Coming out of the fast-food joint, Lin Yu and Gu Yue each had a cup of pumpkin juice, sipping it slowly.
“Just to take the edge off your hunger. I’ll treat you to a big meal at noon.”
Lin Yu was quick to explain the situation to Gu Yue, worried she might think he was stingy. After all, she had traveled all this way, and he was only willing to buy her a thick drink.
Gu Yue didn’t say a word. She was busy raising her head to drink the pumpkin juice, not even caring about the faint orange-yellow juice spilling from the corner of her mouth. She truly looked hungry.
Though she couldn’t speak, she didn’t forget to respond to Lin Yu. Her pure black eyes glanced sideways at him from the corner, and she raised her hand to make an ‘OK’ gesture, showing no displeasure with his plan.
Actually, even before Lin Yu mentioned his plan, Gu Yue hadn’t expressed any dissatisfaction.
She happily followed Lin Yu’s side, no matter how little she ate.
“How did you get here?”
Lin Yu took a small sip of the warm pumpkin juice and casually asked.
Upon hearing this, Gu Yue put down her paper cup, swallowed the juice in her mouth, then lazily licked her peach-colored lips before answering calmly:
“By plane.”
“Oh.”
“Must be pretty rich, huh?”
“How much do you get for living expenses each month?”
Lin Yu joked with a smile.
What started as casual banter unexpectedly made Gu Yue’s face fall instantly. She replied bitterly:
“1,200.”
???
Lin Yu’s head filled with question marks, and he couldn’t help but ask in surprise:
“1,200?”
“How much did it cost you to fly here?”
Gu Yue sighed, her slender back slumping a bit, her arms hanging weakly. She looked quite defeated.
“Adding up all the miscellaneous expenses, it’s over eight hundred, almost nine hundred.”
“Do you still have money left to get back?”
Lin Yu asked with concern.
“Of course!”
“I’m not stupid!”
“There’s no way I wouldn’t save money for the trip back.”
“I’ll take the train back.”
“Cheaper.”
Gu Yue said with a carefree shrug.
“What are you going to do for the next month? Live on sunlight alone?”
Lin Yu couldn’t help but tease.
“No problem.”
Gu Yue waved her hand casually and said boldly:
“I still have some money in my little stash.”
“Enough to get me through until next month.”
Lin Yu nodded when he heard this and felt reassured. But as he walked alongside Gu Yue, he started feeling something was off.
1,200 yuan?
Gu Yue’s family seemed to be at least moderately well-off, right?
Only that little for a month’s living expenses?
And her little stash — in the second half of her senior year, she had improved her grades quickly and often got rewards from her mom. But now, hearing her talk, it sounded like there wasn’t much left in that stash.
Sensing something was wrong, Lin Yu turned to Gu Yue and asked:
“So your monthly living expenses are only 1,500 now?”
Gu Yue nodded, a hint of melancholy about her family’s decline on her face, and said:
“Yeah.”
“My mom lost a lot of money in investments.”
“Now squeezing out 1,500 a month for me is already pretty good.”
Lin Yu nodded at this, then asked again:
“How much do you still have in your little stash?”
Hearing the question, Gu Yue’s face was filled with helplessness. She sighed and said,
“I originally had over thirty thousand, but now there’s only 600 left.”
“My mom took it all to cover some debts.”
Upon hearing about Gu Yue’s miserable situation, Lin Yu couldn’t help but shake his head and sigh.
What a poor girl.
Suddenly, Lin Yu had an idea—maybe he could help Gu Yue get out of this awkward situation.
“Gu Yue.”
Lin Yu called softly. Seeing Gu Yue turn her bright eyes toward him, he spoke seriously:
“At noon, someone’s invited me to lunch. You come with me, and on the way, be a little sweet with your words.”
“Call her ‘Sister,’ got it?”
Gu Yue obediently nodded.
There was still an hour and a half before the meeting time with Qing Mo, which was an awkward gap.
There wasn’t enough time to take Gu Yue out for fun, but just waiting around was too long. After thinking it over, Lin Yu took Gu Yue into the school and showed her around...
...
Inside the campus, two cute-looking girls linked arms like inseparable best friends, chatting and laughing together.
“How are things between you and Lin Yu?”
“Think you can win him over?”
Ye You blinked her big, strikingly black-and-white eyes, curious.
“Pretty much,” Luo Xiaoxiao thought for a moment and said,
“Although there hasn’t been much progress yet, I feel like he already has me in his heart.”
“Do you know? The day before yesterday in the cafeteria, I offered to help him deal with Zeng Qiang, but he stubbornly refused my help.”
“Probably because he doesn’t want to admit defeat in front of me—thinks it’s embarrassing.”
“Ah?”
Ye You covered half her mouth with her hand, surprised.
“So does that mean Zeng Qiang is going to mess him up badly?”
“Hmph!”
Luo Xiaoxiao snorted disdainfully.
“The worse Zeng Qiang messes him up, the better.”
“That way, I can go rescue him.”
“Better if Zeng Qiang beats him so badly he ends up in the hospital. Then I’ll stick to him like glue, taking care of him.”
“I just don’t believe he won’t fall for me after that.”
“Even if he can hold back, once he’s out of the hospital, I’ll pester him for a while longer, then suddenly disappear.”
“If he still doesn’t come after me then…”
“He—he must be gay!”
By the end, Luo Xiaoxiao was so embarrassed and angry she was practically fuming.
Ye You had been covering her mouth, stifling laughter the whole time. After laughing, she asked curiously,
“If Lin Yu agrees, you wouldn’t really help him deal with Zeng Qiang, would you?”
Luo Xiaoxiao rolled her eyes at Ye You, as if mocking her naivety.
“No way!”
“This whole thing was just me making sure Zeng Qiang finds out.”
“If I didn’t stir the pot, how else could I get close to Lin Yu?”
At this, Luo Xiaoxiao suddenly got fired up. Grinding her teeth in frustration, she said angrily,
“That bastard!”
“What’s he playing at?”
“With a face like that—one that makes you expect him to be up to no good—he’s pretending to be all pure and innocent here!”
“Men are the worst!”
“If it weren’t for Sister Xu’s promise, I’d be disgusted just looking at this kind of trash!”
Luo Xiaoxiao was fuming as she vented her frustration about Lin Yu.
Suddenly, a sharp gleam burst forth in her beautiful eyes. The disgust on her face melted away as quickly as ice in boiling water, replaced by surprise, delight, and even a hint of infatuation.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Ye You, curious about Luo Xiaoxiao’s sudden change, followed her gaze. Soon, she too was caught up in the same feeling.
Her breath hitched sharply, and the light that flared in her eyes was as if she had witnessed a miracle.
At the end of their line of sight stood Qing Mo, dressed in a simple yet elegant black dress. Her brows were slightly furrowed in confusion. She didn’t understand where Lin Yu had gone, why he wasn’t answering his phone, and why he had left her standing under the blazing sun, making her uncomfortable...
...
Truly someone to be admired.
ap a wealthy young lady? Or else I'll be eliminated by the system? Ye Feng, who awakened the Kidnapper System, originally wanted to live a peaceful life but never imagined he would become a kidnapper of young women. However, after some time, he discovered that all the girls the system ordered him to kidnap were far from ordinary. "Big brother Ye Feng~ You've kidnapped my heart, and now you're not allowed to leave me ever again~" "Ye Feng~ You kidnapped me back then, now it's my turn to capture you♡" "Little Feng, you're mine! You can only be mine!" "Ye Feng, none of them deserve you. Only I love you the most♡" ... This is madness, they've all gone mad! Wait, what? Why are all the girls I kidnapped yanderes?!
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?!
