Logging off, Xu Qingnan found his optical brain flashing the instant he returned to reality. A metal staff materialized in his hand the prize he had redeemed using forum points from Dream Painting last year. The staff was pitch-black throughout, and its item description listed an overwhelmingly long string of technical terms regarding its alloy composition. Aside from the word “metal,” Xu Qingnan hadn’t retained a single syllable; he had simply noted that it ought to hurt immensely when used to strike someone, that it was perfectly straight and visually striking, and best of all, that it could be claimed entirely with reward points without spending a single credit. So, he had ordered it.
The household security system continued to broadcast its flashing warnings, and the smart locks on the doors and windows chimed continuously with distress signals. Moving with practiced, silent steps, Xu Qingnan padded over to the front entrance and routed the feed from the exterior security camera.
It wasn’t the group of individuals who had pursued and hunted Ren Xubai, as Xu Qingnan had initially suspected.
At least, it didn’t look like it.
Mounted above the door frame, the concealed camera captured only the crown of someone’s head. The hair was a cool brown shade, with the tips of flushed ears peeking out from beneath. The visitor sported a fair, translucent complexion and wore a light gray casual suit, holding an unidentifiable object in their left hand while their right hand rested directly upon the doorknob.
As if sensing Xu Qingnan’s gaze through the lens, the person tilted their head left and right before effortlessly locking onto the camera’s location. Wearing a face mask that left only a pair of round, doe-like eyes exposed glossy and shimmering with moisture, fringed by thick lashes that naturally curved to lower a person’s guard they looked entirely harmless.
Yet Xu Qingnan’s gaze froze.
“Knock, knock, knock—”
Activating the smart lock’s intercom feature, Xu Qingnan demanded, “Who is it?”
“Hello! I’m your new neighbor, I just moved in today,” the visitor completely bypassed Xu Qingnan’s question, giving the bag in their hand a slight shake. The voice carried through clear and crisp, bearing no trace of disguise: “I baked some pastries, care to try some?”
“Not interested,” Xu Qingnan stated with absolute coldness. “Get lost.”
“Ah, spotted,” the visitor let out a theatrical, feigned sigh of mild regret, before removing the mask. Tilting their head once more, they easily relocated the camera’s eye, revealing a soft, pretty face completely devoid of aggressive edges. Looking utterly harmless, carrying zero resemblance to the near-demented madness he had displayed three years ago, the voice dropped lower, carrying a strange, eerie cadence: “Long time no see, Nannan. I finally found you.”
Xu Qingnan’s expression remained fixed, his voice plunging to a deeper frost: “It took you three years to track me down, Shen Jiacheng. You’re losing your touch.”
“Nannan is too clever, actually coming back to this exact place and forcing me to search the outside world for so long,” Shen Jiacheng remained entirely unbothered by Xu Qingnan’s hostility. To him, simply locating Xu Qingnan once more constituted a total victory. “Won’t you invite me inside to catch up, Nannan?”
Catching up.
Catch up on what?
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“So familiar,” Shen Jiacheng’s voice rippled across the audio feed straight to Xu Qingnan’s ear. “Do you remember, Nannan? The very first thing you ever said to me was this exact line.”
The tone wrapping around those words carried an unsettling, visceral wave of nostalgia.
That typical, self-righteous delusion of his.
Xu Qingnan cut off the feed without another word.
On the screen, Shen Jiacheng showed no signs of anger, simply setting the paper bag down on the threshold. “Be sure to eat them; it’s the flavor you love.”
Pointing toward the opposing apartment door with a curved-eye smile, he added, “We have a long road ahead of us.”
Footsteps faded away down the hallway, and the blaring alarms of the doors and windows finally fell silent. Turning around, Xu Qingnan walked over to the sofa and sat down, remaining in heavy silence for a long moment before reaching beneath the coffee table to fish out a cigarette. The hand operating the lighter remained completely, unfailingly steady.
In truth, the most agonizing period had been three years ago. Later on, when Xu Qingnan finally made a clean, absolute break, severing ties with that messy chapter of his life and cutting Shen Jiacheng out entirely, things had slowly stabilized.
Over the past three years, Xu Qingnan had gradually found his footing. Though occasionally plagued by lingering restlessness whenever dreams drifted back to those early days upon arriving on Silver Frost Star, those disturbances bore no relation to any lingering affection for Shen Jiacheng.
His dependency, fondness, sense of responsibility, emotional suppression, and tangled internal conflicts regarding Shen Jiacheng had been burned down to absolute cinders three years ago.
Whenever those past memories resurfaced in his dreams, the scenes featuring Shen Jiacheng evoked the exact same emotional resonance as the ones without him they no longer possessed the power to stir up heightened turbulence.
Only lingering annoyance.
Having zero intention of stepping back into romantic relationships stemmed directly from that harrowing experience; Xu Qingnan had come away deeply convinced that romance was an enterprise requiring exorbitant capital investment while yielding an abysmally low return.
He was merely a Beta, entirely free from the agonizing trials of ruts or ruts-adjacent cycles. Aside from romance
There was no “aside.” Choosing not to date carried zero adverse consequences for him, created no logistical inconvenience in his daily life, and instead freed up a wealth of spare time to dedicate to his passions, sparing him the mental exhaustion of tending to another person’s emotional demands.
Even with Shen Jiacheng showing up on his doorstep now, it failed to ripple the surface of his calm waters.
Yet, having witnessed firsthand the unhinged depths of Shen Jiacheng’s madness, Xu Qingnan closed his eyes, already anticipating the mountain of needless headaches waiting down the road.
The masquerade party unfolded across the yacht’s main deck. The lengthy banquet table had been swapped out for a sprawling display of varied alcoholic beverages and delicate pastries, while a stage anchored at the far end framed the boundless night sky as its backdrop. Accompanied by the soothing rumble of ocean waves, the currently trending band TIME performed mellow, elegant arrangements upon the stage.
Xu Qingnan had changed into the formalwear prepared by the production crew a black suit covered in rich, ornate dark patterns interlaced with woven gold willow vines, paired with an inner shirt crafted from a deep emerald silky fabric, striking a luxurious, retro aesthetic.
The buttons were fastened with absolute precision all the way to the top collar, the lush emerald contrasting sharply against his cold, pale skin and highlighting the sexy line of the throat above the collar a sight that quietly tempted an observer to trace downward, only to be firmly rebuffed by the cold metallic buttons.
The unfulfilled hunger only intensified, contrasting starkly with the man’s freezing, razor-sharp aura that kept people safely at bay, leaving anyone trapped wishing they could weave those desires into vines wrapping tightly around his heart, scratching an itch that refused to be relieved.
The sharp, tailored cut accentuated the man’s peerless physique, wrapping his frame in unbroken lines. With every movement, the second button of his shirt pulled taut under strain, threatening to snap at any second before snapping back into place, pulling those invisible heart-vines even tighter, accelerating heartbeats into disorder and rendering breaths imperceptibly shallow.
A black feathered half-face mask concealed his sculpted brow and deep eye sockets, shedding a measure of his imposing pressure to leave solely the lower half of his face exposed. All focus naturally gravitated toward the pale, thin line of his lips, which unexpectedly radiated a soft, vulnerable allure.
Xu Qingnan rarely buttoned his collar this high, and with a twitch of irritation, he reached up to tug at his neckline. Right on cue, a knock rapped against his door.
Standing outside was an exact replica of Xu Qingnan.
This constituted the mechanism for tonight.
Utilizing physical data profiles gathered from all six participants, the production crew had commissioned a batch of androids outfitted in identical attire, matching half-face masks, and even replicating two parts of their underlying aura. Beneath the obstruction of the masks, a casual glance made separating the real from the counterfeit virtually impossible.
Their objective: differentiate the real from the fake.
The moment one person successfully located another, they would be locked in as roommates for the upcoming week, with no right of refusal granted to the discovered party first come, first served.
Clustered by multiple “Xu Qingnans,” Xu Qingnan found himself ushered toward the deck.
Where he ran into countless other duplicates.
Across the modest deck, six groups of high-similarity collectives drifted back and forth, crossing paths. These human simulations generated from their profile data could even converse with one another, utilizing their respective character personas and linguistic habits, creating an indescribably surreal atmosphere.
Though undeniably lively.
Opting for a glass of high-proof whiskey, Xu Qingnan secured a seat at a densely populated table. The unexpected appearance of Shen Jiacheng had dredged up a wave of bygone history, prompting Xu Qingnan to tilt his head back and down the entire glass in a single motion.
Upon first arriving on Silver Frost Star, Xu Qingnan had been profoundly silent. The underage-edition optical brain strapped to his wrist sported a chipped corner, and lacking the legal eligibility to pilot shared flying vehicles, he had been forced to flag down a private transport. The thirty-minute trip had cost him an extortionate, daylight-robbery rate of one hundred star coins.
Dormitories were available on campus, but physically unstable Alphas and Omegas were strictly barred from residing in student housing; those two designations were logged in official registries at birth, with relevant oversight agencies conducting mandatory home environment and psychological wellness checks every single year. Should parents be found negligent, penalties ranged from three thousand star coins in fines up to a mandatory three-thousand-word self-reflection report dispatched directly to the parents’ employers and every single contact listed on their optical brain portals.
Betas had it far simpler, accounting for fifty percent of the total population. To put it bluntly in crude terms, on the remote planet where Xu Qingnan was born, a missing Beta or two barely registered as front-page news.
With low innate spiritual power ceilings capping out at a modest B—Betas naturally lagged behind in intellect, capability, and even aesthetic sensitivity compared to Alphas and Omegas. Upon entering the workforce, the majority gravitated toward occupations demanding minimal spiritual bandwidth, quietly toiling away as insignificant little ants swallowed by sprawling megacities.
Between the two dominant secondary genders, Alphas required no introduction—ranking no lower than A- minus rare instances of acquired glandular damage, which historically barely breached a hundred cases across centuries. Ironically, even within that hundred-case exception pool, spiritual metrics still managed to scrape a B rating, which conveniently formed the absolute floor for Omegas.
Thus, B-rank spiritual power was practically dime a dozen.
Their sole advantage lay in physiological stability.
Yet precisely for that reason, Betas boasted the highest survival rate, ballooning into the most populous demographic, while that very stability became the exact reason they were overlooked.
Consequently, Betas were inherently incapable of commanding high-tier attention or seizing substantial social resources.
As a result, campus housing conditions for Betas remained thoroughly mediocre.
Yet for Xu Qingnan, it was more than sufficient: guaranteed meals, a dedicated bed, a locker, and above all, working lights.
A newly transferred Beta ought to have slipped beneath the radar without creating ripples; Alphas and Omegas disdained paying attention to them, while fellow Betas generally maintained their own tight-knit social circles. Driven by their innate rationality, they harbored minimal emotional demands since their existing friendships already satisfied their social quotas, meaning nobody would proactively extend a welcoming hand to a newly arrived transfer student.
Aside from his desk neighbor, who occasionally exchanged a couple of words with him.
Yet Xu Qingnan was simply far too striking.
His aura stood completely apart from the local kids.
Despite wearing the most basic campus uniform, walking across the grounds inevitably drew inquiring eyes.
Unflinching like a lone stalk of bamboo upright, razor-sharp, and solitary.
Driven primarily by that striking face.
Before long, upper-class Alphas began approaching Xu Qingnan to confess their affections.
Devoid of courtship gestures or ceremonial fanfare, they simply rolled up surrounded by an entourage, loftily lowering their gazes to appraise his face. “Not bad looking at all, newcomer. Fancy dating?”
They didn’t even know Xu Qingnan’s name.
Xu Qingnan rejected them as a matter of course.
Yet in the eyes of those Alphas, Xu Qingnan’s matter-of-course refusal translated directly to ungrateful insolence.
The campus atmosphere previously peaceful and undisturbed, despite lacking attention shattered instantly.
Ice-cold water dumped from overhead the moment he stepped foot inside the classroom, sharp shards of jagged ice slicing open his scalp and cheeks as blood trickled down from within his thick hair.
Textbooks ripped to shreds, chair seats slathered in industrial adhesive, desktop surfaces drenched in crimson paint.
His desk neighbor packed up his belongings and relocated across the room.
His dormitory suffered a mirrored devastation school uniforms shredded and tossed into the wastepaper basket, bedding and clothes heaved out the window down into the thorny briar bushes below, even his washed-faded underwear fished out and strung up on display from the trees flanking the dormitory entrance gate.
His roommates maintained a terrified silence, save for a single individual who quietly stood up and silently handed a tissue to the boy bleeding from the head.
And that was the extent of it.
With absolute calm, Xu Qingnan requisitioned new textbooks, a replacement desk and chair, and submitted a medical leave request to the administration office to visit the clinic for stitches. Wearing a cap and face mask, he paid two star coins to borrow a flower shop clerk’s comm-link, dialed that Alpha to inform him that he accepted his confession and would meet him by the hospital’s side entrance.
That evening, right before the nursing station desk, he excused himself to use the washroom. Peering downward from the restroom window decades before automated holographic surveillance blanketed every square inch, the ground beneath the washroom window happened to be the one dead zone completely unmonitored by the side entrance cameras.
Five minutes later, he returned to his hospital room right in front of the nursing staff.
Eyes closed, he fell peacefully asleep to the sounds of chaos echoing from outside.
Word surfaced that a large ceramic planter filled with dirt and bearing a potted wild rose had accidentally plummeted downward, striking an underage Alpha right outside the side entrance.
Xu Qingnan cooperated fully with police questioning. Standing right beside the officers was the Alpha’s best friend: “It was him! My friend went to the hospital side entrance precisely because he received a call from him accepting his confession!”
The investigating officer turned toward the pale, slender underage Beta. “Is that true?”
Xu Qingnan raised a hand to point at his own bandaged head, his hair cropped down to an easy-to-dress buzz cut: “The doctor diagnosed a mild concussion. This happened entirely because I rejected this individual’s, this victim Alpha’s, confession.”
“What nonsense are you spewing, we would never pull a stunt like this!” Injury to an Alpha constituted a felony, and unwilling to admit fault in front of the authorities, the friend barked, “Do you have proof?”
“Then what grounds do you have to claim I made that phone call?” Xu Qingnan’s words cut like a blade, sharp, freezing, the buzz-cut hairstyle layering an extra layer of oppressive pressure onto the Beta. “If my head injury has nothing to do with you lot, why would I randomly smash a planter onto an Alpha I don’t even know?”
The investigation ultimately petered out without a conclusion.
Later on, Xu Qingnan paid a visit to check on the recovering Alpha, who was currently surrounded by a massive entourage of well-wishers.
“You actually dare show your face here?” Seething with agitation, the Alpha grabbed a fruit knife off the bedside table and hurled it directly, though Xu Qingnan sidestepped it effortlessly.
Setting his fruit basket down on the floor, Xu Qingnan swept his gaze slowly across every single Alpha stationed inside the room every last one of them born to privilege.
Yet right now, they inexplicably found themselves intimidated into silence by the sheer force of a single Beta’s aura.
“My parents are both gone, I’m completely on my own with zero friends, just an ordinary Beta,” Xu Qingnan stated flatly, verbalizing the vulnerable, defenseless reality of his unbacked existence, before the corners of his mouth suddenly twitched upward into an arc as dazzling as a warming winter sun, though not a single person present had the bandwidth to appreciate it. “But you lot are different heaven’s, chosen, ones.”
“Don’t come looking for trouble with me again. Otherwise, dragging even a single Alpha down to hell with me is pure profit on my end.”
Xu Qingnan spun on his heel and walked out, leaving a wake of curses and jeers trailing behind him that failed to slow his pace by a fraction.
Provoked into a fury, the Alpha’s breathing hitched as his eyes flushed crimson. “Kick his fruit basket out of here!”
Someone immediately rushed forward.
Putting every ounce of strength behind the kick, only to lose his footing and crash hard onto the floor.
The fruit basket rolled and tumbled into the hallway, the draped cloth slipping off to reveal its contents.
Inside, there was nothing.
It was completely empty.
…
Damn it!
Xu Qingnan earned his reputation in a single battle.
Nobody ever dared to trouble him again.
Nor did anyone ever speak to him.
If previously he had assumed that being a newcomer meant he would eventually integrate with his peers share meals together, exchange greetings in passing
The present Xu Qingnan found himself utterly, completely alone.
While Alphas dared not physically accost him, they could easily intimidate his classmates and roommates.
Ultimately, it was that same roommate who had originally handed him a tissue who came to plead with him, begging him to move out.
“We’ve already been accidentally locked inside the washroom for the tenth time,” the roommate kept his head bowed, each word dragged out in agony. “Please just move out.”
Silently, Xu Qingnan turned and left.
He secured an apartment that very day and relocated off campus.
From then on, street thugs intercepted him daily on his commute to and from school. Xu Qingnan bore constant bruises, fighting with the reckless abandon of someone who didn’t value their own life, ensuring that whichever gang of thugs was dispatched quickly learned never to send anyone a second time.
Until, many months later, the entire commute from his school front gate straight to his front door grew peacefully quiet.
And later still, following a grueling year-long war of attrition, Xu Qingnan finally reclaimed a semblance of peace.
Tranquil like stagnant water.
Every single word he uttered drew zero response.
Teachers had initially expressed concern, but Xu Qingnan bore no physical signs of bullying.
People simply refused to speak to him.
Naturally, a teacher couldn’t force someone to carry on a conversation.
Nor did Xu Qingnan desire such charity.
The faculty eventually exhausted their options.
Xu Qingnan gradually accepted that he might genuinely be cursed as a lone star of misfortune.
Growing increasingly silent, his hair growing longer by the day, he drifted through the campus grounds like an unwanted wild ghost.
Fearing that a prolonged lack of vocalization might cause him to atrophy his capacity for speech entirely, Xu Qingnan took to barking out a sharp “Ah” upon returning home every evening, listening to his own hoarse, raspy voice just to confirm he still existed.
During the pre-senior-year psychological screening, Xu Qingnan was flagged as a high-risk student.
Unwilling to shoulder liability, the school administration strongly encouraged him to withdraw.
Clutching that expulsion request form, Xu Qingnan perched precariously along the rooftop ledge, gazing out at the horizon gradually swallowing the distant skyline, before lowering his gaze to measure the unreachable ground far below.
A casual, detached thought flitted through his mind: if he were to pitch himself over the edge, would it finally prove that he existed?
Shen Jiacheng had materialized precisely at that juncture.
“Xu-ge? Xu-ge?”
The visage of Shen Jiacheng slowly dissolved before his eyes, replaced by the face of Ren Xubai.
Ren Xubai’s formalwear featured a clean, refreshing palette of white and blue, vibrant and youthful.
Strikingly reminiscent of the exact color combination Shen Jiacheng had worn on the day they first met.
Snapping back to reality, Xu Qingnan withheld any response, quietly shifting his gaze away as if he were entirely detached from the scene.
“Stop teasing me, Xu-ge,” Ren Xubai reached out to brush against Xu Qingnan’s arm, bursting into a bright smile the second he was dodged. “Dodge all you like, but that just proves you really are Xu Qingnan.”
“…” Raising a hand to rub the bridge of his nose, Xu Qingnan was met only by the soft brush of feathers, prompting him to drop his hand. “What is it?”
Ren Xubai had originally intended to remind Xu Qingnan that since he had arrived first, the two of them were officially locked in as roommates for the upcoming week; but noticing Xu Qingnan’s gesture, the words swerved mid-air: “Care to join me for a walk somewhere?”
Before Xu Qingnan could offer a refusal, Ren Xubai casually gestured toward a certain unidentifiable “Deng You” lingering not far away. “If we don’t move now, Deng You’s heading straight this way. Trust me, if Deng You ambushes us right now…”
Raising an eyebrow which served as his sole facial calisthenics Xu Qingnan pushed himself to his feet. “Lead the way.”
A triumphant smile blooming across his face, Ren Xubai murmured, “Through the stairwell over here.”
Following behind him, Xu Qingnan descended from the deck.
Expensive leather shoes pressed into the yielding white sand, sinking softly with every stride. Ren Xubai wobbled unsteadily twice with a performance sitting somewhere between genuine and affected, before finally quite naturally, or rather, unavoidably clamping his arm securely around Xu Qingnan’s.
He guided the man straight toward the “rose castle.”
Illuminated by a nearby blue floodlight casting an icy, azure tone across the structure, the rose castle stood outlined against the deep indigo midnight sky, exuding an even more breathtaking, fantastical elegance.
Noticing the floodlight looked remarkably familiar upon closer inspection, Xu Qingnan realized it had been unbolted directly from the cruise ship.
Observing Ren Xubai’s expression of unmasked, prideful expectation, guessing the culprit required zero imagination.
A gentle breeze swept through, gently scattering the heavy, stifling gloom that had been stirred up by those turbulent past memories within Xu Qingnan’s heart, clearing away the topmost layer of haze.
Nervous yet intensely eager, Ren Xubai kept his eyes glued to Xu Qingnan’s face, tracking the micro-hint of genuine appreciation that blossomed across those features before letting his smile stretch into an unrestrained grin. Fumbling discreetly with his wristband, a tiny holographic projection materialized in midair, capturing the exact moment Xu Qingnan had crouched down earlier with his fingertips brushing against a rose petal.
“Click.”
Hearing the shutter sound, Xu Qingnan straightened up and turned toward the source with a puzzled frown. “Didn’t you say photography wasn’t allowed?”
Shaking his wrist with an air of practiced mystery—
“What Xu Qingnan wants, he shall have.”
…
Not far away, another individual raised their wrist in tandem, shifting the lens until the framing locked entirely onto Xu Qingnan alone.
“Click.”