Morning Break
By mid-morning, Longhai No. 1 High School felt different.
The news of Mr. Han's arrest had spread through the campus like wildfire, mutating with each retelling.
"He was handcuffed right in class—"
"Yea, I heard the police walked in and he tried to run!"
"My brother's friend said he was involved in some huge crime ring during university!"
"Crime ring? What—??"
"And did you hear? Right before the cops came, Li Feng told him to 'wear more blue.'"
"Yeah. And then—bam—sirens."
"That wasn't coincidence…"
By the vending machines, by the stairwell, by the courtyard trees—students clustered in small groups, speaking in hushed, dramatic tones.
Rumors twisted.
Rumors stretched.
But no matter how far they wandered—
they always circled back to a single name.
Li Feng.
---
Xue, carrying a stack of textbooks, passed by a group of girls whispering intensely.
"…he just said it and the police came…"
"Maybe he has connections—like real connections."
"Do NOT get on his bad side."
Xue's eyelid twitched.
She didn't react outwardly—she kept walking calmly—but inside, she sighed.
Ge ge… What did you do?
She continued toward her next class and noticed something else:
Her classmates kept glancing at her.
Not with hostility.
With caution.
Even the girl who had mocked her the previous day lowered her head, suddenly meek, notebook held like a shield. Fear tightened her posture.
Because after this morning, it was clear:
Li Feng was not someone you provoked.
And the last person anyone wanted to anger
was the person he cared most about—his sister.
Xue took her seat, straightening her pens with practiced neatness.
Her heart, however, was not calm.
Gege is handling things far beyond what I can understand right now…
I need to grow too.
I don't want him to carry everything alone.
One day… I want to be someone who can help him as well.
She inhaled softly and focused on her notes, her resolve quiet but firm.
---
Staff Room
The teachers' office buzzed with nervous tension.
Usually filled with mild morning chatter and the smell of coffee, it now felt like a courtroom.
"Did you hear the charges?" one teacher whispered.
"I heard… several. Not just from here. From years back."
"A disgrace… no, a disaster…"
A higher-ranking academic director stepped into the room, expression grave.
"All teachers, please be informed: due to the severity of the misconduct, disciplinary audits will begin this afternoon. Anyone who worked closely with Mr. Han will be reviewed."
A murmur rippled across the room—fear, confusion, indignation.
At the back, a teacher who had always been cold toward the Second Branch muttered under his breath:
"That Li boy is dangerous… students like him become problems."
Another teacher beside him paled instantly.
"Be careful what you say," he hissed. "You don't know who can hear. Or who might tell."
The first teacher stiffened.
His eyes flicked toward the door—as though expecting someone to burst in that very second.
No one did.
But the fear remained.
Across the room, one of the instructors sat frozen over her half-written lesson plan.
She hadn't said a word since the conversation began — her shock was as real as anyone else's.
But after a long, uneasy moment, she slowly reached for her phone.
Her fingers hovered before she finally typed a brief message.
Precise, with no embellishments — the bare fact of what she'd heard and seen.
Her hands shook faintly as she sent it to the number saved as:
[Li Group Internal Line]
Then she set her phone down and exhaled, barely audible—
Just another teacher rattled by a morning that suddenly became much bigger than a normal "school day".
---
Li Feng — Lunch Break
The halls parted for Feng without him asking.
Students stepping aside. Voices hushed whenever he passed. Some kids pretended not to stare. Others failed miserably.
Even Zhao Kai—once loud, cocky, impossible to shut up—saw Feng approaching and nearly tripped over his own feet trying to get out of the way.
He bowed his head, mumbling something that might have been "sorry" or "please don't kill me."
Feng barely glanced at him.
He walked with calm steps, hands in pockets, expression unchanged—as if the rest of the school simply didn't exist.
But behind him, whispers stirred once more.
"That's him…"
"He looks so normal…"
"Normal? Are you blind?"
"No way I'm messing with him again."
Zhao Kai silently agreed.
---
School Cafeteria
The cafeteria roared with activity— chairs scraping, trays clattering, rumors flying faster than the food line moved.
Feng sat at the siblings' usual table by the window, waiting.
Xue arrived first, and trailing beside her was a girl with lively eyes, quick steps, and the kind of energy that made people shift to make space before she even reached them.
Liu Yue.
Except the moment Feng lifted his gaze—
everything about her changed.
Her posture snapped straight. Her smile vanished. Her expression turned solemn. Her steps became stiff, textbook proper, almost ceremonial.
Xue covered her mouth to hide her grin.
Liu Yue bowed—too low, too rigid.
"G–Good afternoon, Li Feng!"
Her voice shot up a full octave.
Feng blinked once.
"Good afternoon. Please, sit."
"Yes!" she barked—
then froze, horrified.
"I—I mean yes, thank you, I— ah—"
She sat with military precision. Back straight. Hands on her knees. Staring ahead like she was awaiting inspection.
Xue leaned in, whispering loudly enough for Feng to hear:
"She was totally normal until you looked at her."
"XUE!" Liu Yue whisper-yelled, mortified.
Xue's grin widened.
Feng's lips curved faintly—humor in the small tilt of his eyes.
As the conversation shifted, Liu Yue relaxed by degrees.
When they brought up the teacher's arrest, her personality finally bloomed.
Liu Yue lowered her chopsticks with an irritated flick, expression twisting in disgust.
"Oh PLEASE," Liu Yue scoffed, rolling her eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn't get stuck. "The way people are talking— you'd think he was some helpless victim."
She leaned forward, tone slicing cleanly through the cafeteria noise.
"A teacher who messes with grades and preys on students? He's lucky he got was a clean arrest. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded introducing my fist to his face first."
She threw a small punch into the air—sharp, decisive, entirely unironic.
"And don't get me started on how many people are suddenly pretending they 'always knew something was off.' Please. Half the school was kissing his shoes yesterday."
Xue burst out laughing.
"And those rumors going around? Half of them sound like he committed twelve felonies before breakfast."
Feng raised an eyebrow slightly.
Liu Yue, not noticing, kept going.
"That man strutted around like he owned the place. Turns out he barely owned his own dignity."
Xue nearly choked on her soup.
But then—
Liu Yue turned back toward Feng to say something—
and instantly reverted to rigid-robot mode.
Back straight. Shoulders squared. Voice higher again.
"A-Ahem. S-Sorry. I didn't mean— I hope that wasn't disrespectful—sir— I mean, Li Feng—!"
Xue descended into helpless laughter, leaning onto the table.
Liu Yue whisper-attacked her in retaliation.
"STOP laughing! I'm being respectful!"
"This is definitely not being respectful!" Xue wheezed.
Their bickering blended into the cafeteria noise.
Feng simply watched the two girls—one calm, one flustered—amusement quietly flickering behind his eyes.
For a moment, the world felt… lighter.
---
Li Estate
Far across the city, in a secluded study within the Li Family main estate—
The patriarch sat behind a mahogany desk, reading financial reports.
A knock.
His personal secretary stepped inside, bowed, and laid a tablet before him.
"Patriarch… news from Longhai No. 1 High School."
The patriarch arched a brow.
As the report played—a teacher arrested, students panicking, and the line…
"You should wear more blue."
…spoken by Li Feng moments before the police entered…
A strange quiet fell over the room.
The patriarch tapped a finger on the desk.
Once.
Twice.
His eyes narrowed with cold calculation.
"That tone…" he murmured.
"…is the same as last time."
The time Feng had told himself and the three branches:
"I would expect you all to be more occupied."
And chaos followed in the Li Group moments later.
Once could be coincidence.
Twice?
Unlikely.
If Feng orchestrated both events…
How?
With whose support?
The Wen Institute?
Someone else?
The patriarch leaned back in his chair, mind racing.
What exactly has the Second Branch been hiding…?
---
Evening — Second Branch Villa
Night settled quietly over the Second Branch villa.
Downstairs, Xue's piano notes drifted through the halls in light, thoughtful patterns.
From the study, the soft rustle of papers marked Guohua reviewing contracts.
And in Feng's room, only the muted glow of his monitors cut through the dark, casting long, steady shadows across the desk.
He sat perfectly steady, hands hovering above the keyboard, the last fragments of Arachne 2.0's architecture arranged across three screens—layered learning cores, predictive routing grids, compressed city mapping nodes.
Every component was precise.
Every pathway efficient.
Every subsystem balanced.
Level 2 clarity made the entire framework feel like a blueprint he had always known.
No strain.
No hesitation.
Just execution.
He tapped a single key.
The partial boot sequence unfolded.
— not full activation
— just a surface-level wake cycle
— enough to test behavior, input routing, and adaptive learning
The moment Arachne 2.0 stirred, the room shifted.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just a subtle hum in the air—systems spinning up, threads weaving themselves into coherence.
[Arachne 2.0 — Partial Initialization]
Silent streams of data spilled across the monitors:
• school CCTV feeds snapping into organized grids
• traffic node pings aligning into motion maps
• street-level sensor arrays syncing to the framework
• public Wi-Fi signatures forming geolocation clusters
• acoustic echoes from nearby intersections normalized and catalogued
• micro-movement readings from two Zhou operatives mapped into behavioral graphs
Arachne didn't ask permission.
It didn't hesitate.
It simply did what it was designed to do—
catalog, analyze, predict, and restructure every signal within reach.
All of Longhai within its radius felt like it settled under a silent web.
Feng watched lines of real-time output scroll.
No overwhelm.
No burden.
His Neural Predictive Field backed by his other cognitive passives tracked everything effortlessly—each data thread, each anomaly pulse, each pattern aligning with the architecture he'd built.
It was like watching a perfectly tuned engine hum for the first time.
Arachne 2.0 identified three flagged irregularities, resolved two, isolated the third, then reorganized its internal cache—all without a single instruction.
The adaptive cycles were smooth.
Flawless.
Terrifyingly fast.
Feng leaned back, fingers tapping once on the desk in quiet satisfaction.
"It's stabilizing."
Not excitement.
Just certainty.
Arachne 2.0 wasn't complete yet—not even close.
This was only a fragment of its future form.
But even in this incomplete, half-awake state…
It was already operating on a level no system on Earth could touch.
No corporation's firewall.
No government intelligence array.
No security protocol.
Nothing.
Arachne 2.0 would see everything in Longhai.
Understand everything.
Control everything—when Feng allowed it.
He closed a few windows, leaving the main execution graph on the center screen.
A slow exhale escaped him.
"It won't be long now."
The room stayed still, the partial boot cycling quietly in the background—
like a giant opening one eye,
waiting for its creator to wake it fully.
---
Hello, Author here!
Thanks for reading — I hope you enjoyed today's chapter.
If you're liking Li Feng's journey so far, don't forget to leave a comment or drop a Power Stone. Your support helps the story grow and motivates me to keep updating!
See you in the next chapter!