Suddenly, a sharp ring shattered the silence.
The phone on the desk lit up.
The caller ID appeared clearly on the screen: Xiaxia.
His fingers paused for a moment before he answered.
Gu Zhixia’s bright, sweet voice came through at once, brimming with undisguised delight.
“Big Brother! Fu Shiyan and I are together!”
“I thought I was the only one who liked him, but today I finally worked up the courage to confess, and he actually said yes!”
“…”
Joy filled Gu Zhixia’s voice as she chattered on at length, but Gu Huaiye had lost interest in every word she said.
A deep shadow passed through his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to its usual calm.
“Xiaxia, congratulations.”
The call ended.
The moment the screen went dark, the calm he had been feigning crumbled. He dialed another number.
“How’s the investigation going?”
“President Gu, we’ve finished looking into it.”
“Go ahead.”
“The young woman who left tonight is named Shi Shuyi. Both her parents are professors at S University, and she comes from a family of scholars. She’s been well-behaved and outstanding since childhood. She’s currently a third-year physics student, and is widely recognized on campus as a genius beauty.”
Gu Huaiye frowned at that.
A third-year student at S University?
So that woman was only twenty—and a top student, too?
“If we hadn’t found her at Baisen, no one would have guessed that such a well-behaved young woman was so ‘rebellious’ in private. She works part-time at Baisen to hide from her parents the fact that she’s secretly taking acting classes. She’s training in every aspect of the craft, and seems intent on breaking into show business.”
She wanted to enter show business?
Was she trying to attach herself to the powerful?
Hah. So much for being a top student.
Gu Huaiye curled one corner of his mouth in scorn.
“But, President Gu, the reason she barged into your private room this time was that a coworker named Lili set her up. Lili was jealous of Miss Shi’s exceptional looks and popularity at Baisen. Plenty of clients are willing to request her.”
“…”
The voice on the other end reported the investigation in meticulous detail.
Gu Huaiye lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. His gaze flickered in and out behind it.
“Is she coming to work tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday, and Miss Shi has an acting class. Her regular shifts at Baisen are Mondays and Tuesdays. She wasn’t scheduled to work tonight; she was filling in for Lili.”
Baisen, a top-tier private club, catered to the rich and powerful.
With looks like hers, even if all she did was smile and pour drinks, two days’ pay would far exceed what most people could imagine earning.
In this world, beauty was the most straightforward passkey for some people.
“Then Monday.” He crushed out the cigarette, his voice utterly flat. “Have her wait for me on the top floor.”
Shi Shuyi.
Gu Huaiye silently repeated the name to himself.
Had their encounter today really been nothing more than her being set up?
The image of Shi Shuyi looking up at him in panic flashed through his mind again.
“Yes, President Gu.”
*
Shi Shuyi walked out of Baisen International in her high heels.
The evening breeze brushed her flushed cheeks. The panic she had felt in the private room had long since been ground to dust in her eyes.
Just then, a cheerful, almost obnoxiously loud electronic voice rang out in the depths of her mind.
“Ding! Congratulations, Master, on your successful first move!”
“You made it out of Gu Huaiye’s private territory unscathed. Deliberately drawing your eyes to resemble Gu Zhixia’s was a stroke of genius!”
Shi Shuyi’s thick lashes lowered silently, like two elegant black feathers, concealing the cold, mocking glint that flashed in her eyes.
“This time, let’s see what it feels like to be someone’s substitute.”
As a member of the Transmigration Management Bureau, she had already traveled through several fictional worlds.
In each one, she transmigrated into the role of an unfortunate female supporting character and made those who had hurt her suffer, body and soul. This world was no exception.
The male lead, Fu Shiyan, was the heir to one of B City’s most powerful families—and the unseen hand stirring the currents of global capital.
The female lead, Gu Zhixia, was the beloved little princess of Gu Group, a warm, radiant sun in everyone’s eyes.
And the man she had just faced—the male supporting character, Gu Huaiye.
At eighteen, he had taken control of the vast Gu family in a moment of crisis. With an iron fist, he had cleansed the family business of its underworld ties and built a dangerous commercial empire that spanned the globe and reached everywhere.
The original Shi Shuyi came from a family of scholars.
Both her parents were professors at S University—
her mother was an authority in medicine, while her father was renowned in physics and had also earned considerable standing in literary circles.
Growing up in such a family, she had been burdened with high expectations from an early age.
She had followed the rules at every turn, graduated from S University with excellent grades, and her parents had already paved the way for her to enter the academic world.
But when Fu Shiyan came to give a lecture at S University, the original Shi Shuyi fell in love with him at first sight.
After graduating, for the first and only time, she went against her parents’ wishes. Instead of pursuing a master’s degree and continuing her work in physics, she drew on her outstanding abilities and résumé to pass round after round of selection and join Fu Group as Fu Shiyan’s personal senior secretary.
But—
At the time, Fu Shiyan was dating Gu Zhixia.
One was a cold, powerful heir to a prominent family who put reason above all else.
The other was a pampered little princess of a wealthy family, full of romantic hopes. Their relationship had been fraught with friction and conflict from the very beginning.
Fu Shiyan was busy with the family business and had no time for romance.
Gu Zhixia, on the other hand, longed to be cherished and showered with attention and surprises at every turn.
Constant arguments and cold wars wore away at their initial attraction, until one final, bitter clash.
The male and female leads broke up.
Gu Zhixia went abroad to clear her head.
Fu Shiyan had assumed Gu Zhixia made little difference to him, but the emptiness he felt led him to get blackout drunk after a business dinner.
With alcohol clouding his judgment, he mistook Shi Shuyi, who had quietly stayed by his side all along, for Gu Zhixia.
Shi Shuyi had carefully hidden her love for Fu Shiyan deep in her heart. When he became single, she began to hope.
When he made the rare move of approaching her, she didn’t shy away at all.
In the haze of night, their entanglement began.
And from then on, everything went off course.
Until—
Three months later, Gu Zhixia returned.
Only then did Fu Shiyan see his own heart with absolute clarity—
He loved Gu Zhixia, deeply. The uncontrollable possessiveness and stirring she awakened in him were things no one else could ever replace.
And just like that, every tender illusion came to an abrupt end.
Fu Shiyan gave Shi Shuyi a check for a staggering sum, his manner as cool and businesslike as if he were at the negotiating table. At the same time, he told her to leave Fu Group.
That was the only value she had left to him, and his way of drawing a clear line between them.
The pride and manners ingrained in Shi Shuyi would never let her cling to him hysterically.
She took the check in silence, even managing to keep a graceful smile on her face, then submitted her resignation with calm efficiency.
She regarded those three stolen months as a beautiful dream granted to her by fate.
Now that the dream was over and the gift had been taken back, she allowed herself to grieve—but never to lose her composure.
She simply returned that man, silently, to the unreachable altar where he had once stood.
But fate’s cruel tricks were not over.
Two months after Fu Shiyan and Gu Zhixia got back together, Gu Zhixia somehow learned of the past they had deliberately kept hidden.
A crushing sense of betrayal engulfed her.
She and Fu Shiyan had a furious argument. Weeping bitterly, she finally let the secret slip to the one person who should never have found out—
her older brother, Gu Huaiye.
Gu Huaiye was unruly and ruthless, especially after taking control of the Gu family. But when it came to his younger sister, Gu Zhixia, he protected her as if she were the apple of his eye.
He barged straight into Fu Group’s headquarters and beat Fu Shiyan brutally.
At the time, Fu Shiyan was consumed by guilt toward Gu Zhixia. He took the beating without resisting or striking back.
But Gu Huaiye’s revenge was far from over.
He turned his sights on Shi Shuyi’s parents.
In a matter of days, the two highly respected professors were ruined—
a major research project was exposed for serious errors, and they were also framed for stealing academic work. Their lifelong reputations were destroyed.
Shi Shuyi knew her parents. They would never have done anything so disgraceful.
With nowhere else to turn, she set aside every last shred of pride and begged Fu Shiyan to use his connections to clear her parents’ names.
But as she pleaded with him, she stumbled upon a truth that could destroy her—
Fu Shiyan had known from the start that Gu Huaiye was behind it all.
He had stood by and watched, complicit in their suffering.
Despair. Devastation.
Shi Shuyi returned to her parents, trying to prop up their crumbling home with her frail shoulders.
She even forced herself to reassure them that, even if they left academia, the family’s savings would be enough to see them through their old age.
But she forgot that her parents had spent their lives as principled scholars, valuing their integrity and reputations more than life itself.
The successive blows and the mud slung at them had already extinguished their will to live.
They chose the most resolute way to defend the last of their dignity.
When news came that both her parents had fallen from a high-rise, one after the other, Shi Shuyi’s world collapsed completely.
Kneeling beside their bodies, she couldn’t understand.
She had only…
loved someone for three brief months.
She had only had a three-month relationship, just like any ordinary young woman…
Why had it led, in the end, to the abyss of a shattered family?
Why?!
Shi Shuyi went to Fu Shiyan in hysterics. She wanted to ask him why. But at that moment, Fu Shiyan had only just managed to comfort Gu Zhixia, who was devastated because her boyfriend had been involved with another woman.
Shi Shuyi’s arrival sent Gu Zhixia back to the Gu family. She issued an ultimatum: if Fu Shiyan couldn’t deal with the woman outside, he should never come looking for her again.
Shi Shuyi looked at Gu Zhixia, still as warm and radiant as ever, surrounded by adoring people, and fell into a daze.
She caught up with Gu Zhixia, her face haggard, though she forced herself to remain composed.
“Miss Gu, do you know what the Gu family did to my parents?”
“Miss Shi, your parents committed academic misconduct. Why are you trying to pin the blame on the Gu family?”
Shi Shuyi stared fixedly into Gu Zhixia’s bright, beautiful eyes.
There was no point in asking any further.
Gu Zhixia had to know. She knew everything her brother had done.
Gu Zhixia was taking revenge on her for those three months with Fu Shiyan!