The strange expression didn’t leave Weiran’s face—it even got stranger. “I know,” he said again.

Xingyu felt like he was supposed to say something else. “Just…be safe.”

Still that strange expression. “I’ll be careful. But nothing about this is safe.”

Xingyu couldn’t argue with that.

Weiran went to the club at seven p.m. It was quite early for anyone to go to a club, but for a young fu’erdai, the partying started as soon as he could get out of work. Xiaokai was a responsible young man who didn’t go out partying, but Xingyu in his absence had not garnered such a reputation—that evening, at seven o’clock as he stepped through the club’s doors, Zhang Weiran was Liu Xingyu.

There was no way that he could have gotten in as his real self—one mention that he was at all related to the Zhu family, much less their son, and he would be dead on the spot. No; Liu Xingyu had just arrived, not Weiran. Liu Xingyu, who had just come in from overseas, who had made an appearance at a party but hadn’t been seen publicly yet beyond that, who hadn’t been home in so long—he wanted to get some partying in after all that studying. It was a believable story. It was the only one they had.

“ID.” The bouncer dealt with the same people every day. The only new faces he ever saw were hanging off the regulars’ arms. But this man in front of him now—tall, slender, in a proper suit with the proper “I’m better than you” expression on his face…well, he looked the type, but this wasn’t the sort of bar who let in just anyone.

He handed over his identification smoothly, no hesitation or uneasiness at all. The bouncer looked it over.

Liu Xingyu.

The Liu Xingyu? He looked back at the man, who was beginning to look impatient now. Liu Xingyu, the heir to the Liu family, was at this club? The younger Liu son—Liu Xiaokai—he never did this sort of thing, even though he was the same age as all the other fu’erdai. But the elder Liu had been overseas…maybe he was catching up on everything else he missed.

The bouncer stepped aside, handed back Liu Xingyu’s card. “Enjoy your time here.”

Liu Xingyu put the card back into his wallet. “I’d like to be put on the List.”

Ah—one of those. The bouncer said, “Upstairs.”

Liu Xingyu sniffed at him and went in.