Chapter Twenty-One
On the way back to their classroom, Ye Jinliang unleashed his interrogation technique. He threw an arm around Gu Ran's neck and asked sternly, "Spit it out, when did you hook up with Ye Zhenzhen?"
Gu Ran: "..."
"Could you use a different adjective? What do you mean 'hook up'? We are upright and innocent, I won't allow a petty guy like you to maliciously slander us!"
Ye Jinliang shot him a resentful glare. "Bah! We agreed to admire her from afar together, but you went ahead and made a move on your own. You jumped the gun!"
"Who made a move? Where is my lawyer? Someone is defaming me!"
"Stop dodging the question. Hurry up and tell me, what exactly is your relationship with Ye Zhenzhen?"
Gu Ran's attempt to change the subject was immediately thwarted. Hearing this, he could only reply in a mild tone.
"What relationship could we have? She's just a sister I recently acknowledged."
"Sister? More like a sweet older sister!"
Ye Jinliang was so envious that his teeth were sour.
Hearing this, Gu Ran shook his head again. "Look at you, you asked, so I answered. But when I tell you, you don't believe me. I really don't know what to do with you."
"I believe you, I believe you. First there was Li Sinan, and now Ye Zhenzhen. They're all your sweet older sisters, right? Brother Ran, please teach me!"
Gu Ran raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Want to learn?"
Ye Jinliang nodded devoutly, like the most loyal follower. "Yes, yes, I want to learn!"
"Sigh, there's no way around it, it's innate. Who told me to have nowhere to put this damn charm of mine..."
"Go to hell!"
The two chased and played around until they entered the classroom. They didn't say anything more, but tacitly opened their books to study together.
Seeing the little fatty sitting in his seat, chewing on the tip of his pen and studying hard, Gu Ran couldn't help but smile.
When the college entrance examination approached, he would make two sets of secret test papers for him, secretly slipping in modified versions of the actual exam questions to help him score a few more points.
Having made his plan, he lowered his head and began his own studying.
Meanwhile, in the advanced class, Ye Zhenzhen was feeling a bit conflicted.
"Gu Ran, huh? He's a typical second-generation official's kid. He never studies, and every day he's either fighting or on his way to a fight. But I don't know what happened these past two years, he's kept a much lower profile. Anyway, during his freshman year, he beat up a lot of sophomores and juniors, and they didn't even dare to fight back."
Pei Susu's words kept echoing in her ears. In just a few sentences, she had successfully painted the picture of a troublemaker—smoking, fighting, skipping class to go to internet cafes. But Ye Zhenzhen just couldn't reconcile that image with the Gu Ran she knew.
Whenever she thought of Gu Ran, the image of his bright, sunny smile subconsciously floated into her mind. It was like the warm winter sun, instantly entering her heart and lingering there, impossible to forget.
The next moment, she jolted awake, realizing what she was thinking about. Her fair, calm face uncontrollably flushed with a hint of embarrassment.
Not studying properly during class time, and she was actually thinking about a man?
And the most crucial part was that this man was her stepfather's son!
Ye Zhenzhen, you're really crazy!
After warning herself internally, she reached out with her slender fingers to pat her face, forcefully calming her thoughts so she could continue studying without distractions.
But not long after, she thought about moving in the afternoon, and a sense of worry inevitably rose in her heart.
If Gu Ran was really like what Pei Susu said, once she moved in, would he domestically abuse her...
Her thoughts were flying wildly. Holding a pen, she lightly drew aimlessly on the paper; at a glance, it was obvious her mind was not on her studies.
"I say, are you really lovesick?"
After staring at her for a long time, Pei Susu helplessly nudged her arm and whispered a reminder, "The class is almost over, and you haven't written a single word. Even if you're thinking about a man, you can't just stop studying."
Hearing her desk-mate's words instantly pulled her back to reality. She looked down at the untouched test paper and the messy circles drawn on her scratch paper, and her face rarely turned slightly red.
Coughing lightly, she awkwardly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stubbornly denied it, "Who said I'm thinking about a man? I'm clearly thinking about how to solve this problem."
"Alright, alright, then you continue thinking. I won't bother you."
Pei Susu curled her lips, having nothing more to say to this woman who was soft everywhere except for her stubborn mouth.
Even after being caught red-handed, she still refused to admit it. Probably on the day she's cremated after death, only her mouth would be left unburned.
...
The classroom was incredibly noisy after class, but Gu Ran sat quietly in the last row, concentrating intently on solving math problems.
He turned a deaf ear to the surrounding clamor, seemingly enjoying the pleasure of delving into math.
Ye Jinliang, returning from the restroom, saw his oblivious state. A feeling of shame welled up in him. He threw the newly bought Chunghwa cigarettes from his pocket into the trash can and also began to study tirelessly.
There were a total of four self-study periods on Sunday morning. During every break, the surrounding students would get up and leave the classroom, enjoying their free time without teacher supervision.
Gu Ran remained in his seat, continuing to bury his head in his studies, completely undisturbed by the outside world.
He had a strict plan for his time at school. Only when he had finished all his studying would he feel at ease to write code after going home.
However, he clearly felt that his progress had slowed down a lot.
Facts proved that math was not a subject one could master just by burying one's head in hard study.
He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose, looking at the math problem he had pondered over for ten minutes without a clue, and shook his head helplessly.
He really needed a tutor.
Just as he was about to ask Ye Jinliang to go look for a tutor with him in the afternoon, he suddenly remembered that he had to help Ye Zhenzhen and her mother move that afternoon. His plan was going to be delayed again.
But finding a tutor was imminent. He didn't want to waste another week; otherwise, no matter how much time he spent studying, he would just be marching in place.
Just as he was figuring out how to squeeze out time to find a tutor, he suddenly thought of Ye Zhenzhen.
A light burst from his eyes, and the corners of his mouth couldn't help but curl up.
What could be more convenient than having a tutor living right in his own home?
Moreover, that girl was ranked first in the grade. Tutoring a straggler like him would definitely not be a problem.
The morning passed quickly. When the bell for the last class rang, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and began moving their desks under the class monitor's direction.
Because they needed to look at the blackboard for long periods, the students' seats were changed once a week to prevent myopia caused by always looking at the blackboard from the same angle.
However, there was one exception among them, and that was Gu Ran.
Since he didn't need to look at the blackboard, sitting by the window all the time was specially approved by the head teacher. So, while the other students were moving desks and changing seats, he could casually just leave.
Leaning against the window in the corridor, he saw a black Jetta parked at the school gate. Although he couldn't see the license plate clearly, he was sure it was Gu Xiangcheng's car.
In a small county town in 2010, private cars were not overflowing. Even if it was a small Jetta, there weren't many identical ones.
To avoid Lao Gu's nagging, he scratched his hair and helplessly headed to Ye Zhenzhen's classroom...
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
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."
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
