The spotlight hit the center of the stage.
Chen Zhi stood in the shadows, his gaze locked onto the girl holding the acoustic guitar.
A full year.
It had been three hundred and sixty-five days since he last saw Lin Wanwan in the flesh.
She had changed so much.
A year ago, she was still that naive and coquettish girl.
A year later, she exuded a coolness and sharpness he had never seen in her before.
She was no longer that clingy, spoiled kid who would burrow into his arms every day.
Chen Zhi watched her, his Adam’s apple rolling involuntarily.
Mike pushed ahead, forcibly squeezing out two spots in the front row near the edge.
“Excuse me, excuse me—make room for my keyboard player.”
Mike pressed Chen Zhi into a seat and sat down beside him.
A dreadlocked Black guy next to them leaned over and gave Chen Zhi a once-over.
“Mike, since when did your band hire a keyboardist?”
The guy pointed at Chen Zhi’s mask and cap.
“This dude’s wrapped up like he just robbed a bank. Isn’t he hot?”
Mike laughed it off.
“Just a friend I met, pretty shy—can’t handle big crowds.”
The guy shrugged and didn’t push further.
But an Asian guy sitting next to him pushed up his black-rimmed glasses, his eyes cutting past Mike to stare straight at Chen Zhi.
“He looks kinda familiar,” the Asian guy muttered under his breath.
He’d been smoking outside the venue earlier and vaguely heard Mike yell something like “Chen.” Didn’t think much of it then.
But now, the more he looked, the more wrong it felt.
The build. The eyes above the mask.
How could they look so much like the face topping Twitter’s trending list?
The Asian guy glanced down at his phone screen.
It was a high-def live shot from DeepSpace Technology’s Nasdaq bell-ringing ceremony.
The young CEO, surrounded by the global capital elite, looked triumphant.
He looked up, then back at the man wrapped up like a mystery beside him.
The two figures clicked in his mind.
“Wait…”
The Asian guy shot to his feet, blurting out in English.
Then he switched, perfectly, to Mandarin.
“Holy shit!!!”
Mike was startled.
“Dude, you lost it?”
The Asian guy ignored Mike entirely, pointing at Chen Zhi, his finger trembling uncontrollably.
“Chen! You’re Chen!”
“Oh my god, what are you doing at Berklee!”
The Chinese international students nearby caught on first.
“Chen? Which Chen?”
“Holy shit! Chen Zhi? The DeepSpace Tech guy?!”
“What? That freshly-listed billionaire is here??”
The whole underground venue went silent for about two seconds.
Then it exploded.
People sitting in the back pushed forward like maniacs.
Even the foreign students, who didn’t immediately connect the dots, went nuts once they heard “DeepSpace CEO.”
“Oh my god! It’s really him!”
“Wasn’t he in New York four hours ago?!”
“Get your phone out! Snap it!”
Dozens of phones shoved forward in an instant.
On stage.
Lin Wanwan had just picked up her pick, ready to strum the first chord.
The commotion in the crowd wrecked her focus.
She frowned, following the surge of people to see what was happening.
The light was dim—she couldn’t make out the face of the person surrounded in the middle.
But she caught fragments of words.
“Chen Zhi!”
“DeepSpace Tech!”
Lin Wanwan’s hand, gripping the pick, jerked violently.
She locked onto the figure with the black cap.
Too familiar.
Even after a year apart, even bundled up like that, she recognized him in a split second.
Chen Zhi.
It was really him.
Her mind went blank.
Why was he here?
Shouldn’t he be in some top-tier Manhattan hotel, popping champagne with Wall Street’s elite?
Shouldn’t he be doing interviews with global media?
Why was he here, in this rundown basement theater in Boston?
Lin Wanwan bit her lower lip, her breathing quick and ragged.
This past year, she forced herself not to follow the news from home, forced herself to get used to life without him.
But just a few hours ago, standing on a Boston street, she’d watched that triumphant man on a giant screen.
She couldn’t stop herself from sending that “Congratulations.”
She thought it was just a polite goodbye, or a probe before their one-year deadline was up.
She never expected Chen Zhi to show up in person.
Flying over overnight.
Now, Chen Zhi was a billionaire tech mogul.
A media sensation hunted by the global press.
And she was just a student studying abroad.
Sure, her professor said she had a knack for composition, sure, she’d learned to live on her own.
But standing in the shadow of that giant business empire, she felt suffocatingly small.
That crushing gap in status hit her like a freight train.
Run.
That was Lin Wanwan’s first instinct.
She wasn't ready to face him.
She stuffed the pick into her pocket, yanked the guitar strap off her neck,
didn’t even glance at the crowd, and started packing up.
Chen Zhi was shoved around by the crowd, his ears flooded with shouts and questions in every language.
“Boss Chen! Can we get a photo?!”
“Chen! Will MossOS open the European market next?”
Chen Zhi didn’t have time to respond.
Through the gaps in the crowd, he strained to see the stage.
And there he watched, helpless, as Lin Wanwan shoved her guitar into its case, slung it up, and headed straight for the curtain at the back of the stage.
She’s running?
This is bad.
“Move! Please, let me through!”
Chen Zhi tried to push past the people blocking him, but the crowd was too thick.
Mike finally snapped out of it, stepping in to play bodyguard.
“Don’t push! Back off! Give him some space!”
It was useless.
The frenzied students had jammed the front rows solid.
Lin Wanwan’s back was about to vanish behind the curtain.
Chen Zhi panicked.
If she got out of this theater, Boston was huge—how was he supposed to find her?
He yanked off his mask and cap, tossing them to the floor.
The moment his face was bare, the screams got louder.
“It really is Chen Zhi!”
Chen Zhi ignored the cameras shoving in his face.
He stepped onto a metal folding chair, used the momentum, and grabbed the edge of the half-meter-high stage with one hand.
He vaulted up in one smooth motion.
“Lin Wanwan!”
He shouted after the figure about to disappear behind the curtain.
His voice echoed through the venue.
Lin Wanwan froze mid-step.
Her hand was already gripping the edge of the curtain.
At the sound of that voice—both familiar and strange—her shoulders trembled almost imperceptibly.
But she didn’t turn around.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed through the curtain and sped into the dim backstage corridor.
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!"
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?!
