Fifty-two

Deep in the night, the White Building.

Meng Mingcheng was tapping away in front of his optical computer, drafting a spreadsheet.

Since President Ming Jia had given the order, as her loyal lackey, he had no choice but to get right to work.

Creating a spreadsheet sounds easy, but in reality, it is quite complex. Not only does it require compiling the freshmen who performed brilliantly in the Freshman Combat Tournament, but it also involves accessing the student database to pull their mimic grades and cultivation ranks, while synthesizing their national college entrance examination scores along with evaluations from other freshmen on the forum.

Meng Mingcheng took this task quite seriously. After all, he was well aware of Silver Star Academy's current predicament— beset by internal and external troubles and facing a severe shortage of successors. In recent years, the geniuses emerging from other elite academies were more numerous than the last, popping up like weeds. Even President Ming Jia had been forced to delay her graduation by another year, still unable to find a promising sapling to succeed her.

At a critical juncture like this, the newly enrolled freshmen naturally had to be included in the evaluation scope.

"Fortunately, this year's batch of freshmen is quite fierce; they actually managed to beat the neighboring academy into submission during the military training combat tournament. Ah, what a pity, why did they have to enroll a few years too late?" While gathering data, Meng Mingcheng sighed repeatedly. "If they had enrolled a few years earlier, we wouldn't have to worry about fighting to retain our tier and ranking; we'd definitely be charging for the top three."

With that, he clicked into the Silver Star Forum.

By now, the time was approaching midnight, but the number of online users on the forum, which had been celebrating wildly all day, remained quite substantial. Clearly, a victory in the Freshman Combat Tournament had injected a shot of adrenaline into the half-dead Silver Star Academy, causing many Silver Star students, who had been harboring despair just recently, to boil with enthusiasm and begin looking forward to the future.

Amidst the forum's homepage, one out-of-place post stood out increasingly.

[A Star of the Freshman Combat Tournament? Taking You to Expose the True Face of the Xia Family's Eldest Miss]

There were quite a few impressive freshmen in this year's combat tournament, though truly standout ones were indeed rare. Freshman Yuan Hanshuang went without saying, and the little imperial grandson, Xuan Yuanzheng, came with his own celebrity halo that everyone knew about. Xia Mengrou, the eldest young miss of the Xia family, also performed quite well in the combat tournament. Coupled with her affluent background, she had gained a small-scale reputation among the freshmen.

Moreover, Meng Mingcheng was the very person currently working on their freshman spreadsheet.

Driven by curiosity, he clicked on the post.

At the beginning of the post, the original poster's tone was quite sarcastic and passive-aggressive.

"With the combat tournament won recently, the freshmen are really showing off. As a member of Silver Star, I also feel quite gratified. It's just that while browsing the forum, I didn't expect to see quite a few posts blowing hot air about the Xia family's eldest miss."

"As it happens, I actually know a thing or two about the Xia family's affairs. Now, let me take everyone behind the scenes to expose the true face of the Xia family's eldest miss."

After leaving this opening paragraph, the poster started to ramp things up.

"First of all, the imperial Xia family. Everyone should have heard of this name. Our interstellar society's currently strongest Saint-rank is none of other than Grand Marshal Xia, who has been stationed at the Marshal's Mansion for years. It is precisely because of the Old Marshal's existence that the Xia family leaped to become a prominent and powerful family in the imperial territory. As for the Old Marshal's son, he is the current head of the Xia family. As far as I know, the family head and his legal wife have only one biological daughter."

"This eldest Miss Xia Mengrou was only welcomed back into the Xia family at the age of eight, when it was suddenly announced that she was the eldest miss of the Xia family. Hearing this, I believe everyone can feel the same confusion, right? Why would the legal wife have only one biological daughter, yet suddenly welcome back an eldest miss from the outside? I am quite puzzled as well."

At this point, some people in the thread had already figured out that the poster's motives were shady, and they replied one after another.

"Come on, why are you acting like a riddle-maker, OP? If you have something to say, just spit it out, okay?"

"Exactly, beating around the bush like that—if you want to say Student Xia's background is problematic, just say it outright."

Sure enough, the poster popped up again to speak: "I didn't say that. The relationships among noble families nowadays are far messier than that, but this eldest miss is different from the illegitimate daughters of other families. Back in the day on the front lines, her mother was entangled with the head of the Xia family, vainly attempting to climb the social ladder. Who would have thought that they would lose the battle later on, the mistress fell out of favor, and she gave birth to a daughter afterward? If the Xia family hadn't been exceptionally benevolent and righteous, would she even be able to play the pretty role of her eldest miss?"

As soon as these words were posted, the sharp-witted people of Silver Star sensed that something was amiss.

Though their academic performance might be lacking, when it came to eating melons and gossiping, Silver Star students were absolute professionals; they could tell a fox from a dog at a single glance.

"Understood, you're just here to smear someone. The sour grapes smell is overflowing from the screen, my friend."

"Seriously, please, what era is this? People are still checking family backgrounds and household registers? The older generation's business should be resolved by the older generation themselves. The child is innocent, why drag Student Xia into this!"

"I suspect the poster has a conflict of interest; this tone sounds really off. Everyone is busy caring about the combat tournament victory, yet someone starts digging into family registers. Which agency hired these online trolls?"

"It's quite shameful for Silver Star to have someone like the OP. We might just be noobs, but our character isn't that bad. Besides, it takes two hands to clap. If you lose a war, why don't you go scold the head of the Xia family instead of blaming someone else's kid?"

Meng Mingcheng also felt things were strange.

Usually, the atmosphere on the Silver Star Forum was quite good, and chatting and bantering among the students almost never involved this kind of content. Besides, this person's remarks had already crossed the line; according to a moderator's duties, the thread should be locked and a warning issued.

He was just about to trace the OP's IP address and backing account out of habit when he suddenly noticed a red dot jumping up in the upper right corner—the notification icon for receiving a private message.

Opening the private message, an ID reading [Stop Me, I Want to Take One More Hundred Million Bites] came into view.

Meng Mingcheng naturally recognized this ID. Setting aside the fact that he possessed a moderator account capable of seeing everyone's true identity, back when he guided Yuan Hanshuang through her enrollment, he had specifically promoted the Silver Star Forum and his own status as a moderator, boasting that if the junior ever ran into trouble, she should feel free to find him.

[Silver Star Permission Dog]: Junior Yuan, it's so late, what's up?

[Stop Me, I Want to Take One More Hundred Million Bites]: I'm downstairs at the White Building.

Meng Mingcheng was startled.

He glanced at the time on the side, hurriedly grabbed a coat, threw it over his shoulders, and headed downstairs.

With Meng Mingcheng's sharp sense of riding the coattails of the powerful, his emotional intelligence when it came to playing both sides was undeniably top-notch. For a genius with boundless prospects like Yuan Hanshuang, he naturally had to put in the effort to maintain a good relationship. Otherwise, once Ming Jia graduated, wouldn't someone like him—who still hadn't accumulated enough credits—become yesterday's news?

Sure enough, downstairs at the White Building, the black-haired twin-tailed girl was standing right there, accompanied by one of Meng Mingcheng's old acquaintances.

"Good evening, Junior." Meng Mingcheng turned his head. "Whoa, Xiao Hua, why did you come too?"

Xiao Hua wore a mournful expression. "I was already planning to sleep, but since Junior gave the order and needed my help, naturally I had to crawl out of bed."

Meng Mingcheng and Xiao Hua were also old friends. Both possessed very keen instincts, except one was good at sucking up to the powerful, while the other wanted to suck up to powerful people but either never succeeded or constantly offended them instead.

"Of course! If Junior needs my help with anything, I will naturally go through fire and water without hesitation!"

He patted his chest and said ingratiatingly, "So, what's going on?"

"It's like this. Xia Mengrou is my roommate. Some posts attacking her appeared on the Silver Star Forum today," Yuan Hanshuang said. "I've carefully read the Silver Star student handbook, which states that baseless posts involving students cannot be published on the forum. There's no problem with this rule, right?"

"No problem at all, no problem at all. That is precisely our forum code of conduct," Meng Mingcheng said hastily. "I was just looking at this matter myself and preparing to check the poster's IP and ban the account when you arrived, Junior. Isn't that a coincidence?"

"How about this, shall we go to the office to talk?"

"No need." Yuan Hanshuang shook her head. "If possible, could Senior please tell me the identity of the poster and their current location? I'd like to find this person to settle some matters."

Calling it "settling some matters," but in reality, both people standing here could hear the killing intent in her words.

Meng Mingcheng: "Uh, I suppose that's fine, but the administrator can't check the poster's current location."

According to the rules of the Silver Star Forum, rumor-mongers, once hammered, had to use their own accounts and real names to post an apology. Even if he didn't tell her now, Yuan Hanshuang would find out sooner or later.

"It's completely normal that you can't check it," Xiao Hua said, bleary-eyed. "Junior Yuan specifically called me, a mechanical mimic holder, over precisely to link my optical computer and trace their location."

After reaching an agreement, the two of them immediately opened their optical computers and began processing.

Yuan Hanshuang stood aside to wait, when she suddenly felt someone looking at her.

Raising her head, she saw a tall, gray-haired assassin standing by the floor-to-ceiling window on the third floor.

Perhaps because he had been training just moments before, Gu Dong had changed out of his usual unchanging Silver Star uniform and instead wore a pitch-black training outfit that outlined his beautifully shaped abdominal muscles.

From afar, Yuan Hanshuang waved at him. The latter evidently hadn't expected to be caught red-handed just from watching for a moment, but he lazily raised his hand in response and went back to his training.

At that moment, Meng Mingcheng pulled up the results: "Found it! This person is a third-year student at Silver Star, a female, rank-four initial stage... Huh? She also has the surname Xia? Could it be that she's the legitimate eldest miss born to the legal wife mentioned in the post?"

In an instant, a whole bunch of wealthy family infighting and melodramatic plotlines popped into Meng Mingcheng's head.

Fortunately, Xiao Hua on the other side stopped him in time: "No, that's not it. The Xia family's eldest miss is enrolled at Bauhinia Academy; there's no way she would condescend to attend Silver Star."

After synchronizing with his mechanical mimic, his pupils turned a deep, inorganic glowing blue: "The poster's name is Xia Jingjing. According to student records, she's a collateral branch of the Xia family, dormitory number 301. The post was published using the school's intranet."

"Alright, thank you very much." Yuan Hanshuang smiled. "Now, I'm going to go resolve some personal grievances."

With that, she turned and left.

Regardless of what the poster had written, choosing that specific time to post such disgusting content while speaking in a sarcastic tone—Yuan Hanshuang, who had been freeloading off the eldest miss for so long, felt it was necessary for her to step up and fight to protect the eldest miss's smile.

This resolution of personal grievances lasted all the way until dawn.

Many Silver Star students who were still browsing the forum in the early hours of the morning saw the apology statement published by the rumor-monger.

[Apology Statement: I am sorry, I should not have fabricated rumors about a classmate on the forum.]

When Yuan Hanshuang finished up and quietly returned to her dormitory, the eldest miss seemed to have cried herself to sleep. Thus, she quickly washed up and tiptoed onto her bed.

Waking up the next morning, Yuan Hanshuang was surprised to find that Xia Mengrou had actually woken up even earlier than her.

"Awake?" The eldest miss stood at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips, looking down at her.

Perhaps because she was wearing makeup, only her pupils retained a hint of redness; the skin around her eyes showed no trace of having cried so late into the night.

"Morning, Mengrou." Yuan Hanshuang got up, bleary-eyed, only to be grabbed by the arm and pulled out of the dormitory by the eldest miss the moment she finished brushing her teeth. "Wait, wait, wait—where are you taking me?"

"Today is the weekend, and this young miss is in a good mood. I'm taking you to a good place."

The hovercar sped all the way, driving from the suburbs where the two major academies were located straight into the core commercial district of the entire Central Star System. Neon lights flashed, skyscrapers towered, and everywhere emanated an aura of immense wealth—where it was said a tiny patch of land could buy several 1999-class stars.

Xia Mengrou brought her personal butler and a team of maids, strutting proudly like a flock of peacocks all the way to a gorgeously decorated restaurant. The greeters at the door rushed over to welcome them, arranging the most luxurious suite for them.

"Look at you, so skinny. Today this young miss is taking you out to experience the world and eat something good. This is a pretty famous buffet restaurant in the Central Star System, and the food inside is unlimited."

Having roomed together for so long, how could Xia Mengrou not know about Yuan Hanshuang's extraordinary appetite? Because this person could eat so much, whenever she privately instructed the butler to prepare midnight snacks, they were always portioned for four people. "Eat your fill, eat as much as you want, this young miss has plenty of money."

Yuan Hanshuang, suddenly struck by happiness: !!!

And you, my eldest miss, you are the true hero!