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.
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.”
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!
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?!
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
