“Don’t you want to obtain the Lin Group? I can help you you know I can!” Qi Bai said, cutting straight to the point.
“You won’t find another person like me in this world.”
Lin Feizhou was momentarily speechless. When he looked into Qi Bai’s deep, steady eyes, they shone with confidence like polished obsidian.
The woman before him was unreasonably strong-willed, the most fearless person he had ever seen when it came to social hierarchy.
He had seen people like that before but the circumstances back then had been different.
“Can you bear the consequences of offending me?” Lin Feizhou used the argument that had always worked for him.
Being fearless in the face of power was not just empty words. In a world that emphasized class hierarchy from childhood, most people instinctively feared stepping out of line.
Qi Bai merely snorted coldly.
“Now that you’ve boarded my ship, I’m the one worried you might not survive the storm if you try to jump off. Your dear little brother would love nothing more than to swallow you whole, bones and all.”
Qi Bai smiled sweetly as she spoke, but the words that came from her mouth were bloody and sharp.
Her smile was bright, yet Lin Feizhou felt only waves of coldness.
She kept mentioning Lin Jiashu did she know something?
Lin Feizhou was wary of her words, yet at the same time he deeply desired her ability.
The atmosphere in the activity room fell into a stalemate.
After a long moment, Lin Feizhou finally gave a helpless smile.
“I suppose you’ve really got me pinned down.”
He stopped testing her. With a serious expression, he stood up and extended his hand toward Qi Bai.
“I’ll only accept equity participation,” Lin Feizhou said, making his final concession.
But Qi Bai smiled brightly and refused to loosen her stance.
“Profit sharing is fine but I need 100% decision-making authority.”
In other words, Lin Feizhou would simply be paying for trust. It wouldn’t make him a real shareholder at most, an investor.
Yet to Qi Bai’s surprise, Lin Feizhou agreed very readily.
“Pleasure working with you,” Qi Bai said cheerfully.
The two shook hands.
Meanwhile, Liu Changyu watched everything happen before her eyes like it was a dream.
A high-ranking noble sitting as an equal with a lower-ranking noble was the world about to collapse?!
But Qi Bai still seemed unsatisfied with the excitement and suddenly said: “Where’s my welcome gift? You didn’t forget to prepare one, did you?”
Lin Feizhou gestured to the man in black waiting nearby.
Soon, a timid-looking girl wearing a school uniform was brought in.
The girl carried an air of unease and fear, and there were still tear stains on her face.
“Luanluan?!”
Liu Changyu cried out in shock and joy, rushing forward to hug her.
“Sister !”
The anxious Liu Changluan finally saw her own sister and couldn’t hold back her grievances any longer.
The girl who had been suppressing her emotions suddenly had red eyes and buried her head in her sister’s warm embrace.
“Waa ”
The scene of the sisters reuniting was deeply touching, and even Lin Feizhou felt moved.
Although he wasn’t the one who initiated this school reform, he was still one of its participants.
Families like the Liu sisters’, where affection ran so deep, might not be common but with thousands of students in the school, how many families stood behind them?
“Why must there be a reform?” Qi Bai asked softly.
Lin Feizhou signaled for the man in black to take the sisters outside first. Then he looked out the window toward the sky, where the sound of helicopter rotors echoed faintly.
“Maybe… because someone was too bored.”
Bored?
Qi Bai frowned at him. She didn’t believe someone like Lin Feizhou could find life boring.
He had ambition and the means to realize it.
A person like that would only feel there was not enough time, never boredom.
Lin Feizhou noticed her confusion and explained: “Not me. Him… or rather, It.”
It?
Qi Bai felt a chill in her heart. That wasn’t a common form of address.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this world truly contains many unknown forces. Even though we’re nobles, we’re nothing more than pieces on someone else’s chessboard.”
Since Lin Feizhou had decided to cooperate, he had no reason to hide things anymore.
Besides, setting aside their identities, he genuinely felt some recognition perhaps even admiration for Qi Bai.
Qi Bai suddenly seemed as if she had been struck awake by a realization.
“Does this world… have gods?”
Yes.
If no other power were involved, how could such a flawed and chaotic social structure remain stable for so long?
The land area of this world wasn’t any smaller than Blue Star (Earth).
And yet, for all these years, there had been only one independent government?
Lin Feizhou answered indirectly.
“I only know that ordinary people like us are very small. Even so-called nobles are nothing more than clowns wearing crowns.”
This was the second time Qi Bai had heard him belittle nobles like that.
Thinking about the information she had previously found about him a desire for power.
Perhaps the power he longed for wasn’t political power at all.
“I want to build an intelligence network.”
Qi Bai stated her intention directly it wasn’t a discussion.
“Your agency?” Lin Feizhou asked.
“Yes. The information I gave you earlier counts as payment for helping rescue Liu Changluan. If you want to invest, you’ll need to provide top-tier personnel.”
That had been Qi Bai’s real objective all along.
“How many people do you need?”
Qi Bai calculated silently.
“Three departments for now: network engineering, sales, and security. Five people for each department just to test the waters.”
Lin Feizhou thought for a moment and nodded.
But he added one condition.
“The information about the Zhang family playing both sides you sold it to me. You can’t mention it to a third person.”
Outside the activity room, in the corridor, Liu Changyu and her sister were chatting happily.
Liu Changyu even took some food from her bag and handed it to her sister.
“What happened afterward? How did you end up being brought here?” she asked.
While wolfing down the food, Liu Changluan described how she had nearly been discovered in the dance studio.
“I was terrified. They were almost about to find me when suddenly it seemed like they received some kind of message and turned around and left. Not long after, that guy found me and brought me up here…”
The young man in black standing nearby, Wu Yunqi, fell briefly silent.
Do I not even deserve a name?
Only then did Liu Changyu turn to look at him.
Wu Yunqi noticed her gaze and pressed his lips together slightly.
“We just exploited a loophole in the rules.”
“What loophole?” Liu Changyu asked curiously.
“To win, students must keep competing for certain designated items and protect them until the end of the competition. Young Master Lin had someone destroy one of those items, and according to the rules, a new item could then be chosen.”
“And then?”
Wu Yunqi grinned.
“The rules never said the item couldn’t be related to a person. The new item was Liu Changluan’s teammate.”
“My teammate?”
Liu Changluan was stunned.
If her teammate was the winning item, then anyone who became her teammate would win the game.
And that would also mean she herself was technically the holder of the designated item.
After all… it was her teammate.
“If that’s the case, why did Guo Jingjing and the others leave? They were about to find me!” Liu Changluan asked.
Wu Yunqi chuckled.
“They had just exposed their intentions in front of you. If you hadn’t realized it, they might’ve simply pulled you into their group. But since you stayed silent for so long, they’re not idiots…”
“Your good friend might be in danger now. You could recognize her but you might not recognize that man with just a few sentences.”
Only then did Liu Changyu finally understand.
Once the new rule announcement came out, that man probably realized what was happening. He likely planned to silence Guo Jingjing first, then act out a heroic scene in front of Liu Changluan.
“But their plan completely failed,” Wu Yunqi said. “You’ll stay in the activity room for now. When the competition is almost over, you can go back down.”
Hearing Lin Feizhou’s arrangement, Liu Changyu finally let out a long breath of relief.
Meanwhile, Liu Changluan still felt like everything was happening inside a dream.
Just like that… it was solved?
That Sister Qi was truly incredibly capable.