Li Family Second Branch Residence — Evening
The living room was quiet except for the soft ticking of the old wall clock. Dinner had finished, dishes washed, and the house eased into the gentle stillness that came after a long day.
Li Xue sat cross-legged on the sofa, tablet in hand, staring at the collaboration document she had accepted earlier. Her feet swung nervously above the floor.
Li Feng sat beside her, reading it again with calm, precise eyes even though he had already memorized every clause.
The front door opened with a soft click.
Li Guohua stepped inside, loosened his tie, and set his briefcase down. The moment he spotted the siblings together on the couch—tablet glowing between them—his expression softened.
"You received it," he said.
Xue nodded quickly. "Mm… Dad, the contract… it's real, right? They really meant it?"
Guohua smiled gently and walked over, sitting on the armchair across from them.
"I drafted it myself," he said reassuringly. "My legal team and I finished reviewing every line before it was sent."
Li Xue's eyes widened slightly. "So… everything here is already safe?"
"Yes," Guohua said with quiet certainty. "Let me walk you through it."
He reached out, and Xue handed him the tablet with both hands.
"This," he said, pointing to the first highlighted clause, "guarantees that the intellectual property belongs to you and Feng. No one else can claim authorship."
Xue leaned closer, listening intently.
"And this section," he continued, "makes you the lead conceptual designer. That means the project can only move forward if you agree to the direction."
Her lips parted slightly. "Me? But I've never worked with a company before…"
"That's why the language is clear and protective," Guohua said softly. "No one will be able to push you, mislead you, or take advantage of your inexperience."
Li Feng nodded, confirming the assessment.
"There are no hidden risks," he said quietly. "No ambiguous clauses."
Guohua smiled faintly. "Your brother is right. We removed all of those."
He turned the tablet to Li Feng next.
"This clause is about you," he said. "The patent application will be filed under both your names. By law, it cannot be transferred or reassigned without your signatures."
Li Xue sucked in a small breath.
"So no branch… no family member… can take it?"
"No one," Guohua affirmed. "Not unless you both agree. And I made sure that part is ironclad."
A warm, fragile silence settled.
Li Xue lowered her head slightly, overwhelmed not by fear but by relief.
"…Dad," she whispered, "you really… did all this yesterday?"
Guohua chuckled softly.
"When a father sees danger approaching, he moves faster than anyone thinks he can."
He looked at both children—gentle, proud, and quietly firm.
"You two built Silent Hands. It's yours. My job is to make sure the world recognizes that."
Li Feng closed the tablet carefully.
"Everything is in place," he said. "We can proceed."
Xue looked between her father and brother, her chest tightening with a mix of gratitude and determination she could barely put into words.
"…Then I'll sign it properly," Xue said, pressing a hand over her heart.
"I want to take responsibility for Silent Hands. I want to do this."
Guohua's expression warmed.
"Good," he said. "This is your project, Xue'er. You should take the lead."
Li Feng gently nudged her forehead with his palm—a quiet, affectionate gesture.
"You're ready," he said.
She nodded quickly, cheeks slightly pink.
Guohua stood up after a moment.
"I'll finalize the next steps with my team," he said. "You two rest. Tomorrow will be a big day."
He left the room with a soft smile.
The siblings remained on the sofa for a few quiet seconds, the tablet resting between them.
Li Xue finally let out a long, shaky exhale.
"…Gege," she murmured, "it really feels like Silent Hands is safe now."
Li Feng's voice was soft.
"It is."
And though neither said it out loud—
They both knew this was the first real victory they'd won against the Li family.
As the house settled into a rare atmosphere of quiet victory, Li Xue eventually excused herself to prepare for the next school day. Their father retreated to his study, already planning his next steps.
Li Feng remained seated for a moment longer, gazing at the dim tablet screen in front of him — a silent reminder of the responsibilities now on their shoulders.
When he finally rose and returned to his room, the house was still.
And that stillness became the signal.
Time to work.
---
Night — Li Feng's room
The house was quiet when Li Feng returned to his room.
He slipped into his chair, the soft hum of his workstation coming alive as the screens brightened.
He opened the core framework he'd been working on for Li Web — Phase 2.
This wasn't Phase 1's patchwork of exploits, silent backdoors, and opportunistic tools.
Phase 2 was deliberate.
Structured.
Built for the long term.
A foundation for what would come later.
Three windows slid open with practiced precision:
Left:
Arachne — skeletal prototype.
A lightweight correlation engine, not sentient or autonomous, but built to see patterns human cognition routinely missed.
Center:
The Shadow Indexer.
A map of digital footprints tied to the First, Third, and Fourth Branch corporate networks—what they owned, touched, or influenced.
Right:
Branch-behavior prediction trees.
Logic structures meant to anticipate possible proposal strategies next week.
Li Feng cracked his knuckles once and began working.
Accelerated Parallel Cognition settled into gear—smooth, natural.
Recursive Synthesis aligned his thoughts—clean, structured.
He typed.
Not frantically.
Not hurried.
Just… precise.
His right hand grew Arachne's spine, stitching logic into place.
His left rewrote indexing functions, jumping across directories with impeccable timing.
Windows shifted so fluidly it felt like his vision widened with them.
It wasn't multitasking.
It was division of thought—each task occupying its own perfect lane.
A predictive submodule here.
A data-sanitization patch there.
Error-propagation mapping restructured in one window while he refined parsing accuracy in another.
And then—just as two processing threads aligned—the translucent system prompt blinked into existence:
[DING — Passive Unlocked: Neural Harmony]
[Neural Harmony (Biological Augmentation)
• Full ambidexterity
• Accelerated reflex processing
• Motor–thought synchronization
• High-clarity motion tracking
• Sustained long-session performance
— A physiological upgrade required for Level-2 Programming load.]
He didn't need time to interpret it.
The change hit instantly.
His left and right hands synced perfectly—no dominance, no hesitation.
His fingers responded the moment intention formed.
Motion across the screen became sharper, almost slowed.
Instinct clarified everything:
Full ambidexterity — identical precision from both hands.
Reflex acceleration — thought-to-action pathways tightened.
Motor-thought sync — hands and thoughts aligned with no latency at all.
Motion clarity — rapid movements rendered clearer with perfect tracking.
Sustained performance — no drift, no fatigue.
No flair.
No dramatics.
Just raw, functional enhancement.
Li Feng swapped tasks between hands as a test—left hand coding, right hand refactoring—then switched again.
Flawless.
A small breath escaped him, almost amused.
"…The system never disappoints."
He returned to the keyboard.
Not just faster.
Better.
Lines of logic extended in elegant arcs.
Arachne's structure tightened.
The Shadow Indexer slimmed into a more agile configuration.
Behavior models layered themselves with clean logic gates.
Phase 2 no longer felt like an idea or diagram.
It felt real.
After nearly two hours of uninterrupted flow, Li Feng leaned back, eyes tracing the structure with upgraded clarity.
Still incomplete.
But no longer scattered.
A solid framework.
A useable weapon.
A sturdy beginning.
He tapped his fingers once, calculating.
"…Phase 2 is about 38% done."
And that number, for the first time, felt satisfying.
Li Feng closed the final window, satisfied with the architecture beginning to take shape.
He leaned back, letting the soft hum of his workstation fade into the background.
Outside his room, the house lay in calm silence.
But elsewhere in Longhai city...
the night was anything but calm.
---
The Li Estate
While Li Feng worked quietly in his room, strengthening the foundations of the Li Web, the Li estate itself was not still.
Far from it.
Behind closed doors, telephones rang more frequently than usual.
Assistants walked briskly between offices, carrying sealed folders they weren't allowed to read.
A few managers from different branches received sudden late-night instructions.
The Patriarch's personal secretary made several discreet calls, each ending quickly, without pleasantries.
Sub-department heads in R&D, Pharmaceuticals, and Media were asked to "prepare preliminary materials."
A handful of external partners—law firms, medical consultants, PR teams—received polite but unmistakably purposeful inquiries from different branches of the Li family.
Most of the calls were short. Some were cryptic. All were calculated.
And though none of the branches made an overt move…
The pressure within the estate grew thick enough to feel.
A silent storm forming.
---
Next Morning — Longhai No.1 Highschool
The school day began like any other.
The courtyard was its usual mess of chatter, morning yawns, and half-awake students rushing toward their classrooms.
However, if you look closer you'd notice that something in the atmosphere felt… tight.
Controlled.
Teachers whispered more quietly than usual. The admin office door stayed closed longer than usual. And several senior staff members kept checking their phones with nervous, darting glances.
Li Feng noticed all of this the moment he and Li Xue stepped onto campus.
He didn't comment. He rarely did. But his eyes moved once—slowly—sweeping over the school's administrative building.
Something was off.
Li Xue noticed his subtle shift and tugged his sleeve gently.
"Gege…? Is something wrong?"
He shook his head faintly, reassuring.
"Nothing. Go to class first. I'll walk you."
She nodded and trotted beside him until they parted ways at her building.
Li Feng waited until she disappeared inside.
Then he turned toward the Third-Year hall.
He didn't get far.
A teacher stepped out from the stairwell, slightly out of breath.
"Li Feng! Ah—good, you're here. The principal is asking for you."
Li Feng paused.
The teacher swallowed.
"It's urgent."
A few students nearby turned to look.
Li Feng's expression didn't change.
He followed silently.
---
Principal's Office
The principal sat behind his desk, posture straight, expression composed. When Li Feng entered, he simply gestured toward the chair opposite him.
"Sit."
Li Feng did.
Without preamble, the principal drew a single envelope from a folder and set it on the desk between them.
"This arrived early this morning," he said, voice clipped and official. "Addressed to you."
Li Feng glanced at the heading:
Wen Research Institute — Capital City
---
Hello, Author here,
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