Xingyu wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that. Friends—he’d heard the term many times during his research, had seen it on television, had heard people talk about it in passing. He knew the official definition, but he also knew that his ba didn’t want the official definition. “People you can depend on,” he decided on at last.

“Here is another lesson, Xingyu.” Ba took him by the shoulder and led him into his office, away from his secretaries’ ears. “You cannot depend on anyone.”

“I thought you said you trusted people on your payroll.”

“I trust them for certain jobs, but I do not depend on them. If necessary, I could do the work on my own. Listen to me, Xingyu. You are the only one you can wholly trust, and you are the only one you can wholly depend on.”

“So friends—”

“‘Friend’ is just a superfluous word to refer to assets. Be friendly with as many people as you like, but remember that your priority remains to be the company—any contacts you form are for the benefit of the company.”

“Yes, Ba.”

Even if Xingyu wasn’t actively thinking about all these little lessons, the effects of them remained: he couldn’t even think about the people he met at college as friends. They were just assets. He had an asset for each class—if he ever wanted to discuss a class’s materials with someone, he knew just who to go to. And then came Weiran, who was an asset in that he spoke Mandarin and that he provided a very ‘normal college student’ for Xingyu. It was pure luck that he was connected to the List, and even luckier that he was willing to put his life on the line to help Xingyu bring it down.

But, again—that was also connected to Ba. Everything always led back to him.

That first lesson to be heartless toward everything but the company did not end there. It was one of those lessons that branched out into a dozen other lessons—family does not matter and is an arbitrary concept; friendship does not matter and is an arbitrary concept; love does not matter and is an arbitrary concept; and, of course: sometimes the best solution to your problems is to remove the source of the problem entirely.

The best way to remove the problem was poison.