After parting ways with Wen Xue, Mu Yue headed home. The bathtub was already filled with water and bath salts she had prepared earlier. The bath salts today were a soft pink, carrying a faint herbal scent, and boasted both skincare and sleep-aiding benefits.
Sinking lazily into the tub, Mu Yue went over her assets one by one, and mapped out the things she needed to handle next:
First, next Friday was the day in the original story when Mu Yue would run into the domineering CEO Wei Xuan at a private club, exactly between 8 PM and 10 PM.
Second, take out the scammer playboy, the next pawn in the womanizing male leads' group that was due to offer him support.
Third, the elimination mission for the Wen Yuanting New Year's Eve bug.
Oh right, and fourth, it was time to use that lawyer card. That deadbeat guy's follow-up incident from earlier required legal handling, and besides, she now owned a three-story property worth two to three billion yuan, so having a personal lawyer to handle any rental or related matters would keep things far more secure.
But a lawyer couldn't very well live in her house full-time. The bodyguard card and chef card were both for female characters, so having them live on-site for close, round-the-clock service made sense, but a lawyer was a different case. Should she buy her employees a property to live in? That didn't sound too bad, but what would be even more convenient was a much larger estate, where the main residence and the staff quarters were close but separate from each other.
The system spirits had told her that these character cards weren't real humans at all. Real humans had souls, and trading them was strictly forbidden. These cards were more like advanced AIs — the more skills they possessed, the higher their price tag.
If she let them live alone in separate places, there would be certain hidden risks. Mu Yue still leaned toward getting a much bigger property, but that goal wouldn't be easy to achieve anytime soon. Hmm, looks like she really needed to get serious about spending money to level up faster.
After the National Day holiday, the days at school flew by. The New Year seemed still three months away, but it was definitely necessary to take precautions early on. Right now, Wen Yuanting's whole family had already bought insurance, but insurance policies could be canceled. Before New Year's Eve, she had to make sure to remind Wen Yuanting to keep a close eye on his family, no matter what methods he had to use, to make sure they never canceled those policies.
Besides, Wen Yuanting's little sister was the target of one of the womanizing male leads, so that needed intervention too. Money was one part of the solution, but it was just as important to help her build a firm, unshakable mindset. On top of that, there was also the need to make sure she had solid, marketable cooking skills... As she thought this through, Mu Yue felt that the time left was far too short for a young girl to grow into all that. And since nothing bad had happened to her yet, if Wen Yuanting tried to tell her all this out of the blue, his sister would probably think he'd lost his mind. But what if their parents were the ones to bring it up?
Mu Yue stroked her chin, suddenly remembering that last time she'd used that dream prop on Wen Yuanting, she'd never asked him how it worked. Thinking back to how tense and shaken Wen Yuanting had been that day, there was no way he'd woken up and forgotten the whole thing.
That meant she could use the same set of props on his parents too. The prop didn't cost many points — compared to the 10,000 points she'd earned from her mission, it was just a tiny little investment. The whole Wen family loved each other deeply, so if the couple both had the exact same dream, even if it was just a dream, they'd never be careless enough to brush it off.
She jotted that down on her to-do list, planning to find a time to use the props on them. Once the whole family started discussing that shared dream, Wen Yuanting would know all three of them had the exact same nightmare, and that would make the warning hit so much harder. As for the little sister herself, Mu Yue had no plans to make her experience that dream. In the original story, the girl had already suffered far too much misfortune. This was real life, and there was no need to make her go through such a horrible nightmare.
On top of all that, there was the matter of the robbers. Mu Yue had already shown Wen Yuanting the portraits of all the criminals from that prison — of course, she didn't hand him raw data of every prisoner in the facility, just their headshots. Across the ten repeated timelines, Wen Yuanting had only ever caught glimpses of the people in the driver's seat and the passenger seat of the car that hit him, and not every single time. In the agony of the crash, the face of the person in the passenger seat had been clearer to him than the driver's.
As a result, out of all the portraits Mu Yue gave him, Wen Yuanting had pointed out several that looked familiar. That would take time to verify one by one, and she might not even get a definite lead on the exact targets until just a few days before New Year's Eve. The petty thief who used to pick locks for them was already gone, but there was no guarantee that gang of robbers wouldn't find new pawns to keep their operation going and grow even bolder.
Now back to the first two items on her list. The scammer playboy from the womanizing male leads had so many fake aliases in the original story, and only revealed his real name to the male lead once. But tracking someone down in a huge crowd of millions with just a single name was far too difficult. It looked like she could only catch that guy precisely when he ran into the trouble described in the original plot. Mu Yue marked down all the timelines related to him in the original novel, and pulled out every single description of his appearance traits and living habits from the text.
Even though this character didn't show up in the novel until much later, what if she ran into him earlier by chance? Mu Yue hated the thought of having the chance to take care of him earlier, but missing him just because she didn't recognize him when they crossed paths.
Last of all was the upcoming club incident with the domineering CEO, the closest thing on her schedule.
Mu Yue had already re-read that part of the original story. The domineering CEO was at the club that day at the invitation of a close friend, who had organized a private gathering. The exact excuse for the party didn't matter — what did matter was that during this get-together, the domineering CEO would hear the news that his white moonlight was about to return to the country.
On top of that, that group of friends had been egging the domineering CEO on to bring his stand-in out for everyone to see, so they could all get a good look at her and confirm if she really looked that much like his white moonlight. In the original plot, the news that his white moonlight was coming back jolted the domineering CEO back to his senses a little, so even though he could tell everyone's invitation was clearly ill-intentioned, he still called Wen Xue over to the club.
It was as if he was trying to draw a line somewhere, and when one of the men started harassing Wen Xue, asking the domineering CEO when he'd get tired of her, and saying he had his eye on her too, the domineering CEO had coldly said, "It's no big deal. If you like her, I'll send her over to you after a while."
Mu Yue had burst out laughing the second she read that part of the plot.
What on earth was that? The white moonlight the domineering CEO had been pining for was coming back, and he only found out about it from someone else? Those old white moonlight romance novels, she didn't even want to nitpick the plot holes like "she went abroad instead of dying" or "he couldn't even afford a plane ticket" — for crying out loud, the person he supposedly cared about was about to come home, and he was the last one to hear the news? How little attention had he been paying her?
Couldn't he even spring for a plane ticket? Or pay for an international phone plan?
And the rest of the club scene was even more over-the-top and cliché, the classic public humiliation of the female lead, trampling all over her dignity. In the face of capital power, the female lead didn't even have the right to say no.
Looking at it that way, it made total sense that Wen Xue had come up with the idea of starting a training class, teaming up with others to "farm" Wei Xuan for money.
Well, she didn't even need to go out of her way to stir up any conflicts at the club. Just thinking about that old plot made her want to stir up some chaos for that overbearing CEO.
There was still a week left to go, and besides the domineering CEO himself, every single one of those friends he hung out with was total garbage. Mu Yue was already looking for excuses to pick a fight with all of them. Talk about how the quality of your social circle says everything about you.
Before that, though, Mu Yue still needed to do more to polish her own public image. For people like Wei Xuan and his crowd, social status was the most important thing in the world.
So to sum it all up: she still had to spend money, and spend it fast!
The next morning, Mu Yue went through the pile of event invitations again. There were invites to celebrity galas, auctions, fashion shows, and more, and she picked three or four that caught her eye to attend.
The promotional poster for the fashion show immediately won her over. It was a certain brand's fall-winter haute couture collection, themed "Forest of Autumn," which blended elements of autumn plants and animals. The cover image was equal parts ethereal, romantic, lively, and charming, a far cry from the deeply muted, dark tones that most similar collections leaned into.
She was definitely going to that show. As for the other galas and auctions, she would attend them in her capacity as the owner of the three entire floors of the Boguang building. The galas were nothing special—she just needed to show her face a little to let people in A City know she existed. Of course Mu Yue knew how to socialize; without that skill set, she would never have been able to move into a luxury penthouse at such a young age, but now that she was back at eighteen, she simply didn't feel like putting on a social facade for no reason.
As for the auction? She was going there purely to spend money.
The auction featured antique jewelry, calligraphy and paintings, watches, and cars, with the cars as the main highlight. According to Rich Cat's valuation, the final transaction price would be roughly 70 million, a sum that would wipe out Mu Yue's entire savings in one go.
She already had three cars that she rotated between driving and riding in, so adding one more wouldn't make a difference. The main point was that spending such a large sum of money in such a casual, unhesitating way would solidify her public image even more, making the elite crowd of A City think twice before looking down on her. Not to mention the top power players, at the very least none of the younger generation would be foolish enough to pick a fight with her anymore.
It might seem a little high-profile, but there was nothing wrong with that. Being high-profile would save her from having to deal with a whole mess of stupid troubles later on. Of course, this time around she wouldn't act the way she did back when the university semester first started. She would take precautions in advance—for example, if anyone tried to bring up arranged marriage ties, she would shut them down immediately by claiming her family already had plans for her, to stop all the unsuitable suitors from swarming over to her in the first place.
On Sunday evening, Mu Yue went back to campus.
First thing Monday morning, she got up for her regular morning jog. On a Monday, there were barely a handful of people at the playground for a run. Much to her surprise, she actually ran into Wen Yuanting there, and the two of them stopped to chat for a little while.
During their conversation, Mu Yue casually brought up the fact that she wanted to see Wen Yuanting dance, and she successfully watched the senior's face turn bright red again. The sight of him looking so flustered made her feel even more eager.
Once she had all the New Year-related affairs sorted out, she would ask him if he was willing.
And of course, she didn't just want to watch him dance. She was never the type of person who would be satisfied with just a little look.
Mu Yue's schedule was pretty packed the whole week. After finishing her classes for the day, she would check the time and head out to the events she had agreed to attend. She had quite a few formal gowns at home that she'd barely ever gotten to wear. Setting everything else aside, just putting on all those beautiful, intricately designed outfits lifted her mood right up.
At the galas, Mu Yue arrived and left at her own pace. She made small talk with other guests while she was there, and since she was a young woman, most of the people who came up to talk to her were peers—though it was obvious they had been sent over by their elders to get acquainted with her.
There were young men and young women alike, all of whom had been told in advance about her status and spending power. No one dared look down on this new face, and everyone treated her with nothing but polite, proper, well-mannered respect.
Most importantly, the domineering CEO and his friends had shown up at the galas Mu Yue attended. It didn't matter to Mu Yue whether they had actually spotted her or not—all she needed was for them to know that a person like her existed.
Then came the auction. Mu Yue didn't bother with any of the other lots, she only kept her eyes on that one car and won it with a bid that left no room for competition.
Her lavish, unhesitating spending caused a stir both inside and outside the A City elite circle. Sure, every year super luxury cars were bought by someone, but every single one of those buyers had an uncommonly complicated, powerful background.
But Mu Yue? She was younger than all of them. Youth meant so many things. First she'd dropped two to three billion on three whole floors of the Boguang building, then 70 million on a vintage car, and before the semester even started she'd bought a top-tier luxury penthouse worth nearly 200 million.
All in less than a year. What kind of massive, powerful family could support that level of spending? This newcomer named Mu Yue was absolutely, definitely not someone you could afford to offend! Before long, countless older generation power players in A City were pulling their sons' and grandsons' ears, drilling it into their heads to never use their stupid brains and never harbor any silly, inappropriate ideas about Mu Yue.
Mu Yue never bothered to listen to any of those whispers going on behind her back. She just kept an eye on the clock, and soon enough, Friday rolled around.
