When Situ Yunshu woke up, she was still in the car.
Her eyelids were heavy and her consciousness hadn't fully returned, but the sensation on her hand was exceptionally clear.
A warm, large hand was tightly grasping hers, their fingers intertwined without a single gap between them.
Her head was resting heavily against a broad shoulder.
She didn't struggle immediately, only opening her eyes a tiny crack.
A faint, almost imperceptible scent drifted into her nose. It wasn't any kind of perfume, but rather a clean scent unique to a certain someone, much like a freshly washed shirt baked in the sun.
It was so familiar that her heart tightened.
She was safe here.
Having reached this conclusion, Situ Yunshu no longer had any reservations. She abruptly sat up straight, simultaneously pulling hard to free her hand.
This slight movement instantly awakened the person beside her.
Jiang Chengshan practically bounced up, all sleepiness vanishing as he reflexively grabbed her wrist.
"Sister Yunshu, this time, I won't let you go no matter what."
That familiar form of address was like a poisoned key, violently picking the lock on her heart.
Those photos surged in her mind once again, each one like a steel needle viciously piercing into her flesh.
But that young man named Lin Mo had said they were all fake. She didn't know if she should believe him.
With reason and emotion turning into a chaotic mess in her head, Situ Yunshu simply chose the most direct method to suppress these roiling feelings.
She was never a weak woman to begin with.
In terms of combat skills, even a hundred Jiang Chengshans might not be her match.
Situ Yunshu's gaze sharpened. With a clever twist of her wrist, she turned the tables, directly and firmly pinning Jiang Chengshan's entire body against the backrest of the rear seat.
The entire motion was as smooth as flowing water, so fast it left no time to react.
She bent one leg, pressing her knee against his lower abdomen, and looked down at him from a commanding height.
"I haven't forgiven you yet, so don't get so close to me!"
Situ Yunshu lowered her voice, carrying a fierce edge.
"If you move again, I'll blow your damn head off..."
Before she could finish her harsh words, her voice caught in her throat.
Only at this moment did she truly get a clear look at this face.
The silhouette of the green youth from her memory slowly overlapped with the mature, handsome face before her, finally solidifying into one.
Only, on this face, those eyes were frighteningly red, the sockets brimming with moisture, exactly the same as when they had last met over a decade ago.
He was clearly a man in his thirties, so why was he still acting like a teenage boy, getting red-eyed at the drop of a hat?
Pinned beneath her, Jiang Chengshan did not resist in the slightest.
He simply tilted his head back, letting her do as she pleased, his gaze greedily tracing her features.
Then, he reached out with his unpinned hand, slowly and with a hint of cautious probing, gently caressing Situ Yunshu's cheek.
The pad of his finger was a bit rough, bearing thin calluses, yet its touch was scalding hot.
"I really missed you, Sister Yunshu."
His voice was terribly hoarse, as if it had been ground against sandpaper.
As his words fell, a scalding drop of liquid smashed onto his face.
It wasn't his.
It was Situ Yunshu's.
She herself was stunned.
Why did seeing those photos hurt so much she couldn't breathe? Why did the thought of him being with another woman make her hate everything enough to want to destroy the world?
Wasn't it because, for the past dozen years, she had spoken of hating him, yet loved him to death in her heart?
Therefore, upon reuniting, all her disguises and strength instantly crumbled before a single fragile murmur from him.
Once the floodgates of her tears opened, they could no longer be stopped.
Her vision blurred by tears, Jiang Chengshan's face also became hazy.
She still maintained the dominant posture of pinning him down, but at this moment, she was the defeated soldier, utterly routed.
A long-suppressed whimper escaped her throat.
"Jiang Chengshan... you bastard..."
--System: Lin Mo, do you want a wife or not? What?! Too many? Then forget it.--
After sending everyone back to their rooms, Lin Mo didn't leave immediately.
Only a bedside lamp was turned on in Xie Yuling's room. Its warm yellow halo stretched their shadows out long, overlapping together.
There was an indescribable quietness in the air.
"Tell me, Jiang Yunlu... would she know about your uniqueness?"
Xie Yuling's voice was very soft, as if she were asking him, yet also like she was muttering to herself.
She kept her head down, her fingers unconsciously twisting the hem of her shirt.
Lin Mo wasn't surprised by this question.
He merely gave a slight shrug, breaking the heaviness.
"If she knows, she knows. It's actually fine."
He paused, then added, "Don't you know too?"
It was exactly this sentence that made the air in the room instantly freeze.
Xie Yuling abruptly raised her head, looking as if something had shattered in her eyes.
She stared at Lin Mo's face, her chest feeling so tight and stifled that she could barely breathe.
"You!"
She raised her hand and punched Lin Mo on the shoulder. There wasn't much force behind it; it was more like venting.
"Get out. I don't want to see you right now."
Her voice carried a barely detectable tremble as she turned her head away, not letting him see her expression.
Lin Mo opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to explain something, but swallowed the words back down.
He knew he had said the wrong thing.
But there were some things that couldn't be said right now.
Lin Mo took a deep breath, suppressing the strange feeling in his heart, turned around without a word, and opened the door.
Click.
The door lock gently clicked shut.
That sound was like a switch, and Xie Yuling's tense body instantly collapsed.
Her eye sockets grew hot as a mist quickly clouded her vision.
She stomped her foot hard, screaming silently in her heart.
"Damn you, Lin Mo! You blockhead! Can't you even say a couple of nice things?"
What did he mean by "Don't you know too?"
How could she and I be the same!
The more she thought about it, the angrier and more wronged she felt. She turned and threw herself onto the bed, burying her face deep into the soft pillow.
Shifting her gaze, she saw the fluffy fox plushie on the bed. It was the one Lin Mo had caught for her from a claw machine last time.
Xie Yuling grabbed the plushie and held it up to her eyes.
The fox's two beady black eyes seemed to be looking at her innocently.
"What are you looking at! Your master is a giant idiot!"
She clenched her fist and delivered a vicious punch to the fox's fluffy head!
Bam!
The plushie bounced from the impact and rolled back onto the bed.
Outside the door.
Lin Mo hadn't gone far. With his back leaning against the cold wall, he heard that muffled thump inside the room loud and clear.
He didn't use his divine sense to investigate, but he could imagine exactly how Xie Yuling looked right now—angry, aggrieved, and sulking while hugging her pillow.
Lin Mo naturally thought of this, but he couldn't say too much. A scumbag had to act like a scumbag.
Nor could he go back in.
A scumbag had to have the awareness and methods of a scumbag.
This was the precious experience summarized through the blood and tears of the relationship master, senior Handsome Chen.
Women were the kind of creatures where sometimes, the more you tried to explain, the more chaotic the situation became.
The best method was to say nothing at all and let them figure it out themselves.
Once they figured it out, all problems would be easily solved.
The only thing he could do, and absolutely had to do, was to maintain the delicate ecosystem of his fish pond.
He absolutely could not allow their numbers to increase any further.
Lin Mo let out a heavy sigh. If even one more were added, he truly feared that his little fish pond would be turned completely upside down.

saw a female celebrity tied up and stuffed in the trunk! Little did he know, countless cameras were aimed at him at this moment - this was a new type of reality show. The first randomly selected passerby was caught in less than an hour. But when Xu Moru was selected, things started to take an unexpected turn. "Damn, this isn't how the script goes. This Xu Moru is too bold, he's not following the rules at all." "Crap, is this guy taking it seriously?" "The female celebrity has been scared to tears!"

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.”

lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...

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.