Tang Manman's brain had completely crashed from nervousness, rendering her unable to think.
With a blank mind, she obediently reached out and placed her delicate, pale little hand into Lin Yu's large, dark grasp.
Lin Yu didn't hesitate either. He held her hand and directly tucked both of their hands into his other empty jacket pocket.
In broad daylight, Lin Yu's posture of holding one girl in each hand naturally drew the stares of many passersby.
Under the strange, scrutinizing gazes of the pedestrians, both Tang Manman and Xia Muzhu were too ashamed to lift their heads.
But Lin Yu, sandwiched between the two of them, was entirely different.
He was perfectly calm and composed. When the shocked and disgusted looks of the crowd, looking at him as if he were a total scumbag, landed on him, a smile actually surfaced on his face.
His humble and polite demeanor made it seem as if he were receiving a compliment!
"Let's go."
"Let's go eat some instant-boiled mutton."
Just like that, Lin Yu walked toward the mutton hotpot restaurant south of the bridge with a smile on his lips, holding Tang Manman with one hand and Xia Muzhu with the other.
Along the way, the two girls, unable to bear the weird stares from passersby, coincidentally had the same thought of pulling their hands back.
But Lin Yu's grip was very tight.
They struggled gently, and seeing that they couldn't pull free, they stopped insisting.
Moreover, there was another reason why the two were willing to let Lin Yu hold their hands at the same time.
Neither of them wanted to see Lin Yu holding only the other's hand and being affectionate with her!
If I retreat, the enemy advances!
So I absolutely cannot back down!
Thus, the situation turned into what it was now.
The two silently competed with each other in secret, allowing Lin Yu to do as he pleased.
However, there was still some good news for them.
Because it was cold, there weren't many pedestrians on the road.
Therefore, there were only one or two strange glances.
Falling upon them, it was something they could temporarily endure.
Equally, there was bad news waiting for them.
Also because of the cold, the mutton hotpot restaurant they were heading to would be unusually packed.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the customers inside would be a sea of people!
Once they got there, the two would likely become the sole focus of the entire place immediately!
Xia Muzhu had realized this early on and had been deeply worried.
Just as they were about to reach the entrance of the hotpot restaurant and the crowd began to thicken, Xia Muzhu finally couldn't hold it in anymore.
The boss and the lady boss of the restaurant, and even the waiters, were very familiar with her as a regular customer.
Walking in like this in a triangular formation, it wasn't just that she couldn't afford to lose face.
She really, really couldn't afford to lose this much face!
Faced with this immense sense of shame, Xia Muzhu no longer cared about competing with Tang Manman.
She struggled with her hand again, this time using a bit more strength, but she still couldn't yank her hand out of Lin Yu's grasp.
Seeing that the hard way wouldn't work.
Left with no choice, Xia Muzhu could only try the soft approach.
She gently squeezed Lin Yu's hand. When he looked over, she frowned and pouted, putting on a pleading expression, hoping Lin Yu would let her go and save her some face in front of acquaintances.
What Xia Muzhu didn't know was that just a moment ago, Tang Manman's little hand had also started struggling to break free from Lin Yu's large hand.
She felt exactly the same; she didn't want to enter the sight of the people inside the shop in this kind of posture.
Faced with their pleas, it wasn't like Lin Yu was a good guy... (His kind personality had just popped up before being knocked out in one punch by his evil personality.)
Lin Yu found their reactions highly amusing. It was the perfect chance, taking advantage of the fact that both had lowered their pride to beg him.
Lin Yu wanted to make the two of them more familiar with each other, so he feigned distress and said:
"Don't move around."
"It's rare for us to run into each other, so let's have a meal together and get to know each other."
"Isn't it nice like this?"
"I'll be your middleman, and you can slowly get familiar with each other."
"If it weren't for me as the middleman, could you two even be in the same place?"
Both Tang Manman and Xia Muzhu understood the underlying meaning of Lin Yu's words.
It was nothing more than him using this opportunity to force them to make a stance!
This guy Lin Yu...
When did he become so wicked?
But even knowing it was a trap, Xia Muzhu had no choice but to close her eyes and jump right in.
After all, just slightly imagining the looks of the boss and the lady boss shifting from friendly delight to shock and panic after she entered the shop was already too much for her to bear!
At least, if she walked into the shop arm in arm with Tang Manman, they could still use the excuse of being close girlfriends to cover things up...
Xia Muzhu parted her red lips. Just as she was about to compromise, Tang Manman, on Lin Yu's left, suddenly spoke up, beating her to it:
"We don't need you to get to know each other."
Saying that, Tang Manman broke free from Lin Yu's hand, walked over to Xia Muzhu's side, and reached out to gently link her arm with hers.
Xia Muzhu was startled by Tang Manman's sudden action.
What she didn't know was that after finding out they were eating at this particular mutton hotpot restaurant, Tang Manman had been far more nervous than she was.
Because working in this hotpot restaurant was a neighbor who lived near her house.
That middle-aged woman was a notorious gossip.
If she discovered this twisted relationship between her and Lin Yu, she could make sure the whole country knew about it by the next day!
Therefore, Tang Manman was even more anxious than Xia Muzhu.
And she made her stance much faster.
Goal achieved.
Seeing both of them with their heads bowed, looking embarrassed, shy, and somewhat reluctant, yet still awkwardly linking arms in an intimate manner, Lin Yu smiled, his eyes narrowing, and nodded with extreme satisfaction.
With his somewhat fierce looks coupled with that wicked smirk, he looked even more like a delinquent playboy than an actual one!
iemie, male, Race: Moon. Hobby: Collecting anomalies. At first, he thought he possessed two systems: the Crimson Rainbow Moon and the Clear Cold Frost Moon. One day, he discovered that he himself could also become a system for others, holding the chessboard of fate. The Eighth Epoch, also known as the Eternal Moon Epoch. Humans, witches, elves, bloodline descendants, specters, demons, and spirits together compose a new history. Walking the path on behalf of the moon, before he knew it, Chen Miemie's footsteps were followed by all manner of strange and wondrous anomalies. As time passed, many titles circulated about him—The King in Yellow, Lord of Anomalies, Heart of the Eternal Moon, and more. "Me? I'm just a traveler who enjoys collecting interesting creatures," Chen Miemie said.
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?!
and couldn't return to the real world. Finally, I gave up and decided to go with the flow, only to discover that writing a diary could make me stronger. Since no one could read it, Su Luo wrote freely, daring to pen anything and everything. Female Lead #1: "Not bad. This diary helped me steal all the protagonist's opportunities. I just want to get stronger." Female Lead #2: "I don’t care about reaching the peak of the cultivation world. Right now, I just want to enjoy the chaos." Female Lead #3: "What? Everyone around me is a spy? I’m the Joker Demon Lord?" ... It’s so strange. Why is the plot completely off track, yet the ending remains the same? Are you all just messing with me?!
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!
