Shen Rui didn't even look up from his desk when the video landed in his inbox.
A 30-second clip. Low resolution. Captured from behind a tree.
But Lin Xie's voice?
Sharp. Precise. Cutting like sterilized steel.
"If you still want him, apply again in your next life."
Shen Rui watched it once.
Twice.
By the third replay, he had already pressed a number on his encrypted phone.
"Director Qian," he said calmly. "Pull the AI diagnostics contract from Zhang Corporation. Effective immediately."
There was a beat of stunned silence on the other end. "Sir… that's a 300-million yuan project—"
"I'm aware."
"But the Shanghai Robotics Exhibition—"
"Will still happen," he said smoothly. "With someone else. I'll send you a list."
"Understood. Should I notify—"
"No," Shen Rui said flatly. "Let them notice it themselves."
He ended the call and leaned back in his chair, long fingers steepled, expression unreadable.
Across the city, chaos bloomed.
Zhang Corporation's primary project partner withdrew without notice. A dozen subcontracts paused. Three software vendors requested reassessment of their legal terms. The Zhang family's communications director cried in the hallway.
By the time Zhang Min's father stormed into Shen Rui's office, the man's tie was askew and his forehead glistening.
"CEO Shen!" he barked, voice a mix of outrage and desperation. "You didn't even give us warning. This kind of retaliation—"
Shen Rui looked up, slow and cold. "Retaliation?"
"You're bleeding us dry!"
"No." Shen Rui smiled without humor. "Not yet."
Zhang Min's father froze.
Shen Rui stood, smooth and deliberate. "This is not retaliation. This is a precaution. Your daughter thinks it's still 2010. That she can throw wine and gossip and sabotage like it's a campus drama and I'll just overlook it."
"That's not fair—"
"Tell her," Shen Rui said, voice turning razor-edged, "that if she tries one more time—just once—to scheme against Lin Xie, your entire corporation will be bankrupt by the end of the fiscal year."
Silence.
"I'm not threatening," he added. "I'm informing."
Zhang Min's father stared at him.
The chill in the room could've cracked titanium.
Shen Rui smiled again, even colder. "Your daughter picked a fight with the wrong woman."
"She's just—confused," her father muttered. "It's pride—she thought—"
"She thought wrong," Shen Rui snapped. "She thought she was the center of the world. She's not. Not to me. Not to Lin Xie. Not even to physics."
He leaned in slightly, gaze calm and lethal.
"I ignored her before because she was background noise. But background noise shouldn't touch what's mine."
Zhang Min's father looked like he might faint.
"Now," Shen Rui added, adjusting his cufflink, "get out of my building."
The man turned without another word, stumbling slightly as he left.
And Shen Rui?
He sat back down, clicked the video one more time, and let it play.
This time, he smiled.
Soft.
Proud.
And very, very dangerous.
---
The capital buzzed.
Not just whispered—but buzzed. From boardrooms to banquet halls, café tables to shareholders' lounges, the news traveled fast and without filters: Shen Rui had moved. And not in his usual strategic, icy-cold style.
He had cut off Zhang Corporation's top-tier partnership overnight. No press release. No legal back-and-forth. No "amicable separation" statements. Just a sharp severing of ties, followed by a digital silence that screamed louder than any threat.
And all for a girl.
A girl who, according to the capital's collective data:
Was barely eighteen.
Came from nowhere.
Had no known parents.
Scored a perfect 1000 on Senzhou Imperial University's entrance exam.
Had no public social connections.
And currently lived in Shen Rui's penthouse like a programmable black hole of emotions.
It was, in every sense of the word, chaos.
And Zhang Min?
She felt it.
It wasn't just humiliation anymore—it was erosion. Her status, her confidence, her name. People didn't just whisper about her fashion line or her brief dating stint with a minor European prince.
They whispered about how Shen Rui had once ignored her for years—and now publicly retaliated because she insulted another woman.
Her father found her pacing the west wing of their private estate, nearly snapping her custom hair clip in half.
"You lost your mind," he said, sipping wine too early in the day.
She turned, eyes flashing. "You saw what she said about me? That I was... disgusting for scheming?"
"She's not wrong."
"She's a nobody."
"She's Shen Rui's nobody," he corrected flatly.
Zhang Min threw up her hands. "You told me to fight for him! That aligning our families would be good for—"
"And I still believe that," her father said coolly. "But you were told to use strategy. Charm. Intelligence. Not playground jealousy like a pampered idiot."
"She humiliated me!"
"You humiliated yourself," he snapped. "You challenged a woman who doesn't blink, doesn't brag, and already owns the most dangerous man in this city."
Zhang Min opened her mouth, but her father held up a hand.
"You want to marry him? Good. So do half the elite families in the East sector. But none of them are stupid enough to insult the one person Shen Rui just declared war to protect."
"He'll get bored of her," she muttered.
"He built Ruix Corp when he was fourteen. He's run Shen Conglomerate since he was eighteen. He hasn't been bored since birth." Her father's voice dropped lower. "He is the only man I know who could destroy five corporations before lunch and still have time to audit a bank."
Zhang Min paled.
"And you thought you could outmaneuver him by sneering at his girlfriend in a courtyard?" he added with a bitter chuckle. "You're not ready to marry a man like that. You're barely qualified to speak in the same boardroom."
She went quiet.
Her father set down his glass and leaned in, gaze like frostbite.
"If you want him, Min'er… you need to become a woman worth fearing."
She swallowed.
"And until then," he added coldly, "don't provoke that girl again. Because if Shen Rui ever stops seeing her as delicate…" he trailed off. "Then you won't survive the version of her that doesn't need his protection."
He turned and walked away, leaving Zhang Min frozen in place, throat dry and pride bleeding.
Outside, the city kept buzzing.
And in the penthouse of Ruix Tower, Lin Xie stared out the window, eyes unreadable, fingers lightly tracing the glass—like she could already calculate the angles needed to take apart an empire.
She didn't even know people were watching her like she was a storm brewing in real time.
But Shen Rui did.
And he didn't mind at all.