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Chapter 4 – Eight Months Ago (2)
Half an hour later, the drenched and bedraggled superstar Shen Si sat in his top agent Zhou Wen’s car, face dark, saying nothing.
Rainwater squirmed like earthworms on the windshield, dragged back and forth by the wipers with a soft buzzing hum. The black nanny van was trapped in traffic on an overpass, unable to move — as if isolated in another world.
Yet even in this bubble, the cutthroat world of entertainment crept in.
Shen Si’s personal assistant, Xiao Gu, carefully dabbed at his dripping hair with a towel from behind the seat. The tense standoff between Zhou Wen and Shen Si made it hard for him to even breathe.
Still, curiosity got the better of him. He leaned toward Shen Si’s ear and whispered so softly even he couldn’t hear his own voice, “Did you see her?”
Shen Si, his back to Xiao Gu, gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Xiao Gu sighed in relief and snuck a glance at Zhou Wen from the corner of his eye.
Even someone as composed as Zhou Wen couldn’t help but furrow her delicate brows into two tight caterpillars. She rarely lost her temper with Shen Si. No matter how arrogant he was, she always spoke gently. But now, Shen Si’s name was burning up every search engine.
Biting her lower lip, she glared angrily at the handsome face beside her. A large droplet of water clung precariously to a lock of his black hair, hanging over his forehead. Finally succumbing to gravity, it plopped onto his exposed collarbone and slid down the fine texture of his skin — practically inviting crime.
In the dim car light, Shen Si’s pale eyes shone unnervingly bright. Was that the flame of humiliation flickering in them? Zhou Wen let out a sigh, pressing her hand to her forehead. She had only given him half a day off, and he had already stirred up this scandalous fiasco.
When asked why he went to the university, he stubbornly refused to answer.
He only glared at the embarrassing photo of himself falling, as if he could burn a hole through it with his stare. The internet was flooded with speculation and memes. In just half an hour, the photo had been reposted over 100,000 times on Weibo. On this rainy, monotonous day, this tiny incident was enough to entertain netizens for an entire day.
Finally, after missed calls on her phone exceeded a hundred, Zhou Wen shot Shen Si a resentful glare. She chose to return the big boss’s call:
“Mm-hmm, I’ve already picked him up. I’ll make sure he behaves.”
Then Zhou Wen got in touch with the media relations team. Soon, online sources “in the know” revealed that Shen Si had simply visited a university library to borrow books — partly to reminisce about campus life, partly to seek inspiration for his upcoming album. The narrative shifted. Fans were overjoyed, flooding the internet with cries of: “Shen Si, please visit our university!” “Our cafeteria floors aren’t slippery…” Entertainment sites raced to post headlines: Which university do you most want Shen Si to appear at? Online voting surged enthusiastically.
“You’re curious? Try it and you’ll see.”
Xu Zhiyi’s words, with her cool, slightly provocative tone, echoed in Shen Si’s mind like a vicious curse.
Damn prophet! Shen Si cursed silently: Fuck.
“Have they traced the prophet’s IP address yet?” he murmured to Xiao Gu. Before the sentence even finished, he impatiently turned around, snatching the towel from Xiao Gu’s hand and deliberately raising his voice:
“You dawdling like that — are you trying to embroider a flower into my hair?”
Under his thick bangs, Xiao Gu’s eyes curved flatteringly into two slender crescents.
“Officer Chen should be able to catch him soon—”
“Catch who? You’d better not be hiding something from me again—” Zhou Wen turned her head sharply in alert. Shen Si was aggressively drying his face with the towel, his refined features distorted slightly by the fabric — but oddly, he still looked handsome, like a melancholic aristocrat from an Impressionist painting.
Her reproach caught in her throat. Instead, she took the towel from his hand and began gently drying his hair herself.
“If something’s going on, why don’t you tell me? What’s the point of asking Xiao Gu? I’m already grateful if he doesn’t cause you more trouble.”
Xiao Gu and Shen Si exchanged glances. Xiao Gu rolled his eyes and mimed zipping his lips, signaling that he’d keep the secret.
Shen Si’s eyelashes fluttered. He tilted his head slightly, no longer resisting Zhou Wen’s gentle insistence as she efficiently dried his hair to dampness.
“Change your clothes. If you catch a cold, the director will complain tomorrow.” Zhou Wen shot Xiao Gu a faint look.
Zhou Wen’s car always carried a few sets of clothes for Shen Si, just in case.
Xiao Gu promptly pulled out a set with a grin.
“No worries — even with a cold, Si-ge is still the most handsome man in the universe.”
Years of Zhou Wen’s tender care and meticulous attention weighed on Shen Si like a burden. He took the clothes and, unbothered, stripped off his wet down jacket, shirt, and pants right in front of her…
His eight-pack abs, carefully bronzed to a warm wheat color, and the contours of his pelvis were accentuated by tight, damp white briefs. The sensual image stabbed into Zhou Wen’s gaze. She turned her head, her face inexplicably flushing.
Shen Si lowered his head. His messy bangs fell, masking the flash of mockery in his eyes.
“About today — you need to tell the truth. Going to campus for a meal? That lame excuse wouldn’t fool even our boss, whose brain lives in some starlet’s bra…” Zhou Wen stubbornly shoved the towel back into Shen Si’s hand.
“You think I’d still trust you now?” Shen Si turned his face coldly, casting Zhou Wen a fleeting glance.
“In this world, who else can you trust but me?” Zhou Wen paused and replied softly.
“If you’d said that two years ago, I might’ve actually believed it.” Shen Si let out a low chuckle, the sound rolling in his throat. Against the backdrop of torrential rain, it sounded especially cutting.
Xiao Gu swallowed hard, shrinking into a ball in the shadows to reduce his presence.
Ever since what happened two years ago, Shen Si had never smiled at Zhou Wen again. Yet even now, with his handsome face as cold as ice, Zhou Wen couldn’t harden her heart to blame him.
Yes — faced with that flawless face carrying one-eighth British blood, Zhou Wen had never had the heart to be cruel. Only once.
That one time two years ago — the only time she deeply regretted.
For Shen Si’s fans, catching a fleeting glimpse of him in the cafeteria was enough to leave them giddy for the entire day, even smiling in their dreams at midnight. But for Xu Zhiyi, he had already passed by like a failed typhoon landing — gone without leaving a trace.
This Chinese female scientist, once predicted by industry insiders to be the most likely future Nobel Prize winner in biology, had not stayed in the U.S. where she had fought for ten years. Instead, she had returned to China two years ago.
The prestigious university’s biology department had bent over backwards to hire her as a full professor at the age of 28 and funded a world-class P4 virus research building costing tens of millions exclusively for her to study deadly pathogens. All researchers entering the lab had to undergo strict training in France and obtain P4 certification.
Yet now, inside this state-of-the-art lab built just for her, Xu Zhiyi gripped the edge of the control console, her face as pale as paper.
Failure again!
In the past six months, she had lost count of how many times her virus cell cultures had all died. She couldn’t make sense of it. She checked the incubator repeatedly. The blinking data lights indicated everything was functioning perfectly.
Sitting dazed in the hermetically sealed, silent cell room where she could hear her own breathing, the layers of her protective suit squeezed tight. The inflated hood around her head felt like an airless coffin, and the thin blue breathing tube dangling from the ceiling spun ominously — as if it might stop supplying oxygen at any moment.
For several minutes, dizziness washed over her. A white flash blurred her vision, followed by deep darkness. After about ten seconds, her sight returned.
Every step had been correct. There was no reason every petri dish’s cells had died. Failing even the most basic stage of the experiment — it was the strangest thing she’d ever encountered. It felt as though a hand named Misfortune kept repeatedly stroking her.
Resolutely, she left the lightless cell room, went through the disinfection process, changed clothes, and returned to her office in the adjacent biology building.
After a moment’s thought, she changed into a fresh set of clothes and headed to the animal lab to observe a batch of mice recently injected with the virus. Even before she approached, the overwhelming stench of urine and musk hit her like a wall. No matter how sterile the lab was, nothing could mask that nauseating odor. Perhaps it was the small animals’ only form of protest against their use in merciless experiments.
Coincidentally, her PhD student Ren Feifei was in the dissection room instructing several undergraduates on how to draw blood from the mice’s hearts. Upon seeing Xu Zhiyi, the students practically had stars in their eyes, gazing at her with such fervor it was as if they wanted to dissect her inside and out with their eyes.
Indeed, in the biosciences circle, the 29-year-old Professor Xu Zhiyi was riding high. A prodigy who entered university at 15, she earned her Bachelor’s in Clinical Pharmacy at 19. She then completed dual PhDs in Molecular Biology and Virology in the U.S. By 23, she had invented a rapid method to sequence over 2,000 influenza virus genomes in three months, won the MacArthur Genius Grant, and published over a dozen papers in Nature and Cell. She was a super idol to countless aspiring young scientists. Many students even considered it an honor just to hear her say their name.
On a whim — knowing she rarely interacted directly with students — she offered to demonstrate the “cervical dislocation method” for euthanizing lab mice.
She stepped to the bench, a faint smile on her pale face. Grabbing a mouse without even looking at it, she gazed at the circle of students around her.
“First, we need a pencil… This is the legendary ‘pencil of death.’” She smiled lightly.
“You must remember: done well, this is a merciful euthanasia for the mice. Done poorly, it’s torture. Watch carefully.”
Ren Feifei turned her head away, reluctant to look. As a fellow female researcher, she had long been amazed — and disturbed — by her advisor’s disturbingly skilled euthanasia technique. To her, that was true cruelty.
Under the students’ glittering gazes, Xu Zhiyi held a 2B pencil in her left hand, pressing it on the mouse’s neck to immobilize it. Her slender right fingers gently stroked down the mouse’s back like caressing a lover, all the way to the tail.
“Your movements must be gentle… as gentle as possible…”
As she spoke, the tense, struggling mouse relaxed under her soft touch. At that exact moment of release, like lightning, Xu Zhiyi swiftly yanked the tail while pressing the pencil down sharply—
Crack.
A crisp sound.
The mouse’s body instantly went limp. Its spine snapped cleanly in two within its flesh.
The entire motion was neat and seamless. Xu Zhiyi hadn’t even looked at the mouse once.
The students’ exclamations caught in their throats. They weren’t sure whether to make a sound.
Because at the moment the mouse died, Xu Zhiyi’s expression didn’t even flicker. Confronted with such a cold and ruthless mentor, they suddenly worried about their future in this lab.
They stared, dumbfounded, as Xu Zhiyi calmly dissected the mouse, extracting the heart blood — finishing flawlessly in moments.
Xu Zhiyi spoke casually:
“For me, using the ‘pencil of death’ is a bit tedious, but it’s the easiest for beginners to master. Personally, I prefer simpler methods. Every mouse is a life. It’s important to let them die well, die peacefully. You must remember — just because we are dominant life forms doesn’t mean we should neglect respect for weaker ones. 85% of human genes are similar to mice. So let your research be worthy of their lives.”
With that, she clapped her hands, smiled gently at everyone, gave a few words of encouragement, and walked away.