The silver-gray pressure cooker had been sitting still on the cold gas stove for quite some time.
It wouldn’t be long before the warm pot grew as cold as the stove beneath it.
Tang Qinqin and her mother, Tang Yun, sat at the dining table, their expressions long gone from the earlier calm.
Their almost identical slender brows were tightly furrowed, and their eyes flickered anxiously between the clock on the wall and the firmly shut front door. Worry deepened in their hearts.
“Mom, it’s already this late. Why hasn’t my sister come back yet?” Tang Qinqin pouted, her voice tinged with concern.
“Mom doesn’t know either,” Tang Yun replied, her brow tightly knit as she glanced up at the clock again.
8:20.
According to her daughter’s usual schedule, she should have been home by 7:30. Now it was almost an hour past that, and she still hadn’t returned.
Turning toward the still-closed door, Tang Yun asked, “Did your sister say if she was going to a friend’s house tonight?”
“No,” Tang Qinqin shook her head. “She wouldn’t just go to a friend’s without telling anyone.”
“And I told her this morning that I’d make something delicious for dinner, so she should come back early. She even nodded and agreed. She wouldn’t suddenly go off to someone else’s place.”
Hearing this, Tang Yun’s worry deepened even further.
After a while, as the minute hand finally pointed to the six, Tang Yun could no longer hold back.
She stood up, took down an old black cotton jacket from the coat rack, slipped it on, and prepared to head out in haste.
While putting on her shoes, she reminded Tang Qinqin inside the house, “Qinqin, wait here for me. If your sister comes back, call me right away.”
“I won’t,” Tang Qinqin stood up from the plastic stool stubbornly.
“I’m coming too.”
At that moment, Tang Yun had already put on her shoes. She straightened up, frowned, and asked her daughter, “What are you going to do?”
“Obey,” Tang Qinqin said.
“Be good and wait at home. If your sister comes back and neither of us is here, won’t we miss her?”
“No,” Tang Qinqin shook her head. She grabbed the phone her sister had left at home and slipped it into her pocket while putting on her coat.
“If sister comes back and finds neither of us home, she’ll definitely call us on the landline.”
“We won’t miss her.”
Seeing she couldn’t persuade her daughter, Tang Yun finally gave in with a helpless sigh and reminded her once more, “Dress warmly. It’s cold outside.”
...
...
The night was windless, yet the biting cold was everywhere.
Tang Qinqin tugged her cotton hat down a little more until its soft, warm brim completely covered her ears. She hunched her shoulders and continued taking quick, small steps toward the school.
The streetlights cast a dim yellow glow over the patches of snow that hadn’t melted yet.
Tang Qinqin glanced left and right as she walked. Thanks to the deep chill of the night, there were very few people on the streets, so it wasn’t hard for her to look for someone.
Soon enough,
In a park not far from home, Tang Qinqin spotted a solitary figure sitting alone on a bench.
Walking toward that slender figure, Tang Qinqin’s heart surged with a flicker of hope as she recognized the No.3 Middle School uniform on the person ahead. Her steps quickened without her even realizing it.
Drawing closer, she spotted the familiar black backpack beside the silhouette. At that moment, the weight in Tang Qinqin’s heart finally lifted.
She hurried over to the bench and looked down at her sister, whose head hung low. Tang Qinqin’s voice carried a hint of gentle reproach as she said,
“Sis, why are you just sitting here? Why aren’t you going home?”
At last, Tang Manman stirred. She lifted her head, revealing a delicate nose and exquisitely beautiful face flushed red from the cold. But what caught the eye most were her eyelashes.
Her long, curled lashes were stiff and tangled like icy spears, dusted with tiny shards of ice—clear evidence of how long she had been crying here.
Seeing her sister in such a state, Tang Qinqin suddenly panicked, and all the little complaints she had just now vanished.
She sat down beside Tang Manman, gently wiping away the few tear drops already frozen on her sister’s cheek.
Feeling the chilling coldness of her sister’s skin, robbed of all warmth by the biting wind, Tang Qinqin grew increasingly anxious. Furrowing her delicate brows, she asked,
“What’s wrong, sis?”
“Did someone bully you?”
Tang Manman shook her head. Her lips trembled but she quickly pressed them together. She sniffled, and tears quickly welled up in her swollen, red-rimmed eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Qinqin.”
“I’m sorry...”
...
...
Under the streetlamp at the alley’s entrance, the girl stood quietly.
She lowered her head slightly, staring blankly at the patch of pristine snow untouched by pollution, her brows knitted with a sorrow that seemed impossible to unravel.
Suddenly, the sound of hurried footsteps crunching on snow approached from afar, snapping the girl back to reality.
Seeing her mother hurrying over, she ran up to meet her.
“Where’s your sister?”
In just a short while, Tang’s mother’s face was flushed red from the cold, but she clearly didn’t care. Her voice was sharp, laced with an anger that weighed heavily in the air.
“She’s at home.”
Tang Qinqin answered.
Seeing her mother ready to storm home and give her sister a piece of her mind, Tang Qinqin quickly stopped her, pleading,
“Mom, wait a moment, please.”
“For what?”
Tang’s mother halted, her anger simmering as she asked.
“Mom, please don’t be mad at sister when you get home, okay?”
Tang Qinqin’s voice was full of earnest pleading.
“She’s already very upset today.”
“She didn’t do well on her exam and was so scared of you getting mad that she hid in the park all evening, afraid to go home.”
“Me? Mad at her?”
“When have I ever scolded her?”
Hearing her youngest daughter’s words, Tang’s mother felt a bit wronged. She hadn’t scolded Tang Manman once since she was little—not even a few harsh words. When had she ever gotten angry at her?
Though, truth be told, she had planned to give her a good scolding once they got home.
Not coming home late at night—
It made the whole family worry, and that was simply too much!
Tang’s mother was very angry, but upon hearing that her beloved daughter had done poorly on her exam and was hiding in the park out of fear, she couldn’t help but feel a pang of heartache.
At the same time, she was filled with curiosity.
How many points did she actually get on this exam?
How could she possibly have scored so poorly that she didn’t even dare to come home?
Tang’s mother stared at her youngest daughter, took a deep breath, and swallowed the anger welling up inside her before asking,
“How did your sister rank this time?”
Tang Qinqin opened her mouth, hesitated, then pressed her lips together, looking at her mother timidly as if the ranking was something she had personally caused.
“Tell me, quickly!”
Tang’s mother urged impatiently.
Under her mother’s pressure, Tang Qinqin shrank back slightly and stammered,
“Fifty-seventh place...”
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
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.”
world slacker. But a genius female disciple just had to get clingy, insisting that he take her as a disciple. Not only that, she was always making advances on him, thoroughly disrupting his peaceful slacker life...
rowess are unmatched, commanding a million-strong army! Yet, the Emperor wants to depose him for the sake of a false prince? Hold on, are you throwing me into some female-oriented romance plot? How can I tolerate this? With a grand wave of his hand—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! Slander the Emperor? Very well, all of you shall die! ... The False Prince: "Although I am not the biological son, Father and Mother love me more. The throne should be mine!" The Female Lead: "Qin Xiao, you are the Emperor, and I am a commoner. If you wish to marry me, you must abdicate. Otherwise, you will never have me!" The Empress: "After we divorce, you must give me half the empire!" The Transmigrator Consort: "You worthless Emperor, why should I kneel to you? All men are equal—I advise you to be kind!" The Great General: "The enemy general is my childhood sweetheart. For her sake, I willingly abandon the frontier defenses!" The Retired Emperor: "Although Yu'er was adopted, I prefer him. Qin Xiao, you should abdicate and let him become Emperor!" ... Very well! So this is how you want to play? Facing this twisted world of female-oriented tropes, Qin Xiao grins and raises his hand to unleash—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! I am the Emperor. Why would I bother reasoning with you? Seal the gates! Leave none alive!
