Chapter 10: Xin'er's Descent
1261 Words
Night had deepened.
Outside the budget hotel window, Haicheng's neon never slept—a perpetual chemical twilight staining the skyline.
Zhang Tianyou sat in darkness. No lights.
Between his fingers, a cigarette burned. One red ember, the room's only illumination.
Smoke coiled upward. His thoughts remained absolute clarity.
_Foresight Capital_ — registered.
Two million seed capital — confirmed and settled.
The chessboard of vengeance, finally laid open.
Zhou Minghao would be furious by now, mobilizing every resource to investigate him. Old fool Wang Jianguo was probably still singing hosannas for his future "perfect son-in-law."
And Wang Wanru...
Her face surfaced in his memory—that exquisite face, twisted beyond recognition by shock, terror, and something that looked agonizingly like jealousy.
His mouth curved. No warmth.
_You can hear my thoughts now? Good._
_The more you hear, the more it will hurt. The more you'll understand exactly what you threw away._
He crushed the cigarette into the ashtray.
Enough. These people weren't his concern anymore.
There was someone else who mattered.
_Xin'er._
Just the name, rising in his chest, softened something. A flower blooming through scorched earth—the only living thing in his internal wasteland.
The afternoon replayed behind his eyes.
Her endurance under that greasy manager's wandering hands.
Her solitude, nibbling that two-yuan bread crust like it was a meal.
Her quiet dignity, kneeling to wipe someone else's mess from the floor.
Each image, a needle. Each needle, finding his heart.
[She can't stay there.]
His jaw tightened.
[Liu Quanfu is a ticking bomb. One day, he'll cross a line he can't uncross.]
[I need to get her out. Now.]
But how?
Walk up to her, press the two-million-yuan bank card into her palm? _Here. Save your mother. Save yourself._
No.
Impossible.
He knew Xin'er too well. Beneath that fragile exterior lived a spine of forged steel—pride so deep it was practically self-destructive.
Last life, before everything shattered, he'd tried to help her. Subtly. Indirectly. She'd returned every attempt with polite, immovable refusal.
_"Tianyou-ge, I appreciate you. But my battles are mine to fight."_
Direct charity wouldn't save her. It would wound her. Worse—it might make her distrust him.
But...
_Foresight Capital_ needed staff. She was a top linguistics student—brilliant, diligent, wasted in that café. A proper internship. Formal salary. Dignity preserved.
He could keep her close. Keep her safe.
[Yes.]
[Tomorrow—no, tonight. Have Lin Tao draft an internship contract. Competitive compensation. Then arrange a 'coincidental' encounter. Extend the offer naturally.]
[She won't refuse this. It's not charity. It's opportunity.]
He worked through the logistics, refining each step. A surgical extraction—clean, painless, leaving her pride intact.
The phone shattered the silence.
Unknown number.
"Hello?"
Before he could finish, a girl's voice—tear-thick, breathless, fraying at the edges.
"Hello?! Is this Zhang Tianyou? Tianyou-ge?!"
He knew that voice.
"This is Zhang Tianyou. Who's—"
"Tianyou-ge! It's Li Jing! Xin'er's roommate!" The words tumbled out, each one closer to sobbing. "You have to come! Xin'er—something's happened to Xin'er—"
Happened.
The word detonated in his skull.
He was on his feet. His blood, one second ago circulating normally, had frozen solid.
His voice, when it emerged, was a blade.
"Slow down. Tell me exactly."
"It's—loan sharks!" Li Jing's voice quaked. "A bunch of men—tattoos, all of them—they cornered Xin'er outside the dorm! They said she owes them two hundred thousand! If she doesn't pay tonight, they're taking her—"
Loan sharks. Two hundred thousand.
His pupils contracted to pinpoints.
Here it is.
He didn't need to ask how. He already knew.
Her mother's surgery. The five-thousand-yuan loan from an illegal campus lending platform. She'd thought she could work it off.
She didn't understand these predators. Didn't know that five thousand, at thirty percent weekly interest, metastasizes into two hundred thousand within a month.
[Same timeline. Same trap. Same executioners.]
His internal voice was not afraid.
It was the temperature of a furnace.
Last life: this debt destroyed her. Academic probation. Expulsion. The brilliant scholarship student dragged through factory shifts, restaurant kitchens, hostess bars—every humiliation, every degradation, because she was desperate and I was useless and I watched it happen and did nothing .
The guilt of that helplessness—it ate me alive. Every night of my previous existence, down to my last breath.
[This life—]
His eyes. Anyone seeing them now would have stepped back.
[—I will not fail her again.]
"Li Jing." His voice had changed. No panic. Only command, wrapped in something that might, under other circumstances, be comfort. "Listen carefully."
Sniffles. "Y-Yes?"
"First: don't engage those men. Keep yourself safe."
"Second: tell Xin'er not to be afraid. Tell her not to agree to anything, no matter what they say."
"Third: stall them. Tell them the money is coming. Now. "
"I'm on my way."
He hung up before she could respond.
No movement was wasted.
Wallet. Phone. Jacket. Door.
The hotel hallway. The elevator. The lobby.
Outside: Haicheng's midnight streets, still choked with traffic, but ride-hailing apps showed 100+ people ahead of him.
Zhang Tianyou stepped directly into the road.
A taxi, just discharged passengers, tried to swerve. He didn't move.
The driver's window rolled down, abuse already forming—but Zhang Tianyou was already extracting bills from his wallet. Five red hundred-yuan notes, folded once, pushed through the gap.
"Haicheng University. East Gate."
His voice: flat. Absolute.
"As fast as this car can move."
The driver looked at the money. Looked at Zhang Tianyou's face. Something in that face made him swallow his protest.
The tires bit asphalt.
The taxi arrowed through the neon-lit dark.
City lights smeared past the windows—red, gold, white—dissolving into streaks of color. Zhang Tianyou sat motionless in the back seat. His expression revealed nothing.
His thoughts were already three moves ahead.
[The ringleader. They'll call him 'Brother Blade.' Runs illegal lending operations across University Town.]
[Greedy. But also—cowardly. The kind of predator who only attacks the defenseless.]
[Next week, the city's 'Sweep Black' task force will round up his entire operation. He'll draw fifteen years. All his predatory loan contracts will be voided.]
[Two hundred thousand. To me now, it's nothing. I could pay it and end this tonight.]
His mouth curved. Not a smile.
[But that would be too easy for them.]
[You want to prey on my Xin'er?]
[Then you will learn the cost of bad targeting.]
He unlocked his phone.
Banking app. Two million-plus balance, glowing in the dark.
Then he scrolled to a number he'd saved but never called—a name he'd hoped to activate later, on his own terms, for a different purpose.
The phone rang. Long. Long.
Finally: a pickup. A male voice, thick with interrupted sleep, scraping like gravel.
"...Yeah? Who's calling at this godforsaken hour—"
"Black Panther. It's me."
Three seconds of silence.
Then—the voice transformed. Sleep burned off like fog under sunrise.
"T-Tian... Tianyou-ge?!"
"Yes." Zhang Tianyou's tone remained level. Unhurried. "I need you to handle something for me. Immediately."
"Tianyou-ge, just say it . If I so much as hesitate, I'm not my mother's son."
"Haicheng University. East Gate. Female dormitory building."
Zhang Tianyou watched his own reflection in the taxi window—a man with eyes like winter steel.
"Bring your toughest brothers."
"I have a lesson to teach some people."
"About what happens when you pick the wrong person to threaten."
- Writer
