Chapter 257
The little figure beside him had been soft at first.
But now she was a bit stiff...
Gu Ran noticed her tension and quietly shifted his body, bending one long leg slightly.
His arm rested seemingly casually on the soft headboard behind Ye Zhenzhen's head, subtly trapping her in a narrow space.
With this posture, if a certain someone were to shrink back even a little, she would bump right into his arms.
But after waiting for quite a while, this frightened little rabbit stubbornly stayed huddled in place, not moving an inch.
The hunter had no choice but to throw out more bait.
"The feng shui of this room doesn't seem very good," Gu Ran suddenly spoke up.
"You... you stop talking," the aloof girl replied with a trembling voice.
"According to horror movie tropes," Gu Ran ignored her protest, leaned in close to her ear, and spoke faintly in that low, breathy tone typical of telling ghost stories.
"The quieter it is at a time like this, the more likely something is to crawl out from under the kotatsu or around the corner of the stairs."
"Gu Ran! Are you done yet... I'll bite you."
Although Ye Zhenzhen was talking tough, her body was already involuntarily shrinking toward him.
On the screen, the protagonist was holding their breath, walking step by step toward the creepy attic.
Seeing her eyes squeezed shut, too scared to look, a wicked smirk curled on Gu Ran's lips.
He turned slightly and gently blew a breath of air onto the sensitive back of the girl's neck.
That chill shot up her spine instantly.
"Sister, look, is it on the ceiling?"
Ye Zhenzhen instinctively opened her eyes to check. As a result, due to the momentum of her gaze, she happened to run right into a high-intensity jump scare close-up that just popped onto the screen.
The twisted Kayako was crawling down the stairs horrifyingly, in a posture absolutely impossible for a human being to make.
"Ah!!!"
A scream echoed throughout the private booth.
The pale face on the screen took up almost her entire field of vision, its hollow eyes seemingly staring fixedly at her right through the screen.
The bizarre croaking sound blasted from the speakers.
How could Ye Zhenzhen still care about the dignity of an "older sister"? She screamed, turned around, and dove headfirst into Gu Ran's arms.
Her hands tightly wrapped around the young man's neck with astonishing force.
The huge momentum carried the two of them falling back onto the round bed with a muffled thud.
Gu Ran caught her steadily, taking the opportunity to encircle her entire body in his arms, resting his chin on the top of her head.
The girl in his arms was trembling violently, her breathing completely erratic.
Tearful, broken murmurs kept coming from his chest.
"It's all carbohydrates... it's all special effects makeup... I suggest direct cremation... boohoo, Gu 'Dog' Ran, you bastard..."
Gu Ran felt the rise and fall of the delicate body in his arms, his palm gently stroking her back to calm her breathing.
"Oh, don't be afraid, Daddy's here."
Ye Zhenzhen: "???"
...
At the same time, in the next room, Ye Jinliang also let out a miserable scream.
"Holy crap! Don't pinch my thigh!"
Immediately following was Pei Susu's even more excited voice.
"This is so thrilling! Fatty, don't hide! Look quickly! That kid got under the covers!!!"
Ye Zhenzhen: "???" X2
What on earth is going on next door? I suggest the police come and check it out!
Gu Ran looked down at the girl curled up into a ball in his arms.
Then he slowly leaned in to her temple and gently planted a kiss.
"Zhenzhen."
"Wh-what..."
The girl's voice had a heavy nasal tone, so soft and sweet it made one's heart tremble.
"Since you're so scared, how about... we do something else to distract you?"
Gu Ran's voice gradually deepened, like a devil seducing an angel.
S-something else?
The girl's delicate body trembled.
She lifted her head, her wet eyes meeting the young man's pitch-black eyes.
It was unknown how long had passed.
The horrific background noise from the speakers continued incessantly, and the images on the screen were still flickering.
But the atmosphere between the two was becoming increasingly dry and heated.
Ye Zhenzhen looked at Gu Ran, who was so close at hand, and her breathing involuntarily became chaotic.
She opened her mouth, just wanting to say something, but found her throat felt as if it were blocked by something.
Gu Ran reached out a finger, gently caressing her chin.
"For example, studying human anatomy?"
"???"
Just at the moment he was preparing to lower his head and kiss her.
"I... I'm not watching anymore."
Ye Zhenzhen bit her lip, lowered her head, and whispered, "Let's change the movie, change to a comedy..."
"That won't do."
Gu Ran's fingers gently pinched her waist, causing the girl to shiver.
"The tickets are bought, and the supporting facilities are all ready."
As he spoke, his gaze fell on the girl's slightly parted red lips, his eyes growing ever deeper.
"The movie has only just begun. The more exciting parts are yet to come."
On the screen, the horrific sound effects spiked once again.
And on the round bed, the distance between the two was shrinking inch by inch amidst this background noise.
Ye Zhenzhen looked at Gu Ran's eyes, which were astonishingly bright in the darkness. Her heartbeat completely drowned out the ghostly wails and wolf howls from the speakers.
She had a premonition that the next two hours might be even harder for her to handle than encountering a real ghost.
Just at the instant their lips were about to touch, the room's door was suddenly hit heavily from the outside.
"Thump!"
Ye Zhenzhen was so startled she sharply shrank her neck back.
Gu Ran frowned slightly, looking unpleasantly toward the tightly shut door.
Outside the door, Ye Jinliang's loud voice once again penetrated the soundproof wall.
"Old Gu! Old Gu, are you there? This movie is too scary. How about we change rooms and watch it together, the four of us? More people means more yang energy!"
Gu Ran took a deep breath, a vein throbbing on his forehead.
This damn fatty, did he forget to bring his brain when he left the house?
When we used to watch movies before, I never saw you act so innocent!
Ye Zhenzhen took the opportunity to crawl out of Gu Ran's arms, quickly shrinking to the other end of the round bed.
She tightly gripped the unopened pack of thick tissues in her hands, blushing and panting, her gaze darting around.
"...Ye Jinliang is calling you."
Gu Ran sat up and casually straightened his collar, which had been pulled awry.
He ignored the shouting outside the door. Instead, he turned his head and stared faintly at Ye Zhenzhen by the dim light of the projector.
"I don't know if his yang energy is heavy or not."
As his voice fell, he slowly got up, inching step by step toward the girl huddled in the corner of the bed, and spoke through gritted teeth.
"But my internal fire is pretty heavy right now."
Ye Zhenzhen: "!!!"
She knew it!
The whole horror movie thing was just a cover!
This was his true objective!!
Ye Zhenzhen looked at Gu Ran, who was closing in step by step, and then looked at Kayako grinning hideously at the camera on the screen.
She suddenly felt that compared to the young man in front of her, the female ghost on the screen actually seemed a bit gentler.
"Y-you don't come over here!"
Ye Zhenzhen grabbed a wet wipe and threw it at him.
Gu Ran casually caught it and took the opportunity to sit on the edge of the bed.
Amidst the girl's exclamation, he grabbed her ankle.
"Sister, let's continue."
...
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!
m back to his original world. In the end, he realized he had overthought things. [Hey, why is Shen Manni, the female lead, acting strange? Shouldn't she be fawning over the male lead at this point?] [Zhou Qiaoqiao, are you sick? Weren't you supposed to break off your engagement today?] [Damn it! An Youyi, please do your job as an undercover agent and sell my information to the protagonist, you idiot!] ... At this moment, Xu Mo himself didn't know that these female leads had already heard his inner thoughts. Then they decided not to play by the rules. Xu Mo: Please respect my profession as the big villain!
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?!
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.
