“If the other students find out that Sister didn’t enter through her own merit points, but through an endowment backdoor… they might whisper behind her back! They might mock her and make her feel inferior! I… I just don’t want Sister Celeste to suffer any social humiliation on campus after finally coming home!”
It was a masterclass in Green Tea assassination.
In one single, flowing monologue, Rosalle had managed to paint Celeste as an uneducated, uncertified dunce; she had framed the idea of her attending university as a burdensome financial charity case that required her father to bribe the admissions committee; and she had preemptively established a narrative that would justify high-society gossip and student bullying against Celeste on campus, all while hiding behind the shield of “caring about her sister’s emotional well-being.”
Sebastian scowled, his chopsticks clattering against his bowl.
“Hey! What do you mean ‘make her feel inferior’? Who dares to mock my sister at school? I’ll go over to the university campus and smash their cars myself—!”
“Sebastian. Quiet,” Arian snapped, his cold corporate eyes locking onto Rosalle with dark, freezing suspicion.
He recognized the manipulative framing instantly, but as a finance major, he also knew that Rosalle’s technical point regarding S University’s notoriously rigid admissions committee was accurate.
If Celeste lacked standard domestic transcripts, a special endowment transfer was indeed the standard protocol, and old-money aristocrats like Eldest Uncle’s Main House would definitely use that fact to mock her in public.
Adrian Hartwell’s face darkened with anger.
The Chairman opened his mouth to declare that he could buy the entire board of regents at S University if he wished, and that no one in the capital would dare utter a word of gossip against his daughter.
But before the Patriarch could unleash his wealth, a soft, melodious chuckle rippled across the mahogany table.
Everyone turned back to the center of the room.
Celeste had not dropped her chopsticks.
In fact, she had just calmly used her ivory chopsticks to pick up a crisp, golden-brown piece of shredded cucumber from Noah’s pancake plate, placing it delicately into her mouth and chewing with serene, unhurried grace.
She swallowed, dabbed the corners of her lips with her white silk napkin, and then lifted her dark, bottomless eyes to look directly across the table at Rosalle.
Her face wore that exact same bright, entertained smile she had displayed on the foyer rug, the look of a veteran cinema critic watching a provincial actress fumble her lines in a low-budget village play.
Internally, the King of Hell was nearly laughing out loud at the absurdity of the probe.
‘Standard domestic merit points?
A multi-million-yuan endowment backdoor?’ Celeste’s brain accessed the classified profile established for her civilian cover identity by Commander Luis and her personal underworld intelligence hacker, Liam “Ghost” Bent.
When the military directorate had fabricated her eleven-year educational background to cover her deployments in war zones, they hadn’t used a standard village school or a random overseas finishing academy.
They had registered her under a highly classified, state-level intelligence scholarship at St. Jude’s International Institute of Strategic and Analytical Sciences, a hyper-exclusive, invite-only global fortress located in the mountains of Zurich, Switzerland.
It was an institution where the student body consisted entirely of European royalty, the heirs of global financial dynasties, and child prodigies recruited directly by international defense think-tanks.
The “merit points” required for entry were not standard high school calculus or basic literature; they were IQ thresholds exceeding 160, advanced cryptography, multi-language geopolitical debate, and real-world macroeconomic crisis simulation.
In her forged, state-verified academic dossier, Celeste’s name sat at the undisputed rank of Valedictorian of the Global Cohort for three consecutive years, a distinction that had caused the Dean of Admissions at Oxford and Cambridge to personally send begging letters to her unit’s encrypted servers every spring, asking if the “mysterious prodigy” would consider accepting an honorary postgraduate fellowship.
To worry that a student holding the Valedictorian dossier of St. Jude’s would fail the entrance cut-off for Jinghua University was like worrying that a fifth-generation stealth fighter jet might fail the emissions test at a local village mechanic’s shop.
“You need not concern yourself with Father’s financial liquidity or my emotional fragility, Rosalle,” Celeste said smoothly, her voice ringing through the dining hall like polished crystal clear, serene, and carrying an innate, crushing intellectual authority that made Lucas adjust his glasses in sudden fascination. Follow the newest chapters on novelping . com.
She tilted her head slightly, her dark eyes resting on the pale, tense face of the fake daughter.
“My academic trajectory during my time abroad was indeed… unconventional compared to standard domestic high schools. We did not use standard provincial merit points. However, at my previous institute, our evaluations were based on continuous, competitive analytical ranking across global cohorts.”
Celeste smiled, a soft, razor-sharp expression of unshakeable competence.
“I consistently maintained the top ranking in my institution across all core analytical disciplines for the duration of my attendance. I am quite accustomed to rigorous academic standards and competitive examination pressure.”
She turned her gaze back toward her father, offering him a respectful, reassuring nod.
“There is no need for Father to expend a single dollar on endowment backdoors or special committee favors. If S University requires an entrance assessment or a transfer qualification examination, I will simply sit for the examination and achieve the necessary merit score independently. It is a simple administrative procedure; it will not generate any gossip.”
The simplicity, the absolute lack of arrogance, and the serene, titanium-clad confidence vibrating in her words hit the dining room like a shockwave.
There was no defensive anger.
There was no whining or making excuses.
She had simply stated her top-of-the-class ranking as an absolute, immutable law of nature, as undeniable as gravity.
16-year-old Lucas inhaled sharply, his silver glasses catching the light as he looked at his sister with wide, breathless awe.
Top ranking across all analytical disciplines at an international elite academy?