Lin Qingxue's face went from pale to livid when she heard those words.
Her eyes snapped open in disbelief, her chest heaving with rage.
She shot back, so furious she actually swore: "What a load of Crap—does the school belong to their family? They can expel someone just like that? They're just green-eyed monsters!"
With that, she dumped the stuff in her hands on the floor, grabbed her phone and logged straight into the campus forum.
Reading the smear campaign, Qingxue went to war with the trolls.
They could call her a gold-digger—fine—but they were not allowed to bad-mouth her sugar daddy.
She fought the haters for a full two hours.
She hit back under every single comment.
Only after counter-attacking did she calm down enough to head out to her part-time shift at the milk-tea shop.
Even though Jiang Cheng had already transferred 200,000 yuan to her, she was saving that for her mother's kidney transplant later.
She couldn't just sit around living off that lump sum.
After all, it would only tide them over for a while.
When the roommates saw Qingxue heading off to work again, they started teasing her.
"Qingxue, your boyfriend's loaded—why bother with a part-time job?"
"Yeah, he's bought you so many luxuries. If it were me, I'd quit working in a heartbeat."
"The pay there is lousy and the hours are long. Don't tell me your boyfriend only buys you stuff but won't give you pocket money?"
Qingxue smiled politely, keeping quiet about the 200,000 yuan Jiang Cheng had given her.
"You're overthinking it. Jiang Cheng is super generous; of course he's my boyfriend. But that doesn't clash with me working part-time. You know my family's tight on money—work-study is the only way I can manage. I'll skip the noon elective in drawing. If the prof takes roll, cover for me, okay? I'll bring you free milk tea when I'm back."
Take a handout and you're soft on the giver.
A Certain Tea Brand charges over ten yuan a cup—normally they'd never splurge on that.
Whenever Qingxue worked, she sometimes brought them a cup.
That counted as a perk.
Hearing Qingxue promise milk tea, they agreed at once.
After some fake comforting, Qingxue hurried out of the dorm.
Glancing back at the door, she felt nothing but exhaustion.
Maintaining these phony friendships for so long was draining.
But she had no choice—she still needed them to help her skip classes when she picked up extra shifts.
She just had to endure two more years; once she graduated she could move out… Meanwhile, after Military Training ended, Wang Jian and the others finished lunch and went back to the dorm.
Seeing Jiang Cheng already inside, Wang Jian said in surprise, "Bro Cheng, you're back? I could've brought you lunch."
"I ordered take-out; I'll go pick it up in a bit."
Noting Jiang Cheng's yawn, Wang Jian grinned suggestively, "Didn't sleep well last night?"
Before Jiang Cheng could answer, Lu Chuan burst out, "Bro Cheng, how can you be so chill? The three of us saw the forum posts this morning and were too mad to eat; we've been battling the trolls whenever we had a free second."
Jiang Cheng blinked. "What posts? I haven't checked."
Seeing his cluelessness, Wang Jian scratched his head. "Just jealous haters spouting nonsense."
"Exactly—sour grapes," Lu Chuan added. "Though the stuff they say is seriously nasty."
Wu Kun chimed in, "Looks to me they're jealous you're rich and popular with girls. No idea who started the thread, but it's clearly a smear job, you little target."
Jiang Cheng took Wang Jian's phone and looked.
Three pinned threads jumped out:
[Second-Gen Rich Gets Special Treatment During Military Training—Is This What Social Equality Looks Like?]
Below was a photo of him lounging in the break room, phone in hand.
[Rich Kid Drives on Campus, Bullies Classmates] – with pics.
[Second-Gen Rich Bribes Whole Class, Treats Everyone to Milk Tea Every Day] – with pics.
[Within a Week of School Starting, Gold-Digging campus belle Gets Nailed by Second-Gen Rich] – with pics.
Jiang Cheng frowned as he scrolled through the replies.
It was a wall of curses, pitch-black.
The comment trend made it obvious someone had hired trolls to steer the narrative.
All the posts pitted the rich against ordinary students.
They were pushing the sentiment in the worst possible direction.