Chapter 17 Fate Test
Lu Ming didn't even eat dinner, nor did he step out of his bedroom, clearly drawing a very clear line between himself and others.
After her attempts to harass him failed, Wen Chu could only return to her room and lie down.
She racked her brains but couldn't come up with a way to get someone to agree to her request. After careful analysis, she realized that judging from Chairman Lu's attitude towards her, he probably wanted Lu Ming to have a relationship with her. The reason Lu Ming was unwilling was probably because he didn't want to fulfill his father's wish.
He was afraid his father would set him up and use his two major achievements against him.
From this perspective, there seems to be almost no solution.
Wen Chu rubbed her head, looking dejected, and asked, "System, what happens if I fail a side quest?"
System: "The host will not receive the mission rewards, and the lost rewards cannot be regained."
"No punishment?" Wen Chu asked cautiously.
System: "There is no penalty for failing a side quest. New side quests will appear, with randomly increasing difficulty and danger."
Wen Chu coughed violently. "Danger level?? I'm in danger? What kind of danger?"
The system said in a cold tone: "Where there are people, there will be danger."
Wen Chu's lips twitched slightly. "You're quite the chuunibyou (a Japanese term for someone with delusions of grandeur).
"Then let's not do this mission. There's always another time..." Wen Chu comforted herself, folding her hands behind her head. But then she immediately sat up, unwilling to give up, and asked, "Can't we really tie him up and threaten him? If you don't agree, then you can forget about going either!"
System: "In the beginner stage, you cannot complete tasks by violent means."
"That's all?"
The system is silent.
Wen Chu remained silent.
And she hasn't given anyone the feeling of being moved yet, what should we do?
But thinking about it, this emotion shouldn't be fixed at the beginner stage, otherwise what's the point of trying to complete the mission later? They might as well just declare the mission a failure, and the system didn't give any warnings or prompts.
Once she had settled down, she called Lu Ming from just across the wall, and to her surprise, he answered very quickly.
"What is it?" The man's voice sounded a little unfamiliar due to the medium through which it was transmitted, but it still had a certain charm.
Wen Chu asked, "Do you have a spare computer at home? I need to go online."
"You have to call me about something like this? There's something in the drawer."
"Oh, thanks, goodbye!" Wen Chu was about to hang up when she heard the man say, "Are you planning to live in my house until you die?"
Wen Chu smiled and said, "Sure, maybe you'll become the lady of the house after living here for a while."
"Daydreaming."
"It's evening now."
Lu Ming hung up the phone.
Wen Chu rolled her eyes, tossed her phone onto the bed, turned on the room light, found her laptop in the desk drawer, and began to focus on browsing the scientific research progress, product development, and the core competitiveness and business overlap of the three companies: Kemin, Baiyue, and Xierui.
The room next door was dark and unlit, with only the moonlight from the window illuminating the outline of the man inside.
Lu Ming, dressed in black loungewear, leaned against the headboard. He had just sent an email to that small company, hoping they would reconsider. After sending it, he turned off his computer and put it aside, rubbing his sore eyes.
He casually bent one leg, then suddenly remembered something, opened his eyes in the darkness, picked up the tablet that was on the bedside table, indifferently entered the password, and tapped a few times. The tablet opened a certain interface, and he started looking at it.
The screen showed the girl running around like a panicked, ruffled rabbit after he left that morning, her face full of anger. He couldn't hear her, but Lu Ming could vaguely guess from her lip movements that she was cursing him.
Gradually, the girl calmed down, accepted reality, went into the kitchen and messed around for a while before leaving dejectedly. Afterwards, she disregarded social hierarchy, eating and playing cards with the servants, with nonsensical notes stuck to her face.
He watched as the person he considered close and trustworthy sat with the woman he disliked, chatting and laughing, getting along very well, their expressions more vivid than he had ever seen before.
The house where he had lived for so long was like a painting that had been lifeless for years, but suddenly became bright and cheerful.
The fine strands of hair on his forehead obscured the man's eyebrows and eyes, concealing the emotions in his eyes.
The Wen Chu shown in the surveillance video seemed very different from the image he had in mind. So different that even when Lu Ming squinted and stared at her every move, he couldn't tell which one was her real appearance.
If everything presented to him was a facade, then the woman's cunning and acting skills were beyond his expectations.
We really should re-evaluate her.
He took a notebook from the locked cabinet by his bedside, opened the first page, and each line contained the names of people closely related to his life: his parents, Wen Xue, a few of his close friends, important business partners, and occasionally, notes of their preferences following a few names.
Some are important to him emotionally, others are important to him financially or as a threat—these are all people he needs to be careful of.
But Wen Chu was not there.
Before this, he didn't think that this woman would have any deep relationship with him. She was chasing after him unilaterally, and in fact, she hadn't penetrated his life at all.
But things seem a little different now.
He hesitated for a long time before writing her name on it, seemingly worried that he might have made a mistake in his judgment.
After finishing writing, he stared at it for a long time.
Wen Chu finally finished watching around 11:30. She rubbed her shoulders, which ached from holding one position for too long, closed her laptop, walked out of the bedroom, and knocked on Lu Ming's door. "Hey, Lu Ming, are you asleep?"
Lu Ming slowly opened his eyes while lying on the bed, without responding. He wanted to hear what the other person was planning to do next.
But the person outside left without waiting for his response, and he vaguely heard the sound of them going downstairs.
What is this woman up to in the middle of the night? Didn't she eat enough for dinner? Or does she want to do something in his house?
Lu Ming sat up, intending to open the door and check, but his phone on the bedside table lit up; the other party had sent him a text message.
Wen Chu: Goodnight, I'm going home.
"Coming home in the middle of the night? What's wrong with your brain now?" Lu Ming frowned, completely baffled by this woman's thought process. If she wanted to leave, why didn't she leave earlier?
He thought for a moment and then opened the door, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. The door to the bedroom next door was wide open, and the blankets were already folded, as if no one had ever been there.
Lu Ming stood there quietly, pursing his lips.
System: "Detected that the male protagonist is experiencing feelings of loss."
Wen Chu, who had just returned home and closed the door, was left bewildered: "???"
Could it be that Lu Ming couldn't bear to see her leave?
She figured that since there hadn't been any progress today and she'd gathered enough emotion, there was no need to start from the other person's house again tomorrow. Besides, she really couldn't come up with any reasons. She'd never lied much in her life, but she was practically a master liar.
Lu Ming entered the bedroom where the girl had been, glanced around, and his gaze fell on the desk, which showed signs of being moved. Several decorative books on it had obviously been flipped through. He walked over, opened a drawer, and took out a laptop. The computer had no password, and he quickly turned it on.
He opened his browser and saw Wen Chu's browsing history; she seemed quite open about it and hadn't even considered deleting it. However, even if she did delete it, he had ways to recover it. When using someone else's things in someone else's home, one should be prepared for the possibility of information leaks.
He saw that he had browsed several authoritative foreign academic websites in his history, one of which he didn't even know what the land was used for. These were things that laymen couldn't possibly know.
At first, it was all obscure and difficult-to-understand academic papers, all of which were recent years' research on algorithms and product framework iterations in the field of artificial intelligence. Then came various materials from technology groups, including Baiyue, ranging from personnel changes and board reshuffles to the history of cooperation, all of which she dug up very deeply from various channels.
Why would she need to know all this? Or rather, how could that stupid woman possibly know all this?
Lu Ming's doubts grew stronger. This was not at all what the simple-minded woman he remembered, who thought of nothing but love, would do. He increasingly felt that Wen Chu's approach to him was not as simple as it seemed.
This woman is very good at disguising herself, thereby lowering others' psychological defenses against her.
Lu Ming scrolled to the very end, deep in thought, when he came across a website with a completely different style: "Compatibility Test - Test your compatibility with him/her!"
He tilted his head in confusion, then clicked on it and found that it was a compatibility test where you input two people's names. Moving the mouse over the input field, the history predictably displayed their two names.
"..." Lu Ming began to doubt again whether his guess just now was too much of a stretch for this stupid woman.
But having come this far, Lu Ming, almost as if possessed, re-entered the two names he had saved. He was just a little curious and wanted to know what the other person would see. Ideally, they would see no match at all and would be as far away from him as possible.
He stood there waiting, the website kept spinning for ages, and then it redirected him to a pay page! To find out the result, he had to pay 9.9...
"..." Lu Ming silently took out his phone, scanned the code, and finally saw the result.
"Wen Chu and Lu Ming's names match by a whopping 98%! They're a match made in heaven! You'll encounter many twists and turns in your journey of meeting and falling in love, but your unwavering love for each other will overcome them one by one. The red thread of fate will bind you together tightly. Be bold and brave in your love! You have the best ending!"
"..." Lu Ming's face turned pale and then red; he never thought he would have a moment of madness.
He slammed the laptop shut, the force of which revealed his speechlessness and annoyance. But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that a drawing software was still running.
He reopened his computer with doubts and opened the drawing software. A large, simple hand with its index finger pointing at him off-screen popped up, making Lu Ming's eyelids twitch.
Below it was written in large characters: "Those who see this will immediately increase their favorability towards Wen Chu by 20%!"
"Crazy!" Lu Ming slammed the computer shut and returned to his bedroom, seething with anger at being tricked.
Now, lying in bed, he was wide awake, his emotions swirling. The image of Wen Chu kept popping into his mind. He sat up again, pulled the notebook from the drawer, and drew a hastily drawn five-pointed star in front of Wen Chu's name on the last line.
After midnight, Lu Ming's consciousness gradually faded, and he soon fell asleep.
A system notification sounded from above: "Initialization begins. Any remaining traces will be cleared."
"Surveillance footage cleared."
"Call logs and text messages have been cleared."
"Browsing history cleared."
"Diary entries cleared - clearing failed. Entity cannot be cleared."
A note from the author:
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