The after‑party was held at a private club in the French Concession, a converted Art Deco mansion with dim lighting, leather banquettes, and a bar that served cocktails named after classic films. The city's elite had migrated here from the Grand Theatre, shedding the formality of the red carpet for the more intimate theatre of whispered deals and quiet alliances. Lin Fan stood near a window, watching the snow begin to fall—the first snowfall of the season, delicate flakes that dissolved as they touched the glass.
Su Xiaoyu was across the room, surrounded by producers and journalists and the kind of people who always surrounded success. She had presented the lifetime achievement award with grace and humour, her voice steady despite the adrenaline of the earlier confrontation. Madam Chen had not been seen since. Word had spread, as word always did, and the industry's old guard was recalibrating in real time. Some of them had already approached Lin Fan with cautious congratulations. Others had avoided him entirely. He preferred the latter.
He wanted to leave. The club was warm and elegant, but he was tired. The Phase I trial data for Linfloxacin was waiting for his review, and there was a call with Wang Feng scheduled for midnight about the shell company acquisitions that were still unravelling Zhang Weiguo's network. More names. More documents. More quiet, patient work. But Su Xiaoyu had asked him to stay, and he had learned that the small courtesies—showing up, staying late, standing beside someone while they navigated a difficult room—were as important as any corporate victory.
The crowd shifted, and Su Xiaoyu appeared beside him, two glasses of champagne in her hands. She looked radiant but tired, the emerald gown catching the light, the jade bracelet still on her wrist. "You're brooding," she said.
"I'm not brooding. I'm observing."
"That's the same thing with you." She handed him a glass. "I saw you talking to the head of distribution for Huayi Brothers. Are you acquiring them too?"
"Not tonight. He wanted to know if I was interested in co‑financing a series of independent films. I told him I'd consider it."
"You'd consider it. That's your answer to everything."
"It's usually true."
She laughed, then set down her glass. "I'm ready to leave. But I don't want to deal with the paparazzi outside. The last time I left a festival, there was a photographer who followed my car all the way to my apartment."
Lin Fan considered the situation. The Zonda was parked in the VIP garage, which would make a quiet exit difficult—the photographers knew his car now, and the matte black Pagani was about as inconspicuous as a fighter jet. The Honda, however, was still parked at the villa. He had driven the Zonda here, but there was no reason he couldn't arrange for it to be collected later.
"I'll drive you home," he said.
"You already drove me here."
"No, I drove us here in a supercar that attracts attention. I meant I'll drive you home in something that doesn't."
She looked at him with a curious expression. "Do you have another car stashed somewhere? A private jet, perhaps? A helicopter?"
"Better." He pulled out his regular phone and sent a message to Chen Wei, who was working late at the logistics hub. *Need a car at the Grand Theatre VIP garage. Something ordinary. Text me when it's there.* Then he turned back to Su Xiaoyu. "Give me twenty minutes."
---
Twenty‑five minutes later, a silver Toyota Camry rolled into the VIP garage, driven by one of Chen Wei's junior dispatchers. The young man handed Lin Fan the keys with a slightly awed expression, clearly recognising both the billionaire and the movie star standing beside him. "Mr. Lin. The car is fully fuelled. Mr. Chen said to tell you it's the most boring car in the fleet, as requested."
"Thank you. Tell Chen Wei I owe him one."
The dispatcher left, and Su Xiaoyu stared at the Camry. "This is your secret weapon? A rental car?"
"It's the same model I drove when I was a Didi driver. Nobody notices a Camry." He opened the passenger door for her. "Get in. I'll take you home the way I used to take everyone home. Quietly, smoothly, and without anyone noticing."
She climbed in, arranging the emerald gown with practiced efficiency. Lin Fan settled into the driver's seat, and the God‑Level Driving skill hummed to life beneath his thoughts. It had been months since his occupation as a ride‑hailing driver, but the skill was permanent, and the familiar interior of the Camry—the slightly worn steering wheel, the faint scent of air freshener, the gentle hum of the engine—felt like returning to a place he hadn't known he'd missed.
They pulled out of the garage and into the quiet streets of the French Concession. The snow was falling more heavily now, dusting the plane trees and the cobblestones with white. The city was hushed, the usual roar of traffic muffled by the weather. Lin Fan drove without hurry, the car moving through the streets with the fluid, automatic grace that the God‑Level skill allowed.
"You really did this," Su Xiaoyu said after a while. "Drove strangers around for money."
"For a week. It was my first occupation. The System—the thing that gave me all of this—started me as a Didi driver. I had to complete twenty trips with a rating of 4.8 or higher. I ended up with a 4.9, and I got the Zonda as a reward."
"And you kept driving? After the week was over?"
"I kept the skill. The driving. The knowledge of how to read traffic patterns, how to navigate the city, how to make a passenger feel safe. The System's gifts are permanent. The occupations change every week, but what I learn—it stays."
She was silent for a moment, watching the snow through the window. "What else have you learned? What other occupations?"
He thought about the list. "Driving. Cooking—I started as a beginner, but now it's God‑Level. Michelin‑starred. You've eaten my food. Corporate strategy—that's how I helped Zhan Bingxue fight off the Chen family's takeover. Emergency medicine—I spent a week in the ER at Shanghai General, and I performed surgeries I had no right to perform. I saved a minister's daughter. I saved a homeless man with a brain bleed. I saved a carpenter named Mr. Wei, who was dying of an infection that no other antibiotic could touch. He walked out of the hospital on his own feet."
"The carpenter from the novel?"
"Yes. The novel was fiction, but Mr. Wei was real. He's at home now, building his wife a kitchen chair. The one he promised her before he got sick."
Su Xiaoyu turned to look at him. Her expression was unreadable—not the careful mask she wore for the cameras, but something deeper. Something searching. "You saved his life, and then you wrote a novel about it, and then you bought a film studio and bankrupted a predator and exposed a legendary actress on a red carpet. What's next? Are you going to build a hospital?"
"I already own a pharmaceutical institute. A hospital isn't out of the question."
She laughed, but it was a short laugh, tinged with something that might have been wonder. "You're not what I expected when I first met you. You seemed so... ordinary. Quiet. Like someone who was still figuring out who he was."
"I'm still figuring it out. I just have better tools now."
They drove through the city, the Camry's tyres hissing softly on the wet pavement. The snow was beginning to accumulate, softening the edges of the buildings, muffling the world. Lin Fan found himself taking a longer route than necessary—not because he wanted to delay the destination, but because the drive itself was pleasant. The quiet. The snow. The presence of someone who had become, over the months, a genuine friend.
"Do you miss it?" Su Xiaoyu asked. "Driving strangers around? Before the money and the fame?"
"Sometimes. When I was driving, I was invisible. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody expected anything from me except a safe ride and a five‑star rating. I could be kind to people without it becoming a headline." He paused. "There was an old woman, on my last day of driving. Her name was Mrs. Chen. She was ninety‑one years old. Her husband had died thirty years ago, and she was losing her memory, and she just wanted someone to drive her around the city so she could see the places she remembered before she forgot them. I drove her for an hour and a half. She talked about the Japanese occupation. The famine. The first time she saw a foreigner—a French sailor who gave her chocolate. She told me her husband's face was the only thing she could still remember clearly."
Su Xiaoyu's voice was very soft. "What did you tell her?"
"I told her I was a good listener. And I was. That was the gift of being invisible. You could listen without anyone expecting you to talk."
They stopped at a red light. The snow fell on the windscreen, the wipers sweeping it away in rhythmic arcs. Su Xiaoyu reached out and touched his hand, just for a moment. "You've been listening all night. At the premiere. On the balcony. On the red carpet. You didn't have to be invisible to do that."
"No. But it helped."
The light turned green, and they drove on. The streets grew quieter as they left the French Concession and entered the residential district where Su Xiaoyu lived—a modest apartment building, not the penthouse that her fame might have afforded, but a quiet place with a garden and a doorman who had known her since she was a teenager. She had never moved, she had told him once. The apartment had been her grandmother's, and the memories were too thick to leave.
Lin Fan pulled the Camry to a stop outside the building's entrance. The doorman, an elderly man in a heavy coat, peered at the car with mild curiosity—he was accustomed to Su Xiaoyu arriving in black sedans and limousines, not a silver Camry driven by an anonymous young man.
"Thank you," she said. "For driving me. For everything tonight."
"It's just driving. I used to do it for a living."
"No." She opened the door, then paused, looking back at him. "You did it for the living. For Mrs. Chen. For the people who needed someone to listen. You did it because you cared, even when no one was watching. That's not just driving. That's—" She stopped, as if searching for the right word. "That's the opposite of everything I've experienced in this industry."
He didn't know what to say. The golden phone was silent in his pocket. Outside, the snow continued to fall, quiet and steady.
"I'll see you at the next premiere," he said.
"You'd better." She stepped out of the car, the emerald gown rustling against the cold, and walked toward the entrance. The doorman hurried to open the door for her, and she paused again, turning to wave—a small, human gesture that was entirely unlike the carefully posed waves she gave on red carpets. Then she disappeared inside.
Lin Fan sat in the Camry for a moment, the engine still running, the wipers still sweeping the snow from the windscreen. The God‑Level Driving skill was a quiet presence in his mind, but it was not needed here. He wasn't driving. He was just sitting, letting the quiet of the night settle around him.
Then his phone buzzed. Not the golden phone—the regular one. A message from an unknown number. He opened it and read:
*Mr. Lin. My name is Zhou Hui. I was Liu Min's assistant in 2011, the year Madam Chen pressured her to withdraw the complaint. I have documents that may be useful to you. I've been waiting fifteen years to give them to someone who would actually use them. Please call me.*
He stared at the screen for a long moment. The snow fell. The Camry's engine hummed. And Lin Fan, who had started the evening as a reluctant guest at a film festival and had ended it as a friend driving a movie star home, began to type his reply.
The battle was not over. But the allies were gathering. And he was ready.