The Heiress's Game

Gu Yunjin saw that post before going to bed.

Julie updates her social media accounts frequently, but not in the way that is carefully planned and timed to coincide with peak traffic hours—sometimes it's a close-up of a color palette, with the paint squeezed out crookedly.

Sometimes it's the sunset outside the studio window, accompanied by a caption like "The light is beautiful today."

Sometimes it's an old book with curled edges, the pages covered with dense pencil lines.

Tonight's update is a photo. Her left hand, with smudges of cobalt blue paint still on her knuckles, is holding a steaming cup of tea.

The caption was just five words: "Tea is better than coffee."

After a night of fury from Ningville fans, the comment section below has surprisingly returned to calm.

The top three comments were all praising her: "The paint in her hand is so sexy," "This is a true artist," and "What new works is Teacher Zhu painting lately?"

Occasionally, a few sarcastic comments remain buried at the bottom, but they have been drowned out by the newly generated positive reviews.

Julie did not disable comments, delete posts, or issue any explanation or response.

She continued to update her blog and reply to fans' comments as usual, her tone relaxed and indifferent, as if the whole farce was just a bug that flew in through the window, and once it was gone, she would continue eating.

Gu Yunjin leaned against the headboard, her fingers slowly tracing names on the screen, a very faint smile playing on her lips.

Julie is smarter than she expected.

She offered Julie very little. Detailed information about Gu Zhenxing—his upbringing, personality traits, likes and dislikes, and the backgrounds of the women in his life.

These things are maps, but having a map doesn't mean you know how to navigate.

Many people believe that having intelligence is enough to make them invincible, but the real power to turn intelligence into a weapon lies in the people who use it.

Julie understood the map and even drew a route that Gu Yunjin hadn't marked.

The women around Gu Zhenxing throughout his life can be roughly divided into two categories.

One type is after his money and status, such as those women who come and go outside;

One type is after his "true love," like Ning Limei. Ning Limei spent twenty-three years shaping herself into the ultimate form of the latter—wanting nothing but him.

This strategy was invincible for a period of time because Gu Zhenxing himself believed in it.

But even the most invincible strategy has a shelf life. Twenty-three years is long enough. Long enough that Gu Zhenxing has become accustomed to being surrounded by people who "don't want anything," and long enough that he can no longer tell whether those who "don't want anything" are genuine or just acting.

Julie didn't try to squeeze onto either of those roads. She didn't pretend to be aloof, nor did she act out a true love story.

She took a completely new path—I am a talented woman, I have my own career, I don't need your money or your love, I just get along well with you.

The brilliance of this positioning lies in the fact that it fundamentally dispelled Gu Zhenxing's wariness.

A woman who doesn't want anything might be pretending. But a painter with her own career, who has set records at auctions and has an international reputation, doesn't need to pretend.

Her social standing existed before she met Gu Zhenxing; her paintings weren't promoted by Gu Zhenxing, and her fame wasn't given to her by him.

When she stood in front of him, they were equals.

This character was someone Julie found herself.

Gu Yunjin remembered that when she first entrusted this task to Julie through Zhou Ji, Julie only said one sentence: "Your task is to make him feel that you are different from all the women he has ever met."

As for how they differed, she didn't provide a script.

She never provides scripts; she only provides direction and resources. How well one navigates that direction depends on their individual abilities.

The path that Jolie has taken is better than any script she ever envisioned.

My phone vibrated. It was a message from Zhou Ji, a simple and concise statement: "The person who anonymously bought Julie's painting is Gu Zhenxing."

Gu Yunjin looked at the words, her expression unchanged. She had guessed it.

She didn't guess it today; she guessed it much earlier—around the time Julie told her that the mysterious buyer had offered tens of millions, she already had a name in mind.

This wasn't the first time Gu Zhenxing had done something like this. Back then, Ning Limei ran a small floral design studio in Clearwater Bay and took on several custom-made orders.

The largest single order came from a subsidiary of the Gu Group, and the contract amount was just enough to cover all of Ning Limei's expenses that year.

When Gu Zhenxing paved the way for Ning Limei, he used the same method—not appearing in person, but operating anonymously through subsidiaries or partners, making the woman believe that she relied on her own abilities, when in fact every step she took was on the carpet he had laid out.

The only difference was that Ning Limei knew she was stepping on a carpet.

Julie, however, was unaware of this. She believed that she had truly earned the price at the auction house based on her own merit.

Gu Yunjin turned her phone over and placed it on the bed with the screen facing down.

The corners of her mouth curved slightly.

Originally, she and Zhou Ji planned to repeat the operation routine abroad—arrange for an anonymous buyer to bid a price that would be memorable for Julie's painting at an auction house, and then, through several rounds of media hype, to firmly establish the label of "emerging Chinese-American painter" on her.

This plan has already been successful once abroad; in China, it's simply a matter of copying and pasting.

But now it's not necessary. Gu Zhenxing did it for them. And he did it even cleaner—because he really wanted to buy it.

One genuine buyer is more trustworthy than a hundred arranged buyers.

The auction house wouldn't know it was insider trading, the media wouldn't know it was rigged, and Jolie herself wouldn't know that her biggest collector was her target.

Everyone on this chain is doing their job, and no one knows they're being used, except for those sitting behind the curtain.

Gu Yunjin recalled a sentence, which she forgot which book she had read it in—the most brilliant strategy is not to make others do what you want to do, but to make others do what you want to do while doing what they want to do themselves.