Underworld Player

A torrid summer's day.

In her chilly, air-conditioned dorm room, Xia Wen stood in front of a small blackboard, sternly conducting a special lesson. On the blackboard were stuck seven or eight photos, haphazardly placed, which were connected by a complex web of lines.

"Bish, you know where you fucked up?"

"Nope."

Lin XiaoYi was sitting perfectly straight, looking like a model student with her feet together and her hands folded in her lap as she shook her head innocently.

"Simple, you fucked up… in your strategy! You did everything the wrong way!"

Xia Wen nodded earnestly.

"Think about it, why does he put so much effort into keeping a low profile? Obviously, it's to avoid giving his secret away! You could've acted dumb and pretended not to know, but you had to march right up to him and expose the secret identity that he had kept hidden for so long, that he was even willing to be vilified to hide...! If he had been anything less than an honorable gentleman, don't you think he might have chosen to silence you for good right then and there?

"Uh... isn't that going too far?" Lin XiaoYi pulled a face in disbelief.

"Haven't you heard? Dead men tell no tales. In fact, you not only failed to keep it to yourself, you even blabbed about it to the authorities, so you tell me who's gone too far!"

Xia Wen gave her friend a huffy side-eye.

"Everyone says 'big booba, big dumb' and I guess it must be true." Xia Wen shook her head in disappointment. "Because you exposed his precious secret, it must have ruined his life in unexpected ways—he hasn't tried to court another girl and even locked himself in his room for three days...

"The way I see it, since his secret was leaked, he can no longer play the lone hero the way he would like, so we won't see him do things like dumping an ex then immediately latching on to a new girlfriend anymore."

"...Isn't that a good thing?" Lin XiaoYi muttered under her breath. Addressing her friend, she continued, "If he stops being such a playboy, that means that I just need to keep on pursuing him and one of these days he'll be mine..."

Xia Wen scoffed. "Well hang on, haven't you hit a wall every time? The man won't even look you in the face, girl, it's all just a one-sided fantasy in your head.

"Honestly, I'm getting a strong feeling that there's a high chance he's going to do you in eventually, or hypnotize you into becoming his sla—" Xia Wen spotted the campus belle slowly reaching a hand for a pillow to throw, and she coughed drily. "—Ahem. In conclusion, we should try a different approach.

"First, I have to say, the old approach of actively pursuing the target is dead, never gonna work. You tried it—more than once—and got absolutely nowhere fast every time, so you must understand this. Even though he's clearly rich enough, with one million yuan in his card, he's only willing to treat you to street food—that fact alone makes it overwhelmingly clear that he wanted to discourage you."

"I won't give up, though!" Lin XiaoYi balled up her fists and set her jaw. "I believe that all this is a test of our love! Even if he acts prickly toward me now, if I'm ever in any real trouble, I know he'll be there to save me... That's how romance stories are supposed to go!"

"...I think it's time you stopped reading so much fantasy fiction. It's not reality! Instead of believing your romantic fairytales, you're better off trusting the hard truths in my research material*!"

Xia Wen rolled her eyes in disdain.

"You're a big girl now, aren't you embarrassed to be dreaming of being swept off your feet by Prince Charming like a little girl? Let me tell you—"

Deftly catching the pillow that was flying at her head, Xia Wen huffed proudly. "Hmph! I'm not falling for that again! Yibao**, Mama really loves you, but..."

She never finished the sentence, because a livid campus belle had pounced at her and trapped her in the legendary cross choke...

Just another day in the women's dorms.

———

In truth, Xia Wen was on Lin XiaoYi's side. After listening to her best friend explain all about the strange events of the past few days and seeing that the dozen or so students who had been sent to the hospital in a coma still had not woken up, Xia Wen begrudgingly let herself be convinced that the world really was becoming more dangerous.

Besides, the fact that she had seen the huge balance in a certain scumbag's bank card with her own eyes had changed her opinion of said scumbag, and she was willing to believe that there was a grain of truth to what Lin XiaoYi had been saying.

After all, one of the claims about his poor character was based on how he courted seven girls in a row, but as soon as each one agreed to date him, he would stop showing up and spend all his time devising ways to scam them of their money.

Yet, how could someone who had a casual million yuan loaded on their bank card be in need of money? There was no way!

Thus, Xia Wen put her prejudices aside, and when she looked closer at his dating history, she discovered a most surprising fact.

Bai Zhi's third ex-girlfriend, Mu QianSe was well known to be a timid, weak girl, but even a scaredy-cat like her had been buoyed by the exhilaration of first love and invited that guy out to watch a scary movie together at night.

It was hard to imagine any normal guy blowing her off—more likely, they would even arrive ahead of time and prepare to welcome her—but Bai Zhi was far from normal. It could be said that he never did anything normal people would.

So there she was, a naturally fearful girl, standing outside the movie theatre in the middle of the night, trembling as she made 37 missed calls to her date. That scumbag not only didn't pick up, but even sent a text message that said, "Watching the International, shh!"

Xia Wen had heard that the poor girl stumbled back to her room that night alone, in tears.

Was this "normal person" behavior?

When she first learned of this, Xia Wen had seethed with righteous fury, but once she put it together with what Lin XiaoYi had said, she realized that what she had first thought might not be the whole truth.

The reason Bai Zhi couldn't make the date could have been because he was busy wrestling with the supernatural entity that haunted Mu QianSe at that very moment… of course, once the deed was done, there was no longer any need for him to stay with her… hence the text message which effectively meant he was breaking up with her!

It was the same way he had courted Lin XiaoYi so passionately in the beginning, then once the supernatural entity had been neutralized, he had immediately made it clear he wanted nothing more to do with her.

This was no longer a baseless conjecture—by comparing Mu QianSe and Lin XiaoYi's experiences, the unusual factors they had in common could be clearly observed.

Lin XiaoYi's theories about Bai Zhi now made perfect sense to Xia Wen.

*Referring to doujinshi that Xia Wen reads, with plots where male protagonists hypnotize and take advantage of women. See Chapter 21.

**Referring to Yibao, a panda bear cub abandoned by their mother, as a way of describing the depth of Xia Wen's disappointment.