The funeral lasted a full week. By Saturday morning, the paperwork was finally done, and the main branch of the Su family prepared to head back to H City.
With the land and country house already sold, their tactics flipped. Since they couldn't bully her out of the property deeds, they turned on a fake, smothering affection. They spent the entire morning trying to convince Su Nian to move into the main family mansion once college started, clearly aiming to get close to her cash inheritance. Su Nian agreed to the living arrangement just to get them to leave, but she flatly refused to ride back with them, choosing to stay behind for the rest of the summer break.
By noon, the house was empty and quiet again.
That was when the local investigative report hit her secure phone. Su Nian scrolled through the file, her brow furrowing. The men on the jungle road weren't random thugs; they were a professional hit squad hired specifically to kidnap her. But the trail stopped there. The men didn't know who the ultimate client was, and before her team could extract anything useful, every single member of the squad committed suicide in their cells.
The masked man was an even bigger dead end.
He had deliberately left a trail on the local traffic cameras, but it led straight to a common military transport vehicle—one used by multiple units without a specific assigned driver—which had gone directly into the regional barracks. The official police report concluded that the masked man had simply stumbled into the kidnappers and started a fight over a personal dispute. According to the initial statements from the surviving thugs, the masked man and the gang had killed a wild boar in the brush and fought over who got to keep the carcass.
Su Nian let out a sharp, disbelief-filled laugh. A wild boar. It was the most ridiculous cover story she had ever heard, but with the gang dead, there was no one left to question.
She tossed the phone onto the table, frustrated. She had expected this incident to give her a thread to pull, but she had hit a brick wall. Still, the mystery of the masked man stuck in her head.
She walked out to the second-floor balcony and sat down, staring blankly at the yard. A stray cat she'd taken in nestled in her lap, its blue eyes tracking a bird while it made low, chirping sounds.
"Su Nian, hot tea."
Lana set a steaming cup on the small table. Su Nian didn't look up, her eyes fixed on the bare maple trees at the edge of the property, where a few dead leaves clung stubbornly to the branches.
"It's freezing out here," Lana said, checking her watch. "Why don't you come inside? Ever since Miss Hannah went back to her unit, you barely move."
Before Su Nian could answer, her phone vibrated. It was a short video file from Luna.
Su Nian tapped the screen. As the video played, her grip on the phone tightened.
The footage showed the exact same military transport car from the surveillance report—same make, same license plate—pulling up to the gates of No. 1 College in H City. A young man stepped out. The camera only caught his back, but his build, his height, and the way he walked perfectly matched the masked man from the jungle path.
The dead end had just opened up.
"Lana," Su Nian said, her voice dropping its lazy tone. "Tell Luna to run a full background check on this guy. I want to know who he is."
She stood up, the cat slipping from her lap. If this guy was hanging around No. 1 College, she wasn't going to wait until next month to start her semester. She needed to get to the city now.
"Change of plans," Su Nian said. "We're leaving tonight. Let's go grab some essentials from the village market before it gets dark."
Lana didn't ask questions. She and Luna weren't just childhood friends; they were military-trained assistants and high-level hackers capable of bypassing almost any firewall. If there was a digital footprint to find, they would find it.
Su Nian called Uncle Mu, a trusted family driver who knew the mountain shortcuts better than anyone, and asked him to prepare a low-key vehicle for a night drive. It was a ten-hour trip from Y Village to H City, but since it was summer, the roads were clear of mud and snow.
By the time night fell, the house was packed. Su Nian walked down the front steps just as Uncle Mu pulled up in an unmarked black sedan.
She slid into the back seat, rolling the window down an inch to let the cool, pine-scented night air clear her head. The exhaustion of the past week finally caught up to her, and she let out a long yawn.
Uncle Mu glanced at her through the rearview mirror. "Tired?"
"Yeah," she muttered, leaning her head back against the seat and closing her eyes.
Within minutes, she fell asleep. As the car wound through the dark mountain passes, she had a strange, vivid dream. She saw the masked man again, fighting off the kidnappers, but the memory twisted into a fast-paced escape through the city streets with him by her side.
When she woke up with a start a few hours later, her heart was racing. She frowned, annoyed at herself. Why was she looking forward to seeing him again?
She forced her mind back to reality. She had more important things to worry about than a mysterious stranger. She remembered her grandfather's final words, spoken in the quiet of his hospital room before he passed. He wanted her to live a normal life, finish her degree, and quietly build up her strength before taking over the Su family assets. 'Don't fight them yet,' he had warned her, referring to Su Fan and the greedy elders. 'Wait until you have a firm foothold in the business world.'
He had also left her a final, cryptic clue about her biological family, along with a heavy warning: finding them would bring massive danger, and she had to be strong enough to survive it.
To do that, she had a plan. Her immediate goal wasn't just to attend college; it was to get an internship at Lin Corp, the massive conglomerate that dominated H City's economy. Her grandfather and the founder of Lin Corp had been brothers-in-arms decades ago. While the elder Lin had left the military to build his business empire, her grandfather had stayed in the service, eventually leaving the management of the secondary Su family businesses to his nephew, Su Fan, because his own son had chosen the military over corporate life.
If she wanted to take back what belonged to her, she needed to learn how the corporate world worked from the inside out, and Lin Corp was the perfect training ground.
The dark mountain roads slowly gave way to wide, multi-lane asphalt. In the distance, the massive, glowing skyline of H City began to cut through the night.
As the first pale light of the dawn broke over the skyscrapers, the car crossed the city limits. A new journey was starting.