34: Chapter 34 The Logic of Normal People

The wind on the rooftop was strong, whipping Wang Hao's expensive designer jacket until it snapped loudly.

Seeing Leng Qingxuan push the door open and approach step by step, Wang Hao's legs, which had grown stiff from standing for so long, seemed to be infused with a new surge of strength.

The corners of his mouth curled uncontrollably into a triumphant arc, and his eyes flickered with a morbid excitement.

She had come.

As expected, she was still afraid.

In this moment of intense public scrutiny, on the edge of life and death, she had finally compromised for his sake.

Wang Hao took a deep breath and adjusted his stance to look even more precarious, more tragically resolute.

He looked at Leng Qingxuan, his voice trembling with carefully rehearsed sorrow: "Qingxuan, you finally agreed to see me. I knew it, you don't have absolutely no feelings for me in your heart."

Leng Qingxuan stopped five meters away from him, arms crossed, her expression as indifferent as if she were looking at a stray dog faking an injury on the side of the road.

"Say what you have to say." She was sparing with her words.

This cold attitude did not extinguish Wang Hao's enthusiasm; instead, it made him get even more into character.

He whipped his phone out of his pocket, tapped it quickly with his fingers, and a heavily edited recording began to play.

The recording was full of him fawning over Leng Qingxuan on various occasions, followed by her icy rejections. Under the magic of editing, it sounded like a tragic account of a devoted man having his dignity ruthlessly trampled by an arrogant goddess.

Immediately after, as if performing a magic trick, he pulled a neatly folded A4 sheet of paper from his chest pocket and snapped it open.

It was covered in dense, bold text, with the title in bold: "To the Girl I Deeply Love and This Cold World."

"This is my suicide note!" Wang Hao roared at the top of his lungs, waving the paper in his hand as if it were an imperial decree to judge Leng Qingxuan.

"I've already posted it to the campus forum, Tieba, and all the major social media platforms! I left a handwritten copy on my dorm desk, and there's a backup in the cloud that will be automatically sent to all the media outlets at the scheduled time!"

He leaned forward, causing gravel to tumble from beneath his feet, which drew a gasp from the crowd watching below.

"As long as I jump from here, everyone will know you were the one who forced me to my death!"

"It's you, Leng Qingxuan! Relying on your beauty and your family's money, you toyed with my feelings and trampled on my self-esteem!"

Wang Hao became more and more agitated as he spoke, spit flying everywhere. "You will carry the infamy for the rest of your life! You will be condemned by everyone! I will make you live in guilt forever, and you will never be able to forget me!"

This was a high-stakes gamble.

The stake was his life, and the winning condition was what he believed to be the innate emotionality and weakness of women.

A drone buzzed overhead, broadcasting this hysterical scene in real-time to countless mobile phone screens.

The air froze.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for the high-and-mighty campus belle to react.

Would she apologize in a panic? Or would she burst into tears and beg him to stay?

However, what broke the silence was a soft laugh.

"Heh."

The sound was not loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the wind.

Wang Hao froze, his flushed face instantly stiffening like a poorly made animation that had been paused.

"You... what are you laughing at?" he stammered. This part wasn't in the script.

Leng Qingxuan raised her hand and gently brushed back the hair that had been ruffled by the wind, her movements as elegant as if she were attending an afternoon tea.

She looked at Wang Hao, her eyes no longer cold, but filled with a mockery that bordered on pity.

"I'm laughing at how naive you are."

She took a step forward, her shoes making a crisp "clack" against the concrete.

"Classmate Wang Hao, have you read too many romance novels? Or do you think the real world is an RPG game that revolves around you?"

Leng Qingxuan's voice was steady and calm, exuding an unquestionable sense of authority. "Do you think your death can destroy me? Can make me feel guilty for the rest of my life?"

Wang Hao opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"Let me educate you on the operational logic of the real world."

Leng Qingxuan extended a slender finger: "First, if you jump, sure, your name might be on the trending list tonight."

"But I guarantee you, within three hours, the Leng Corporation's PR team will take over all the channels of public opinion."

"Your so-called 'suicide note' and 'recording' will be analyzed frame by frame by a professional legal team to find countless loopholes."

She extended a second finger: "Within six hours, all negative entries about me will be removed, and in their place will be all the dirt on you from childhood to the present."

"You peeking under girls' skirts in elementary school, bullying classmates in middle school, getting reprimanded for harassing a female teacher in high school... Maybe you didn't actually do these things, but by then, you will have done them, understand?"

Wang Hao's face instantly turned ghastly pale, and his body began to tremble uncontrollably.

"Within twelve hours," Leng Qingxuan extended a third finger, her tone growing colder, "you will go from being a 'lovesick victim' to a 'mentally ill patient with a severe paranoid personality disorder who has been stalking and harassing female classmates.'"

"The direction of public opinion will instantly reverse. People won't sympathize with you; they'll only be glad that the school has one less potential rapist."

"As for after twenty-four hours..."

Leng Qingxuan lowered her hand, her eyes as sharp as a blade: "The world will completely forget you. Everyone will go to class, everyone will eat."

"To me, your death matters even less than me missing a rare monster in my game."

"That is the power of capital, and it is the truth of public opinion."

Every word was like a heavy hammer, smashing fiercely against Wang Hao's fragile psychological defenses.

The "revenge plan" he had carefully constructed and the "moral kidnapping" he thought could destroy the world were, in the face of Leng Qingxuan's absolute rational logic, nothing more than a joke, fragile and vulnerable.

"You... you're lying! You're trying to scare me!" Wang Hao broke down. He grabbed his hair with both hands, his eyes unfocused. "I don't believe it! Everyone is watching! This is a livestream! You can't silence the public!"

"A livestream?"

Leng Qingxuan pointed at the buzzing drone overhead, a mocking arc curling on her lips: "You think this is your amulet? No, this is your death warrant."

"It is precisely because of the livestream that everyone saw your madness just now and heard your illogical accusations."

"The way you look now, how are you a victim? You're clearly just a giant baby who is threatening suicide because he couldn't get the love he wanted."

"If you want to jump, then jump."

Leng Qingxuan took a step back and made a "please" gesture, her expression as relaxed as if she were seeing off a guest: "This is the fifth floor. If you're lucky, you'll die completely. If you're unlucky, you'll just end up with high paraplegia."

"When that time comes, you'll be lying in bed, watching me live my life to the fullest, watching me date other men, while you need a caregiver just to roll over. Only then will you know what true despair is."

"No... no..."

A beast-like whimper escaped Wang Hao's throat.

His psychological defenses had completely collapsed.

All his anger, resentment, and fanaticism turned into deep fear at this moment.

He looked at the ant-like crowd below, looked at the hard concrete ground, his legs went weak, and he slumped to the ground like a pile of mud.

Seeing this, Leng Qingxuan frowned in disgust and took two steps back.

"Is that it?" She sighed, her tone full of disappointment. "What a waste of my breath."

Saying all that had tired her out; it was a waste of energy. It would really be better to go chat with Huang Mao and increase his favorability points, right?

She didn't spare another glance at the boy slumped on the ground, turned around, her long hair tracing a sharp arc in the air, and walked toward the exit without looking back.

...

Corner of the cafeteria.

Huang Mao watched the figure walking away so coolly on his phone screen, along with the "666", "Goddess is mighty", "As expected of campus belle Leng, easily crushing moral kidnapping", "This is the thinking of a normal person, right? Does this guy live in a novel?" flooding the comment feed...

He silently closed the livestream page, then picked up a piece of meat with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly.

"As expected."

Huang Mao felt not the slightest bit of surprise.

In the logic of a normal person, where would there be so many scenes of "If you die, I'll regret it"?

Life is your own. Giving up your life for someone who doesn't love you is, in itself, a form of extreme stupidity.

And trying to use death to punish someone who doesn't care about you is the stupidity of all stupidities.

If Wang Hao had actually jumped, it would only mean that the sieve of natural selection had let another defective product slip through.

Huang Mao finished the last sip of his soup, stood up, and carried his tray toward the return area.

This farce was over; the afternoon classes had to continue, and life had to go on.

...

Stairwell of the General Building.

Leng Qingxuan walked down with steady but firm steps, each step carrying a hint of irritable emphasis.

Although she had won beautifully on the rooftop just now, that physiological sense of nausea still lingered.

Talking to an idiot who only had self-indulgent thoughts in his brain was simply an insult to her intelligence.

"I need to find a place to wash my eyes... I don't know where Huang Mao is right now. I don't have classes in the first two periods this afternoon, so I can ask him to find an empty classroom and play a few rounds."

While thinking this, she took out her phone to send a message to Huang Mao.

Because she was a bit distracted, she didn't notice the figure walking up at the corner of the third and fourth floors.

The two almost collided in the narrow corner.

"Sorry."

"Watch out."

Two voices rang out at the same time.

Leng Qingxuan instinctively took half a step back, steadied herself, frowned slightly, and was about to walk around when she froze for a moment the instant she saw the other person's appearance.

Standing in front of her was a girl.

Unlike Leng Qingxuan's aggressive, cold beauty, this girl's beauty was subtle and gentle.

She was wearing a tailored, pale beige haute couture dress, the hem of which curved perfectly as if it had been mathematically calculated. On her feet were a pair of lambskin flats with no logo but excellent texture.

Her long hair was slightly curled and casually draped over her shoulders, her skin so fair it was almost translucent.

The most striking thing about her was her eyes.

They were eyes that seemed to be shrouded in the misty rain of Jiangnan all year round—gentle, yet carrying an unshakable melancholy.

Even just standing there quietly, she made people want to soften their breathing, afraid of disturbing the tranquility around her.

If Leng Qingxuan was an iceberg that made people shrink back in awe, then this girl before her was a deep, bottomless pool.

"You are..." Leng Qingxuan narrowed her eyes, quickly searching her memory for this face.

In this university, there was almost no one she felt could rival her temperament.

However, there was indeed one in her memory, and she seemed to know...

And the other party seemed to recognize her even faster.

A flash of surprise passed through those melancholy eyes, which then turned into a polite smile.

She nodded slightly, her voice as soft as a breeze: "Good afternoon, classmate Leng Qingxuan."