At the Gu family, at this very moment.

Just as Gu Xian had speculated, Old Mr. Gu was already waiting there impatiently.

After going up and downstairs a few times, Old Mr. Gu finally strolled over to the door and looked like he was about to go out.

Butler Zhou came over and stopped him. “Sir, Aunty Mei had just called and let us know that they are already on their way. It was just a few minutes ago. It will probably take them another 20 minutes or so coming from Second Young Master’s place. It’s windy outside today. It’s best that you wait for them indoor.”

Gu Xian, next to them, was oblivious to his son’s current depression. He took the tea offered to him by Aunty Mei and took a sip. Remembering something, he said to Gu Shao, “I have caused Gu Yaobai a little bit of trouble on his end.”

Gu Yaobai’s company took on a couple projects in City N but had yet to sign the contracts. As far as Gu Xian knew, they were already in their preliminary phase. Gu Xian pulled some strings and took the two projects from him.

Two projects in their initial phases went belly up overnight, and without any signs ahead of time either. They figured that Gu Yaobai would be on his way to handle that as they spoke.

“What we don’t know is how long that will tie him up for,” said in a relaxing tone Gu Xian leaned back on the couch.

Old Mr. Gu had been pining about Mr. Gu bringing Xiao Xi back home. When the two were out earlier, Old Mr. Gu made multiple calls, worried that Gu Shao would not go home for Mid-Autumn Festival.

Gu Shao gave Aunty Mei a look when he heard her and said, “Go and get it ready.”

Aunty Mei immediately had a smile on her when Gu Shao said that. “Oh, alright. I’ll go have it prepared.”

Then, with a big smile on her, she added, “I am sure Old Mr. Gu will be delighted.”

Those from that Gu family had been longing for Gu Shao to bring Gu Xi back.

Not only were them looking forward to meet Gu Xi; Gu Xi, too, longed to meet the other Gu family members.

Her phone continued to vibrate in her pocket.

A few minutes later, Gu Xi finally gave in and pulled her phone out again.

She sneaked a peek over in Gu Shao’s direction.

Gu Shao was on another call by now and was giving instructions to the person on the other end of the call. Gu Xi pulled out her phone again and switched it to her other hand. She placed it on the seat and was about to continue her discussion with [AAA].

Gu Xi thought that she had perfectly avoided Gu Shao when she did all that but what she didn’t know was that Gu Shao saw all of it.

[Perhaps we should meet in person.] That was the last thing that [AAA] said.

After school that afternoon.

Gu Xi thought she would be picked up by the chauffeur but it was Gu Shao who showed up.

“Dad?” Gu Xi jumped into the car and looked at Gu Shao, pleasantly surprised.

Looking at the happy and surprised look on the girl when she saw him, Gu Shao felt a sense of warmth in him.

He had planned to give her a stern lecture for signing up to Tianchuang Competition behind his back.

After all, even though the purpose was different, but her behavior was no different from those who made in-game purchases from their parents’ phones.

Gu Shao looked at Wang Huazhou and asked, “You have the design proposal as well?”

“Yes. Here’s a copy of it.” Wang Huazhou handed over a USB drive to Gu Shao.

This was an electronic copy that he had made for himself. He had planned on looking through it later.

“It was a smart companion tool,” said Wang Huazhou. Pausing, he added, “Your daughter did a good job on it.”

Gu Shao only took one look and he was sure that the proposal wasn’t done by Gu Yanlin.

Gu Yanlin’s majored in electronics technology. They have yet to get to that point in the design.

What was this about his team?

Gu Shao frowned as he took the registration information from Wang Huazhou.

He was taken aback when he saw the very familiar name. It wasn’t every day that Gu Shao was surprised. His first reaction was someone having the same name as him and his next thought was that someone had stolen his identity.

Setting aside his surprise, Gu Shao kept on reading without saying a word.

It was his name, his ID number, and even his address was correct.

Except that, how come he wasn’t aware that he had registered for the Tianchuang Competition?

Gu Chenyi had just posted his message when he received a call from Old Mr. Gu.

“Grandpa?”

“Why couldn’t I click on that voting link?!” asked Old Mr. Gu over the phone, with a slight displease in his tone.

Old Mr. Gu had wanted to cast a vote too when he saw the link in Gu Chenyi’s friend's circle. Nevertheless, when he finally located Gu Xi’s picture and clicked on the “cast vote” button under it, it was unresponsive no matter how many times he had tried.

Old Mr. Gu thought it was his cellphone at first but it was the same even after he had switched to a different phone.

On the other side, Gu Chenyi returned to his own class with a shocked-and-leave-me-alone ­look.

All the way until he heard something about “Xi”, Gu Chenyi popped right back up, jumped up from his seat and walked over.

“What about Xi are you talking about?” asked Gu Chenyi.

“Oh, we are talking about voting for the student representative. Goddess Xi is participating.”

“Gu Xi?”

“Yeah.” The others nodded and grumbled. “She has quite some votes too.”’

“Nonsense. Just think. The outcome of yesterday’s joint competition was shocking. Besides, Goddess Xi is quite pretty on top of that.”

“Gu Xiao Xi, you aren’t that far from the third place.” Next to Gu Xi, Dong Mingming studied the trend studiously on her phone.

“This isn’t going to work. I need to try to somehow get you more votes.” Gu Xi wasn’t that far from the third place and, truth was, she wasn’t that far from the second place either. She just might be able to pass those two if they give it some effort.

First place, however, was out of question.

Dong Mingming looked at the number of votes for the first place and sighed. When comparing the number of votes of the first place to those under her, it was a landslide.

“Gu XueEr Gu was first place last year. I guess she is going to take the title two years in a row.” Dong Mingming grumbled.

Gu XueEr?

“Fourth place in what?” asked Gu Xi as she looked over at Dong Mingming, baffled.

“This one. Voting in the forum.” Having said that, Dong Mingming showed her phone to Gu Xi.

At the top of HSAU’s school forum was the voting of the student representative for the Art Festival.

Dong Mingming clicked on the link and scrolled down to Gu Xi’s photo. Sure enough, in addition to her name and her class underneath her photo, there was also a number “4”.

“Hehe, and here I was just wondering how to get you more votes,” said Dong Mingming with a chuckle.

As it turned out, she had yet to act upon it when Gu Xi’s was already in 4th place.

Gu Xi finally arrived at the classroom under everyone’s look.

Lo and behold, it was even livelier inside the classroom.

“Gu Xi is here!”

“Welcome back, Valedictorian!”

“Gu Xi, you are so good at hiding.” Had it not been this competition, nobody would know that Gu Xi was as scary as Sheng Xiuyan.

“Out with it, did you eat Wang Houxiong* or textbooks growing up?” Someone asked.

Gu Xi, too, joked around with him, “Both.”

Gu Xi was surrounding by everything asking about the joint competition.

“Oh right, Gu Chenyi!”

Over on this side, only after she had greeted Gu Xuan did it occur to Gu Xi that Gu Chenyi should have walked out with her.

Lo and behold, when Gu Xi turned and looked around herself, she noticed that Gu Chenyi was gone again.

“This is odd. He was here just a moment ago. Where did he go now?” Gu Xi grumbled.

She was just about to turn back around and told Gu Xuan that she didn’t know where Gu Chenyi had disappeared to when she saw two cars pulling up in front of them.

One of them was Gu Shao’s. That one she recognized. The other one must belong to Gu Xuan.

Gu Xuan looked at the time and said to Gu Shao. “It’s almost dinner time. Let’s grab dinner together?”

Gu Xuan, “……”

What exactly were you gloating about?

But he was a little bit envious.

Thought Gu Xuan to himself.

As though reading Gu Xuan’s mind, Gu Shao’s lips curved upward a little and he tossed out a sentence calmly, “Have your own if you are envious of me.”

Gu Xuan’s face dropped visibly when he heard Gu Shao’s words. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but he would need to be able to locate her first!

Gu Xuan, once again, regretted the decision of his young self for marrying a wife who loved to travel.

Gu Xuan detected strong pride from Gu Shao’s very plain and simple words.

–So what if you have a daughter?

Gu Xuan grumbled but he dared not say that out loud in front of Gu Shao.

“How were things with you in Country D?” asked Gu Shao as the award ceremony hasn’t begun yet.

Gu Xuan, too, had a serious look when he was asked.

“Same as usual. Things are steady, overall.”

“That being said……” Gu Shao narrowed his eyes. Something occurred to him, his face dropped and he said, “Gu Yaobai had been causing a lot of ruckuses in Country D.

“I wasn’t lying……” Gu Xi turned back around with a guilty conscience and smiled at Gu Shao.

Luckily, Gu Shao wasn’t going to lecture her in front of her other schoolmates.

Gu Xi said goodbye to her other schoolmates before she left with Gu Shao.

Gu Shao finally looked down at the milk tea that Gu Xi was holding that was already half gone.

“Too much junk food will affect your body’s development and stunt your growth,” said Gu Xi, his tone solemn as usual.

Gu Xi nodded docilely when she heard that. She grumbled to herself, however, She isn’t that short either.

When Gu Shao wasn’t paying attention, Gu Xi placed her hand above her own head and saw that she only reached the height of Gu Shao’s arm.

Gu Chenyi read a few more different articles on his phone before he closed out of the news application.

Raising his brows, he said to Gu Xi, “What happened with the Gao family was certainly the handy work of First uh……”

He was half way through talking when he realized that he always gave himself away. Luckily he stopped himself just in time.

“What I meant to say was. That’s bad karma for his family.” Judging from the way Gao Zifan was, the Gao family was probably no innocent people either.

Looking at how hard Gu Chenyi tried to cover it up, Gu Xi did her best not to busted out laughing and nodded.

“See for yourself,” said Yang Jing as he pointed at the screen with the outcome and the surveillance videos that were still ongoing.

Gao Zifan suddenly realized what had happened when he saw what was on the big screens. He was frantic all of a sudden.

“That, that was not possible!” That meant everyone knew his score and his earlier performance!

Yu Fangfang, who returned to the wait area after Gao Zifan, too, had saw the grades on the screen. She felt relieved the same time she felt contempt toward Gao Zifan.

“Gao Zifan was the one who dragged you down and he had the audacity to accuse you for distracting him!” Someone blurted out disgruntedly.

“Exactly. I figured those from Liming had also checked on yours and Gao Zifan’s scores by now and were too embarrassed now to even look at you.”

Is that so?

Gu Shao looked over in Liming’s direction and, sure enough, those from Liming lowered their heads even more.

Suddenly, a tall junior boy from Liming stood up and walked over to Gu Xi. He said to her with embarrassment, “I’m sorry. I had misunderstood you last year.”

Gu Xi and Sheng Xiuyan finished their question set and walked out of the venue. Before they were even able to walk into the wait area, all the others from HSAU came up to them excitedly.

“They are here! They are here!”

“God Xiu, Goddess Xi, that was amazing!”

“Quick, quick, our two deities. Please share with us how that was accomplished!”

“Right, right. We would like to find out how you are feeling right now and did you have fun while working on those problems.”

Gu Xi was baffled at her teammates’ excitement: What was going on?