The ICU Bill

The ICU bill was like a death sentence slapped across Lin Feng's face. He had just received a layoff text from Lingyun Group: 500,000 yuan in life-saving money versus 36,000 yuan in severance pay. Fate had handed him a butcher's knife.

The moment his phone cracked on the floor, blue code surged into view: [Relationship Insight System activated. If you don't reach 70% trust from Zhao Shanhe within 72 hours, your mother's hospital bed will be cleared for good.]

His direct supervisor, Zhao Shanhe, smiled like a Buddha as he handed over a bug in the Sea Star System, a coffin waiting to be sealed: "If you can't fix it, you and your mother will disappear together." Wang Lei's code was booby-trapped. The coffee Su Qing from Xinghuo Tech brought was laced with poison. Even the bronze wine cup Zhang Meng, his childhood friend, shoved at him bore the characters "Ma Su" and his father's bloody fingerprint.

The System said Zhao Shanhe's killing intent had soared to 90%. It said that beneath Su Qing's undercover mask lay the cause of his father's death. It said his mother's cerebral hemorrhage was the result of chronic poisoning. It said that among the three skeletons in the 2018 dockside warehouse were his real parents.

When he wagered half his life to uncover the ultimate truth, the System's final popup appeared, splattered with blood: [You think you're taking revenge? The bomb that killed your birth parents back then was triggered by your own hand.]

From the oxygen tube in the ICU to the shareholding charts on the trading floor, relationships were nooses, family bonds were poison, and even the System was the final trap his dead father had set. Lin Feng stared at his bloodstained hands in the mirror and finally understood: in this deadly game of relationships, there had only ever been one survivor, himself, the one who had buried every truth with his own hands.