On the Biwater anonymous forum, to avoid directly mentioning authors by their pen names, people commonly used abbreviations. “SC,” for instance, had been used to refer to Cen Sisi’s pen name — “Su Cheng.”

That was why those two letters had felt familiar to Ruan Yu.

Cen Sisi’s pen name and Li Shican’s initials were the same. She wasn’t sure whether that was a coincidence.

But she had already had a falling-out with Cen Sisi, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to reach out to Li Shican on her own initiative. The nature of whatever connection existed between the two of them was, for the moment, impossible to verify.

Shen Mingying drew in a sharp breath. “Those two are in on something together? Think about it — Cen Sisi has a nasty mind but she’s not particularly sophisticated. Could she really have stirred up that kind of commotion on Weibo by herself? And didn’t she say she only hired a small batch of trolls at first and didn’t know how it ended up shooting onto the trending list? What if she’s just a front, and Li Shican is actually the one pulling the strings behind the scenes — nursing a grudge from being rejected and using this to get back at you?”

“…”

What an imagination.

Ruan Yu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Right at that moment, her palm buzzed with an incoming message, and she looked down.

It was Liu Mao, sending over the legal statement along with the court’s notice of case acceptance.

She read through it carefully, organized her wording under his guidance, and was just about to post the formatted image on Weibo when her phone buzzed again.

In the group chat, Xu Huaisong: Not forceful enough.

Followed immediately by a sprawl of red-circled corrections.

Ruan Yu couldn’t make much sense of the legal terminology, but the general gist she got was something along the lines of: change this, change that, change everything.

Liu Mao, apparently unable to hold back any longer, typed: Nitpicking every little thing — do I have no dignity?

Xu Huaisong: There’s only one chance for a statement. If it doesn’t cut to the heart of the matter, it’s as good as a complete defeat. Which matters more — your client’s interests, or your ego?

Ruan Yu swallowed, silently watching the screen.

Zhikun Liu Mao: Fine, you do it then.

Xu Huaisong: Your call. Zhikun Liu Mao

Xu Huaisong recalled a message.

Xu Huaisong: Your call. Soft Jade

Ruan Yu: “…”

Had he gotten so irritated he’d tagged the wrong person?

She wasn’t about to provoke him. She typed: Then I’ll trouble Attorney Xu to send me the revised version. Xu Huaisong

Then she turned and quietly sent Liu Mao a private message: Attorney Liu, I think he just lost his temper — please don’t take it to heart.

After sending it, she curled her lip and felt a flicker of self-reproach.

Being a two-faced fence-sitter in the name of world peace was genuinely exhausting.

But if she was being honest, Xu Huaisong wasn’t actually targeting Liu Mao this time — his edits truly were sharper and more incisive.

The deterrent effect was achieved. The moment the revised statement went out, faced with the threat of potential litigation, several of the named accounts immediately backed down and quietly deleted their related posts.

Within a few hours, the rest of Cen Sisi’s allies went conspicuously silent as well.

Ruan Yu had originally expected that Cen Sisi might decide to go down fighting anyway — thrashing about in her final moments, sending a wave of trolls to accuse her of filing a malicious complaint first.

But strangely, Weibo remained completely calm.

Those who had once devoted themselves to throwing mud had gone as quiet as if their voices had been cut off at the root.

The following morning, a book blogger with a fairly strong reputation in the original fiction community laid out the entire incident in chronological order and published a lengthy illustrated post that came down firmly on Ruan Yu’s side.

This post spread just as rapidly as the long Weibo entry Cen Sisi had once used to smear her.

A large number of people began apologizing to Ruan Yu. Another wave of internet users delivered pointed, incisive criticism at the handful of bloggers who had earlier shaped the narrative.

Readers who supported Ruan Yu finally had room to breathe, and led by this organized wave of users, quickly seized the moral high ground in public opinion.

From that illustrated post onward, the whole world seemed to have taken Ruan Yu’s side.

Her Weibo follower count rose rapidly, pushing toward the three-hundred-thousand mark.

Ruan Yu stared, bewildered. How could the legal statement have produced such a dramatic effect?

Then, late that night, everything reversed again. — Cen Sisi was exposed. Someone identified her as a real-life junior acquaintance of Ruan Yu’s, claiming she had been targeting her across online platforms because of a personal dispute in real life.

The internet erupted in shock, and public attention quickly shifted away from the plagiarism case toward the considerably more gossip-worthy subject of this so-called “real-life dispute.”

I knew something was off — “Xie Shiren” had already clarified everything and apologized, so why was this third party “Su Cheng” still running around throwing mud at “Wen Xiang”? Turns out it’s a personal grudge.

The more you think about it, the more unsettling it gets — “Su Cheng” is seriously something else.

Which school is she from? Someone dig deeper!

Do some of these keyboard warriors live by the ocean? First they harass “Wen Xiang,” now they’re doxxing “Su Cheng” — what does her school have to do with any of you?

The way things were unfolding was beyond anything Ruan Yu had anticipated. The further she scrolled, the deeper her frown became.

Until she came across one comment: Don’t let yourselves be used as a weapon. From the illustrated post to the exposé — can’t you tell this is the work of a professional PR team? There’s someone behind “Wen Xiang.”

She paused, and tried to look at it more closely — but refreshing the page, she found the comment had vanished.

Scrolling further, she came across another: The narrative shifted this fast and nobody thinks something’s off?

She tapped into it quickly this time — but still saw the words: This comment has been deleted.

These comments that cast doubt on her were disappearing the instant they appeared.

Once could be a coincidence. Twice was harder to explain.

Looking carefully at the sequence of this reversal — while it had started with her side’s statement and the court acceptance notice, everything that followed had the unmistakable shape of something organized.

The initial illustrated post by that book blogger was reasonably balanced. But the subsequent exposé that internet users put together was a considerable overreach.

If Ruan Yu had intended to take underhanded measures to strike at Cen Sisi, why would she have chosen to file a lawsuit in the first place?

Who was this person acting without her knowledge behind the scenes?

She picked up her phone, intending to ask Liu Mao about it, but glanced at the time — 00:07 — and backed out of the dial screen, sending a WeChat message instead: Attorney Liu, please call me back when you have a moment.

Ruan Yu yawned and went to sleep, and didn’t stir until a ringtone jolted her awake the next morning.

She fumbled blearily for her phone, saw it was Liu Mao calling, and snapped awake immediately. She answered: “Attorney Liu, have you seen Weibo?”

“I have.”

Ruan Yu wasn’t completely coherent yet, so she was more blunt than she might otherwise have been — just saying whatever came to mind: “Was this something the firm arranged?”

“Hm?” Liu Mao sounded somewhat surprised. “No.”

“Then who could it be?”

Liu Mao’s tone reflected genuine puzzlement. “Not sure, but this kind of meeting-them-on-their-own-terms approach isn’t how we resolve things.”

By “we” he meant lawyers.

Ruan Yu regained her clarity and realized her conjecture had been slightly disrespectful toward his profession.

She said apologetically, “I’m sorry — I’m not fully awake yet, I spoke a bit rashly.”

“It’s fine, I understand. Get some more rest first, and I’ll look into the situation further.”

But Ruan Yu had no way of falling back to sleep.

Even before the ringtone woke her, she had been having a nightmare — she had dreamed that Cen Sisi was strangling her.

She couldn’t deny that even if she hadn’t orchestrated anything on Weibo, she was unquestionably the direct and immediate beneficiary of it all. So Cen Sisi would certainly assume it was her doing, and might very well be planning further retaliation.

Ruan Yu pressed her fingers against her forehead with a dull ache, opened Weibo, and found that Cen Sisi’s profile hadn’t been updated — the calm before a storm.

She got up, washed her face, ate breakfast, put on a load of laundry — but whatever she was doing, her mind wasn’t on it. The laundry wasn’t even out to dry before she picked up her phone again and opened Xu Huaisong’s WeChat conversation.

Her imagination was sending waves of anxiety through her chest, but she’d already said something clumsy to Liu Mao in a moment of panic, and felt too embarrassed to go back to him now. Asking Xu Huaisong was the only option.

Well — the way Xu Huaisong had handled that retaliatory incident the other day without breaking a sweat, she might as well ask for his thoughts.

She hesitated for a moment, then sent a message: Attorney Xu, do you have a moment right now?

Five minutes passed with no reply.

Ruan Yu pressed the lock screen button, tucked her phone into her pocket, glanced back at the tub of laundry waiting to be hung up, and carried it out to the balcony. She had just picked up the drying pole when two vibrations came in quick succession from her pocket.

Two in a row didn’t quite seem like Xu Huaisong’s style. She pulled out her phone, and sure enough.

10086: Suspension notice: Dear valued customer, please be advised…

10086: Payment reminder: Dear valued customer, please be advised…

Her number had been suspended for non-payment. She could see the WiFi was working fine, so her WeChat messages would still come through without issue. She set the phone aside for now and went back to hanging up the laundry, and only once she was finished did she hear her phone buzz again.

This time it was Xu Huaisong: No time to type.

What was the difference between “no time to type” and simply “no time”?

The answer came the very next second — an incoming voice call from him.

“…”

She answered it. Before she could even get out a “hello,” she heard a flurry of voices on his end. Men and women layered over each other, all speaking English, the sound of an intense discussion in full swing.

She quickly said, “Attorney Xu, it’s nothing urgent — if you’re busy—”

The next instant, the world went silent.

Every sound on the other end cut out completely.

Ruan Yu looked at her phone screen with a puzzled expression. Poor signal?

On the other end of the line, six or seven Black and white individuals in a conference room sat with their mouths open mid-sentence, staring at Xu Huaisong, who had just raised his hand in a “stop” gesture, expressions registering bewilderment.

Without a word, Xu Huaisong stood up and wrote a single line on the whiteboard behind him: Urgent call.

One by one, every mouth in the room closed.

“Go ahead.” His unhurried voice came through the receiver and into Ruan Yu’s ear.

Oh — the call hadn’t dropped after all.

She steadied herself against the windowsill and chose her words carefully. “It’s like this, Attorney Xu — the defendant and I ran into each other at a shopping center once before, and I’m not sure whether that was coincidental or deliberate. If it was deliberate, I’m worried my personal information may have been compromised to a greater extent than I’d assumed. Also, after the phone recording a couple of days ago, the defendant sent me a text message that was somewhat threatening in nature…”

Because she’d been spiraling through alarming possibilities in her head, her account wasn’t especially clear or coherent.

But that didn’t stop Xu Huaisong from understanding. “You’re worried the defendant poses a threat to your physical safety?”

“Mm…”

Ruan Yu gave a dry, awkward laugh. Given his flat, detached tone, she half-expected his next words to be: Do you have a persecution complex?

So before he could say anything further, she immediately added, “Of course, I’m probably just over—”

The word “thinking” never made it out. She stopped abruptly, her gaze freezing on a white van parked down below the apartment building.

The vehicle was mostly hidden by two large trees with full, dense canopies — she couldn’t make out the windshield or the license plate. What she could faintly see was that the body was caked in mud, and the side windows were covered with black film.

This looked a great deal like the kind of van kidnappers always used in television dramas…

Ruan Yu went quiet. Xu Huaisong asked, “What’s wrong?”

Lost in her panic, she didn’t notice that something in Xu Huaisong’s voice had shifted — there was an edge of tension to it now.

She instinctively dropped into a crouch, tucking herself out of sight, and said in a faltering voice, “I… there’s a van parked below my building — it wasn’t there when I was doing laundry just now…”

“What kind of van?”

Ruan Yu’s mind had gone completely blank. “Just… just the kind that’s really ideal for kidnapping someone!”

“Stay calm.” Xu Huaisong was, of course, considerably more composed than she was. He was about to ask her to describe it more specifically and clearly when he suddenly heard a sound — ding-dong.

At the same moment, Ruan Yu drew in a sharp breath. Her voice sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “My doorbell just rang. What do I do…”