It was late evening when Xueling finally returned to the city center. After leaving Xiaoman's place, she had gone directly to Lingyun Capital.
Though it was a Saturday, the firm's twenty-seventh floor still thrummed with life. Screens flickered with graphs and numbers, the low hum of servers mixed with the faint clatter of keyboards. The city outside was winding down, but Lingyun never slept — desperation didn't allow it.
When Lin Zhaoran heard she had arrived, he came down himself, practically jogging to the lobby. His tie was crooked, his sleeves rolled, his exhaustion obvious. "Miss Feng—ah, sorry—Miss XL," he corrected himself quickly. "You didn't have to come in person."
"I wanted to see the situation," she said simply. "Also, call me Miss. Xue. I don't want anyone else to connect XL or Lingyun Capital to me."
"Understood!" said Lin Zhaoran and led her to the private elevator that bypassed the main floors and opened directly into the executive suite. Inside, she caught the faint scent of stress — cold coffee, stale air-conditioning, overworked ambition.
"I will take you to the core team, now Miss Xue. If you need to remain anonymous…"
"Don't worry" said Xueling and quickly whipped out a black mask and donned it on. "I am ready, let's go".
He led her to the private elevator that opened directly into the executive suite. As they rose, Lin's reflection in the mirrored wall looked pale beside hers — she calm, unreadable; he caught between awe and unease.
Ever since the day she had appeared with that quiet assurance and the plan that saved his sinking company, Lin Zhaoran had wondered if she was even real. Every projection she'd run, every restructuring she'd proposed, had turned chaos into order, disaster into profit. He was a man who had spent two decades clawing his way up in the cut-throat world of finance — he had seen brilliance before, but never like hers.
And she wasn't even eighteen.
He had learned quickly not to question her. Genius didn't explain Feng Xueling. There was something almost terrifying about the way she saw through markets — and people.
The elevator doors slid open. Inside the glass-walled suite, tired analysts huddled around their screens. The central display was filled with bleeding red graphs.
"We're still stabilizing liquidity," Lin explained, trying to sound composed. "Exposure to real-estate derivatives was higher than projected. The algorithm over-corrected after last quarter's downturn. I've had the team running projections for forty-eight hours, but—"
"Show me," Xueling interrupted gently.
He gestured to the head analyst, who hesitated before pulling up the firm's predictive model. Equations and data flashed across the screen, complex and elegant — and entirely wrong.
Xueling scanned it once. Twice. "You're treating volatility as a flaw," she said. "But volatility is information."
She picked up the stylus and began rewriting equations directly over the model, her strokes swift and sure. "Re-weight the coefficients based on real-time variance. Add stochastic thresholds to normalize nonlinear recovery. And make your liquidity forecast adaptive instead of fixed. The market doesn't forgive rigidity."
Lin Zhaoran watched, transfixed. Her tone was calm, detached — but the room seemed to bend around her words.
"Run it," she said simply.
The analyst's hands trembled slightly as he entered the new parameters. The graphs flickered, recalculated… then stabilized. The losses shrank by half.
Silence fell.
"Fourteen-percent loss," the analyst whispered. "Down from thirty."
Lin exhaled shakily. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath. "Impossible," he murmured.
"It's math," Xueling replied lightly, turning toward the window. "You just have to stop treating chaos as your enemy."
Lin stared at the figures. A moment ago, the future of his company had looked like an open grave. Now — there was light. Hope. A path forward.
And the one who had given it to him was this girl — no, this enigma — who spoke of markets like she was conversing with something only she could hear.
I owe her everything, Lin thought. Every job saved, every investor reassured, every hour I can sleep again — all of it, because of her.
He swallowed hard. Gratitude didn't feel big enough for what he felt. It was closer to reverence.
"Miss Xue," he said quietly, voice steadying with conviction, "Lingyun Capital will follow your lead. Whatever you need — data, access, funds — it's yours."
Xueling turned back to him, expression unreadable but faintly amused. "Good. Then prepare a dummy portfolio under my authorization. I want to test a pattern model tonight."
Lin hesitated. "May I ask… what kind of pattern?"
"The kind no one else sees yet," she said. "The kind that decides who survives when the market burns."
Her gaze slid to the floor-to-ceiling window where Jinhai's skyline shimmered in fractured reflections — cold, sharp, beautiful.
Lin Zhaoran followed Xueling's gaze to the city skyline. Her reflection shimmered against the glass — calm, distant, untouchable.
He wanted to ask what she was thinking, but he already knew the answer. She was thinking ahead, always several steps ahead.
After a few moments, Xueling turned back to him. "Chairman Lin, I need a favor."
"Anything." The word escaped before he could even consider what it might mean.
"I need a private place," she said. "Something secure, quiet, with enough open space to move freely. It should be sound-proofed and not traceable to me or the company. Can you arrange that?"
Lin blinked. "A… workspace?"
She met his eyes. "You could call it that. But I'll need reinforced flooring, minimal cameras, and no outside staff. I'll bring my own equipment."
He hesitated. "May I ask what you're planning?"
Xueling's lips curved faintly. "Let's just say I need to rebuild my stamina. There's a… competition coming up."
The word competition didn't sound athletic coming from her. It sounded like a battle.
"An investment?" Lin asked carefully.
"A test," she replied.
Lin's mind raced. A secure, sound-proofed facility wasn't hard to arrange — the company owned several unused warehouses from their logistics venture. But the thought of this girl — his savior, his hidden boss — stepping into any sort of physical fight sent a chill through him.
He opened his mouth to protest, but one look at her stopped him. She wasn't asking for permission. She was informing him.
"Understood," he said finally. "I know just the place. One of our decommissioned R&D training sites — it's been empty for months. I'll have it cleaned and refitted by tomorrow evening. You'll have keys and full privacy."
"Perfect," she said. "And Chairman Lin—"
He straightened. "Yes?"
"Keep this between us. Not even your assistant."
"Of course."
She gave a short nod, picked up her bag, and turned to leave. The soft click of her heels faded down the corridor until the elevator swallowed her.
When the doors closed, Lin Zhaoran sank into his chair, exhaling the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
What kind of eighteen-year-old asks for a secret facility? he thought. And why did I agree without hesitation?
He leaned back, rubbing his temples. Gratitude, he told himself. She'd saved Lingyun Capital. That was reason enough.
But as he glanced at the graphs still glowing on the wall — numbers she had bent to her will with a few strokes — another feeling crept in, sharper and deeper. Awe, yes. But also fear.
Because Lin Zhaoran had seen many powerful people in his life — ruthless financiers, cunning politicians, brilliant innovators. Yet none of them had that quiet, chilling certainty Xueling carried.
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At the Mo family's private hangar on the outskirts of Jinhai, the night air trembled with the roar of jet turbines cooling.
Mo Shenyu stepped out of the sleek black aircraft, coat snapping in the wind. His eyes—dark, sharp, and restless—took in the waiting figures.
Assistant Liang hurried forward, tablet in hand.
"Master Mo, we've traced the anomaly you asked us to monitor."
"Speak."
Liang hesitated. "It's… unusual, sir. The dark-web relay we've been following—the one you said might connect to her—just came alive again. It was dormant since last night's shutdown."
Shenyu's jaw tightened. "Location?"
"Jinhai city grid. A civilian node. The origin routed through multiple cloaks, but the last trace intersects with something called the Dragon Gate Server Cluster."
The name dropped like a stone.
For a moment, only the hum of cooling engines filled the space.
"Dragon Gate," Shenyu repeated slowly, his voice low enough to make Liang flinch.
"Yes, sir. It's that network—half-syndicate, half-fight circuit. They're running something called the Jinhai Challengenext week. A new entrant just registered under the handle XL."
The faint sound of Shenyu's gloves tightening broke the silence.
He knew that alias. It had appeared once before—in Helios Tech's encrypted correspondence.
He'd ignored it then, not wanting to believe the coincidence.
Now it was undeniable.
"Pull everything," he said. "All data, all participants, anyone tied to the Dragon Gate in Jinhai. I want the original footage that got that fighter scouted."
"Already trying, sir. But the league uses military-grade encrypt—"
"Then break it," Shenyu snapped. His tone cracked like gunfire.
He turned away, pacing toward the wide glass wall that overlooked the hangar. In his reflection, he caught the faintest tremor in his own hand—the old surge, the ghost of the beast he'd barely leashed.
Dr. Chu Jian had warned him: If you chase that shadow, the sickness will return.
But the thought of her—dragged into an underworld arena, marked by those vultures—overrode reason.
He exhaled once, steadying his voice. "Prepare the team. I'm entering the tournament."
Liang froze. "Master Mo, you can't—Dragon Gate fights are unsanctioned. You'd expose your identity—"
"Isn't that just what they want?" His tone was calm again, almost too calm. "They are sending her into a trap to expose me. If she's there, I'll find her. If she's not, I'll burn the place down and show them who cannot be touched. ."
The assistant's throat bobbed. "Yes, sir."
Outside, the wind howled through the hangar's open doors, carrying the smell of fuel and metal.
Mo Shenyu looked out into the darkness stretching over Jinhai—its skyscrapers gleaming like shards of glass, its streets pulsing with secrets.
Dragon Gate.
A name from the underbelly of China's power web.
And somewhere in its depths, was the girl who had once dragged him out of death's grasp.
He reached into his coat pocket and touched the thin hairband still looped around his wrist.
"Hang on," he whispered. "I am coming."