Zhao Jizhe disappeared from the company just as abruptly as he had appeared.
Few people paid attention to his arrival or departure, except for the cleaning lady, who hesitantly asked Chu Tianheng about it once.
“Is Xiao Zhao not coming back?”
“I guess not. He probably has other plans.” Chu Tianheng was always the most gentle and easygoing at the company. “Why do you ask, Auntie?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. Just curious.” She waved her hands, hesitating before saying, “That kid was pretty nice. I’d struggle to carry things sometimes, and he always helped me…”
The day Chu Tianheng relayed this to Li Xuan, the three of them were having dinner downstairs, with Qi Boyuan also present. Qi Boyuan snorted coldly, “Putting on an act.”
“Did you get a fortune reading or something? Why are you so against him?” Chu Tianheng glanced at Li Xuan, then asked Qi Boyuan.
He didn’t actually have much of an opinion on Zhao Jizhe. A large part of that was because he hadn’t been there the day Li Xuan smashed a glass—hadn’t seen the blood or how Zhao Jizhe had followed him all the way to the hospital.
“No need for fortune-telling. Just by looking at him, you can tell he’s got bad intentions. Completely beyond my understanding. I’ve never met anyone like him before, and hopefully, I never will again.”
Qi Boyuan spat out half a crab claw, noticed Li Xuan’s indifferent glance, and quickly dropped the subject. He checked his phone. “I’ll head back to the company first, then stop by the bank… Senior, don’t forget you have that forum meeting today.”
…
After leaving the restaurant, Chu Tianheng headed straight for the forum. Li Xuan found a quiet place and called Sheng Min.
There were only two days left until the first round of auditions. Sheng Min was either at school discussing things with his professor or at home watching various plays all day.
“The weather’s nice today. Go sit in the sun on the balcony for a while. Don’t just stay cooped up in the study.”
“Got it. Why do you sound like you’re lecturing me now?” Sheng Min replied with a smile.
“Why, can’t I?” Li Xuan said. “So you’re allowed to do whatever you want, but I can’t say a word? That’s unfair.”
As he spoke, he walked two laps around the software park before heading upstairs. He ran into Qi Boyuan, who was on his way out.
“You free this afternoon? I’ll go over this month’s finances with you after I get back from the bank.”
“Sure.” Li Xuan thought for a moment. “Six o’clock works.”
Just then, he noticed an administrative staff member carrying a bag of things outside. Qi Boyuan coughed awkwardly and said, “That’s, uh… his stuff. I forgot to have someone clear it out.”
It wasn’t that he forgot. It was clearly the administration that had forgotten, and today, when Qi Boyuan remembered, he had reminded them again.
Li Xuan didn’t say anything about it. “What time does the forum end? Bring Senior back with you, and let’s go over last month’s revenue for Nook.”
“Got it, I’ll tell him.”
Qi Boyuan glanced at the empty space where Zhao Jizhe had sat. Feeling unexpectedly pleased, he waved a hand and hurried off.
But his good mood didn’t last long.
The six o’clock meeting never happened.
Chu Tianheng didn’t make it back in time. His phone was constantly busy when they tried calling him.
“What’s Senior doing? It ended at five, didn’t it? It’s not that far…” Qi Boyuan took off his glasses and wiped them. “Why do I feel like my eyelid is twitching?”
“That’s because you sleep too much,” Li Xuan replied while typing on his keyboard, reaching into his drawer for a mint.
“Not everyone has forty-eight hours in a day like you.”
Li Xuan let out a low chuckle, kept typing, and bit down on the mint candy with a crunch.
Qi Boyuan called again. This time, the call actually connected. His hand slipped, putting it on speaker.
Chu Tianheng’s voice came through, a little anxious. “Boyuan, are you guys at the office? Li Xuan hasn’t left yet, has he?”
“No… Where are you?”
“Li Xuan is there, right?”
The signal on his end must have been weak. He asked again.
“I’m here,” Li Xuan said, sensing something was off.
“Good. Stay there. I’ll be there soon.”
“What’s going on, Senior? Don’t be so cryptic.” Qi Boyuan’s voice suddenly went up a notch. But all he got in response was a busy tone—Chu Tianheng had hung up.
“Don’t bother calling again. He’s probably in the parking lot or getting into the elevator.” Li Xuan watched Qi Boyuan pacing near the desk. “Can you sit down? You’re making my eyes hurt.”
“Wait, he’s only telling half the story—”
Li Xuan frowned slightly. “We’ll know once he’s back.”
Just as he finished speaking, the door swung open. Chu Tianheng hurried in, clutching his laptop. He glanced at them, then turned around and shut the door.
“There’s something I think none of you know yet.” His tone was calmer than on the phone, but still serious. “I went to the forum this afternoon, and someone from Yuanxin was there. I ran into an old colleague.”
As he spoke, Chu Tianheng quickly opened his laptop while explaining, “We never really got along… He was involved in a lot of Yuanxin’s games that copied foreign ones. His skills were subpar, and he always resorted to shady tricks. When I saw him today, I deliberately avoided him, but he just had to come up to me… and he asked about you.”
“Him?” Qi Boyuan pointed at Li Xuan.
Li Xuan simply raised an indifferent eyebrow. Chu Tianheng reported a name and asked, “Do you know him?”
“No.” Li Xuan shook his head coldly. “What did he ask?”
“I don’t think you’d know him either,” Chu Tianheng continued. “He was being all sarcastic and vague, saying…” He hesitated, because the words were unpleasant. “Saying I left Yuanxin thinking I was climbing to a higher branch, but I wouldn’t even realize when it all came crashing down.”
“How bad was your relationship with him? Is your ex-colleague a middle schooler, picking fights over things like this?” Qi Boyuan was speechless. “Senior, don’t take it too seriously…”
“Let him finish.” Li Xuan stood up, grabbed a bottle of soda, and tossed it to Chu Tianheng. “Then what?”
“I didn’t think much of it at first, but the more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Sure, he has a bad personality, but from what I know of him, he wouldn’t go off the rails like this without reason.” Chu Tianheng had rushed back so quickly that, even in the cold season, he was sweating. “Plus, Nook has always been on Yuanxin’s monitoring list. Since I’m on this side now, I can’t check conveniently, so just to be cautious, I called a former colleague to ask him to look into it. He sent me this right after I left the forum.”
Chu Tianheng pulled up a link on his laptop, clicked a few times, then pushed it toward Li Xuan.
It was a promotional video for a closed beta test of a game. The moment Li Xuan saw the page, his lips pressed together. He clicked in, sped through it at double speed, then rested his fingers on the keyboard and let out a cold chuckle.
Qi Boyuan, watching over his shoulder, turned pale. He snatched the laptop from Li Xuan’s hands, gritting his teeth. “They didn’t even bother hiding it. At least change the skin—this is straight-up lazy.”
“They did try to cover it up. This publishing company, on paper, has no connection to Yuanxin at all.” Chu Tianheng pointed at the company name on the login screen, sounding exhausted after a tense afternoon. “I looked into it—it was only registered last month. But Yuanxin is definitely providing technical support. Just from the art style, I can recognize several familiar names… But the core content and gameplay? It’s just Nook with a different coat of paint. Anyone in the industry, or even someone who’s played Nook, can tell at a glance.”
Li Xuan said nothing. The office was silent except for Qi Boyuan furiously tapping on the keyboard, skipping ahead and pausing the video.
Chu Tianheng took a sip of water and continued, “This is what’s strange to me. Based on their usual tactics, and even their internal discussions in previous meetings, they shouldn’t have copied so blatantly. Nook is already a known name in the industry. Legal action takes time, but public backlash happens instantly. That’s probably why they registered a separate company as the publisher. But even so, something doesn’t add up—it’s too big of an investment.”
He frowned in frustration. “I don’t understand their motivation. Yuanxin has managed to stay at the top of the industry because most of its employees are capable. Nook has a lot of complex features. Duplicating it to this extent takes as much effort as developing a new game. And with Nook’s current market share, they’re targeting the same player base. How do they expect to steal our users? By offering bigger in-game discounts? But then how do they make money? From my perspective, this is a losing business.”
No one spoke for a long time. Finally, Qi Boyuan put down the laptop, but instead of commenting on the video, he looked at Li Xuan with a complicated expression. “Last week, our servers stopped getting attacked… Was it the same group of people?”
Chu Tianheng looked confused. “Yuanxin attacked our servers? That doesn’t make sense—it wouldn’t benefit them.”
Li Xuan shook his head. He stared at the constantly refreshing screen. It was clear that Yuanxin had been watching Nook closely—otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to replicate it so quickly. The investment required to mimic versus outright copy a game was hard to quantify, but the latter undoubtedly carried greater risks.
They had no personal feud with Yuanxin. Yuanxin was simply after profit. Whether through reskinning or copying, they wouldn’t have started with full duplication. If they were willing to take such a loss now, it could only mean someone was paying them even more to do it.
And there was only one person who could be behind this.
Even the fact that Chu Tianheng stumbled upon this today…
“The moment you arrived, he sought you out?” Li Xuan asked.
“Yeah…” Chu Tianheng hesitated, sensing something off.
Li Xuan pressed his lips together tightly. It was the usual tactic—”knock the mountain to shake the tiger.” Li Mingge wasn’t afraid of Li Xuan knowing; he was afraid of him not knowing.
Chu Tianheng noticed his tense expression. “We need to figure out how to respond. The game is still in closed beta. There’s internal testing, then open beta, and the official launch should be in about a quarter…”
“When did the closed beta start?” Li Xuan interrupted, his voice low.
“The day before yesterday. It’s a small test, only within Yuanxin. I was planning to get a beta account but haven’t managed to yet.”
The day before yesterday… Li Xuan tapped his fingers on the desk.
A closed beta that was already being deliberately leaked just two days later?
This wasn’t a real test—it was a staged performance.
Li Mingge was waiting for him to surrender. If Li Xuan yielded, no matter how much was invested in this game, it would probably never launch. But if he refused… given Li Mingge’s aggressive stance, it likely meant ~Shu Xin’s condition had worsened, and time was running out.
They were all crazy.
“No need to calculate the timeline, Senior.” Li Xuan pressed his fingers to his brow. “There won’t be any closed or open beta testing. They are waiting, if they don’t get my response, they’ll launch at the latest by next week.”
“Wait?” Chu Tianheng was stunned. “Who’s waiting? For what?… And how do you know there won’t be any beta testing?”
“Because it’s targeted at you, isn’t it?” Qi Boyuan, who had been holding back while waiting for Li Xuan to answer, couldn’t help but interject. He turned to look at him. “Am I right?”
“Yes.”
Li Xuan’s direct answer caught Qi Boyuan off guard. He hesitated before testing the waters, “You know who’s behind this? … Your dad?”
Chu Tianheng, who had been listening in shock, blurted out, “Dad? The one who came last time?”
“Does it matter?” Li Xuan asked.
Qi Boyuan had only been guessing, knowing little about Li Xuan’s past grievances. He only remembered how domineering Li Mingge had been that day, which left a strong impression. But judging from Li Xuan’s reaction, he had guessed right. For a moment, he wasn’t sure whether he was more surprised or more frustrated. “It doesn’t matter? Your dad wouldn’t really go this far to mess with you… Is he just trying to scare you? Don’t give me that look—are you even his biological son?”
“No.”
The string of questions only elicited a cold, one-word response from Li Xuan.
“No?!” Qi Boyuan was dumbfounded. “You’re joking, right?”
“Is that funny?”
Qi Boyuan quickly exchanged glances with Chu Tianheng, who looked just as shocked. Pressing his lips together, he asked, “So this is for real? What now?”
“We do what needs to be done.” Li Xuan rubbed his temples. “Don’t you all have work to do?”
Qi Boyuan gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus, pulling his thoughts away from Li Xuan’s sudden revelation. “I’ll start preparing the lawsuit materials…”
“That won’t do.”
Li Xuan spoke calmly. If Li Mingge could persuade Yuanxin to pull something like this, he wasn’t afraid of legal action. In China, game copyright law was based on substantial similarity, which left plenty of room for manipulation. Game mechanics and systems weren’t even protected under current legal practice.
Qi Boyuan was furious. “So we can’t sue, we can’t do anything—are we just supposed to sit here and watch?!”
“Just focus on your work,” Li Xuan said coldly, grabbing his water bottle and taking a sip. He pressed his hand against the desk, thinking for a moment, his fingertips stiff and white from the pressure. His voice remained steady. “They’ll probably go full free-to-play. For ‘Nook,’ we need to speed up development. The new map should go live early—two days. Senior, can you finish it? If not, I will.”
“Full free-to-play?” Chu Tianheng was overwhelmed by the influx of information.
Li Xuan simply repeated, “Can you finish it?”
“I can.” Chu Tianheng forced himself to respond.
“Will this even work?” Qi Boyuan’s head throbbed as soon as he heard the words “full free-to-play.” He thought back to a few months ago when Li Xuan had casually warned him that the company might run into some trouble. At the time, he had thought the server attacks were the worst of it. He never imagined things would escalate to this level—a strategy that harmed both sides. “If it’s really free, even if we update faster, how can we stop players from leaving Nook and joining them?”
“There might be more.”
“More?! What, are they going to pay players to switch?”
“Faster leveling, free in-game items…” Li Xuan scoffed. “Same old tricks. Do I really need to spell them all out? Don’t worry about it. Nook’s revenue will definitely take a hit—I know that. Just focus on securing funding. The two firms I met last week—whoever offers the most, take it. No more negotiations, but do it fast. If the deal falls through… just start the process, and we’ll figure it out later.”
Qi Boyuan was exasperated. “What the hell is your dad—oh wait, your adoptive father—trying to do? Even if you’re not biologically related, why go this far? Are you really going head-to-head with him? Is there no other way? At least tell me why!”
“For me, no. And I can’t explain it. What, do you want me to write a personal essay about it?” Li Xuan’s gaze was dark. “Just tell me—are you in or not?”
“Oh, so now you’re the one with an attitude?! You’re such a goddamn bastard!” Qi Boyuan rarely cursed, but after a long standoff, he finally snapped, swore, and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
“Boyuan.” Chu Tianheng instinctively wanted to follow, but Li Xuan stopped him. “It’s fine. He’s going to talk to the investors.”
Li Xuan glanced at his computer screen, the brightness almost blinding, then turned away and popped a mint into his mouth.
Chu Tianheng sighed. “I’ll go work on Nook’s update. Don’t worry, I can finish it.”
“Sorry, Senior.” Li Xuan curled his lips slightly. “Qi Boyuan had some idea of what was coming, but I didn’t mention anything to you before.”
“It’s fine. You two have known each other longer,” Chu Tianheng didn’t mind, though he still felt like he was caught in a whirlwind. He looked at the younger man and tried to reassure him, “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. I’ll try to get more information from Yuanxin—it might not happen so soon.”
It all still felt surreal. When he had left the forum that afternoon, he had just thought something was off. He never expected things to escalate to this level so suddenly.
Li Xuan didn’t respond, only letting out a faint smile. “Or it could happen even sooner.”
And as if his words had been prophetic, that very weekend—before they could even secure a beta account—the game, officially named Void Island, seemingly appeared out of nowhere and launched.
