Day Four began with thunder.
Not real thunder—no, this was Challenge Thunder, which involved a massive speaker, blinking red lights, and the host parachuting in from the roof while yelling, "TRUST IS A LIE!"
Lin Xie, standing barefoot in the kitchen slicing a pear with surgical precision, barely glanced up.
Yuyan, who had just tried to microwave a boiled egg, screamed and dropped it.
"Oh my GOD, why is he like this?!"
"He's very committed to thematic delivery," Lin Xie observed, dicing the pear cubes uniformly.
Outside, contestants gathered in the courtyard with bleary eyes, only to be greeted by a massive billboard that read:
DAY FOUR: SABOTAGE SANCTUARY.
Below that:
One of you is the traitor. Find them before they ruin the challenge. Or… let them win.
"What kind of Black Mirror sleepover game is this?" muttered a dancer from a boy group.
The challenge was simple on paper:
One person on each team would secretly be given the role of saboteur.
The rest had to complete a puzzle-building relay while deducing who the saboteur was.
If the team failed their task, and didn't correctly guess the traitor? The saboteur won points.
If they guessed right, the saboteur lost points.
"Sabotage," Lin Xie said flatly. "Acceptable today."
"Yes," the host said. "Only today."
"Excellent."
Yuyan turned to her immediately. "Don't even THINK about it."
"I wasn't assigned the role," Lin Xie said calmly, clipping on her team vest. "They would not risk giving me direct permission to cause destruction."
"…So you're saying if you had been assigned traitor, we'd all be unconscious by now?"
"I wouldn't waste tranquilizers."
"I—THAT'S NOT WHAT I—YOU ARE IMPOSSIBLE!"
The challenge began with the teams running into their assigned "Sanctuaries"—which looked like luxury escape rooms but with mildly unstable decor, timed puzzles, and low lighting that made everyone's eye bags look worse.
Lin Xie immediately walked into the first puzzle room, looked at the scattered hexagonal tiles, and announced, "This is based on a 17th-century encryption method. The solution is in the negative space."
Her teammates stared.
Yuyan, from the doorway: "Can we at least pretend to struggle for five minutes?"
"No," Lin Xie said, already assembling the tiles. "We have a saboteur."
The others froze.
"What? How do you know?!"
"Because one of you is sweating disproportionately and moved the starting tile before the briefing finished."
A girl from a dance group paled. "Wait, what? Who?"
"Give it five minutes," Lin Xie said, still calm. "They'll trip."
Sure enough, two puzzles later, one contestant knocked over a gear mechanism that caused a full-room reset.
Everyone screamed.
The accused, a harmless-looking singer, started sweating. "It was an accident! I swear!"
Lin Xie, narrowing her eyes: "There are no accidents in a closed system."
Ten minutes later, her team successfully completed the puzzle, called out the correct saboteur, and earned a bonus for being first.
Another team was still stuck in Room Two trying to figure out how to turn the lights on.
Online, chaos exploded again.
#LinXieSaboteurHunter
[#1 worldwide · 2.3M posts in 3 hours]
@WatcherOfChaos
i swear she doesn't even play these games she just ascends into another plane of strategic enlightenment
@YesQueenDismantleThem
lin xie really said "you're sweating too hard = guilty" and the math MATHEMATICALLY MATHED 😭
@WenYuyanSupportGroup
yuyan: "stop being so scary"
lin xie: blinks in binary and solves world hunger
@hosttrauma2025
pray for the host who has to follow her lines with a script like a mortal
But again, not everyone was pleased.
@FairPlayFirst
Can we PLEASE talk about how it's unfair that she solves the puzzles like they're Sudoku for toddlers??
@ProtectTheSaboteurs
some people just want to have fun not be dissected like a crime scene 😭
@JealousButCorrect
how is she funny AND terrifying AND a genius??? leave some traits for the rest of us
Back in the house, contestants were recovering with iced tea and damage control.
Someone muttered, "I think I pulled my soul during that mirror maze."
Lin Xie sat on the couch quietly sketching a map of the rooms from memory.
Yuyan eyed her warily from across the room. "You didn't sleep last night, did you?"
"I only need two hours."
"YOU DIDN'T EVEN CLOSE YOUR EYES, DID YOU?!"
"I was analyzing the air vent layout in case of later use."
"In case of WHAT?!"
"Escape. Surveillance. Strategy."
"You're not playing a spy sim. This is a variety show!"
"I am being varied."
Yuyan collapsed dramatically onto a beanbag. "One day you're going to break the building."
"I've already filed recommendations for structural improvements."
Yuyan stared at her.
Lin Xie blinked. "They were accepted."
Yuyan rolled over, face in a pillow. "I give up."
Someone in the hallway screamed, "WHO TOOK THE LAST EGG TART?!"
Lin Xie calmly reached for another hexagonal puzzle piece.
Yuyan peeked. "…Are you building another challenge from memory?"
"Yes."
"You're a menace."
"That's redundant information."
Day Four ended with new alliances forming, drones catching three meltdowns, and a camera catching Yuyan staring a little too long when Lin Xie walked past holding tea with perfect posture and a complete lack of mercy.
Even the editors would have to admit:
This season?
Was the beginning of controlled catastrophe.
And Lin Xie was the one holding the blueprints.
------
Wen Yuyan couldn't sleep.
The house was quiet—well, mostly. Someone was snoring down the hall (probably the opera singer with sinuses), and a few of the camera drones still hummed gently above, their red lights blinking like judgmental eyes.
Yuyan lay in her assigned bunk bed, sheets tangled around her ankles, staring at the ceiling like it had answers.
It didn't.
But unfortunately, her brain wouldn't shut up.
Not after today.
Not after Lin Xie looked at her.
Just a glance. A blink, really. Not even anything dramatic or prolonged. It wasn't a smirk. It wasn't a smolder.
Just an accidental moment in the hallway as Lin Xie passed her, holding a bowl of soup like a war trophy, eyes flicking over Yuyan's face for a single second.
And her heart had actually fluttered.
Wen Yuyan. Heiress of CharmNet Media. Ballerina since three. Debutante at sixteen. Trained in etiquette, finance, public speaking, social navigation. Destined—trained—to marry power.
And for years, that power was Shen Rui.
The golden CEO. The impenetrable face of the Shen family empire. Handsome, brilliant, unattached. He was the one every elite girl circled like a planet around a star. Yuyan had planned her entire adult life with one quiet, private goal:
Become Mrs. Shen Rui.
She joined the right events. Attended every gala. Chose the right dress codes. Laughed at appropriate decibels. Memorized his coffee order even though he never once offered her any.
He never looked at her.
Not even once.
Not the way she wanted.
And then came her.
Lin Xie.
Not from high society. Not bred for politeness or trained in careful seduction.
No. Lin Xie was… something else.
Silent. Sharp. Mechanical. Chaotic. Efficient in the most unnerving way possible.
Yuyan had wanted to hate her.
She still wanted to hate her.
But after being rescued mid-challenge, after watching her crush the saboteur puzzle like a sentient search engine in a ponytail, after enduring a day where Lin Xie dropped truth bombs like confetti and drank tea while other people cried…
She couldn't stop thinking about her.
Her focus. Her voice. The way she spoke with all the softness of a guillotine and zero desire to charm anyone. The way she'd saved Yuyan without hesitation, without fuss, without even making it into a big deal.
And worse…
The way Lin Xie had accidentally brushed past her in the corridor and Yuyan's stomach had done a cartwheel.
"What is wrong with me?" she whispered into her pillow.
The pillow did not answer. Rude.
Her face still burned just thinking about it.
Her mother would be mortified.
Her mother, who had spent years whispering phrases like, "Keep your chin high, dear," and "A man wants a woman who can match him without threatening him," and "Marry the empire, not the man."
There had never been room in that plan for confusion.
Or fluttering.
Or girls with hair like silk cables and eyes like searchlights.
"Ughhhh," Yuyan groaned, flipping over in bed and punching her own blanket. "This is not part of the script!"
Because Lin Xie wasn't supposed to matter.
Lin Xie was supposed to be an obstacle.
A momentary distraction on Yuyan's climb to becoming the perfect wife to the perfect man.
Instead…
She was sitting in Wen Yuyan's brain like malware.
Just existing.
Looking unbothered. Smelling like osmanthus tea and danger. Holding eye contact like it was a weapon.
Making Yuyan feel like maybe—for once—she wasn't the smartest person in the room.
Or the prettiest.
Or the most watched.
Because now?
Every time Lin Xie walked by, the cameras moved too.
Not because she tried.
Because she was.
And Wen Yuyan was losing her mind about it.
A soft beep interrupted her spiral—probably a system notification from the smart wall panel. A curfew reminder or temperature control setting.
But Yuyan didn't care.
She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest, heart racing for no good reason.
Then, footsteps outside.
Quiet, precise, not rushed.
Yuyan didn't even need to peek.
She knew.
Lin Xie was walking past the door again.
Maybe heading to the kitchen. Maybe going to stare at blueprints like an AI who couldn't sleep. Maybe recalculating how to win tomorrow's challenge without making it look like she solved it in her dreams.
Yuyan told herself not to get up.
Not to follow. Not to peek.
So she only allowed herself a glance at the closed door, one shaky exhale, and a mutter she didn't even understand:
"…This is so unfair."
Because Shen Rui had never once made her feel like this.
But Lin Xie, with just one glance?
Was already undoing everything she thought she wanted.