Chapter 30: Making Him Worry Again

The reconciliation that night lasted until dawn. Yin Xigui fell asleep in Sheng Linyou's arms, traces of not-yet-dried tears still on his lashes, his breathing gradually evening out.

Sheng Linyou kept holding him, sitting on the floor against the edge of the bed. His back went numb from the hard frame, but he didn't move.

He looked down at the slight furrow between Yin Xigui's brows even in sleep, and smoothed it gently with his thumb; the two fine lines slowly relaxed under his touch.

Pink hair spilled across his arm, a few strands caught in the buttonholes of his cuff. He didn't try to free them.

When dawn was near, he carried Yin Xigui onto the bed and lay down beside him.

The two of them were finally lying in the same bed again, half a fist of distance between them. In his sleep, Yin Xigui shifted closer, forehead pressed to his shoulder, fingers unconsciously clutching the front of his pajama shirt.

Sheng Linyou closed his eyes and listened to his steadied breathing. The string in his chest that had been wound too tight for too many days finally loosened a little.

But he knew it wasn't over.

The wounds on Yin Xigui's body, the resistance to abolishing the lower-tier system, and all those hands hidden in the dark, waiting to reach out again—none of it would vanish because of one confession.

In the gradually brightening light his thoughts ran on and on, and when sleepiness finally crept over him, only one thought remained in his head: he had to do something.

He couldn't keep waiting for Yin Xigui to carry it all alone.

The next morning, after Yin Xigui went out, Sheng Linyou went to find Zhou Ling.

Zhou Ling was giving instructions to a subordinate in the courtyard. When he saw him approach, he hastily wrapped up the conversation and came over, his polite expression edged with caution.

After telling Yin Xigui the truth about Sheng Linyou's injury last time, he hadn't been punished, but he had clearly sensed the Family Head's suppressed fury.

"Is there something you need, Mr. Sheng?"

"Yin Xigui is pushing the proposal to abolish the lower-tier system."

Zhou Ling's expression shifted, but he didn't deny it: "The Family Head did raise it. Brought it out at the senior staff meeting last week. It hasn't formally gone through the process yet."

"Where's the resistance."

Zhou Ling hesitated.

He looked at Sheng Linyou's calm face. The old scars on it had faded to nearly invisible, but that steady, unambiguous way of asking questions made it impossible to brush him off.

"The resistance isn't out in the open. Every family has voices against it, but what's really blocking it are the old subordinates implicated with Yin Rui lurking in the shadows, a few allied families still sitting on the fence, and... some people who hold lower-tier resources in their hands. The Family Head moving on this means moving their rice bowls. They won't come out and oppose it directly, but privately they're already maneuvering."

Sheng Linyou was silent for a few seconds. The wind blew through the locust tree in the courtyard, leaves rustling; a few yellow ones spiraled down to land at his feet.

"And what are those people maneuvering toward."

Zhou Ling glanced at him and lowered his voice: "There are rumors they want to use the Family Head's partner as leverage. No concrete plan yet, but the direction is aimed at you. I mentioned it to the Family Head; he told me to assign more people, and said nothing else."

Sheng Linyou nodded. "Understood. Compile what your people have found these past few days into a report for me."

Zhou Ling froze.

Looking at his expression, he suddenly realized that the man in front of him was not simply "the Family Head's partner." The tone of "compile it for me" was almost identical to Yin Xigui giving instructions in the study—concise, certain, brooking no argument.

"All right," Zhou Ling answered.

When Sheng Linyou turned to head back, his steps were quicker than when he came.

He passed down the long corridor into the study and stopped beside Yin Xigui's oversized desk, looking down at the documents spread across it. The draft proposal to abolish the lower-tier status system sat at the corner, edges curled—it had clearly been read and reread many times.

Next to it were several annotated opinion papers, small pencil notes in the margins in Yin Xigui's handwriting, more scrawled than usual.

Sheng Linyou studied the annotations for a while, then sat down in the chair by the desk and started going through the stack of files.

He didn't have to wait long.

Three days later, Zhou Ling turned up the first batch of concrete findings—several people were colluding privately, and the direction did indeed point at Sheng Linyou.

One of them was a business partner Yin Rui had once propped up, surnamed Wu, holding several resource channels connected to the Yin family. After Yin Rui's fall he had stayed visibly still, but privately he had already begun reaching out to old hands from the Yin family's side branches.

"What are they planning to do," Sheng Linyou asked.

"What we've found so far says they want to shake the Family Head's position by calling your status into question."

Zhou Ling handed over the compiled file. "Yin Rui may have fallen, but the lower-tier status determination records from back then are still sealed at the Municipal Bureau. If they play it right, they can dig out procedural flaws and whip up public opinion."

Sheng Linyou flipped through the file—not fast, but reading every page carefully.

At the last page his hand paused. It listed one item of information: the exact location where that archive was stored, and the retrieval process.

He closed the file and looked up at Zhou Ling: "Does Yin Xigui know about this."

"The Family Head knows someone is moving, but he doesn't have the full picture of their plan yet. I haven't had the chance to report it."

"Don't tell him yet." Sheng Linyou set the file on the desk, fingertips pressing the edge of the paper. "I'll handle it."

Zhou Ling wanted to say something. His lips moved, then closed.

He looked at Sheng Linyou's profile. There was no hesitation in that face, no impulse—only a calm remarkably like his Family Head's.

"Mr. Sheng, this could be dangerous."

"I know."

Sheng Linyou locked the file in the drawer. "But he's stood in front of me so many times. It's my turn to stand."

It was on the afternoon of the fourth day that Sheng Linyou went to the Municipal Bureau for that archive.

He chose the hours when Yin Xigui would be in the regular meeting at Yin headquarters. Zhou Ling arranged a car and people to follow him discreetly, but once he walked through the Bureau's front doors, they could only wait in the car outside.

Sheng Linyou went in, followed the route Zhou Ling had described to the sub-office that managed the old archives, and submitted a retrieval request.

The clerk at the front desk glanced at his identity information, eyes pausing a beat on his face, then lowered his head to search the system.

Sheng Linyou sensed something subtle in that instant's pause. The man recognized him.

"One moment, Mr. Sheng."

The clerk stood, turned, and went into the archive room. After the door shut it was nearly five minutes before it opened again. The clerk came out with a document pouch in hand and set it on the counter, pushing it over.

"Here's the file you requested," the clerk said, expression flat.

Sheng Linyou took it, checked the number on the cover, and confirmed it was the lower-tier determination record Yin Rui had left behind concerning him.

He was about to thank him when he caught, from the corner of his eye, the fingers of the clerk's hand at his side tapping lightly against the edge of the counter—fast.

A thread of wariness crawled up the back of Sheng Linyou's neck. As he picked up the pouch he casually scanned the clerk's face—the man's gaze wasn't on him at all; it went past his shoulder toward the doors behind him.

Sheng Linyou turned around. Four men were walking in through the entrance. No uniforms, but their build and gait were cut from the same cloth as the three who had cornered him in the alley back then.

The other people in the Municipal Bureau hall began to quietly give way; some lowered their heads and hurried out.

Sheng Linyou tucked the pouch under his arm and backed up half a step. His hand slipped into his pocket for his phone, but before he could wake the screen, the first man was already in front of him.

"Mr. Sheng, the Bureau can't release this file today. Please come with us."

Sheng Linyou looked at the man. His palm pressed the edge of the phone and hit the speed-dial key, but his fingers went no further.

He calculated distances and angles. The counter behind him, gaps on either side, four men blocking the front.

"Who sent you."

"Mr. Wu would like to see you."

Sheng Linyou caught the surname. The old subordinate of Yin Rui's from Zhou Ling's file.

He tightened his grip on the pouch's corner; as his fingertips rubbed the edge of the pages he felt the weight and warmth of the stack beneath.

"It takes four of you for one meeting?"

The first man didn't answer. He stepped forward and reached for his shoulder.

Sheng Linyou turned aside to evade the hand, his shoulder banging into the counter with a muffled thud.

Using the shift in balance, he pivoted toward the gap on his side—but the second man had already closed it off. He was boxed between the counter and three of them, no way back.

One man's hand clamped onto his forearm, grip like an iron vise.

Sheng Linyou strained once and couldn't break free; then the other side was pinned too. Wedged between two men, he was dragged toward the side door, the pouch slipping from his arm and hitting the floor, pages fanning out across the ground.

He was hauled into a small compartment at the end of the corridor, and the door shut behind him. The two men let go and withdrew; the lock clicked closed from outside.

Sheng Linyou stood in the compartment, breathing hard a few times.

The room wasn't big and had no windows—only a single faintly flickering tube light overhead.

He slid slowly down against the wall to sitting. A red mark ringed his wrist where the grip had been; in a few hours it would turn purple.

He looked down at the mark on his wrist and thought of the scar that ran across Yin Xigui's collarbone.

He thought of Yin Xigui's reddened eyes when he said "no more secrets between us," and of his own one-word answer: "Deal."

Sheng Linyou clenched his fist in the dark.

His phone wasn't on him—it had fallen into that scattered pile of papers. The people outside couldn't reach him either.

He was trapped in this compartment with no idea how long he'd be kept.

But he knew Yin Xigui would discover he was missing later today.

He would come looking.

Leaning against the wall, Sheng Linyou slowed his breathing. Forehead against the cold wall, eyes closed, he thought: this time, don't let him see me chained up in some basement again.

He didn't want Yin Xigui to ever see that image again.

What he didn't know was that Yin Xigui had already cut the meeting short and was in a car rushing back.

On the phone in the car, the screen lit up with a message from Zhou Ling: "Mr. Sheng went to the Municipal Bureau for the archive. Out of contact for now."

The instant Yin Xigui read it, his fingers tightened around the phone.