In late autumn, the weather had long since turned cold.
There were too many people attending the school anniversary. The originally reserved venue was not large enough, and there was no way to change the location at the last minute, so they had to build tents extending outwards.
Gusts of cold wind blew continuously.
The guests, however, didn't feel cold at all. Not only were they not cold, but their hearts were extremely fiery—
They had made the right choice to come!
Not only did they actually get to see Su Ning, but compared to other places, she seemed much more approachable here. Out of ten people who tried to talk to her, three were actually let through by the guards.
And one could even get a response from her!
In all fairness, the performances put on by the university students were of a very high standard. Just a single poetry recitation was loud enough to shake the heavens and was incredibly moving.
Unfortunately, very few people paid attention.
The occasional perfunctory applause was merely to show their own decency.
This situation made the mental journeys of the performing students pretty much the same: going on stage, being surprised by so many people, realizing something seemed wrong and doubting themselves, then feeling disappointed once they understood.
No one even wants to watch. What's the point of our performance?
Someone complained as soon as they got off the stage.
Instantly, it resonated with the others.
Is this still a school anniversary? If you ask me, we might as well rename it someone's private banquet!
Exactly, why didn't the school screen the guests they invited?
Who says they didn't screen them? Every single one of these people is a well-known figure in Beiping. Usually, you couldn't invite them even if you tried. It's just that the school made a miscalculation, not expecting that they wouldn't even do the bare minimum of keeping up appearances.
In the backstage, everyone was venting their frustrations freely.
However, they all deliberately lowered their voices... The previous incident had still left a profound impact on their pure minds.
Suddenly, a burst of fierce applause rang out.
The crowd felt a bit awkward.
Whose turn is it to perform? The effect was unexpectedly this good...
No one knew.
They had been gossiping too happily and forgot whose turn it was. Someone quietly lifted a corner of the backstage curtain. Looking through the small gap, the first person they saw wasn't the one on stage.
But rather—
Su Ning.
Thirty seconds ago.
Miss Su, what's wrong?
Originally relying on their previous acquaintance, plus being fully prepared before coming, Boss Duan clearly sensed that Su Ning was loosening up a bit. He was feeling fantastic when he saw her suddenly stop talking and turn her head. His heart skipped a beat.
Su Ning didn't answer him.
Clap, clap, clap.
Three light claps acted like a trigger. One, two, three, more and more people started clapping until it formed a wave-like roar.
Even though they didn't even know why.
Amidst the thunderous applause.
What happened?
Who went on stage? What's going on?
Such questions were endless, and they usually received a brief answer.
Miss Su clapped.
Oh.
That was enough. They clapped even more vigorously, and the applause even showed a trend of getting louder. Being in a favorable position, Boss Duan got his answer directly from the person herself.
My sister has taken the stage.
Su Ning smiled, looking at the tall, straight-postured girl speaking calmly on stage. To recover so quickly, she truly deserved to be the major villain who required a plot kill to be written off.
So it's Miss Pearl...
Omitting a long string of flattering and complimentary words, seeing that she wasn't impatient.
Boss Duan praised her while thinking.
He sighed with emotion in his heart.
Life's fortunes are truly hard to predict. A year ago, the Su family struggled even to feed and clothe themselves, and he wouldn't even bother to glance at them if they met. Now, the tables had completely turned.
How enviable.
If it weren't for the fact that everyone had thoroughly researched the Su family and found that tracing back several generations, they were all farmers digging food from the dirt, people would have long since gone to claim kinship.
Originally, some people didn't believe it.
Logically speaking, poverty shouldn't last more than three generations. The Su clan still lived in the suburbs of Beijing; surely there must have been someone wealthy and noble among their ancestors.
Ha, there really wasn't!
The most famous and successful person the Su clan had ever produced was that Grand Eunuch Su. If you talked about success qualities like being smart, ruthless, and domineering, they had them all, but somehow they just kept missing out on wealth and status by a hair.
They could only barely manage to act like local tyrants, bullying other villages...
Thinking this.
Boss Duan looked at Su Ning, who was listening attentively to the speech. Perhaps heaven had deliberately arranged it this way, concentrating all the missing luck and essence of the Su clan into one or two individuals.
First, it was the legendary Su Huaishan.
And then.
It was his daughter, Su Ning.
Such hard-working praise also brought returns. Boss Duan successfully achieved his goal, he could now get a piece of the oil project!
Regarding this, Su Ning had her own considerations.
It was about dividing the cake.
The newly opened Nanjing side needed to be won over, but one couldn't just forget the old friends for the new ones. That would seem too distant and chill the hearts of the old friends!
The system sneered.
Clearly, she was just overly paranoid, terrified of being kicked out by a united front from Nanjing. Restricting and guarding against them at every turn wasn't enough; she couldn't even sleep at night, which was why she thought of pulling the Beiping crowd into the arena to create checks and balances.
It couldn't even be bothered to point these things out.
......
Someone succeeded!
This news spread through the venue like a whirlwind. The people who had come specifically for the oil became even more frantic now, using all their strength to squeeze toward Su Ning.
Just in case.
Profit makes people crazy. In this situation, no relationships were of any use. Everyone was now a competitor; get out of the way.
What are you doing?
Antonio was furious; this was already the fifth time he had been pushed aside!
That person turned their head.
Hmm, he looked a bit familiar... Come to think of it, he seemed to have had a history with Miss Su. Oh, sorry, an extremely perfunctory apology. After saying that, the person turned back and continued to fight their way forward.
So what if they had a history.
That was old news.
Hmph, who didn't know that Miss Su had long since stopped paying attention to him? If it weren't for the consideration that Miss Su might go back to her old flame, and the fear of pillow talk against them.
He wouldn't even deserve to hear those words!
Poor Antonio was still waiting for the rest of the apology, only to be met with push after push from one person after another. By the time he reacted, he had already been shoved to the edge.
He was exasperated.
A bunch of vulgar guys chasing after fame and fortune.
He looked again at Su Ning across the countless people, his mood terrible. He didn't believe she hadn't noticed him... so it was on purpose.
Deliberately ignoring him, humiliating him.
Thinking this, his heart suddenly stirred; a similar situation seemed to have happened before.
In the past, when he got deeply involved with girls he liked, the beginning was always passionate and beautiful. He would put everything into it, hoping to fall completely in love—
Just like his parents.
But every single time.
Every single time, the result was failure.
Although disappointed, Antonio would never be discouraged by this. Sometimes he was very lucky, and right after confirming there was no future, he would meet the next person who made his heart flutter.
The only bad thing was.
The previous girl often couldn't be as free-spirited as he was, even if he had sincerely made it clear that they could continue to be friends in the future.
Most people would still pester him endlessly.
The remaining small portion.
Seemed different. They wouldn't pester him at all. Even the next time they met, they would treat him like air, and they would have a new partner by their side, acting intimately.
Yet he could always coincidentally run into them.
Antonio felt it was very strange, so he had gone to ask his mother.
Silly child, they are just playing mind games.
His mother gently told him.
Some girls are twisted and scheming, always believing that they can win true love by playing tricks, provoking men, and making them jealous.
Men are generally more straightforward in this regard.
They usually cannot see through it.
Sometimes, they fall into these traps and mistake them for true love, leading to a lifetime of misery. His mother had been afraid that Antonio would be deceived as well, so she had carefully broken down these common female tactics for him.
Thinking about it now, could Su Ning have...
He then realized that Su Ning's sudden change in attitude happened right after he ran into Wan'er on the street.
Therefore...
Antonio smiled.
Then he sighed.
If he hadn't been completely out of time, perhaps he wouldn't have needed to orchestrate this whole hero-saving-the-beauty act in the first place.
A person next to him gave him a strange look. This guy was smiling one moment and sighing the next. Could there be something wrong with his head? They had heard that such illnesses were contagious.
The person subtly backed away a little.
With the crowd being so dense, stepping back meant bumping into someone else. This made it even worse, practically confirming that the guy was a total lunatic!
...
On the other side.
Su Ning watched as Guan Jixing was bumped into Antonio and caught by him. At that moment, a line of poetry flashed through her mind, one that suited neither the occasion nor the people involved:
When the golden wind of autumn meets the jade dew, their encounter surpasses countless others in the mortal realm.
