Their lips parted, leaving a lingering thread of silver. Xia Yanchun's almond eyes were filled with affection as she flashed a wide, toothy smile at Shen Nian.
Shen Nian pinched her cheek and told her to get off him.
After lying there contentedly for a while, Xia Yanchun mustered her energy and dragged Shen Nian into doing a livestream with her.
It had been a while—time for a duo stream!
Naturally, they used her account for the stream. She figured she might as well use Shen Nian to drive some traffic to herself.
The afternoon stream wasn't just about solving academic problems. Most of the time, they were just chatting—talking about future plans, sharing streaming experiences, discussing how they used to study, and how she managed to hold the number one spot at Cinan No. 2 High School for so long...
Shen Nian's role was just to sit on the side and be a mascot.
Shen Nian just had to stand there to generate traffic. Her stream, which usually only had one or two thousand viewers, surged to over four thousand just because of his presence.
If they had posted a notification in Shen Nian's own stream, even more of his fans would have undoubtedly flooded in.
Over the two-hour stream, a few people subscribed to her channel, bringing her net revenue to barely over a thousand.
It was decent, but still a far cry from what Shen Nian pulled in.
For Shen Nian, the income from monthly auto-renewing subscriptions alone was a substantial sum.
Xia Yanchun could cry from the sheer envy.
"Hmph," the frustrated girl grunted, poking Shen Nian with her elbow. "I want to eat braised pork ribs tonight."
"If you want to eat it, can't you make it yourself?"
"..."
Heh, other people's boyfriends only showed their true colors after getting married. Hers was already acting like this before he had even proposed. After marriage, he probably wouldn't even let her eat at the table.
Xia Yanchun felt a sense of sorrow. What exactly did marriage bring to women?
Shen Nian relented in the end. By evening, he dragged Xia Yanchun to the market, bought two pounds of ribs, and cooked them for her.
With culinary skills that had long reached the level of a restaurant chef, Shen Nian barely had to try. A fresh batch of braised pork ribs, supposedly good for beauty and skin, was served straight from the pot.
"This is so good!" Xia Yanchun used a toothpick to pick up a small piece and popped it into her mouth, her almond eyes sparkling.
"With a boyfriend as gentle and sweet as me, what time would you come home?"
"I wouldn't even leave the house."
"I'll give you points for sweet-talking," Shen Nian grinned, showing his teeth.
It couldn't be helped; being a gentle guy was just like that.
Could his 98% eccentricity really negate his 2% gentleness?
They had to wait for Shen Yue to come back before eating dinner together. After dinner, Xia Yanchun dragged Shen Nian downstairs for a walk to digest their food.
At seven o'clock in winter, the sky was already dark. The streetlights flickered on, but even in the dead of night, the city rarely quieted down.
The rain had stopped around three or four in the afternoon. Although there was no bright sun, a strong east wind was blowing. In just a few hours, the pavement and roads were already half dry.
Xia Yanchun seemed to be in a great mood, swinging Shen Nian's hand back and forth as she held it.
"Without realizing it, I fell in love with him, trying to find a way to express it, where is my courage~"
"..."
"Casting aside those most romantic words, I just want to melt all the coldness for you~"
Shen Nian gave a fake smile.
Listening to someone tone-deaf sing was a unique kind of entertainment.
Her voice was actually quite pleasant, but when she started singing, it was an indiscriminate sonic attack on everyone around her. That was the problem.
Sometimes, Shen Nian really wanted to suggest that Xia Yanchun take vocal lessons. It didn't matter if she tortured him with her singing in the future, but she shouldn't torture their future kids.
After painfully enduring an entire tone-deaf song, Shen Nian couldn't hold back anymore. "Let's go buy something to eat up ahead."
"I came down here to digest. If you want to eat, buy it yourself."
"I mainly just want to stuff your mouth. Your singing is too damn awful."
Xia Yanchun furrowed her delicate brows, angrily kicked Shen Nian, and said fiercely, "You're not gentle at all."
"Honest advice is hard to hear, Xia Yanchun. You can't let yourself be blinded by sweet talk."
"I'll hit you, I'll hit you." Xia Yanchun couldn't be bothered to argue with him. She didn't care about honest advice or sweet talk; she only knew that Shen Nian had insulted her. This was an unbearable weight in her life, and she wouldn't feel right until she kicked him.
Neither of them had showered yet anyway.
And so, Shen Nian's pants gained two dirty footprints.
Xia Yanchun had a typical internet mindset, and Shen Nian was too lazy to criticize her for it.
After strolling around the neighborhood and feeling less full, Xia Yanchun leaned closer to Shen Nian, shifting from holding his hand to linking arms and pressing herself against him.
She loved this. Leaning against Shen Nian felt so incredibly comfortable.
Even before they had made their relationship official, she used to lean against him like this on the bus ride back to their town.
Thinking back carefully, she had been so bold back then. Even though she had never considered spending the rest of her life with Shen Nian, she still engaged in all sorts of ambiguous behavior with him...
Xia Yanchun felt bashful and stopped herself from thinking further. Neither she nor Shen Nian had partners back then, and they had known each other since childhood. What was the big deal about leaning on him a bit!
"Should we head back?"
"Okay, okay. Let's go back, take a shower, and laze in bed together until tomorrow morning."
"No way, I have to do my homework later!"
"Damn it, can't you do it faster? I finish my homework the moment the teacher assigns it."
"Wow, Student Shen Nian is so amazing. You're the absolute best, okay?!"
"Guaranteed, guaranteed. I'm the most badass little sheep."
"..."
Xia Yanchun's mouth twitched. Thankfully, there was no one around, otherwise she would have abandoned Shen Nian right there and gone home alone. He was too embarrassing.
...
The maiden of winter rose from the very tail end of the year and gently flipped past the first few thin pages of the new year.
The biting, crisp wind blew at a leisurely pace, slipping into the gaps of their idle chatter, blowing away all their gloom, and sweeping time away inch by inch.
Studying and exams took up almost the entire day. Shen Nian always felt like he was rushing through his days; before he even realized it, winter break had arrived.
"I'm so scared of failing a class... boohoo."
Hearing the murmurs of the classmates around her, Xia Yanchun flipped her hair, glanced around the classroom, and cheerfully skipped over to Li Shiyan.
"How did it go?"
"Hm? It was fine, not too hard."
"I thought so too. Let's go, let's go, we'll have Shen Nian give you a ride home later."
"No need to go to the trouble. I don't have much luggage anyway, I'll just take a cab back."
Li Shiyan smiled, her eyes curving into crescents. Being an off-campus student was so convenient; she didn't even need to pack to go home.
"Oh, I see. That works then. Hehe, let's go eat hotpot in a few days and make Shen Nian treat us!"
"Hehe, I've been hitching rides with you guys for so long in college, I should be the one treating."
"Oh, why are you keeping such clear tabs? I'll check tonight to see which day we can go. Come on, we'll at least drop you off at the school gate!"
"Mhm!"
Xia Yanchun found Shen Nian, who was already waiting on the side, linked arms with him, and walked out of the classroom together. Li Shiyan quickly followed behind them.
She felt like a little sidekick.
But then again, being a little sidekick wasn't so bad. In a way, she had witnessed nearly four years of Shen Nian and Xia Yanchun's romance!
Watching Shen Nian and Xia Yanchun being so affectionate left her feeling satisfied. They were just too adorable to ship, simply too sweet.
This kind of bickering young couple was the absolute best to ship.
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
for mindless slaughter, this isn't for you.] My name is Ye Shu, and I'm a transmigrator. It seems I'm supposed to be the protagonist, but that feels pretty unlikely. This world has been invaded by a system. The antagonists on the other side have suddenly become pure, flawless saints. The female leads have been force-fed the so-called "original plot," making them think they've been reborn. Now, everyone thinks I'm scum. Including the old lady in my ring. And here I am, in the Monster Beast Mountain Range, braising pork. To put my situation in perspective— It's as if, the moment Xiao Yan stepped into the Monster Beast Mountain Range, the Soul Emperor already knew he would become the Flame Emperor, and Yao Lao had been turned to the enemy's side. I have nothing right now. Oh wait, that's not true. I do have a white-haired loli child-bride who's the Heavenly Dao, and her only skill is acting cute. So, tell me guys... what are my chances of making it to the end?
