Chapter 30
"Why are you being so stubborn again?"
Hearing that Gu Ran wanted to eat at the cafeteria, Ye Jinliang's face filled with resistance, and he struggled to back away.
"Don't you know the cafeteria changed its menu this week?"
With his weight of over 180 pounds refusing to cooperate, Gu Ran couldn't do much with him for a moment. He could only try to persuade him with reason and emotion.
Ye Jinliang shook his head, his chubby cheeks trembling along with the motion. "I don't know about that, stop lying to me!"
"It's true. The cafeteria's weird menu experiments got reported by a joint petition from the parents. Starting this week, they're making normal food. Let's go try it out. If it's decent, we won't have to eat out anymore."
Gu Ran said this, adding a sentence in his heart: This way, I can also eat with Ye Zhenzhen. For no other reason than looking at a beautiful girl makes the food go down easier.
After all, who wants to stare at a fat face while eating?
After much coaxing, he dragged the chubby boy to the cafeteria and lined up at the serving counter.
Ye Jinliang peeked at the dishes under the counter, then patted his chest and breathed a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness. Putting the taste aside for now, at least they looked like normal dishes, without the previous dark cuisine.
Gu Ran stepped forward, looked down, and ordered a few decent-looking dishes. Then he looked around, searching for that aloof figure.
"Young man, your food is ready. Move along quickly, don't hold up the people behind you."
The cafeteria lady looked at Gu Ran and felt he looked increasingly familiar. Then she realized, wasn't this the kid who ran up to her a few days ago and then decided not to eat?
Hearing this, Gu Ran paused, pointed at a dish on his tray, and asked, "Auntie, what is this?"
The cafeteria lady glanced at it and said lightly, "Potato stew with meat."
Although he got an answer, Gu Ran was still confused and pressed on, "Potato stew with what?"
"Potato stew with meat!"
"Potato stew with WHAT?!"
After a few rounds of this back-and-forth, the cafeteria lady finally caught on. She silently picked up her ladle, scooped up a few pieces of meat, and added them to Gu Ran's tray, which had previously been full of only potatoes.
Watching this entire operation, Ye Jinliang's eyes widened. He quickly rubbed his hands together, stepped forward, and mimicked the exact same routine.
"What is this?" He pointed at his own tray, which also lacked even a speck of meat, and asked the cafeteria lady.
The latter glanced at him and replied flatly, "Potato stew with potatoes."
"Potato stew with wha... uh... Potato stew with potatoes?!"
Ye Jinliang was dumbfounded. He blinked at the disdainful cafeteria lady, not understanding why she didn't play by the rules.
Meanwhile, Gu Ran had already carried his tray over and found Ye Zhenzhen, who was eating quietly. He parked himself straight down on the right side of the girl.
Suddenly having someone beside her startled Ye Zhenzhen. Turning her head and seeing it was Gu Ran, she rolled her eyes in annoyance.
"Why are you sitting here eating by yourself again?"
Why did he say 'again'?
Ye Zhenzhen narrowed her eyes slightly, a trace of suspicion flashing in them.
But hearing this, Pei Susu, who was sitting beside her, was not happy.
Popping her head out from the girl's left side, she glared with her almond-shaped eyes and said, "Hey, Gu Ran, you might be good-looking, but watch your mouth! What do you mean 'eating by yourself'? Am I not a person?!"
"Oh, there's another person here. I'm so sorry, I didn't notice."
Gu Ran apologized very sincerely, but Pei Susu pouted. She couldn't help but feel that his apology sounded a bit weird.
She wanted to say something else, but then she felt a pale hand clamping down firmly on her inner thigh, as if warning her not to speak out of turn.
It seemed... that was exactly the case.
She curled her lips, silently cursing a certain someone for prioritizing a boy over her best friend, but ultimately, she kept her mouth shut.
Seeing her take the hint so well, Ye Zhenzhen nodded in satisfaction, then turned to look at Gu Ran's tray.
Noticing that his plate clearly had more meat than hers, she frowned slightly and unceremoniously snatched a piece with her chopsticks.
"Why do you have so much meat?"
Her mouth moved slightly, her aloof eyes filled with confusion.
"Maybe... it's because I'm good-looking?"
Gu Ran shrugged, then waved to Ye Jinliang, who was looking for him.
As soon as the chubby boy saw him, he stomped over with a tray, looking thoroughly indignant.
He couldn't hold it in anymore. That cafeteria lady was bullying him too much!
How could she treat people so differently?
When that guy Gu Ran asked what dish it was, she told him it was potato stew with meat. But when it came to him, she said it was potato stew with potatoes.
What, just because he had a lot of meat on his bones, he didn't deserve to eat any more meat?!
"So you mean... I'm not good-looking?"
Ye Zhenzhen blinked, narrowed her eyes slightly, and asked softly with a calm tone.
But Gu Ran sniffed out an imperceptible hint of danger in her words.
He paused, his brain spinning at top speed, his CPU practically starting to smoke.
"Well... it's mainly because you're too beautiful. Although that cafeteria lady is a bit older, she still has a tender, girlish heart. Seeing someone as pretty as you, she's bound to feel a little jealous."
Gu Ran replied smoothly, reaching up to wipe nonexistent cold sweat from his forehead, giving his quick-witted answer a perfect score.
"Get lost, all you do is talk nonsense all day!"
A flash of shy annoyance crossed Ye Zhenzhen's eyes. Watching his exaggerated movements, she couldn't help but reach out and smack him lightly.
"No way, I'm speaking from the bottom of my heart. Five-star General MacArthur once said that if there were a ranking for the most beautiful girls in the world, Ye Zhenzhen would definitely be the best-looking one!"
"Pfft! Just eat your food!"
A blush appeared on Ye Zhenzhen's usually calm face, and she quickly reached out to push Gu Ran's face aside.
Pei Susu, eating silently on the side, rolled her eyes repeatedly, thoroughly disgusted by the sickeningly sweet interaction of the couple next to her.
She stared at her food but couldn't eat another bite, having already been stuffed full of dog food.
Turning to look at Gu Ran, who had a smirk on his lips, she frowned.
This guy was such a smooth talker, he was obviously a playboy!
Unable to finish her own meal, she couldn't resist picking a bone with Gu Ran.
"Gu Ran, since you said that, why don't you tell us exactly how pretty our Zhenzhen is?"
Hearing this, Gu Ran tilted his head slightly, blinked, and said softly, "Do you understand what 'the most' means?"
Pei Susu: "..."
She silently gripped her chopsticks tighter, turned her head to look straight ahead, and kept telling herself: Don't get angry, don't get angry.
"Hurry up and eat your food, why do you have so much to say? Otherwise, you're not getting any more meat!"
Seeing this, Ye Zhenzhen chuckled softly. She helped her best friend scold Gu Ran, taking the opportunity to snatch another piece of meat from his tray.
Ye Jinliang, who had just walked over, witnessed this scene. He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes wide.
What did he just see?
The campus belle, Ye Zhenzhen, taking meat from Gu Ran's plate?!
Watching their natural interaction, he blinked, inexplicably feeling that this world was somewhat fake.
Not only did the cafeteria lady treat Gu Ran with special favor, but even the aloof, unapproachable beauty looked at him with such affection.
What exactly did he do to deserve this?
Just because there's meat on the plate?!
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!
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.”
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.
