Qing Mo's disgusted voice reached Xu Mingyao's ears with absolute clarity.
She froze abruptly.
Warm tears were still sliding slowly down her red, tear-stained face, but her expression had lost all its warmth.
She was as stiff and wooden as a statue.
It was as if her very soul had been annihilated into nothingness by those words of disgust.
"Hahahahahaha!"
Lin Yu's laughter burst from the phone's receiver, so loud his voice almost cracked.
He sounded like he had just finished watching the world's greatest circus performance, entirely unsparing with his laughter.
"Well said!"
"Wonderfully said!"
"I'll reward you right now!"
The pained sounds from the receiver instantly changed their tune, becoming as joyous as a musical movement.
This time.
Xu Mingyao could do nothing.
She couldn't even muster the strength to curse.
An indescribable anger boiled within her body.
On the snow-white bedsheets, her pale, delicate hand clenched tightly into a fist, wrinkling a large patch of the fabric, yet her fist still trembled uncontrollably.
She gasped heavily for air, the deep flush of anger on her face gradually spreading down her neck.
Under such extreme agitation, the veins on her neck bulged, pulsing forcefully with every breath she took.
Standing by the sofa, watching Xu Mingyao trembling with rage, Tao Yaoyao's eyes revealed a hint of worry.
Long before Xu Mingyao woke up, she had been staying in this luxurious hotel suite.
After all, the Xu family's assets had now been completely frozen; apart from the hotel, the two of them had nowhere else to stay.
And naturally, everything that had just happened had fallen upon her ears as well.
During the time Xu Mingyao was going mad, she hadn't made a single sound, trying her best to minimize her presence.
Because she knew her too well.
Due to being spoiled since childhood, whenever she got angry, she cared for nothing and no one.
With the exception of a very few people, anyone who approached her at this time would inevitably become the target of her venting.
So at times like this, the best method was to treat oneself as thin air and avoid catching her attention.
Things would be fine once she finished being angry, or at least when she wasn't as angry anymore.
Only this time...
Tao Yaoyao looked at Xu Mingyao with worried eyes.
Just a moment ago she was merely panting heavily, but in this short while, she was starting to look as if she were having trouble breathing.
The rising and falling of her chest became increasingly violent, and her gasps carried a somewhat sickly moan.
Tao Yaoyao was very worried about her, afraid she might make herself ill from the anger.
Amidst Xu Mingyao's increasingly heavy panting, Tao Yaoyao felt deeply uneasy.
Ultimately, her concern for Xu Mingyao outweighed the consideration for her own safety.
Tao Yaoyao stepped forward, crouched by the bed, and gently held the hand Xu Mingyao was using to grip the crumpled bedsheet.
Holding her breath, she said softly and cautiously:
"Sister Ming, don't be angry, I..."
Before Tao Yaoyao could finish speaking, a heavy, transparent glass ashtray was smashed down toward her face.
Crashing down alongside the ashtray was Xu Mingyao's furious roar.
"Get out!!!"
The diamond-like glass ashtray with its countless faceted edges struck hard just above Tao Yaoyao's brow.
Those edges weren't sharp, but under Xu Mingyao's angry swing, the hard glass easily broke Tao Yaoyao's skin.
Blood rushed out, flowing from the wound above her brow.
The bright red blood traced past her brow, splitting into two streams at the bridge of her nose, and slid down Tao Yaoyao's fair skin.
Perhaps because she was mentally prepared, pain did not linger on Tao Yaoyao's face for long.
What showed more on her face was a kind of calmness.
A sorrowful calmness.
As the bright red streaks of blood caught Xu Mingyao's eyes, she suddenly froze for a second.
Above the surging sea of anger, a wave of guilt suddenly reared its head like a small hill.
But very quickly, that fragile guilt was smashed to pieces by the waves of fury.
"What are you still putting on an act here for?!"
"Why don't you get out along with those bitches!"
"You whores are all the same!"
"You only have money in your eyes!"
"Now I have no money left!"
"What are you still pretending for?"
"Why don't you get out with them!!!"
Xu Mingyao roared furiously at Tao Yaoyao, her crazed demeanor perfectly masking the tears that were flowing even faster down her face.
Tao Yaoyao's thick eyelashes trembled, lowering even further.
She lowered her head and, as she usually did when she made Xu Mingyao angry, spoke softly:
"I'm sorry."
After speaking, she slowly stood up, turned around, and walked away.
Xu Mingyao panted heavily; her gaze did not follow Tao Yaoyao's movement, but instead continued to glare at the spot by the bed where she had just been crouching.
She wanted so badly not to care about her, but she still couldn't control herself from averting her gaze to secretly check where Tao Yaoyao was going.
Seeing that she didn't leave the hotel room, but instead picked up the hotel's first-aid kit and walked into the bathroom, her suspended heart finally settled down...
...
When it came to treating flesh wounds and minor cuts, Tao Yaoyao had always been an expert.
An expert forged by prolonged experience with injuries.
So it took no more than a few minutes for Tao Yaoyao to treat the roughly one-inch wound above her brow.
After dressing the wound, Tao Yaoyao did not leave the bathroom.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she saw another one of her wounds.
The shallow cut on her neck had long stopped bleeding.
After more than a day of healing, the already subtle wound had become even less noticeable.
She raised her chin slightly, lifted her hand, and gently stroked the wound with her fingers.
She thought of him.
She remembered how yesterday, despite being equally furious, he had chosen to compromise.
She remembered his reluctant warning.
Her eyes noticeably darkened a shade.
For no reason, she thought of that girl named Tang Manman.
She felt that she was truly lucky.
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...
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!
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?!
] [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!"
