Chapter 28: Obstruction by Force

The days after going public looked calm on the surface, but the things hiding in the dark hadn't disappeared.

When Sheng Linyou went out to buy things, people still stole glances at him now and then.

But those looks were different from before. No longer open contempt—now it was a subtler kind of scrutiny, sweeping from the side of his neck down to his wrist, confirming that the collar was truly gone, then sliding away again.

Once, while he was waiting in line to pay at a convenience store, the man ahead of him turned back for a look, lips moving, and squeezed a murky line out through his teeth: "Who knows what tricks he used to climb his way up."

It wasn't loud. But the checkout counter was so quiet that the words landed in the air, crystal clear.

Sheng Linyou ignored him, paid, and walked out.

But when he got back to the car, his fingers rested on the steering wheel for a moment before he started the engine.

That feeling of being labeled was like a layer of clear tape that wouldn't wash off. You thought you'd peeled it all away, and then when you raised your hand at a certain angle it caught the light again, telling you plainly that the layer was still there.

Yin Xigui learned about it because Zhou Ling mentioned it in passing during a routine report.

At the time Yin Xigui was signing a procurement contract, his pen gliding smoothly across the paper through the final stroke. Then he looked up at Zhou Ling.

"Who said it to him."

"A stranger, at the convenience store checkout."

"Find out who he is."

Zhou Ling acknowledged the order without asking anything further.

But his steps were half a beat slower than usual as he walked out. He could hear the tone of that sentence—no inflection, no anger—but beneath that voice, flat as a lake frozen all the way through, something was slowly gathering.

That night, as the two of them sat side by side on the study sofa, Yin Xigui suddenly asked, apropos of nothing: "Brother, did anything happen when you went out today?"

Sheng Linyou's hand didn't stop turning the page. "No."

"What about the convenience store?"

Sheng Linyou's fingers paused at the edge of the page. He turned his head and glanced at him.

Yin Xigui was curled up at the other end of the sofa, hugging his knees, watching him. His expression was ordinary, but the sharpness in his eyes wasn't entirely hidden.

"You heard?"

"Mm."

"It was nothing. Just one sentence."

Yin Xigui didn't answer.

But he hugged his knees tighter, rested his chin on them, and stared out the window at the darkening dusk in silence for a long time.

Sheng Linyou closed his book and looked at his profile, noticing that his lips had pressed into a very thin line.

The following week, Yin Xigui put forward a proposal at the Yin family's executive meeting: abolishing the lower-tier system.

The conference room was filled with a full circle of people—finance, legal affairs, the heads of several core subsidiaries.

Yin Xigui sat at the head of the table, a printed proposal before him. On the title page were the words "A Proposal on the Abolition of the Current Lower-Tier Status System," the wording dry and businesslike.

He spoke quietly, but the room was so silent that every word reached everyone clearly.

He summarized the main points: eliminating the legal classification of lower-tier status, purging all existing lower-tier records, repealing every associated restriction.

When he finished his last word, the room stayed quiet for seven or eight seconds.

Then someone coughed, and after that people began to speak, one after another.

"Family Head, the foundation of that system is the entire social hierarchy. Touching it means touching a great many people's interests."

"And the current regulations have been enforced for decades. Abolishing them would involve far too many legal provisions."

"The families outside who cooperate with us keep lower-tiers of their own. If we abolish the system unilaterally, will it affect those partnerships?"

Yin Xigui listened. Then he pushed the pages of the proposal to the center of the table.

He waited until everyone had finished before speaking, his voice as steady as ever: "I know this proposal has far-reaching implications. That's why today it's only being raised for discussion. I am not demanding immediate execution."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over every face present.

"But I will see this through to the end. If any of you have concerns, submit them to me in writing, and I will deal with them."

After the meeting ended, Yin Xigui's pace back to his office was unhurried, but Zhou Ling, following behind him, could see that his shoulders were drawn a little tighter than usual.

He pushed open the office door, went in, and sat down. He didn't start approving documents right away; he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a while.

That afternoon, Yin Xigui received the first written objection. Then a second, a third—by evening, a small stack had piled up in the corner of his desk.

The wording was never fierce, but the core message was the same: this proposal touched too many things, and it should not have been raised while the current Family Head's seat had only just settled beneath him.

Yin Xigui flipped through the stack once, put it in a drawer, and locked it.

He didn't tell Sheng Linyou about any of it.

He never even mentioned the seven characters "abolish the lower-tier system" in front of him.

He was afraid that if Sheng Linyou knew, he would say things like "don't do this for me" again, would furrow his brow again, worrying that Yin Xigui was throwing himself into the fire.

Sheng Linyou found out three days later.

That evening he went out to pick up dry cleaning, and in the alley beside the old house, someone blocked his way.

Three men, each built half a size broader than him, their faces expressionless, standing in the middle of the alley cutting off the path.

One of them knocked the dry-cleaning bag out of Sheng Linyou's hand. The bag burst open, the folded shirts inside sliding out into the dust.

Sheng Linyou took half a step back.

He looked at their positioning—two in front, one behind, sealing off both ends of the alley.

The wariness that lingered at the back of his neck was still there. The memories from two years ago, of being caged and cuffed, were like a barb buried under skin—not painful normally, but grinding against a nerve whenever pressure hit.

He spoke with his voice pressed very low. "Who sent you."

The first man didn't answer. He just moved.

When the fist landed against the side of Sheng Linyou's ribs, the force staggered him back a step, and his lower back cracked against a trash bin at the alley's edge with a muffled thud.

The second man's fist swung in from the left and grazed his cheekbone, dragging a line of burning pain with it.

Sheng Linyou blocked twice. He had been a professional racer once; his reactions were much faster than an ordinary man's. But the three of them worked together with practiced coordination—one entangling his arm while another struck from his blind spot.

When he was shoved against the wall, his shoulder ground against the rough brick, the cloth and skin scraping into a hot, raw ache.

The whole thing took less than two minutes. The three men stopped and left, their footsteps fading fast toward the mouth of the alley.

Quiet settled back into the alley, leaving only Sheng Linyou, sliding slowly down the wall until he was sitting against it.

The dry-cleaning lay scattered at his feet, the white shirt stained with dust and a few drops of blood.

His blood. It had seeped from the scrape on his cheekbone and traced a thin line down to his jaw, where it had dried.

He sat there catching his breath for a while, then lifted a hand to feel his ribs.

A dull ache pulsed steadily up from that patch of skin. He took a few breaths before pushing himself up against the wall.

He bent down, gathered the scattered shirts back into the bag, wiped the blood from his face with his cuff, and kept walking.

As he came out of the alley's mouth, sunlight slanted down through a seam in the clouds and landed on the edge of the fresh wound on his cheekbone.

He squinted slightly and didn't stop.

By the time he reached the gate of the old house, Zhou Ling was in the courtyard talking with someone. One look at him and Zhou Ling froze, hurrying over.

"Mr. Sheng—"

"Don't let him see."

Sheng Linyou's voice was flat, but the strained steadiness underneath was audible. "If he asks, tell him I fell on the way."

Zhou Ling looked at him for a few seconds, gaze falling on the bloodstain on his cheekbone and the scraped fabric at his shoulder. His lips moved, but nothing came out.

He stepped aside and watched Sheng Linyou cross the courtyard and walk through the front door.

Sheng Linyou's steps stayed steady as he went upstairs to the bedroom, the dull ache in his ribs pressed down and contained—every step a confirmation that he could still walk.

He entered the bedroom, closed the door, leaned against it for a few breaths. Then he went to the bathroom and turned on the tap to wash his face.

When the cold water hit the wound on his cheekbone it stung enough to make the corner of his eye twitch. He wiped the water away with the back of his hand and looked at himself in the mirror—a scrape three or four centimeters long on his cheekbone, the edges reddened; along his jaw, a dried line of blood already thinned by the water.

He lifted his shirt hem and checked: a bruise darkening on the side of his ribs, the skin there warmer than around it when he pressed his palm to it.

He lowered his shirt, rolled up the bloodstained cuff, opened the bedroom door, and went out.

Yin Xigui was downstairs in the study, reading documents.

Sheng Linyou stopped at the study doorway, leaning against the frame without going in. At the sound, Yin Xigui looked up—and the moment his eyes landed on Sheng Linyou's face, he seemed to hit pause.

He set down his pen, rose, and came around the desk toward the door.

When he reached him, his gaze traveled slowly from the wound on his cheekbone to the scraped fabric at his shoulder, then stopped on the faint raised outline of a bruise hidden beneath his shirt hem.

He said nothing the entire time, lips pressed into a line, the color draining from his face by a degree within seconds.

"Who." Yin Xigui's voice was pitched extremely low, like a string twisted to the very brink of its limit.

"Strangers. The alley. Three of them."

Yin Xigui's breath caught for a beat.

He looked at the injuries on Sheng Linyou's face and reached out to touch them—then stopped midair, curled his fingers, and drew his hand back.

He turned, picked up his phone from the desk, and dialed Zhou Ling. When the call connected, he said only one sentence: "Investigate. The alley beside the old house, this evening." Then he hung up.

He walked back to Sheng Linyou, and this time he reached out and gently lifted his chin, tilting his head to examine the scrape on the cheekbone.

His fingertip never touched the wound. It hovered an inch above the edge, trembling slightly.

"Does it hurt." His voice finally cracked.

"It doesn't."

"Liar."

Sheng Linyou looked at him.

Yin Xigui's eyes were already rimmed with red, but he blinked hard and forced that sheen of water back, his throat bobbing once.

"Don't cry." Sheng Linyou's thumb brushed the corner of his eye.

Yin Xigui shut his eyes hard. When he opened them again the sheen had been pulled back, and nothing remained in them but a cold that had frozen solid.

He lowered his hand, stepped back, and picked up his jacket.

"Where are you going." Sheng Linyou asked.

"To take care of something."

"Yin Xigui—"

"I won't do anything."

Yin Xigui stopped at the door without turning around, his voice coming from over his shoulder, even and steady—but every word scraped like a blade across ice.

"Just so they know what the consequences are for touching you."

The door closed.

Footsteps faded fast down the corridor.

Sheng Linyou leaned against the study doorframe and looked down at the faint trace of blood on his cuff that hadn't fully washed out.

Outside the window, dusk was sinking.

He stood there a while, then slowly made his way to the sofa and sat down. The bruised patch on his ribs pulled as he settled; he frowned faintly, then leaned back into the cushions and closed his eyes.

From the far end of the corridor came the sound of the front door opening and closing.

Then, silence.