Watching Xu Shuai put on an act,
Long Aotian shot him a disdainful glance. "Cut the act, kid. I saw you and Wang Lijuan taking the subway together. Where’d you go?"
At those words, Xu Shuai seemed to recall something wonderful.
He couldn’t help but break into a smile—a blissful one at that.
Huang Fei and Li Longlong exchanged glances. They noticed everything, yet for some reason, it felt oddly grating.
"We were just..."
Before Xu Shuai could finish, Huang Fei and Li Longlong waved him off. "Stop. We don’t wanna know anymore."
Xu Shuai paused, then turned to Long Aotian. "Hey, Aotian, where’d you and that aloof campus beauty from next door go today?"
Leaning in with a sly grin, he added, "I even saw you holding hands."
Seeing Xu Shuai’s unmistakable gossipy expression, Long Aotian chuckled. "Take a guess."
Xu Shuai wiggled his two thumbs suggestively.
Long Aotian suddenly stood up. "Did you get it on recording?"
"Huh?" Xu Shuai stared blankly. "Get what?"
"Hold on, quiet." Huang Fei made a shushing gesture, and the dorm fell silent.
With a tap on his phone, Huang Fei played back Xu Shuai’s voice, dripping with mischief: ["Heh heh, I saw you holding hands..."]
"Damn it, you bastards!" Xu Shuai lunged like a tiger, tackling Long Aotian. "I treat you like sworn brothers, and you pull this crap on me!"
"Serves you right for showing off. I’m sending this to Shen Mengjie so she can show Wang Lijuan."
"No, don’t!"
"Three cups of fruit tea. Extra ice."
"Fine, I’ll get them right now."
Watching Xu Shuai flip them off from the balcony, Long Aotian and the others burst out laughing.
Amid the laughter, Li Longlong suddenly sighed. Turning serious, he looked at Huang Fei and Long Aotian. "Honestly, I kinda envy Xu Shuai."
Huang Fei patted his shoulder. "Pursuing a girl takes persistence. You’re giving up way too soon."
"What’s going on?" Long Aotian asked, curiosity piqued.
"After you guys left, we got bored in the dorm and tried chatting up Shen Mengjie and Han Xiaojing, maybe even arranging a meetup." Huang Fei gestured for Li Longlong to continue.
"No luck," Li Longlong muttered, exhaling heavily. "She’s just... cold toward me."
"Cold? Maybe she’s just shy?" Long Aotian said. His impression of Han Xiaojing was of a quiet girl—hardly the type to come off as distant.
"I knew you wouldn’t believe me, but it’s the truth."
Li Longlong pulled out his phone and showed Long Aotian the chat log.
His messages were at least two lines long each.
Han Xiaojing’s replies, however, were mostly: ["Mhm"], ["Okay"], ["Got it"].
The longest one? ["Who else is going?"]
Just glancing at the screen, it did seem a bit frosty.
Noticing Long Aotian’s expression, Li Longlong turned to Huang Fei. "Show him your chat log."
"How many times do I have to say it? Stop calling me 'Old Huang.'" He pulled out his phone. "Our convo’s simple too, but at least there’s some emotional feedback."
He opened the chat, and Long Aotian’s eyebrows rose slightly. "Yeah, I guess there’s... some emotional value here."
["Mhm (playful emoji)"], ["Okay (winking happy emoji)"], ["Thanks (adorable emoji)"], ["Can’t, I’m busy (sad emoji)"]
"See, Longlong? Once you learn to read girls like I do, you’ll get that emotional payoff from Han Xiaojing too." Huang Fei grinned confidently.
"Uh..." Long Aotian sucked in a breath, at a loss for words.
Huang Fei was clearly enjoying this. In this state, anything he said would fall on deaf ears—or worse, strain their friendship.
"Honestly, Shen Mengjie seems nice, but I’m not sure if—"
"Right?" Huang Fei beamed. "You think so too, Aotian? I knew it—"
Long Aotian opened his mouth but didn’t finish. Some lessons had to be learned firsthand. And who knew? Maybe Huang Fei was onto something.
"Ugh..." Li Longlong sighed again, taking his phone back. "At first, I just thought Han Xiaojing was pretty. But the more we talked, the more I liked her personality too."
"But at this rate, I’ve got no shot."
"Early on, even a single ['Mhm'] from her would make my day. But over time, I got greedy. She never changed."
"I think I just got dumped... without even dating."
Long Aotian patted his shoulder. "Look at it this way—no start, no breakup. The campus is full of youth and possibilities."
"And how long have you known her? Really known her? How many times have you met or eaten together? Don’t compare yourself to Xu Shuai. Not every girl is Wang Lijuan."
"Thanks, Aotian. That makes me feel even worse." Li Longlong let out a half-laugh, half-groan.
Long Aotian didn’t know what else to say. From his perspective, it was all too rushed. This wasn’t the fast-paced dating scene of a decade later. Taking things slow was more sincere.
"Your glorious sworn father has returned!" Xu Shuai kicked the dorm door open, arms laden with four cups of fruit tea, two six-packs of beer, and a bag of skewered snacks.
Spotting the beer, Long Aotian nudged Huang Fei. "Let’s drink."
Between sips and bites, Xu Shuai caught up on the situation.
"No big deal. I’ll talk to Lijuan, and we’ll set up another dorm hangout. Worst case, we stay friends."
"Exactly! Maybe Han Xiaojing’s just a slow burn," Huang Fei added, hiccuping mid-sentence.
"Whatever. I’m over it. I’ll play it by ear. I’m not some Adonis, but I’m not ugly either. There’s no way I won’t find a girlfriend!"
"But... thanks, guys."
Li Longlong said it with a rare kind of coolness—not the superficial kind, but a liberated one.
Long Aotian raised his can and clinked it against Li Longlong’s. "Don’t get emotional. As your sworn brother and one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Dorm 147, it’s our duty."
"Hahaha..." Huang Fei and Xu Shuai both nodded with laughter, showing their approval.
Li Longlong rolled his eyes but still downed the drink in the end...
transmigrates into the role of a villainous rich second-generation kid in an urban fantasy novel, and gets bound to a god-tier choice system. Right at the start, he catches the female lead stealing exam papers! This triggers the villain's choice options! [Choice 1: Pretend you didn't see anything] [Choice 2: Loudly call her out, drawing everyone's attention] [Choice 3: ...] And thus, a twisted villain is born. To avoid getting killed by the protagonist, he has no choice but to take down all the protagonists first. Jiang Che: Nobody understands being twisted better than me!
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?!
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!
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.
