Chapter 1.11

A/n: I apologize for the weird intro in advance. I wrote it on a whim. Yeah, that's my excuse.

The inconspicuous chilly autumn wind blew into an inconspicuous opened window of an inconspicuous house, perfectly balancing with the inconspicuous warm weather of the inconspicuous September day. Nobody knew that inside, an inconspicuous boy was sitting in his inconspicuous room, ready to use his inconspicuous spiritual power to destroy the inconspicuous world.

Luckily, that boy was not in the world Ling Xia was in. In fact, the boy had nothing to do with the plot at all. To the actual storyline now.

Ling Xia opened Weibo to see what replies he got to his post denying his relationship with Yang Lizhen and explaining the real situation. Most of them were positive, which showed that most people in this world were open to homosexuality.

Most of them were actually bashing the host of the thread. How had the host opened the discussion anyway?

'What a shock! The son of the biggest clothing brand in the world's CEO might be homosexual! He's coming out of a small room with another boy, but the boy's hair is all messy and they seem very close. Could this be love blossoming in the young master's heart, or is this something else entirely? These two had no other interactions the entire day, are they just hiding their relationship, or are they not in a relationship at all? Although no money can be seen in the scenes in the pictures, the person in question has always been after money to help his family. He's also one of the poorer ones admitted into the school, there are many other reasons their relationship could have gone on, especially because our prince's eyes were directed at only one person in the past: his childhood friend who unfortunately died. In an interview a few days ago, he claimed he still loved his childhood friend, and he said nothing about moving on, so what could this new boy be to him? A person to bestow his kindness on? A boytoy? A new flame?'

It was surprisingly convincing, if Ling Xia didn't know the truth, he would get lost in the paragraph's lies. It pretended to take a rational approach, reasoning out everything for the readers, but, really, it was pure slander.

The long paragraph seemed to be aimed at Ling Yu, but it was also making him seem as innocent as possible by bringing up the past and mentioning that Ling Yu was a kind person. The host was really trying to bash Ling Xia.

And there was only one person that hated him enough to do that.

Ling Xia went to a new tab and opened up a document he used for writing down everything he found about Mu Ninghua through the past week along with some proof like the pictures of the diary he still had.

Speaking of which, he hoped his manipulation of spiritual energy didn't dwindle too much, so that guy he used it on wouldn't remember he was taking pictures of the pages in the diary, so Chu Yan's people wouldn't think to check Li Ming's phone for pictures.

What was his name again? Oh right, Du Wu, the guy that Ling Xia choked.

Ling Xia needed to stop getting distracted. Du Wu's name didn't matter at all.

Mu Ninghua was a wild dog that kept on attacking her maker, and she needed to be reigned in. A female dog… Hehehe—

So many distractions! Why was he in the mood to have fun when he was just sitting in a chair? Whatever.

Ling Xia would use the information on the document to blackmail Mu Ninghua into submission sometime later.

He coded the document so that if it was deleted, it would automatically be uploaded to the internet under an anonymous name. The same thing would happen if Ling Xia didn't open the document at least once a month. Not all counter-attacks required violence after all. Sometimes, just a bit of information was all that was necessary.

Alright, blackmail: check.

The next thing on Ling Xia's to-do list was… wait. Wait until the proposal he put up on the venture capital firm's website got noticed.

Ling Xia hated it when he had nothing to do, he sat at his laptop watching videos of figure skating.

One of the videos piqued his interest. It was a compilation of one of the past Olympics' top ten programs for the men's and ladies' singles and predictions for the top contenders in the Grand Prix that was happening soon.

Ling Xia had never seen anybody who dared to predict who would win next time and put it on the internet. He watched the video intently, trying to gauge what international figure skating in this world was like.

The first person shown in the video was Kim Eunjoo, who won gold at the previous Olympics while representing South Korea. She had skated to light and airy music and her movements mimicked those of a fairy's. Both parts worked extremely well with the way she jumped because she liked jumping with one hand in the air. Anybody could tell that she was a professional figure skater, even her expression of wonder and carefreeness matched the tone of the music.

She had even landed a triple axel in her free skate, the first to do so in ladies' singles skating and the hardest of the six jumps, considering it needed an extra half rotation before landing to be ratified.

Kim Eunjoo earned a total of 202.4 points, reaching a new high for herself. She retired, proud of her accomplishments. It was odd that she was even included in the compilation to Ling Xia because it also had guesses for the next Grand Prix, and Kim Eunjoo retired, but he didn't mind. The performance was excellent.

Although Kim Eunjoo got first place at the Olympics, the silver medallist, Lina Ivanov, was actually the one that set a world record, but things could go very unexpectedly in figure skating, especially because it was split into two parts in the higher levels: the short program and the free skate.

The short program, like it's name, was shorter than the free skate and was a bit more focused on the technical elements such as the jumps.

Lina Ivanov set the world record in the short program, but, unfortunately, the pressure and expectations of the crowd seemed to have gotten to her, as she fell on her triple axel and the first jump of a combination in the free skate. She lost many points because of deductions and her grade of execution was lower than usual for the rest of the skate.

Both the men's and ladies' bronze medallists' performances were also fantastic, with the men's third place only 1.57 points away from second place, one of the closest scores in the history of the Olympics.

The gold medallist for the Olympic men's singles figure skating, however, won by a large margin. He won by ten points because his program component score was higher than everybody else's.

In figure skating, each program was judged based on the TES, or technical score, focusing more on the quality of the jumps, and spins, and the PCS, or program component score, focusing more on the interpretation of the music and how effortlessly and freely skaters moved on the ice. These two scores were then added up to reach the final score for both the short program and the free skate. The two scores from the short and long programs were then added up as well, which was the actual score a figure skater got that was also used for judging which place they got.

The gold medallist's name was Lucas Smith, and he represented the U.S. in the Olympics. The reason his PCS was higher than the others was because his movements matched the music a lot.

During the free skate, the music he chose was intimidating and strong, and as soon as the first note played, he got into character, his motions imitating a soldier of the finest quality with rigidness and order drilled into his bones, but also of suppressed craziness that was finally let loose in a brilliant dance.

He performed a quadruple flip right off the bat and followed up with a flying spin which the judges awarded with an astonishing grade of execution.

Every step on the ice was filled with strength and momentum as he danced and twirled around on the ice, his arms following the strong beat of the music. His movements looked wild from a far-off perspective, but up close, every time the blades of his skates touched the ice was clear and concise, showcasing his expertise in controlling himself on the ice.

Whenever Lucas Smith's arm flung out, a strong gong resonated through the room and in the hearts of everybody that was lucky enough to witness it. At some point, the audience started anticipating them, but their expectations suddenly stopped being met when the music transitioned into a peaceful period.

The notes floated into everybody's ears, leaving a serene feeling behind. Lucas Smith skated in a slow spiral, with his free leg high in the air behind him. The figure skater spent his time doing things that showed his interpretation of the music until the music picked up again, at which point he displayed his jumping ability.

He did a jump combination, and although in the first jump, a triple lutz, his skate almost turned into a flat edge, he got a positive grade of execution. He then did a triple axel which earned him many points along with a quadruple loop and another jump combination.

'Ping!'

A high note rang throughout the ice rink, and Lucas Smith's body made it look like he had reached up and hit that note himself, and he stopped there for a tiny second before coming down like thunder as the beat picked up again.

His body spun around near the ice in a sit spin. When he finished, he sped around on the ice, following the beat of the music. Soon the time came for another jump. He positioned himself for it appropriately, skating backwards for a couple of seconds before striking the ice with the tip of his right skate's blade and launching himself in the air.

His body did three and a half rotations in the air with his arms pulled close to his chest, but as he was getting closer and closer to the ice, he knew he wouldn't land the jump. The fact that his left leg hadn't already started extending backward showed that reality well.

Lucas Smith tumbled onto the ice but got up as quickly as he fell to continue his performance. Ling Xia winced at the fall. It seemed as if Lucas Smith had tripped over himself and fallen.

It was a pity, too. If he really did land that quadruple lutz, he would be the first to do so in competition, and his program would have been flawless. But Ling Xia was once again engaged in the performance as Lucas Smith did his last jump and spin.

His spin started on the left foot, but he changed to his right foot when the music paused for a moment, using his left foot to push into the spin. He started with a sit spin, rising up to an upright position, and finally a layback position, his hand reaching up to the sky.

When his spin was finally done, he flung his arms to the side and stomped his foot on the ice, which signaled the end of his free skate.

The audience burst into loud applause, some people even standing while Lucas Smith caught his breath on the ice. His arms now hung at his side, and he was breathing heavily.

In the Li's house, Ling Xia lifted his hands to clap for the awesome performance along with the audience before realizing he wasn't actually there himself.

He leaned back in his chair and chuckled at his actions before shooting back into an upright position after he realized the video would show what score Lucas Smith got next.

In the video, Lucas Smith was stepping out of the ice rink with a stuffed animal in hand. Next, there was a transition into the place where the figure skater would receive his score. He sat on a bench, wearing a white jacket that wasn't previously there. When he noticed the camera rolling, he waved and shook the stuffed animal in his lap a little.

The intercom suddenly came on, and a male voice started speaking.

Lucas Smith was visibly nervous as he was biting his lip, and he had stopped shaking the little stuffed animal. He looked at the screen that would be showing his scores soon.

Back to real-time, Ling Xia intently watched the screen, waiting for the results to pop up on the bottom of the screen. The bar at the bottom first showed Lucas Smith's free skate score, which was 179.4, and along with his short program score, added up to be 261.87 points. He shot to first place from third place and stayed there for the rest of the event.

Ling Xia thought Lucas Smith's score would be better if he did the quadruple lutz earlier in the program. Usually, figure skaters try to do the hardest jumps first when they still have a lot of energy. Although, he might have done that because, in the second half of the program, all jumps and spins get an extra ten percent added on to their score, so his quadruple lutz would have gotten even more points.

The video continued onward to the predictions for the next season, but Ling Xia was unable to watch it because Li Ming's father had opened the bedroom door and scolded him for staying up so late from the doorway.

Ling Xia sheepishly apologized and obediently went to bed, surprised the video ended up so long. He hadn't checked the length of the video before watching it, but it turned out to be over an hour long.

When he heard the door close, he immediately threw off his covers and tiptoed back to his still-open laptop. Luckily, Li Ming's father hadn't noticed that little detail. He plugged in his earbuds and watched the rest of the video secretly, only accompanied by the dead silence of the night.

Question: Do you readers want something to explain figure skating or are you fine with this?