Chapter 177.1: Poaching with a High Salary
Shen Xiu’s fingers moved across the keyboard without the slightest pause. “Me.”
The man’s deep, cold voice reached his ears, leaving Qin Mo momentarily speechless.
“……”
At that moment, Qin Mo finally experienced the true meaning of the phrase “a silence so loud it’s deafening.”
And involuntarily, a classic quote from the Xiuologists surfaced in his mind—“Is there any surprise Boss Xiu doesn’t have up his sleeve?!”
He wanted to ask too: How many more surprises does President Shen still have that I don’t know about?!
After answering Qin Mo’s question, Shen Xiu waited three seconds. When he didn’t hear any response, he finally allowed himself to tear his gaze away from the virtual screen suspended in front of him and glance at the phone on speaker mode.
He spoke again, “Any other questions?”
Hearing Shen Xiu’s indifferent voice once more, Qin Mo swallowed and replied, “No more.”
“President Shen, I won’t take up any more of your time. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
As soon as Shen Xiu finished speaking, his gaze returned to the virtual screen.
In the office.
After ending the call, Qin Mo stared at the now-black phone screen, then lifted his hand to rub his forehead hard.
If someone were to tell him right now that Shen Xiu was a god—he’d believe that kind of nonsense!
The project had wrapped up. That afternoon, Team Leader Liu came in from outside. When he saw Qin Mo again in the main hall, he remembered the question he had asked last time and couldn’t help but call out, “Special Assistant Qin, you…”
Before Liu could finish his sentence, Qin Mo already knew what he was about to ask. He replied faintly, “President Shen wrote it.”
“?!”
Team Leader Liu’s pupils shook, and he stood frozen in the hall.
Qin Mo could practically feel the deafening silence radiating off Team Leader Liu—he fully understood that shock. He reached out and patted Liu’s shoulder.
With concern, he asked, “Anything else you’d like to say?”
Team Leader Liu: “…Nothing.”
Poaching? Ha! He really had some nerve back then. How presumptuous he was!
Qin Mo said, “Get back to work.”
Team Leader Liu: “…Okay.”
With someone like Shen Xiu—the ultimate overachiever who seemed capable of anything—it would actually be strange if K Corp wasn’t the industry’s leading giant!
—
Meanwhile, Taihe, who had just acquired the intelligent driving project that K Corp didn’t seem to value much, had taken a keen interest in the programmer who wrote that system.
They wanted to poach him with a high salary.
But when they tried to negotiate a deal, they found Qin Mo’s mouth was sealed tighter than a fortress—completely impenetrable.
So, they shifted their focus to Team Leader Liu, who had once led the intelligent driving project.
That Thursday, they found an excuse to invite him to a dinner meeting.
At the dinner, Taihe’s staff—acting on orders from above—kept finding reasons to get Liu drunk.
Team Leader Liu didn’t think much of it and soon got heavily intoxicated.
Seizing the moment, Taihe’s people leaned in and pressed him with the same question over and over again:
“Team Leader Liu, do you know which of your company’s staff wrote the program your side sold to us?”
Team Leader Liu, half-conscious after being asked several times, finally slurred out, “Who else could it be?”
“Of—of course it was our President Shen!”
Even drunk, just mentioning it made Team Leader Liu feel shame all over again—he had once tried to hook up with President Shen. What a disgrace!
“Our Presi—President Shen… he can do anything!”
President Shen?
Was it… that President Shen they were thinking of?
The Taihe staff looked at Team Leader Liu in shock, not quite daring to believe it. One of them asked again, just to be sure:
“President Shen… do you mean Shen Xiu?”
Upon hearing Shen Xiu’s name, Team Leader Liu—who had been sitting with his eyes closed from intoxication—suddenly opened them and muttered faintly, “Wh-who else could it be?”
As soon as he said that, it was like all his energy drained away. He closed his eyes again and collapsed face-down on the table, completely out cold.
The Taihe staff had been startled when Team Leader Liu suddenly opened his eyes, thinking he’d sobered up.
But after he said his piece and went back to sleep, they breathed a collective sigh of relief—only to exchange confused and slightly alarmed looks.
For a moment, none of them could decide what to do next.
“…Do you think what he just said was legit?”
“Pro-probably?”
“Trying to poach K Corp’s President Shen… this… is beyond evaluation.”
“Shen Xiu actually knows how to code? That’s insane!”
“What’s so surprising? I mean… it’s Shen Xiu.”
“Yeah, that’s true. It’s Shen Xiu we’re talking about. Honestly, after everything we’ve heard, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could fly.”
“All right, enough chatter. We’ve got the name—let’s just ask the boss directly.”
The highest-ranking official in the private room called Taihe’s CEO and put the phone on speaker.
When the CEO picked up, he assumed they had finally gotten the name. He got straight to the point: “Who is it?”
“President Qin, Liu Jiang said… it’s Shen Xiu.”
There was a long silence on the other end.
The CEO had been ready to say, ‘What kind of joke is that?’—but the moment he heard the name Shen Xiu, the words died in his throat.
After all… it was Shen Xiu.
A few minutes later, the Taihe employees still sitting in the private room heard the voice of their CEO coming from the speakerphone.
“Forget what I said earlier. No one is allowed to breathe a word of this to anyone.”
With that, the Taihe CEO, clearly embarrassed, hung up without hesitation.
Trying to poach someone from K Corp with a high salary—only to find out it was K Corp’s own boss?
If word got out, they’d become the laughingstock of the entire industry.
He had overstepped.
—
Saturday.
As always, Shen Xiu brought a bouquet of deep red roses, placed them gently on the passenger seat, and drove to the cemetery.
He had been to this cemetery countless times. It was so familiar to him, he could find his way there with his eyes closed.
Standing before the familiar double tombstone, Shen Xiu first carefully cleaned the area as he always did. Only then did he place the bouquet in front of the headstone.
Once everything was in place, he straightened up, his eyes resting on the engraved names as he spoke with solemn clarity:
“Mom, Dad, it’s me—Shen Xiu. I’m home.”
At that moment, Shen Xiu was completely certain: standing before his parents’ grave, he was just Shen Xiu.
Maybe it was because the cemetery was surrounded by trees, but the cold wind that blew through felt chillier than anywhere else.
After speaking those words, a stream of vivid memories surged through Shen Xiu’s mind.
The tangled, treacherous jungles…
The icy chill of a mecha cockpit…
The bright full moon hanging over a vast ocean…
The bloody chaos of a battlefield…
The gleaming futuristic cities he had once overlooked from the sky…
All of it felt like a distant, surreal dream.
None of it felt as real as this moment, standing before his parents’ grave.
No matter where he had been, no matter what he had gone through—Shen Xiu knew one thing for certain:
The only reason he made it back, was for this.
To return to the beginning.
To always remain true to himself.
Shen Xiu’s dazed expression vanished in an instant, replaced by firm resolve. He spoke aloud, voice steady:
“No matter what, I’m still me.”
The cemetery was vast and empty. Aside from countless graves, Shen Xiu was the only living soul present.
So, of course, no one would reply to him.
But Shen Xiu, standing in front of his parents’ tombstone, was long used to this kind of silence. He didn’t need a response.
Gazing at their headstone, he couldn’t help but recall that last New Year’s Eve—when he brought piles of spring festival scrolls, fireworks, and offerings, arriving at the cemetery in the dead of night to ring in the new year with his parents.
In hindsight, it was… a little embarrassing.
Thankfully, no one else had a brain wired quite like his—who else would think of spending New Year’s at a graveyard?
If someone had seen him, they might’ve been scared half to death—and then he would’ve been guilty of something.
Still…
Shen Xiu’s gaze fell gently on his parents’ names etched in stone.
He’d do it again.
In Shen Xiu’s mind, while showing up at a graveyard at midnight to celebrate New Year’s might seem eccentric—even slightly shameful—when looked at from another angle, it made perfect sense:
Spending the New Year reunited with his parents.
What could be more logical than that?
Before coming today, Shen Xiu had had so many things he wanted to say—stories from the many worlds he’d passed through, the things he’d seen and endured. But once he stood at the grave, it was like he’d returned to the way things had been when he was a child with his parents:
Neither side knowing quite how to express themselves.
Yet everything was understood without a single word.
And so, from the system’s perspective, what it saw was this—
Shen Xiu staring silently at his parents’ graves.
Unmoving.
Not speaking.
For over an hour.
The silence stretched so long that the system started to panic, wondering if Shen Xiu was about to do something drastic. Trembling with anxiety, it finally decided to speak up with a cautious reminder.
[Mr. Shen, please calm down! You can’t do that! It’s no different from creating a bug in the world’s system!]
In every parallel world, there existed a “Child of Destiny”—a chosen one who ensured the proper flow and stability of that world’s timeline. As the appointed stabilizer, Shen Xiu’s mission was to make sure that, before the next chosen one awakened, the current one fulfilled their destiny without incident and within the timeline’s design.
If even one world descended into chaos, it could destabilize all timelines.
Therefore, aside from the system itself and each of its contracted hosts, everyone else was bound by their own predetermined fate within their own timeline.
To disrupt that fate—to derail a timeline—could cause collapse, just like what had happened with the system’s previous host. And when that happened, the system would be forced to bind itself to a new host to clean up the mess left behind.
However… after Shen Xiu completed his mission, the system—due to a few “questionable” actions—had been reset by Shen Xiu.
From that moment on, Shen Xiu outranked it.
It was no longer his supervisor—it had become his subordinate.
Unable to boss Shen Xiu around like it did with previous hosts, the system, now clearly outmatched, could only try to persuade him.
[Surely you don’t want the timelines to fall into chaos again—countless people across parallel worlds to be cast into the unknown and suffer casualties—forcing you to relive the lives of the already-dead all over again, right?]
[Think about it! You may still have only a few friends, but it’s so much more than before! The world is wonderful now!]
Shen Xiu: “……”
If the system hadn’t mentioned it, he wouldn’t have remembered that back then, during all those missions, his number of friends didn’t need rounding—it was just a hard zero.
The system’s words hit where it hurt.
Wounded and sulking, Shen Xiu murmured, “…Shut up.”
“I just stared at the tombstone a bit too long. I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
He was only zoning out… silently gazing at his parents’ grave.
Shen Xiu firmly added, “I’m perfectly sane—and I’m glad to be here. No need to worry.”
System: [……]
Really? It didn’t believe him at all.
Because Shen Xiu’s most iconic trait… was going completely off the rails while looking totally normal.
Even worse—he loved wrapping it all in airtight logic. As long as it made sense to him, Shen Xiu could twist anything into a justification that sounded perfectly reasonable—and believe in it with unshakable certainty.
The process? Irrelevant.
The result? That was all Shen Xiu ever cared about.
For example—
When Shen Xiu had once served as the Federation’s Chief, one moment he was happily sipping tea and chatting with the Crown Prince of the Empire, and the next—
He received a mission update from the system, and his expression changed faster than a lightning strike. Without hesitation, he knocked the Crown Prince out cold.
Why?
Because if the prince returned to the Empire at that time, he’d be assassinated.
To ensure the prince could survive long enough to become the fated one who would end the war, Shen Xiu chose to… imprison him in his own mansion.
He deployed 24-hour round-the-clock patrols on the perimeter.
Inside, the security was an inescapable net of high-tech traps—not even a mosquito could reach the prince.
And while he was supposed to assist the prince, Shen Xiu simply impersonated him instead—resolving every crisis himself, sticking perfectly to the timeline, solving every threat and political knot… and only then, after everything was over, did he finally let the Crown Prince out.
The first time the system witnessed this brand of “Shen logic,” it was utterly speechless—just like the Crown Prince, who emerged from captivity totally bewildered.
In the end, the prince who would go on to bring peace between the Federation and Empire…
Every time he saw Shen Xiu afterward, his eyes would fill with deep trauma, and for the rest of his life, he took a wide detour whenever Shen Xiu appeared.
What did Shen Xiu say back then?
Oh right.
He told the system—
“Look, you tell me: did he die? No. Did I help him end the war? Yes. That’s all that matters.”
System: [……]
Well… sure.
The prince didn’t die.
But… his spirit sure did.
Who imprisons the person they’re supposed to assist—just to keep them from being killed and avoid destabilizing the world?
Well… Shen Xiu does.
And what’s worse—he’s convinced there’s nothing wrong with it.
In the end, the prince didn’t die, and the world didn’t collapse due to his premature death.
Cases like that? Too many to count.
In summary—while Shen Xiu’s logic is technically “rational,” it rarely overlaps with what normal people consider rational.
What others see as crazy or wrong?
To Shen Xiu, that’s irrelevant.
The only thing that matters is whether his logic holds up in his own head.
Put simply—everything follows one principle:
Shen Xiu’s will is the highest law.
Any phenomenon, person, or object that doesn’t align with the logic of a given parallel world?
Shen Xiu simply forcibly rewrites it to fit the logic of his own origin world.
Because in Shen Xiu’s worldview, every timeline has both a predetermined path and a newborn one.
So as long as he exists in that world, everything he creates is, by definition, logical.
And that’s exactly why the system has a severe case of PTSD whenever Shen Xiu starts talking about what’s “reasonable” or “normal.”
Still, though it’s intimidated, the system mumbles weakly:
[The dead can’t be brought back… forcibly inserting someone who shouldn’t exist will destabilize the space-time continuum…]
Shen Xiu: “…I know.”
He truly didn’t understand what he’d done to earn such deep-rooted misunderstanding from the system.
From his perspective—and based on every retrospective analysis he’d done—he hadn’t done anything wrong.
In fact, he had completed every mission with flawless execution, with zero uncontrollable outcomes.
So, at last, Shen Xiu could only come to one conclusion—
The system’s standards were just ridiculously high.
Shen Xiu stayed at the cemetery for several hours—
and for every single one of those hours, the system was on high alert, heart in its throat.
Only after Shen Xiu left the cemetery without expressing any desire to go back in time, resurrect his parents, or tamper with the world’s established timeline…
did the system’s internal database finally stabilize.
On the drive back, the system—unable to suppress its curiosity—asked cautiously:
[Mr. Shen… how did you first realize that you… weren’t normal?]
Shen Xiu, hands on the wheel, thought back to the special effects incident and replied quietly:
“…Because I could do VFX.”
“In all my past memories, by normal logic, there’s no reason I should know how. So—it wasn’t normal.”
System: [???]
Of all the possible catalysts it had imagined for Shen Xiu’s awakening—
it had never expected… special effects.
Not the classified files.
Not the database inconsistencies.
Not the advanced AI operations.
Not even that time back in the training camp, when he entered the study and saw things that should’ve triggered suspicion—
Nothing.
But special effects? That was the breaking point?
It was now more certain than ever—
Shen Xiu’s logic… was a realm it would never be able to comprehend.
—
After returning from the cemetery, Shen Xiu resumed attending classes as usual.
It was senior year, and the course load was light. Shen Xiu spent most of his time either working on “New Life” or repairing disrupted world timelines.
As a result, everyone saw less and less of him on campus.
Another class ended.
Shen Xiu, who only had one class that day, didn’t linger at school. He left swiftly and headed straight back to the villa.
Only after Shen Xiu’s figure had completely disappeared did his classmates in the classroom dare to gossip.
“Have you guys noticed? Shen Xiu seems even busier lately.”
“Not just busier—his aura is getting stronger too.”
“I have a feeling… once he finishes his classes, he’ll gradually fade from the public eye.”
“Same here. After all, he’s already maxed out his ‘experience bar’—he probably isn’t interested anymore.”
“The God of Grind truly never stays in one place! But honestly, thinking about barely seeing him again makes me a little sad.”
“It can’t be helped. Shen Xiu was never the type to stop for anyone or anything. The fact that he spent this time with us at all is already amazing. People grow, and in growing, we have to learn to let go of the past and charge ahead.”
“So… when is ‘New Life’ actually coming out? I’m dying to know what kind of youth film even requires special effects. I have a feeling… this might be Shen Xiu’s last movie.”
“You—prophet of doom—shut up!”
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