"Fortunately, the stab didn't hit any vital organs, and since it was treated promptly with only a small wound, stitching it up will be enough," the doctor at Zhongwu Hospital told Ye Shuang the next morning, discussing Chen Qin's condition. "But even a small wound can be dangerous if it hits the heart or similar areas."
"Understood."
After exchanging a few more words with the doctor, Ye Shuang entered the ward to check on Chen Qin.
She was lying in bed, with several nurses attending to her.
When Chen Qin saw Ye Shuang walk in, she playfully flashed a peace sign. "I'm fine, yay!"
"Just rest for now," Ye Shuang said, sitting beside the bed.
"Should I contact Uncle Chen and the others?"
"No, they’d be terrified," Chen Qin replied, forcing a lighthearted tone. "I prefer sharing only good news."
"Telling family would just make them worry without helping anything."
Ye Shuang could only sigh. "Then let me be the only one worrying."
Chen Qin giggled. "Sorry to trouble you~"
But her complexion was pale—she was clearly putting on a brave face just to ease Ye Shuang’s concerns.
"What about work?"
"The doctor said I’ll need at least half a month of bed rest, but it’s fine. I’ll just work from the hospital," Chen Qin said.
"I’ll stay here and help handle company matters too," Ye Shuang offered. "Luckily, the knife missed all the vital organs. The doctor said the angle was extremely tricky but somehow avoided everything important."
"Huh? A stroke of luck in misfortune, then."
"How can you still laugh about it?" Ye Shuang asked.
"Because I’m happy."
"Happy?" Ye Shuang was puzzled. What was there to be happy about?
"Because I only got a minor injury," Chen Qin said, tilting her head. "But what if the knife had hit you somewhere fatal? Even if Zhao Mengyao just meant to scare you with the knife, I was so afraid of losing you."
"If it happened again…"
"I’d still choose to do the same."
Ye Shuang: "..."
"You’re such a fool," Ye Shuang murmured. Then, after a pause, he suddenly asked,
"So… we’re really not dating?"
"Nope," Chen Qin said, then proceeded to recount everything about Ye Shuang and Zhao Mengyao from beginning to end.
Ye Shuang listened quietly. Though it was his own story, it felt completely unfamiliar—as if it had happened to someone else.
"None of that matters now," Ye Shuang shook his head and said earnestly,
"Be with me."
Chen Qin stared at him blankly before smiling and shaking her head.
"No."
"Why…?"
Chen Qin lowered her head, deep in thought.
"I really do like you, but…"
"I don’t want you to be with me out of obligation or guilt."
"I don’t want you to be with me because of those jumbled memories."
"Of course, at first, when I realized you’d replaced Zhao Mengyao in your memories with me, I was overjoyed…"
"It felt like we had shared memories, like… the girl you worked so hard to please… was actually me."
"But then I realized—that just made me a substitute."
"Zhao Mengyao is Zhao Mengyao."
"And I am me."
Chen Qin placed a hand over her chest. Even wounded, bathed in the morning light streaming through the window, her smile seemed to glow brilliantly.
"This lady is one of a kind! I’m no one’s replacement, and I don’t need anyone’s pity."
"I love you for who you are, and I want a love that’s just as unique."
"I want you to genuinely like this girl, not just feel like you owe her."
"Ye Shuang, I want you to remember everything."
"And then, properly tell me, ‘I love you.’"
Ye Shuang gazed at the radiant girl before him, momentarily speechless—she was so dazzling that he felt like a corpse dragged out of the gutter and forced into the sunlight.
She was extraordinary, with her own pride and dignity. Even if Chen Qin could humble herself to the bone for Ye Shuang, that didn’t mean she’d accept being a stand-in or a bandage for his wounds.
Right.
Ye Shuang suddenly understood.
They’d grown up together—he remembered Chen Qin’s favorite foods.
So why, during dinner yesterday, had Zhao Mengyao’s preferences overwritten those memories?
Chen Qin was Chen Qin. Zhao Mengyao was Zhao Mengyao.
"Memories…"
A sharp pain shot through Ye Shuang’s head, but nothing came back to him.
Noticing his discomfort, Chen Qin gently reassured him, "Take your time. I don’t know what happened to you, but I’m sure you’ll be okay."
"After all, this lady isn’t going anywhere."
"..." Ye Shuang smiled. "Yeah."
Just then, his phone rang.
It was the police station.
"Hello? Yes… What? Seriously? Alright." Hanging up, Ye Shuang frowned slightly, lost in thought.
"Huh?" Chen Qin asked.
"Zhao Mengyao…"
"She got arrested?" Chen Qin sounded displeased. "What a joke. My injury barely counts as minor."
Ye Shuang shook his head. "No, when she ran out of her apartment, she was in such a hurry that…"
"She got hit by a dump truck at the corner."
Chen Qin: "..."
"You’re kidding?"
"Nope. The police said it was instant—they couldn’t even find her head." Ye Shuang felt neither sorrow nor joy. While Zhao Mengyao didn’t deserve death, it seemed too lenient for her.
Rather than a quick end, rotting in prison with regret would’ve been more fitting.
After all, death was over in an instant.
"As the Analects say, ‘Heaven punishes the wicked. If Heaven won’t, I know a thing or two about fists.’"
Ye Shuang laughed. "That’s in the Analects?"
"Heh."
They exchanged a glance and smiled in unison.
"Hey, Ye Shuang."
"Yeah?"
"It hurts…"
"Idiot. Lie down already."
Not long after Zhao Mengyao’s encounter with the dump truck, Tang Hao also ran into trouble overseas. While transferring assets, he was betrayed by someone he trusted, losing everything before getting robbed by locals in a "zero-dollar shopping" spree.
After that, news of Tang Hao simply vanished.
Overseas, death often goes unnoticed.
With Zhao Mengyao’s demise and the collapse of the Zhao Corporation, the chapter closed—erasing her not just from the world, but from Ye Shuang’s life as well.
As if she’d never existed.
And with this interlude over, Yinshan Academy finally welcomed its annual sports festival—
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
【Prologue: The Beginning of It All – Use holy water to heal the saintess tainted by demonic energy, then converse with her.】 Shen Nian stared at his older sister sipping yogurt, lost in thought. So you’re telling me my sister is the saintess, and yogurt is the holy water? 【Main Quest 1: Brave Youth, Become an Adventurer! Reward: Rookie Adventurer Title.】 【Side Quest 1: Find the Adorable Kitty! Reward: 1000 Gold Coins.】 Shen Nian: "Wait, I’m a high school senior here—did some guy who got isekai’d accidentally bind his system to me?" Hold on, completing quests gives gold rewards? Titles even boost stats? Is this for real? (A lighthearted, absurd campus comedy—not a revenge power fantasy.)
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.”
