The entrance of the hotel where Jin Qi’an’s birthday banquet was held was decorated rather ostentatiously, with the three gilded characters Jin Qi’an hanging right at the entrance—so gaudily distinctive that those who didn’t know better might think it was a wedding where the bride’s name had been scraped off.

This was Yan Luqing’s first time stepping out of the villa doors to breathe the outside air.

At this season it should be the latter half of autumn. She carefully observed the types and appearances of the flowers, grasses, and trees, looked at the license plates of the various luxury cars parked nearby, and combined with Big Black’s earlier “odd change, even unchanged,” she could confirm that this world was almost no different in its settings from reality.

Yan Luqing tugged at a bit of fabric at Gu Ci’s elbow, because she was worried he might stray off, but from the outside they looked no different from a normal male-female pair of companions.

Among the crowd of unfamiliar faces, Yan Luqing once again inexplicably felt a sense of shared hostility against a common enemy and mutual pity with Gu Ci.

The kind of banquet held by these rich second-generation heirs was completely different from those upper-class cocktail parties full of clinking glasses. Although everyone was dressed brilliantly, the scene was truly quite boisterous. It was very easy to slip away too, one only needed to walk around the less crowded outer circle and avoid the circle in the very center playing games.

But the outer circle had one downside: there were more cleaning aunties and waiters replenishing food. Yan Luqing had to pull left and tug right to prevent Gu Ci from bumping into people.

Suddenly, Big Black said from behind: “That girl at your right front looks like she’s about to greet you.”

Yan Luqing had thought about it beforehand and felt that since this body belonged to an aristocratic family, it was inevitable there would be such social exchanges.

She asked Big Black: “Does this person know I have mental illness?”

The three people around her were all frozen by this question.

Even the air seemed to solidify for a few seconds.

Yan Luqing urged: “Hurry, does she know or not?”

Big Black said: “Most people should know about this matter. But don’t worry, they never dare to say anything to your face…”

Yan Luqing waved her hand: “I’m not worried about that. Since they all know, then it will be even easier to handle.”

No one knew what she meant.

Until that girl really came forward, squeezing out a clumped-up smile to greet Yan Luqing: “Qingqing, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you at this kind of occasion. Young Master Jin truly has great face!”

“It really has been a long time.” Yan Luqing smiled far more sincerely than her. “Sigh, mainly because my illness has been relatively stable lately.”

“…???”

Speaking of how lethal such words sound coming from someone with mental illness—that girl’s smile first froze, then within a few seconds turned into a pained mask, and very quickly she went pale and hastily found an excuse to slip away.

Little Black wanted to laugh but couldn’t hold it back, “puchi puchi” behind her like farting sounds.

Very soon, Big Black again began reporting: “Someone you know is coming over there, white dress, yellow—”

Apparently the original owner really hadn’t shown up in a long time. Everyone’s words were almost all the same hypocrisy, beginning with “It’s been a long time, have you been busy lately?” Yan Luqing would toss back a light “Not busy, my illness has been stable lately,” and thus reaped more than a dozen pained masks.

There was even a girl stunned by her words, foolishly asking: “That kind of illness… how do you stabilize it?”

Yan Luqing thought for a moment: “Just… stably go crazy?”

…

In short, not a single conversation exceeded thirty seconds, each forcibly and swiftly ended, accompanied by the “puchi puchi” accompaniment behind her.

As expected, these dozen pained masks would spread their pain, and very soon Jin Qi’an would know she had arrived.

This truly was a method where she didn’t need to drag Gu Ci into the inner circle, nor did she need to rack her brains thinking up words for socializing.

Yan Luqing stood in place with three men waiting for ten minutes, and finally Young Master Jin arrived, draped all over with ornaments and celebratory items.

Dyed blond hair, walking with a lazy slouch, several piercings on his ears….

Judging with an objective attitude, his style was non-mainstream, and his whole face carried the look of kidney deficiency.

Yan Luqing had already spat eight hundred mouthfuls of saliva at him in her heart, but on the surface she still pretended to be quite calm.

“The birthday star has arrived?”

Jin Qi’an’s expression stiffened.

Just now he had heard several young ladies say that a crazy woman had come, not knowing if she was here to make trouble. Jin Qi’an thought, impossible—she had just taken someone from me, how could she come to wreck my event?

But now, hearing this tone, why did it feel so ominous?

“How could that be? Since Eldest Miss Yan has come, of course I must come out to welcome you.” Jin Qi’an was just about to chat some more to cater to her tastes, when his gaze turned and landed on the man at her side.

Jin Qi’an’s brows arched high: “Gu Ci?”

He quickly looked back at Yan Luqing. “You bringing him here is…”

“If not for him, why would I bother coming to your birthday banquet.” Yan Luqing resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

Jin Qi’an was dumbfounded: “What?”

Yan Luqing was too annoyed by his face. Folding her arms, she said: “Do you still have something you ought to return that hasn’t been returned? Think it through yourself. Later, either have someone bring it over, or come give it personally.”

Yan Luqing didn’t know how the original owner had spoken with Jin Qi’an, but she felt that putting on airs could never go wrong, so she simply stared at him expressionlessly.

Anyone stared at by a madwoman would hardly feel comfortable.

Jin Qi’an wanted to curry favor with the Yan family, yet he didn’t want any more contact with this lunatic. He mumbled a few nonsense words to smooth things over, then turned on his heel without looking back and left.

During that whole string of conversation—not just that, but ever since entering this door today—Yan Luqing had always felt as if she were an actress on stage.

Not because she knew she was acting, but because there was a gaze carrying exploration, falling on her continuously, neither light nor heavy.

As if in observation.

Who could it be? Would it be… Gu Ci?

Yan Luqing gathered up her wild thoughts, and also collected her theatrical airs. Looking at Jin Qi’an’s retreating back, she touched her own face. “Is today’s makeup working so well that it looks scary? I didn’t even make any expression.”

Little Black blurted out from behind: “It’s your reputation that’s scary, right? Before I came, my buddies all advised me not to come, said working under you is like playing with one’s life.”

Yan Luqing turned back to glance at him.

Little Black immediately changed his words: “But obviously I’ve already worked for a whole day and a half, and I’m still alive, right!”

Yan Luqing: “……” Damn it, you might as well not have corrected yourself.

The few of them hadn’t been standing long when someone came, claiming to be representing Young Master Jin to deliver something.

Yan Luqing signaled with her eyes for Big Black to accept it. Knowing that every single one of her movements would be reported to Jin Qi’an’s ears, she immediately put on airs again, folded her arms, and enunciated each word clearly: “Tch, no sincerity.”

The runner left, and Big Black handed the item to Gu Ci.

Yan Luqing also leaned in, pulling Gu Ci over to sit at the nearest table and chairs, urging him: “Why don’t you open it and check?”

At that moment, Big Black suddenly grabbed Little Black, lowered his voice, and said, “I’ll take you through the process I mentioned this morning again.” Then he walked to a spot about ten meters away from Gu Ci and Yan Luqing.

Yan Luqing’s gaze was fixed on Gu Ci’s hands. His ten fingers were white and slender, and resting on the black cloth bag they were extremely pleasing to the eye. Yet he had no intention of opening it.

Gu Ci said: “Can’t see clearly, and there’s no need to check. If there were a problem, it wouldn’t be returned in the first place.”

Makes sense…

After that, Gu Ci said again: “About the phone, thank you.”

His words were spoken very stiffly.

Yan Luqing was momentarily stunned when she heard it.

She lifted her head to look at Gu Ci’s profile facing her. The sunglasses covered most of it, leaving only the near-sharp chin and the elegant jawline exposed.

It turned out that if his eyes were completely covered, his features would take on a kind of sharp beauty, appearing extremely cold and difficult to approach.

Yan Luqing stayed silent for a few seconds, then softly hummed: “That thank you of yours is really insincere.”

But Gu Ci heard it.

Because he suddenly turned his head toward Yan Luqing, took off his sunglasses with one hand, revealed his upper face entirely, his eyelashes like crow feathers half-lowered as he gazed in her direction, and said: “Thank you.”

In the instant when he removed his sunglasses and slightly tilted his head, it was as if a streak of flowing light passed across his eyes.

Yan Luqing was still savoring it, when Gu Ci put his sunglasses back on. “Now? Is that sincere enough?”

Yan Luqing: “……”

A vivid performance of Cold and Ruthless.

As if entirely impervious to Yan Luqing’s change in emotions, Gu Ci, who became a cold executioner once he put on his sunglasses, continued with the soul interrogation: “Now that you’ve got it, what are you still staying here for?”

Yan Luqing took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.

“——To wait.”

—

Everyone knew that every year on his birthday, Young Master Jin had to cut the cake at the exact time of his birth, not a single minute off. Even if it was broad daylight, there still had to be a performance of lighting candles in the dark and singing the birthday song, and the song had to be sung in full.

This year was the same.

The lights went out, the candles were lit, and just as everyone was closing their eyes to sing—

“Whoosh—Bang!”

From under the small table holding the cake suddenly came an extremely loud firecracker explosion. Everyone was startled, huddled together in chaos. Someone shoved the table toward the birthday star, and the enormous cake toppled directly over Young Master Jin’s head, face, and body—candles included.

Not only that, when Young Master Jin, furious, tried to step down to find the culprit, he bumped into someone, and with the cream on the floor being so slippery, he accidentally broke his leg in the fall. His tragic screams echoed for three days without end.

The ambulance that the good-hearted called arrived very quickly, almost as if it had known long beforehand someone would be breaking a leg.

Not far away, the “good-hearted person” silently watched the scourge covered in white cream be carried onto a stretcher. Turning toward the youth beside him, he gave a thumbs-up: “Little Black, awesome!”

Yan Luqing poked Gu Ci, her excitement not yet past: “Hey, do you know what just happened? It’s fine if you couldn’t see, I’ll tell you. This Young Master Jin, on his birthday—”

“More or less, I figured it out from the sounds,” Gu Ci cut in.

“So we waited all this time just to…” He paused, as if unsure what word to use to describe such an act, and finally thought of one that was childish yet precise: “Avenge me?”

“……”

In truth, Yan Luqing had wanted to do this for a long time.

Back when she was only a reader of the original book, Jin Qi’an’s ashes had been scattered by the comment section at least a thousand eight hundred times—of course, the original owner had been scattered even more.

Since Yan Luqing had come into this world, naturally she had to teach him a lesson for the paper person she had liked for so long.

So upon hearing what Gu Ci said, Yan Luqing immediately grew displeased. “This can’t be called avenging you, this is just venting anger!”

“Venting whose anger?”

“Mine.”

Gu Ci paused for a long time. Amidst the surroundings noisier than a marketplace, he suddenly felt an absurd impulse to laugh. “What anger do you have?”

“Who told him to bully you?”

The young girl spoke in a deliberately fierce tone. “He bullied you, he deserved it.”