C2 Chapter 2

“You little skank, taking out a loan with your own photos—you’re not worth anywhere near that much. The only reason you’ve got any value is because you’re a student at Yingrui, and you’re lucky we even go to school with you!”

In the dim, shadowy parking shed, Huang Hao stared at Bai Nuochu as she kept her head down, wearing a look like he was doing her a favor.

Huang Hao couldn’t wait—he grabbed Bai Nuochu hard. “You’re the kind of trash who’ll let someone grope you for fifty bucks. Once we get the loan, we’ll toss you five hundred. Think about it—do it once and you get ten times the cash. You should be on your knees thanking us while you strip!”

In the dim parking shed, Huang Hao tried to rip Bai Nuochu’s clothes off again—but this time, before his hands even touched her, he let out a strangled yelp. “Ah!”

No one saw exactly what happened, but thin silver needles—fine as hair—had suddenly appeared in his wrist and at his waist.

“What the hell is this? Boss Gu is coming to pick up the photos—strip her!” Huang Hao spat, fully showing his thug side as he locked onto Bai Nuochu. She kept backing away, “scared,” yanking so hard on her beat-up backpack that it warped out of shape.

“If we’ve got time, we can all have some fun with a soft little thing like her. Either way, if she can’t pay it back, she’ll end up getting used by other guys…”

“Ah—ah!” But before Huang Hao could finish, the other boys moved in. Bai Nuochu’s slender hand shot out from her backpack—and in an instant, several of those strange, hair-thin silver needles were embedded in their hands too.

They tried to grab her, but the needles seemed to tug at something inside them—strength draining fast. Then a terrifying surge of lust rose up in their bodies. They looked at each other, their eyes slowly turning red…

What? What did this worthless girl do to them?

“These points relax the muscles and crank up desire,” Bai Nuochu said softly. When the face that had been tucked between her shoulders finally lifted, her cold, detached gaze made it hard to meet her eyes. “In a minute, you’ll start going after each other…”

The fallout between them would be a hundred times worse than getting caught by the family over a gambling debt and being beaten for it.

Just imagining that possibility made Huang Hao’s eyes bulge.

How could this happen? In barely a minute, they’d gone from having it in the bag to total ruin.

Even worse, Bai Nuochu hadn’t hesitated for a split second. Her counterattack was precise—each strike locking onto the next, controlling pressure points so cleanly that no one could fight back. Only then did she lift her cool, detached face.

Huang Hao suddenly remembered the rumors people swore were true: Bai Nuochu was a devil. Her own father had nearly strangled her at birth. She’d personally caused her fiancé’s father to die.

Behind him, the scene turned brutal—pleas for mercy and cries of surrender rising one after another. Bai Nuochu turned around, her expression cold, not a single extra emotion on her face.

By the time Bai Nuochu stepped out of that dark carport, the timid look she always wore had returned.

She’d only gone a few dozen yards when her phone rang. A video message came through, and a smile surfaced on her delicate face before she could stop it.

It wasn’t the careful, frightened mask she could put on at will. It wasn’t the sharp, intimidating edge she’d been forced to show just moments ago, the kind that left everyone shaken and wary. This—this was the expression a girl not yet eighteen was supposed to have.

She’d been unlucky, getting targeted and set up by a few spoiled rich kids, but she’d dealt with them. And right on time, the video Mrs. Qin had secretly recorded of her sister arrived: in the dim light, her sister smiled at the flowers outside the window. The first flower her sister had seen this spring.

Her sister was Bai Nuochu’s only family in the world.

But just as Bai Nuochu’s amber eyes started to glisten, a large hand suddenly covered her phone screen.

Who was it? Bai Nuochu immediately switched back to a panicked, timid expression and looked up.

The disgust in Gu Lijue’s eyes deepened. Everywhere he went, there were women scheming to manufacture “chance encounters” to latch onto the Gu family—especially lately, with that shameless actress pushing his patience to the limit.

The South Campus had always been the quiet corner of Imperial City University—a place where he and Chiwei used to wander hand in hand, away from prying eyes and the exhausting suspicion of others. Gu Lijue remembered that without those sharp, poisonous stares, Chiwei’s smile was purer than lilacs.

And now even the last place that held a trace of their memories was being invaded—by some woman who would stop at nothing, slipping in wherever she could, trying to claw her way into the position of Young Madam Gu?

The moment that name surfaced in his mind, Gu Lijue’s dark eyes turned even colder.

Not long ago, there’d been a celebrity named Vivian who’d managed to get a photo of herself in the same frame as him. With a carefully chosen angle and a rehearsed expression, she’d shamelessly spun it into rumors that they were far too close. Even after that shallow star got hit with a harsh crackdown from Gu’s, the same disgusting stunt only seemed to be spreading.

The woman in front of him stared at her phone with her eyes practically glowing—clearly copying that same sleazy playbook.

He didn’t care how she’d followed him here. But choosing Chiwei’s last place of memories as the stage to latch onto Gu’s? That was her biggest mistake.

“Photos?” Bai Nuochu’s light voice lifted.

Her mind raced through a dozen turns: Huang Hao and the others had said their backer would be here any minute.

“Are you Mr. Gu?” Bai Nuochu asked cautiously.

“Isn’t that the whole reason you showed up?” All that scheming and staging—wasn’t it just for the name Gu Lijue?

So this man was the one behind the scenes, the one trying to buy her photos?

“The photos,” Gu Lijue said, his voice tightening. “Don’t make me say it twice.”