"You're still lying to me."
"I already know everything. That girl was someone you hired to trick me."
"You even gave her five hundred yuan, didn't you?"
"..."
Lin Yu opened his mouth, wanting to deny it, but he couldn’t find the words.
The fact that Tang Manman could say all this meant she already knew everything. There was no point in trying to argue.
"Why did you lie to me about having a girlfriend?"
Tang Manman sniffled, her nose red from crying. Gone was her usual gentle, timid demeanor—now she pressed on relentlessly.
Why did I lie to you?
Looking at Tang Manman’s tear-streaked face, Lin Yu truly didn’t know how to answer that question.
How could he explain it to her?
Tell her the truth?
Admit that he did it because he was afraid she’d fall for him, so he faked having a girlfriend to crush any hope she might have?
Wouldn’t that sound ridiculously conceited?
He’d probably just come off as arrogant.
Or should he tell her the truth about this world?
Explain that this was just a comic book world, and he had to stay ten thousand miles away from her to prevent the story from collapsing into chaos?
If he said that, he’d probably get locked up in a mental institution.
Lin Yu was at a loss, unable to come up with a proper response.
"Say something!"
After waiting a moment and getting no answer, Tang Manman’s voice trembled as she pressed him again.
"Say what? What’s there to say?"
Under her relentless questioning, Lin Yu couldn’t think of a good answer, so he abandoned logic altogether and turned the tables, adopting a defiant, careless attitude.
"So what if I lied to you?"
"You’re gullible, so I felt like tricking you. What’s the problem?"
Lin Yu channeled the unreasonable arrogance of a delinquent, snapping back at her.
"And another thing."
"What’s with this whole act of yours?"
"I thought you didn’t like me."
"Yet here you are, barging in first thing in the morning to interrogate me over something so trivial?"
"Don’t you have anything better to do?"
"Get out of here!"
"Stop making trouble for no reason!"
Lin Yu lashed out at Tang Manman in one breath, then tried to slam the door shut before she could react—playing the coward and retreating into his shell.
Oh, right!
And that damn Cheng Ya!
Screw you!
Give me my money back!
The dark-blue steel security door flew toward its frame under Lin Yu’s pull.
But in the next second—
A sound.
The door stopped moving.
"I like you!"
"Wh-what?"
Lin Yu gripped the door handle with one hand, his shocked gaze cutting through the half-open gap. Tang Manman stood there, crying even harder now, and for a moment, he couldn’t believe his ears.
"Tang Manman, what did you say?"
Lin Yu asked again, disbelief thick in his voice.
"I said,"
"Lin Yu,"
Tang Manman sniffled, her voice trembling.
"I like you."
...
If the human mind were an endless plain, then one’s convictions and stubbornness would be the towering mountains rising from it.
The clearer the belief, the deeper the obsession—the higher and more unshakable those mountains became.
But right now, Lin Yu suddenly realized that those once-imposing peaks had blurred into obscurity.
It was as if a thick fog had rolled in, carried by Tang Manman’s tearful words straight into his mind.
The mist spread quickly, turning into layers of hazy gauze that draped over those sky-piercing summits.
Stay away from the four female leads?
Couldn’t see them anymore.
The hardships of a long-distance relationship?
The gap between their futures?
Even those seemed to fade into the background.
All rational voices in his ears scattered like dust in the wind, dissolving into faint, indistinct whispers.
Lin Yu looked at Tang Manman outside the door—her eyes brimming with tears, hopeful yet nervous—and felt his heart melt.
His lips trembled uncontrollably, and he bit them nervously.
Staring at her delicate face, flushed from either crying or embarrassment, the emotions in his chest grew brighter, sharper.
Swallowing hard, Lin Yu took a deep breath, ready to speak from the heart—
But then, a soft, almost teasing voice whispered gently in his ear.
"Senior year of high school is a critical time. I wouldn’t want Manman getting into a relationship—it might affect her grades and ruin her future."
"Don’t you agree?"
"Lin Yu?"
That gentle sentence sent an icy gale howling through Lin Yu’s mind.
No—
Not just a gale.
A full-blown storm.
The violent winds tore away the delicate mist, leaving the mountains of conviction and reason standing stark and undeniable once more.
"Hah."
"Hah!"
Lin Yu let out two cold laughs—the second louder, as if the first hadn’t been bitter enough.
"You like me?"
He pointed at himself with one finger, sneering.
"So what?"
"Is that supposed to be some grand achievement?"
"Tang Manman, I’m sure plenty of people at school like you too."
"What?"
"Are you going to take responsibility for every single one of them?"
"Tang Manman."
"You like me."
"That has nothing to do with me."
"Do you understand?"
"I don’t like someone like you."
"Just look at you."
"Dull, boring, stiff as a board—flat as a plank too. You’re just not interesting, got it?"
"Can you stop clinging to me from now on?"
Lin Yu forced his voice steady, straining to sound annoyed.
Across from him, Tang Manman seemed stunned.
Her face visibly paled, her slightly reddened eyes wide and unblinking.
Lin Yu could see it clearly—how the hope in her eyes shattered, how the sparkling gemstones turned into lifeless rubble.
Unable to bear the sight, Lin Yu lowered his head and pulled the door shut.
His voice was hoarse as he muttered one last thing:
"Get lost."
"And don’t ever bother me again."
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
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!
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
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?!
