XINGYU WAS A realistic person. He was logical. It was one of the few of Ba’s perfect little lessons that Xingyu didn’t try to actively suppress. Even as Ba’s lessons were always directly applicable to the company, and were intended to only be applicable to the company, Liu Xingyu wasn’t about to limit himself so much. He could apply logic and reason to everything else. He could understand any kind of world he got himself into.

Here is what he reasoned.

Ba put a considerable amount of trust into Xingyu. After all, he’d trained him for eighteen years, honed him into the perfect heir. Even if he’d left, there was no length of Xingyu’s absence that could replace that kind of intensive, careful wiring. Xingyu had been gone for twelve years, and Ba still didn’t consider using Xiaokai in his place. Xiaokai had none of the experience that Xingyu did.

Of course, he still couldn’t give him all of his trust. Twelve years was a long time to be gone. What had Xingyu done while he was over there? Studying, certainly; attending school—he had the degrees to prove that. But what else? Who had he met? What if there was someone who could give him something more tempting than whatever Ba had offered, and what if Liu Xingyu took the deal? What if he was coming back to take over the company—or, worse, what if he was coming back to give the company to someone else?

So he wasn’t about to hand over the company to Xingyu anytime soon. He needed to erase all the different possibilities. He needed to ensure that Xingyu was still loyal to him, still loyal to the company.

And then there was his laoma. He understood that she was an important part of the List. He understood that she controlled parts of the List that Ba never touched. She didn’t have the same control over the company, but she did have an inordinate amount of power—as much power as Liu Baiyan did in the List, even. Her role—which would later become Xiao-Xiao’s role—was vital. Part of this, of course, was her access to and control of the Files.

Xingyu hadn’t even known that such a thing existed until Xiao-Xiao told him about it. The existence of the Files changed…everything. Everything. No longer did they have to worry about finding every single person’s weakness—all of the weaknesses existed in one place for the taking. All they needed to do was get access.