Yinshan Academy had many small gardens, each featuring a rustic wooden pavilion. The pavilions were modest in size, with a stone chess table at the center and several benches surrounding it. Vines gently coiled around the support pillars, making it seem as though they had merged into one.
Tao Xiaotao found a secluded corner and sat down on one of the benches. At this hour, with most students rushing to the cafeteria for lunch, the place was nearly deserted.
She pulled out a plastic bag and opened it to reveal a pile of bread crusts—leftovers from a bakery the night before, sold at a steep discount. A whole bag for just one yuan.
Bread crusts weren’t always easy to come by, though. If you arrived too late, they’d be gone.
But after sitting overnight in the summer heat, the crusts didn’t taste great—not that Tao Xiaotao minded much. She took a sip from her water bottle and continued chewing.
“Darn it, my bottles are gone.” After finishing a couple of crusts, her mood suddenly plummeted. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, plopping onto her lap.
She cried as she ate the rest, then gulped down the remaining water in her bottle before carefully rewrapping the leftovers.
Dinner.
Sniffling, she glanced to the side, as if sensing something.
“……”
But she didn’t dwell on it, gathering her things and leaving.
A dozen seconds later, two heads popped up from a nearby bush, a leaf still perched atop Bai Yuyou’s head.
“Yuyou, why was Tao Xiaotao eating those bread crusts? Is her family really poor or something?” Tang Keke couldn’t help but ask.
“But Yinshan Academy’s tuition is 30,000 per semester, and the Hong Kong-Macau International Class starts at 100,000.”
“I’m free,” Bai Yuyou said. In her memory, she’d never paid tuition—some special exemption had covered it.
“Free… Oh, right!” Tang Keke suddenly recalled. “If you list our academy as your first choice for college, they waive all tuition fees.”
It dawned on her that many students at the academy didn’t pay tuition. Yinshan Academy had all sorts of waivers—for top academic performers, first-choice applicants, those admitted for special talents, and so on.
“Those bottles… was she planning to sell them?” Tang Keke felt a pang of guilt. She’d never seen someone her age collecting bottles before and had just assumed the girl was helping with cleanup out of kindness.
“We messed up,” Bai Yuyou said.
“Let’s give her some money. How much do those bottles even sell for? A few hundred?”
“Don’t know.” Bai Yuyou shook her head. “Keke, let’s collect bottles to return to her…”
“Huh?” Tang Keke blinked. “Where would we even find that many? Might as well just give her cash.”
Bai Yuyou thought for a moment. “Then ask the cleaning lady.”
“Right! She probably took them to sell.”
The two girls scurried off to search for the cleaning lady from the day before. Luckily, she wasn’t hard to find—soon, they spotted her driving a cleaning cart, sunglasses perched on her nose like a trendy accessory against the glaring sun.
“Bottles?” The cleaning lady gripped the steering wheel, the machine’s brushes still spinning beneath her feet. After hearing the girls’ question, she held up two fingers.
“Sold for this much.”
“Two hundred?” Keke guessed.
“Silly, if bottle collecting paid that well, everyone would be doing it. Two yuan!”
“Two yuan?” Tang Keke was stunned. That huge bag of bottles was only worth two yuan?
She gestured vaguely, suddenly wondering if the units were different.
Just then, the cleaning lady drove off, her cart’s hazard lights blinking behind her.
“Two yuan made her that upset…” Tang Keke scratched her head, realizing Tao Xiaotao’s situation was even tougher than she’d imagined.
Her heart ached for the girl.
She turned to Bai Yuyou. “How about we just give her a hundred yuan?”
“She doesn’t like us,” Bai Yuyou pointed out. After all, Tao Xiaotao had kept her distance before.
“Maybe not dislike… maybe she’s just shy.” Tang Keke pondered. “If we can’t talk to her directly, let’s slip it into her desk.”
“……” Bai Yuyou blinked but didn’t object.
……
By afternoon, military training was over, and everyone had returned to the classroom to rest. With no classes scheduled, many students dozed off.
Though they had to stay until four, sitting indoors playing on their phones was far better than standing at attention outside.
Seated at the front of the classroom, Tao Xiaotao was packing her books to take back to the dorm when her fingers brushed against something unexpected—what she first thought was a scrap of paper turned out to be a crisp red banknote.
“?!”
She froze, glanced around, then quickly stuffed the money into her pocket and hurried out.
From a distance, Bai Yuyou and Tang Keke exchanged glances.
“Success.”
“Mhm.”
Tang Keke flashed a victory sign. “She must be happy, right?”
Bai Yuyou, however, kept her eyes on the doorway, silent.
Once outside, Tao Xiaotao pulled out a phone no bigger than half her palm, a faded “3G” stamped on its back. She fumbled with the buttons before finally dialing a number.
Soon, someone answered. “Hello?”
“Um, hi, advisor? This is Tao Xiaotao from Business Class 1.”
“Oh, Xiaotao! What’s up?”
“I, uh… I found a hundred yuan… and I don’t know who dropped it. Could you help ask around? Whoever lost it must be worried.”
“A hundred?” The advisor paused, then chuckled. “It’s just a hundred yuan—keep it for snacks or fruit. Don’t worry about it.”
“B-but…”
“Really, it’s fine. Focus on your studies, okay?” The advisor sounded entirely unconcerned.
The call ended.
Tao Xiaotao stared blankly at her phone. “Heavens… a hundred yuan ain’t worth frettin’ over? City folk really built different…”
She trudged back to her seat, visibly unsettled—a reaction that left Bai Yuyou and Tang Keke baffled.
Why did she seem even unhappier now?
The two girls exchanged glances.
Did she lose the money?
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
