Du Family Private Hospital.
Rumble.
A special car marked with the Dongfang family logo and crest came to a steady stop at the entrance. Click—the door opened.
"You idiot, wait outside. I'll be back soon."
"Hey, hey, Miss, Miss, I want to go, I want to go..."
Dongfang Zhixia had barely taken two steps when her little secretary grabbed her. She had originally planned to come alone—just snatch the person and run—but the little secretary insisted on tagging along, refusing to stay alone in the villa.
Unable to win the argument, Dongfang Zhixia finally relented.
Sometimes it’s like that. Once you open a crack, subsequent events pour through like a broken dam, impossible to stop.
From the moment she had compromised at the hospital, letting that whole “dream” of the little secretary kissing Ye Cheng slide, trying to erase it from her mind, Dongfang Zhixia had already opened a very dangerous crack.
With Dongfang Zhixia’s intelligence, she obviously wasn’t ignoring this. It’s just that... emotions are complicated, and people are complicated too. Solutions can’t be cut-and-dried.
She still hadn’t figured out a concrete plan.
She wasn’t even a winner yet. A pack of wolves was staring hungrily from all sides, and there was only one piece of meat. In this situation, Dongfang Zhixia could only set aside the issue with her little secretary for now—a matter from within her own camp.
Priority: take care of the big trouble outside first.
Dongfang Zhixia lifted her head, gazing at the massive “Du” emblem in front of her, her eyes narrowing.
“No. If you don’t behave next time, I won’t bring you out again!” Dongfang Zhixia’s tone turned serious. The little secretary instantly fell in line, quickly releasing her two little paws and folding them neatly on her lap.
“Miss, I’ll wait for you here, okay? You have to come back soon, okay...”
The little secretary blinked her clear eyes, radiating the virtue of “knowing when to yield” in big, bold letters.
Dongfang Zhixia: “...”
She seriously suspected that her “idiot” had become like this because of some jerk’s influence. She used to be so obedient, but now she’d learned to test her limits and change her face at will.
Dongfang Zhixia let out a sigh, her voice softening considerably.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. Then we’ll go home together.”
The little secretary nodded vigorously. “Go get ’em, Miss!”
Dongfang Zhixia: “...”
So you know exactly what I’m here to do, huh?
Tap, tap, tap. Dongfang Zhixia’s footsteps echoed through the corridor, her brows furrowed in thought. “Why does she seem smarter all of a sudden?”
It might have been her imagination, but ever since waking up at the hospital, the little secretary had visibly grown sharper.
Things she used to miss, she now picked up on. Just like outside—when Dongfang Zhixia raised her voice and got serious—that was a sign of anger. Back in the day, the little secretary would have apologized pitifully, put on a hurt expression, and tried to “bluff her way out with cuteness.”
Now? She instantly rolled over in submission, clearly aware that her earlier comment had been something that would provoke anger—and she’d still said it...
Tap, tap. Dongfang Zhixia stopped in the middle of the hallway. Her eyes held disbelief and even a hint of shock.
“It can’t be that she caught that bastard’s influence!”
The more she thought about it, the more terrifying it became.
Since waking up this time, the little secretary seemed like she had unlocked some new wisdom. Still a bit slow, sure, but compared to her former brand of “grandma-level smart,” she was leaps and bounds sharper.
Simply put: she had become more human-like in her reasoning.
Dongfang Zhixia: “...”
Her face darkened. Her heartbeat quickened. Her hands, hanging at her sides, clenched tighter and tighter.
No one knew how long passed before a sigh escaped her. Her clenched fists loosened, and footsteps once again echoed through the empty corridor.
She hadn’t just gotten access to the Du Family Private Hospital—she’d also received detailed admission procedures and room numbers. It was practically like someone had stuck Ye Cheng’s GPS coordinates right onto her.
She stopped.
Dongfang Zhixia glanced at the room number above the door, took a deep breath, and let it out.
Click.
The hospital room door swung open. Whoosh—a breeze swept past. The room was empty, cleaned and tidied, with nothing left inside.
Tap, tap, tap. Dongfang Zhixia walked in and quickly spotted the remains of a “camera shard” in the trash can.
That confirmed she hadn’t gotten the wrong place. Someone had definitely stayed here before—and besides, Dongfang family intelligence was rarely wrong.
Every bit of evidence pointed to one truth: he had been taken away again. She had arrived too late.
Unlike her earlier fiery temper, this time Dongfang Zhixia was calm. She sat quietly at the head of the bed, staring out the window, her eyes vacant as if lost in thought.
After a while, her phone buzzed with a vibration, snapping her back to reality.
“Buzz, buzz!”
It was a message from her little secretary.
“Miss, Miss, have you made it yet? Did you get lost?”
The tone and concern were just like always. But this time, Dongfang Zhixia noticed something else. Maybe... this sentence needed a little translation.
Miss, did you find the commander yet?
Dongfang Zhixia: “...”
She was anxious. And the one waiting outside was anxious too... So, why had things turned out like this? From what point had things spiraled beyond control?
Maybe... she should rewind the clock. Back to when she shouldn’t have let her “idiot” go stargazing late at night. No stars were seen—only an eight-pack-abs succubus smoking on the balcony.
From that moment, was this outcome already set in stone?
Maybe the fault was hers—for not stepping in sooner. Not that her little secretary had gone wrong.
The responsibility was hers to bear, not her idiot’s fault. It was all because of her...
Even Dongfang Zhixia didn’t realize that her own thoughts were growing stranger and stranger. She was starting to brainwash herself, searching for a closed-loop explanation.
Before long, she emerged from the hospital.
From afar, she could already see her little secretary, leaning out the car window, waving energetically. “Miss, Miss, over here!!!”
Her voice was full of excitement. She looked left and right, didn’t see Ye Cheng, and wilted for a split second. Then, she perked right up again, calling out—Miss, Miss.
Dongfang Zhixia: “...”
Always so enthusiastic. Always so adorably slow...
“Miss, did the chop-suey miss take Ye Cheng away again?” The little secretary blinked her eyes.
Chop-suey miss?
Dongfang Zhixia froze for a moment at that nickname, then quickly realized she was referring to that problem child who always has a cold face. But... why did it fit so perfectly?
Chop-suey miss... minced chop-suey?
Wasn’t that exactly the kind of thing that jerk always said out loud? Now it had slipped straight into her little secretary’s mouth, fitting like a glove.
Dongfang Zhixia forced a smile, as if she could never be defeated. "Yeah, she ran off again. We came up empty this time too, Mengmeng, we..."
"It's okay, Miss. It's all that shrewish rich girl's fault for being so fierce. We'll go find the officer again tomorrow."
The young secretary proactively hugged Dongfang Zhixia, gently patting her mistress's back to comfort her.
Dongfang Zhixia: "???"
After being comforted, Dongfang Zhixia finally realized something was off. At that moment... no!
"No, you idiot, that's supposed to be YOUR line!" Dongfang Zhixia straightened up, staring incredulously at her secretary, whose eyes were still filled with pure innocence.
She looked the same as always—harmless on the surface, no problem there. So how did she suddenly...
The young secretary blinked. "What's wrong, Miss? Is there something on my face? I saw on TV that when someone's upset, you're supposed to give them a hug and..."
The secretary began explaining the comforting techniques she'd learned from TV shows.
After she finished, all that was left was Dongfang Zhixia, standing there questioning her entire existence.
Rumble.
Even as the car started up again and headed back toward the academy, Dongfang Zhixia still hadn't snapped out of it. She wore that look of "Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?"—her mind full of question marks.
There was too much information today, all at once. She was having trouble processing it in such a short time.
Back at the villa.
Dongfang Zhixia was running on the first-floor treadmill, wearing headphones and listening to music, while from the living room came the sound of her secretary watching soap operas.
"Beep, beep, beep..."
Dongfang Zhixia stopped, sat down to rest, wiped the sweat from her face with a damp, warm towel, and began staring into space again.
She started thinking: What exactly happened today? Why was their resident idiot acting so strangely? Could it be that after all these years of raising her, she'd finally had a sudden spark of intelligence?
No way, right?
Was this the same secretary who'd almost scored two hundred and fifty on the college entrance exam?
Dongfang Zhixia put down the towel and crept out of the gym. She gently opened the door to peek into the living room.
The young secretary was sitting on the couch with a blanket draped over her legs, looking wide-eyed and silly, staring at her phone.
Dongfang Zhixia: "???"
What was that idiot up to now?
Without raising any alarm, Dongfang Zhixia retreated, closed the door, and went back to running. But she made a mental note of it.
Late at night.
After washing up, the two lay in bed. As per routine, the secretary spent a while before sleep watching "IQ-lowering dumb-down videos" and then drifted off peacefully.
She closed her eyes, and soon her breathing became steady.
After waiting a long time, the "sleeping" club president opened her eyes. She stealthily reached over and swiped the secretary's phone.
"Click."
A faint sound of the phone unlocking.
It was a little underhanded, sure, but... she couldn't worry about that now. She had to verify something.
She was too afraid. Every single sign pointed to one thing—the idiot didn't seem so idiotic anymore. At least not the kind of carefree fool she used to be. She had learned to hide things.
Fortunately, the password lock was still the same—her birthday.
For the record, Dongfang Zhixia's own password lock was her secretary's birthday too. They used each other's.
She scrolled through the photo album and the chat history with Ye Cheng. Everything looked normal—except that the messages were a little fewer and a little stranger than usual, but otherwise fine.
For example:
"Officer, when are you coming back?"
"Officer, I had a dream last night. Do you want to know what it was?"
"Hehe..."
Dongfang Zhixia: "..."
Silently, Dongfang Zhixia exited the chat interface. It seemed she had been overthinking it. The idiot was still the same idiot—even if she'd gotten a little smarter, she still couldn't hide that air of foolishness.
Alright, now she could go to sleep.
Turning off the phone, Dongfang Zhixia was about to sleep when she stopped at the last second.
A moment later, she opened the secretary's search history. Inside were the recent searches that hadn't been fully deleted yet.
After reading the search terms clearly, Dongfang Zhixia's pupils suddenly contracted.
"Can two people be together with the same person?"
"Why can't you be together with the same person?"
"Then is it okay if you don't get married but still be together with the same person?"
"Why are mistresses called homewreckers..."
Dongfang Zhixia: "???"

and couldn't return to the real world. Finally, I gave up and decided to go with the flow, only to discover that writing a diary could make me stronger. Since no one could read it, Su Luo wrote freely, daring to pen anything and everything. Female Lead #1: "Not bad. This diary helped me steal all the protagonist's opportunities. I just want to get stronger." Female Lead #2: "I don’t care about reaching the peak of the cultivation world. Right now, I just want to enjoy the chaos." Female Lead #3: "What? Everyone around me is a spy? I’m the Joker Demon Lord?" ... It’s so strange. Why is the plot completely off track, yet the ending remains the same? Are you all just messing with me?!

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!

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!

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?!