Lifting Long Aotian's shirt, Li Qingxue saw a large red swelling on the right side of his back, with a faint scar across it—though it had stopped bleeding by now.
"Long Aotian, were you beaten up?" Li Qingxue's voice trembled as she took in the sight of the injury.
Long Aotian turned and lightly flicked her forehead with a scoff. "Do I look like someone who gets bullied easily?"
"You can't even see it yourself. It's so swollen—no wonder you were in so much pain."
Li Qingxue didn’t fully understand men’s resilience. For her, even a minor scrape could hurt for ages. Seeing such a large bruise on his back, she could only imagine how much it must ache...
"Hey, hey, don’t cry. It’s not what you think." Long Aotian then explained everything—how after registering for school, he’d gone out to eat with his roommates and ended up intervening when he saw someone being harassed.
"You idiot! Always sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. But did you even stop to think? What if that lunatic had thrown a knife instead?..."
Li Qingxue huffed, though she knew this was just who Long Aotian was. Only he would do something so reckless.
Wasn’t that how they’d first met, after all?
Back when she was at her lowest, a meddlesome boy had said just one thing—and she’d remembered him ever since...
"I’ll go buy you some ointment. Wait here."
"Heh, look what I’ve got!" Long Aotian pulled a tube of cream from his pocket and waved it in front of her.
"You’re still laughing? I thought you’d been hurt, and here you are grinning like an idiot!"
Long Aotian’s smile faded as he lifted his shirt for her to apply the medicine.
"Qingxue, don’t tell Yuying about this, okay?"
"Ouch—be gentle!"
"Oh, so you *do* feel pain?" Despite her words, her touch softened, and she even blew lightly on the wound to help the ointment absorb.
"Yuying worries too much. If she found out, she’d cry—and I can’t stand seeing her cry. You have no idea how long that girl can go on sometimes." A faint smile tugged at his lips, as if recalling something.
"I know. The way you forced yourself to act normal at the restaurant—I could tell you didn’t want Yuying to notice."
"But I think Hu Yuying is stronger than you give her credit for." Li Qingxue said this based on how Yuying carried herself at school.
"That’s good."
"‘That’s good’? You’re always thinking of others—why can’t you care about yourself for once?"
"Pfft, it’s just a scratch. My skin’s thick. It’ll heal in a couple of days."
Li Qingxue jabbed a finger near the edge of the bruise. "Then why hide it from Yuying?"
"You’re the most stubborn person I know."
Long Aotian tugged his shirt back down. "It’s not stubbornness. There’s no point making a fuss over nothing. I’d just look weak."
"You’d rather suffer than swallow your pride."
"So you *want* to see Hu Yuying cry?"
"No."
"Exactly. Why worry her over nothing?"
"And you’re one to talk! The way you were earlier, anyone would think I’d done something terrible to you. So dramatic." Long Aotian laughed.
Li Qingxue rolled her eyes and sat beside him. "You’re really good to Yuying."
"Yeah, well, call me ‘Big Brother Long,’ and I’ll take you on as my second sidekick."
"As if!" She smoothed her clothes, stealing a sidelong glance at him. She opened her mouth as if to say something but hesitated.
A quiet moment passed.
“Let’s head back. Nothing else to do here, and we’ve got military training soon.” Sitting this close to Li Qingxue for so long, Long Aotian suddenly felt awkward.
In his memories, Li Qingxue was always bright and cheerful, as if all the world’s joy lived in her. Just being near her was enough to lift anyone’s spirits.
But now, arms crossed and lips pursed, she radiated an uncharacteristic tension.
Long Aotian turned to study her.
Noticing his gaze, Li Qingxue fidgeted. "Wh-what are you staring at?"
"Your makeup’s smudged."
"Huh? Really?" She touched her face—girls took these things seriously. "I only wore a tiny bit today, it shouldn’t be—"
Mid-sentence, she caught his smirk and pinched his waist. "Jerk! Making fun of me!"
She knew he was just trying to lighten the mood. What a fool...
Her laughter dissolved the tension.
"Let’s go."
Watching Long Aotian walk ahead, Li Qingxue felt both amused and exasperated. In many ways, he was wonderful—helping Hu Yuying grow, saying the words she’d needed to hear, stepping in when others were bullied.
Yet when it came to himself, he brushed everything off like it was nothing. A strange guy.
He seemed out of place in this world, yet he kept trying to belong.
He looked like any other eighteen-year-old, but there was something undeniably different about him...
---
**Room 301, 3rd Floor, Girls’ Dormitory 12**
Hu Yuying bit her lip hard, her clenched fists turning white at the knuckles.
"Yuying, you’re back?" a roommate called.
Forcing a smile, Hu Yuying murmured a quiet "Mm" and retreated to her bed.
She tried to steady her breathing, but tears spilled over anyway.
As Long Aotian’s most devoted follower, no one understood him better than she did.
If Li Qingxue had noticed, how could *she* have missed it?
The instant his body had stiffened, she’d known.
But Long-ge had kept smiling, pretending everything was fine—so she pretended, too.
If he didn’t want her to know, she wouldn’t let him know she knew.
She’d seen Li Qingxue texting him secretly.
Even if Li Qingxue hadn’t, *she* would have.
So she’d overheard his words.
Seeing that bruise on his back—her heart ached more than she could bear.
But Long-ge knew her too well. He feared her worry, her tears, so he played it off like it was nothing.
He was always looking out for her. When Li Qingxue mentioned she was doing well at school, he’d just smiled and said, ["That’s good."]
One thing he’d said was true: her heart *was* small.
Too small...
"Brother Long, before I met you, I thought life was just like that—nothing special. But after meeting you, I’ve forgiven all the hardships the world has thrown at me."
Gazing at the photo of herself and Brother Long happily linking pinky fingers, Hu Yuying carefully pressed the picture against her chest.
"Meeting you felt like... I just really, really like you..."
"You wanted to see me grow stronger, become better—so I will. I’ll grow stronger, become better. One day, I’ll climb over that wall in your heart..."
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
iaobai: "Councilor Dad, front me some funds. I want to hire ten thousand professional miners for a project!" [Five-Star Mission Issued: Capture the leader of the Blood Heaven Pirate Gang, who is on the run in the Radiant Star Sector. It is said the gang has over a hundred members. Proceed with caution.] Lu Xiaobai: "Councilor Dad, lend me the family's hundred-thousand-strong Lu Army!" [Seven-Star Mission Issued: Subdue a juvenile Void Dragon Beast.] Lu Xiaobai: "Councilor Dad, I'm taking your tamed Void Dragon Beast King out for a family reunion!" I said, System, don't you have any slightly more challenging missions? You're just not up to par! [Nine-Star Mission Issued: Become the Human Councilor.] Lu Xiaobai: "Dad, there's a small matter I'd like to discuss with you..."
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?!
