Chapter 52: Magpie Bridge PromiseLeo Xu stood outside the bus with his entire body frozen in a way that made him look like a statue carved out of disappointment, and his chest felt as if it were being squeezed by an invisible hand that kept tightening with every passing second. The world around him kept moving, the students kept chatting, and the air still smelled faintly of damp earth and mountain mist, but none of that mattered because the only thing Leo could see was the brutal number floating in his mind like a curse, a number that seemed to mock his entire existence with its cold, merciless simplicity.Don’t they always say good people get good returns, he thought, and his mind tried to force the truth into a different shape, as if sheer willpower could change reality. How had it ended up like this, where his kindness and care were treated like a mistake, where his efforts to be decent were answered with a punishment so sharp it could cut through steel?<

Chapter 54: The Gate of Falling SkyThe Moments feed had become a battlefield of its own, a place where everyone tried to prove their existence with a single picture, and yet the moment Zheng Jingjing posted her edited photo, it felt as if the world had finally decided to give her the attention she deserved. The image was the same one taken earlier on the Magpie Bridge, but the person who had photobombed the picture had been erased so cleanly that it looked as though the intrusion had never existed. The editing was seamless, the kind of work that only a few could pull off without making the result look fake, and even the slightest imperfection had been avoided.Likes poured in rapidly, the numbers climbing as if the post had been blessed by the gods of social media. It was not just a popularity surge, it was proof of the one unbreakable law of beauty, that the world would always reward the attractive, no matter how many people tried to pretend they were above it. S

C56: The Popularity SurgeThe whole bus was vibrating with the kind of chatter that only arises when a single moment of crisis becomes the new shared myth of a group of people who never actually experienced it. The scenic area incident had been so intense that it could have been sold as a horror movie script, and yet everyone was treating it like the most exciting chapter in their own lives, the kind of story that gets retold until it becomes a legend.Logically, someone could have demanded compensation from Tianzhu Fortress Scenic Area, especially considering the level of danger involved, but Amber Lin was not interested in chasing money or dragging the matter into a drawn out dispute. She was not poor, she did not need to beg for a refund, and she certainly did not want to waste her energy arguing with the management of a place that had already proven itself incompetent enough to nearly kill her.The scenic area, for their part, reacted with the kind of

C58: Midnight Toast The dim lighting of Bertus always made the whole place feel like it was pretending to be a secret, and that was exactly the kind of atmosphere Li Shuru liked, because it gave her the feeling of being both untouchable and misunderstood at the same time. The chandeliers scattered pale light like soft snowfall across the marble floor, and the air carried a faint scent of oak barrels, expensive citrus, and the kind of perfume that could only be purchased by someone who had never once worried about money. Jiang Chen, seated across from her, watched her with a calm face that betrayed none of the inner storm that was building in his mind, and it was that composure that made Li Shuru’s expression flicker for a moment, as if she had noticed the quiet danger hiding behind his casual posture. “How much was that bottle of champagne you ordered?” Li Shuru asked, her voice gentle but sharp, like a blade wrapped in velvet. She did not ask because s

C60: Unexpected Truths About ten minutes later, Amber Lin returned to the table, her face drained of color and her expression twisted into something like panic, as if the world had suddenly tilted and she was desperately trying to keep from falling off the edge. She moved with a kind of urgent haste, the way people move when they are trying to outrun a nightmare, and even her breathing sounded sharp, forced, and completely out of rhythm. “Is something wrong?” Leo Xu asked immediately, his instincts kicking in the moment he saw the fear on her face, because even if he pretended to be a carefree idiot, his brain still knew when a person was in crisis. Amber’s eyes darted around the room for a split second, like she was checking for witnesses or confirmation that the disaster she feared was real, and then she spoke, her voice trembling. “My father had an accident.” Those words landed in the air with the weight of a falling sto