Murong Feiyue knew his cousin’s personality very well. She was arrogant by nature, and extremely strong in terms of strength. Even when she was faced with Jiang Tong, she never had a kind word to say. With a personality like that, this was the first time he had ever heard anything like that coming from her mouth. Someone who was far more terrifying than Jiang Tong?
Jiang Tong was in the top twenty of the Youth Ranking List, and she fought to fame, being known as the ‘demon girl’ by everyone. She was the first woman to succeed in placing among the top twenty on the list, and her reputation was not any lower than his own. Murong Feiye could admit that if she used her secret moves on him, he would also be caught in a tight spot. Jiang Tong was already on another level in the ancient martial arts world, and because of her high reputation, everyone assumed that she was the most suitable for Jiang Shuxuan.
Murong Feiye knew that Murong Miaoxue wasn’t lying to him when she uttered those words, there was no point for her to. But if that were the case, then why didn’t Jiang Shuxuan bring the girl out to meet the others of their brotherhood? They had gone through so many things together, if any one of them really fell in love and found a partner, there was no reason for them not to bring them out and introduce them.
But from what he saw yesterday, it seemed that Jiang Shuxuan didn’t want him to see her.
Murong Feiye paused for a bit. “Listening to what you just said, I’m not itching to see and get to know her.”
He had initially returned to the ancient martial arts world due to the turmoil that was happening, but he didn’t expect to have dug up something more interesting. A smile stretched on his face as he thought about how fun it was going to be.
“I hope you don’t come to regret your decision,” Murong Miaoxue said before hanging up the call, clenching her fist tightly. She had improved quite a lot over the past few months, at least, to the extent that it wouldn’t be too one-sided if she had to face the demon girl.
Only, every time she recalled that day, Gu Xiqiao’s indifferent face and the terrifying pressure on her person, and being locked in the empty space, a shiver would shoot down her spine.
It wasn’t enough! She wasn’t strong enough yet!
Determination burned in Murong Miaoxue’s eyes, and after drinking a glass of water and taking a short break, she entered the training tower again.
Not far away, Jiang Tong looked at Murong Miaoxue quietly, her thoughts deep. The girl beside her couldn’t help but comment, “Murong Miaoxue has been entering the tower day and night, but she still can’t reach your level, Tong Tong. I don’t know where she gets the thought that she can compare to you at all!”
Jiang Tong’s lips curled up at those words. “Forget about her, let’s go in.”
She only had Jiang Shuxuan as her goal in mind right now, everything else was just insignificant in her eyes.
***
The next day, Peng Zijie walked into the visitor room of the prison, looking at Peng Zixian with no emotion in his eyes.
Peng Zixian pressed herself against the glass, with a desperate gaze at Peng Zijie as she cried out, “Brother, Brother, just let me out from here, will you? This is not a place for humans, look, look at my hands!”
Peng Zixian raised her bloodied hands to show him, and it seemed like in just one night, she had aged years, and she felt extremely battered and exhausted.
“Brother, they gave me stale buns to eat, and locked me up with those mad women who committed crimes. They asked me to lick the floors and use my own towel to clean the toilets!” Peng Zixian couldn’t take it anymore. She was a dignified daughter of a noble family, why did she need to suffer such embarrassment? She was being oppressed by the group of prisoners.
Now she was full of regret. She had stayed up all night and reflected on her actions, and she regretted targeting Xiao Yun, which in turn had provoked Gu Xiqiao!
Thinking that Peng Zijie would look at her in distress after hearing all her words, she was surprised to find that his gaze had not changed in the slightest.
Peng Zijie pulled out his phone from his pocket, flipping it to an email that he received yesterday night. Even without any signature on it, he knew it was Gu Xiqiao who had sent it to him. He clicked on the attached audio file, playing it out loud.
“I know all of Peng Zijie’s secrets. As long as you kill someone for me, I will tell you everything. You will be the sole heir to the Peng family!”
Peng Zixian fell to the ground instantly in shock, looking at Peng Zijie blankly. Her lips trembled as she tried to find the words to say.
“Because of you, the Peng family was almost at death’s door. I really regret my decision to rescue you seven years ago.” Peng Zijie kept his phone, looking indifferently at the sister who had him wrapped around her fingers in the past.
Peng Zixian was dragged back down to prison, and as she looked at Peng Zijie’s resolute back, the last ray of light vanished from her eyes.
Walking out of the prison, Peng Zijie opened the email again, clicking on the reply button. Thinking of the man’s face, he was slightly dazed, then he wrote out solemnly, “Thank you.”
***
Gu Xiqiao closed her email without any expression on her face, and proceeded to call Luo Wenlang after.
“Boss Gu, just the person I was looking for!” Luo Wenlang was excited to receive a call from Gu Xiqiao. He and the bunch of financial analysts had been doing their research on the financial field, and had some preliminary findings that they wanted to share. The more they studied the two plans given by Gu Xiqiao, the more shocked he became. “It’s about the arbitrage portfolio that you gave us last time. Actually we’ve already been stuck at one part for a long time, and we can’t seem to reach a consensus.”
“Tell me about it.” Gu Xiqiao opened a new document on her computer, one hand holding the phone and using the other to type.
Luo Wenlang began to chatter on endlessly, including his own thoughts on it, as well as the opinions of some others. He has a great memory, and he could remember all that was said by the financial analysts word for word.
After he was done speaking, Gu Xiqiao continued to type several more lines of words before asking, “Is there anything else?”
Even though he had only said everyone once, he knew that Gu Xiqiao remembered everything for sure. After thinking a while more, he was confident that he didn’t miss out anything, and shook his head. “That’s all for the time being.”
“Alright.” Gu Xiqiao scanned through the words that she had typed once more, seeing nothing wrong or omitted, she typed another line of code.
Alright? What was alright? Before Luo Wenlang could react, Gu Xiqiao’s faint voice came through the phone again. “Look up at your computer, have you received it?”
Looking up instinctively, Luo Wenlang was taken aback when a page suddenly popped up on his screen, a wall of dense text on it.
He roughly read through the words and found that it answered all of the doubts that he had just voiced.
It hadn’t been that long since the questions were raised, right? He thought that it would take her at least an hour to get back to him, not this soon!
Luo Wenlang: Tell me, what do I do when I get heart attacks from my boss every day?
Even with Luo Wenlang’s intelligence, the few pages of documents still took him a little time to read through and digest. Once she estimated that he was done with it, she started talking about his own matters. “Dalin is in middle school, studying his second year, right?”
“That’s right.” Luo Wenlang was still looking at the documents that Gu Xiqiao had sent over. He had actually read through it several times already, but there were some areas that he needed time to go over slowly later on. He felt his hand tremble slightly when he heard Gu Xiqiao’s question, steeling himself for what she would say next.
“I have a little friend, about twelve years old. I intend to send him to the school, he may be a little withdrawn.” Gu Xiqiao had decided to send Hua Youlin to school, since it would be better for him to mix around with other children of the same age group and interest. Otherwise, this introverted attitude of his would probably be a problem in the future when he needed to socialize.
As expected, Brother Jiang was his cold self toward him, and she herself didn’t have much time to accompany him. It was the easiest this way.
As for the mission, she would wait till he was back to normal before thinking about it again.
Sending a child to school? Luo Wenlang was shocked when he heard it, but he recovered easily after remembering Gu Xiqiao’s character. “I need to announce to the finance department that Nine Heavens have finally entered the international world in the afternoon, and I’ll be quite busy then. I’ll bring Dalin over at night, they should be able to get along well since they’re the same age.”
Luo Wenlang has been leading a team of financial analysts and has been studying financial products for quite a long time. They were initially already internationally well-known analysts, and they had gained a lot of knowledge over the past few days and were already on the way to breach the field internationally.
Even though they had learned a lot more, and it would be easy for them to earn the same amount here should they decide to venture out and open a firm on their own, such cases were not rare after all, none of them had the intentions to leave Nine Heavens.
The first reason was because of the welfare and benefits that Nine Heavens provided for them. They were all given accommodations in the same building, and would always see faces of their colleagues when they opened their door. There were familiar faces when they walked into the elevator, and this experience was actually quite novel to them. They knew everybody on each floor, and when inspiration hit in the middle of the night, they could knock on the other’s door and excitedly express their thoughts. They had to say that this was the first time they had ever worked in such a comfortable company.
Secondly, it was because of Gu Xiqiao’s forward thinking. The financial talent of her and Luo Wenlang was really strong, especially Gu Xiqiao, which terrifies them. Every time they thought, ‘Ah, this is her limit.’ she would come up with even more jaw-dropping plans and ideas.
Every day in this company was a surprise, and every day they were developing and improving themselves further. Even though they had been here less than a month, they had already regarded this place like home.
Nine Heavens was all the rage now, and it was inevitable that there would be people coming around to try to poach them. However, no matter how high the price they gave, none of them had ever succeeded, and this matter remained as an unsolved mystery to the other companies.
The other companies were extremely jealous of Nine Heaven’s performance, and were dumbfounded when the company released a piece of news in the afternoon.
(Verified) Nine Heavens: The Finance department has succeeded to align our products at international standards, and are now selling to nine countries. The contract signing with other countries is still in progress, so stay tuned.
This Weibo post caused an uproar.
The people in China had always known that foreigners looked down on China’s economy, especially in terms of the country’s financial aspect, they were several decades behind some countries, after all. The financial market of China was still young, and even the materials that were used to teach finance in universities were all translated from materials obtained from other countries.
It wasn’t like there weren’t financial institutes in China, but rather, they were more for domestic and local use, because the foreigners look down on the products of China.
However, today, what had they found out?
Look at the list of countries that had entered into an agreement with Nine Heavens, they were all developed countries in the world, England, Korea… The fact that they were willing to sign a contract with Nine Heavens only told them one thing—the countries had acknowledged Nine Heaven’s skills!
Those financial companies in China couldn’t help but cry a river inside, thinking, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be an internet company?! Why the frick are you butting heads and stealing our rice bowls? What happened to the basic trust between people?!’
Although there were people with those thoughts, the majority of the population were still proud of this feat. They were earning money from the foreigners after all, it used to be the other way around, and now the tables have turned! It was such an excitable feeling!
***
In Tang Enterprise, Qin Heng handed over a document as he said, “Young Master Tang, that’s all I have, do you want to have a look at it?”
Tang Qingqiu raised an eyebrow, confirming again. “You said that the medical research group that was established by Nine Heavens, they handed everything to you, not sending even a single person from their side?”
Qin Heng nodded his head. “That’s right.”
“They just gave the entire thing to us, just like that? There’s so much profit to be made from this, aren’t they afraid that we would do something like misappropriating the funds or something?!” Tang Qingqiu still couldn’t get over his astonishment.
“It doesn’t look like they have any interest in this field,” Qin Heng replied, thinking back to Mu Zong’s attitude when they spoke. He choked out the next words with slight difficulty, “And I feel that… they might have just been too lazy to bother managing this.”
“It’s a global sensation, and such a good publicity opportunity,” Tang Qingqiu said, blinking his eyes rapidly. “And they’re really willing to just give it up?”
It was just a little weird, if you thought about it.
“Young Master Tang, take a look at this and you’ll probably understand why.” Qin Heng pulled out the most bottom piece of paper, handing it to Tang Qingqiu. “First, they created the online game, ‘Nine Heavens’, and then the virtual helmers, and finally their newest financial products. Young Master, I really think that Nine Heavens don’t need the publicity from the cell fusion. They’ve already attracted the attention of the world just using the things they have created themselves.”
Taking the paper that Qin Heng handed to him, Tang Qingqiu was reluctant to admit that his secretary was right. Before he knew it, Nine Heavens had already wrestled a strong foothold in the international world, and they didn’t need anymore publicity to raise their image.
“So what, this cell fusion collab is just given to Tang Enterprise? Free publicity for us?” Tang Qingqiu still couldn’t believe this piece of news.
Qin Heng nodded unabashedly. “Young Master Tang, you haven’t been dealing with the matters of Tang Enterprise lately, so you may not know about this. A few of our finance people had gone over to Nine Heavens for a brief interaction, although it was only one day, after returning, their performance results basically doubled.”
There was another piece that he didn’t say, and that was after their people had gone for a few more training sessions in Nine Heavens, some of them were even reluctant to return.
“So you’re saying that Nine Heavens is deliberately playing nice with me?” For their department to double their performance, it showed that Nine Heavens had not spared any effort in teaching the people from Tang Enterprise.
Qin Heng nodded his head again.
Tang Qingqiu said nothing as he flipped through the reports on his desk, and suddenly sighed. “I really want to know who is behind the scenes of Nine Heavens!”
The popularity of Nine Heavens had increased step by step, and the employees inside that company were miles better than everyone else outside. Tang Qingqiu was really itching to know what kind of person was able to develop Nine Heavens to what it was today.
Qin Heng: Okay boss, you don’t have to keep repeating yourself, aren’t you tired of repeating the same sentence countless times?
***
Gu Xiqiao sneezed suddenly. ‘Someone’s talking about me again.’
“I’m guessing it’s Big Jiang.” The system was smug nowadays, materializing whenever it had free time to fly around. Since it didn’t need to sleep at night, it had also finished exploring the shopping area yesterday night already.
‘Nonsense,’ Gu Xiqiao said, glancing at the system spirit. ‘Brother Jiang is just upstairs, okay.’
When the system spirit spoke, Xixi had started staring at Gu Xiqiao. For a long time, it felt that something was off, and so it flew to her side to speak to her. “Chirp chirp chiiirp?”
“… Xixi, I’m not Haha. Can you use human language to speak with me?”
“…” It had really forgotten, staying so long with just Haha for company had really made it stupid! Xixi thought angrily.
“Beauty Qiao, I said that I keep feeling that there’s this strange aura in the room.” Although the elixir that Gu Xiqiao gave it last time failed to let him advance, its power had still increased quite a bit, and its five senses were sharper than ever, and it could feel the aura that was lingering in the air.
Gu Xiqiao straightened up when she heard Xixi’s words. “You can feel it?” She suddenly recalled what the system spirit had said last night. If Xixi could feel it, then Jiang Shuxuan must have already felt it and known about it too.
But he had not said a word about it.
‘System, what do you think is going on?’ Gu Xiqiao was slightly confused. The system spirit was just a bunch of data, how could even Xixi feel its presence?
The system spirit’s icy blue eyes were filled with confusion. “Beauty Qiao, I’m not sure, and there isn’t any information in the database either.” It hesitated before continuing, “After I upgraded, it feels like I’ve forgotten something important.”
‘Then don’t think about it anymore, when you reach the highest level, we’ll know eventually.’ Gu Xiqiao sighed.
Seeing that Gu Xiqiao was ignoring it again, Xixi flapped its wings and flew back to sit on Haha’s head, feeling slightly grieved at the dismissal that it had received.
It had initially wanted to complain to Haha, but before it could open its beak, Gu Xiqiao had walked over suddenly, a familiar brown pill in her hand.
Xixi: ＼（￣︶￣）／ Beauty Qiao loves me, she loves me!
Haha, who heard Xixi’s inner happy thoughts: At this time, you just need to keep smiling and pretend ^_^
Such a mentally retarded bird, Haha was the only one who would not be separated from Beauty Qiao.
Gu Xiqiao also took Xixi’s food from where it was kept, and fed it.
***
Jiang Shuxuan was upstairs, looking at the screen of his phone, which was filled with messages from WeChat.
Murong Feiye: Shuxuan, I’m suddenly real curious about that little beauty at your side, when will you bring her to meet us?
Jiang Shuxuan: Never.
Murong Feiye was stumped, wasn’t he intending to ever bring her to meet his good friends? He thought about it for a while, before shooting a message to Tang Qingqiu.
Murong Feiye: Aren’t you curious about the little beauty beside Shuxuan?
Tang Qingqiu: I’m more curious about Nine Heavens.
Murong Feiye: …
Nine Heavens? Yet another new term that he had never heard of before this.
After blacklisting Murong Feiye, Jiang Shuxuan went downstairs with his phone in hand.
Hearing the light noise that came from the stairs, the system spirit flickered and disappeared into the air immediately, turning back into a string of data and returning to the void space.
It was still more afraid of Jiang Shuxuan, feeling like there was nowhere to hide when he was around.
Jiang Shuxuan walked down steadily and slowly, and Gu Xiqiao happened to glance up at him, her clear eyes landing on his tall figure. Her eyes gleamed, and curved up as she smiled brightly at him.
A slight pause, and then Jiang Shuxuan walked to her side. “Where’s Hua Youlin?”
“I told him the matter about sending him to school this morning, and he seemed to be very interested. I asked Uncle Mu to get him a set of textbooks for the first year, so he should be studying them.” Gu Xiqiao said, the smile still on her lips.
“First grade? Sending him to school would be good.” Saying that, he lapsed into a short silence, before continuing, “Something came up in the ancient martial arts world, I need to head back for a while. It’ll probably be about seven days.”
After returning to the Imperial Capital, he had been by her side every single day. Even though there were times when he needed to leave to settle some matters in the ancient martial arts world personally, he would deal with it quickly and hurry back. But today was different, something had happened at the trial tower, and it concerned the survival of the entire ancient martial arts world, he needed to hurry back.
“Are you leaving right now?” Gu Xiqiao pursed her lips, her voice low.
Jiang Shuxuan hmmed.
“Then I’ll walk you down.” Gu Xiqiao placed Xixi’s food in its bowl, and turned to follow Jiang Shuxuan down.
Jiang Shuxuan didn’t refuse, and the two took the elevator down straight to the parking lot. The car was parked not far from where they emerged, just a few steps, but he stood rooted to the spot after they got off the elevator.
Gu Xiqiao was the one who broke the silence between them, looking at him while saying, “Brother Jiang, the sooner you go, the sooner you’ll return.”
“Yeah.” Jiang Shuxuan replied, but his gaze was on her. His eyes were a deep pool of onyx, and a heavy emotion hung in them. Being stared at with such a heavy gaze, even Gu Xiqiao would fidget under it.
“It’s actually…”
Before she could finish her sentence, she felt an arm land on her waist. Her eyes widened, and before she could react, a chilling cold landed on her lips.
After a beat, a soft sigh sounded beside her ears. “I’m going.”
Gu Xiqiao could only nod blankly.
The black car pulled out of the parking lot slowly, and Gu Xiqiao made her way back upstairs. Open the door, close the door.
“Sister Gu, what’s the matter with you?” Hua Youlin had coincidentally come downstairs to get a glass of water, and bumped into Gu Xiqiao, who was still in a daze.
Gu Xiqiao seemed to come back to her senses at his voice, and a finger came up to her lips. “I’m just thinking why isn’t Dalin here yet.”
Hua Youlin recognized the name, she had told him that someone named ‘Dalin’ would be bringing him to school, and he couldn’t help but feel a little nervous inside. The hand that held the glass tightened unconsciously. “School probably hasn’t let out yet.”
It was only four o’clock, and it was indeed not the end of the school day yet. Gu Xiqiao walked over to the sofa, watching the TV with Haha.
***
Jiang Shuxuan didn’t head straight for the ancient martial arts world, but went home to the Jiang family house to change his clothes. The clean and slender fingers buttoned his shirt one by one.
The butler knocked on his room door. “Young Master, Miss Jiang Tong is here to see you.”
“No,” Jiang Shuxuan replied coldly.
The butler nodded, and made his way out of the room. But before he could close the door, a voice came from behind, “You’re obviously here, why won’t you meet with me?”