Chapter 25: The Black Car Outside

Lin Ci caught Gu Mianmian by the arm, spun smoothly, and led her toward another quiet path on campus.

There were no streetlights on that road. The trees cast heavy shadows, and the place felt deserted.

Gu Mianmian looked at the direction, the exact opposite of the dorm, and her face filled with doubt.

She paused mid-step and raised her head to look at Lin Ci.

“Senior, aren’t we going back to the dorm? Why are we heading this way?”

Lin Ci didn’t change expression and lied without missing a beat.

“I’m thirsty. I forgot to leave cold water in the dorm. We’ll swing by the little shop over there and grab a bottle. It’s on the way.”

Gu Mianmian looked ahead. That path really did lead to the shop.

She didn’t ask more, just followed obediently and pressed closer to Lin Ci.

Lin Ci’s palm was warm. Holding her hand in the night wind made her reluctant to let go.

They grabbed a bottle of water at the shop, paid, and jogged all the way back to the dorm.

Once inside, the first thing Lin Ci did was twist the security lock shut.

She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled out her phone, opened the gallery, and found the photos she had secretly taken over the past few days.

They were shots of a black car from several angles.

Each photo had been taken at a different time.

But it was always the same black business car with a Beijing A license plate, and every time it was parked on the tree-lined road near the dorm.

Counting the one she had just seen, that made four times.

Lin Ci leaned against the headboard and stared at the album. Her expression grew worse by the second.

‘Freaking hell.’

‘This crappy car has been following us for a whole week.’

‘Do they think I’m blind?’

Lin Ci was still staring at the album and thinking when Gu Mianmian walked into the bathroom with a towel and a change of clothes.

“Senior, I’m going to shower first.”

“Mm. Go ahead.”

Soon the bathroom filled with the sound of rushing water. Steam spilled out from the crack under the door.

While Gu Mianmian was showering, Lin Ci rolled off the bed and hurried to the desk.

She opened her phone and tapped into an app for checking company information.

She remembered the document folder she had glimpsed from far away through the car window in front of the administration building that day.

The cover had a logo on it, with four large characters beside it: Capital Gu.

She typed those characters into the search bar and added foundation as a filter.

The screen immediately flooded with related companies.

Lin Ci followed the leads down the chain.

In the end, every trail pointed to the same massive beast.

Gu Holdings Group.

Units, tens, hundreds, thousands…

Lin Ci counted the ten billion in funding data on the screen and felt dazed.

This group was the leader in Capital’s real estate and finance industries. Its wealth was terrifying.

Why would it come to a poor, backwater university like theirs?

Were they looking for someone?

Lin Ci thought of the strange text message about the poor student foundation from a few days ago.

Then she recalled how the other side had asked for Gu Mianmian’s birthmark and blood type right from the start.

A bold guess had basically taken shape in her mind.

The Gu family from the capital was looking for someone.

That person might be Gu Mianmian. She was very likely the one the Gu family was searching for.

But Lin Ci couldn’t understand why, if they were looking for someone, they had to do all these sneaky little things in the dark.

They even sent a car to park under the dorm building, acting all suspicious.

Lin Ci sighed, exited the app, and locked all the screenshots into an encrypted album.

Could Gu Mianmian not be an orphan?

Was she a child of the Gu family?

The water behind this ran deep.

The next day at noon.

In front of the school’s second cafeteria.

Lin Ci and Gu Mianmian had just finished lunch and walked out when a light rain began to fall.

Before Lin Ci could open her umbrella, a young man carrying a folder stopped them head-on.

He wore a suit and a work badge, and he smiled gently.

“Classmate, do you have two minutes? We’re from a charity organization, doing a survey on orphan groups.”

The man held out a paper form toward Gu Mianmian.

When Gu Mianmian saw the word orphan, her face paled, and she instinctively shrank back.

The man stepped closer.

“You just need to fill in basic information. We have small gifts for participants. Could I trouble you?”

Gu Mianmian looked lost, not sure what to do. She was about to reach for the pen.

Lin Ci snatched the form from the man’s hand.

She quickly scanned it.

The questions were extremely detailed. They even asked whether the person had red patches or birthmarks at birth.

There were also options about early medical records and blood type.

Such obvious targeted screening.

Did they really take her for a fool?

Lin Ci sneered inwardly.

She didn’t waste words. With both hands, she ripped the form apart.

“Checking household registration on me now? We don’t need your little gifts. Get lost.”

Lin Ci threw the scraps into a trash can, grabbed Gu Mianmian, and walked quickly around the man.

The man stood frozen in place, his expression ugly, but he didn’t chase after them.

“Senior, that form…”

Gu Mianmian spoke quietly, nervous.

“That kind of thing is definitely some shady organization. If you run into one again, just treat it as a scam.”

Lin Ci looked at Gu Mianmian’s panicked expression and scolded her in a bad mood.

“And you. You didn’t even look before filling things out. What kind of charity asks for other people’s private information? Only an idiot would fill out that crap.”

Gu Mianmian shut her mouth obediently, but her hand caught the hem of Lin Ci’s clothes in her pocket.

She felt that her senior was especially protective of her today.

That feeling made her heart feel sweet.

‘Love it’

That night.

Lin Ci walked Gu Mianmian to the library for her evening shift.

The whole way, she deliberately led Gu Mianmian along the crowded main road.

After watching Gu Mianmian enter the reading room, Lin Ci didn’t return to the dorm.

She pulled her hood down lower, covering most of her face.

With both hands in her pockets, she followed the shadows of the tree-lined road and quietly doubled back to the South Second Gate.

The black business car was still parked in that corner, engine still running.

Lin Ci slowed down, using the roadside greenery as cover, and crept closer to the rear of the car.

The front passenger window was rolled down halfway.

The reading light inside was on, revealing a woman with glasses.

The woman was staring at a laptop, fingers tapping on the keyboard.

Lin Ci stopped behind the greenery and squinted.

The light in the car was bright enough for her to see the content on the laptop screen.

It was an enlarged photo.

It was Gu Mianmian’s ID photo from the school database.

Beside the photo was a form with an official seal. At the top were three words: pending sample.

Lin Ci’s heart skipped.

‘Well, well.’

These people really were after Gu Mianmian.

They wanted her DNA.

Lin Ci moved quietly, careful not to alert anyone in the car, then turned and hurried away once she reached a hidden spot.

She ran all the way back to the dorm, lay on the top bunk, and stared at the darkened ceiling.

This mess was getting more troublesome.

If the Gu family wanted to bring Gu Mianmian back, she would become the heir to a ten-billion-dollar fortune.

But if there was a power struggle inside the Gu family, the girl could end up as cannon fodder.

Lin Ci had always considered herself a man. Her body might have changed, but she couldn’t lose her backbone.

Since she had promised to protect this girl, she absolutely couldn’t let anything happen to her under her nose.

Before she figured out the Gu family’s true intentions, she needed to find a way to keep this hidden.

Lin Ci turned over, took out her phone, and sent Gu Mianmian a WeChat message.

– Don’t talk to strangers recently. No matter who asks for your personal information, don’t say a single word. Be good.

Less than three seconds after the message was sent, the phone buzzed.

Gu Mianmian replied instantly with a single word: Okay.

Then another message came.

 Is something wrong, senior?

Lin Ci felt a little guilty, scratched her head, and replied.

It’s nothing. There are too many credit card promoters outside campus lately. I just don’t want you to get scammed.

Gu Mianmian didn’t ask more.

But behind the duty desk in the library.

Gu Mianmian stared at the words be good on the screen, dazed.

The light fell on the back of her hand, making her skin look almost transparent.

The corners of her mouth curved up uncontrollably.

Be good.

Her senior had told her to be good again.

She screenshotted the chat and skillfully moved it into a triple-encrypted folder.

It already held hundreds of photos and screenshots of Lin Ci.

“If senior wants me to be good, then I’ll be good.”

Gu Mianmian murmured softly, her fingers unconsciously rubbing the screen.

In the dorm.

Lin Ci was just about to toss her phone aside when the academic system popped up a pinned notice.

Curious, she tapped it open.

The next second, her face went pale.

The notice was simple.

The final exam schedule had been posted.

First subject: French intensive reading.

Exam time: next Monday at nine in the morning.

Lin Ci stared at the table on the screen, her vision almost doubling.

In her twenty-two years of life, she had never touched anything from a foreign language department.

Back in science and engineering, the hardest thing had been calculus.

How had changing bodies also changed her major?

Now she had to learn French?

How was that different from learning heavenly script?

Lin Ci bolted upright in bed and began rummaging frantically across the desk.

She pushed aside the clutter and finally found the major textbook at the very bottom of the bookshelf.

The cover was printed with a string of complicated French letters.

Lin Ci sighed and nervously opened the book.

When she saw the contents of the first page, her whole mind went blank.

‘No way?’

‘What is this?’

‘I know all twenty-six letters. Why don’t I recognize them when they’re put together?’

Lin Ci closed the book in despair.

‘I can’t live like this.’

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