Chapter 14 Is it you?

Outside the cordon, crowds thronged, and various colored light sticks, banners, and glow sticks converged into a shimmering sea, illuminating almost half the street.

The air was thick with excitement, anxiety, and an uncontrollable frenzy.

Whenever a staff member or vehicle makes the slightest movement, the crowd erupts in waves of noise, with countless mobile phones and cameras raised high, their lenses forming a dense forest, all aimed at the door that is about to open.

"Someone's out! Someone's out!" someone shouted, instantly igniting the entire arena.

Screams and shouts came like a tsunami, almost overturning the entire venue.

Behind Meng Huaiwen, Lin Suxing, and other members of Team D, followed Lin Ke, who was all alone.

Lin Ke followed the group of contestants forward, looking lost and disoriented, having long forgotten the composure she should maintain when facing the fans' cameras.

He looked somewhat down, with slightly red eyes, as if he had just been crying. This unusual state immediately caught the attention of some observant fans outside the fence.

"What's wrong, Keke? She looks unhappy?"

"Did something happen to you, baby? Your eyes are all red!"

"Are you too tired from practicing? I feel sorry for you!"

Lin Ke was very close to the fence. After hearing the fans' words, she quickly forced a smile, her voice trembling slightly: "N-nothing... I'm just a little tired, don't worry about me."

However, the more he said this, the more he seemed hesitant to speak, the more his fans felt that he had suffered a great injustice.

"It doesn't look like it... Haven't you noticed that these past few days, when we're off or going to get off work, the other groups are all doing activities together, but the people in Group D are ignoring our Keke?"

“I’ve been wondering about this for a while now. Lin Suxing still talks to Meng Huaiwen, but I haven’t seen them chatting or laughing with Lin Ke for so long.”

"Keke must have been ostracized, that's why he's been so listless and unhappy these past few days! He used to greet us so warmly when he saw us!"

"That's so unfair! Is it because Coco is a popular contestant that they think she'll steal their votes and attention?"

"This is workplace bullying, right? I saw a post before about them ganging up on Keke to steal the center position, and the post was deleted immediately. I didn't think much of it at the time, but now it seems to be true. The production team is covering it up to prevent people from revealing it!"

Within just a few hours, Lin Ke's thousand-member fan group unearthed screenshots of the deleted Douban post and spread them widely in the super topic. Lin Ke's fans were in an uproar, and even the fans of other contestants learned about this "leaked information" whose authenticity had not been verified.

Why aren't the Produce producers doing anything about those lower-ranked contestants ganging up on and ostracizing more popular ones?

[They're shamelessly ganging up to grab the center position. No wonder Keke didn't want to walk with them, and they completely ignored her.]

[My heart aches for Keke. She's always so kind and silently endures everything. Even when she's bullied, she smiles and says it's okay!]

[I'm a fan of Yueyue from next door, and they definitely have a problem here. Their ganging up on each other is really disgusting.]

[After all this, isn't the production team going to give an explanation? Shouldn't someone like Lin Suxing have withdrawn from the competition?]

The hashtags #LinKeFeelingWronged# and #LinKeHasHitCenterPosition# quietly climbed to the bottom of the trending searches. Coupled with a carefully edited picture of Lin Ke with red eyes looking pitiful, a large number of fans flooded Lin Suxing's social media accounts to hurl insults and attacks, accusing him of ostracizing and bullying Lin Ke.

Please stop bullying our innocent, blank-slate-like boy!

[Disgusting and despicable! You beast!]

[Lin Suxing withdraws from the competition!]

Why are you bullying our Keke? Just because he has a good temper?

【Our Keke is just a soft-hearted kid who cries when he sees his teammates unhappy. He doesn't dare to fight back, so you bully him even more, don't you?!】

【Do you know that Lin Ke is the light of our entire Croissant family? So how could you bully him? You bully him, have you no shame? Let me ask you something. Are you sleeping at 5 a.m.? Our kid is practicing dance, practicing dance when he's sick, practicing dance when he has a fever. You think you're so great at riding on his popularity?】

[The wolf king is the wolf king. Only the full moon needs the wolf king. Only when the light is dazzling will you wish for someone without light, saying, "Someone like you isn't worthy to steal Coco's center position!!"]

*

The west wing corridor of the old house never sees sunlight, and the air is filled with the smell of old wood and dust slowly decaying.

This place is deserted, with only the occasional servant hurrying by, their footsteps quickly swallowed up by the heavy carpet and the boundless silence.

Li Xinian leaned against a dusty stained glass window.

The sparse light from outside the window pierced through the dappled glass, casting cold, broken colors on his sharply defined face.

He was wearing a well-fitting dark black suit, and the family ring on his right index finger gleamed with a dim light.

Simply by standing there, the arrogance and coldness emanating from him had already designated this desolate corner as his temporary territory.

Li Wanlin blocked the other end of the corridor, his breathing slightly rapid, as if he had rushed over.

His suit was also quite expensive, but it always exuded a carefully crafted sense of constraint, and at this moment, his neck was flushed red with resentment and anger.

"You think you can rest easy just because you've got the exclusive operating rights to the port?" Li Wanlin's voice sounded sharp in the empty corridor, trying to break the silence. "What Grandpa fears most is someone monopolizing power! What you're doing is playing with fire!"

Li Xinian didn't even twitch an eyebrow. He slowly turned the ring on his hand, his gray-blue eyes, like glass covered in a cold mist, swept over Li Wanlin with a scrutinizing gaze that almost froze him.

"Playing with fire?" he spoke, his voice low and steady, yet every word was laced with sharp icy intent. "Li Wanlin, someone who isn't even qualified to handle a spark has the audacity to criticize others for playing with fire?"

He chuckled very lightly, but the smile didn't reach his eyes at all; instead, it added to the mockery.

These words were like a poisoned whip, precisely shattering Li Wanlin's carefully maintained composure. His face flushed red instantly, then turned pale, his chest heaving violently.

Faced with overwhelming power and status, all accusations seem pale and powerless. The disadvantage surges up like a cold tide, gradually drowning out reason.

A flicker of madness, driven to desperation, flashed across his eyes. Suddenly, a twisted smile appeared on his face. His voice was low, yet every word was vicious, piercing the most untouchable forbidden zone.

"And what are you anyway? The legitimate son of the legal wife, the eldest grandson of the Li family, sounds prestigious, doesn't it? But after your mother's family declined, your uncle was seen with other women, which angered your 'noble' mother to death, didn't it? He even built a feng shui formation to suppress her spirit! What do you have to rely on now? Your uncle has long since abandoned you!"

As a deeply rooted old-money family, the Li family's business empire spans both traditional and emerging sectors. In the traditional sphere, the family started with mineral resources and energy extraction, accumulating enormous wealth in its early years; subsequently, it expanded aggressively into high-end real estate and infrastructure investment, holding numerous prime commercial properties and landmark buildings.

As the family continued to accumulate wealth, it also grew more and more numerous. Over several generations, it branched out and spread out, and by the time of Li Xinian's generation, it had formed several branches with intertwined interests and complex relationships.

Li Xinian was born into the direct line of the eldest son's family, while Li Wanlin came from a collateral branch. Although they belonged to the same bloodline of the Li family, they were in an antagonistic relationship since childhood due to their interests, competing and crushing each other and being unable to bear seeing the other succeed.

Li Wanlin was always overshadowed by Li Xinian's direct lineage, but precisely because of this, the Li family's "well-known secret" became his only weapon to attack Li Xinian.

The words fell into the dead silence, as if the dust had solidified.

The cold sarcasm on Li Xinian's face vanished instantly. It wasn't rage, but an extreme, almost terrifying calm. His movement of turning the ring stopped.

In the shattered light and shadow, something deep within his icy gray eyes seemed to suddenly crack, bursting forth with a chilling aura capable of freezing one. The languid arrogance surrounding him instantly solidified into a tangible, suffocating pressure.

He stared silently at Li Wanlin, his eyes cold and contemptuous, as if he were looking at a corpse rather than a person.

[Urgent Mission: Nian Nian has encountered a hostile force! Please come and help him!]

Lin Suxing stared at the two pixelated figures standing opposite each other on the screen, and a power-up button that popped up above their heads. Without hesitation, he began to press the button repeatedly.

He had just gotten back in the nanny van when he opened the companionship module to see what Nian Nian was doing.

I happened to see Niannian talking to this bad guy, and dialog boxes kept popping up above their heads.

He didn't know what had happened before, but this man was clearly not saying anything nice; he was just rubbing salt into Nian Nian's sore spot out of impotent rage.

Since Nian Nian is his person, there is no reason for him to be bullied by others.

With his hand speed (not really) after being single for many years, the charge progress in the pop-up taskbar quickly soared from 0% to 80%!

After a long while, Li Xinian finally spoke very slowly, his voice several degrees lower than before, smooth as if the sharpest blade was scraping through ice, each word carrying a deadly chill.

"Are you done talking?"

Three words, like the final judgment.

Li Wanlin was terrified by the undisguised, almost inhuman, chilling killing intent in his eyes, and all his courage to fight back vanished instantly.

He staggered backward, his back slamming heavily against the cold wooden handrail of the spiral staircase with a dull thud.

Li Xinian took a barely perceptible half-step forward, looking down at him with such contempt and disgust in his eyes that it was almost tangible.

"roll."

A monosyllabic command is not open to questioning.

Li Wanlin's face was ashen, his lips trembling. He scrambled around and lunged toward the spiral staircase, the wooden steps groaning under his frantic footsteps.

Just then, he seemed to be pushed by an invisible force, lost his balance and fell straight down!

The wooden boards and clappers played a rhythmic percussion piece. With the final heavy thud and wailing, Li Wanlin collapsed at the bend of the escalator. Immediately, a servant heard his screams and came to help him downstairs.

Silence returned.

Li Xinian remained standing in the same spot, expressionless.

The shaky light from the window shone on the man's sharply defined profile, half in light and half in shadow. His deep-set eyes were shrouded in thick shadows, concealing all possible emotions and leaving only a cold, deathly stillness.

When Li Wanlin slipped just now... it felt like something was pushing him.

As if remembering something, a hint of urgency escaped from beneath the icy mask of the man who had remained calm even after being ridiculed and insulted: "...Is it you?"

However, all that answered him was the still silent corridor.

A note from the author:

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