Chapter 31 – Silence Where Love Lived
Days passed in a haze of empty, colorless routine.
The vibrancy that had defined Xiao Xi's strategic comeback dissolved into a muted, depressive stillness.
She went to the set, filmed the required scenes, smiled flawlessly on camera, and delivered her lines with professional precision.
But the moment the director called cut, the mask crumbled.
She would return to her hotel room, throw herself onto the bed, and stare at the wall until the first harsh light of dawn appeared.
Her System remained a dim, almost mournful internal presence, its voice synthesized and strained:
[Low-power mode activated… severe emotional overload detected… physical instability imminent. Please stabilize, Host.]
"I don't know how to," she whispered to the ceiling, the words hollow and defeated.
The heartbreak over Gu Yanzhou's perceived betrayal and the terror of the ongoing digital attack had exceeded her psychological limit.
She was running on fumes, sustained only by the lingering muscle memory of survival.
The external world, her loyal audience, noticed the change in the vibrant "Comeback Queen."
Fans commented worriedly:
"She looks thinner and drawn lately…"
"Her eyes don't sparkle anymore; they look empty."
"Did something serious happen behind the scenes? She seems so sad."
Meanwhile, across the vast, lonely expanse of the city, Gu Yanzhou was engaged in his own slow, deliberate process of self-destruction.
He hid behind his work like a fortress, drowning himself in an impossible volume of tasks:
back-to-back meetings,
all-night calls to global offices,
and endless, meticulous reviews of complex contracts.
He was trying to use corporate power to silence the profound, aching emptiness in his chest.
He didn't sleep.
He subsisted on lukewarm coffee and sheer willpower.
He didn't eat properly.
He certainly didn't smile.
He was a perfect, functioning automaton, and he looked terrifyingly unwell.
His ever-loyal assistant, Lin Bo, hesitated before approaching the monolithic CEO one morning.
"President Gu… with all due respect, you look profoundly unwell.
You haven't left the office in three days."
Gu Yanzhou didn't lift his eyes from the financial folder, his focus intense and dangerously brittle.
"I'm fine, Lin Bo. Just maximizing efficiency."
But the assistant, who had witnessed his CEO survive corporate espionage and near-death, thought:
You've never been less fine.
The silence from Miss Xiao Xi is killing you faster than any market crash.
And in a secure, anonymous server room, the hacker—who was watching the social media data on both protagonists—smirked at a glowing screen, typing lines of malicious code designed to exploit the digital-emotional link.
Let the heartbreak weaken her system.
Let him crumble.
The bond is severed.
Now I take the power.
Then I'll take everything.