Wu City, the CBD business district was lined with towering buildings. During the morning rush, white-collar workers walking past the coffee shops beneath the office towers each held a cup of coffee, striding briskly, swiping in to work as they entered the buildings.
“Morning, Vice President Lin.”
“Morning, Director Lin.”
Lin Yi nodded to each of them in turn, his expression mild, a faint smile lingering on his face. “Morning.”
He stepped into the elevator and pressed the floor button. Before he could even sit down at his desk, an assistant called out to him, “Hey, Brother Lin, Director Zhang wants you to come over.”
“Coming right up.”
Lin Yi answered, knocked on the door, and upon hearing a voice tell him to come in, walked into the office.
No one was behind the desk—they were in the reception area. A slightly plump middle-aged man sat on the sofa, several breakfast items laid out on the coffee table in front of him, still steaming.
Director Zhang looked up at him, greeting him warmly, “Little Lin, have you had breakfast yet? Come sit down and eat something with me.”
“Ah, I just ate.”
Lin Yi pushed up his glasses, standing to the side, smiling. “Director Zhang, you wanted to see me about…?”
Director Zhang’s face was full of smiles as he rapped his knuckles on the table. “Little Lin, ah, it seems like there was some kind of problem with that Hengtai project last month. They called me…”
Once outside the office, Lin Yi took the elevator down and called a car. He had bought a car a couple years back, but rarely drove it—this road jammed up for at least half an hour during the morning rush, nowhere near as convenient as the subway.
After sorting out the problem, Lin Yi smiled and saw the person off into their car. Across the street, waves of food aroma drifted over from the restaurants—it was already afternoon.
“Hey, miss, your extra-beef beef noodles are ready!” “Handsome, you want scallions and cilantro?”
Lin Yi: “Just a little.”
A call came in: “Vice President Lin, Director Zhang said—”
“Got it, I’m heading back now.”
Lin Yi hung up the phone and looked up. “Sorry to trouble you, could you pack this to go?”
Carrying the takeout box up in the elevator, Lin Yi set the noodles down on his office desk and headed to the conference room.
Everyone inside had already arrived, seated in two rows, packed full. The meeting had been going on for a while; seeing him come in, gazes turned toward him one after another.
Director Zhang wore a smile, waving him over. “Vice President Lin’s here, come sit down quick. Xiao Liu, grab another chair for Vice President Lin.”
After the meeting ended, Director Zhang called him into the office. His short, pudgy fingers pinched a cigarette, slowly grinding the ash.
“Little Lin, ah, I heard Heng’an just closed a big deal recently. We can’t fall behind, we’ve also got to…” Black Lotus Novel Novel Site — BLACK LOTUS NOVEL
Back at his desk, a thick stack of folders sat piled beside his blank-screened computer. The assistant walked in again, set down another stack of documents, and left.
Lin Yi turned on the computer and sat back down in his chair, the cold glow of the screen reflected in his glasses. He began working through the backlog, the clatter of the keyboard rattling on.
Late at night, Lin Yi rubbed his brow, taking a moment’s rest, his body sinking into the soft chair as he let out a long breath.
Suddenly remembering something, he picked up his phone. There were dozens of messages on his personal WeChat.
[Morning, so sleepy.]
[(photo taken in the mirror)]
[Today’s OOTD! Rate it, quick!]
[Ugh, I’m so mad, that restaurant I told you about last time—went with Tiantian and waited two and a half hours, turned out to be absolutely terrible! Those good reviews must be fake]
[So tired, why won’t any of this knowledge go into my brain]
[Huh, wait, aren’t I supposed to be a genius]
[Baby, why aren’t you replying, is there a woman next to you holding your hand down or something]
[Darling, I ordered you a milk tea]
[Does it taste good? (kitten blinking innocently)]
……
The tone was lively and youthful, sharing her daily life with him.
But Lin Yi was truly exhausted, worn out down to his bones. Looking at his girlfriend’s messages, he couldn’t find the usual sense of delight.
He recalled the assistant seeming to have come in at some point. He looked up and saw a cup of milk tea sitting next to the takeout box on the desk.
The beef noodles had already gone mushy. Lin Yi picked up the room-temperature milk tea, tore open the straw, poked it through, and took a sip.
The taste of schizonepeta flooded his mouth, mixed together with vegetable juice and lemon—the flavor was beyond words.
Clearly one of her pranks.
Lin Yi coughed a couple times, drank some water to wash out the taste, and picked up his phone: [Still not off work. Are you back in the dorm?]
A reply came quickly from the other end, complaining that he’d vanished for an entire day, demanding why he hadn’t replied, asking if he was sick of her.
“Ding.” A new work email popped up in his inbox. Lin Yi stared at the chat window, not knowing what to say back, a deep sense of helplessness washing over him.
He tried to be as patient as he could: [Xiaoyue, I really am busy, still haven’t finished work.]
But somehow the other end only got angrier, asking: [Busy enough all day that you couldn’t even spare time for one reply?]
Lin Yi suddenly froze.
Maybe it was because of seeing Ji Yang and Wang Linzhou a few days ago—these past few days he kept finding himself thinking back to the time when he was still at Linglang.
Back then they’d had nothing, dirt poor. The studio had nothing in it—no separate desks, no proper office.
The space was small too—just a few tables crammed in with computers set up, and there was hardly any room left. It was a struggle for the few guys just to get up and stretch.
He remembered the room next door had been some kind of materials-cutting workshop, machines running in the dead of night, cutting and grinding PP plastic sheets.
The few of them had written code and debugged programs, making their indie game, in that terrible environment—and somehow hadn’t thought anything of it at the time.
What was it for, back then? There didn’t seem to be any real reason—he’d just gone along with them, more out of a spirit of playing around. At least it was more interesting than attending class.
That year, there was an independent game festival held domestically, jointly with an international one, meant to support indie game creation. Winning the competition meant receiving a large sum of investment, no strings attached.
At first, everyone had only signed up on a whim, not taking it seriously. After all, what chance did a few inexperienced college students have against real competition?
Until one day, he’d forgotten something at the studio and gone back at two in the morning to get it, and saw Lu Zhun.
The computer cast a cold white glow, the sound of the keyboard clattering away. On the table beside him, an empty coffee cup sat tilted over, along with a takeout container he hadn’t gotten around to throwing away.
The next day when he came back, the desk had already been cleaned up—only the progress had moved forward a bit more.
He wasn’t sure exactly when it started, but the three of them had all, without discussing it, stopped going out to hang around, spending more and more time at the studio instead.
As the deadline for the competition drew near, they were still behind on progress. Back then, Lu Zhun had been even busier than Lin Yi was now. Staying up day and night, communicating and holding meetings with them, arranging plans, personally debugging the program.
He could even be in the middle of a meeting, head down replying to a message, then slip out to go home and pick up his girlfriend from school.
Wang Linzhou had complained to him privately, saying maybe Brother Lu had evolved past needing sleep behind their backs—he’d never once seen him sleep. BLACK LOTUS NOVEL Novel Translation Site · Black Lotus Novel
But actually, that wasn’t true—Lin Yi had seen it once. When the first version was completed, they were all excited, and the guy had leaned against the little water dispenser in the break room and fallen asleep.
Hearing their cheering, he’d gotten back up, poured hot water for coffee, and returned to his desk. As if nothing had happened.
The day before the competition, they finally finished. Every last detail polished, everyone could finally rest, all exhausted to the bone, able to fall asleep the moment they lay down.
But the guy got up and grabbed his jacket.
It wasn’t yet his usual time to go pick someone up from school. Lin Yi, genuinely curious what he was up to, tagged along under the excuse of hitching a ride.
The road, sure enough, wasn’t his usual route home. Was he going on a date? Lin Yi, drowsy with exhaustion, his thoughts scattered, was just about to doze off when the car pulled up at an apartment complex in a quiet area, a real estate agent waiting downstairs.
He froze, and just like that ended up following the guy to look at apartments for an entire afternoon.
He knew about his family’s situation. He also vaguely knew that Lu Zhun had been working part-time jobs to earn money all through his years of school, and that before partnering with them to open the studio, he’d been writing programs for people for pay—probably had some savings put aside.
But housing prices in Wu City were so expensive—he figured it’d barely cover a down payment, at most.
Lin Yi truly couldn’t understand it, yawning nonstop. “Brother Lu, why the sudden urge to buy a place? Wasn’t the rental you had before pretty good? Close to the studio too, convenient.”
“Besides, worst case you could just live in the dorms—who even buys property these days, why waste that kind of money.”
The guy had been looking at the bedroom just then, dusk light streaming in through the window, illuminating his lean frame, his shadow stretching long across the floor.
He stood by the window, knocking on it to check it, his face wearing its usual lack of expression, taciturn as ever, and simply said, flatly.
“It’s noisy. She doesn’t sleep well.”
So much time had passed that Lin Yi no longer remembered what his own reaction had been upon hearing those words back then.
But right now, a sharp ache suddenly welled up in his chest, his nose growing stuffy along with it.
The computer’s glow was cold and white, glaring. He took off his glasses, his whole body slowly sinking into the chair, and raised a hand to cover his face.
……
A young girl’s moods came fast and went just as fast. Lin Yi coaxed her a bit, and by the next day she wasn’t angry anymore.
Knowing he was heading to Wu City for a business trip, she told him not to overwork himself, to remember to rest and eat. And to bring back some local specialties when he came home.
The work had gone smoothly enough, but on the third day, on the way back from the factory after wrapping things up, the car suddenly broke down, stalling out on a mountain road in Wu City.
The location was too remote—no cars passed by on the road at all. He called for a tow truck, but it wouldn’t arrive until at least the next day.
The sky had already begun to darken, dark clouds churning in the distance, the air hot and stifling, clearly about to rain.
Lin Yi looked at the dead car—should’ve known not to have driven out here. He pressed at his aching temples, leaned against the car, rummaged through the cigarettes left over from the last time he’d seen off a business partner, and lit one.
Hadn’t smoked in a long while.
The first few drags made him cough, but Lin Yi gradually adjusted, and slowly exhaled a breath of smoke.
When was it he’d stopped smoking again?
The smoke blended with the mountain mist in the distance, blurring together, and Lin Yi’s memory drifted back—it seemed to still be that stretch of time back at Linglang.
With only a few days left before the competition deadline, there was still a pile of bugs left to fix. They’d been run ragged, busy from dawn to dusk, nerves strung as tight as a wire.
He and Ji Yang had smoked to relieve the stress, smoking heavily, one cigarette after another, until the whole studio was thick with smoke. Wang Linzhou had grabbed his computer and fled to the room next door, saying he’d rather work alongside the cutting machine.
Maybe it had gotten too out of hand—by the next day, even Lu Zhun couldn’t take it anymore, and coldly tossed the two of them out, shutting them out the door.
Lin Yi exhaled a breath of smoke, sinking a little into the memory.
The smoke slowly dispersed before his eyes, and a car suddenly pulled up in front of him.
It was a black Bentley—he’d seen it from a distance at a tech expo two months ago. Lin Yi’s hand, holding the cigarette, suddenly went still.
……
The sky had gone dark, mist rising and falling through the mountains. The black Bentley drove along the mountain road, a faint scent of white plum blossom floating in the cabin.
The light inside the car carried a warm tone.
In the driver’s seat sat a man around thirty years old, his features mild, looking easy to get along with, steadily driving the car.
“Director Lin’s here on a business trip?” he asked.
Lin Yi knew who he was. Zhouxing Tech had been developing rapidly in Wu City these past few years, growing bigger and bigger—naturally, people in the industry all knew his assistant, Xu He, as well.
“That’s right. Didn’t expect the car to break down.”
Lin Yi responded, fingers tapping slowly on his knee, asking as if in passing, “How come your Director Lu’s out here?”
Xu He smiled slightly, replying gently, “Finished with work, happened to pass through on the way back to Wu City.”
The black Bentley drove out of the mountain road, entering the urban area of Wu City.
The car pulled over to the side of the road. Before getting out, Lin Yi glanced at the rearview mirror.
The man in the back seat had taken off his suit jacket, wearing only a black dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, his wrist bones pale and cold, a faded red string tied around it.
He hadn’t said a single word since getting in the car, calmly flipping through documents with lowered eyes, cold and detached.
Watching the black Bentley drive off into the night, Lin Yi still stood at the hotel entrance, not moving. Black Lotus novel Novel Reading | BlackLotusNovel
“Pat, pat.” The rain started falling.
Suddenly it poured down hard, raindrops falling heavily onto his suit, soaking dark patches into the fabric. The night sky in the distance was pitch black and still, the streetlights a dim yellow.
It seemed like it had been a rainy night like this back then too.
After he’d handled the aftermath of the competition and closed up the studio, he’d rushed to the Wu City hospital, and by the time he got there, everyone had already dispersed, the police had already left. Ji Yang was nowhere to be found.
Only the guy sat alone, quietly, in the corridor.
He said nothing at all, just sat quietly through the night.
Not until dawn did he calmly get up to go handle the girl’s funeral arrangements.
“Brother Lin, what’s wrong?”
The assistant hurried out, holding an umbrella over him, shielding him from the rain overhead, muttering on and on, “Ugh, it’s my fault, I ate too much random stuff yesterday. Brother Lin, how’d you get back? I was just about to go pick you up.”
The car’s headlights cut through the pitch-black curtain of rain, then dimmed again in an instant. Raindrops splashed into his eyes, and Lin Yi slowly came back to himself.
“…It’s nothing. Let’s go back.”
