After school in the afternoon.
The weather outside was still sweltering, yet Ye Shuang sat at the desk in the school infirmary, staring blankly at the contents of his phone.
There wasn’t much—just a few lines of chat history from a conversation with An Shiyu during lunch break.
An Shiyu: Let’s go to the amusement park this weekend!
Ye Shuang: Are you feeling okay…? Why suddenly the amusement park?
An Shiyu: It’s fine. It’s part of my final bucket list.
An Shiyu: Won’t be doing this again after. Getting bored of it.
An Shiyu: yawns.jpg
Ye Shuang: "……"
Final bucket list…
Hearing that phrase, Ye Shuang felt an inexplicable discomfort, as if his heart had been pricked by a needle.
As he stared at his cracked phone screen, he couldn’t help but wonder what An Shiyu really meant.
Her physical condition was just like this battered phone—no one knew how much longer it could hold on.
Suddenly, the screen went black, completely unresponsive.
"……"
Still dazed, Ye Shuang blinked before fumbling around for a charger. After plugging it in, the spiderweb-like screen remained lifeless. He turned it over a few times before finally setting it down.
The phone…
Was broken.
"Guess I’ll find a repair shop," Ye Shuang muttered, standing up and grabbing his car keys.
……
"How did you even manage to wreck it this badly?" The shop owner eyed the mangled phone in Ye Shuang’s hand and couldn’t help but mutter.
Did you run it over a few times?
Or maybe toss it into a washing machine?
"Just dropped it once," Ye Shuang replied vaguely, recalling how it might have gotten damaged during Alice’s kidnapping.
"Can it be fixed?" he asked.
"Nah. It’s not just the screen—the motherboard’s rusted in places. Definitely water damage." The owner placed the phone on the counter, then glanced at the car parked outside.
"Boss, with a ride like that, you’re still using a cheap phone? Shouldn’t you be rocking an Apple Pro Max or something?"
Ye Shuang picked up his phone and smiled faintly. "A friend sold this to me. Got used to it, so never bothered upgrading."
"Huh. How much?"
"Can’t remember. A few hundred."
"Not bad for the price," the owner said, swallowing the words "ripped off by a friend."
Ye Shuang scanned the phones in the display case. "Guess I’ll just get a new one, then. If this one’s beyond repair."
"Sure thing. Apple 15 Pro Max?"
"Not my style. Just give me the latest model from this brand."
"Oh, Blue Rice Phone? Let me check… Don’t have the newest, but there’s the Big Rice 14. Same parent company." The owner pointed at a phone in the case.
"Same brand?"
"Yep. Big Rice 14—Blue Rice’s daddy," the owner said matter-of-factly.
"How much?"
"Four-five."
Ye Shuang raised an eyebrow. "That much of a price gap for the same brand?"
"Hey, it’s different! The cheap ones are built to fail. Look at this—Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. Like a person’s limbs and heart, top-tier stuff."
"See, the chipset’s the heart. A bad chip means a laggy phone, just like a bad heart means you can’t move your limbs."
The owner launched into a sales pitch, boasting how it could "punch Huawei and kick Apple."
Ye Shuang fell silent, not pressing further.
After getting the new phone, he synced his cloud data. All that was left was to back up his chat history from his computer.
Swiping through the screen, the smooth high refresh rate was undeniably better than his old phone, but it felt unfamiliar.
He’d long outgrown his youthful obsession with gadgets. The novelty had worn off.
As for the owner’s spiel about the camera’s prowess? Ye Shuang couldn’t care less.
His finger hovered over the specs page.
Gazing at the chipset details, he murmured, "The heart, huh…"
"…Sigh."
He opened the front camera and took a quick selfie.
"Compared to the old phone… Is the difference really that big?" He flicked through the photos before locking the screen and returning to his car.
Time to head back.
Nighttime.
Ye Shuang prepared a simple dinner—steamed shrimp, scrambled eggs with beef rolls, and stir-fried lettuce with pork. Nothing time-consuming, just quick blanching and stir-frying. His heart wasn’t in it.
"Brother, there’s a girl in our class named Tao Xiaotao. Her family seems really poor," Tang Keke brought up during dinner, recounting the day’s events.
"She even collects bottles to sell."
Bai Yuyou nodded beside her. "She… eats bread crusts. Doesn’t seem enough."
"Collects bottles?" Ye Shuang paused, then remembered something. "Actually, Yinshan Academy must have subsidies for financially struggling students. It’s mandated by the state. You could suggest she look into it."
"She… doesn’t want to get close to us," Bai Yuyou said softly.
Ye Shuang listened as they explained the situation, realizing Tao Xiaotao was the girl who’d bumped her head the other day.
"So, you gave her 100 yuan, but she seemed unhappy?"
"Yeah."
"That’s a principled kid. And collecting bottles… She must have a strong will," Ye Shuang mused. "She probably thought the money was lost by someone and didn’t want to keep it. Might even be worried about the owner."
"Tossing money into someone’s desk like that isn’t right. You could hurt their pride."
"Then what should we do?" Tang Keke scratched her head, while Bai Yuyou listened quietly.
"Let me think…" After a moment, Ye Shuang said, "Honestly, any out-of-town student who gets into Yinshan Academy is impressive. If she’s as diligent and strong-willed as you say, try befriending her properly."
"About the bottles—invite her to a meal tomorrow, apologize, and explain the 100 yuan."
Ye Shuang recalled the financially struggling students he’d sponsored before. If Tao Xiaotao was as described, she’d be an ideal candidate.
Though he no longer needed to sponsor students to cultivate future talent for his company.
Still, he’d be happy to see Bai Yuyou surrounded by more outstanding friends.
lan, the Luo family, tracked him down - along with the babies in their arms. Mo Xuan stared pensively at the paternity test results from over a dozen top institutions, both domestic and international, showing a 99.99% match between himself and the two baby girls. At 23, Mo Xuan, a doctoral student, had become the father of two three-year-old children. The kicker? The mothers weren't even the same person! He gradually realized he was being lured step by step into an elaborate trap designed by these two yandere sisters. "Be good, little Xuan. Sister's life belongs to you entirely." "Brother, if you try to run away, I'll have no choice but to tie you up." Mo Xuan: "Do whatever you want, ladies. I give up."
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.”
ts me of treason?" "Correct. The host must return to the capital and gradually build up influence." "Wait—I have half a million soldiers, and you want me to go back to the capital to 'build influence'?" "Host, you are currently the Northern Garrison General, loyal to the Great Xia Dynasty." "Of course I am loyal to Great Xia! Absolutely loyal!" "But you keep referring to yourself as 'We'..." "Never mind the details! Summon all the regional commanders and military officers! We suspect treacherous officials are manipulating the court! They shall march with Us to the capital and purge the corrupt!" "......"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
