[This story takes place in a fictional setting. All characters who appear are over eighteen years old. There is no inappropriate content involving minors; this is purely fictional.]
“Xu Chuan, let’s go home. You only make two yuan per hug—no matter how poor a man is, he shouldn’t sell his body!”
“Oh my God, that little girl is so cute! Don’t hug her—girl, you’ve been tricked…”
“Xu Chuan, you’re seriously the worst…”
It was Sunday afternoon, and the People’s Square was crowded with visitors. Off to one side of the plaza stood two boys who looked like high school students.
One of them had a buzz cut and a face full of helpless misery. He held up a large whiteboard that read:
[One easygoing, pleasant hug / 2 yuan. No charge if you don’t feel relaxed and happy!!]
[Scan to pay: ■]
The other boy was tall and handsome, with tousled bangs. He was crouched down, gently hugging a little girl.
After about four or five seconds, the boy released her and straightened up.
“Oh? She really stopped crying?” The parent who had brought the girl out for a stroll looked astonished.
The little girl, who had been crying restlessly a moment before, had actually calmed down after being hugged by this big boy.
The parent took out her phone, scanned the QR code, and smiled at the boy.
“That hug of yours really works.”
“Ma’am, would you like to try it too?”
Xu Chuan opened his arms slightly and smiled at the middle-aged woman beside him. “No charge if you don’t feel relaxed.”
“Ahaha… I can try too?”
“Of course.”
[WeChat payment received: 4 yuan!]
“You’re shameless, Xu Chuan!” Li You had been holding the sign all afternoon, and he was practically grinding his teeth to dust.
“Snow Leopard, shut up!”
The parent led the child away.
Xu Chuan closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, relaxing for a moment.
When he opened his eyes again, every person in the square had a colored outline around their body.
It looked like something out of a video game. Completely unreal.
That morning, he had suddenly awakened a superpower: he could see other people’s emotions as colors.
He had to thank his good boy Li You for helping him figure out what the colors meant.
That morning, Xu Chuan had gone to Li You’s house to hang out. After Li You’s parents let him in without informing their son, Xu Chuan had barged straight into his good boy’s room.
He had nearly scared Li You impotent on the spot—Li You had been curled up under the covers, firing off the Thirteen Shots of Certain Death.
It was at that exact moment that the colored outline around Li You’s body had changed dramatically.
The pure yellow that originally surrounded him was first replaced by purple embarrassment.
Then, when Li You saw that it was Xu Chuan, part of the purple turned into a pale red anger.
At first, Xu Chuan wasn’t entirely sure what the purple and pale red meant. But after seeing the yellow and the screen of Li You’s phone, he understood.
Yellow meant exactly what yellow meant.
Thinking of this, Xu Chuan glanced at his good boy standing nearby. Li You’s outline was currently made up of several colors.
The three most prominent were pale red, silver, and yellow.
The three colors flowed and alternated, tracing a multicolored glow around the skinny young man’s body.
Pale red: agitation.
Silver: jealousy.
Yellow: yellow.
Actually, Li You wasn’t the only one. Most of the people in the square had varying amounts of yellow mixed into their emotional colors.
Sexual repression was pretty normal, especially among young men and women in their teens and twenties.
Before coming to the square, Xu Chuan had wanted to see whether he was sexually repressed too.
Unexpectedly, his body was surrounded by waves of pale cyan light, which concealed his original emotional outline.
The glow was enormous—seemingly endless—and he could freely draw it into his body or expel it at will.
The instant he drew the pale cyan light into himself, he could sense what emotion it represented.
Pale cyan: relaxation, happiness, comfort…
At the same time, it made him curious about something else.
He could control the pale cyan relaxation, letting it enter or leave his body. Could he control the other emotional colors too?
Could he obtain other colors through physical contact with people? Or share some of his seemingly inexhaustible pale cyan with them?
After an entire afternoon of experiments, he had his answer.
It was possible!
That was why he had dared to add “No charge if you don’t feel relaxed and happy” to the whiteboard.
The woman who had just led her child away had pale cyan relaxation and orange excitement in her outline.
Whenever Xu Chuan hugged a customer, he would experience each of their emotions.
Gray, for example, was fatigue. Shades of red generally leaned toward impatience and irritability. Orange represented excitement and exhilaration…
So far, the color he had absorbed the most was gray, which he then replaced with his own pale cyan.
Perhaps his superpower had strengthened his tolerance for foreign emotions.
He had hugged nearly fifty people from noon until evening, absorbing all sorts of debuffs, yet Xu Chuan still felt perfectly fine.
It felt as though several emotion bottles had appeared inside his body.
Some emotions were liquid, such as pale-red agitation. Others were gaseous, such as gray fatigue.
But as long as they didn’t build up to the point of overflowing, they wouldn’t affect him. He could even take them out and use them whenever he wanted.
Wonderful. A godsend for insomniacs! From now on, whenever he couldn’t sleep at night, he could just use some gray to help himself doze off.
“You had a great time this afternoon, didn’t you?” Li You said sourly. “First it was cute little girls, then beautiful aunties…”
He shook the whiteboard in protest. “Now hurry up and pay me! I suffered all afternoon. We should at least split the money fifty-fifty!”
The sky was growing dark, and the sun was setting. Fewer and fewer people remained in the square.
It was time to pack up. They should head home early; they still had school tomorrow.
“You worked for me, and now you want wages too? You really want to have everything your way, don’t you?”
Xu Chuan smiled. “Go to the supermarket and buy me a drink. And bring me a grilled sausage too.”
“Go to hell, you—”
Li You bared his teeth at Xu Chuan and raised a finger. He was just about to start cursing when something suddenly interrupted him.
His gaze shifted away from Xu Chuan’s face, passed over his shoulder, and settled on the person behind him.
It was a girl. Xu Chuan had no idea where she had come from, but she was standing right behind him.
“Oh, damn…”
Li You swallowed the rest of his sentence, suddenly becoming tense and timid.
He moved closer to Xu Chuan and lowered his voice.
“What an… what an incredible talent!”
Realizing that someone was behind him, Xu Chuan turned around.
Unexpectedly, when he faced the girl, he couldn’t see her emotional colors right away.
His gaze seemed to drift uncontrollably toward a certain area.
He really couldn’t control it!
There was no other reason. They were simply too prominent.
Even though she was wearing nothing more than a slimming black hoodie.
“Um… hello.” Xu Chuan dragged his gaze back up with some difficulty and looked at the girl’s face as he greeted her.
Night had fallen, and the bright white streetlights around the square had come on.
The girl had delicate, lovely features. The light cast faint shadows across her fair cheeks.
Her hair was neither long nor short, and she wore it loose over her shoulders. It swayed gently in the evening breeze.
She was unbelievably beautiful. Yet compared with that particular feature, all her other beauty seemed insignificant.
A woman among women. The ultimate embodiment of femininity.
“Your hugs—I saw you over there,” the girl said. “Do they really make people feel relaxed and happy?”
The girl’s voice was soft, but she didn’t get the words out very smoothly.
Like translating Chinese into English and then back into Chinese…
But… what was she babbling about?
“You want a hug, right? Of course you can—”
“No, no! Absolutely not!”
Li You hurriedly shouted over him, waving his hands again and again. In a rushed tone, he continued, “We’re getting off work! Absolutely not!”
“Get lost!”
Xu Chuan pressed down on Li You’s big face and shoved the bastard aside.
Turning to the beautiful girl across from him, he gave her a polite smile.
“Sure. We’re getting off work soon anyway. I’ll give you a free ride for this last trip…”
“No need. I’ll pay…”
“Don’t, Xu Chuan! You fucking—aaah…”
“Snow Leopard, shut up!”
He finally managed to make the bastard quiet down. Xu Chuan turned his attention back to the girl in front of him.
What was I supposed to look at again?
Oh, right. The color of her emotions.
The girl had originally been standing there with her head slightly lowered, absentmindedly waiting. But when she noticed that Xu Chuan still hadn’t done anything, she raised her head and caught the change in his gaze.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Ah… nothing…” Xu Chuan said after pausing for a moment.
In the night, with the chaotic lights of the traffic roaring past on the road outside the plaza, he could finally make out the colored outline surrounding the girl before him.
This was also the first time Xu Chuan had ever seen such a pure emotional color in a complex creature like a human being.
Still and undisturbed, like an ancient well…
Black.
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
ions, keeping it grounded and realistic】 After quitting his job, office worker Su Yang accidentally binds with the "Enjoy Life System." As the name suggests, simply by indulging in life's pleasures, he can earn random rewards from the system—no need to spend money on beautiful women or grovel before anyone. Just enjoy, and the money follows, making it all about effortless fun. The system comes with a scanning feature, allowing him to establish a favorability bond with women rated 85 points or above. Every 20-point increase in favorability unlocks additional rewards. After suffering through over twenty years of hardship, Su Yang trembles with excitement, his dull eyes suddenly gleaming with newfound hope. "Enjoy life? How hard could that be?"
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.
