Chapter Sixty-Five – The House Cracks
The evening descended on Horizon Gate with a strange stillness. The city lights reflected against the polished glass towers, glowing like a fragile illusion of stability. Inside, the building's heartbeat was uneven — subtle tremors of uncertainty rippled through the floors, corridors, and offices.
Xinyue stood in her control room, surrounded by monitors, tablets, and feeds streaming live updates from every corner of the company. The first domino had fallen; the secondary fractures had spread. She traced the pattern with a delicate touch, watching as managers hesitated, departments faltered, and carefully constructed plans collided in unpredictable ways.
Jun's voice broke her focus. "They're reaching critical thresholds. The cracks aren't just appearing — they're widening."
Xinyue didn't look up. "Exactly. Fear only becomes leverage when it consumes certainty entirely. And once that happens… the house begins to crack."
Jun's brow furrowed. "Li Wei is close. Too close. He's piecing the puzzle together faster than anticipated."
Her gaze shifted to the city below, lights glimmering like fireflies against the dark river. "He's part of the storm now. He always was. Whether he realizes it or not, he can't stand outside of it. And soon, he'll have to choose where he stands — with me… or against me."
Li Wei moved through Horizon Gate with purpose, scanning the corridors, noting every hesitant glance, every subtle shift in behavior. The anomalies were no longer random — patterns emerged. Reports that had seemed innocent carried subtle alterations. Emails had been rerouted. Decisions that should have been straightforward now contradicted one another.
He whispered to himself, tension coiling in his chest. "It's deliberate. Someone is orchestrating this."
Every instinct told him the orchestrator was close. Invisible, omnipresent, intelligent. And yet, he couldn't fully identify her. The closer he got to the source, the more he felt a strange pull in his chest, a reminder of what — or who — had always mattered most.
Meanwhile, Xinyue tracked his movements, anticipation coiling like a quiet storm. She had calculated every misstep, predicted every reaction. Every falter, every hesitation, was feeding into the larger effect.
Jun leaned forward, voice low. "You're pushing him into the eye of the storm."
"Let him see," she said. "He needs to witness the fragility. He needs to understand the system before he understands me."
The building itself seemed to pulse with tension. Employees whispered in corridors, misread memos, and second-guessed instructions. The fear that Xinyue had carefully cultivated was no longer subtle — it had become tangible. A palpable tension clung to every office, every meeting room, every hallway.
Li Wei reached the floor where the secondary targets were faltering most visibly. He noticed a group of mid-level managers arguing quietly over conflicting schedules. Their voices were low, tinged with panic. Documents were missing or misfiled. Internal communications had been al"ered, deliberately or accidentally — he couldn't tell.
Every detail whispered a single truth: someone was orchestrating the chaos from the shadows.
He turned toward the empty hallway, sensing a presence he could not see but could feel. Every instinct screamed that she was near. Xinyue — the woman who had haunted his past and captivated his heart — was behind it all.
Xinyue allowed herself a rare smile. From her perspective, Li Wei was finally seeing the cracks, the tremors, the fractures she had engineered. Yet he still did not know the full scope, did not understand the precision, the depth, the history driving her hand.
She thought of him — the man she had never stopped loving — and realized that his proximity made the next stage of her plan both more dangerous and more necessary.
"Jun," she said quietly, "it's time for the next layer. Let the first domino's fall be the signal. Let the fear propagate further."
Jun nodded. "Understood. But be careful. One misstep… one moment of hesitation…"
"I never hesitate," Xinyue replied, her eyes never leaving the monitors. "I simply watch. And when the house cracks… I see who survives."
Outside, the city remained unaware, its glittering lights masking the storm that raged within. Inside Horizon Gate, hesitation had become panic, miscommunication had become chaos, and uncertainty had become a weapon wielded with precision.
Li Wei's hand tightened around his folder as he walked the corridors. Every instinct told him he was closing in. And yet, every heartbeat reminded him of Xinyue — the only person capable of orchestrating this, and the only person he could never truly bring himself to oppose.
Xinyue, watching him from afar, allowed herself one thought:
The house is cracking. And when it falls… only the strong, the clever, and the faithful survive.
Her heart whispered another truth: And I still want him to survive beside me.