In Room 404 of Huaqing University.
Jiang Muyao lay sprawled in her chair, staring at the freshly refreshed [Satisfaction: 99.8] on her phone's backend, on the verge of a cardiac event.
"Damn it!"
The curse ground out through her clenched teeth; her thumb nearly cracked the screen.
No, seriously, what is WRONG with college students nowadays?
Hire a few handsome guys to serve their food and patrol the halls, and they award 99.8 points on the spot? Where's the backbone of today's youth? Where's the healthy distrust of capitalists?
And the Huaqing University president—did water get into his brain too? She's out here spending the family's money with malicious intent, and he responds with a thank-you letter AND a gift of land? What is that nonsense?!
"No. This cannot continue."
Jiang Muyao dug her nails into her temples, eyes going vicious.
If buying hearts with money makes satisfaction skyrocket, then she'll just have to deploy clauses so overbearing they're genuinely hateable!
What do female college students hate most?
Room inspections! Lights-out! Anyone meddling with their schedules and freedom!
And as it happened, Room 404 housed the whole department's certified super-grinder—Lin Chu.
Lin Chu was the textbook poverty-stricken academic star. For the 8,000-yuan top scholarship, she ground through every night until three or four in the morning. She was thin as a bundle of sticks, wound tight as a bowstring, tear ducts on a hair trigger—and a dropped needle in that room could start a war.
Look across any women's dorm on campus and you'd find the same breed of conflict: GPAs, grad-school recommendations, roommates at each other's throats.
"If I forcibly strip them of their right to grind—mandatory lights-out, mandatory blackout, credit deductions for anyone caught studying late—those GPA-worshipping grinder queens will treat me like a blood enemy, and complaint letters will flood the academic affairs office within minutes!"
Jiang Muyao slapped her thigh. The idea was PERFECT.
This strike hit the exact jugular of the modern college student.
No time like the present.
At 5 p.m., invoking her trustee privileges, Jiang Muyao had the facilities department post eye-searing red-and-black notices in every corridor of the district:
[Huaqing Women's Dorm District "Anti-Hustle" Special Management Regulations (Trial)]:
[Article 1: Effective immediately, power and network access will be cut building-wide at 22:30 sharp every night! Desk lamps, power banks, and all forms of nighttime studying are strictly prohibited!]
[Article 2: Everyone must be in bed by 23:00. Male-model security stewards wearing noise-canceling headphones will patrol the corridors; any typing, page-turning, or vocabulary-drilling sounds detected in a room will be logged as a violation!]
[Article 3: As compensation for emotional damages, the district hereby establishes the "Paid Slacking and Romance Fund"! Students who sleep on time, binge shows, game, date, or get their nails done may claim a 2,000-yuan monthly cash subsidy from the facilities department! If a room's average grade drops at finals, the whole room wins a seven-day Maldives vacation!]
The moment the bright red notices went up, the corridors exploded.
...
10:25 p.m.
The air in Room 404 was thick as lead.
Lin Chu's hands pressed down hard on the brick-thick Advanced Macroeconomics, eye rims full of bloodshot threads, lips cracked, her whole body shivering.
"Five more minutes... five more minutes until the power cuts..."
Her lips twitched neurotically; her nails dug holes through the pages, and a tear splatted onto the paper, blooming into a blot of ink:
"No—there's a midterm next week, I can't sleep... if I sleep, the class next door will pass me... if I don't get this semester's scholarship, I can't pay tuition next term, and what about Mom's medicine..."
She hadn't had a proper meal in days; her stomach spasmed, acid rising, throat tightening. She lowered her head and dry-heaved twice.
The wall clock ticked over to 10:30 exactly.
Click.
The incandescent bulb overhead died instantly, and the entire building plunged into dead black.
"NO!"
Lin Chu's voice tore as she screamed, lunging to slap the desk-lamp switch. Click, click, click—the circuit was already cut; the switch did nothing at all.
"Give me back my light! Give me back my electricity! You're trying to kill me! What do you rich girls know?! You have NO idea what I went through to get here!"
Lin Chu broke completely. She slid down onto the concrete floor, hugging her knees, nails biting into the soft flesh of her own arms, tears and snot smeared across her face.
Gu Qing and Su Xiaoman shrank back behind their chairs, hands half-lifted toward her, frozen, helpless.
The door hinges gave a small creak.
Jiang Muyao strode in, trailing a draft of cold air.
Tap.
Her phone flashlight blazed white. She snatched Advanced Macroeconomics out of Lin Chu's arms and flung it toward the plastic trash bin on the balcony!
The book thudded into the bucket.
"What gives you the right to throw my book?!" Lin Chu shrieked, diving after it.
Jiang Muyao's right hand shot out, clamped around Lin Chu's icy, bony wrist, and hauled her back. With her left she unzipped her track jacket, produced a black-and-gold bank card, and slapped it onto the metal desk with a crack.
"Is crying going to memorize your formulas? Or keep you from being carried straight from the exam hall to the crematorium?"
Jiang Muyao's brows knitted; her voice dropped low, hard as a paving stone:
"Look at your face. Those eye circles are dark enough to ink a brush with, and your heart's pounding like a busted motor. Keep this up two more days and you'll miss the scholarship AND land a bed in the ICU!"
She tapped the card's face.
"The password is the last six digits of your student ID. There's a hundred thousand in it—first installment of your slacking fund."
"Now go wash up and brush your teeth, and be in bed with your eyes shut in ten minutes! If I see your feet touch the floor before eight tomorrow morning, I'll dock every cent of this semester's slacking subsidy. Am I understood?!"
Lin Chu stood frozen on the concrete, swaying.
Her gaze dropped to the black-gold card, then traveled up—up to Jiang Muyao, standing at the balcony's wind gap. The tall figure in thin pajamas was blocking the very spot where the draft came through hardest.
A hundred thousand.
This money could cover all four years of tuition and fees, with enough left to keep her mother stocked with imported medicine for months.
Jiang Muyao hadn't come to torment her at all.
She had come in the most high-handed, most unreasonable posture imaginable, and simply yanked her back from the edge of the cliff.
"Muyao..."
Lin Chu's chest heaved; the bowstring wound tight for months snapped at last. She crashed into Jiang Muyao's arms, arms locking around her waist, tears and snot wiping all over her:
"I'm sorry... I used to badmouth you behind your back... I thought you were just some mean rich girl... why... why did you only come NOW?!"
Jiang Muyao, nearly suffocated by the death grip, stood rooted, both hands hovering in midair, her brain a wall of question marks.
No, seriously, are you unwell?
I'm BULLYING you right now. I'm trampling your dignity with money! Why are you sobbing your heart out and hugging me?!
Beep.
From the shadows outside the door came a faint electronic pulse.
Under a dorm-assistant's uniform, Lu Jingchen—freshly enrolled as an auditing special assistant—stood pinned in place in the darkness by the door, clutching a micro device, throat bobbing.
Through the crack in the door, he had watched everything unfold.
At first he'd assumed this Jiang family princess was running amok, sabotaging the facilities on purpose to force a malicious bankruptcy.
That was not it at all.
She had stepped on the single most painful spot, and with a set of rules that looked like pure hooliganism, dragged a bottom-tier student—one about to be driven mad by poverty and hyper-competition—back from the brink.
Crude methods. Surgical aim.
"Abolish the grind, richly reward health... so THIS is the management model she's designing?"
Lu Jingchen drew a breath, a thin sheen of sweat on his palms. He backed two steps out of the motion-sensor light's range and typed rapidly into the evaluation committee's encrypted terminal:
[Evaluation Report No. 01: Jiang Muyao has implemented an anti-hustle, human-centered strategy, using inverted metrics to resolve an extreme psychological crisis among the student population. Extremely high practical value. Recommend the evaluation panel directly confer a first-class Strategic Innovation commendation and commit an additional fifty million in interest-free support funds.]
The delivery chime blinked soundlessly down the corridor.
In the dorm, Jiang Muyao, sweating through her clothes, had wrestled the limp Lin Chu under the covers.
She dragged her feet back to the desk and picked up her phone, thinking: after a mess like that, satisfaction HAD to have cratered through the floor.
The instant the screen lit, the family contest system pushed a bold, gold-embossed announcement that stung her eyes:
[Supreme Bulletin of the Family Evaluation Committee: Congratulations, Contestant Jiang Muyao! Ranked first in financial activation rate, first in recorded satisfaction history, and a perfect score in strategic innovation—awarded an additional fifty million investment bonus!]
Staring at that blinding "fifty million," Jiang Muyao's vision went dark and her chest seized; she nearly keeled over on the spot.
She raised a hand and pinched her own thigh. Hard.
It hurt.
Where exactly had it all gone wrong—why was going bankrupt THIS hard?!