Chapter Fourteen: Rather I Betray the World

After a long, restless night, Mo Jiang finally ended his ordeal by tearing up the solution to the advanced mathematics problem. A poor student was a poor student, and Mo Jiang had resigned himself to fate. He wasn’t planning to master the Tenfold Puppet Show anytime soon, choosing instead to chip away at it slowly, with steady persistence over time.

Just as he was preparing to sleep, a sudden thought struck him. He took out the wish-granting fruit—the first-level one. Mo Jiang fixed his eyes on a particularly difficult Tenfold Puppet Show math problem, and swallowed the fruit in one gulp.

“Let me solve it!” he wished, eyes wide open, staring at the problem. Suddenly, the numbers and symbols seemed to spin before his eyes, whirling around and around, until Mo Jiang realized, with a sinking heart, that he still couldn’t solve the problem.

“That’s it? The first-level fruit is just gone?”

Mo Jiang had already suspected the first-level wish-granting fruit was limited in scope, but he hadn’t imagined it would be so feeble—not even enough to let him guess an answer.

Just then, his brows arched in surprise. He blinked, and then a look of delight broke across his face.

Suddenly, he realized he knew how to solve the problem after all.

“Thank goodness, it works. So, one problem, one fruit—if it’s a set of thirty problems, that’s only thirty fruits… but—” His excitement faded, his face stiffening as reality set in. Thirty problems meant thirty first-level fruits. And there was always the chance the wish would fail.

Staring at the remaining math problems before him, Mo Jiang fell into a ghostly silence.

After a moment, he found the torn-up answer sheet and shredded it again, just to be sure—it hadn’t been completely destroyed before.

…

When Mo Jiang woke up the next morning, it was clear he hadn’t slept well. As he arrived at Fengzhongyuan High School, he caught sight of Zhou Yanxin—but quickly realized she wasn’t there by chance; the girl was waiting for him.

“Good morning,” Mo Jiang greeted her, forgetting the awkwardness of yesterday. After all, he’d visited the City of Flowers in the meantime, and those matters seemed far behind him now.

“It’s not early. Classes have already started.” Zhou Yanxin approached, slipping her arm through his with an affectionate air. A faint scent drifted to Mo Jiang’s nose. He noticed she had clearly put effort into her appearance; her stylish outfit accentuated her figure, enough to stir anyone’s blood.

Mo Jiang paused, struck by a sudden realization—did this mean they were… officially dating now?

But he remembered he already had a fiancée.

“I’m already engaged,” Mo Jiang said.

“I know, but I don’t mind. Don’t worry, Su Nanzhou won’t mind either.” Zhou Yanxin’s eyes curved into crescents, evidently delighted.

Her response caught Mo Jiang off guard.

“The Su family rose by relying on the Mo family. The ties between our families are really just between Su Nanzhou’s father and your father. Without your family, the Sus are just another wealthy household. The more beautiful a woman is, the more realistic she becomes—because they’re all smart,” Zhou Yanxin remarked coolly.

Her insight surprised Mo Jiang—he hadn’t expected a girl in her teens to be so clear-sighted.

He didn’t mind realistic girls, but he also liked those who weren’t so practical. Yet he knew deep down that the latter scarcely existed; it was really just a matter of degree.

“So, are you clever?” Mo Jiang asked, a foolish question.

“Do you want me to be clever?” Zhou Yanxin leaned in, resting her head on his shoulder. She was tall, and with her heels, was only half a head shorter than Mo Jiang.

“What if I do? What if I don’t?” Mo Jiang pressed on with his silly questions.

“If you do, then tonight I’ll fulfill my duties as your girlfriend,” Zhou Yanxin shot him a sidelong glance.

“Will your parents even let you out?” Mo Jiang couldn’t help laughing. He was beginning to like this girl; she was like a little fox, her dainty claws scratching and teasing at his heart.

“I believe in you—you’ll be fast,” Zhou Yanxin replied, suddenly serious.

Mo Jiang’s smile froze.

He searched the memories of his predecessor. When he found nothing similar, he breathed a sigh of relief and answered with equal seriousness, “I can take medicine.”

She burst out laughing.

…

After class, Mo Jiang ran into Su Nanzhou. She had come to see him deliberately, repeating what she’d said the day before—ostensibly to comfort him over Mo Qingqing’s death, with no mention of Zhou Yanxin at all.

This made Mo Jiang feel somewhat awkward. Luckily, Wen Lanjing, on his behalf, had already sent Su Nanzhou a generous gift—a valuable necklace.

After a brief conversation, the bell rang, and Su Nanzhou hurried away, blushing shyly as she left.

“A winner in life, truly a winner,” Mo Jiang murmured as he watched her go. Reincarnation was truly a technical skill—if you had bad luck, you might have to consider seizing someone else’s life. His own occupation of another’s identity was a real-life example of such usurpation.

At that moment, an icon popped up on his phone screen.

It was a new email—from Zhou Fangqing.

Mo Jiang opened it and found a list of first-line celebrities and international stars who had settled in Xin Yuan, Shangmo City in recent years. These stars all had one thing in common: they had only debuted recently—anywhere from one or two years to seven or eight.

Mo Jiang scanned the list. All were handsome, beautiful, and striking in their own unique ways—no wonder they were famous.

There weren’t many, just over a dozen.

After quickly reading through, he noticed a separate line at the end of the email, specifically set apart. It warned him not to believe anything said by anyone who approached him in the near future—whether ordinary or extraordinary.

Mo Jiang read this line twice, and a girl’s face immediately sprang to mind.

Zhou Yanxin.

“Better I betray the world than let the world betray me,” Mo Jiang’s eyes turned cold. Zhou Fangqing must have discovered something—or perhaps this was Wen Lanjing’s message.

He showed no reaction, simply copied the list of names into a new document and destroyed the email.

Then he went online, searching each name one by one.

“Hm?”

Fame brought rumors, and these stars had all sorts of stories swirling around them, some true, some false, some even contradicting each other.

What caught Mo Jiang’s attention was the background of one male celebrity—there were nearly a hundred different versions.

Some said he came from a family of musicians in a certain city, others claimed he was from humble origins, and some insisted he’d emigrated as a child. The emigration story was especially detailed, even posing the rhetorical question: If he hadn’t moved abroad as a child, how could there be no trace of him in any records from three years ago?

Mo Jiang’s eyes lit up. “It’s him! Zhang Wenheng! The one who looks even prettier than a woman!”