“CEO Jiang.”

“You look beautiful.”

Lin Qing stared at herself in the mirror, unable to fully accept the sight of her body covered head to toe in bold, conspicuous logos.

Jiang Han looked her up and down with satisfaction and offered encouragement: “You’re young. You look good in anything.”

Lin Qing settled into the back seat of the car, clutching her evening clutch bag, wearing the bright, striking makeup that a team of artists had spent all afternoon applying.

“I feel like a telephone pole plastered with advertisements,” she muttered.

“Endure it. It’ll be over before you know it,” Jiang Han said gently.

The two of them rode to the “Meng River Gathering.”

Wang Zaiwu and Liang Meng had already arrived, impeccably dressed and polished, standing together in the exhibition hall to welcome the incoming guests.

Catching a free moment, Wang Zaiwu nudged Liang Meng’s elbow. “You look surprisingly decent tonight.”

Liang Meng shot him a sidelong look. “When do I not look decent?”

“I’m complimenting you — you look especially beautiful tonight.”

“Oh, so when you don’t say it, I’m not beautiful? Drop dead.” Liang Meng gave him a sharp elbow in the ribs.

Wang Zaiwu watched the stream of elegant women flowing past them and said softly, with a touch of feeling, “Hey — why is it that every time you stand next to me, I feel so completely out of place? The moment you linked your arm through mine, I felt like I was doing something deeply, deeply wrong.”

Liang Meng had just finished smiling and exchanging pleasantries with a wealthy socialite who had passed by. She immediately dropped her smile and turned to warn Wang Zaiwu, “Keep that mouth of yours shut. If you ruin things tonight, I will never speak to you again. In a little while, you absolutely must make everyone believe that we are a real couple.”

“Forced into a pairing,” Wang Zaiwu murmured through barely-moving lips, his hands folded neatly in front of him. “I heard your sister and Jiang Han are both coming tonight. And Lin Qing too. Tonight is shaping up to have some serious drama!”

“Jiang Han is coming too?” Liang Meng’s composure faltered, and she instinctively took a small step back.

“I just saw his name on the guest list. His listed companion is Lin Qing,” Wang Zaiwu explained.

Liang Meng couldn’t help herself — she punched him in the arm. “Something this important, and you didn’t tell me sooner?”

“Would it have made any difference?” Wang Zaiwu didn’t see what the fuss was about. “So — are you still going to go through with this?”

Liang Meng let out a breath and said nothing.

Of course she was.

Wang Zaiwu was right. Whether he told her or not, it changed nothing about the outcome.

“I heard the grand finale of tonight’s auction is a work by Italian designer Porta — a butterfly brooch set with red diamonds,” Wang Zaiwu said.

“They can sell whatever they want. I’m not buying,” Liang Meng replied flatly.

“You might not be, but plenty of others are eager to. Apparently Porta is in her nineties now — this is expected to be her final piece.”

Liang Meng was unmoved. “I just went to the ‘Mingxin’ brooch exhibition not long ago. I’ve seen enough brooches and jewelry to last me a while. These things go for tens of millions — sometimes hundreds of millions. I’m not interested. That money would be better spent building my herbal tea business.”

Wang Zaiwu asked, “So — has my dad agreed to lease you the Baoquan brand?”

“More or less. It all comes down to how you perform tonight,” Liang Meng reminded him. “You don’t actually think your father genuinely wants me as his daughter-in-law, do you?”

“Well, he might not want it. But I definitely don’t either. Sticking with you, Young President Liang, means three meals a day that don’t always materialize.”

“Get lost.”

Aunt Wang had booked the International Exhibition Center for the Meng River Gathering.

Every invitation had been specially crafted in solid 24-karat gold — opulent beyond measure.

Under the evening sky, Lin Qing walked forward, taking it all in with a quietly sinking heart.

She had heard about the extravagance of high society — but seeing it in person, she found it exceeded even her imagination.

The women sweeping past were each more stunning than the last — every one of them looked like a celebrity.

The deeper in she walked, the more intimidated she felt. Jiang Han sensed this, tightened her arm against his side, and reminded her: “Straighten up.”

“CEO Jiang, the only time I’ve been to an exhibition center like this was for a book fair. This is on another level entirely. And I’ve never walked a red carpet before — and those camera flashes on both sides keep going off…”

“Don’t worry. Just walk. Nobody here knows who you are. Whatever photos are taken, if you don’t want them, they’ll be deleted eventually anyway.”

“Is that so.”

“At most they’ll leak out, make the financial news, and push Sansheng’s market value down a little further. It’s practically at the bottom anyway.”

“Oh my god—!”

Lin Qing inhaled sharply again, feeling the bare skin of her legs go even colder.

The more Lin Qing trembled, the slower her pace. Jiang Han did his best to match her.

“Ugh, I’m so tired of jade and tourmaline. Why is this gathering featuring those again?”

The murmur of nearby socialites drifted into Lin Qing’s ears.

“Same. I just picked up a full strand of Mikimoto and TASAKI pearls last month. But you always have to show face at Aunt Wang’s gatherings.”

“Exactly! What’s the point of buying from a shop? Even Sotheby’s and Christie’s auctions are old news. This is where you find the real treasures — everything sold in regular channels is leftovers.”

“I heard Aunt Wang really went all out this time. Just organizing this event reportedly cost over ten million. The security costs alone were extraordinary!”

Lin Qing listened, and felt her sense of self shrink a little further.

She lip-synced to Jiang Han: Sell me off, and I might not even fetch ten million.

What a way to burn money.

Jiang Han gave a dry, half-hearted chuckle and reminded Lin Qing, “You need to start getting used to this.”

“I can’t get used to it,” Lin Qing shot back. “Every time you make me work the futures market, my heart races the whole time. I have to keep telling myself: this is investing, this is investing! And in a moment, the auction inside will have items going for astronomical prices — the number of zeros might outlive me. CEO Jiang, you have to consider the psychological load this puts on someone who grew up without money!”

Jiang Han, at a loss, came up with a trick. “Here’s what we’ll do — whatever price you see inside, just mentally drop four zeros. Remove the ‘ten-thousand’ unit entirely.”

“That’s a good idea,” Lin Qing said, gripping her clutch with renewed confidence. “So the security cost was just 1,000. That’s actually not bad.”

She lifted her chin, and beneath the night sky and towering Western-style architecture, she stepped forward with measured, composed strides, following Jiang Han up the red-carpeted steps, one by one.

Inside the grand hall, the chandeliers blazed, and a beam of light fell across her eyes.

In that moment, Lin Qing couldn’t help but think back — back to university, when she had once thought that Zeng Rui represented the ceiling of wealth she would ever get close to.

Now she finally understood what Jiang Han had meant: beyond wealth, there is always more wealth.

Extravagance has no ceiling.

And so there was no point in losing yourself in all this glitter.

“Oh my! Aunt Wang! You look simply stunning tonight!”

Aunt Wang stood at the center of the grand hall, regal as the Queen of England.

Tonight she wore a Valentino violet haute couture gown, paired with a full set of Bvlgari serpenti jewelry, giving her an air of overwhelming wealth and radiant vitality.

“How come I don’t recognize the bag she’s carrying?” Lin Qing asked carefully and quietly, leaning toward Jiang Han.

Jiang Han cast her a withering glance. “If you don’t recognize it, treat it as a grain sack.”

Lin Qing caught Jiang Han’s contempt for her lack of sophistication, and resolved not to ask any more embarrassingly obvious questions.

Before long, Lin Qing spotted Liang Meng not far away.

She couldn’t help herself and bothered Jiang Han again, “Why is Liang Meng standing with Wang Zaiwu again?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Jiang Han replied. “Tonight they’re a couple.”

“Then what about Lu Zhou?” Lin Qing blurted out.

Jiang Han stared at her with an expression one might reserve for an alien being.

After a long moment, he turned back to finish making pleasantries with two business associates, and only then leaned over and hissed at Lin Qing under his breath:

“Are you completely dense?! Tonight Liang Meng’s official partner is Wang Zaiwu! As for that Lu Zhou — he can go freeze somewhere far away!”

“Still, between Lu Zhou and Wang Zaiwu, Lu Zhou is definitely better looking. He and Liang Meng suit each other more,” Lin Qing said, not backing down.

Jiang Han looked at her and confirmed once again that she had absolutely no filter on her mouth.

“Can you be any more useless? Mind your posture — stand straight! If you’re going to be seen as my woman, is it too much to ask for a little dignity?”

Lin Qing straightened her back and made a zipping gesture across her lips toward Jiang Han, signaling that tonight she would be good — a dignified and well-behaved mute.

At that moment, Aunt Wang spotted Jiang Han too, and came sweeping over with a group of wealthy socialites.

Men were scarce in the grand hall.

The titans of industry were invariably too busy for this kind of thing. They’d hand their wives the black card and send them off — never accompanying them in person. In the time it took to stand around here, they’d probably have earned enough to buy their wife or daughter another Cartier necklace.

The men who had come in person were either sons-in-law living under their wives’ roofs, or new couples still deep in the honeymoon phase.

“Jiang Han! It’s been ages!”

Lin Qing noticed clearly that Aunt Wang was deliberately treating her as invisible, pointedly looking straight past her to engage Jiang Han.

“Sister-in-law.”

Jiang Han was every bit the social operator — the single word “sister-in-law” made Aunt Wang bloom with delight.

“With so many people here, don’t be calling me sister-in-law — it’s embarrassing,” Aunt Wang said. “Old Wang was just talking about you yesterday — saying you’ve taken over Ling Xue. How is that going?”

Lin Qing had seen Ling Xue SOHO’s performance report for the month — that crumbling incomplete construction project had bled Jiang Han 30 million yuan in a single month.

If she had been in his shoes, she’d have been tearing Aunt Wang apart on the spot.

But Jiang Han was Jiang Han. Composed and impassive, he smiled and answered graciously, “If my brother hadn’t been too busy to deal with it, this good fortune would never have landed with me. Thank you.”

That final “thank you” — delivered with such apparent sincerity, as though directed at a lifesaver — made Lin Qing standing beside him want to wince.

The social density of this world exceeded anything Lin Qing had anticipated.

The other socialites chimed in enthusiastically:

“Jiang Han, that means you’re buying us a meal!”

“Of course! You have to!”

“I haven’t been to Ling Xue in forever! Now that it’s Jiang Han’s, I simply must go and show some support.”

“Jiang Han is just so remarkably accomplished — business empire and all, and still this handsome on top of it.”

“Isn’t he just—”

Throughout all of it, not a single person acknowledged Lin Qing’s existence. Every word was aimed at Jiang Han in a steady stream of flattery.

Lin Qing was like a person cropped out of a photograph — invisible within the group shot.

Get paid to do the job. Get paid to do the job.

Lin Qing repeated it internally like a mantra, trying her best to ignore the fact that she was being socially erased.

After all, these were people from a completely different world — and given that she’d probably never cross paths with them again in her life, Lin Qing straightened her spine a little more deliberately.

Still on duty.

But no matter how hard she tried to maintain a pleasant expression, a warm and welcoming gaze, a poised and graceful presence as she stood there — she felt like a wax figure in a museum.

People conversed right in front of her, used her as a backdrop for photos, struck various poses of exaggerated warmth and closeness — and then extended cold phones directly at her to snap the shots.

It wasn’t until Liang Xing appeared that the dynamic finally shifted.

Liang Xing arrived alone, emerging from a distance, walking with unhurried solitude. The moment she came into view, all the warm, chattering exchanges came to an abrupt halt.

Against the deep blue of the evening, Liang Xing was dressed in a white ICICLE new Chinese-style haute couture piece, a silk brocade clutch on her arm, her entire presence conveying a sense of quiet serenity — as though she were untouched by the world and had no desire to be part of it.