The servant brought out the dishes prepared by Lin Ran, and Luo Yao’s appetite instantly perked up at the sight.
Lin Ran fed her bite by bite, and Luo Yao ate with quiet focus.
After the meal, the private doctor came to check on her again and found that Luo Yao’s condition had improved significantly. Her fever had already subsided in just one day, and the doctor estimated she would fully recover in another two days.
Luo Yao’s cheeks were still slightly flushed, which Lin Ran knew was due to her illness. He held her in his arms as they sat on the balcony of the bedroom, gazing at the sky.
He couldn’t understand why Luo Yao loved stargazing so much.
Lin Ran: "The stars don’t move."
Luo Yao: "But hearts do."
Though she still felt a little unwell, being this close to Lin Ran under the stars made the discomfort seem trivial.
Being sick wasn’t so bad after all.
Because of her condition, the two didn’t do much—just held each other quietly.
Eventually, Luo Yao fell asleep, and Lin Ran prepared to carry her back to bed.
"Meow!"
Lin Ran stiffened, turning his head to glare and whisper sharply,
"Don’t wake her up."
"Meow!"
Damn it, why wouldn’t this cat listen?
Gently, he lifted Luo Yao, carried her from the balcony to the bedroom, and laid her down with care.
The black cat remained on the balcony, watching motionlessly.
After tucking Luo Yao in, Lin Ran pressed a light kiss to her forehead before returning to the balcony.
"What are you doing here so late? Shouldn’t you be asleep?"
He immediately felt silly—cats were nocturnal, after all.
"Meow!"
"Are you some kind of peeping Tom-cat? Spill it—do you always watch us when we’re... you know?"
"Meow!"
Whatever. Life was dull, and cats didn’t understand humans.
He returned to bed and fell asleep with Luo Yao in his arms.
In his dream, he stood in a primal forest, where a pair of eerily unnatural eyes stared at him—motionless, unblinking.
Lin Ran reached for his phone to illuminate the darkness but realized he hadn’t brought it.
Just as he was about to speak, the eyes beneath parted to reveal a grotesque mouth that sent chills down his spine.
It resembled a human mouth, yet wasn’t quite human.
Blood dripped ceaselessly from it, impossible to tell whether it was the creature’s own or someone else’s.
Lin Ran jolted awake in a cold sweat.
That dream again—the second time now, though clearer this time.
He took a deep breath and grabbed his phone to search:
[What does it mean when dreams continue from previous ones?]
After scrolling through countless bizarre theories from online forums, he sighed.
"Ran, what’s wrong?"
Lin Ran turned to see Luo Yao awake, her eyes soft with concern. He patted her back gently. "Nothing. Just a nightmare. I was looking it up. Did I wake you?"
Luo Yao nuzzled into his chest. "Dreams are just illusions. The only real thing is the person beside you."
Lin Ran smiled, soothing her back to sleep before closing his own eyes.
The nightmare resumed...
He woke with a start to morning light, Luo Yao sitting by the bed, her fingers lightly brushing his cheek.
"Ran, another nightmare?"
Lin Ran inhaled deeply, the scent of Luo Yao calming him. He sat up abruptly, meeting her gaze.
Unbrushed, her hair was adorably tousled, her cheeks flushed. Her eyes—no longer their usual icy detachment—sparkled with unspoken warmth.
The sight hit him like a knockout punch. Lin Ran admitted it: he was utterly enchanted by her.
When he first returned from rebirth, he’d only wanted to cherish Luo Yao. But gradually, that turned into dependence—he craved her presence every second.
Now, having tasted her love, he couldn’t live without her.
How had he been such a blind fool in his past life to miss her magic?
Seeing Lin Ran recover, Luo Yao relaxed and made to leave, only for him to grab her hand.
"Don’t go. I haven’t had my fill of looking at you yet."
She leaned down, pressing her cheek to his. She adored this version of Lin Ran—the one who clung to her endlessly—and despised the one who’d once looked at her with disgust.
"Alright. I’ll stay until you’re satisfied."
Truthfully, she didn’t want to leave either. She longed to stay with him forever, but she couldn’t. She had to climb higher, to the very top, before she could rest.
She had something crucial to do. She was waiting, too.
They lingered in silent admiration until time forced them apart. Lin Ran finally released her with a reluctant sigh.
After Luo Yao left, Wang Bao arrived, introducing several elite bodyguards from the security team.
From their rugged, dependable faces alone, Lin Ran felt reassured. He had them dress in plain clothes and follow at a discreet distance.
That day, Lin Ran headed straight to the real estate company and summoned Wu Zhishang for a meeting.
Thanks to Xu Kai’s expertise as a lawyer—and the backing of Luo Corporation—all the company’s paperwork had been finalized two days prior with remarkable efficiency.
Lin Ran cut straight to the chase with Wu Zhishang.
"Between brothers, let’s skip the formalities. Our future’s boundless—after all, I’ve got capital behind me. You can’t deny that, right?"
Wu Zhishang winced. "Lin, just say what you mean. No need to keep rubbing salt in the wound."
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!
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
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?!
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
