Lin Xie had just managed to navigate the battlefield of breakfast when her phone-an unassuming black rectangle gifted by Shen Rui-started buzzing on the table.
Once.
Twice.
Then nonstop.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
She stared at it like it was malfunctioning.
"Do you want me to shoot it?" Shen Rui asked casually from across the table, sipping coffee like he hadn't just offered to eliminate her mobile device.
"It's vibrating like it's possessed," Shen Yan whispered, peeking over the fruit platter.
"It's the standard ringtone," Lin Xie replied.
"No," Madam Shen frowned. "That is not a ringtone. That is a cry for help."
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Finally, Lin Xie tapped the screen, answering with all the emotional range of a refrigerator. "Lin Xie speaking."
But she accidentally hit the speaker button too.
And what came out next made everyone freeze mid-chew.
"-Miss Lin Xie! Hello, this is Dr. Huang, Head of Senzhou Imperial University-ARE YOU AWARE that you've just made history?!"
Lin Xie blinked. "Pardon?"
"You scored a PERFECT 1000 on the Advanced Unified Entrance Examination! We've never had this in recorded academic history! The AI scanners double-checked it three times!"
Pause.
"Would you believe," Dr. Huang went on breathlessly, "you solved the final calculus logic matrix in under twelve seconds. That problem was originally designed to stall quantum processors for twenty minutes!"
Shen Rui slowly turned to look at her.
Lin Xie, unfazed: "It was repetitive."
Dr. Huang didn't hear her. He was still shouting.
"We're offering you full academic funding, on-campus housing, research grants, private laboratory access-just say yes. Say yes now. Before some overseas institution snatches you away!"
Everyone at the table was frozen.
Even Mr. Shen, who had been quietly reading the financial paper, slowly set it down.
Shen Yan's mouth dropped open. "Did he say twelve seconds?!"
"I think he said quantum processor-stalling level," Madam Shen whispered.
"Did our future daughter-in-law just outscore AI?" Shen Yan shrieked.
"She said it was repetitive," Shen Rui said, unable to stop the smug curve of his mouth. "Because it was."
Lin Xie, still on the call, blinked. "You're speaking too loudly. I'm eating toast."
Dr. Huang: "WE'LL NAME A BUILDING AFTER YOU. JUST PLEASE ACCEPT."
Lin Xie glanced at Shen Rui, deadpan. "Do I need a building?"
Madam Shen clutched her pearls. "You need whatever you want."
"I don't need funding either," Lin Xie continued blandly. "My boyfriend is rich."
Shen Rui sipped his coffee. "She's not wrong."
Dr. Huang was still rambling, but Lin Xie calmly ended the call and placed her phone back on the table like nothing had happened.
Silence reigned for two full seconds.
Then Madam Shen stood and pointed dramatically. "SHE GETS MY JEWELRY VAULT. RIGHT NOW."
"Done," Mr. Shen said, not looking up.
Shen Yan threw a croissant like a confetti cannon. "She's going to destroy the entire university ranking system!"
"I want her as my emergency contact," Madam Shen declared.
"I want her as our family motto," Shen Yan added. "Lin Xie. Cold. Pretty. Smarter than machines."
"I want her as Prime Minister," Madam Shen said.
"She can run the country if she's bored," Mr. Shen agreed, sipping tea.
Shen Rui, still seated with a faint smile tugging at his lips, looked at Lin Xie like a proud parent at a kindergarten talent show-if the child had accidentally outperformed a national security algorithm and humiliated three PhDs.
He leaned closer.
Quiet. Warm. Proud.
"I knew you'd ace it."
She blinked at him. "You bribed the testing system."
"I didn't," he said. "But I was tempted. Now I don't have to. You made them cry without me."
She paused, processing that.
Then, with the same robotic deadpan: "Next time, let me bribe them."
Shen Rui laughed.
Laughed.
Openly. Easily.
And for a moment, the entire table watched in awe-not just of Lin Xie, the genius cold orphan turned university-breaking myth, but of what she was doing to their famously aloof son.
Because Shen Rui, under her gaze, wasn't just powerful.
He was happy.
And somehow, that was the most mind-blowing part of all.
---
Lin Xie had never seen a house this large in person before. Not in the way civilians used the word "house." She had lived inside weapons-grade containment facilities, walked through sterilized research domes, once resided in a decommissioned AI launch bunker with a heated floor-but this?
This was absurd.
Marble hallways wider than aircraft runways. Chandeliers that looked like they could communicate with satellites. Portraits of ancestors so rich they probably taxed kingdoms. There were rooms that had rooms, and mirrors that adjusted to "natural light simulation" when the sun moved.
She tilted her head up at a floating staircase made of glass and steel. "Is that stable?"
Shen Rui, hands in pockets, said calmly, "It's been stable since 1994."
"Hm." She stepped on it anyway like she was about to test for mines.
"You know," he added mildly, "most people are impressed by art or architecture. You look like you're running a tactical sweep."
"I am," she said, poking the wall with one finger. "Your security grid's lagging by 0.3 milliseconds on the east corridor. Very exploitable."
Behind them, Shen Yan popped her head out of a guest lounge. "She noticed that?!"
Madam Shen, sipping red tea in a long satin robe, glided up with a delighted expression. "She's better than any firewall. Let her rewire the whole compound if she wants."
"I do not want," Lin Xie replied flatly. "But if someone attacks you with nanodrones, I'll assist."
"See? Adorable," Madam Shen whispered.
"She's like a pet war drone," Shen Yan said. "With hair."
"I heard that," Lin Xie replied without blinking, peering at a koi pond beneath the glass floor. "These fish are genetically modified. Their bioluminescence is artificial."
"They sparkle in low light," Shen Rui said. "Grandmother likes them."
"They're inefficient. They will burn out in five years unless their water is nitrate-infused."
Pause.
"...Shall we change their water?" Mr. Shen called from the second floor, casually flipping through a stock portfolio.
Shen Rui sighed. "She's only been here an hour."
"She's efficient," Madam Shen beamed.
As they walked past the indoor conservatory, Lin Xie paused. She stared at a piano.
"Do you play?" Shen Rui asked, knowing full well the answer was going to be absurd.
"I installed music theory when I was six. It's inefficient as a survival skill. But I can reproduce most classical sequences by ear."
She sat.
Cracked her knuckles once.
And proceeded to play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the casual, mechanical precision of someone setting off a warhead. Except-somewhere around the middle-the tempo slowed. Shifted. Warped into something emotional.
Something she wasn't supposed to know how to feel.
The room went quiet.
By the time she lifted her hands off the final note, several house staff were staring through the glass like she'd just solved death.
Madam Shen dabbed her eyes. "I'm adopting her."
"I already adopted her," Shen Rui said dryly.
"You don't count. Yours was romantic."
"I think it was practical," Lin Xie replied.
Madam Shen whispered to Shen Yan, "They're perfect. I want to be them when I reincarnate."
Upstairs, Mr. Shen texted the family chat: Do not disturb them. The AI child is bonding with furniture.
Later, in the courtyard, Lin Xie observed the rose garden.
"These flowers are too symmetrical. I don't trust them."
"You're picking fights with roses now?" Shen Rui asked, leaning on a marble pillar.
"They look suspicious."
"They're... flowers."
"I've seen weapons shaped like orchids."
He smiled, half-exasperated, half-charmed. "Do you want to interrogate the gardener?"
"Briefly."
And somehow, instead of being offended, the gardener ended up offering her rare honey tea and teaching her how to prune genetically coded bluebells.
By sunset, she had "accidentally" broken one antique vase (Shen Yan clapped), dissected a biometric mirror in the hall to "test latency" (Mr. Shen nodded approvingly), and threatened a suspicious security drone with a kitchen fork (Madam Shen hugged her).
Shen Rui, following behind her like a handler with the world's most intelligent chaos unit, just watched. Amused. A little horrified. Mostly proud.
"She really is trouble," Shen Yan said as Lin Xie began quietly explaining the flaw in their motion sensors to a butler.
"She's my trouble," Shen Rui replied simply.
And that was that.
By the time dinner came around, the staff had already adjusted.
Every table had exactly four slices of toast.
The lights in the hallway had been recalibrated to Lin Xie's retina preferences.
And one of the koi now glowed her name.
Lin Xie stared at it.
Suspiciously.
"...That's weird," she said.
"We love you," Madam Shen replied from behind her.
Lin Xie, still staring at the fish: "I think I'm being emotionally blackmailed."
"Correct," Shen Rui murmured, placing a hand at the small of her back. "You're part of the family now."
And weirdly?
She didn't mind.
Even if she was still waiting for the roses to attack.