Chapter 125: Is She Nothing More Than a Tool?

In Huo Shuyue's mind, her uncle was a man who dominated the Imperial Capital, someone who always kept himself untainted by the mundane and remained aloof from everyone. She had only ever received even a shred of his concern because of her mother, his elder sister. Therefore, when she discovered that her uncle had come to pick her up from school today, her first reaction was one of flattered disbelief.

However, all of this shattered at the sound of Rong Ye's question: "Where is Gu Ci?"

A look of utter bewilderment appeared on Huo Shuyue's face. Once she realized the truth, she felt terrible! So, her uncle hadn't come to pick her up at all; he was just using her as a pretext to find Gu Ci! What was this? Was she really just a tool?

Following that logic... why, out of all the students who were good at their studies, did her uncle insist on having Gu Ci tutor her? As a speculation crossed her mind, Huo Shuyue gasped, feeling completely rattled. She wanted to stand there, hands on her hips, and tell her uncle that she was not his pawn to contact Gu Ci, and that she, Huo Shuyue, would rather die than help him with such things!

However... seeing her uncle's gaze, which remained nonchalant yet carried an overwhelming air of authority, her resolve crumbled. She said, feeling incredibly aggrieved, "She had something to do, she didn't come."

Rong Ye raised an eyebrow, crossed his legs in a leisurely manner, and spoke with gentle, unashamed composure, "Shuyue, I just remembered I have something else to attend to. You should head home on your own."

"???"

Huo Shuyue swallowed a mouthful of frustration and, unwilling to let it go, finished what she hadn't said earlier: "But she told me to come over later."

After saying this, she cast a triumphant glance at her uncle from the corner of her eye. She didn't believe for a second that he wouldn't regret kicking her out of the car after hearing that! But to her disappointment, her uncle remained as calm and unruffled as ever.

Rong Ye curled his lips and looked at her. "Forget it, I'll take you home after all. That other matter isn't very important."

Hearing this, Huo Shuyue finally exhaled, laughing wildly in her heart. This was the first time she had ever heard her uncle retract his own words! It gave her such a sense of achievement!

But then, Rong Ye added...

"It's a good opportunity for me to test the progress you've made in your studies these past two days."

Huo Shuyue: "???"

Although she had no proof, she felt as though she had just done something incredibly stupid! As she muttered to herself, breaking down every word Rong Ye had said, she wished she could just slap herself. Why did you have to open your mouth!

…

Meanwhile, outside No. 1 Middle School, in a silver Bentley.

Elder Qin was lecturing Qin Yunqi. "It worked last time, but not this time? I don't think I can ever rely on you! Are you trying to make me lose face in front of Old Man Yuan on purpose? I gave him my word that you could help him get off the other party's blacklist, and you? Two days have passed, and there hasn't been a single result. You nearly made that old man laugh himself to death!"

Speaking of this, Elder Qin was so angry his beard was twitching. Qin Yunqi felt bitter, but he didn't dare refute the elder, so he just hung his head and took the scolding. When he saw that the account Old Man Yuan had given him was the same one that had blacklisted his own grandfather, he had assumed the matter was absolutely settled and that there would be no problem repeating the process.

But the reality was that he had crashed and burned! When he tried to follow the same procedure to remove Old Man Yuan's WeChat from the blacklist, he found that his program no longer worked. He didn't want to believe it, tried several more times, but the result was always failure.

Qin Yunqi was going crazy. He couldn't understand why a method that had been running perfectly—and had even succeeded once on that very account—suddenly failed. But facing Elder Qin's suspicious gaze, he didn't have the nerve to tell him that Old Man Yuan was also trying to get unblocked by the same beloved little apprentice. It was too embarrassing!

However, Qin Yunqi was becoming increasingly curious about the elder's apprentice. After so many days of failures, he realized the problem wasn't his technical skills, but the account itself. He had every reason to suspect that the account was protected by an even more skilled hacker, which was why he kept failing. He was incredibly curious: what kind of person was this apprentice, who had so many masters around her?

Even knowing he would be scolded by his grandfather, he couldn't help but follow along. Seeing the elder stop to catch his breath, Qin Yunqi quickly stepped forward to massage his shoulders. "Grandfather, what kind of person is your apprentice?"

Elder Qin gave him a sideways glance, but when he mentioned Gu Ci, his tone was filled with pride and admiration. "Gu, that girl... she is the most talented conductor I have ever met in my life!"

Hearing this evaluation, Qin Yunqi was shocked. He never expected his grandfather to hold such a high opinion of his apprentice. To a layman, a conductor might seem like someone just waving a baton as a decoration in a concert hall. But the Qin family was a musical dynasty, and Qin Yunqi himself was a violinist; he understood that a conductor was the core soul of an orchestra. Without one, an orchestra was nothing but chaos.

There was a saying in conducting: the left hand is heaven, the right hand is earth. The left hand controlled the artistic conception, dynamics, breathing, and emotions, as boundless as the sky; the right hand controlled the beat, rhythm, and precision, as steady as the earth. Elder Qin represented the absolute pinnacle of the conducting world, yet he had given Gu Ci such an assessment!

What Qin Yunqi didn't know was that Elder Qin's expectations for Gu Ci went far beyond this. In his understanding, most conductors were primarily useful during rehearsals, but Elder Qin knew that the internal conductors of the Music Association were meant for much more than that...