Chapter 27 – Distance
The days that followed Xiao Xi's cliffside confession were a prolonged form of exquisite torture for both of them.
Xiao Xi threw herself into the endless cycle of filming and strategic planning, working until physical exhaustion was the only sensation she could still feel.
She was determined to stay busy, to bury the devastating conversation beneath a relentless mountain of work, hoping the System—now unstable and silent—would mistake her hyperactivity for stable functioning.
But everywhere she went, the subtle whispers followed.
The paparazzi, always sniffing out emotional weakness, captured the new strain in her eyes.
"Did she finally fight with President Gu?"
"She looks pale today… the pressure is getting to her."
"Maybe the 'Sugar Daddy' scandal was real, and it's ending."
Her public smile tightened into a brittle, painful line.
Internally, the System flickered constantly, an unstable mess of fragmented code and error messages.
[Host condition deteriorating. Physical and Emotional conflict detected.]
[Luck – 200. Continued proximity to Prime Variable without stabilizing mission parameters is detrimental.]
A silent scream echoed in her mind.
"I know! I know I'm a mess! I know I should be stable!"
The System sputtered, its voice strangely digital and faint, as if struggling to communicate through heavy interference.
[Unauthorized data interference ongoing. Source proximity increasing.]
She paused, the exhaustion momentarily forgotten.
The hacker.
The interference.
They were not only stealing her luck but actively destabilizing her System, pushing her to the brink of collapse.
And now Gu Yanzhou was hurt and distant, a victim of her forced secrecy.
She closed her eyes, leaning against a cold studio wall.
"I'm losing everything.
The truth, the lie, and now, the lifeline."
Across the city, Gu Yanzhou sat in his panoramic office suite, the symbol of his restored power, staring blankly at the glass window.
The city sprawled before him, an empire he no longer cared to control.
His phone vibrated ceaselessly on his polished desk—his mother's lecturing calls, urgent updates from his CFO, invitations from wary competitors.
He ignored them all.
His brain, however, was functioning on overdrive, analyzing every word Xiao Xi had spoken: A story. I read your death.
The impossible truth felt less insane than the hollow emptiness in her eyes when she walked away.
He had sent his security detail to monitor her movements, discreetly, around the clock.
He only asked them one question, repeated hourly: "Is she safe? Is anyone physically near her?"
He didn't know if she was avoiding him because the truth had made their partnership unsustainable… or if she was actively protecting him from a threat she was fighting alone.
Either way, the distance was a physical agony that hurt more than any corporate betrayal he'd ever known.
He felt like a man who had finally found the meaning of his existence, only to have it ripped away by a hidden, fatal flaw in the fabric of reality.
He picked up his phone, stared at her contact name, typed a desperate plea, and then deleted it.
He wouldn't beg.
But he also wouldn't let her go.
He just needed to figure out what was more dangerous to her—his presence, or his absence.