The next day, clear skies.
The waves lapped against the shore—another fine day.
Ye Shuang had bought a good amount of breakfast and brought it back, but it seemed everyone was still asleep. After all, young people loved to sleep in, and it was summer break. Besides, they'd all been pretty exhausted from last night, especially with that hiking activity before bed.
But at this moment, Ye Shuang's gaze landed on a purple tent, its entrance marked with a small blue fish icon.
That was the tent where An Shiyu and Anshi Yi were staying. When he'd seen that clock yesterday, Ye Shuang had made up his mind to go inside—not to play the voyeur, but to genuinely see if he could help the girl from another timeline.
Just as Ye Shuang was thinking this, the nearby tent gave a slight rustle, and then the zipper at the entrance rasped open, revealing a head—"Ah—"
After a fish-like cry, Anshi Yi stumbled out, rubbing her eyes. "This crappy tent was way too uncomfortable to sleep in."
She noticed Ye Shuang standing not far away, and Chao Yiyu gave a casual wave.
"Yo, morning."
"Morning." Ye Shuang's gaze briefly flickered past her, and upon noticing there was no sign of the clock, he said, "Heading to the water again today?"
"Water? That's not really a priority." Anshi Yi said, then spotted the breakfast in Ye Shuang's hands. "What'd you get?"
"Buns. Though there's not much on this island selling breakfast—just convenience store heat-and-eat stuff." Ye Shuang said, gesturing for Anshi Yi to come eat.
"Hey, is there any cola?"
"Who drinks cola first thing in the morning?" Ye Shuang sighed, exasperated.
"Replenishing sugar, replenishing energy—it's a good thing."
"Fine, let's just eat breakfast first."
As Ye Shuang said this, Anshi Yi plopped down in the chair beside him and started eating. She wore shorts and a t-shirt, her long, slender legs pale and smooth—but no sign of the clock.
Anshi Yi seemed unusually sensitive to stares. When she noticed Ye Shuang's glance, she perked up with interest. "What, into my legs? No reaction to black stockings—turns out you're a bare-leg guy, huh? A thousand bucks for a feel?"
"You're imagining things." Ye Shuang looked away just as An Shiyu emerged from the tent.
Unlike Anshi Yi's neat appearance, An Shiyu's usually tidy shoulder-length hair stuck up in several unruly strands, as if she'd slept on it wrong.
"Pretty early." An Shiyu said, spotting the breakfast.
"Want one?"
"Hmm, I actually have my own stuff for energy." An Shiyu said, pulling out a bag that seemed to contain some snacks.
"You should probably eat something warm in the morning."
"Doesn't matter." An Shiyu said, digging around in her backpack before pulling out a bag of chips.
The next moment, a familiar clock appeared right in front of Ye Shuang. He froze for a second, only to realize that a pair of panties had been slipped over the chip bag.
"Hmm? You're into some twisted stuff, huh—keeping panties inside your snack bag." An Shiyu gave a deadpan look, then glanced at Anshi Yi.
"Threw it in there casually. Whatever." Anshi Yi shrugged.
While the two fishes chatted, Ye Shuang stared at the clock on the packet—
The familiar hum rang out once more, and his vision was swallowed by a blinding white.
...
...
Ye Shuang came to his senses quickly, calmly getting to his feet.
This was Anshi Yi's panty world—a bit different from Little Yu's. At the very least, Ye Shuang looked at his own palm and saw that he hadn't become Shanxia; it was himself.
The surroundings were still the familiar array of instruments, though slightly less tidy. Ye Shuang stood still for a moment, surveying the area, and confirmed it was still the same location as the laboratory.
"I'm wearing this too—so what's my role?" Ye Shuang examined the white lab coat he had on and searched through it, eventually finding an ID badge.
"Shanxia..." Recognizing the familiar name, a look of bewilderment crossed his face. What did this mean? Had he become Shanxia after all?
But at least his appearance was his own now.
Though he didn't fully understand what was happening, Ye Shuang decided to step outside and see what was going on.
"Click, clack, click, clack." The crisp sound of footsteps. Ye Shuang had lived here a few days before and still remembered the layout, even if certain parts were different. Still, he knew which way the laboratories were.
"Ah..."
Ye Shuang's steps came to a halt. In front of him, hanging by the door of a room, was a schedule sheet recording times.
"Test subject..." Ye Shuang's gaze slowly moved upward to the latest time listed—
When that name appeared, Ye Shuang felt a surge of disbelief, yet still spoke aloud:
"Test subject, 482..."
Ye Shuang: "..."
Ye Shuang stood in silence for a long while. He looked at the ending times for each entry below, and felt his breathing start to turn labored.
"..."
"Why did it have to be this way, when..." The familiar ache of sorrow washed over him again and again, forcing Ye Shuang to take deep, heavy breaths.
"Hey, Shanxia, you okay?"
A voice came from beside him. Ye Shuang started, turned, and froze.
A girl dressed in pure white stood next to him—long hair, and a face that was intimately familiar.
[Character: Test Subject 483
Test subject rescued by An Shiyu]
An Shiyu's test subject.
"You... out here." Ye Shuang glanced at the room door beside him. They were in the hallway, and as far as he knew, test subjects shouldn't be allowed outside their observation rooms.
But remembering that the timeline here was different, Ye Shuang chose a more roundabout approach. "What are you... doing here?"
He couldn't confirm whether this girl was Anshi Yi, but he certainly hoped she was.
He couldn't believe the count had already reached four hundred and something.
"What am I doing here? You're the one who's late." The girl answered fluidly, then extended her slender little wrist. "Time to draw blood."
Her arm was riddled with needle marks, densely packed. Though Ye Shuang had steeled himself, the sight still wrenched his heart. This was exactly why entering this world required him to summon up so much courage.
Ye Shuang led the girl into the observation room. Nothing much had changed here—the plain white room, the plain white bed. Perhaps the one difference was the television set.
Ye Shuang quietly observed all of this as the test subject deftly stripped off her clothes, ready for him to take her measurements.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
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!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
