"Done!" Long Aotian stretched lazily.
He raised his hand to rub his shoulders. Seeing this, Hu Yuying hesitated for a moment, then remembered her duty as his assistant.
She stood up and walked behind Long Aotian. "Brother Long, let me give you a massage," she said, her hands kneading his shoulders.
"Does that feel better?"
"Not bad, very comfortable."
Encouraged by Long Aotian's approval, Hu Yuying became even more enthusiastic, putting more effort into the massage.
Back in her hometown, she would often massage her grandfather's shoulders after he finished working in the fields.
She didn’t have any special techniques; just a simple massage was enough to help him relax.
Hu Yuying felt that Brother Long had been kind to her, so being able to help him in return made her happy. She didn’t find it troublesome at all.
"Alright," Long Aotian patted Hu Yuying's hand and stood up, stretching his waist lazily.
"It's getting late. I should head back now," he said, glancing at the weather outside.
"Okay."
Hu Yuying walked him to the door.
"You can go back now. If you run into any trouble you can’t handle, give me a call. Remember, no matter what happens, protecting yourself is the most important thing."
"I understand, Brother Long," Hu Yuying replied, her smile bright and warm.
Hu Yuying was a very genuine person. Her smile was always pure, never tainted by ulterior motives or complicated emotions.
Everything about her radiated sincerity and kindness.
"That's the spirit. You should smile more often. Come on, give me another smile," Long Aotian teased.
Hearing this, Hu Yuying laughed, her clear, bright eyes curving into crescents.
"See you later."
As she watched Long Aotian walk away, Hu Yuying clenched her small hands, mustering her courage. She called out to his back, bathed in sunlight, "Brother Long, can I... can I contact you when I’m free too?"
"Of course, anytime," Long Aotian replied without turning around, simply raising his hand to wave goodbye.
"Brother Long, take care on your way back," Hu Yuying said, waving at his retreating figure even though he couldn’t see her.
She stood there until Long Aotian disappeared at the end of the alley.
Hu Yuying looked up at the sky, her smile as radiant as jade, and took a deep breath.
This weekend had been a happy one for her.
Her worries had been replaced by joy, and now her heart was filled with happiness.
When she got home, she locked the door and hurried to her bedroom.
She pulled out her phone from under her pillow.
Seeing the blinking notification from QQ, she opened the app.
Long Aotian: "Little teacher, today’s meal was delicious. Thanks for the treat."
Reading the message, Hu Yuying couldn’t stop smiling.
She carefully picked up her phone and typed, "If Brother Long likes it, I’ll cook for you again."
Long Aotian: "OK."
After receiving his reply, Hu Yuying lay down on her bed, staring at the ceiling. The shyness unique to a young girl was captivating, making it impossible to look away...
Before heading home, Long Aotian stopped by the market.
After helping an elderly man organize some things, he was shooed away to go home.
Long Aotian didn’t go straight back, though. Instead, he went to an internet café.
He had opened a stock trading account earlier that morning.
Now it was time to get down to business. Although he didn’t have much money,
for Long Aotian at this stage, it was enough.
Having read the novel thoroughly, he knew there were many opportunities for wealth throughout the story. So he wasn’t in a rush.
Besides, he couldn’t afford to be impatient. He wasn’t the protagonist, after all, and didn’t have access to all those convenient plot devices.
He couldn’t expect money to fall into his lap just when he needed it, or a pillow to appear the moment he felt sleepy.
For now, this was fine. It felt like he had a cheat code.
Slowly accumulating wealth was, in its own way, a kind of happiness for Long Aotian.
After finishing his tasks, he logged off and headed home.
After taking a shower, he lay down in bed. Although it had been a few days since he had transmigrated into this world,
when he was alone and quiet, he still felt a sense of unreality.
It all felt like a dream, and he didn’t know when he might wake up.
Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep.
The next morning.
Li Qingxue turned over in bed and opened her sleepy eyes.
Seeing the sunlight streaming in, she stretched her arms and yawned.
She picked up her phone and, out of habit, thought about asking Ye Liangchen if he was awake. It was Sunday afternoon, and they would soon be heading back to school.
She wanted to ask if he had run into any difficulties with his studies and what time he planned to leave for school.
It was a habit.
A habit formed over many years, not something that could be easily broken.
But when she opened the QQ chat window and saw the conversation history, Li Qingxue came back to reality.
She lowered her gaze, lost in thought.
He had already taken back the special affection he once had for her. Now, they were just ordinary friends.
She took a deep breath, feeling a heaviness in her chest.
Glancing at the time on her phone, Li Qingxue got up, dressed, washed up, and left her room.
"Xue'er, why are you in such a hurry? Have some breakfast before you go," her mother called out.
Li Qingxue, who had already stepped out the door, turned back, grabbed a slice of bread and a carton of yogurt, and left again. "I’m going to exercise," she said.
Watching her daughter run off, Li Qingxue’s mother chuckled. "Who eats breakfast while exercising? This child..."
Li Qingxue walked along the road until she reached the waterfront.
She looked around and sighed softly.
Just as she was about to leave, she noticed a figure lying on a slanted platform not far away.
She walked over.
When she saw the two leaves covering the person’s eyes, she couldn’t help but laugh. "Hey, why did you change your sleeping spot today?"
Hearing her voice, Long Aotian lifted the leaves from his eyes and glanced at her. "Oh, it’s you again."
"I wasn’t sleeping. I was just killing time."
Li Qingxue sat down not far from Long Aotian, her hands resting on her knees as she gazed at the shimmering, flowing river.
"Habits are such a scary thing. This morning when I woke up, I instinctively wanted to contact him."
"Are you using me as a sounding board now?" Long Aotian asked lazily, his hands behind his head.
"But keeping these thoughts to myself is so painful. I don’t know who else to talk to. Since you’re just killing time anyway, can’t you listen to me?"
"Killing time is one thing, but being bored is another. Don’t confuse the two," Long Aotian corrected her.
He then glanced at the girl beside him. "Why did you stop talking?"
Hearing this, Li Qingxue’s mood inexplicably brightened. "Yesterday, after I got home, I thought about it seriously. I think what I feel for him is more familiarity than actual liking."
"We’ve known each other for so many years, and we’re so used to each other. For me, his presence has become a source of dependence and companionship. But is that really what love is?"
......
] This is a dark fantasy-themed dating simulation game. The main gameplay involves containing various monster girls and investigating the truth of a world shrouded in mist alongside your companions. However, due to his love for the dark and bizarre atmosphere, Luo Wei ended up turning a dating game into a detective mystery game. Women? Women only slow down his quickdraw! To Luo Wei, the female leads in the game are more like tools to perfectly clear levels and squeeze out rewards. For Luo Wei, flirting with every girl he meets and then discarding them is standard procedure. Worried about characters losing affection points? No need. With his maxed-out charm stat, Luo Wei is practically a "human incubus." A little psychological manipulation and those points come right back. It's a bit scummy, but the paper cutout heroines in the game won't actually come at him with real cleavers. However... Luo Wei has transmigrated. He's accidentally entered the second playthrough of this game. His past actions have caused all the girls to transform into terrifying yanderes. Due to the game's setting, most of the heroines he once contained are "troubled girls." Obsessive, twisted, mentally unstable, all aggressive yanderes... The type who will kill you if they can't have you... Luo Wei wants to cry but has no tears left. "I really just want to survive..." In short, this is a story of battling wits and engaging in a love-hate relationship with yanderes.
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?!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
