The encounter with Lin Kexing stayed with Jiang Ruoqiao. With a “less trouble is better than more” mindset, she reached out to the person who had previously taken the photographs and asked them to keep following Chen Yuan. Lin Kexing, her mood inexplicably soured after running into Jiang Ruoqiao, had left A University in a hurry without even finding Jiang Yan. Over the past stretch of time, she had been consumed with anxiety and fear over being blackmailed by her female classmate. She hadn’t known who to turn to, and when that classmate — growing greedier by the day — came to her with demands yet again, Lin Kexing had finally reached her breaking point. In a fit of anger, she called Chen Yuan and told him the full story from beginning to end. At the time, he had reassured her, telling her not to be upset about it — he’d figure out how to handle it.

A couple of days later, the classmate stopped showing up to class. Word was she had gone on a trip with her boyfriend.

If this had been any other time, Lin Kexing would never have given a classmate’s business a second thought. But she thought of what Chen Yuan had said, and a flood of possibilities rushed through her mind in an instant. She desperately wanted to ask Chen Yuan whether he had done something — but every time she dialed and was about to connect, she hung up at the last second.

She was a little afraid of Chen Yuan.

She had even started to wonder whether that smear campaign against Jiang Ruoqiao had been his doing too…

She thought about telling her mother, but her mother had been run ragged lately with matters related to her upcoming study abroad.

Her father and two brothers had gone even further, ordering her not to have any further contact with Chen Yuan whatsoever.

At this juncture, the person Lin Kexing instinctively turned to and relied upon was still Jiang Yan. Jiang Yan was so clever — he would surely think of a good solution! She genuinely despised that classmate’s repeated extortion, but all she had ever wanted was for the woman to stop bothering her, to stop threatening her — she had never wanted anything bad to actually happen to that person.

—

Leaving the library happened to coincide with dinnertime. Jiang Ruoqiao had made plans to eat at the dining hall with her dormmates, and Lu Yicheng had an appointment with Wang Jiangfeng. The two parted at the library entrance — only to run into each other again in the dining hall twenty minutes later.

Whenever Lu Yicheng saw Jiang Ruoqiao together with her dormmates, he always felt somewhat self-conscious.

Mainly because her dormmates… always looked at him in a way that made him uncomfortable. Head to toe, he felt like their gazes were X-rays scanning right through him.

“He’s getting all shy, he’s getting all shy.” Yun Jia watched Lu Yicheng’s hasty retreating figure and kept teasing, “What’s going on? Why is our campus heartthrob so easy to embarrass? He didn’t even bother to say hello to us.”

Jiang Ruoqiao turned to look at her, expression blank. “And whose fault is that? It’s because you all look at him like mothers-in-law sizing up a prospective son-in-law.”

Gao Jingjing gave a polite cough. “We really should rein ourselves in a little. People who don’t know any better would think our dormitory is some kind of den of hoodlums — look how badly we’ve scared the campus heartthrob…”

“Den of hoodlums?” Luo Wen corrected her with great dignity. “We’re a Silken Spider Cave, thank you.”

The four girls huddled together, chattering away nonstop.

When Lu Yicheng sat down and saw that the person across from him was Wang Jiangfeng, he finally let out a breath of relief.

Wang Jiangfeng teased, “Who put that look of ‘survivor of a catastrophe’ on your face? Who was it?”

Lu Yicheng: “…”

He replied helplessly: “Nobody.”

Wang Jiangfeng immediately stood up. He swept a glance around the dining hall and naturally spotted Jiang Ruoqiao and her dormmates, still deliberating over what to eat. Enlightenment dawned on him. “Ah — understood. Now I get it.”

He joked, “Old Lu, you’d better get used to it. Those girls are all Jiang Ruoqiao’s family — they’re her bridesmaids at her wedding, you know what I mean?”

Lu Yicheng cut him off. “What wedding, what bridesmaids — don’t talk nonsense. Nothing like that is happening.”

Wang Jiangfeng laughed out loud, then — as if remembering something — gave Lu Yicheng a nudge. “Why are you still just sitting there? Go over. Hand Jiang Ruoqiao your meal card, let her swipe it herself, let her treat her dormmates.”

Lu Yicheng: “I’m not going.”

He was afraid of their X-ray gazes.

Wang Jiangfeng gave him a look of utter exasperation. “You’re going to lose points this way, you know — they’ll think you have no social awareness. Go, go. I’ll ask you one thing: do you want to win Jiang Ruoqiao over or not?”

Lu Yicheng went quiet.

“If you do, then go now.” Wang Jiangfeng kept his eye on their side of the room. “Once they figure out what they want and buy their food, you’ll have missed your window to make a good impression. Strike while the iron is hot.”

In the end, Lu Yicheng got to his feet anyway, and jogged over to Jiang Ruoqiao’s side with his meal card.

Jiang Ruoqiao: “?”

The other three dormmates: snickering.

Lu Yicheng took a deep breath and held out his meal card to her.

Jiang Ruoqiao looked at him with an amused smile. “What’s this about?”

Lu Yicheng: “You can use my meal card. Order whatever you want.”

*The way he said that.*

Jiang Ruoqiao thought to herself: *Someone who knows what this is will see it’s a meal card — someone who doesn’t might think he just handed over a black Amex.*

Thinking that, she still reached out and took the card — and she didn’t need to think twice about it; she could tell this had absolutely been someone else’s idea. Lu Yicheng let out a quiet sigh of relief and didn’t look at Yun Jia and the others, turning and striding away. As if he’d come over for no other purpose than to hand over the card. Yun Jia leaned in close to Jiang Ruoqiao and declared in an extravagantly theatrical voice: “He actually gave her his meal card — I actually witnessed Lu Yicheng’s meal card with my own eyes. This means he’s inviting us all to lunch, right?”

“I’m ordering the most expensive thing today!” Yun Jia announced.

Jiang Ruoqiao quickly tucked the card away in her coat pocket, put on her most serious expression, and said: “Weren’t we just saying we’d get the clay pot knife-cut noodles? Come on, let’s go buy that.”

“Hey hey hey,” Yun Jia exchanged a look with Luo Wen, and the two of them hooked an arm each through Jiang Ruoqiao’s, flanking her from both sides. “Clay pot knife-cut noodles — that costs what, exactly? What did Lu Yicheng just say?”

Luo Wen picked up the thread: “He said — order whatever you want!”

All three girls closed in on Jiang Ruoqiao, absolutely insisting on buying the most expensive thing.

After all the time they’d known each other, having lived together for over two years, who didn’t know who? If Jiang Ruoqiao had no feelings for Lu Yicheng in *that* sense, she wouldn’t have gone to the library to study with him, and she certainly wouldn’t have taken his meal card. Since Lu Yicheng was going to become the boyfriend of their dormitory’s finest — could they really be polite with him? Could they really spare his wallet? They absolutely could not.

Meanwhile, the moment Lu Yicheng returned to his seat, Wang Jiangfeng immediately pressed him: “So? Did she take the meal card or not?”

Lu Yicheng sat down and gave Wang Jiangfeng a suspicious look. “Why are you so worked up about this?”

Wang Jiangfeng really did seem far too invested in this.

Wang Jiangfeng froze, then caught on and let out an exasperated exhale. “You don’t actually think I have feelings for Jiang Ruoqiao, do you?”

Lu Yicheng smiled and said nothing.

Wang Jiangfeng was at a loss. “Look — even though our dormitory now has your shining example, that doesn’t mean — ” he emphasized firmly — “that I personally, with full self-awareness, would ever have designs on someone like Jiang Ruoqiao. I can tell at a glance that she and I are never going to have anything to do with each other for the rest of our lives. For someone like her — forget pursuing her, I wouldn’t even let myself have thoughts.”

They were close enough friends that this kind of joke about “liking the same girl as your best friend” was something you could actually say to Lu Yicheng.

Even if Lu Yicheng and Jiang Yan had already had a complete falling-out.

“Got it.” That was Lu Yicheng’s reply.

Wang Jiangfeng snorted. “Almost got played there — did she take the card or not?”

Lu Yicheng gave a small nod.

Wang Jiangfeng laughed. “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jiang Ruoqiao has feelings for you too.” Wang Jiangfeng said.

Lu Yicheng, out of habit: “Don’t talk nonsense.”

It was just a meal card.

Wang Jiangfeng fired back: “Then why did she take yours but not mine?”

It was honestly just something he said to make his buddy happy — but the moment the words left his mouth, both Wang Jiangfeng and Lu Yicheng froze. Lu Yicheng slowly raised his head and looked at him.

“What do you mean?”

Wang Jiangfeng wore an expression of complete dismay. “I didn’t mean it that way — I really didn’t, I genuinely didn’t!”

Lu Yicheng: “You offered her your meal card before?”

Wang Jiangfeng: “…”

Why was he getting a death stare from Old Lu?

This was irrational and abnormal.

Old Lu was always the most even-tempered of people.

After a great deal of explaining and no small amount of dry mouth, Wang Jiangfeng finally managed to clear things up: he and Jiang Ruoqiao were both in the student council. Once, Jiang Ruoqiao had done him a small favor, and it happened to be around dinnertime. Since he didn’t have the time himself, he had given his meal card to her and another junior, essentially treating them to dinner — but neither of them had accepted it.

He had truly only said it in passing, just to illustrate what it meant that Jiang Ruoqiao had taken the card this time — and he hadn’t expected to accidentally land himself in hot water.

Wang Jiangfeng finally reflected: “Old Lu, you’re done for. Just now, I genuinely thought you were going to hit me.”

“Do you know what that proves?” Wang Jiangfeng said, aggrieved. “It proves that in your heart, no matter what — friendship, brotherhood, companions — none of it matters as much as Jiang Ruoqiao.”

—

Just as students everywhere were racing to cram in their last-minute revision for exams, the bombshell of a news story broke.

Apparently, a couple from a certain school had been kidnapped. Everyone had assumed they were off on vacation, but after police responded to an anonymous tip and arrived on the scene, the two were rescued.

Lin Kexing had been on edge for days, and just as she was gathering the courage to reach out to Chen Yuan to put a stop to things, the class group chat suddenly erupted —

【Did you guys hear? That kidnapping case everyone’s been following — apparently the victims are Cao Fei and her boyfriend. How terrifying. But Cao Fei posted on social media yesterday saying she was still on vacation — how did she end up kidnapped?】

【Exactly — the whole thing is terrifying when you think carefully about it. I thought she was on a trip this whole time, but it turns out she was being held hostage. Word going around is that someone wanted to teach her and her boyfriend a lesson, and those two had a really rough few days.】

【Yeah, I heard too — apparently a lot of those kinds of photos were taken of them… It’s horrifying. Who could have done this?】

The hands holding Lin Kexing’s phone were trembling.

She genuinely hadn’t thought Chen Yuan would go this far!

【No idea. But apparently people have been detained now. Not sure if there’ll be an official announcement — though it does feel crazy given that this is Jing Shi. And what could Cao Fei and her boyfriend have possibly done to get involved with people like this? Did she ever offend anyone?】

Lin Kexing was terrified.

She suddenly realized — Chen Yuan was going to be traced, no, Chen Yuan had already been detained by now.

Very soon, they would trace all of this back to her.

But how was she supposed to explain that she had never asked Chen Yuan to do any of this — that Chen Yuan had done it on his own? She really hadn’t known anything!

By the time Jiang Ruoqiao woke up that morning, Yun Jia and the others were already discussing the story.

Yun Jia was still scrolling through her phone and suddenly let out a sigh. “It sounds like it was some rich kid’s revenge. Why does the whole thing feel so surreal to me? These spoiled rich kids really think they’re above the law! What era do they think they’re living in? It’s terrifying.”

Jiang Ruoqiao climbed down from her bunk, calmly combing her hair. At this, she replied simply: “Indeed. Above the law.”

They had access to the finest education that money could buy.

They had been born in Rome and had never known what hardship was, had no concept of how difficult ordinary people’s lives could be.

They lived inside their own world, answering to no one, ruling as kings. Anyone who displeased them was nothing more than an insect beneath their feet.

But what they didn’t know was that there is a story in this world about elephants and ants.

—