Fu Linzhou frowned.
Earlier today in the office, she had stormed in and confronted him, hysterical—nothing like the gentle, obedient woman she usually was.
He had indeed been annoyed at the time, feeling she lacked tact.
But now, looking at her like this, that irritation had faded, leaving only exhaustion and a trace of guilt.
These past six months, she really had taken good care of him.
Fu Linzhou spoke. “Don’t talk nonsense. You’re wonderful.”
Wen Yirou stood up, walked slowly to his side, wrapped her arms around his waist, buried her face in his shoulder, and sobbed quietly.
Fu Linzhou stiffened for a moment, but he didn’t push her away.
“Linzhou, I really, really like you.”
“I know I’m just a stand-in. I know there’s someone else in your heart. But I can’t help it.”
“When you smile at me, when you pick food for me with your chopsticks, I feel like everything is worth it.”
Fu Linzhou said nothing. His palm landed on her back and patted it gently.
“Don’t overthink it. Between her and me—that’s long over.”
Wen Yirou lifted her head, tears still clinging to her face, but her eyes brightened. “Really?”
“Really. Don’t overthink it from now on.”
Wen Yirou nodded vigorously, her tears turning into a smile.
She nodded hard. “I believe you.”
Fu Linzhou thought, maybe this was how it should be.
Wen Yirou was good—gentle, considerate, and sincere with him.
These six months, he had grown used to her presence, used to this warmth of everyday life.
Su Qingsi was the past—an obsession, a lingering unwillingness.
But life couldn’t be built on unwillingness.
He should be content.
Later, when the right moment came, he would confess to Wen Yirou and turn their fake contract into something real.
As for Su Qingsi…
Let her become the past completely.
Su Qingsi stood before the floor-to-ceiling window of the Su family apartment in the city center.
The night was thick, and the glass reflected her alluring figure.
Her hair fell like a dark waterfall, cascading over her shoulders.
In her mind, the System’s voice carried obvious urgency. “Host, we’re detecting a deviation in the Plotline.”
“Fu Linzhou just made his decision—he chose Wen Yirou. The plot node where the white moonlight stirs up trouble can no longer proceed.”
“If the male lead’s and female lead’s romance solidifies here and heads straight toward a marriage ending, the chase-and-reconcile arc catalyzed by the white moonlight in the Original Work will be drastically compressed or even skipped entirely.”
“Host, this will make it very difficult for the parallel timeline to form. Your mission will fail, and you won’t survive.”
Su Qingsi didn’t move. Her delicate face showed no expression at all.
“Host? Are you listening?” The System’s electronic voice rose slightly.
“You need to do something, or we’ll—”
“Shut up.”
Su Qingsi spoke, her voice icy cold, cutting off the System’s chatter directly.
The System fell silent instantly.
Su Qingsi raised her hand, her slender fingertips tracing a light arc through the air.
A semi-transparent virtual Light Screen unfolded before her, illuminating her moist, luminous eyes.
She didn’t look up Fu Linzhou or Wen Yirou. Instead, she pulled up another person’s file.
Gentle brows, a poised smile—it was Lin Wanqing.
The System was puzzled. “Host, why are you looking into her? The key issue right now is the male lead—”
“Someone was underestimated.” Su Qingsi’s lips curved upward into a smile devoid of warmth—dangerous and alluring.
On the surface, Lin Wanqing was Wen Chengye’s wife, Wen Yirou’s birth mother, a virtuous wealthy madam.
A devoted wife and mother, well-regarded in social circles.
But in reality, she was Su Mingyuan’s first love.
More than twenty years ago, when the Su Family had yet to rise and was barely scraping by as a third-rate clan.
Their love had been pure and innocent, but in the end, the gap between their realities forced them apart.
The Su Family needed a marriage alliance that could bring immense resources to turn their fortunes around. Under his family’s arrangement, Su Mingyuan married the only daughter of the Shen Family—Shen Zhiwei, a true heiress of top-tier aristocracy.
Shen Zhiwei was also Su Qingsi’s biological mother.
She not only brought all of the Shen Family’s resources with her, but she herself was a business prodigy—iron-willed, sharp-eyed, and precise in her judgment.
With her full support, the Su Family’s enterprises expanded rapidly within just a few short years, their status soaring as they leapt into the ranks of the capital’s new elite.
Su Mingyuan held his first wife in the highest esteem, and the couple shared a deep and devoted bond.
After Shen Zhiwei passed away from illness three years ago, Su Mingyuan never remarried, and their story was once celebrated as a model of fidelity.
However, before that celebrated story began, there was another episode unknown to all.
It happened after the wedding date between Su Mingyuan and Shen Zhiwei had been set, but before the ceremony took place—Lin Wanqing sought out Su Mingyuan.
She chose the timing of her ovulation, carefully schemed, and had a one-night stand with Su Mingyuan.
Afterward, Lin Wanqing took the compensation money the Su Family gave her and vanished without a trace.
Su Mingyuan, for his part, treated it as an accident, a mistake, buried it completely, and married Shen Zhiwei as scheduled, beginning a new life.
What he did not know was that the vanished Lin Wanqing was already pregnant with his child at the time.
Months later, Lin Wanqing, her belly swollen with pregnancy, appeared before Wen Chengye—a nouveau riche who had just made his fortune in building materials and was desperate to climb into high society.
She was pitiful and delicate, utterly unlike the common, vulgar women one usually encountered.
She hinted that the child was her ex’s, that she had fallen in with the wrong man, and that she had nowhere left to turn.
Wen Chengye fell for her at first sight. Not only did he not mind, he was filled with nothing but tender concern, and immediately vowed to care for mother and daughter for the rest of their lives.
He joyfully acknowledged the child as his own, declaring to the world that she was his biological daughter, and he doted on Lin Wanqing, indulging her every whim.
That child was Wen Yirou—and she carried Su Mingyuan’s blood.
It was no coincidence that she bore a resemblance to the original body. Wen Yirou was Su Qingsi’s half-sister on their father’s side.
She was the Su Family’s illegitimate daughter.
Su Qingsi pulled up a plotline segment from later in the original novel.
In the original work, after the vicious white moonlight Su Qingsi courted her own destruction and was imprisoned, Lin Wanqing appeared by sheer coincidence.
In the guise of a gentle, understanding flower, she stayed by Su Mingyuan’s side—a man tormented and disappointed by his daughter’s crimes, and overwhelmed by the Su Family’s decline.
She comforted him, cared for him, and with her soft tenderness, gradually erased Su Qingsi’s presence.
Bit by bit, she made Su Mingyuan believe that the daughter struggling in prison—set up by others and subjected to humiliation at the hands of many—had willingly sunk to that level, had brought it all upon herself, and was not worth another ounce of his effort.
At the same time, she let her own outstanding daughter, Wen Yirou, gradually replace Su Qingsi’s place in Su Mingyuan’s heart.
In the end, Su Mingyuan abandoned his biological daughter Su Qingsi, who was fighting for survival in the mire, and married Lin Wanqing.
Wen Yirou changed her surname to Su, becoming the eldest daughter of the Su Family with full legitimacy. She was entered into the family registry, and enjoyed all the splendor of both her father’s and her husband’s houses.
Meanwhile, the true eldest daughter of the Su Family, Su Qingsi, was released from prison penniless, exiled to a strange city, and finally, on a freezing snowy night, died silently of cold and destitution beneath a bridge.
“Lin Wanqing.” Su Qingsi murmured the name softly.
She gazed at the woman’s gentle, demure photo on the Light Screen.
“I underestimated you.”
The System was silent for a few seconds. “Host, what do you intend to do? The priority is to win back the male lead’s heart and advance the Plotline. There’s no need to bother with these supporting characters.”
“No, I’ve changed my mind.” Su Qingsi turned off the Light Screen and looked out the window at the dazzling city nightscape.
The neon lights hung like an inverted river of stars.
“Originally, I only wanted to go with the flow, finish the Plotline, live a second life, and enjoy a carefree life above the masses.”
“But now, I’m going to make Lin Wanqing fall from grace.”
“And I’m going to make Wen Yirou forever remain an illegitimate daughter who can never see the light of day.”
“As for Fu Linzhou?” She let out a soft laugh.
“He’ll come back on his own.”
Her stunning reflection stared back at her from the glass window.
“The game has only just begun.”