The taxi weaved through the traffic heading back to the city, the neon lights outside the window stretched into ambiguous, blurred ribbons of light.
Xu Yumo curled up in the corner of the back seat, her fingers unconsciously tracing the soft handkerchief. The fabric still held a trace of warmth, yet she still couldn't remember where exactly she had seen the man in the garden before.
Then again, Zhou Shiye's circle had always been vast and sprawling. Among the powerful second-generation heirs of the Beijing elite scene, there were plenty whose names she couldn't put to faces. She'd probably crossed paths with him at some gathering once.
She lowered her gaze, and her eyes inadvertently landed on the lower right corner of the handkerchief.
Only then did she notice a half-bloomed jasmine flower embroidered there in low-key silver-gray silk thread, beside it the logo of a top luxury brand. The stitching was exquisite—clearly a one-of-a-kind custom piece.
…
Damn.
She had originally assumed this was nothing more than an ordinary handkerchief, so trading it for a cake and taking it away had seemed perfectly fine.
Who would have thought he'd use something this expensive to wipe a stranger's tears?
Even within her own circle, that kind of casual disregard was quite rare.
It looked like she'd still have to wash it clean and find an opportunity to return it.
Xu Yumo stared blankly for a long moment before slowly snapping back to her senses.
If this were the past, she probably would have treated this handkerchief as an opening—a natural excuse to go ask Zhou Shiye about it, using it to smooth over last night's unpleasant parting.
But right now, her heart felt like a hollowed-out cavity, leaving only the sound of howling wind.
Empty enough that she no longer wanted to find any excuse to see him.
Nor did she want to continue this futile, one-sided affection.
For the past eight years, Zhou Shiye's world had always been bright and lively.
The girlfriends by his side changed like a revolving lantern, yet he always managed to show up when she needed him most.
He'd cross half the city to deliver medicine when she had a fever, bring warm late-night snacks when she was pulling all-nighters on her thesis, and drive hundreds of kilometers to take her to the seaside to feel the wind when she was upset.
She had gathered these fragments of tenderness like precious treasures, deceiving herself into defining them as special favor.
She thought that as long as she stayed put—never confessing, never crossing the line—she could wait until the day he finally turned over a new leaf.
But that casual "boring" from last night had struck like a heavy hammer, shattering every illusion she had.
It turned out that the special favor she'd repeatedly confirmed was nothing more than her own misreading—a grand obsession she alone had built.
Xu Yumo curled the corner of her lips in self-mockery, tucked the handkerchief neatly into her bag, and completely cut off any thought of asking Zhou Shiye about it.
It didn't matter anymore.
Since they moved in the same circle, there would always be another day they'd meet.
Returning it then wouldn't be too late.
The next morning.
When the alarm rang, Xu Yumo felt her eyelids were impossibly heavy.
She sat up from the bed in her rented apartment. The room was small, simply furnished, but kept clean and tidy.
While washing up, the person in the mirror looked a bit pale, with faint dark shadows under her eyes. She pressed an ice pack over them for a moment, and as the cold seeped in, the lingering emotions from last night were gradually pressed down as well.
Time was running short. She casually threw on a down jacket, grabbed a bread roll from the convenience store at the entrance of the complex, and hurriedly squeezed into the morning rush hour subway.
The carriage was crowded and stuffy, the tide of people wrapping her in the middle like a sardine can. One hand gripping the overhead handle, the other nibbling on a dry bread roll, she stared at a fixed point in the void, calm to the point of numbness.
Besides heartbreak, she had a more pressing problem to deal with.
Xu Zhengming had cut off all her connections and resources. Her old pleas and networks had all failed. She had to find another way out.
Just as she was lost in thought, an advertisement screen for the Digital Economy Summit flashed past outside the subway window.
She paused slightly.
Right—next Wednesday was the Digital Economy Summit.
That was the true arena of power and prestige in the tech world. Those who could obtain an entry pass were the top new titans and premier capital players who commanded the industry. A company like the Xu family, deeply rooted in traditional heavy industry, couldn't even reach into the heartland of cutting-edge technology, let alone get involved.
Originally, she had planned to wait until this batch of core components arrived, get the Gait Algorithm running smoothly, and only then touch that circle with a sufficiently mature model.
But now, at this critical juncture of life and death, she couldn't afford to wait.
The moment she arrived at the company, Xu Yumo quickly opened her computer and began screening information about the summit, eventually zeroing in on the third-tier technology supplier responsible for the venue's hospitality robots. That company was in a panic because their core algorithm had crashed.
She remotely reproduced the problem overnight and fixed the bug that had plagued them for three days with a remarkably clean piece of code.
In exchange, she obtained a pass to enter under the guise of a technical support staff member.
The day of the summit.
Inside the lavish banquet hall, the air was thick with perfume and the clink of glasses, a swirl of elegant figures.
During the tea break, Xu Yumo took the opportunity to weave through the crowd of investors and corporate executives, holding Aether Technology's technical whitepaper in hand.
But reality was far harsher than imagination. When they heard the unfamiliar name "Aether Technology," the other party would often pause briefly before offering a distant, fake smile. Some didn't even take the whitepaper, brushing her off with a few perfunctory words before turning to clink champagne glasses with more prominent figures.
The barriers of class and circles materialized here as invisible yet unyielding walls of ice.
Xu Yumo suppressed the frustration rising in her chest and was about to move toward her next target when a stir broke out at the entrance.
The clusters of people scattered throughout the room parted swiftly to both sides, as if drawn by an invisible magnet. Even the high-and-mighty executives who had been looking down their noses moments ago now wore warmer, more eager smiles.
Xu Yumo followed the commotion with her gaze, her eyes cutting through the layered crowd and landing directly on a tall, imposing figure emerging from the depths of light and shadow.
He wore a meticulously tailored gray suit, his stride unhurried, his expression cold and detached—yet he carried an undeniable, almost oppressive presence.
The moment she made out those sharply defined features, Xu Yumo froze.
It was the man who had handed her a handkerchief in the garden that night.
"He Linxi is here."
"The one from Matrix Technology?"
"Yeah. He rang the bell at NASDAQ last month. His net worth is staggering now—a bona fide tech darling."
"Tech darling? His backing is old money at the highest level…"
Whispers rose and fell like a gust of wind, pressing in from every direction.
Xu Yumo stood rooted to the spot as long-buried memories were abruptly unearthed.
He Linxi.
The legendary figure who had dominated the top of the rankings throughout her high school years—someone who had never lacked attention or gossip on campus.
But back then, her eyes had been filled entirely with Zhou Shiye, leaving only a vague impression of this untouchable academic prodigy and campus heartthrob.
Add to that the years apart, the boyish immaturity now shed for a cold, composed aura—she hadn't been able to match him to her memories that night.
As for Matrix Technology, the name was equally familiar. It was a towering giant in the domestic AI industry, one she had even set her sights on as a goal to chase.
But she had never dreamed that the man pulling the strings behind that giant would be him.
Because he was too young—young enough that they had once worn the same school uniform, supposedly starting from the same line.
Yet at this very moment, she was clutching an ignored whitepaper in a cramped corner.
While he stood at the absolute center of the arena of fame and fortune, held aloft by the top echelons of capital.
Xu Yumo watched the man elevated in the halo of light, surrounded by admirers. The thought of retreat flickered through her mind for only an instant before she forcefully suppressed it.
She drew a deep breath, straightened her back, and walked straight against the crowd toward him.
"Mr. He." She stopped a few steps away, extending the whitepaper with both hands, her clear voice neither servile nor overbearing. "I'm Xu Yumo, head of Aether Technology. I have a project you might find interesting."
Before she even finished speaking, the executives clustered around He Linxi turned to look. Seeing an unfamiliar pretty young woman, a few faint snickers rippled through the crowd.
"Aether Technology? Never heard of it. What little workshop crawled out of the woodwork?"
"She's been peddling that booklet to everyone. Kids these days have no sense of decorum."
"A startup that probably hasn't even closed an angel round, daring to block Mr. He's path? Does she really think you can break into the tech world with a pretty face?"
The sneers and jabs landed on her without missing a single word. Xu Yumo pressed her lips together, her knuckles whitening from the grip, but the hand she extended remained steady without a tremor, her gaze refusing to yield an inch.
He Linxi stopped.
His deep gaze swept past the crowd and settled on her delicate face, etched with stubborn resolve.
After pausing half a second on those clear, almond-shaped eyes, he gave an almost imperceptible furrow of his brow. An invisible pressure radiated outward, and the surrounding murmurs died instantly.
Under the stunned gaze of the onlookers, He Linxi raised his hand and took the whitepaper.
"Go on." His words were terse.
Xu Yumo blinked in surprise.
She had already prepared rebuttals for being ignored or rejected, but she never expected him to accept it so readily.
She quickly steadied herself and cut straight to the point with clear logic: "Aether Technology specializes in sensitivity algorithms for humanoid robot end-effectors. Through multimodal fusion, we can reduce response latency to the millisecond level…"
He Linxi lowered his gaze to flip through the pages, his fingertips pausing on the underlying algorithmic framework section, his eyes lingering there.
A sidelined investor beside him seized the moment to interject: "Mr. He, a startup project like this probably isn't mature enough. No need to waste your time…"
Without even lifting his eyelids, He Linxi casually turned a page with his long fingers, cutting him off: "Let her finish."
The man fell silent immediately.
Xu Yumo continued her presentation, the tension in her chest gradually easing as she delved into her expertise. After laying out the core highlights, she looked at the inscrutable man before her with a hint of nervousness.
He Linxi closed the file and fixed his gaze on her again. "The underlying logic is somewhat interesting, and the reasoning loop is clean enough." His tone remained flat, but his words cut straight to the point. "However, under the drive of large models, the implementation difficulties of hardware redundancy—your report doesn't offer a perfect solution."
Seeing that he had not only read it carefully but also spotted the core technical pain point at a glance, Xu Yumo felt a surge of delight. She quickly pulled out her phone and extended an olive branch: "President He, if you're interested in this direction, why don't we add each other on WeChat first? I can go back and put together a more detailed implementation plan for the redundancy handling and send it to you."
Her voice paused briefly, as if something had just occurred to her. Those beautiful almond-shaped eyes curved into a lively arc, and her tone softened a notch, carrying a hint of slyness that only the two of them understood: "Also… it'll make it easier to contact you, to return your handkerchief."
He Linxi's gaze rested on her vibrant face, and something surged like a dark tide in his deep black eyes for a fleeting moment.
Then, the corner of his thin lips curved into an almost imperceptible smile—whether it was amusement at seeing through her little scheme or a hidden indulgence was hard to tell.
He leisurely pulled out his phone from his suit pocket and brought up his QR code. "Alright."
The air around them nearly froze solid.
The big shots who had just been ruthlessly rejected by He Linxi were now staring as if their eyes might pop out of their sockets, their looks at Xu Yumo filled with utter disbelief, as if they'd seen a ghost.
Yet, the second Xu Yumo's fingertip aligned with the QR code to scan it, her breath caught sharply.
The screen didn't pop up with a "Add Friend" request interface—instead, it jumped straight into his personal profile.
That minimalist black-and-white avatar, that single letter H with no notes attached.
It was already sitting right there in her friend list.