Chapter 15: I’ll Have Your Back.

Chapter 15: I've Got Your Back.

"Did you go for a swim or something?"

The ring on Gu Junhan's finger gave off a faint glow as he dried Wen Yu's wet hair with a towel.

Wen Yu shook his head. He was sitting in the car—

it was huge. He'd never seen a limo this long before.

The young man shifted uncomfortably in his half-soaked shirt, remembering how he'd blocked Gu Junhan. Yet Gu Junhan didn't mention it at all.

He... isn't he upset?

Wen Yu thought to himself.

Gu Junhan seemed to have suddenly lost all his edge. The man's gaze landed on Wen Yu's upper body, visible through his soaked shirt, and unexpectedly, he fell silent.

Wen Yu felt uneasy under the stare.

That unsettling sensation of being sized up made him instinctively edge toward the far end of the seat, until there was a gap about two hand-widths between them. Only then did Wen Yu lower his head and murmur, "Thank you."

Gu Junhan, unlike his usual self, leaned right into Wen Yu.

"You don't need to board at school anymore," he said abruptly, his voice low and husky. "I'll pick you up after class. I'll have someone toss... I mean, pick up your luggage."

Wen Yu's head shot up, panic flashing in his eyes. "N-no... that's not necessary."

Gu Junhan leaned back into the leather seat, tilting his head at an angle, radiating a dark, ghostly menace from the marrow of his bones.

The moment he heard Wen Yu refuse him, his expression shifted.

He closed in step by step on Wen Yu, who had shrunk into the corner.

Gu Junhan looked like a statue carved straight out of Greek mythology. The veins on his hand pulsing faintly, he took his time removing the Patek Philippe from his wrist.

The watch caught the light, reflecting in Wen Yu's round, dark eyes.

The next second, Gu Junhan suddenly clamped down on Wen Yu's slender wrist. A faint red quickly bloomed on Wen Yu's pale wrist.

Wen Yu cried out in pain as the Patek Philippe was forcibly strapped onto his wrist.

Inside it were a tracker and a listening device—Gu Junhan's.

"Don't worry, just a little welcome gift." Gu Junhan leaned in close, his warm breath lingering, the atmosphere inside the car turning unsettling.

Wen Yu didn't know what was coiling around his body, especially around his waist and stomach. He ducked his head and asked, "You're not mad that I blocked you?"

Gu Junhan couldn't tell if he was genuinely clueless or just playing dumb.

"You blocked me?" The man's gaze turned ice-cold. "Of course I'm mad. Of course I blame you."

"You don't get it—people only dare to bully you because you're too weak," Gu Junhan said, fully aware of what he'd gone through today. "Just like right now."

Before the words even finished leaving his mouth, the man's palm suddenly moved upward, his long fingers trailing along Wen Yu's vulnerable neck. "You know what? People with real power never worry about consequences."

"Blocking me? Yeah, I'm pissed. But instead of worrying about whether I'm mad, you'd be better off not ending up in such a mess."

The man's hand now held his breath in its grip. "You know how to spend money, right?"

Wen Yu stared straight ahead and gave a slight nod.

"Then throw money at it. Isn't that what I gave you the card for—to blow through it?" Gu Junhan withdrew his fingers and picked up the clothes he'd prepared, handing them to Wen Yu. "If someone messes with you, five million gets you a hired goon."

"A hired goon?" Wen Yu took the clothes—clean and neatly folded. He'd braced himself for another dress, but turns out he was overthinking it. "Isn't hitting people illegal?"

Gu Junhan paused. True, the laws here were strict—nothing like the criminal underworld that sprawled across Xizhou. And Wen Yu was a local citizen, raised as a good little boy taught never to hit or curse.

"Wen Yu," Gu Junhan said his name, "don't be scared. Even if you hit someone, they won't die."

"I'll cover you."

The next day.

Wen Yu was asleep in the back row of the lecture hall.

Gu Junhan had given him yet another card.

The PIN was set to Wen Yu's birthday.

It was like Gu Junhan had done a full background check on him—knew everything.

Mid-lecture, the classroom's silence suddenly broke into excited chatter. Wen Yu jolted awake.

On the blackboard were the words: ZAOHUA GROUP · ZAOHUA GROUP.

"This company," the professor said, lowering his voice a notch, "you've probably never heard of it."

The students below whispered among themselves, trying to figure out what was being listed.

Some flipped through textbooks, others looked up at the screen. Wen Yu turned his gaze to the blackboard too.

"You might be thinking, 'What kind of no-name company is this?' It's not that it's unknown—it's that it doesn't need to be known."

The professor walked to the edge of the podium, then casually strolled over to Wen Yu's side and leaned there, arms crossed.

"ZAOHUA GROUP's headquarters isn't in Country M or Country Y. Where is it? On a man-made island reclaimed from the sea, called Night City. It governs itself, flies no national flag. It has fewer than 50,000 employees worldwide, but its annual revenue—take a guess."

No one spoke.

"Last year: one point five trillion dollars."

That number jolted Wen Yu fully awake. The classroom erupted.

"There's a classic question in finance: if a company's cash flow is strong enough, it can completely ignore the capital markets and do its own thing. ZAOHUA GROUP is the real-world answer to that."

The professor looked at the stunned students. "You can't even find it on Baidu. But it has plenty of subsidiaries—Wanxing, Jumen, Qingsheng, and so on—all under it, all in the global top 100."

"If you're interested, look into it."

Wen Yu didn't fully get it, but he could tell what the professor was describing was a big deal.

One point five trillion dollars!!

Forget ordinary people—even the so-called elite families had never seen money on that scale.

The bell rang, and the professor was out the door before any of the students could move.

"Is ZAOHUA GROUP really that big a deal? Could the professor be making it all up?" one student was saying to their classmate.

“This ZAOHUA GROUP, I don't know about it, but Wanxing Company has monopolized the entire liquor-making industry in East Continent.”

“Really?”

“My dad just managed to secure a deal with Wanxing Company not long ago. How could that be fake?”

“Then isn't ZAOHUA GROUP really powerful?” A guy slammed his phone on the desk. “So what's its debt ratio? I'm really curious.”

The people around him were also scrolling through their phones, but the search results were sparse—ZAOHUA GROUP's public information was remarkably scarce. Most searches returned news about its subsidiaries, and the parent company didn't even have a website.

“It must be pretty high, right? With a giant like that, who isn't up to their ears in debt?” Someone said confidently.

As the group chatted excitedly, a voice suddenly cut in from the side—neither loud nor forceful, yet it quieted the entire back row for a moment.

“The debt ratio is eleven percent.”

It was a girl sitting two rows away who spoke.

She had been fiddling with a deck of tarot cards, but now she looked up, revealing a pretty face.

The group went quiet.

“Eleven... eleven percent?” The guy who had confidently claimed it would be high gaped slightly. “Wow, that's incredible!”

The girl didn't bother to respond. Her gaze swept past the group and came to rest on the last seat by the window.

A young man sat there, quiet and still, surrounded by empty seats as if an invisible wall separated him from everyone else.

The girl stood up, stepped around a few seats, and naturally sat down beside him, her tone as casual as if she were talking to an old friend.

“Hey, we meet again.”

Wen Yu looked up and said, “Hi.”

“You don't have any friends, do you?” The girl asked directly.

Wen Yu shook his head. “No, I don't.”

The girl nodded, without saying anything comforting, just tilting her head slightly as if thinking.

“I heard the cafeteria has a new dish. Wanna go try it together?”

Wen Yu paused. A new dish at the cafeteria?

“Sure,” Wen Yu replied.

The girl stood up, tucked the tarot cards into her pocket, and brushed off imaginary dust from her skirt.

“My name is Lou Xuemeng. What's yours?”

“I'm Wen Yu.”

The two walked out of the classroom one behind the other.

The guys in the back row were still discussing the 11% debt ratio, and no one noticed them leave.