Chapter 17 – A System's Glitch
The intense media coverage and round-the-clock professional demands finally caught up with her.
Late that night, after reviewing endless scripts and responding to endless messages, Xiao Xi collapsed onto her apartment couch.
The exhaustion was a crushing physical weight, hitting her bones with the dull ache of a marathon runner.
As her mind began to drift, the System panel suddenly reappeared, flashing violently.
[System Diagnostics Running… Error… Error… Connection unstable. Foreign code injection detected.]
"Not now," she groaned, rubbing her eyes. The instability was terrifying.
Her survival depended entirely on the System's ability to guide her away from the plot's pitfalls.
The panel flickered violently, cycling through green, red, and blue error messages before finally locking onto a single, terrifying new message:
[New Directive: Protect Primary Variable – Gu Yanzhou. Immediate Action Required.]
Her blood ran ice cold, jolting her fully awake.
The adrenaline spiked so sharply it hurt.
"What do you mean, protect him?" she demanded, whispering urgently at the flickering interface.
"He's the male lead! He's supposed to be invincible! He's not part of my mission!"
Her mission was purely selfish: accumulation of Luck for survival.
No reply came, only a brief period of disorienting static.
Then, a message appeared briefly before vanishing, an anomalous string of code that felt alien and chilling:
[Secondary Consciousness… awakening. Target: Timeline integration.]
Xiao Xi froze, her body rigid with a sudden, primal fear.
"What secondary consciousness?
Is that the interference?
Is someone else in the code?"
The idea that a second entity was fighting for control over her destiny—and Gu Yanzhou's—was terrifying.
A sharp, distinct knock on the apartment door interrupted her internal panic.
Hesitantly, she moved toward the door. When she opened it, Gu Yanzhou stood there, looking completely out of place in her dilapidated hallway, dressed in a flawless, charcoal-grey suit, holding two unassuming takeout boxes bearing the logo of a cheap but beloved noodle shop.
He looked—hesitant, almost vulnerable—a look she'd never associated with the corporate titan.
"I figured you hadn't eaten," he said simply, avoiding her gaze as he offered the boxes.
"My team said you skipped three meals today."
The gesture was so incongruously normal, so far removed from their high-stakes, ruthless strategic partnership, that it momentarily stunned her.
Something in his tone was softer than usual, lacking the usual cold edge of demand.
The system beeped once, faintly, logging the emotional data:
[Affection +7%. Timeline deviation: 34%.]
The warning to protect him, the sudden softness in his demeanor, and the rising affection score all pointed to one terrifying conclusion:
the plot was actively forcing them together, and he was now officially a part of her survival mandate.