Chapter 31: My Condition Is Your Fear

"What exactly are you afraid of?"

Jiang Yi's voice, like a surgical scalpel tempered in ice, precisely and mercilessly sliced through the air in the project room—air that had only just begun to soften due to their alliance—and pierced straight into Xu Yuan's already scarred heart.

Time seemed to freeze.

Xu Yuan's pupils constricted sharply. Her blood felt as though it were flowing backward, leaving her hands and feet ice-cold. She could feel Jiang Yi’s gaze; it was not a simple interrogation, but an examination, a test. He was watching her—this ally who had just presented her "declaration of war"—to see if she was truly qualified to stand by his side, or if she was merely an unstable burden that could be easily shattered by fear.

A simple lie? Something like "I have a phobia of fire"?

No, that wouldn't work.

The thought flashed through her mind for only a second before she dismissed it. Jiang Yi was not a fool like Li Wenfeng; he had witnessed her "crazy girlfriend" act in the KTV, a performance that was riddled with holes yet effectively insane. He was too intelligent. Any simple lie lacking logical support would look like a rag covered in patches before him—ludicrous and fragile.

A weak lie would only force her back into a position where she required his pity and sympathy, completely destroying the fragile, equal covenant they had just established.

Her brain raced at an unprecedented speed. Fear, lies, truth... countless fragments collided and rearranged themselves in her mind. She had to provide an answer—one that was real enough, heavy enough, and convincing enough to make him believe, perhaps even... resonate with her.

A perfect lie, woven from the threads of truth.

Xu Yuan slowly lifted her head, meeting those bottomless, probing black eyes. She did not look away, instead allowing the fear from her dreams—the fear that had seeped into her very marrow—to spread genuinely and unreservedly in her eyes.

"It's not the library I'm afraid of." Her voice was terribly hoarse, each word trembling with a faint, imperceptible shiver. "What I fear is that place, because it reminds me of something... something I don't want to remember."

She saw Jiang Yi’s brows furrow almost imperceptibly.

He did not interrupt her. He was waiting. Waiting for her to continue.

Xu Yuan took a deep breath, tearing open the bloody, festering scar hidden deep within her heart, and carefully grafted onto it the terror born from her prophetic dreams.

"My family went bankrupt, my father was imprisoned—you should know about that." She gave a self-deprecating laugh, a smile that looked worse than crying. "But what you don't know is that the final straw that crushed my family was a fire."

"A small, office fire that was officially classified as an 'accident'."

She watched Jiang Yi’s eyes, which began to ripple with change, and continued in a tone of sleepwalking, flat narration, recounting the "truth" she had just woven in her mind.

"The night before my father was taken in for investigation, the accounting office at his company caught fire due to faulty wiring. It wasn't a big fire; the fire department put it out quickly. There were no casualties, and it didn't even make the news."

"But by coincidence, that fire destroyed a safe. Inside that safe was the most critical item my father had prepared to submit to the police the next day to prove his innocence... the original ledger."

"Without that ledger, the entire chain of evidence was broken. Every accusation became an ironclad case with no hope of defense."

"So," she looked at him, the genuine fear in her eyes merging perfectly with the real despair she had just recalled, until one could no longer distinguish between them, "do you understand now, Jiang Yi?"

"It isn't fire that I fear."

"I am afraid of that feeling of powerlessness—watching the most important thing you have being devoured bit by bit, while you can do nothing to stop it."

"I am afraid of that despair, of having your throat gripped by fate with no room to even struggle."

"I am afraid that the library will become my second accounting office. And that our 'Deep Sea Echo' will become my second... burned ledger."

Having finished, she fell silent.

She had placed all her chips on this table. She used her most authentic pain to gamble on his empathy for something he had experienced himself.

The project room fell into a deathly silence.

Jiang Yi stared at her intensely. Within his dark, heavy eyes, complex emotions—like a raging storm—churned in a way Xu Yuan could not fathom.

He didn't fully believe her.

With his intelligence, he could easily detect the overly "coincidental" drama in her words.

But he could also see the fear in her eyes—the kind that could not be faked, the kind that went down to the marrow. That fear was too real, so real that it reminded him of that rainy night ten years ago, when his father was taken away and his mother wore that same expression of utter despair.

Even more, he could not deny that her words had precisely and cruelly struck the deepest chord within him.

Watching the most important thing be devoured while powerless.

Having your throat gripped by fate, unable to fight back.

Was this not the living hell he had been experiencing day and night for the past ten years?

A long time passed—so long that Xu Yuan thought she had lost this high-stakes gamble after all.

Only then did Jiang Yi finally, slowly, look away.

He didn't say "I believe you," nor did he say "I understand."

He simply turned around silently and pushed the breakfast that had been sitting on the corner of the table since he arrived—now long since cold—toward Xu Yuan with a heavy thud.

The movement was somewhat rough, even tinged with impatience.

But the steamed bun pushed toward her was like a silent, heavy contract.

It was saying: I accept your story.

It was also saying: Now, eat it.

And furthermore: I don't care if your fear is real or fake; I only care that as my ally, you must live well. Because your value is far more important than your fear.

This was a cold, emotionless, almost cruel form of consideration.

Yet, it was the highest level of tenderness that someone like Jiang Yi could offer.

Xu Yuan's heart felt as if it had been held by a warm hand—gently, yet with immense strength. It was sour and burning, hurting so much she could barely breathe.

"Since your problem is solved," Jiang Yi sat back in his chair, his voice returning to that cold, distant tone, "let's talk about our problem."

With this sentence, he roughly and indisputably ended the standoff that had nearly exhausted them both, pulling the topic back to the only main line.

The mission.

Xu Yuan silently picked up a cold steamed bun and took a fierce bite, swallowing all the surging emotions along with the chilled filling.

She knew she had won the bet.

With a perfect lie, she had temporarily secured her biggest secret and thoroughly solidified her position in this alliance.

From this moment on, they were no longer just in a simple "cooperative relationship."

They were true, equal accomplices who could entrust their backs to one another.

The next three hours were the most efficient and mentally grueling hours of Xu Yuan's life.

The massive whiteboard in the center of the project room became Jiang Yi’s personal battlefield.

Like a calm and fanatical general, he used a black marker to rapidly outline the vast and complex empire of "Deep Sea Echo" across that white territory.

"User data must be encrypted with asymmetric encryption. Private keys are stored locally, public keys on the chain, ensuring no one can decrypt it but the user themselves."

"Sonic QR codes cannot use traditional QR codes; they are too easily cracked. We need to write our own generation algorithm, packing audio data with timestamps and device IDs to create a dynamically encrypted soundprint."

"The servers cannot be cloud-based; it's not secure. We'll rent physical servers ourselves and deploy them in the basement of the Xingyu family warehouse, physically isolated."

He spoke with extreme speed, technical terms Xu Yuan had never even heard of spilling from his mouth. His eyes, usually as still as an ancient well, burned with an almost obsessive fire that belonged to a top-tier genius.

In the corner, Lu Xingyu, who had been busy tinkering with his "wife," had long since taken off his headphones and joined the storm.

He was no longer the shy, awkward nerd. He was like a critical arms expert, constantly challenging the strategist Jiang Yi with sharp and lethal questions.

"Boss, if this encryption algorithm runs, the power consumption will be too high! Any Android phone under two thousand yuan will overheat and throttle within ten minutes, and the user experience will collapse!"

"And the soundprint recognition! Have you thought about how to do sound source separation and background noise reduction in a noisy environment? That requires a specialized audio processing library; the existing open-source ones don't meet the requirements at all!"

"And physical servers—what about heat dissipation and power? The power meter in my little warehouse can't handle a high-performance server running 24/7!"

The two went back and forth, their speed like machine-gun fire. The architecture diagram on the whiteboard was drawn, erased, and drawn again, becoming increasingly complex and—ever more perfect.

For the first time, Xu Yuan felt like an outsider.

She watched the two men, who were shining as they immersed themselves in their own world, and for the first time, she clearly recognized the gap between herself and them.

But she did not retreat.

When they fell into a dispute over "database read/write efficiency," she stood up silently, walked to the whiteboard, picked up a red marker, and drew a bold circle in the center of their complex architecture diagram, right around a lonely little figure representing the "user."

"You two geniuses," she knocked on the board, successfully grabbing their attention, "I don't understand what you're talking about. I only want to ask one question."

"Our user—a girl who just went through a breakup, crying uncontrollably under her covers—how is she supposed to use this app of ours—which is powerful enough to build a nuclear weapon by hand—to tell the scumbag who dumped her how sad she is?"

Jiang Yi and Lu Xingyu froze simultaneously.

"What she needs is an entrance that is simple enough and safe enough," Xu Yuan said, looking at them, every word crystal clear. "She needs to know that every word she says won't be heard by a second person. She needs to feel that she isn't lonely in her sadness, that in this world, there are many others like her, echoing solitarily in the 'Deep Sea'."

"What she needs is not a cold technical product."

"But a tree hole that can give her a hug."

"Technology should serve humanity. It should not stand above humanity."

The project room fell into a deathly silence once more.

Lu Xingyu looked at Xu Yuan, his eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses filled with undisguised, awe-struck worship.

As for Jiang Yi, he looked at the girl standing before the whiteboard, holding a red marker, her face pale as a ghost but her eyes bright as the sun. In his dark, heavy gaze, all the coldness and sharpness faded away at that moment.

All that remained was a tenderness he himself had not yet realized.

He knew he had found it.

He had found the most indispensable piece of this vast empire—the piece called "soul."

The meeting lasted until dusk.

Lu Xingyu, like a soldier fueled by adrenaline, grabbed a purchase list filled with strange model numbers and dashed out of the project room, heading to the electronics market to procure the first batch of armaments for their "empire."

In the project room, only Xu Yuan and Jiang Yi remained.

The air no longer held the morning's hostility, replaced by a weary, tacit understanding between comrades.

Xu Yuan thought that this thrilling day could finally come to an end.

However, just as she was packing her things to leave, Jiang Yi’s cold voice sounded from behind her, without warning.

"My sister called you."

It was not a question; it was a statement.

Xu Yuan’s body stiffened instantly.

She turned around abruptly to see Jiang Yi leaning back in his chair, watching her expressionlessly. His eyes were like two bottomless, icy pools.

"I..." She opened her mouth, but all her explanations and lies felt pale and powerless at this moment.

He knew.

He really did know everything.

Yet, to her surprise, there was no anger, no humiliation, and not even a trace of feeling offended on Jiang Yi’s face.

He simply looked at her calmly, as if stating a matter of business that had nothing to do with him.

"I don't need company."

"I need data."

He stood up slowly, walked to the whiteboard filled with their ambitions, and used his finger to knock heavily on the little figure representing the "user" that Xu Yuan had circled in red.

"Next Wednesday, the Binhai Intermediate People's Court will be the place with the highest concentration of negative emotions in the entire city. Anger, despair, unwillingness, sadness... everything we want is there."

"That is our first, and most perfect, user testing ground."

He turned his head to look at Xu Yuan, who was speechless from shock. In his bottomless eyes, there was no longer any fragility or pain; in its place was a calm and madness that belonged to a general—a calm and madness that was almost cruel.

"So, Xu Yuan."

"You aren't going to keep me company."

"You are going as the project manager of 'Deep Sea Echo' to collect your first batch of user requirements."

"This is your job."