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.
with countless casualties. As a top-tier gamer, Liu Xuan volunteered to join the fight, intending to dominate with his skills, but instead he obtained the hidden class: [Pacifist]. Unable to attack. Unable to use active skills. Fortunately, with each level gained, he acquired a new passive skill. And so, armed with a body full of passives, Liu Xuan slaughtered his way through the battlefield of ten thousand races! [You attacked Liu Xuan] [You gained the debuffs: 'Poison', 'Fear', 'Burning', 'Bleeding', 'Freeze', 'Silence', etc.] [Your attack speed has been reduced by 99%] [Your armor and magic resistance have been reduced by 99%] Warriors of the Ten Thousand Races: How the hell am I supposed to fight this?!
ions, keeping it grounded and realistic】 After quitting his job, office worker Su Yang accidentally binds with the "Enjoy Life System." As the name suggests, simply by indulging in life's pleasures, he can earn random rewards from the system—no need to spend money on beautiful women or grovel before anyone. Just enjoy, and the money follows, making it all about effortless fun. The system comes with a scanning feature, allowing him to establish a favorability bond with women rated 85 points or above. Every 20-point increase in favorability unlocks additional rewards. After suffering through over twenty years of hardship, Su Yang trembles with excitement, his dull eyes suddenly gleaming with newfound hope. "Enjoy life? How hard could that be?"
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
