"Forget it, call me whatever you like. You can even call me big brother if you want." Fang Zhiyi waved his hand. "We'll be living under the same roof from now on. Letting you use an old blanket would be too embarrassing for me."
Fang Qingci opened her mouth but didn't know what to say. She never could have imagined having so many things today.
"Oh, right. I'll contact a school tomorrow. You need to get an education. You don't want to end up a semi-illiterate like your ex-parents."
Fang Qingci's mouth dropped open. "Go... go to school?"
"Yeah, don't you like school?"
She lowered her head. "I do, but Mom said..."
"Ex-mom," Fang Zhiyi corrected her deadpan.
"Ex-mom said it's useless for girls to go to school..."
"Bullshit! She's just jealous!" Fang Zhiyi cursed out loud, making Fang Qingci flinch.
Fang Zhiyi subconsciously lowered his voice. "From now on, you study hard, understand? I have plenty of money. More than enough to put you through college."
"Plenty of money, my foot! The way you spend, you'll be begging on the streets in less than three months!" Little Hei finally couldn't hold back anymore.
Fang Zhiyi rolled his eyes at it. "Done playing dead?"
"Fang Xiulian, my ass!"
That night, Fang Qingci slept very well. She even dreamed of Gao Xiang, who had such a nice smile.
Similarly, Fang Mingshan's house was quite lively. Now that they had money, Liu Wenxia even cooked an extra dish, and the family celebrated joyfully.
"That eldest brother, hiding his money to spend on himself!" Fang Mingshan still felt that Liu Wenxia had asked for too little.
Liu Wenxia said, "Getting eighty thousand for a little brat of a girl is already good enough!" She paused, looking slightly unnatural. "Anyway, won't he have to provide for our parents in the future?"
Old Man Fang happily took a sip of his liquor. "That little bastard, as if he'd dare not give me any!"
Fang Tianqi gnawed on a chicken leg. "Does that mean my sister isn't coming back?"
"She's not coming back. We'll worry about the future when it comes."
"Great!" The little boy danced with joy.
When Fang Zhaodi, no, Fang Qingci woke up, she immediately tried to scramble out of bed in a panic. Usually, the roosters would have crowed by now, and she had to hurry up to light the fire and cook for the whole family, otherwise she would be scolded.
"Why didn't the rooster crow today?" Fang Qingci was rushing about when she suddenly noticed the new clothes clutched in her hands. She froze.
The events of yesterday quickly flashed through her mind.
Right, she was now at her uncle's house. Her uncle didn't have chickens or pigs. The only living things in the house were her uncle and herself... But she still got up quietly and groped in the dark, preparing to do some chores.
Otherwise, her uncle would definitely resent her too.
But as she turned around, she saw a figure, which nearly made her scream in fright.
Fang Zhiyi rubbed his eyes. "Good heavens, what are you doing instead of sleeping so early in the morning?"
Fang Qingci lowered her head. "I... I need to cook..."
Fang Zhiyi was taken aback. "Cook? Oh, right, I forgot. Yes, I've got it set up for you. You have to go to school today. Damn, how did I forget..."
"School?" Fang Qingci had also forgotten about this. She hadn't expected her uncle to be telling the truth!
Fang Zhiyi went back into his room, fumbled around for a bit, and handed her ten yuan. "Take this and buy something to eat yourself. We don't have anything in the house, what the hell are you going to cook?"
Fang Qingci hesitated for a long time before reaching out to take the money.
She walked out of the house in disbelief, suddenly hearing her uncle's frustrated voice from inside: "Damn it! How did I forget to buy a schoolbag??"
Fang Qingci's return to the town school caught the attention of her classmates. After all, every class always had a few girls who dropped out, but she was the only one who had come back.
Neighbor Wu Xiaohu's eyes were full of surprise. "Fang Zhaodi, what are you doing here again? Aren't you going to cut pig grass?"
His words caused several classmates to burst into laughter. Fang Qingci's face flushed red, but fortunately, the teacher walked in.
"Before we start the lesson, let me just say that Fang Zhaodi, no, Fang Qingci has returned to our class. She might struggle a bit at first, so everyone please help her out." With that, Teacher Zhang looked at Fang Qingci and smiled gently. "You can ask me anytime if there's something you don't understand."
She had learned yesterday that Fang Qingci had been adopted by Fang Zhiyi. That Fang Zhiyi looked quite decadent, but he insisted on sending her to school, which earned Teacher Zhang's inner approval.
"Fang Qingci, huh? Do you even know how to write your own name?" Wu Xiaohu mocked again.
"Wu Xiaohu! Shut your mouth!" Teacher Zhang frowned. Wu Xiaohu resentfully shut his mouth, but his eyes darted around Fang Qingci. He had also heard the news of her adoption by Fang Zhiyi. This Fang Zhiyi was surprisingly generous, actually buying new clothes for this worthless girl.
A bad idea gradually surfaced in his mind.
Meanwhile, Fang Zhiyi had also gotten ready and left the house. Most of the compensation money from the original owner's wife had been given to Fang Mingshan's family, so he had to figure out a way to make some money.
This town was relatively prosperous, but conversely, certain industries couldn't survive in such a place. It wasn't until Fang Zhiyi walked to a small construction site and saw the foreman directing his men to pile some discarded iron wire and cardboard boxes at the gate that he had an idea.
Fang Zhiyi turned and left. A short while later, he pedaled a secondhand tricycle unsteadily up to the site.
"Selling the scrap?"
The guard glanced at him and nodded. "Selling. Go weigh it yourself."
Although the words were casual, Fang Zhiyi noticed that the guard's eyes never left him. After weighing it, Fang Zhiyi paid the market price. Seeing no one around, he slipped a pack of good cigarettes to the guard.
The guard was clearly very satisfied. "Haven't seen you around before. Just started in this line of work?"
Fang Zhiyi sighed. "Yeah, I used to do transportation in the city. Then something happened, so I came back... Forced by the circumstances of life, you know."
The guard nodded. "Collecting scrap makes decent money too."
"Hey, first time doing it, as long as I don't lose money, it's fine." Saying that, Fang Zhiyi pulled out a hundred-yuan bill and stuffed it into the guard's hand. "Brother, if there's any business in the future, wait for me to come, alright?"
The guard beamed. "Alright, alright, you know how things work!"
"Damn, you're really going backwards in life. Bribing a gatekeeper?" Little Hei didn't understand.
"What do you know? In this kind of construction site, you can't even be a guard without some connections. The money from selling scrap goes straight into his pocket," Fang Zhiyi said. "Besides, you think I'm just here to collect scrap?"
With that, he turned a corner and headed straight for the town's scrap recycling station. After disposing of the scrap, Fang Zhiyi directly sold the tricycle as well, and then turned around and bought a small truck, leaving Little Hei completely dumbfounded.
"You're a total spendthrift..."
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...
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!
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
