"You certainly don't stand on ceremony."
"Standing on ceremony with you, Madam Enforcer? That would make us strangers."
Liang Bing didn't smile. She straightened up from the pillar, took two steps toward the edge of the covered walkway, and looked out at the sports field.
"Let's talk."
"What could a student like me possibly talk about with you?" Su Bai tucked the coffee into his pocket. "Calculus? I'm good at that. I could teach you how to pass."
"Last night," Liang Bing began, ignoring him, "between eleven and three in the morning, the city's energy monitoring network picked something up."
"Intermittent gravitational collapse readings above the city center." She spoke slowly. "The values were tiny and deeply buried. They didn't even trigger the automatic alarms. The duty officer only filtered them out of the background noise while reviewing the data this morning."
Eleven to three. The city center.
He'd been in Ye Qingqing's living room then.
"Gravitational collapse?" Su Bai's expression didn't budge. "Sounds scary. Which is worse, that or me failing calculus?"
Liang Bing didn't take the bait.
Silence settled over the walkway for a few seconds. Wind blew in from the sports field, rustling the camphor leaves.
"According to regulations, I shouldn't share a single word of what I'm about to say," she said.
"Then hurry up and swallow it back down." Su Bai looked utterly sincere. "I can't keep a secret. All I know is eating. Telling me would be a waste anyway."
"I'm going to tell you anyway." Liang Bing turned to look at him. "I want to see your reaction."
"..."
Well, that was a first. Nobody else had been quite this upfront.
"The Intelligence Department at headquarters pulled an all-nighter and accessed the Imperial Capital Sky Eye database." Liang Bing stared at him. "The