The early spring sunlight filtered through the branches of the plane trees, casting dappled shadows on the ground.
Downstairs from Room 404 in Building 36, quite a few guys were coming and going. Whenever they passed by that large plane tree, almost everyone's gaze would uncontrollably drift toward the space beneath it.
For no other reason than the girl standing under the tree was simply too eye-catching.
Li Zhiyi was wearing a creamy-white knit cardigan over a light blue floral dress today, with a pair of clean white sneakers on her feet. She stood there quietly with her head lowered, her long black hair cascading down her shoulders. Her whole being exuded a pure, delicate aura that made people want to protect her.
Just after turning a corner on a tree-lined path, Guo Yang, who was walking at the front, suddenly stopped in his tracks, staring blankly ahead.
"Holy shit..." Guo Yang cursed subconsciously, frantically nudging Li Zicong next to him with his elbow. "Brother Cong, look! Who is that beauty? Since when did such a stunning girl appear downstairs of our Yuanpei sausage-fest dorm? Who scored such a gorgeous girlfriend?"
Li Zicong stroked his chin, squinting his eyes as he scrutinized her for a good while before giving his professional assessment.
"A top-tier beauty," Li Zicong clicked his tongue in admiration. "With that aura, she's definitely the most beautiful girl in our department. This is exactly my type, she's absolutely stunning. But looking at how she's standing, I'd guess she's been waiting for a while."
"This girl has been standing here for a long time, hasn't she? What kind of bastard doesn't know how to cherish a woman, making such a pretty girlfriend wait downstairs in the cold wind for so long? Damn it, this guy must be an absolute scumbag!"
"Exactly, what a waste of heaven's gifts!" Guo Yang agreed, itching to make a move. "Say, if I go over there right now and ask for her WeChat, will I get beaten up?"
Chen Zhi shoved his phone into his pocket. Listening to his roommates' passionate curses, he couldn't help but sigh.
Ignoring them, Chen Zhi walked toward Li Zhiyi under the plane tree.
He had barely taken two steps when Guo Yang grabbed his arm, shouting in a lowered voice, "Lao Chen, are you crazy? Where are you going?"
"To see someone," Chen Zhi looked at him, baffled.
"Don't tell me you're going to hit on her!" Guo Yang looked at him with an expression of utter disappointment. "She's clearly waiting for her boyfriend. Aren't you just asking to get scolded if you go over there now? Can you not embarrass our Room 404?"
Li Zicong chimed in, "Exactly, Lao Chen, calm down. A girl of this caliber is definitely already taken. If you're really that frustrated, Brother Cong will treat you to an all-night gaming session at the internet cafe tonight."
Chen Zhi shook off Guo Yang's hand in disgust.
"I am that absolute scumbag."
Dropping those words, Chen Zhi walked toward Li Zhiyi without looking back.
Chen Zhi walked under the tree.
Li Zhiyi was looking down at the moment, but hearing footsteps, she raised her head.
The moment she saw Chen Zhi, the girl's somewhat dim eyes instantly lit up. But quickly, as if remembering something, she aggrievedly lowered her eyelashes and shrank her shoulders back a bit.
Seeing her looking like a little punching bag, Chen Zhi walked straight up to her, blocking the appraising gazes from the surroundings.
"Why did you come without letting me know in advance?" Chen Zhi asked in a gentle tone.
Li Zhiyi pursed her lips, looking up at him cautiously. "Are you upset?"
"What nonsense are you thinking." Chen Zhi reached out and rubbed her head a couple of times, smoothly covering up his lie. "I was just worried you'd make a wasted trip. I'm usually not at school, always busy outside every day. If you waited for nothing, my heart would ache."
Li Zhiyi looked at him.
She didn't expose Chen Zhi's loophole-ridden excuse, only giving a soft "Oh."
Only she knew how much grievance and compromise was hidden in that single "Oh."
Not far away, his three roommates took in this entire scene.
Chen Zhi took Li Zhiyi's hand and turned his head to look at his three roommates, who were frozen like stone statues.
Guo Yang pointed at Chen Zhi, trembling. "You, you, you, you, you..."
"You what?" Chen Zhi raised an eyebrow. "Never seen a family member visiting?"
Too lazy to bother with these three single dogs whose worldviews had just shattered, he pulled Li Zhiyi along and walked away.
"Let's go. Ignore them, we'll go somewhere else to be affectionate."
After saying that, he didn't even leave an explanation, pulling Li Zhiyi toward the direction of Weiming Lake.
Leaving his three roommates completely dumbfounded in the wind.
"Fuck..." Guo Yang clutched his chest. "I feel like I just got my heart broken. Why does a dog like Lao Chen get to have her!"
...
The two walked all the way to the edge of Weiming Lake.
The early spring breeze off the lake was still a bit chilly. Chen Zhi tucked Li Zhiyi's hand into his own jacket pocket. Li Zhiyi obediently walked close to him, her cheeks slightly flushed.
After walking for a while, Chen Zhi found a secluded bench and pulled Li Zhiyi down to sit.
He casually took off his thin jacket, draped it over Li Zhiyi's shoulders, and then reached out to wrap his arm around her, letting her lean against his chest.
"Tell me," Chen Zhi pinched her cheek. "Why did you come over so suddenly? Is something the matter?"
Li Zhiyi leaned against his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat.
She hesitated for a long time before slowly lifting her head.
"Chen Zhi," Li Zhiyi looked into his eyes. "Is your company... called Deep Space Technology?"
The hand Chen Zhi had around Li Zhiyi's shoulder tightened slightly.
He had always kept a low profile at school. Although Deep Space Technology was currently renowned in the AI circle with a valuation in the tens of billions, his identity as the boss behind the scenes was known to almost no one except Pei Ningxue and a few core executives.
Even Li Zicong's father, who mingled in the Beijing investment circles, only knew that the boss of Deep Space was surnamed Chen and was a Peking University student.
How did Li Zhiyi connect the two?
"Yes," Chen Zhi didn't deny it.
In front of Li Zhiyi, there was no point in hiding information that had already been exposed.
"Why bring this up all of a sudden?" Chen Zhi smiled, pretending to be nonchalant. "Aren't you usually uninterested in these business matters?"
"Then... is your company currently short-staffed?" Li Zhiyi asked carefully.
"Very short," Chen Zhi told the truth.
Deep Space Technology was burning money every day now. Their business was expanding extremely fast, and they needed people everywhere, from algorithm engineers to legal and financial staff.
"Are you going to come be the boss's wife and supervise me?" Chen Zhi teased her half-jokingly.
Li Zhiyi shook her head repeatedly, a trace of blush creeping onto her cheeks.
"Not me." She bit her lower lip, seemingly mustering a lot of courage before continuing, "Then... I have a classmate who wants to intern at your company. Is that okay?"
The smile on Chen Zhi's face slowly faded.
He understood Li Zhiyi too well.
Since childhood, this girl's personality had carried a deep-rooted sense of inferiority and sensible compliance. She was never willing to trouble others, let alone use her boyfriend's position to pull strings and arrange a job for someone.
Today, not only did she take the initiative to wait for him outside his dorm building, but she also made this unprecedented request.
Chen Zhi cupped Li Zhiyi's cheeks with both hands, forcing her to look into his eyes.
His expression became more solemn than ever before.
"Zhiyi, look at me." Chen Zhi's tone was incredibly serious. "Is this what you want to say, or did she make you say it?"
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
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?!
m back to his original world. In the end, he realized he had overthought things. [Hey, why is Shen Manni, the female lead, acting strange? Shouldn't she be fawning over the male lead at this point?] [Zhou Qiaoqiao, are you sick? Weren't you supposed to break off your engagement today?] [Damn it! An Youyi, please do your job as an undercover agent and sell my information to the protagonist, you idiot!] ... At this moment, Xu Mo himself didn't know that these female leads had already heard his inner thoughts. Then they decided not to play by the rules. Xu Mo: Please respect my profession as the big villain!
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!
