kitchen. Something about keys. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Everything was fine.
Then the audio cut.
Not gradually — mid-syllable. The warmth seized. Stuttered. The smooth dissolution hitched like a stream buffering on a dead connection, and Zhang Tingting hung between two versions of herself, not sure which one was loading.
The warm nothing flickered.
Held.
Flickered again.
-------------------------
The headlights illuminated the guard house window. The engine dead. The campus settling into that particular silence between afternoon and evening when the last classes have emptied and the night hasn't started yet.
Ka-chunk.
The rear passenger door opened first.
Lin Feng stepped out of the SUV and the evening rearranged itself around him, his silver hair catching the last of the headlights' glow against a sky that had given up on gold and was settling into bruise-purple.
The silhouette resolved — tall, unhurried, the collar of his jacket sitting exactly where it should. The SUV behind him still ticking as the engine cooled, pinging softly in the quiet like a metronome counting down to something.
He didn't rush.
He didn't run to the door or call her name or do any of the things that a boy who'd just driven across the city at twice the speed limit should have done. He stood there and let his eyes work first.
Then he looked at the small guard house.
The window was lit from the inside — fluorescent, that particular shade of institutional yellow.
And within the small guard house lay figures. Three, maybe four, visible through the glass. Seated and standing. One shape in a plastic chair. Another kneeling beside it.
The door was open. A young woman leaning against the frame — sunglasses on at dusk, which was wrong. The smile underneath them was worse. Not the smile of someone guarding a door. The smile of someone who'd been told to stand there and was doing it without knowing why.
An older security guard stood right beside her, smiling like her, their arms touching without any semblance of personal space.
Lin Feng cataloged all of it in the time it took to roll his shoulders and close the car door behind him.
The evening air touched his skin, cool and gentle. Ahead of him lay the concrete path between the SUV and the guard house maybe fifteen meters long. The south gate arch dark against the last light. Campus sounds — distant, muffled, belonging to a world that had nothing to do with this one.
He just stood there.
-------------------------
Inside Zhang Tingting's head, the warm nothing died.
It didn't fade. It collapsed — like every muted channel in her head unmuting at once. The dissolution that had been so gentle, so warm, so fine reversed itself...
Like someone poured a bucket of ice water on her.
Then the memories flooded back.
The kitchen.
Not the idea of a kitchen. The kitchen — Lin Feng's kitchen, fluorescent light buzzing above the counter, the wok smoking because he'd added the oil thirty seconds too early.
His voice behind her, calm, unhurried: Don't touch it yet. Let it heat up for some time. Her hand on his, guiding him how to handle a ladle. The smell of garlic hitting heat at the exact right moment because he'd listened to her guidance, because—
The strolls. Night campus. The particular sound their footsteps made on the path between the east gate and the dormitory, hers quick and short, his longer but slowed to match. The way he never walked ahead of her. The way she'd noticed that and never said anything.
The night gatherings that to her were dates in all but name and recognition.
The car keys landing in her palm. The weight of them. Hold these for me. Not an order. A trust.
The first time she ever saw him — a boy launching himself from the passenger seat of a moving car to tackle Su Qingxue out of the path of a truck that would have killed her.
The sound of his body hitting the pavement. The moment she realized the boy with silver hair wasn't getting up immediately and something in her chest did something it had never done before.
All of it. Searing. Vivid. Every image so sharp it cut.
Seconds ago these had been dissolving. Seconds ago "Lin Feng" had been a sound without a shape, something she'd been ready to let go of, and she'd been fine with that.
She'd been nodding. Agreeing. Su Qingxue's smile hadn't looked wrong anymore. Zhang Yuting holding her hand had felt like family. The boy kneeling beside her with his hand holding hers had felt like — like—
She couldn't finish the thought. Her stomach turned.
No! No!
That was the thing that made her skin crawl. Then Zhang Tingting could feel something on her hand.
She looked down and there it was. Long Tian's fingers still wrapped around hers, warm and dry, no, even intimate, their fingers intertwined.
And the sensation, the sight of it now made her want to tear her own skin off. Zhang Yuting's grip on her other hand — her cousin, her family — felt like a second lock on a door she needed to break down.
Her heart was hammering. Cold sweat on the back of her neck, under her jaw, in the creases of her palms where his skin touched hers. Nausea climbing her throat in a slow, greasy wave.
He… What did he do to me?
Lin Feng… Where are you? Please save me!
He wants me to forget.
He wants me to forget about you.
The thought arrived whole and clear and furious.
He was making me forget everything.
-------------------------
Zhang Tingting moved like the devil was right behind her.
Her right hand — the one Long Tian was holding — ripped free. Not a pull. A wrench, violent, the kind of motion that didn't care if it broke fingers.
His grip had been loose. Distracted. His eyes weren't on her anymore — they were on something bright past the window, and his face had gone strange and blank in a way she didn't stop to interpret.
Her left hand was harder.
Zhang Yuting was holding on tight, her cousin's fingers interlocked with hers like a promise, and Zhang Tingting didn't pull. She shoved. Both palms flat against Zhang Yuting's chest. Full force. Survival force.
Zhang Yuting's heel caught the leg of the plastic chair. She went backward — arms pinwheeling, mouth open, — and hit the guard house floor with a crack that sounded like it hurt.
"Ting—"
Su Qingxue's hand reaching for her shoulder. Zhang Tingting twisted sideways and pushed Su Qingxue down, making her land on the floor with a slight thud.
In front of her was the door. It was already open.
But beyond it lay two bodies in the way — the one who was with her the whole afternoon who was meant to protect her from Long Tian, the one with the sunglasses blocking the doorway, and the other was the security guard, both wearing that same pleasant expression that had stopped looking pleasant the moment everything flooded back.
As if injected with chicken blood, Zhang Tingting, her veins flooded with adrenaline, ran with everything she had and used her body like a battering ram and pushed her way between Liu-23 and the guard.
Yet the two did not react to it. Their bodies just shifted — not resisting, not grabbing, just there, like mannequins someone had positioned and forgotten about.
Then air.
Cool on the sweat covering her neck and face. Open space. The fluorescent yellow of the guard house behind her. The campus spreading out in every direction with room to breathe, room to run, room to exist as herself.
Behind her: Zhang Yuting's voice, choked and confused. Su Qingxue calling her name — "Tingting!" — sharp, commanding, the voice of someone used to being listened to.
In front of her was Lin Feng, his short silver hair waving in the breeze.
She didn't look back.
She bolted as fast as the wind.
-------------------------
Long Tian was still on his knees.
The girl had ripped her hand away from him.
The system display still showed the aftermath — Zhang Tingting, Affection: -10, and the freefall log scrolling in the background like a receipt for a purchase that had been refunded in the worst possible way.
710 system points. Gone.
The skill timer still frozen at 0:02, blinking once, twice, then folding itself into a minimized error report he'd have to open later.
He'd deal with that. He'd figure it out. The system always had a reason. The system always—
The SUV's driver and front passenger door opened at the same time.
A leg. A heel on concrete. One figure stepping out from the front passenger seat. Another from the driver's seat.
Two entities entered the system's field of view at the same time.
It screamed.
-------------------------
[WARNING]
[UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED!!!]
[UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED!!!]
[Entity 1: Name: ???Star Rating: ???Affection: ???]
[Status: BEYOND CURRENT SYSTEM LEVEL]
[Information unlock cost: 10,000,000 CP ]
[Entity 2:Name: ???Star Rating: ???Affection: ???]
[Status: BEYOND CURRENT SYSTEM LEVEL]
[Information unlock cost: 10,000,000 CP ]
-------------------------
Ten million.
Each.
He had 4,845.
The gap wasn't a number he could grind toward.
It wasn't a mountain he could climb with enough dailies and side quests.
It was the distance between a boy standing in a parking lot and the light from a star that had already died.
The system wasn't telling him the price was high.
It was telling him the price didn't exist in his currency.
The question marks where names should be. Where star ratings should be. Where affection values should be.
His system — the system that had mapped Su Qingxue's emotional architecture down to the decimal...
That had tracked Zhang Yuting's baseline like a heart monitor...
That had priced Liu-23 and the guard's compliance like some commodity —
Had no language for what was standing in front of it.
This was why.
But before Long Tian could compose himself, the second notification hit.
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[ALERT: EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE DETECTED. ]
[SYSTEM FUNCTIONS RESTRICTED]
Purchased temporary skill [Passive Agreeability] — SUSPENDED
Cause: External Interference from unknown source. System Level too low to mount a counter.
Recommendation: DISENGAGE. RETREAT.
-------------------------
Liu-23. The guard. Both severed in an instant — not by a countermeasure, not by a competing system. By something.
Something external and from an unknown source.
He should have listened. The recommendation was right there in capital letters: DISENGAGE. RETREAT.
He looked at them instead.
Two women standing in what was left of the light. The sky behind them fading to dark. They'd stepped out of the SUV the way people step out of cars — naturally, without performance, without awareness that they were doing anything worth watching. And it didn't matter. The effect was the same.
Long Tian had seen beautiful women. Su Qingxue was beautiful. Zhang Yuting was beautiful.
Every girl his system had cataloged and rated and priced had been, in her own tier, attractive.
But those two made all of that feel like he was a frog at the bottom of the well.
He couldn't look away.
The system warnings pulsed red at the edges of his vision. DISENGAGE. RETREAT.
And underneath the warnings, underneath the error logs and the frozen timer and the 70-point freefall receipt, something older than the system and stupider than caution took hold of his chest and pulled.
He wanted them.
Not the way he wanted Su Qingxue — calculated, strategic, part of the plan.
Not the way he'd wanted Zhang Tingting — romantic, like he wanted to make her into his lifelong partner.
This was the want that came before systems and strategies and plans. Primal. Gravitational. The kind that made men start wars over women whose names they didn't know.
The system said retreat.
His eyes said stay.
-------------------------
Xiao Yue felt his gaze before she saw his face.
It landed on her skin like something with legs. Crawling. Assessing. Not the way a man looks at a woman he finds attractive — the way a customer looks at something in a display case he's already decided to want.
She'd felt gazes like this before. At banquets. At galas. From old men with money who thought proximity to that family entitled them to proximity to her.
Disgusting.
She found the source. A boy. Kneeling on the guard house floor — when had he ended up on his knees? — with a face that was trying very hard to be handsome and almost succeeding.
Almost.
The kind of face that would turn heads in a classroom but disappeared the moment you put it next to Lin Feng's.
Sigh… If Lin Feng could look at me like he wants to push me into his bed and bring me to my wit's end, I would be the happiest girl alive.
But no… this creature has shown more lust towards me in three seconds than Lin Feng has in two days.
The thought arrived barbed. They'd shared a bed. He touched her but only because she made him do it. He hadn't even shifted toward her in his sleep. She'd lain there in his shirt, close enough to feel his warmth, and he'd treated her like a roommate with a lease agreement.
And this boy — this stranger — was looking at her like she was already his.
Lin Feng. Obviously the better problem to have.
Across the hood of the SUV, Lin Weiwei caught the same gaze and felt the same revulsion — but hers came with a sneer.
This toad dares to dream of swan meat?
She ran the assessment in half a second. Jaw: weak. Shoulders: narrow. The way he held himself — like someone performing confidence rather than possessing it.
A knockoff handbag displayed under fluorescent light, trying to pass for the real thing. She'd spent years watching Lin Feng's shoulders, Lin Feng's jaw, Lin Feng's way of standing in a room like the room had been built for him. She knew what the genuine article looked like.
He's worried about THIS?
Really Big Brother? You think he's a threat?
And what's with those lecherous looks! I lay half naked on top of Big Brother the other day but he doesn't even look at me that way!
Her eyes flicked to the girl standing behind him. Su Qingxue. The campus belle. The name that had kept Lin Weiwei awake on more nights than she'd ever admit.
Ordinary. That was the word. Not ugly. Not plain. Just... ordinary. Campus-level pretty. The kind of face that won university pageants and lost everywhere else. Four years of jealousy dissolved into something worse than anger.
Embarrassment.
And then, there was that Su Qingxue.
The one Big Brother chased for four years…
Well, at least Big Brother is now interested in me… and unfortunately, in that stalker bitch over there too…
Their eyes met across the car. Xiao Yue and Lin Weiwei. A rare frequency — two women who agreed on almost nothing, arriving at the same conclusion through completely different calculations.
Something flickered in Xiao Yue's expression. The faintest narrowing — not at Long Tian, but at the situation. A guard house. A kneeling boy. A girl who'd apparently been sitting in a plastic chair with people standing around her. Lin Feng had driven across the city like the world was ending to get here.
Are we missing something?
Lin Weiwei caught it. Held her gaze for a beat. Then shrugged — one shoulder, barely a movement.
Or Big Brother is just paranoid.
Xiao Yue tilted her head slightly toward Long Tian. "Ms Lin, you're that desperate for a man's attention, right?" she said, voice flat, "How about that one over there? Just look at how he looks at you. He seems like he cannot wait to confess his love to you."
Lin Weiwei's lip curled. "Oh really? I thought he was looking at you. Since you're a bitch, why don't you act like one?"
"I'd rather jump from the top of the highest building in the world first before entertaining someone who is not Lin Feng. I'm not a whore like you!"
The two absolutely stunning women continued insulting each other.
Long Tian heard enough. Not every word — but enough.
The tone. The glance in his direction. The casual, unhurried cruelty of two women who had looked at him, assessed him, and found him worth less than an insult.
They hadn't dismissed him. Dismissal implied consideration.
They'd used him as a punchline — a fate to threaten each other with, like a disease or a bad haircut.
Two goddesses had just agreed that he was worse than loneliness.
-------------------------
Zhang Tingting sprinted towards Lin Feng as if a pack of wolves were behind her.
At the end of the line, Lin Feng stood there. Neither running nor walking, but just standing, like he was waiting for her.
Like she was worth the wait.
Even when running towards him, Zhang Tingting kept her eyes on his, not daring to look away.
She could see the lamplight on his silver hair. The jacket she'd seen a hundred times. The specific way his shoulders sat that she'd memorized without meaning to.
Lin Feng. Lin Feng! Lin Feng!!
She didn't slow down. She accelerated — or tried to, her legs almost buckling, her sneakers scuffing concrete — and closed the distance in a few desperate strides that had no rhythm and no grace and didn't care about either.
Then she hit him at full force.
Lin Feng buckled slightly as he absorbed all of her momentum. Then Zhang Tingting's fists closed on the front of his jacket, knuckles white, fingers twisting into the fabric like if she let go she'd dissolve again.
Her forehead pressed against his chest. His heartbeat under the jacket — steady, real, there. The solidity of a person who wasn't trying to rearrange her from the inside.
Tears began to fall like rain from her, wetting Lin Feng's jacket.
She was shaking, furious, terrified.
But safe.
He was saying something. She couldn't hear it. Her ears were full of her own pulse and the sound of her breathing — ragged, too fast, the kind of breathing that came right before crying or right after running for your life.
She registered, distantly, that there were two women standing by the SUV. Tall. Beautiful in a way that made the word insufficient.
It was them. Lin Weiwei and Xiao Yue.
But she couldn't care about that right now.
Her fingers tightened on his jacket.
Don't let go. Don't let me go.
-------------------------
[Zhang Tingting] ★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (1-Star Heroine)
├─ Previous: -10
└─ Current: -15 (-5▼)
-------------------------
Two camps.
The geography resolved itself the way battle lines do — not by negotiation but by gravity. Bodies finding their sides.
Lin Feng's side: Zhang Tingting clinging to him, her fists still locked in his jacket. On his flanks were two women who quickly stopped insulting each other the moment Zhang Tingting crashed into him.
Long Tian's side: emerging from the guard house on unsteady legs, the kneeling finally over. Su Qingxue dusting herself off as she stepped behind him, her face composed into something careful. Zhang Yuting in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, the other pressed to the spot on her chest where her cousin's palms had hit.
And then there were the confused Liu-23 and the security guard flanking the entrance, their brows furrowed in bewilderment at what had just happened.
The lampposts were fully on now. Twenty meters of concrete. Two sides.
In between the golden-haired and silver-haired men was only the sound of Zhang Tingting sobbing on Lin Feng's chest.
Then…
"Lin Feng."
"Long Tian."
Just names. No titles, no pleasantries, no pretense that this was a conversation.
Long Tian's interface flickered in the periphery of his vision. The system still had its label:
Lin Feng. Classification: Minor Villain. Threat Level: Low.
However, just by being present, the skill malfunctioned.
Then, he was also flanked by two entities the system couldn't classify standing at his shoulders. These two were definitely not escorts. Or products of plastic surgery and beautification.
They were the real deal.
Had watched a 70-point lead evaporate in one second. And now had Long Tian's target heroine clinging to him like he was the last solid thing in the world.
Low threat?
He could even take Tingting just like that! Make the system look useless and make me waste my system points!
The crack in his faith widened.
Low threat my ass.
Lin Feng looked at the boy across the concrete.
He'd seen everything he needed through the guard house window — the plastic chair, the kneeling position, the girl's hands held by two people, Liu-23's wrong smile.
And now Zhang Tingting shaking against him, her grip iron-tight, radiating the kind of fear that didn't come from a conversation.
He must have used the system's abilities against Tingting…
Good thing we arrived here on time.
But from the looks of it, it seems that I almost lost Tingting.
Lin Feng then looked at Liu-23 who was still confused. Looking around, at Lin Feng, then at the people around her as if she had forgotten who they were or why she was here.
And he seemed to have used that too. That brain hacking skill that forces people into compliance.
But… wasn't that skill supposed to be unbreakable?
And also, it seemed that Tingting had escaped from him…
Was something like that supposed to happen?
Did I miss something?
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[End of Chapter]