Illegitimate Child

When aunt and nephew came out of the office building, the golden-red light of the late spring sunset had already stretched across more than half the campus. It shone in from the angle between the North Shore Jungle and the Forest-Piercing Long River, draping Bright Emerald's wetland vegetation in a thick Light Membrane.

Ronan narrowed his eyes slightly, his gaze passing through the blinding curtain of sunlight as he swept over the changes and movements across campus—he was not observing anything in particular. He was simply bored.

After leaving Li Mingde's office, Lady Luo Shuqing had not said a word for a full three minutes. In the corridors, in the elevator, and across the broad campus, she merely walked ahead as though she had completely forgotten her own nephew existed.

All right, she was genuinely angry this time.

Ronan figured that across three generations of the Luo Family, he was probably the only one who had ever been advised by the school to take a leave of absence while enrolled. Calling it a leave of absence was merely polite phrasing. Retaining his credits, class hours, honors, and so on did not change the essential fact that he was being held back.

Without a doubt, this was the kind of serious incident where one got "hung from the rafters and whipped senseless."

Ronan truly had nothing left to say. Even with Xie Junping and Hu Huaying, two super-fixers with connections reaching the heavens, helping cover for him, they still could not patch up his attendance record enough to meet Zhi Xing Institute's minimum standards. Over the past few months, he had really gotten too carried away.

Maybe he should have started with SCA and hacked into the Ministry of Education system...

Meaningless thoughts spun through Ronan's mind, but he also had