novelraw Chapter 108: The Legend of the Empty Seats
Chapter 108: The Legend of the Empty Seats
The gates of Capital University felt strangely small as Mo Chou stepped through them. Only forty-eight hours ago, she had been navigating the collapsing Phoenix Mall with someone who was supposed to be a literal ghost.
Now, the weight on her shoulders wasn’t a bulletproof vest or a disguise, but a backpack filled with textbooks for class and a half-eaten bag of Mochi donuts.
The air on campus was thick with a different kind of tension—one fueled by social status and whispered secrets.
"You’re walking like you’re expecting someone to jump you," a smooth, low voice murmured beside her.
Mo Chou didn’t turn her head. Lu Jinhai was walking half a step behind her, a position that looked casual to a passing student but was actually calculated to shield her blind spots.
He looked every bit the refined, scholarly heir in a knitted sweater, but the "Evan" who had dismantled the Lu Group’s empire over breakfast was still visible in the way his eyes never stopped scanning the rooftops.
"Force of habit," Mo Chou whispered back, her voice barely audible over the hum of the morning crowd. "And stop walking like a bodyguard. You’re supposed to be my ’unrequited pursuer,’ remember? You’re ruining the act."
Jinhai let out a soft huff of laughter, a rare sound that made a group of nearby freshmen stop and stare. "Acting aside, have you looked at the campus forums? We haven’t been in class for a while, but it seems like we’ve become some sort of mysterious celebrities."
---
"MO CHOU!"
A scream echoed out. It was a mix of frantic relief and anger. Before Mo Chou could brace herself, she was caught in a bear hug. Li Chen and Huang Chunhua practically collided with her, their faces a chaotic mess of tear-streaks and fury.
"You are simply heartless!" Li Chen cried, gripping Mo Chou’s shoulders so hard it actually made her sore muscles wince. "We called you a thousand times! We even went to the hospital! We were ready to start digging through the rubble with our bare hands! Did you know that we almost died of a heart attack after watching the news?"
"I’m sorry," Mo Chou said, her voice softening with genuine guilt. She felt a pang of remorse; while she had been playing a deadly game of chess, these girls had been living in a very real nightmare. "The signal was down, and everything was... it was a disaster zone."
Huang Chunhua, usually the more composed and stoic of the duo, wasn’t looking at Mo Chou. She was staring directly at Lu Jinhai, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes narrowed into slits.
"And you," Huang Chunhua said, her voice dropping into a one of icy disapproval. "You disappear for weeks, making Mo Chou miserable, and then you show up right when the world starts exploding? How convenient that you’re always around for the drama but never for the support."
Lu Jinhai’s expression instantly shifted. To the rest of the campus, he was a statue of unapproachable ice, but as his gaze landed on Mo Chou’s friends, he offered a stiff, almost pained nod of acknowledgement.
"Huang Chunhua. Li Chen," Lu Jinhai said, his voice flat but lacking its usual arrogant bite. "It’s good to see you are both... unharmed."
"Oh, don’t you ’cold guy’ us, Lu Jinhai," Li Chen snapped, stepping into his personal space—a move that usually sent most students running for cover. "If you ever leave her like that again, I don’t care how many billions your family has; I will find a way to ruin your life."
Jinhai didn’t flinch. Instead, he looked at Mo Chou, a silent plea for rescue in his eyes. He tolerated their outbursts only because he knew they were the only ones who actually cared for the girl behind the "spoiled princess" mask.
"He stayed with me the whole time," Mo Chou interjected, grabbing Li Chen’s hand to stop her. "He... he actually saved my life in there."
Huang Chunhua and Li Chen exchanged a long, complicated look. Their anger didn’t vanish, but it was joined by a grudging sense of relief.
"Fine," Chunhua sighed, brushing a stray hair from Mo Chou’s forehead. "He gets a pass for today because he brought you back in one piece. But Lu Jinhai, you’re on thin ice. If you ever pull another stunt like that or make Mo Chou sad again, just know we will come for you."
---
As the group moved toward their classes, the chatter among the passing students took a sharp turn away from the mall tragedy and into the obsessive world of E-Sports.
"Did you see the clip? It’s sitting at five million views already!" a group of guys from the gaming club were crowding around a tablet near the fountain. "Bulletz uploaded his reaction. He literally threw his headset across the room."
Mo Chou slowed her pace, her ears perking up at the mention of the famous streamer.
"I’m telling you, it was a slaughter," the lead gamer insisted, replaying a screen-recording of BloodXSurge. "Bulletz was at the top of his game, and then out of nowhere, this player ’Mystic’ just...straight up annihilated him. The movement was frame-perfect. He didn’t just beat him; he broke the server record for the fastest solo-wipe in the competitive tier. It was like he knew what he was going to do before he did it."
Mo Chou felt a jolt of dry amusement. She had played that match weeks ago to blow off steam, using a ghost-route encryption that she had written herself. She never expected the clip of her destroying a top-tier pro to go viral while she was busy surviving a real-life assassination attempt.
"Bulletz is offering a ten-thousand-dollar bounty just to find out his real ID," another student chimed in, scrolling through a frenzy of forum comments. "But have you seen the news? Someone just claimed the bounty."
Mo Chou’s eyes narrowed. Impossible. No one could have tracked her identity through her custom-built firewall.
"Wait, look!" Li Chen pointed at a large digital notice board in the hallway. A livestream was being projected. "It’s ’Lin Mae’ from the Performing Arts department. She’s doing a ’live reveal’ right now!"
On the screen, a girl with heavy makeup and a high-end gaming headset was smiling coyly at the camera, her eyes fluttering with practiced innocence. "Yes, it’s true," Lin Mae purred to her thousands of live viewers. "I didn’t want to say anything because I value my privacy, but after seeing how much Bulletz wanted a rematch... I decided to come forward. I am Mystic."
---
The crowd in the hallway erupted into a frenzy of excitement and skepticism. "Lin Mae? She’s a decent player, but ’Mystic’ level? Since when?"
"She’s showing the account login!" someone shouted, pointing at the screen.
Mo Chou leaned in, her eyes turning cold and clinical. She saw it—Lin Mae was holding up a phone showing the ’Mystic’ profile page. But Mo Chou’s trained eyes noticed the slight 0.5-second lag in the interface and a tiny pixel mismatch in the font. It was a high-level "skin" over a dummy account, it was designed to look like the real thing to a casual observer.
"She’s opening a donation link," Huang Chunhua whispered, her voice dripping with disgust. "She’s claiming she needs funds for a ’Mystic Charity Stream’ for the mall victims. People are already sending thousands! Look at the screen!"
Huang Chunhua also chimed in saying, "I heard that she has multiple boyfriends. Her character is questionable. I wonder if that money will actually go towards helping others."
Mo Chou felt a familiar spark of cold irritation. She had spent hours perfecting gaming skills, she hadn’t even celebrated her own wins; she wasn’t about to let a third-rate social climber use her alias to scam her classmates and profit off a tragedy.
Lu Jinhai, who was watching Mo Chou closely, caught all her reactions. He knew that someone was going to pay for their audacity.
"Let her have her five minutes of fame," Mo Chou murmured, her fingers already dancing over the phone she had built and modified herself, sending a silent command to her home server. "The higher she climbs, the harder she’ll hit the ground when the ’real’ Mystic decides to log in and show the world what a slaughter actually looks like."
As they entered the lecture hall, a student standing by the door—a well known bully of the performing arts clique—sneered at Mo Chou. "Hey, Mo Chou, did you see? Lin Mae is the Gaming Goddess. Guess some people have actual talent, and some just have family money and a pretty face."
Mo Chou didn’t even look at him. She just smiled—a small, predatory smile that made Lu Jinhai’s heart skip a beat with a mix of admiration and fear.
"Yes," Mo Chou said softly, her eyes flashing. "Talent is a very... difficult thing to fake. And even harder to survive when you don’t actually have it."
ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧