“Today we’re having braised pork and mushroom rice.” Ruan Xingmian changed her shoes at home and casually picked up the apron by the door to put on.
“Oh right, let’s film some footage.”
She picked up the tripod and handed her phone to Gu Xing. “When I call you later, turn off the camera and come help me film a close-up shot.”
“Okay.”
Gu Xing looked around. The house was very tidy.
Things were slowly accumulating.
There was no coffee table in the living room. A square bamboo mat was spread over the tatami, and the only three-seater sofa was placed right next to it.
The sofa cover was a pretty avocado green.
In the dining area, there was an 80-centimeter square electric heating table with a bright yellow floral tablecloth.
There were only two solid wood chairs, provided by the landlord. One had a rainbow cushion woven for it, while the other was still bare.
The half-finished cushion lay in a corner of the sofa.
He imagined that in her free time, she would wear socks and step onto the bamboo mat, listening to music while crocheting the rainbow cushion.
Gu Xing walked around and found nothing to do—even the toilet was scrubbed clean. The entire bathroom was dry and tidy, carrying a faint scent of oranges.
He heard Ruan Xingmian call him, turned off the camera, picked up the phone, and headed into the kitchen.
“Good thing I didn’t make too much. Sister Ji Ling had some at noon, and we can finish the rest tonight—just the right amount.”
She had somehow acquired two clay pots. At the bottom, she placed cooled rice, topped it with chopped braised pork, poured a full ladle of sauce over it, added halved braised eggs, and finally a handful of braised tofu strips.
The low heat was on.
Ruan Xingmian sliced the mushrooms, then took out a carrot and a cucumber to rinse.
“I smell the rice crust.”
She sniffed lightly twice, her nose twitching gently, and her eyes suddenly lit up with a sparkling glow.
That gentle light reflected in Gu Xing’s eyes as she asked, “Gu Xing, do you smell it?”
Gu Xing pursed his lips. “Mm, I smell it. It’s very fragrant.”
“I’ve always been confident in my cooking skills. Ah, how can someone be so good at cooking?”
As she spoke, she stood on tiptoe and swayed slightly, the loose strands of hair hanging over her shoulders swaying along, even the tips of her hair radiating joy.
Gu Xing nodded in agreement.
His thin lips, usually pressed tightly into a straight line, quietly curved into a faint smile.
The warmth in his eyes deepened, tender and lingering.
“Gu Xing, you’ve been filming my face the whole time, right?”
Ruan Xingmian held a carrot in her hand and stood in the shot, smiling softly.
Forget the shot—Gu Xing’s gaze was fixed on her face.
He hadn’t even glanced at the perfectly aromatic clay pot.
“Come here, point the shot here, and film my cutting skills.”
“Okay.” Gu Xing adjusted the shot, focusing on Ruan Xingmian’s hands, his expression growing more attentive.
With a flick of her wrist and a flash of the knife, the carrot in her hand transformed into fine, even shreds, each one slender and uniform.
She then took a section of cucumber, and with the rise and fall of the knife, emerald-green shreds piled up like a small jade mountain, crisp and neat.
His cool eyes suddenly brightened, and when he looked at Ruan Xingmian’s face, they seemed to shimmer with light, filled with admiration and delight.
The corners of his mouth lifted unconsciously.
“Next, we’ll turn off the heat and blanch the carrot shreds in boiling water.”
She gave instructions, and Gu Xing followed the direction of her finger with the shot, never losing focus or making another mistake.
The mixed mushroom slices, carrot shreds, and cucumber shreds were placed on top of the clay pot, and finally, two green vegetable leaves were added.
Ruan Xingmian clapped her hands together. “Time to eat!”
Heat-resistant mats had been placed on the table beforehand.
Gu Xing carried the clay pot.
Ruan Xingmian prepared two glasses of sour plum juice, one with ice and one without.
She drank the one without ice.
She arranged the dishes, took photos, and recorded videos.
After capturing the footage, she distributed spoons and chopsticks to begin the meal.
“This counts as our first relatively formal meal at home.”
Ruan Xingmian raised her glass first, her face beaming with a smile.
She referred to this place as home.
Gu Xing followed her lead and raised his glass.
The two glass cups clinked together, producing a crisp sound.
Two pairs of beautiful eyes met in the air, overflowing with similar smiles, then shyly looked away in unison.
Gu Xing ate very earnestly, even with a hint of wolfing down his food.
“If you move in, and we eat together every day, I’ll definitely have to correct this bad habit of yours. Eat slower.”
Gu Xing slowed down his pace: “It’s a habit I developed in high school. After starting university, I got even busier. Eating faster saves time.”
Ruan Xingmian nodded.
She genuinely admired Gu Xing and the others—not only were they smart, but they also worked incredibly hard.
The two chatted as they ate, the atmosphere exceptionally harmonious.
Ruan Xingmian gradually gained a more comprehensive understanding of Gu Xing’s academic journey.
In the novel, the perspective was centered on Lu Tian.
He was lavishly praised.
Things like: the eldest son of the Lu Group, his mother a high-ranking executive in the company, holding significant power and influence.
The Male Lead’s mother had a strong personality and was a shrewd manager, poised to take over the Lu Group from her sickly older brother, making the eldest son the future heir.
His father was a renowned professor in computer big data technology.
He was the dean of the top-tier college at A University.
The eldest son of the Lu family was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
He progressed from A University’s affiliated kindergarten all the way to the flagship program at A University.
It seemed he was born to be looked up to.
Whenever the Male Lead appeared, the author could drone on for five hundred words praising his expensive attire and family background.
Whenever the Male Lead was involved, Ruan Xingmian skimmed through those parts.
Her understanding of this world’s background came from the original host’s memories.
Only now, from Gu Xing’s words, did she learn some of his past.
For example, City A was a municipality directly under the central government, managed by districts. Gu Xing’s hometown, Ninglong District, was on the outskirts of City A, belonging to a mountainous area far from the city.
Gu Xing was the top scorer in the district’s high school entrance exam and was specially admitted to A University’s affiliated high school with full tuition exemption, along with a living allowance and scholarship.
When mentioning the special admission conditions, his eyes dimmed slightly.
Ruan Xingmian noticed the change in his mood.
She smiled gently: “It’s okay, Gu Xing. We’re just chatting casually. If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to.”
Ruan Xingmian was someone who valued personal space and also respected the other person’s personal space.
She didn’t believe that being in a relationship meant forcing the other person to lay bare their entire heart in front of her.
“Mm, it’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, it’s just a bit hard to bring up.”
Gu Xing stirred his spoon, staring at the rice in his bowl. “After entering the affiliated high school, there was a special admission contract. Once signed, all competition achievements would serve one person.”
He looked up: “That year, the people who received the contract were me and your sister. The person we served…”
Ruan Xingmian finished his sentence first: “Was Lu Tian.”
So, Lu Tian’s reputation as a teenage genius, and all those arrogant honors in the original book, were bought.
“What’s so hard to say about that? The one who should be ashamed is Lu Tian.”
Her indignant defense melted the frost in Gu Xing’s eyes.
“The person beaten in the car was Li Wei, my undergraduate roommate and one of Lu Tian’s lackeys. He secretly filmed private videos of female students and uploaded them online for profit, until someone cornered him.”
Mentioning gossip, Ruan Xingmian put down her chopsticks, cupped her glass with both hands, and listened intently with wide eyes.
Gu Xing told stories in a very straightforward, no-frills way.
Plain and straightforward, the cause, the process, the outcome.
Many details were omitted.
For instance, the real cause was during his senior year of college, when for a week straight he received anonymous emails—a girl he had never met was pleading for help. Her private videos had been uploaded to an app called “Dark Pupil”…
In the attached screenshots, against a black background, rows upon rows of thumbnail images of secretly recorded videos were densely arranged, each with a virtual currency price ticking in real-time in the bottom right corner.
At the same time, Ji Ling also received anonymous pleas for help from various girls.
By chance, they discovered that both of them were using anonymous accounts to infiltrate the dark web, trying to trace any clues.
So the two of them had been collaborating since very early on.
The login interface of “Dark Pupil” was filled with garbled code. Gu Xing tried three times before bypassing the dynamic encryption protocol.
After entering the app, the sight before him churned his stomach—secretly recorded videos were categorized by different scenarios. Tags like “Back of the Classroom,” “Girls’ Dormitory,” and “WCN Virginity Loss” stung his eyes red.
Even more terrifying was that the app used an intelligent recommendation algorithm, capable of precisely pushing similar content based on a user’s browsing history.
Gu Xing discovered that these videos were automatically fragmented upon upload, transmitted through dozens of node servers worldwide, making it impossible to trace the source through conventional methods.
For three days straight, without sleep or rest, he filled the whiteboard in the lab with data flow diagrams. Finally, in the metadata of the fragmented videos, he found an anomaly—each video retained a specific compression algorithm signature.
These were the server parameters from their college’s computer lab.
Gu Xing stared at the code, cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck.
The high-performance servers specially procured by the college used exactly this unique video compression algorithm.
He pulled up the server access logs and found that during late-night hours, an account named “Genius” frequently accessed the video processing module.
Following this lead, Gu Xing hacked into “Genius’s” cloud storage, which contained hundreds of encrypted folders, named in a way that perfectly corresponded to the video categories in “Dark Pupil.”
When he cracked open one of the folders, he was shocked to find Li Wei’s thesis backups—Li Wei, whose undergraduate thesis was written like garbage, turned out to be the mastermind behind “Dark Pupil.”
“Fuck!”
Ruan Xingmian cursed, then covered her mouth, sneaking a glance at Gu Xing.
Afraid he’d think she was crude.
Gu Xing looked at her, a corner of his mouth quirking up. “Fuck.”
He was echoing his girlfriend.
Ruan Xingmian completely let go, wanting to curse further, only to realize that aside from the crude genital insults from rural arguments, she had no other vocabulary.
She asked, “Could Li Wei maintain this app all by himself? I mean, is there someone behind him?”
Like Lu Tian.
After all, Lu Tian kept many women and had plenty of expensive hobbies.
“Lu Tian operates covertly, always talking but never acting. The reason this hasn’t blown up yet is, first, insufficient evidence; second, not enough leverage; and third, we want to dig deeper.”
But when Lu Tian started having improper thoughts about Ruan Xingmian, Gu Xing grew anxious.
Even if the evidence was insufficient for now, it wouldn’t stop the public from splashing some mud on Lu Tian. After all, he loved nothing more than plucking feathers from others to adorn himself.
Gu Xing suddenly reached over, taking both of Ruan Xingmian’s hands in his. “Lu Tian himself is a ticking time bomb. Falling from a great height is just a matter of time, Xingmian. Don’t be afraid of him.”
Ruan Xingmian gave a faint smile, clasping Gu Xing’s hand in return. “Yes, I was just about to say that earlier.”
Her grip tightened with excitement. “Gu Xing, you’re really so handsome and amazing!”
Then her mind went blank, her face flushed and heart raced. “Gu Xing… what did you just call me…?”