Liu Shiyun was absolutely a woman of action—by the very next day, she had already submitted everyone’s names to the drama club.

“Role selection for the play is next Monday! Don’t forget!”

Qian Wei nodded, then quickly sank back into thoughts of her online legal consultation website. What she’d envisioned before had seemed thorough enough, but now that she was actually starting the business, Qian Wei realized things weren’t so simple. She’d already hired an IT team to develop a prototype of the site—that part wasn’t hard. Uploading a massive library of legal contract templates wasn’t difficult either, not for someone with Qian Wei’s practicing experience, aside from the time it took. What she hadn’t anticipated was that the hardest part would be promoting the website. She’d considered handing out flyers at the major universities in City A and advertising on campus forums, but that would only attract college students—the ordinary working people who most needed legal consultation services weren’t necessarily paying attention online. How to promote the site on the ground had become a major problem.

“Qian Wei?”

Qian Wei blinked, then answered reflexively, “What?”

Lu Xun frowned. His tone was still calm, but there was a faint note of accusation running through his words. “We’ve only been out for ten minutes, and you’ve already zoned out six times.”

That tone carried quite a bit of resentment…

Qian Wei immediately set about soothing him.

Lu Xun turned his head aside; the tension in his face finally began to ease, and the corners of his pressed lips finally curved slightly—clearly, Qian Wei’s attention had made up for the grievance of being ignored a moment ago. Still, he cleared his throat and tried to appear indifferent. “Don’t think I’m saying this because you don’t care about me. I’m mainly worried you have something on your mind—after all, when you’re with me, there’s basically nothing that can distract you.”

Qian Wei found this funny. She thought Lu Xun was awfully confident. She couldn’t resist teasing him. “Don’t get too comfortable—who knows, maybe I’ll suddenly fall for someone else.”

She looked him up and down. “Though your face is a face, your waist is a waist, and your butt is a butt, and everything about you is outstanding, deep down people are all a little fickle. Even a feast fit for an emperor gets tiresome eventually. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll try a street stall snack for a change and find it refreshingly novel!”

Lu Xun just laughed. “With me, you won’t get the chance to fall for anyone else.” He leaned in close to her ear. “Don’t even dream about it.”

“Besides, once you’ve eaten a feast like that, you really can’t go back to street food.” Lu Xun glanced at her, his voice low and seductive. “Is street food better than me?”

The look in Lu Xun’s eyes as he gazed at her was subtly charged—anyone on the receiving end of a look like that would probably feel their face flush and their heart race.

Qian Wei pressed a hand to her chest. “Lu Xun, if you keep sending off sparks like that at random, I’m going to call the police!”

Lu Xun smiled. “Why don’t you say it’s because you’re the one conducting electricity?”

The two of them kept flirting like that all the way into a Thai restaurant. Lu Xun had been working hard this month and had turned back into a man of means; the moment he got his translation side income, he’d brought Qian Wei to try the Thai food they hadn’t managed to eat before.

After they sat down and ordered, Lu Xun still wanted to know. “So what have you actually been thinking about lately?” He paused. “Of course, if you don’t want to talk about it, I completely respect that. I just want you to know that whatever’s troubling you, I’ll be on your side.”

Looking at Lu Xun in front of her, Qian Wei couldn’t help but feel a rush of warmth. On the surface he seemed so aloof and cool, but underneath, Lu Xun was a gentleman—he had power, but he never used it to force anyone into accepting things his way.

Qian Wei didn’t want to hide anything either. She spilled everything, laying out her business plan and current difficulties for him like beans pouring from a bag.

Lu Xun thought it over for a moment after she finished. “Have you considered partnering with the major law schools in City A and turning the platform into a legal aid alliance? You could set up a ‘legal clinic’ practicum base on the site—each participating law school could have a few faculty members in charge, selecting suitable cases from the platform’s request section for legal aid work. Under the guidance of licensed-attorney faculty, students could help gather materials, draft complaints, and prepare other legal documents. As far as I know, law schools have been trying to imitate the ‘legal clinic’ model used in European and American law schools. With law, there’s a real gap between studying statutes and cases in the classroom and actual practice—I’ve felt that deeply myself after working on a few cases. But it’s rare for second- or third-year students to get direct access to cases at a law firm, so opportunities like this are genuinely scarce and valuable. A lot of students who plan to become lawyers are eager for this kind of practical experience. If you can get this platform off the ground, our law school at A University, at least, would be very willing to cooperate. And once you bring universities on board, you can use the students participating in the ‘legal clinic’ to help with on-the-ground outreach—like that legal education event we did before.”

Lu Xun’s suggestion gave Qian Wei a fresh angle. She added, a little excited, “Right, right—first connect with the major law schools in City A, gradually expand our influence, promote it among the universities, and later we can go promote it to law schools in neighboring provinces and cities too. If we already have successful partnerships with City A’s law schools to point to, other regions should welcome it as well. And it’s not just law schools—once the platform matures, we can also connect with law firms, and ask each firm to assign a lawyer to provide some online consultation and training. Since our platform’s audience is lower-income people, we could look for smaller firms to partner with, since their target clients overlap with our service population. Once our platform gains some influence, we can invite these smaller firms to join, sign strategic cooperation agreements with them, and pay them a fee for each online consultation and training session—while the platform gives them exposure in return. Once our platform’s clients need to actually hire a lawyer, naturally the firms they’ve already consulted will be the first ones that come to mind, and we’ll do targeted recommendations too.”

“And the money to pay these firms for joining the platform and providing online legal consultation and training—how are you planning to cover that? Even with a discounted rate from a strategic partnership, that adds up to a significant sum over time.” Lu Xun took a sip of tea. “I know your original intention in starting this consultation website was public-service in nature, but anything purely charitable burns money. We don’t have that kind of capital, so we’ll inevitably hit a wall. Eventually a platform like that becomes unsustainable, unless you can find a profit model—or at least enough to make the site financially self-sufficient so it can keep running.”

Qian Wei cupped her face in both hands and stared at Lu Xun.

That gaze made him a little uneasy. “What?”

“I’m thinking about how amazing my boyfriend is—he always analyzes problems so sharply, hitting the nail right on the head.”

Lu Xun’s expression stayed mostly flat, but his ears turned faintly red, barely noticeable. He said, feigning nonchalance, “It’s not that big a deal. I’m just decent at it, that’s all.”

Qian Wei sighed with genuine admiration. “Is there anything in this world that can actually stump you? You’re being unfair, honestly. You understand everything, and you can untangle any problem and solve it with ease.” She asked, curious, “I wonder—doesn’t being like this make you feel like ‘being unbeatable is so lonely’? Since nothing is ever a real challenge for you, is it hard for you to stay interested in things for very long?”

“Not with you.”

Qian Wei blinked, and then realized what he meant. She suddenly laughed. Lu Xun was like this—dead serious on the surface, yet unconsciously flirtatious, catching people so off guard that before they even had time to brace themselves, they found they’d already been swept off their feet.

With Lu Xun on board, Qian Wei’s online legal consultation platform business made twice the progress with half the effort. Lu Xun personally went and secured cooperation from several law schools in City A. Qian Wei could hardly believe it—this guy, armed with nothing but his face, his tongue, and a proposal document for the site’s prototype, had managed to win over some of the most rigorous and hard-to-please law schools around. It was the first time Qian Wei fully grasped just how extensive Lu Xun’s connections and social network were. The site had barely been up and running for long, and he’d already pulled in several rounds of investment from A University law school alumni. It was a genuinely formidable display of public relations skill and execution—Qian Wei was thoroughly won over. If a person like Lu Xun didn’t become her business partner, who would? At the same time, it quietly stirred up her competitive spirit—if nineteen-year-old Lu Xun could already accomplish this much, then she needed to push herself to do even better!

And because Lu Xun had joined in, what had originally sounded like a rather dry business venture now carried a hint of sweetness. Other couples went on dates to go shopping or watch movies; Qian Wei and Lu Xun’s dates consisted of passionately discussing their startup together.

“For the initial pricing, should we go with a membership model—annual fee or monthly subscription? How much should we charge? Last night I gathered the pricing standards of a few similar professional service platforms and put together a research report. Do you want to look—”

Before she could finish, Lu Xun leaned in and quickly kissed her on the cheek.

Qian Wei flushed. “Lu Xun!”

“Hm?”

“Weren’t we supposed to be discussing business?”

Lu Xun took the research report out of her hands and raised an eyebrow. “I’m working for your startup for free right now, not earning a single cent. I’ve been running around to several law schools in City A, paying my own travel expenses out of pocket. As an employee, is it too much to ask for a little benefit in return?” Having said that, he leaned in and kissed her again. He lifted his head to look at her, his beautiful dark eyes fixed and faintly glistening, his voice low and rough. “Hm? Wouldn’t you say so, boss?”

Being called “boss” made Qian Wei’s heart race. In her past life, Lu Xun had been the boss lording it over her; in this life, she never imagined he’d end up calling her boss instead. Qian Wei felt a giddy sense of vindication, and in that lightheaded moment of triumph, she failed to put up any resistance in time against her newly appointed subordinate’s “insubordination.” By the time she came back to her senses, Lu Xun had already kissed her until her lips carried a faint, becoming flush of red—though his expression still showed a trace of dissatisfaction, full of unspent longing.

Qian Wei quickly scooted a little further away from him. She cleared her throat, trying hard to steady her uneven breathing. “How is this working for free! I, Boss Qian, hereby promise you right now: once I make it big, you’ll definitely get your share. I’ll give you fifty percent of my future equity right now!”

“I don’t want equity. Having you is enough.” As he spoke, Lu Xun used a highlighter to mark a paragraph on the research report. “There’s a problem with the data in this section. I’ve looked into this website—the pricing you’ve cited here is from after they’d already secured pre-A round funding. That’s not the pricing structure they used in their early stage. Since our site has just launched, we should really be referencing their early-stage data instead.”

Qian Wei was simply stunned. She wondered—was Lu Xun even human? Really human? Could a person really flirt so effortlessly while also working with total seriousness at the same time? The most terrifying part was that he did both—flirting and working—absolutely flawlessly.

A serious man is sexy; a Lu Xun who could be both seriously focused on work and seriously flirtatious was simply irresistible. Qian Wei was starting to believe that some people didn’t even need to take their clothes off to already be radiating pure hormones.

But Lu Xun still didn’t seem satisfied. He pulled her into his arms and kissed the tip of her nose. “I pointed out a problem with the data—don’t I deserve a little reward?”

Qian Wei’s face and heart both raced. “Weren’t we just saying I’m the boss? Then shouldn’t an employee need my approval before claiming any benefits? Why do you just go ahead and grab them yourself?”

“Can’t help it. The boss is too tempting, and the employee hasn’t been paid in far too long.” Lu Xun blinked. “I haven’t had my fill.” He leaned in close to her ear and nipped gently at her earlobe. “I’m hungry again. I want more.”

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; form is no different from emptiness, emptiness is no different from form; sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness are all likewise so… Qian Wei wished desperately that there were some kind of mantra for calming desire. She told herself, “Focus on work, focus on work!”