Shen Buyao listened to the flirtatious remarks from her "online wife" and reminded her with annoyance:
"Hey hey hey, tone it down a bit. She's still a kid."
Lin Yu: "..."
A 240-month-old kid, huh?
How much older could you possibly be?
The "online wife," however, was very obedient and spoke in a tender, honeyed voice:
"College boy, get ready. Just manage one set of moves and we're good."
"Don’t stress about it. It’s normal to be nervous the first time."
Hearing this, Lin Yu leaned slightly closer to the mic and said,
"Sis, I’ll do my best. I’ve played a bit of Dance Battle before."
The "online wife" seemed especially delighted by this:
"Oh ho? That’s perfect!"
"See, I told you—no college kid these days is a total newbie at this."
"Don’t get the wrong idea, I mean the game. Ohohoho!"
Lin Yu: "..."
Was he overthinking it?
With the way she was talking, wasn’t she practically inviting him to?
Lin Yu felt an odd sense of disorientation.
Had he walked into an antique shop or a massage parlor?
It was like being relentlessly teased by a mischievous older sister!
If it weren’t for the fact that he needed to maintain his innocent college-boy persona to get what he wanted from Shen Buyao,
he’d have fired back with some flirtatious banter of his own to see who was truly the master.
These two little brats—who were they calling a kid?
He was a seasoned old fox who’d lived to middle age and been reborn!
How could an eagle like him be outsmarted by a couple of sparrows?
"College boy, I’m leaving my wife in your hands. Do your best."
"Give me one round’s worth of time—I need to fix a watch."
With Lin Yu settled,
Shen Buyao walked to the other side of the counter, pulled out a badly faded pocket watch from a drawer.
Just by its appearance, it was clear this was an antique with years of history.
Then,
she opened a small tool case, about the size of an eyeglass box,
and swiftly began "dissecting" the pocket watch with practiced precision.
Her technique was nothing like what Lin Yu had seen in those short videos online.
Didn’t watch repair require a microscope or magnifying glass, like those one-eyed experts used?
Had all those videos he’d watched in his past life been fake?
Or was this just not the right stage for those tools?
Shen Buyao didn’t need any glasses or magnifiers.
Her hands moved with effortless speed.
A true master of muscle memory.
While keeping up her rapid movements, she glanced at Lin Yu with a calm smile.
That serene, picture-perfect charm once again flooded Lin Yu’s mind.
As long as she stayed quiet, Shen Buyao was the epitome of an elegant, gentle beauty.
Lin Yu couldn’t help but sigh inwardly: If only she were mute.
He forced himself to refocus on the game.
Flexing his nimble fingers,
he recalled playing Dance Battle occasionally in his youth.
Back then, his skill level was firmly at three stars.
Any song with four or five stars would trip him up at the complicated parts.
But now?
His enhanced reflexes and physical conditioning had leveled him up.
And today, thanks to his roommates’ "special encouragement," he had extra buffs:
+100% hand speed!
+20% visual acuity!
+3% all stats!
With these stacked bonuses, pulling off six or seven-star songs should be a breeze.
As for ten-star difficulty—he’d never tried it.
But winning wasn’t his goal anyway.
He just needed to clear one set of arrows and score some points.
Once the game loaded,
the two female avatars instantly triggered a wave of nostalgia in Lin Yu.
The retro vibe was strong—it felt just like the old days!
The character he was controlling, Shen Buyao’s avatar, was clearly a paid skin.
A pristine white dress with a glossy sheen, though not as bright as the character’s radiant skin.
The hairstyle and accessories seemed custom-made to resemble Shen Buyao’s own look.
And of course, no premium player would be caught dead without… sparkling wings!
The real absurdity, though, was the "online wife" who kept calling Shen Buyao "hubby."
Her avatar was male, decked out in even flashier gear—clearly outspending the antique shop girl.
Even more eye-searing than the outfits were their usernames:
Shen Buyao’s ID: PossessUrHeartლ
Online sis’s ID: OwnUrLoveლ
Lin Yu: Classic.
In the game, the two lovebird avatars swayed to the prelude melody.
Then—
"Ready!"
"GO!"
Before the "GO" even finished, the first two arrows had already appeared.
The moment they flashed on screen,
Lin Yu’s fingers moved like lightning.
His reflexes translated the visual cues into flawless keystrokes.
What surprised him even more was how sharp his light sensitivity had become.
From his perspective as a film school student,
judging a camera or smartphone’s imaging capabilities wasn’t about megapixels—that was just marketing fluff for amateurs.
Plenty of 20MP phones had worse color accuracy and texture than some 5MP models.
The real key to color reproduction? The sensor’s light-capturing ability.
To put it simply, the larger the image sensor, the better the color reproduction, bringing it closer to human vision.
That’s why a phone with tens of millions of pixels can’t compare to one with just a few million—the former’s sensor is as tiny as a drop of water, while the latter’s is the size of a coin.
The human eye is the most powerful camera of all. If compared directly, its sensor would be at least as big as a pancake.
What astonished Lin Yu was this:
He felt his own "image sensor" had been enhanced to the size of a "frying pan"!
Within the white halo, his gaze locked onto the brightest highlight.
The moment the progress ball touched the highlight, synced with the beat’s downbeat—
Lin Yu swiftly tapped the heavily resistant spacebar...
"Clink!"
A golden "PERFECT" flashed across the progress bar.
In the rhythm game,
a 10-star difficulty song
left almost no room for rest, except for the brief transitions between verses and choruses.
No gaps, no pauses.
The second set of three arrows had already appeared—
Left, right, left.
Timing it just right—
Space.
"Clink!"
"PERFECT ×2" popped up on the screen.
"Not bad, college boy. Solid fundamentals,"
"Thought you couldn’t play, but turns out you’ve got the malt’s aroma!"
His online "wife" sounded pleasantly surprised.
Shen Buyao didn’t even glance over.
She kept calmly fiddling with her pocket watch.
College kids—
Wasn’t it normal for them to have some gaming skills?
Even Shen Buyao could keep up with the first few sequences of this song.
With a bit of luck, she could chain four or five PERFECTs in a row—nothing extraordinary.
At first,
neither of the two women—inside or outside the game—paid much attention to Lin Yu’s performance.
They assumed it was just average skill, a lucky streak, a fluke...
But when the PERFECT chain hit ×9, and the arrow sequences stretched to seven in a row—
This game became inseparable from the dynamics between the three of them!
rowess are unmatched, commanding a million-strong army! Yet, the Emperor wants to depose him for the sake of a false prince? Hold on, are you throwing me into some female-oriented romance plot? How can I tolerate this? With a grand wave of his hand—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! Slander the Emperor? Very well, all of you shall die! ... The False Prince: "Although I am not the biological son, Father and Mother love me more. The throne should be mine!" The Female Lead: "Qin Xiao, you are the Emperor, and I am a commoner. If you wish to marry me, you must abdicate. Otherwise, you will never have me!" The Empress: "After we divorce, you must give me half the empire!" The Transmigrator Consort: "You worthless Emperor, why should I kneel to you? All men are equal—I advise you to be kind!" The Great General: "The enemy general is my childhood sweetheart. For her sake, I willingly abandon the frontier defenses!" The Retired Emperor: "Although Yu'er was adopted, I prefer him. Qin Xiao, you should abdicate and let him become Emperor!" ... Very well! So this is how you want to play? Facing this twisted world of female-oriented tropes, Qin Xiao grins and raises his hand to unleash—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! I am the Emperor. Why would I bother reasoning with you? Seal the gates! Leave none alive!
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?!
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!
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.
