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The moment she heard that name, Elena Shen, who was still groggy and drowsy, suddenly snapped to attention.

She lifted her heavy eyelids, thought for a moment, and gave a compromise:

"Ten o'clock."

Aurel Shen closed his laptop, no longer pushing her to look at the rest of the data. He lifted his chin slightly, gesturing for her to head to her room.

"Go to sleep. Message me if anything comes up."

Elena shot to her feet and gave him a lazy wave before darting out of the study and running straight back to her bedroom.

7:30 AM, the next morning.

When Elena came downstairs after washing up, Aurel was already sitting on the sofa reading documents.

Jason Fang stood nearby, occasionally reporting on work matters.

After breakfast, Aurel offered to drive her to campus. Elena didn't refuse. She went upstairs, grabbed her laptop and phone, and headed toward the main hall.

Jason, having finished sorting the signed documents, saw his boss carrying a suit jacket and following closely behind the young lady. Doing his due diligence, he asked:

"Mr. Shen, would you like me to drive?"

Aurel didn't break stride. "No need. Head back to the office and prep for the nine o'clock meeting."

When Elena reached Aurel's car, he was already there. She instinctively moved toward the back seat, but his voice called her back:

"Elena, sit in the front. Jason's going back to the office."

She glanced toward the gate where Jason was walking to another vehicle, and, without hesitation, opened the front passenger door and got in.

Last night, Aurel explained quite a bit about the company's upper management. On the way to Huaihai University, he casually quizzed her on several of those topics to see how much she had retained.

In front of Aurel, Elena was far more relaxed than she ever was with Ethan Jiang.

As soon as she got in the car, she leaned lazily back in her seat, her clear eyes fluttering playfully as she munched on a box of mixed nuts he'd brought her. Despite her nonchalant posture, she responded fluently and precisely to each of his questions.

By the time they reached the south entrance of the university, a noticeable dent had been made in the box of nuts.

Aurel stopped the car outside the South Gate. Seeing her snap the lid shut and casually toss the box into the glove compartment, he tapped the steering wheel and said with a smile, his tone laced with indulgence:

"Not eating anymore?"

Elena's brows arched, and she shook her head as she unbuckled her seatbelt. "No. I feel like I've gained weight lately. I need to go on a diet."

Outside the South Gate of campus.

On the other side of the entrance, Jasper Zhong, who had just stepped out of a nanny van with Grace Su, turned her head and spotted Elena emerging from a sleek black luxury car.

Her gaze fixed sharply across the sparse stream of pedestrians, narrowing with interest. She reached out and tugged on Grace's sleeve.

"Grace, is that the junior you're always talking about? The double major in finance and physics, Elena Shen?"

Jasper's gaze hovered over the expensive vehicle Elena had just stepped out of. "Didn't you say she came from an average background? That car is worth a fortune. Who's the man inside?"

Grace followed her line of sight.

A shadow of jealousy, well-concealed, flickered in her eyes.

The car windows were tinted—one-way vision. From their angle, they couldn't see inside. All they could observe was Elena stepping out of the passenger seat. Just as she turned toward the campus, the man inside the car called her back.

The driver's window rolled down halfway, revealing a glimpse of a man's sharply defined brow and side profile.

Elena leaned in, speaking with casual familiarity, took something from his hand, then waved and turned toward the campus as he watched her walk away.

Once the black car pulled off, Grace's gaze shifted back to Elena, her expression still gentle and composed.

She answered Jasper's question with feigned indifference:

"Her background is supposed to be modest. But she's a top student… That man might be a friend."

Jasper was still fixated on the few photos she had just snapped. Zooming in with two fingers, her eyes locked on the clearly distinguished license plate.

She snorted with a touch of malice, her tone biting.

"A friend? The kind that shares her bed?"

"Grace, your junior, has serious skills. A few years back, she tried to steal little Mr. Jiang. Now that she's failed at that, she's already jumped ship to a new patron. I wonder what the boys on campus who secretly admire her would think if they knew their dream girl was a social climber."

Grace chuckled softly. She caught a glance at the photos Jasper was scrolling through and said, as if the matter had nothing to do with her:

"That's her private business."

Seeing Jasper was showing no intention of deleting the photos, Grace's eyes flickered with a cold gleam. She calmly reached out to darken the phone screen and linked arms with her, cheerfully saying:

"Come on, stop worrying about others. Didn't you just visit the set with me? Got your content ready? I've got a commercial shoot this afternoon. Walk back to campus with me to grab some things—I'll be heading off soon."

Elena's first class of the day was quantum physics. Annie Gu, who hadn't opted for a second major, had zero interest in anything physics-related.

Especially not quantum theory—which made her head spin just hearing the term.

Refusing to torture her scientifically allergic brain, Annie skipped class altogether and waited in the library with bubble tea.

After the long lecture, Elena was packing up and about to head to the library when her phone chimed repeatedly.

A flood of WeChat notifications lit up her screen.

All from Annie.

Even just from the text, Elena could tell she was frantic.

[WTF!!!]

[Elena babe, you're trending!!!]

[Sending you the link now—look quickly!]

Elena frowned.

Clicking on the link, a Weibo post immediately popped up, at the top of the page flaunting a candid shot of her stepping out of Aurel's car that morning. The post was titled "Elite Aristocrat Caught with a Gorgeous College Girl", and thanks to the blogger's large following, the post was gaining traction fast.

The entire post was thinly veiled slander—suggesting Elena was vain and materialistic, likely "kept" by some rich man, selling her beauty for status.

The writers ended their soapbox rant with a pious-sounding "reminder" to today's female college students to "stay grounded, uphold integrity, and not bring shame to the nation's highest institutions."

While Elena scrolled through the post, Annie bombarded her with more furious messages.

[We figured it out. That Weibo account 'Nan Feng · Ge Yun' belongs to Jasper Zhong from the art department.]

[She's Grace Su's roommate. After Grace got into acting and landed a few gigs, Jasper piggybacked off her fame and now has millions of followers.]

[These are clearly stealth photos. The captions were deliberately phrased to incite rumors—but squashing this kind of hype isn't too hard.]

[Problem is, it's been reposted a lot already—even our campus forum is flooded with it.]

[Even if we get the platform and moderators to delete it, the damage is done. People will still gossip.]

[Elena, who dropped you off this morning?]

Elena typed two words:

[My brother.]

There was a pause on the other side. Then the screen showed:

"Typing…"

But after a few seconds, nothing came through. Just as Elena was about to scroll through her contacts to call Auden Zhang to handle it, Annie's call popped up.

No one else was around in the empty classroom, so Elena slid her thumb across the screen to answer.

Annie's voice crackled through, equal parts shock and thrill:

"Elena babe—your brother's back in the country?!"

Elena closed her PowerPoint and logged into Weibo.

"He came back yesterday."

"I knew that wasn't Ethan's car…" Annie trailed off suddenly—then two seconds later let out a full-on, stunned shriek.

"Elena! Forget dealing with Jasper. Your brother just went public with your identity—on the official Shen Group account!"

Elena's fingers froze on the mouse.

She hadn't even navigated to the Shen Group's homepage—just hit refresh.

At the very top, pinned in bold, the Shen Group's usually barren account—which typically only posted bidding notices—now displayed a single, striking line:

@ElenaShen: Heiress of the Shen Group.

It was a clarification—and a mic-drop rebuttal to Jasper's low-level smear campaign.

Along with the official post, Aurel himself published a personal statement from the Shen Group's account.

Unlike Jasper's post, which had blurred the license plate and only dared show Elena's face, Aurel's post used the exact same photo—but fully unedited, clearly displaying the plate number.

Below it, he even attached a few additional images confirming he was the one driving the car.

Finally, he publicly tagged Jasper Zhong, leaving her no escape from accountability.