It was still early in the morning, which made his number of fantasy-fueled escapades all the more shameful. It had been years of this. He still hadn’t gotten over the guilt that overwhelmed him whenever he remembered how good a friend Xingyu was, and yet here he was…jerking off to him every time they made prolonged contact with each other. For the first few months, he’d assumed that he would grow out of this reaction, but if it hadn’t at this point of their relationship, he doubted that it ever would.

His mind was wandering again. He went to the counter and ordered a latte, then went to a corner seat and set his laptop up.

Xingyu knew the bare basics of this charity event—it would be at the Chen’s estate, it would be on Saturday, it would start at nine p.m., it was a formal event. It would be filled with people who ruined Weiran’s life. They were hiring waiters.

This last point was something Weiran took care of as soon as Xingyu knew he was attending this event, and he had been doing regular and steady research on how exactly a waiter should act around a crowd of the city’s most elite. Right now, he needed to do research on everyone who could possibly be attending. There were only a few people that Xingyu could name who were most definitely on the List, but he hadn’t stayed long enough to a, get a more complete collection of names, or b, figure out who was at the top—who was controlling everything.

Liu Baiyan was obviously one of the people at the top, along with Sun Yue. They had different functions within the List: Liu Baiyan was the one who took, and Sun Yue was the one who gave, or at least that was how Xingyu had described it to him, and how he said his father had described it to him. Liu Baiyan was the one who made deals, bought and managed properties, built companies, etc., and then Sun Yue was the one who dealt more intricately with the List.

“Dealt more intricately—what does that mean?”

“I’m not sure about the details,” Xingyu had explained. “I only ever spent time with Ba. Whenever I got curious, he would only say that I’d learn about it once I got a handle on my role.”

He’d already done plenty of research on both people—nobody had ever found anything even slightly incriminating on either person, of course, nor had they found anything on their families. All of the research and the work that Weiran’s parents had put into bringing them down hadn’t even made a dent before it was completely erased from all records. But occasionally he went to check the search results on them, read the latest gossip, click through whatever pictures the paparazzi had taken of them—anything that could be significant.