He pushed open the car door.
Lin Yu bent over, about to step one foot out of the car.
"Why?"
A voice suddenly sounded behind him.
It was chilly and aloof, mournful like a consort long confined to a cold palace.
If it weren't for a faint, barely perceptible tremor in that voice, Lin Yu might have wondered if there was a ghost behind him.
Lin Yu paused mid-motion, turned to look at her, and asked in confusion:
"Why what?"
Qing Mo finally set aside her work, placing the laptop she had been preoccupied with throughout the ride off to the side.
She gazed deeply at Lin Yu.
Her reddened eyes had lost their usual coldness and arrogance.
Her shoulders slumped. The pretense of indifference she had kept up along the way crumbled away. She looked like an ordinary young girl about to be abandoned, questioning him with grievance:
"You don’t have anyone you like right now."
"So why won’t you give me a chance?"
"Do you hate me that much?"
Qing Mo’s questions left Lin Yu momentarily at a loss for words.
He awkwardly scratched the blond hair on his head, looking at Qing Mo, who seemed as fragile as a piece of delicate porcelain.
Lin Yu didn’t know how to explain it to her.
Qing Mo was really great, honestly.
Young, rich, beautiful, and obedient.
On the outside, she could hold her own; on the inside, she could let things go…
…
Uh.
Though he’d never tried it.
Lin Yu figured Qing Mo could let go of just about anything.
A woman like this wasn’t just a virgin’s killer.
She was every man’s killer.
But it was just…
…
Lin Yu looked back into Qing Mo’s eyes, which had shed their cold exterior and now showed only fragile, tearful red. His expression twisted with awkwardness and difficulty.
"Ah," he sighed.
"It’s not really about hate or anything."
"We’re just not a good match."
Lin Yu still didn’t say what was on his mind, brushing it off with a casual excuse.
When it came to the four heroines in his manga,
Lin Yu always felt a strange sense of dissonance.
It was like they belonged to different worlds…
No.
That distance was too close.
More like they were from different dimensions.
No matter how close they tried to get, there was always an unbridgeable gap.
It made it impossible for him to invest real feelings.
Like how people call fictional characters their “waifus.”
But no one actually holds a piece of paper up to their parents and says, “This is your daughter-in-law, my wife.”
Seeing the tears welling up in Qing Mo’s eyes, threatening to spill over at any moment,
Lin Yu—hoping to avoid trouble—limped away quickly on his leg, which was already treated but still hurt when he walked.
He darted through several alleys in one breath.
Only after making sure Qing Mo couldn’t catch up even if she changed her mind did Lin Yu finally relax. He hailed a taxi on the roadside and headed home.
Back in his small rented room,
Lin Yu stripped off his clothes, curled up in the covers with his phone, and scrolled through the messages he had missed while unconscious for a few days.
Emmm…
He skimmed through WeChat.
There wasn’t really any important news on his phone.
Aside from some “Happy New Year” greetings, only two people’s messages needed replies.
Lin Yu held his phone and began replying to those two.
Long Aotian: Did you save any New Year’s Eve leftovers for me? (Nose-picking emoji)
Xia Aodi: Nope. (Shrug emoji)
Xia Aodi: It’s already the fourth day of the Lunar New Year.
Xia Aodi: It would’ve gone bad in the fridge.
Xia Aodi: You never said when you’d pick it up.
Xia Aodi: I finished it all yesterday.
Xia Aodi: But if you want some, my sister said she can whip up a whole new feast for you.
Xia Aodi: We’ll pack it all up for you then.
Long Aotian: No, no.
Long Aotian: Forget it.
Lin Yu clutched his phone, his fingers tapping away quickly on the screen.
To be honest,
Lin Yu wasn’t exactly starving for a meal.
But the New Year’s Eve dinner—it always held a special appeal for someone living alone.
Xia Aodi: So, what have you been up to these past few days?
Xia Aodi: Not answering calls.
Xia Aodi: Not replying to messages.
Xia Aodi: Did you get sold abroad and have your kidneys cut out?
Long Aotian: Damn!
Long Aotian: You hit pretty close to home!
Long Aotian: Your big bro almost got locked up by some rich woman with long legs and a nice butt, forced to live off her for life!
Long Aotian: Barely escaped her.
Long Aotian: So dangerous!
Xia Aodi: …
Seeing the three dots Xia Yueshan had sent, Lin Yu could picture his speechless expression through the screen.
Sigh.
What could he do?
The world was just strange like that.
The truth didn’t sound believable to anyone!
Leaving Xia Yueshan’s chat, Lin Yu tapped on the other conversation that needed a reply.
He scrolled down and skimmed through the series of unread messages Gu Yue had sent.
On New Year’s Eve,
Bored and with nothing to do, he had asked her to hang out.
Too bad it was the holidays—all the entertainment spots nearby were closed, leaving little to do.
In the end, they just watched a movie, caught some plushies at a claw machine, and strolled along the beach.
Oh, and they went to a seaside café to watch the New Year’s fireworks.
Those fireworks were really pretty.
But sadly,
He only got to watch the shows at 6 PM and 8 PM with her before Qing Mo called him over.
He had been thinking that if time allowed, he could have come back to catch the midnight fireworks with her, too.
Back at the café,
Gu Yue had hyped up the midnight fireworks like crazy.
Almost called them the eighth wonder of the world!
Lin Yu was genuinely curious about what those fireworks might have looked like.
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?!
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!
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
