"Heh... hehehe..."
A chilling laugh echoed from a bedroom in the dead of night. Xie Yuyan stared at the bed she had once treasured, now reduced to someone else's plaything. Her desolate eyes seemed on the verge of shedding tears of blood.
Her crimson bangs obscured her forehead as the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. At that moment, Xie Yuyan pulled a dagger from her pocket and began stabbing the blanket repeatedly—
"Hahaha... hahahaha..."
"Why... why can she have it but not me? Why?! Why?!"
White cotton stuffing scattered everywhere as the blade tore through the fabric, but Xie Yuyan didn’t stop. She kept slashing and piercing the unfamiliar blanket with relentless fury.
"Why... Ye Feng... why you..."
......
"Drip... drip..."
Water droplets fell from Ye Feng’s hair as he stood before the fogged-up mirror, lost in thought.
Before him was the system’s interface.
He remembered hearing the system’s alarm earlier while carrying food back to his room, but at the time, he hadn’t bothered to check. Now, with a moment of quiet, he finally had the chance to investigate what had gone wrong.
"No special missions... no emergency tasks... So why did the alarm go off for no reason? It happened before too, but then it stopped."
After skimming through, Ye Feng found no clues. But as he flipped through the records, he suddenly noticed a drastic change in Xie Yuyan’s progress bar.
"How did Xie Yuyan’s progress suddenly jump to 99%? Does this mean my mission is almost complete?"
A surge of excitement ran through him. After so long with no breakthroughs, today had brought unexpected progress. The progress bars for the others had also shifted—
Li Mucheng was at 50%, Su Yuxin at 30%, while Shen Mengli lagged far behind at less than 10%.
"That doesn’t make sense. I’ve spent so much time with Mengli—why is her progress so low? Meanwhile, Xie Yuyan, whom I haven’t seen in ages, is almost maxed out. I thought this was based on time spent together, but apparently not..."
"I wonder if Xie Yuyan is even still in Shu City... She left without a word and hasn’t contacted me since. If I ever see her again, I’ll make sure she learns her lesson."
"Huh?"
As Ye Feng idly browsed the exploration tab, he noticed the first entry had a faint trace of progress. After scrutinizing the system’s cryptic hint, his brows furrowed in confusion.
[Shadow Figure]
[Exploration: 1%]
[Evasion Count: 0]
[Reward: Increase exploration to unlock more rewards, or raise evasion count for additional benefits.]
......
"What the...? What is this? 'Shadow Figure'... 'Evasion Count'?"
Ye Feng was utterly baffled by these terms that seemed unrelated to anything he knew. His mind struggled to process the flood of unfamiliar information.
"Is the system telling me to track down this 'Shadow Figure'? But what does 'evasion' have to do with it?"
A cold draft seeped through the door, snapping him out of his thoughts. For now, he’d set this mystery aside until he got home.
After drying off, Ye Feng stepped out of the bathroom. Noticing Shen Mengli’s blanket shifting slightly, he quietly returned to his own bed. Lying down, his mind wandered through memories—from his past to the present, the moments he’d shared with Shen Mengli.
Truthfully, he had no idea when she’d developed these feelings for him.
He’d already tried talking her out of it twice, but she refused to give up. It wasn’t like he could control her thoughts or force her to stop. That just wasn’t realistic.
At least her foot was healing bit by bit. Once she fully recovered, it would likely be time for them to part ways. Just like how he’d bought Xie Yuyan a house—his way of making amends...
After all, their situations were partly his fault. Once he felt he’d compensated enough, maybe his guilt would finally fade.
"Shadow Figure"... It sounded dangerous. But why explore it? Was the system guiding him toward something? Well, he’d take it one step at a time. Maybe answers would come soon. At least the system was finally showing signs of life.
Ye Feng turned his attention to the window. From the sound outside, the heavy rain had weakened. By morning, it might stop completely, making it easier for him and Shen Mengli to return home.
As he closed his eyes, an image of Xie Yuyan flashed in his mind.
When would that woman come back? He’d already prepared gifts and a house for her—she’d be thrilled, right? Then again, she was always so unpredictable. When she returned, he’d make sure she remembered never to disappear like that again.
......
"Hah... hah... hah..."
Meanwhile, in another bedroom far away, Xie Yuyan clutched one of Ye Feng’s personal garments, inhaling deeply as if it could soothe her seething rage.
"Ye Feng... Are you running away because you’re scared of me? Well, I’d love to meet the woman you’ve allowed into your bed. She must be special, huh? Don’t worry—no matter where you hide, I’ll find you... And then, let’s see just how far you can run~"
With that, she plunged her dagger into Shen Mengli’s blanket. A rustling sound followed as she slipped beneath Ye Feng’s covers......
Finally... home... So why did she feel nothing but emptiness?
Xie Yuyan lay still, her delicate brows furrowed in silent agony.
"I’ll find you... I will..."
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
] [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!"
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
