White Tiger pushed the bowl of noodles, with only two bites eaten, to the farthest corner of the table, as if that could sever all ties with it.
“That’s about it. I’ve said what needed to be said. The rest is up to you once you get to Rust Harbor—figure it out on the spot.”
He stood up, pulling up the zipper on his jacket with a casual motion, as if he were wrapping up the most ordinary of afternoon chats.
Chen Guan didn’t move.
He sat on the plastic stool, the envelope resting on the table in front of him, his fingers lingering on the edge of the kraft paper. Watching White Tiger zip up, he suddenly spoke.
“I have one more question.”
White Tiger’s hand paused. He looked up at Chen Guan.
“Ask.”
Chen Guan’s gaze met his.
“What was your name before you became White Tiger?”
The two of them faced each other across the plastic table with the leftover noodles. The distance wasn’t great, but the question made the air between them shift, just slightly.
White Tiger looked at him for a moment, then laughed.
It had been a long time since anyone cared about his name.
To others, a name was just a label. No one ever bothered with who he used to be, with everything that had shaped him.
“Does it matter?” he asked, his tone still light, the same as before he’d spoken, as if the question belonged to the same category as whether the noodles had tasted good.
Chen Guan didn’t answer. His expression said enough.
White Tiger pulled the zipper up all the way, let his hands drop, leaned back, and sat down again.
His gaze lingered on Chen Guan’s face for a moment, then shifted, landing on the alley visible through the glass door.
“Why do you suddenly want to ask that?”
“No reason.”
“Then why ask?”
“I just want to know.”
A corner of White Tiger’s mouth twitched. Chen Guan was more persistent than he’d expected.
“You’re not much for talking usually, but when you do open your mouth, you go straight for the soft spot.”
Chen Guan glanced down at the file bag on the table.
He thought of the identity documents inside.
He Chenguan.
“You don’t have to answer,” Chen Guan said, picking up the file bag to tuck it into his ring.
“I was just asking.”
“You don’t just ask things,” White Tiger’s voice came from across the table, carrying a hint of amused irritation.
Chen Guan said nothing.
White Tiger watched him for a few seconds, then reached out, picked up the chopsticks from the table, spun them in his hand once, and set them back down.
“You asked too early.”
“Huh?”
“Come back from Rust Harbor first. If you still want to ask then, I’ll think about whether to answer.”
It wasn’t some unspeakable secret.
“Alright.”
Chen Guan picked up the file bag and stood.
The two of them walked toward the door, one after the other. As they passed the counter, White Tiger casually placed a bill on it—enough to cover both the noodles and a tip.
White Tiger stepped outside first, stopping at the entrance, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. He turned sideways to look at Chen Guan following behind.
“Bus leaves at six tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.”
“You already said that.”
“Yeah, well, just making sure your memory isn’t that bad.”
Chen Guan didn’t take the bait. He stood at the door of the noodle shop, scanning both ends of the alley.
One end connected to the back gate of the West Campus, the other opened onto the main road. There were still puddles from the rain a few days ago, sunlight glinting off the water’s surface.
What Chen Guan didn’t say was that when he’d heard the name He Chenguan, it had genuinely startled him.
……
Back in the dormitory, Cheetah was still curled up in the corner, its purple fur catching the slanting rays of the setting sun with a faint glow.
At the sound of the door, its ear twitched. It looked up at Chen Guan before flopping back down.
Chen Guan closed the door, walked to the desk, and sat. He emptied the contents of the file bag onto the table.
An ID card: He Chenguan, with his photo, but slightly altered—made to look more down-and-out than he was now.
A bus ticket: six o’clock tomorrow morning, destination Rust Harbor.
The card with the jester hat printed on it.
And a thin bank card, no name on it—a prepaid card, probably stuffed with some activity funds from White Tiger.
At the very bottom was a handwritten note, the handwriting messy—White Tiger’s.
On it was just one line:
Don’t die.
Chen Guan stared at it for two seconds, then flipped the note over. On the back was an even smaller line:
Have you finished the apples yet?
He set the note aside, picked up the ID card, and studied it again.
He Chenguan. Male. Twenty-two.
The person in the photo really did look a lot like him—but the eyes seemed far more weary than his actual ones. The whole presence radiated the kind of beaten-down exhaustion familiar to someone who’d scraped by at the very bottom of society.
In short: lifeless.
White Tiger had paid serious attention to the details.
Chen Guan gathered everything up and tucked it under his pillow. He glanced at Cheetah by his side and suddenly remembered something he’d forgotten.
He’d forgotten to ask White Tiger about Cheetah.
All because of that name—He Chenguan. It had thrown him off.
Chen Guan walked over to Cheetah and crouched down.
“Let’s practice.”
Cheetah lifted its head, violet pupils reflecting his face.
“Portal, open.”
A dark purple crack tore open in front of Cheetah, about a meter wide and a little over two meters tall—just enough for a grown adult to duck through.
“Close.”
The crack sealed shut.
“Open again.”
The crack appeared once more. This time, it was about 0.3 seconds faster than before.
“Close.”
Shut.
After the seventh opening and closing, the portal’s activation speed had stabilized to under half a second.
Chen Guan crouched in front of it, observing the stability of the crack’s edges. The dark purple glow no longer flickered wildly like it had at first—it converged cleanly.
“Enough. Rest.”
Cheetah withdrew the portal, collapsed onto the ground, and panted a few times. The arcs of electricity at the tip of its tail sparked and then fizzled out. The repeated openings and closings were clearly draining it heavily.
Cheetah pushed itself up from the floor, padded slowly over to Chen Guan’s feet, and rubbed its head against his shin.
Chen Guan glanced down at it, grabbed an apple, split it in half, and fed one piece to it.
“Starting tomorrow, you’ll need to put on an act with me.”
Cheetah tilted its head, looking at him, and ate the half apple.
Suddenly, its face twisted in pain, as if it had swallowed poison.
Chen Guan looked suspiciously at the remaining half apple in his hand. He’d heard dogs couldn’t eat chocolate, but he’d never heard that leopards couldn’t have apples.
He tentatively took a bite of the apple.
The same pained expression that had been on Cheetah’s face immediately spread across his own.
That bastard White Tiger!!!
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!
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
e school belle recognized by the whole school, a genius girl from the kendo club. She also has a hidden identity, the youngest legendary demon hunter. Chen Shuo just transmigrated and found himself turned into a weak, helpless little vampire. He was caught by Su Xiyen and taken home at the very beginning. Since then, Chen Shuo's life creed only had two items. "First, classmate Su Xiyen is always right." "Second, if classmate Su Xiyen is wrong, please refer back to item one." Many years later, Chen Shuo, who had turned back into a human, led a pair of twins to appear in front of all the vampires to share the secret of how he turned back into a human. "It's simple, I tricked a female demon hunter into becoming my wife!"
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.
