Zhao Teng had roughly ten thousand objections to working on this project. But at the end of the day he was Feiyang Company’s programmer, and with Dong Siyang keeping watch from above, there was no getting out of the work that needed to be done.

He had braced himself for the end of his easy days, fully expecting the workload to balloon until the game launched the following month. What he hadn’t anticipated was that his workload hadn’t increased in any meaningful way.

It wasn’t that Zhu Yun had gone easy on him — the tasks she assigned him were no fewer than they should have been, everything accounted for — and yet somehow, the work felt lighter. More precisely: it was less frustrating.

Zhao Teng eventually worked out why. The project had grown more solid.

When Zhang Fang had been running things, the project was like a building in a storm — orders reversed by the hour, everything up in the air. It wasn’t uncommon for him to conceive some new idea in the morning and overturn it entirely by the afternoon. Working under him had been a grinding misery, always being pulled off one half-finished task to start another.

Zhu Yun was the exact opposite. She knew precisely what needed to happen each day, even each hour. She laid down the broad framework first — the main structure never wavered — and then filled in the details incrementally, not through random patchwork but by growing steadily upward from the roots: branches extending, new leaves unfurling.

It might not have been obvious at first, but as the project advanced, Zhao Teng quickly came to appreciate the formidable logic and order that ran through everything Zhu Yun did. The work, as a result, was twice as efficient for half the effort.

She never sidestepped problems. Every obstacle was addressed the moment it appeared.

This was the first time Zhao Teng had ever worked under a lead of this caliber. The first time he had ever seen a project schedule that actually meant something. The first time he had understood what it felt like to do project work and actually enjoy it.

One afternoon, Zhao Teng went to the stairwell for a smoke. Li Xun followed.

The two men leaned — one against the wall, one against the window — smoking in silence, each lost in his own thoughts, each quietly brooding over his own concerns.

“Ah…” Zhao Teng let out a long sigh. “What’s going to happen to our Zhang Fang.”

Li Xun glanced at him. Zhao Teng said: “I’m liking him less and less by the day.”

Li Xun said nothing. Zhao Teng asked: “How’s your project going?”

Li Xun: “Nowhere, for now.”

Zhao Teng: “You still haven’t started? Careful — Director Dong will lose his patience.”

Li Xun gave a brief, dry laugh. “Someone else has already volunteered to stand in front of the cannon. Why should I be careful about anything.”

An image drifted unbidden into Zhao Teng’s mind: Zhu Yun stepping forward to take the bullet for everyone.

Feeling uncharacteristically nosy, Zhao Teng asked: “What exactly is your relationship with her anyway?”

Li Xun: “No relationship.”

Zhao Teng clearly didn’t believe him. “No relationship? Then why did she put it as a condition that she’d only come in if you came with her? She took the hit for you, and she bought you that outrageously expensive computer setup. And don’t think no one noticed — the Titan case is sitting right there in the bin.”

Li Xun had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He said, with complete composure: “Probably because she finds me attractive.”

“……”

Zhao Teng stared at him.

“Are you serious?”

Li Xun’s expression was so perfectly undisturbed that Zhao Teng, without quite realizing how it happened, found himself half-accepting this deranged explanation.

He did acknowledge that Li Xun was good-looking — it was partly the height and the fine features, but mostly something harder to name, some quality of manner that set him apart. Zhao Teng couldn’t quite put his finger on where exactly the distinctiveness lay.

“Fair enough — the two of you have definitely raised the average at this company,” Zhao Teng conceded with a shrug. He crushed out his cigarette. “I’m heading back.”

“Push the pace a bit,” Li Xun said.

Zhao Teng stopped.

“What?”

Li Xun leaned against the wall, looking out at the shade of the sky. His voice took on a lazy, sun-warmed quality.

“She tends to stall when it comes to the final submission — she’ll spend a long time on it. You need to build that buffer into the schedule, or you might not make the deadline.”

“How would you know that?”

“Just a guess.”

“……”

Li Xun glanced at him and said: “The company hasn’t had a product launch in a long time. These two games matter. A lot has already been invested in them — if they fail, the next two years are going to be very painful.”

Zhao Teng frowned, didn’t say anything, and left the stairwell. Three seconds later he came back, pushed the door open and said: “Unrivalled Warlords is Zhu Yun’s project. She was the one who went to Director Dong and took responsibility for it herself. If anything goes wrong, it falls on her — not me.”

Li Xun turned his head to look at him. From where he stood, his greater height gave him a natural, easy angle of looking down. He said nothing more than a neutral, unreadable “Is that so?” — and left.

Those two words were enough. The ease Zhao Teng had felt in his work quietly curdled back into irritation.

He didn’t even notice it happening to himself — but from that point on, influenced by the look Li Xun had given him at the end, every time he met with Zhu Yun to go over progress, he found himself nudging her, in an almost unconscious way, to move a little faster.

Zhu Yun’s brow furrowed. “Are we falling behind?”

And Zhao Teng did indeed notice, as the launch date drew closer, that Zhu Yun was doing exactly what Li Xun had predicted: her pace was slowing, her expression was growing tighter, and she was becoming more and more indecisive in how she handled things.

“It’s fine — there’s enough here for the first release,” Zhao Teng said, trying to reassure her. “We can fill in the rest afterward. Isn’t that what you said from the beginning?”

Zhu Yun sat at her computer, expression fierce as she typed, offering the occasional grunt in response.

With half a month left before the launch, Zhang Fang began working on the operations and marketing side of things, and the experience was destroying him. While Dong Siyang was out of the office, Zhang Fang threw himself at Zhao Teng and wailed in despair.

“Where am I supposed to find the money?! I don’t have money for marketing!”

Zhu Yun raised an eyebrow. “The budget report shows there’s a marketing fund allocated.”

Zhang Fang roared back: “That’s all going to pay your salary and that freeloader’s!”

As the launch date approached, Zhu Yun’s tolerance had also narrowed considerably. “Marketing is marketing — salaries are salaries. We sank this much into the product and you’re giving us a few thousand for promotion? You can’t be serious.”

Zhang Fang bellowed: “Is it my fault we’re broke?!”

Zhu Yun rolled up her sleeves. “Where’s Dong Siyang — I’m going to talk to him directly.”

Zhao Teng, lounging idly nearby: “Out on a business deal.”

Zhu Yun was furious. “The company has two games and both are at the most critical stage. He’s off chasing deals every day while these sit here unattended?”

Zhao Teng shrugged and went back to his game.

Zhu Yun turned and glared at Zhang Fang. Zhang Fang found his resolve wilting under her stare and was already hunting for the next person to redirect his aggravation toward — Guo Shijie. But as he turned around, Li Xun came into his line of sight.

He was standing at Guo Shijie’s desk, looking at something.

Zhang Fang immediately swivelled to face him instead.

“Hey, you freeloader — what are you doing?!”

Li Xun didn’t react.

Zhang Fang strode over and found Li Xun holding a printed image — the promotional cover art for Unrivalled Warlords that Guo Shijie had drawn.

Zhang Fang shouldered his way closer. “What are you doing, wandering around doing nothing all day? Take a leaf out of little Guo’s book — look how hard he works!”

Li Xun set the image down on the desk.

“This illustration won’t work.”

Guo Shijie raised his head weakly. His dark circles had deepened into something resembling a panda’s — he had been working overtime for more than ten consecutive days. Zhang Fang threw an arm around Guo Shijie’s shoulder and said to Li Xun: “Who do you think you are, telling people what to change? Can’t you see how exhausted little Guo is?”

Li Xun: “Too generic.”

Zhang Fang breathed deeply.

“As the head of HR, I think it’s time you and I sat down for a serious talk,” Zhang Fang said in a tone of weighty concern. “Ambition is fine, but you need to be grounded. Let me remind you — little Guo’s position in this company is actually senior to yours—”

“It’s not too late to fix it now.” Li Xun ignored Zhang Fang entirely and spoke directly to Guo Shijie.

Guo Shijie looked spent. He sat with his head bowed, face drawn with exhaustion.

Li Xun bent down so he was at eye level with Guo Shijie.

“I know you’re worn out,” he said quietly. “But this image is what we’re going to use to promote the game — it’s the face of the whole project, the first thing a user ever sees. It has to make an impression.”

Guo Shijie stared at him in a daze.

“You know the game content is good now, right?” Li Xun said. The faint lines that ran down his cheeks gave his face a settled, unhurried gravity.

Guo Shijie nodded. With all the changes that had been made, the game was completely unrecognizable from what it had been — even he, someone who didn’t play games much, found it genuinely engaging.

“So push through a little longer. Once it goes live, things will ease up. And if you really feel like you can’t get the image where it needs to be, there’s always the option of bringing in someone outside.” Li Xun straightened up, tilted his head toward Zhang Fang. “Get him to pay for it.”

Zhang Fang: “Huh?”

The earlier part of the exchange had gone in one ear and out the other, but those last four words landed clearly enough — he spun around in alarm. “What do you mean, get me to pay? Why would I be paying?!”

Li Xun glanced at him with faint contempt, then walked back to his seat.

Zhang Fang grabbed Guo Shijie by both hands, slapped his own chest resolutely. “Don’t worry, little Guo — I won’t let you suffer like this. I think the illustration looks perfectly fine — there’s nothing wrong with it at all. Right, Team Leader Zhu?”

Team Leader Zhu was standing nearby, both hands on her hips, like a teapot deep in thought.

It took the teapot exactly ten seconds to make up its mind.

“Change it.”

Zhang Fang: “……”

Li Xun made a quiet, satisfied sound and opened his book. Guo Shijie let his head drop to the desk.

Until now, Zhu Yun had been pouring everything into the gameplay and code optimization, and hadn’t paid Guo Shijie’s work nearly enough attention. But with Li Xun having brought it to her notice, she too saw the problem with the cover art.

Just deciding to change it, though, wasn’t enough. Zhu Yun sat down with Zhao Teng and Guo Shijie to talk it through and got nowhere after an entire afternoon.

Zhao Teng’s feedback was simple: “Not enough visual impact.”

Guo Shijie asked how you achieved visual impact.

Zhao Teng said he didn’t know.

Guo Shijie looked like a man who had seen the light at the end of a very long tunnel. Zhu Yun, taking pity on him, told him to go home for the day.

Zhang Fang came back from the bathroom just in time to see Zhu Yun let him leave. He rushed to intervene: “Zhu Yun, since when do you have the authority to dismiss people? You can’t just send someone home whenever you feel like it!”

Zhu Yun gave Guo Shijie a pat on the shoulder. Guo Shijie shouldered his worn-out backpack and left.

Zhang Fang exhaled deeply.

“When there are no rules, nothing stands. I can see it now — this company is finished.”

Zhu Yun dropped into Guo Shijie’s vacated chair and stared up at the ceiling through Zhang Fang’s ongoing lament.

She was tired.

More tired than Zhao Teng or Guo Shijie.

Truthfully, the workload on Unrivalled Warlords was within what she could handle — she had worked on projects far more complex and convoluted than this. But she had never felt this particular brand of exhaustion, this particular anxious, unsettled feeling.

She understood why —

She was competing with Fang Zhijing. And that made her care about the outcome in a way that made her feel raw.

Zhu Yun covered her face with her hands and breathed in slowly.

A message came through on her phone. She took it out and looked. The sender’s tone was playful:

“Dear Team Leader Zhu, Tian the Painter says to come home for dinner.”