She didn’t consider herself someone who felt guilty easily. The experiment back then wasn’t carried out by her own hands.
Nor did she personally order the accident involving Lin Yuanzhou and Lin Anping. She hadn’t even known who they were until today.
But the problem was, if she hadn’t had that absurd idea back then, this experiment might never have started. If the experiment hadn’t started, Lin Jianqing’s parents might not have been involved.
If they hadn’t been involved, Lin Jianqing wouldn’t be sitting at his desk in Lingqi Network right now, quietly organizing some irrelevant material for her.
He should still be attending classes normally at school, his mother wouldn’t be lying in a hospital ward, and his father wouldn’t have died in that Border City incident. He wouldn’t have been easily kept by her side with a contract because of money either.
Thinking of this, Shen Huaixue suddenly felt a bit irritated. She hated this kind of reasoning, as if all clues came full circle and pointed back at herself.
‘So all of this is because of me?’ Shen Huaixue asked herself inwardly, but her heart gave no answer.
She picked up the coffee on the table and took a sip. The cold, bitter taste spread across her tongue. Shen Huaixue frowned and put the cup back down.
Just then, the office door was knocked.
“Enter.”
Zhang Jie pushed the door open, holding a new document.
“President Shen, this is the supplementary material just compiled.”
Shen Huaixue looked up.
“Put it down.”
Zhang Jie placed the file on the table but didn’t leave immediately. She glanced at Shen Huaixue’s expression and cautiously asked, “Is there still some issue with Student Lin’s family?”
Shen Huaixue’s hand paused as she flipped through the file. Then, with a natural expression, she said, “No.”
Zhang Jie nodded.
“That’s good. Student Lin is doing okay today, and he’s been working quite diligently.”
Shen Huaixue’s gaze stopped on the document. After a moment, she asked softly, “Is he at his workstation?”
“Yes, he was just organizing materials.”
“Mm.”
Shen Huaixue didn’t say anything else.
After Zhang Jie left, the office fell silent again. Shen Huaixue opened the new supplementary material. This material was more sensitive than the previous ones. It contained some internal codes from the experimental project back then.
Project objective: a blurry scrawl, as if it had been erased. However, Shen Huaixue knew the final outcome. Project risk: extremely high. Failure result: test subject collapse, spiritual pollution, rift factor backlash, rapid lifespan reduction.
Shen Huaixue continued reading. One research note was highlighted in red.
“This reaction does not exhibit stable awakening characteristics, but possesses rare mental threshold resilience. Recommend long-term observation.” On the next line was another experiment record. These were from early experiments by the Lin couple.
Shen Huaixue’s gaze stopped on those words. Her fingers unconsciously tightened. This record didn’t have names, only a vague code. M-17… even the code was incomplete.
The remaining documents were top secret. Even using all the connections she could mobilize, Shen Huaixue couldn’t find the relevant information. In the end, there was only a blurry experiment code.
What could this be? Maybe only the Lin couple knew what that code meant. Rather than digging it out from those cold files of the Shen Family.
She picked up her phone and dialed a number. After the call connected, a woman’s respectful voice came from the other end.
“Miss.”
“Try to mobilize the family’s connections and find the Lin couple’s early experiment files.”
Shen Huaixue’s voice was calm. The other person paused.
“If we investigate everything, it might involve the main family’s sealed archives. It might take some time.”
“That’s fine.”
“Understood.”
After hanging up, Shen Huaixue placed her phone face down on the desk. She looked outside the office, or more precisely, in Lin Jianqing’s direction.
She didn’t really care what the Lin couple had done early on. What she cared about now was that her past frivolous actions might have invisibly affected Lin Jianqing’s life. And also affected her own, but perhaps this was the opportunity for the two of them to meet.
But… he knew nothing. He didn’t know that his parents might have died from human error, nor that his mother’s mental breakdown might not be simple PTSD. And all of this—Shen Huaixue in this office was one of the original sources of everything.
Shen Huaixue was silent for a long time. Then, she put the documents on the desk into the folder one by one. The sound of the folder closing was soft, as if some secret was being sealed away again.
Before leaving work in the afternoon, Lin Jianqing sent the organized materials to Zhang Jie. After checking, Zhang Jie quickly replied with a “Good work.” Lin Jianqing breathed a sigh of relief, shut down his computer, and packed up to leave.
He needed to go back to school today to continue working on his homework. He also hadn’t finished the practice draft Guan Ju assigned last time.
When walking out of the company, Lin Jianqing passed by the President’s Office. The door was closed, there was no sound inside, and he didn’t stop.
For him, it was actually easier that Shen Huaixue didn’t show up today. He wished it could be like this every day. Being able to work normally, clock out normally, and go back to school normally was already a rare peaceful day.
Lin Jianqing stepped into the elevator, pressed the first floor button, and the doors slowly closed. And just before the doors fully closed, the President’s Office door silently opened a crack.
Shen Huaixue stood behind the door, looking toward the elevator. She didn’t call out to Lin Jianqing, nor did she send him a message like usual to come over. She just watched quietly. Only when the elevator numbers descended bit by bit did she look away.
She’d let it go for today. She had many things to investigate. At least until she figured things out, she didn’t want Lin Jianqing to notice anything unusual.
Rather than investigating, it was more like… facing Lin Jianqing, this was the first and only time in Shen Huaixue’s life that she felt guilt.
The next two days, Lin Jianqing lived surprisingly peacefully. So peaceful that at first he was even a bit unaccustomed to it. Big. Life seemed to have briefly returned to its proper track.
Of course, it was only surface deep. Lin Jianqing knew very well that his life now couldn’t really return to normal. He was just afraid that Shen Huaixue was holding back a big move.
But in these two days, Shen Huaixue didn’t suddenly send him messages to come over, didn’t make him change into strange clothes, and didn’t press him in front of the mirror to teach him all that messy stuff.
This actually made Lin Jianqing a bit puzzled, but it was just puzzlement. He wasn’t idle enough to actively wonder why Shen Huaixue wasn’t bothering him.
That woman not showing up was, no matter how you looked at it, a good thing for him. At least these two days, he could finally go to class on time, finish homework on time, and clock in at the company on time, like an ordinary college student.
Although Lingqi Network itself was Shen Huaixue’s turf, as long as she didn’t show up, everyone else in the company was actually easy to get along with.
Sister Zhang still took good care of him, and his colleagues didn’t deliberately make things difficult for him because he was an intern.
If not for that contract and Shen Huaixue herself, Lin Jianqing might even think this job was really good. High salary, close to school, and not too demanding—no matter how you looked at it, it seemed like a pie falling from the sky.
But the problem was, of course, it wasn’t a real pie. By the time Lin Jianqing saw it clearly, he had already fallen into a trap.