"What is it? Why aren't you going into the Academy?"
Cheng Queyi blinked her eyes and said admiringly, "You really are amazing, Senior! Even the Tiansheng Group can't do anything to you!"
"Bullshit!" Wang Wen hurriedly cut off the young girl's starry-eyed admiration. "They didn't even take a proper look at me. Otherwise, I'd have died eight hundred times over!"
He paused. Seeing that Cheng Queyi was still gazing at him with stars in her eyes, he helplessly changed the subject. "How did you know it was Tiansheng?"
"I asked my dad to rescue you. He found out that the Tiansheng Group was the one applying pressure, and then he was at a loss." Cheng Queyi said excitedly.
"Your dad? I seem to remember he opened a... No, why are you smiling so happily?" Wang Wen looked at her speechlessly.
Cheng Queyi immediately put on a pitiful expression. "I know you're busy, but I didn't expect I'd really have to wait three whole weeks without getting a chance. It's okay if I skip class to ask you this week, right? Besides, you just got out of prison—no, I mean, you just escaped from the Guard Department. You were locked up for more than ten days, so you must not have eaten or slept well. I asked my mom to make you something delicious to help you recover!"
"Tiansheng?" Wang Wen kept talking to Cheng Queyi on the surface, but his thoughts had already drifted elsewhere. From the corner of his eye, he watched the bespectacled girl standing silently nearby, and forced himself to recall what Tiansheng's Mirror had said to her before they met last night.
Back then, it had been dark, with poor visibility. Wang Wen had also been immersed in the Academy's tranquil atmosphere and hadn't noticed the two of them right away. Now that he was forcing himself to revisit the memory, he could only vaguely summon a few scattered images.
He certainly couldn't hear what they'd said.
But by analyzing their lip movements bit by bit...
"Report," "best friend," "contact," "schedule," "enter the tower."
After thinking it over for a moment, Wang Wen suddenly looked enlightened.
"So I wronged Yu Zhi."
"No! I didn't wrong her! She also found people to block me, but Tiansheng beat her to it! I still need to stay away from a crazy woman like that!"
Wang Wen pressed his lips together and nodded in agreement, giving himself a little pat on the back for his good judgment.
"Senior, you agree?" Seeing Wang Wen nod, Cheng Queyi cheered. "That's great! The car's over there. Let's go now!"
Wang Wen's eye twitched.
He endured the discomfort in his head and used Memory Rewind again, trying to recall what the girl in front of him had just said.
And what, exactly, he had agreed to.
After 1.5 seconds,
he looked calmly at Cheng Queyi. "I appreciate the offer, but unfortunately, I already have other plans today. Maybe another time."
"How is that possible? You only just came back last night, and you already have plans today?" Cheng Queyi stared at him in disbelief.
Wang Wen nodded. "Yes. I made them yesterday."
Even Heaven loved a good spectacle.
By an incredible stroke of luck, Vice Chief Jiang arrived to save the day.
He came hurrying over from far away, carrying a pile of things, and called out, "Oh, what a coincidence! You're right here, so I don't have to go into the Academy to find you."
"Hello. Hello, students." The Vice Chief hastily greeted the two girls, then shoved everything in his hands into Wang Wen's arms. "I really couldn't afford a brain-computer! I got everything else! By the way, why did you want two phones?"
He cautiously glanced at the two girls staring blankly at him, then leaned closer to Wang Wen and whispered, "Dual SIM, dual standby?"
Wang Wen lowered his head and checked the bags to make sure nothing was missing, pleased with the Vice Chief's efficiency.
Ignoring his question, he said directly, "Thanks for your hard work. Tell me how much all this cost, and I'll transfer the money to you later."
"Oh, that can wait!" The Vice Chief pulled Wang Wen aside and lowered his voice. "What matters is, what exactly are you planning? That Xiao Chen—who knows what he said to the Chief last night, but he went into the tower in the middle of the night!"
Nearby,
the bespectacled girl's eyes suddenly lit up behind her lenses when she heard words like "brain-computer," "phone," and "transfer."
She glanced thoughtfully at the bag of things, then looked back at Cheng Queyi, who was still waiting eagerly. She said irritably, "What are you still waiting for? Can't you see he doesn't want to talk to you?"
"He's not ignoring me." Cheng Queyi gazed from afar at Wang Wen's grave expression. Though her voice sounded dejected, she still made excuses for him. "He's just busy. Really busy."
Over here,
hearing the Vice Chief's words, Wang Wen raised his eyebrows in surprise and asked, "Did he go in himself?"
The Vice Chief shook his head. "Not exactly. He still went to find that so-called sworn brother of his, but this time he rounded up a few more people to make a standard five-person team. I guess his talk with that sworn brother didn't go too smoothly, so he wanted more people he could trust."
As soon as Wang Wen heard that the head guard hadn't gone into the tower himself, he lost interest.
Just then, Cheng Queyi called from nearby, "Senior, go ahead and take care of your business. We can meet another day."
So he walked over to her, peeled off the number from his new SIM card, and put it in her hand. "Be careful on your way. This is my number. Call me if you need anything."
The Vice Chief hurried after him and asked urgently, "What do you think will happen to them this time?"
Wang Wen shrugged helplessly at Cheng Queyi, then turned to answer the Vice Chief. "Unless something unexpected happens, the same thing as before: nothing."
Cheng Queyi looked over the number several times, then left with the bespectacled girl.
On the way, she took out her pink phone and saved the number, then took out a note and copied it down again.
"See? He's so busy, but he still made time to care about me." She waved the note with his number on it, carefully folded it, and tucked it into her bag, smiling sweetly.
The bespectacled girl pretended to let out a despairing sigh.
But as she lowered her head and covered her forehead, the image that came to mind was of the new phone she'd glimpsed inside the shopping bag when Wang Wen took his new SIM card.
Every modern "fashionable young woman" shared one special ability.
They could recognize any overpriced item that cost more than their monthly living expenses.
She was sure she hadn't mistaken it. That phone was the hottest flagship model on the market right now.
Price: Point Points.
More than her entire yearly living expenses.
The bespectacled girl clearly remembered that just over ten days ago, that guy had still been a Poor Ghost.
His account balance had been barely more than four hundred.
One serving of cake and milk had been enough to wipe it out.
How had he gotten rich enough to buy such an expensive phone in so little time?
And why had someone personally delivered it to the Academy?
Was Wang Wen a prince pretending to be a bumpkin, or a bumpkin pretending to be a prince?
Remembering the middle-aged man who had delivered the phone, and the "obsequiousness?" radiating from him, as well as Wang Wen's corresponding calmness,
she adjusted her glasses, lightly licked her lips, and let a mysterious smile curl at the corner of her mouth.
"That mechanism was like a single-control switch." In the distance, the uninformed Wang Wen was still patiently explaining to the Vice Chief. The two of them stood at the Academy's entrance, seemingly tireless.
"The first person to activate it gets the item inside. But the second person to activate it finds nothing." Wang Wen raised a finger and said mysteriously, "And I already sold the first activation—or rather, gave it away."
Before you continue