Chapter 15: The Frozen Fracture

Jiang Yi left.

Like a sudden hurricane carrying the breath of destruction, he swept through this small corner and abruptly departed, leaving behind a scene of utter chaos.

And a heart, torn apart and bleeding from the blade hidden within his words.

Xu Yuan sat there quietly, motionless.

The faint, curious, and speculative gazes around her felt like countless fine needles pricking her back. She could hear the girls at the neighboring table whispering in hushed tones.

“Oh my god, was that Jiang Yi just now? Why did he get so angry?”

“I don’t know. It seems like that girl provoked him… Look, his eyes were red when he left. So scary.”

“Serves her right for sticking her nose in. Jiang Yi’s a madman now; whoever crosses him is doomed.”

The murmurs buzzed annoyingly like swarming mosquitoes.

But Xu Yuan heard nothing.

In her world, there was only Jiang Yi’s final gaze—overflowing with raging fury and humiliation—and that cold, cutting sentence:

“Get out of my world!”

With his own hands, he rebuilt the ice wall between them, which had just begun to crack, sealing it once again, thicker and more impenetrable than before.

Their collaboration ended there.

All her cautiousness, all her cleverness, all her approaches under the guise of “money” became nothing but a complete joke in that moment.

Xu Yuan slowly lowered her head, her eyes falling on the weighty proposal on the table—marked up by him.

It still carried his cool, unique aura.

Every red annotation spoke of his painstaking study under the lamp last night. Every brilliant idea revealed his unmatched genius.

They could have been the best partners.

They could have won that lifesaving prize together.

But now, it was all over.

She had ruined everything.

Lin Feifei was right—she shouldn’t have meddled. What right did she have to interfere in someone else’s life?

Xu Yuan’s eyes stung with waves of acid, yet stubbornly, she refused to shed a tear.

She didn’t know how long she had sat there—long enough for the onlookers to lose interest and gradually disperse.

Finally, she stood up slowly.

She didn’t chase after him, nor did she weep.

She simply bent down, picked up the chair Jiang Yi had knocked over—still in a disheveled state—and gently placed it back where it belonged.

As if with that small, stubborn gesture, she silently answered his roar—

I will not leave.

...

In the days that followed, Xu Yuan and Jiang Yi sank into a complete cold war.

The campus of Binhai University was neither too large nor too small, yet they seemed to live in two parallel worlds that would never intersect.

Xu Yuan never returned to that corner by the window on the third floor of the library.

Her days were packed tightly: classes, buying the cheapest meal in the cafeteria, then diving straight into her dorm room, working on an online testing part-time job from five in the afternoon until late at night, without fail.

She was like a wound-up, tireless machine, numbing her heart full of scars with relentless work.

Occasionally, she would spot that familiar figure from afar on campus.

On the way to the teaching building, at the cafeteria window, beside the evening playground.

He was always alone, like a walking iceberg, radiating a cold aura that warned strangers to keep away.

Each time, their eyes would meet only briefly before swiftly looking away as if the other were a burning flame.

Neither of them spoke a word.

The freshly signed cooperation agreement, with ink barely dry, became a neglected scrap of paper.

The “Starlight Cup” competition was never mentioned again.

“Hey, what’s going on between you two?”

On Friday night, Lin Feifei finally couldn’t stand it anymore. She slammed shut Xu Yuan’s battered laptop, interrupting her five-hour work session.

“A cold war? A sulk?” Lin Feifei crossed her arms, wearing an exasperated expression. “Xu Yuan, I’m telling you, if you two split, the happiest person will be Song Shiya! I heard she openly bet at the dance club today that your ‘fallen duo’ won’t even pass the preliminaries!”

Xu Yuan rubbed her aching eyes, saying nothing.

“Look at you now, a mess!” Lin Feifei poked her forehead tenderly. “You’re working yourself to death for money? Have you slept more than ten hours in the past few days? You’re so thin now you look like a bean sprout—one gust of wind and you’ll fall!”

“I’m fine.” Xu Yuan’s voice was hoarse.

“Fine, huh!” Lin Feifei grabbed a bag of chips from the table, tore it open fiercely, and shoved it into Xu Yuan’s hand. “Eat! Right now! If you keep this up, you’ll drop dead before Jiang Yi even gets into trouble!”

Xu Yuan stared at the chips in her hand, then at Lin Feifei’s face, which was filled with frustration and genuine concern. The wall she had been holding up inside finally crumbled a little.

“Feifei,” her voice trembling with tears, “did I... really do something wrong?”

“You didn’t!” Lin Feifei replied immediately without hesitation. “The one at fault is that ungrateful bastard Jiang Yi! He got betrayed and still helped count the money! His sister cares about him, you meant well too, so why did he get mad at you? He’s just too proud to admit his fragile pride got hurt. Serves him right to be alone forever!”

Lin Feifei’s words were fierce with righteous anger, but Xu Yuan only shook her head bitterly.

She knew Jiang Yi wasn’t like that.

He was just... too proud. Proud enough to rather face the world’s storms alone than let anyone see the scars long etched across his body by jagged reefs.

“Forget him,” Lin Feifei said, seeing how lost Xu Yuan looked and not wanting to scold her further. Suddenly, she remembered something and pulled out a poster from her phone, handing it to Xu Yuan.

“Look at this!” Her tone brightened again. “You know ‘Fengqi’ Tech, right? One of the top internet companies in the country! They’ve just launched a ‘Qingyun Project’ for college students—a programming challenge for two-person teams. And the best part is—look here!”

Lin Feifei pointed to a line of small print on the poster:

[Grand Prize: 30,000 yuan and an internship offer at Fengqi Tech headquarters!]

Thirty thousand yuan!

That number sparked a faint glimmer in Xu Yuan’s eyes, which had long since dimmed.

“This competition’s timeline is short; registration closes next Friday,” Lin Feifei coaxed. “And I’ve checked, its credibility is way higher than that ‘Starlight Cup’! If you win this, not only will your dad’s medical bills be covered, but your job after graduation will be secured too!”

Xu Yuan’s heart raced uncontrollably.

She understood what Lin Feifei meant.

This was an opportunity.

An opportunity more legitimate, more enticing than the “Starlight Cup”—a chance to stand before Jiang Yi once more.

But...

Would he give her that chance?

Just as she hesitated, caught in an inner battle, someone knocked on the dormitory door from outside.

“Xu Yuan? You’ve got a package!” the dorm supervisor’s loud voice echoed down the hall.

Puzzled, Xu Yuan went out and signed for a small parcel with no sender information.

Back in the dorm, under Lin Feifei’s curious gaze, she opened the package.

Inside, there was nothing but a brand-new phone—identical to her old one with the shattered screen.

On the phone’s startup screen was a small white note.

Written in sharp, slender black penmanship were two lines.

The first line was a bank card number.

The second read:

[Password: Your birthday.]