Chapter 43: WE ALL WANT TO KNOW WHO TANG XIAOYU IS

The pause that followed was the longest one yet.

Liuxian: Not today.

Zhang Wei looked at the message for a moment.

Then he put his phone down, opened his calendar, and began clearing the afternoon.

Meanwhile on the other side of the city, Guiying had finished his breakfast, turned off the television, and was sitting at his desk with his laptop open and his phone face down beside it.

He had turned it face down because it had not stopped vibrating since the news segment ended. The main forum of the Omega Rights Foundation alone had apparently noticed the gala footage and had opinions about Tang XiaoYu and Liu Liuxian that they were expressing at considerable length and volume.

He was choosing not to read those right now.

He opened his laptop instead and pulled up his investment portfolio, because the world was apparently on fire about his ring finger and the most useful thing he could do about that was nothing, and in the meantime his Sungsing shares had moved overnight in a direction that required his attention.

His phone buzzed with a different kind of notification.

He looked at it.

A message from Liuxian.

Liuxian: I saw the news. Do not worry about it. I will handle it.

Guiying looked at the message.

He typed back: Are you going to your family?

The response came quickly.

Liuxian: This afternoon. You do not need to come.

Guiying looked at that for a moment.

Then he put the phone down and went back to his portfolio.

He was not worried.

He was not worried at all.

He looked at the phone.

He was slightly worried.

Still, if Liuxian didn’t want him to get involved then he would stay put.

On the bright side, his shares were going up. With money in his account, he could invest in several corporations. Especially real estate.

His voice vibrated, he glanced at the notification. It was a message from 404.

He grabbed the phone with his free hand and checked the message.

404: Finally roped, Lao Teijun in. He’s a sucker for money, so he’s on no one’s side. Once he relays the information to me, I’ll send it to you immediately. On that note, Shen Zihao has begun looking into you, or rather your alias, Tang XiaoYu. How do you wish to approach this?

Guiying paused, after his standoff with Liuxian it made sense that he would do some digging.

"Let’s give them something to work with then. I’ll create several cases for my alias, along with dates. You can date them back accordingly. As for family, say that I’m an orphan and have no relationship with any Tang family."

...

Guiying watched the three dots move, then 404’s reply finally came in.

404: Got it. I’ll process everything, immediately you send the details.

Guiying wrote what he needed immediately, then sent it to 404.

Whose reply came instantly.

404: Received. I’ll let you know once it’s done.

Guiying was expecting to receive word after a day or two but he was surprised to see 404 typing again.

404: It seems someone has already filled in the blank spots for you. Attached below is your background profile as Tang XiaoYu.

??

He already had a background profile?

Was this Liuxian’s doing?

He opened the file, whosoever did this had been thorough.

Luckily 404 found this on time, or there would have been clashes. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Tang XiaoYu, 28 years old.

Born in Chengdu to a French mother, Isabelle Tang, and a Chinese father, Tang Minghe, both deceased. Father passed away when Tang XiaoYu was four years old in a construction accident.

Mother passed away when he was eleven from illness.

No surviving relatives on either side. Raised subsequently in a private residential care facility in Chengdu, funded by a discretionary trust established in his name by an anonymous benefactor, which covered his education and living expenses until he reached adulthood.

Education: Completed secondary schooling with distinction. Subsequently spent four years traveling across Europe and Southeast Asia studying art independently, developing a particular focus on Chinese ink wash painting, French impressionism, and contemporary East Asian installation art.

No formal university degree, self educated, which he has spoken about in several small independent art publications as a deliberate choice.

Current occupation: Independent art collector and occasional consultant for private acquisitions.

Has brokered several significant private sales between collectors in Europe and China over the past three years. Known in certain circles, not widely, which is consistent with the persona of someone who values discretion.

Current residence: No fixed permanent address prior to recent months. Has maintained short term residences in Paris, Geneva, and Hong Kong at various points over the last four years.

Personal life: Private. No known prior relationships of significance. No social media presence under this name prior to six months ago, which the profile attributed to a general preference for privacy.

Net worth: Modest but comfortable, consistent with someone who works in high value art consultation without being a primary market player himself.

Guiying finished reading and set the phone down on the desk.

He looked at the ceiling for a moment.

Then he looked at the phone.

This was Liuxian’s doing. It had to be. The level of access required to build something this clean this quickly, and the particular detail of the French mother, which echoed his own actual background in a way that felt deliberate and careful, pointed in one direction only.

Liuxian had known, or suspected, that this moment was coming. And he had prepared for it without saying a word.

Guiying picked the phone back up and typed to 404.

Guiying: Scrap what I sent you. Use this profile as the foundation. Add the details I sent as supplementary history that fits within this framework. Make sure nothing contradicts.

404: Already on it. Whoever built this knew what they were doing. It’s clean work.

Guiying: I know.

This was Liu Liuxian’s doing after all.

He put the phone down.

He looked at the ring on his finger.

Then he looked back at his portfolio.

Liu Liuxian, he thought, with something that was not quite exasperation and not quite warmth and was possibly both at once, was going to be a problem for a very long time.

He found, quietly and without entirely meaning to, that he did not mind.

The afternoon passed quietly.

Guiying worked through his portfolio with the focused efficiency he brought to most things, moving between his Sungsing shares, three startup companies whose trajectories he had been tracking since his first week at the mansion, and a real estate index he had been building notes on for the past several days.

By two in the afternoon he had made four investment decisions, sent 404 two additional pieces of supplementary background detail for the Tang XiaoYu profile, and received confirmation from Lao Tiejun via 404 that the Xue family’s current search had followed the false trail to Harbin and found nothing.

He allowed himself a small measure of satisfaction about that.

At three he got up, stretched, made himself a cup of tea from the selection Wang Chengli had quietly stocked in his room at some point during the first week, and stood on the balcony for a while looking out at the garden.

The city was doing its afternoon things beyond the walls. Unhurried, indifferent, entirely unaware that Xue Guiying was standing on a balcony in the richest district in the country drinking tea and watching his investments go up.

His phone buzzed.

Shen Mingzhu: Tang XiaoYu!! Are you seeing Weibo right now???

Shen Mingzhu: They are trying to find you. Someone posted a thread called "Tang XiaoYu Investigation Team" and it already has 200,000 likes.