Chapter 26: The Gentle Mask

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Four in the morning.

The entire world lay wrapped in silence, broken only by the scattered chirping of insects beyond the window.

Xu Yuan’s eyes flew open, and she sat bolt upright in bed. There was no scream, no cold sweat—only a slow, heavy sense of suffocation, as though she had been submerged in icy water.

Her heart beat against her chest with dull, weighty blows. Every thud brought with it a sharp, densely packed pain.

Wen Ran.

Wen Ran, the man in gold-rimmed glasses who had watched with a smile from behind a pure-white curtain as Jiang Yi was dragged into the abyss by endless black threads.

A chill far more intense and bone-deep than any of her previous dreams swept through her entire body in an instant.

At last, she understood.

Every one of her earlier predictions had been wrong.

Li Wenfeng’s bullying, Song Shiya’s hostility, even the library fire that was about to erupt… They were merely the visible “storms” laid out in plain sight.

The true force seeking to drag Jiang Yi, that stubborn reef, into the abyss was the calmest, most harmless-looking presence of all—the gentle current concealed beneath the sunlight.

It was Wen Ran.

That realization struck like the sharpest ice pick, brutally and without reason, shattering every last trace of Xu Yuan’s wishful thinking and innocence.

What she had feared before were uncontrollable, sudden accidents.

Now, she feared a living enemy—someone wearing a perfect mask and hiding in the shadows.

That kind of fear was more tangible, and far more… despairing.

She tumbled out of bed so abruptly that she knocked over the glass of water beside it. The crisp crash rang through the silent night, painfully loud.

“Mm… Xu Yuan, what are you freaking out about this time?” Zhou Lili mumbled sleepily from the upper bunk.

But Xu Yuan could not afford to care about anything else. By the faint glow of her phone screen, she hurriedly pulled on her clothes. She did not even put on shoes before rushing barefoot to Lin Feifei’s bed.

“Feifei! Wake up!” She shook the sleeping Lin Feifei hard.

“What is it…?” Lin Feifei opened her eyes groggily. The moment she saw Xu Yuan’s paper-white face, etched with panic, she woke halfway. “Good heavens, what did you dream about this time?!”

“Help me!” Xu Yuan seized her hand with such force that she nearly crushed the bones. “Feifei, use every connection your family has and help me investigate someone!”

“Who?” Lin Feifei’s heart rose into her throat.

“Wen Ran.” Xu Yuan stared at her and spoke each word distinctly. “I want to know everything about him. His family background, his connections—especially… what exactly happened between his family and the Jiang family ten years ago.”

…

The next day was Tuesday.

All day, Xu Yuan was consumed by an unbearable anxiety that left her unable to sit still.

Lin Feifei worked quickly. Early that morning, she had activated the vast network of her remarkably well-connected older brother and begun a thorough investigation into Wen Ran’s background.

But an investigation like that took time.

Until the results came back, every minute and every second was agony for Xu Yuan.

She did not dare go looking for Jiang Yi.

She was afraid that one careless glance would betray the terror already raging inside her.

More than that, she was afraid… that Jiang Yi might hear from her the name capable of utterly destroying him.

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All she could do was hide in the dormitory like an ostrich, clutching her computer and frantically working on her online testing job, trying to numb the heart that had long since been tied over a fire and roasted again and again.

Ding-dong—

At three in the afternoon, a video call request appeared in the lower-right corner of her computer screen.

It was Jiang Yi.

Xu Yuan’s heart shot into her throat.

He had contacted her first?

She drew a deep breath, forcibly suppressed every emotion, put on her headphones, and pressed the answer button.

Jiang Yi’s still lean, stern face appeared on the screen. He seemed to be in the East District server room; behind him stood the familiar rows of densely packed server racks.

“The proposal.”

His voice remained as emotionless and businesslike as ever, as though yesterday’s “computer delivery” incident beneath the dormitory building—an event that had caused such an uproar—had never happened.

“…What proposal?” Xu Yuan’s mind stalled for a moment.

Jiang Yi’s brows drew together almost imperceptibly.

“The Windrise competition,” he reminded her. A trace of restrained impatience entered his voice. “You said we were making a new start.”

Xu Yuan’s heart was lightly pricked by something.

Only then did she remember that yesterday, in the server room, she had issued him an invitation to a “new deal” in a manner almost resembling a declaration of war.

“I…” She parted her lips, only to find her throat painfully dry.

She had not slept all night. Her mind was filled with Wen Ran’s smiling eyes. How could she have had the slightest thought for a competition proposal?

“You didn’t do it?” Jiang Yi watched her vacant expression, and his gaze slowly turned colder.

“I did!” Xu Yuan denied it almost instinctively.

She could not let him notice anything unusual.

Even less could she allow him to think she was an unreliable partner who did nothing but make grand claims.

She abruptly pushed the copy of News Interviewing and Writing, already thumbed ragged from constant use, toward the camera and began her practiced yet clumsy performance.

“I spent the whole night researching! Windrise Technologies’ corporate culture leans toward humanistic concern and technological innovation. So I abandoned our earlier concept involving ‘memory.’ I think we could create an interactive project about… ‘sound’!”

Her mind raced at unprecedented speed, summoning every scrap of useful knowledge she possessed.

“We could develop an app that lets users record things they want to say but dare not say, then turn them into an anonymous, one-of-a-kind audio-wave QR code. Users could share the code with the person they want to confide in. The other person would have to scan the code to hear the message.”

“We’ll call it ‘Echoes from the Deep.’”

She finished in one breath, then watched the expressionless face on the screen nervously, waiting for judgment.

Jiang Yi fell silent.

He looked at her—the astonishingly bright eyes reddened with sleeplessness, and the way she was clearly nervous to death yet stubbornly pretending to be confident and fully prepared.

A long time passed. So long that Xu Yuan thought he might hang up just as he had in the server room the previous day.

Only then did he finally speak, slowly.

“All right.”

Just two words.

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Yet they were like a merciful decree descending from the heavens, pulling Xu Yuan back from the ruins of lies that were about to collapse around her.

“Send me your detailed proposal.” He paused, then added, “Before tonight.”

“All right!” Xu Yuan nodded immediately without thinking.

“And…” Jiang Yi looked at her. A complicated glimmer passed through his dark eyes. “Yesterday… my sister…”

He seemed about to ask something, but in the end, he said nothing.

“It’s nothing.” He turned his gaze away, his voice once again assuming its cold, distant tone. “Carry on.”

With that, he ended the call decisively.

Xu Yuan stared at the black screen and let out a long, silent breath.

At least… she had managed to bluff her way through.

She was just about to begin rushing through the damned proposal she had only just improvised when someone gently knocked on the dormitory door from outside.

“Who is it?” Lin Feifei called impatiently.

A gentle, achingly familiar voice came from beyond the door.

“Excuse me, is Xu Yuan here?”

Xu Yuan’s body went rigid.

It was Wen Ran.

Why was he here?

“Xu Yuan? Your gentle senior is here to see you!” Seeing her standing frozen in place, Lin Feifei raised her brows suggestively and got up to open the door.

“Don’t open it!”

Xu Yuan practically screamed. She sprang from her chair and seized the doorknob.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lin Feifei jumped at her overreaction.

“I… I haven’t changed clothes! I…” Xu Yuan stammered, her mind a blank.

She could not see him.

At least until Lin Feifei’s investigation was complete, she absolutely could not have any further contact with him.

“Xu Yuan?” Wen Ran seemed to have heard the commotion inside. Concern entered his voice. “Are you in there? Are you feeling unwell?”

“I’m fine!” Xu Yuan pressed herself against the cold door and tried to make her voice sound steady. “Senior, I’m sorry, but I… I’m not really able to receive visitors right now. Is there something you need?”

Silence fell beyond the door for several seconds.

Then Wen Ran’s voice came again, as gentle as ever, utterly free of worldly sharpness.

“It’s nothing serious,” he said with a soft laugh. “I merely heard that you and Jiang Yi entered Windrise’s challenge competition.”

Xu Yuan’s heart shot into her throat.

“I entered that competition too.”

“And, unfortunately…” He paused. His voice carried just the right amount of helplessness and regret, as though he were genuinely concerned for her. “I only just learned that one of the judges for the preliminary round is my… aunt.”

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