After leaving the hospital, the girl returned to the orphanage, seemingly resuming her usual life. The difference this time was that she wasn’t alone anymore—someone was by her side.
"Listen up, dummy, the old folks here in this place? All dressed up like decent people, but their hearts are blacker than anyone’s."
"Not long ago, a kid with good looks showed up, and within a couple of days, they were sold off. Tsk tsk tsk..."
The girl froze for a moment upon hearing this and instinctively retorted, "Sold off? Are you sure you don’t mean adopted?"
"Oh, slip of the tongue. Honestly, there’s not much difference. I figure the only reason they’re being careful now is because inspections are tight. Otherwise, us ‘defective goods’ would’ve been priced and parceled out long ago—10,000 here, 20,000 there, piece by piece..."
The girl fell silent.
The little boy started rambling about things she couldn’t quite grasp at first, but eventually, she understood. It was about... well, something too dark to dwell on.
In a place like Great Sea City, too many eyes were watching, leaving little room for shady dealings. At most, they could only scam some government subsidies.
And when it came to scamming subsidies, the louder you wailed about how tragic your kids were, the more you got. After all, if no one played the game, who’d foot the bill for the director’s BMW?
In short, the orphanage wasn’t as rosy as it appeared on the surface. Few people bothered with things that didn’t turn a profit.
Through the boy’s "hints," the girl finally realized what he was getting at.
He was warning her. Even though she was sick, to the orphanage—to the black-hearted, BMW-loving director—she wasn’t a burden. She was a goldmine.
Because of her condition, the orphanage could milk her story for sympathy, using it as positive publicity to rake in attention.
Smack!
The boy slapped a newspaper he’d swiped from somewhere onto the table in front of her. In an inconspicuous corner, a headline read:
"Touching Story: Great Sea City Orphanage Refuses to Give Up on Any Child—Girl with Congenital Heart Disease Rescued Multiple Times..."
The girl stared blankly at the article, only to hear the boy remark dryly,
"Eat well, drink well. From now on, the director’s BMW upgrades are on you. So yeah..." The boy rambled on with a straight face while the girl kept staring at the newspaper in her hands.
So... this was the truth? She wasn’t a burden?
She didn’t know how the boy had dug up all this, but she was certain he’d gone to great lengths, spending who knows how much time, just to ease her guilt.
He must’ve sensed the gloom hanging over her.
All these days, listening to him spout dark, cryptic nonsense, she’d thought he was just trying to mess with her head. But in the end... he was messing with her head—just in a way she’d never forget.
Suddenly, her eyes stung. Not with the helpless, lonely tears she was used to, but with something unfamiliar—a warmth spreading through her chest.
"Thank you..." she mumbled softly. After all these years, it was the first time she genuinely meant it.
"Hey, we’re bros. If you really wanna thank me, just make me the primary beneficiary on your life insurance, dummy!" The boy grinned, completely unfazed.
The girl: "..."
"Why do you keep calling me dummy? I’m way smarter than most people here!" she huffed, indignant. She wouldn’t claim to be smarter than him, but compared to the rest of the orphanage? No contest.
The boy blinked, then grabbed the name tag on her wrist, squinting at the characters.
"Lin... Bai... dummy? Hah, so ‘little dummy’ isn’t even a stretch!" He rubbed his smooth chin, pretending to ponder.
The girl: "???"
"Who taught you to read like that?" she gasped.
"Nobody. I taught myself. Since I’m not in first grade yet, I had to use a dictionary. Isn’t this character ‘dummy’?" He blinked back, dead serious.
The girl: "..."
It took forever, but she finally managed to correct him—sort of. Good news: he stopped calling her "dummy." Bad news: he still called her "little dummy."
She wasn’t a dummy! Ugh, so annoying...
Big bro’s such an idiot...
......
"Listen up! This Ye Cheng may be broke, but he’s no pushover! No money here—just my life!!!"
Ye Cheng struck an exaggerated exorcist pose, leaving the girl in front of him utterly speechless. Sure, popping up behind him with a lighter was a bit startling, but did he really have to mistake her for a ghost?
So mean...
Lin Baizhi’s cheeks puffed up visibly as she glared at Ye Cheng.
"It’s me! Don’t you remember?"
"Nice try. Latest scam—‘It’s me, it’s me’ fraud?" Ye Cheng sneered, refusing to fall for it.
Lin Baizhi: "..."
Good news: big bro’s terrifying singleness skills hadn’t changed over the years, so no scheming women could weasel their way in. Bad news: she seemed to be locked out too... So annoying!
Finally, she rolled up her sleeve to show him the scar on her wrist—the one she’d gotten when he’d knocked her over on the playground. It was the only proof of her identity.
"Now do you believe me?" Lin Baizhi’s voice was icy, her eyes practically radiating enough resentment to rival an actual ghost.
Ye Cheng squinted, studying the fuming girl and her half-healed scar.
"Ohhh... right! The scammer!"
Lin Baizhi: "..."
"I wasn’t scamming you!" she snapped.
"Then I don’t know you. I only know the scammer." Ye Cheng turned to leave, leaving Lin Baizhi gaping in disbelief. Even after all this time, big bro’s antics were impossible to predict.
Panicking, she quickly backtracked, afraid he’d bolt: "Fine, fine! It’s me! I’m the scammer!"
"So it's you, kid. No wonder you looked so familiar. Alright, let's cut to the chase—how about you pay me 80 or 100 grand, and we’ll call it even? I won’t even hold it against you for trying to scam me. So, what’ll it be? QR code or bank transfer?"
Ye Cheng smoothly pulled out his phone and flashed the payment QR code, shoving it right in front of the girl.
The girl: "…"
ose... to cooperate with the protagonist! Shen Yuan: I have a system! Protagonist: What? System: Holy crap, you're just spilling it out like that? Shen Yuan: Let's team up, we'll split the system rewards! Protagonist: Fifty-fifty split? Shen Yuan: No way! Protagonist: What!? I'm the one getting beaten up, and I don't get half? Shen Yuan: Forty-sixty split, I get forty, you get sixty! Protagonist: Deal! Big brother, come on, hit me! As long as it doesn't kill me, beat me like you mean it! Shen Yuan: Don't worry... I will definitely protect all of you! No one but me can lay a finger on you! Guard our Heaven's Chosen Ones! I'm the only one allowed to bully them!
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?!
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
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!
