Camping Expert Locals

Room 517, the dorm of legends.

"Stretch your ears, raise your vigilance..."

The passionate singing rang out. Xue Tao squirmed in his bed for a while before reaching out to turn off the alarm. However, his hand slipped; instead of turning off the alarm, he knocked his phone off the bed.

Thump!

The phone crashed onto the floor. The alarm mixed with the sound of the phone vibrating against the floor tiles sounded like demonic noise piercing the ears in the quiet early morning.

"Brother Tao, what are you doing so early in the morning..." Wang Haoran glanced at the time. Holy crap, it was only 5:30 AM. Was their camping trip gathering really this early?

The reason Wang Haoran hated many outdoor activities was that they often required waking up early.

Recalling the times he followed tour groups with his parents as a kid to just skim through sights, it was absolute torture.

But then again, Mount Tianrong was right in the suburbs of Jiang City. It wasn't far, so why did they need to get up this early?

It didn't make sense.

Xue Tao fussed about for a long time and mumbled a bunch of things before Wang Haoran finally understood: apparently, the girl he asked out this time was coming to Jiangcheng University for breakfast before they set off together, which was why Xue Tao had set an alarm to get up early and prepare.

Unbelievable.

Since he was already awake anyway, Wang Haoran decided to take the opportunity to observe what Brother Tao was actually preparing.

It turned out he was just picking out an outfit and suffering from decision paralysis.

Then it seemed he wanted to wash his hair, but he dawdled too much and ran out of time, so he just wet it a bit and blow-dried it. While drying his hair, the hairdryer cord knocked over the unfinished health tea he had brewed last night. It almost spilled on the laptop, causing Xue Tao to yelp and frantically clean up the mess.

...Great. Sure enough, Brother Bai's decision to live off-campus and only occasionally return to the dorm to hang out was correct.

With a little genius like Xue Tao in the dorm, no accident was actually a surprise.

Who knows, maybe one day this guy's brain would short-circuit and start a fire, resulting in the three of them perishing together, while Su Bai, who didn't live in the dorm, would happily get an automatic postgraduate recommendation... Oh wait, with Brother Bai's grades, he didn't need any crooked methods to get recommended for grad school. Even though he spent every day eating, drinking, playing, and picking up girls, he still scored high marks. That was Brother Bai's time management for you. Do you have time management like that, I ask you?

"By the way, where's Old Chu?" Wang Haoran watched Xue Tao mess around for a long time before suddenly realizing someone was missing from the dorm.

That was just how the 2D game fanatic was—mainly characterized by being thick-skulled.

"Him? Didn't his girlfriend come over last night to listen to the camping lecture? She probably didn't go back after it was over. Sigh, they must have gone to get a room."

Speaking of getting a room, Xue Tao was incredibly envious.

To put it bluntly, that was his initial goal in dating.

However, his only chance with Liu Yuanyuan had ended in failure.

There was no follow-up either, and now they were preparing to break up.

Xue Tao vaguely began to realize that perhaps Liu Yuanyuan was just not a good person; she was too scheming and had a bad attitude towards him.

He'd better pin his hopes on this Huang Ran... Sigh, who knows when he'd be able to escape the life of a simp.

After packing his things, Xue Tao received a message from Huang Ran saying she was already at the bottom of his dorm building.

This moved Xue Tao immensely. In the past, when he went out with Liu Yuanyuan, he always had to prepare everything in advance, and Liu Yuanyuan would dawdle for ages before coming downstairs from her dorm.

But this time, the roles were completely reversed, tsk tsk.

Xue Tao went downstairs looking triumphant, only to see Huang Ran wearing winter clothes and warm tights on her lower half.

Although, compared to Top Student Chen, who had a natural god-tier physique for tights, she was still far behind.

At the very least, she was on par with Liu Yuanyuan without a problem.

Sigh, with his level, he couldn't hope for a true goddess; he could only play in the mid-tier matches.

Under Su Bai's day-after-day factual blows, Xue Tao had gradually accepted his fate. Although he would occasionally get a big head, most of the time, he could recognize his own standing.

"Xue Tao, you came down so fast?" Huang Ran showed a hint of pleasant surprise.

"Fast? Just normal, I guess."

"Hehe, let's go. Take me to eat at the cafeteria. Your Jiang U cafeteria is so much better than ours—it's cheap and delicious... I feel like the contractors at our place aren't even human..."

To be honest, no exaggeration.

Huang Ran's emotional intelligence was indeed higher than Liu Yuanyuan's.

Mainly because Liu Yuanyuan always liked to put on a sour face, while Huang Ran didn't have as much arrogance as Liu Yuanyuan. Therefore, in Xue Tao's eyes, the winner was clear.

Arriving at the cafeteria, perhaps due to some destined rivalry attribute, Xue Tao very reasonably bumped into Chu Mingzhe.

He didn't expect this guy to also bring a girl for breakfast. Wait, didn't you guys stay at a hotel last night? Why come to the cafeteria for breakfast?

Faced with this question, Chu Mingzhe answered self-righteously: "The room types left last night didn't include breakfast, and the breakfast at Ji Hotel is just so-so anyway."

"Heh, you're just reluctant to spend money. If you went to a luxury hotel and stayed in a suite, how could they not have it?"

"..."

Chu Mingzhe complained endlessly in his heart: Bro, if I stay in a luxury hotel, are you going to pay the difference?

Honestly, although Chu Mingzhe's pocket money was quite abundant compared to ordinary college students, he had a lot of expenses too. He had to buy weird electronic gadgets, satisfy his artsy youth pretentiousness, and buy clothes for Lei Lei...

Yes, ever since they started dating, Chu Mingzhe had taken on a large portion of the Jirai-kei girl's expenses.

He even helped her get cough syrup prescriptions... It was really weird. He had no idea why their circle was fixated on cough syrup; they were truly eccentrics.

At this moment, seeing a stranger, the Jirai-kei girl's social anxiety flared up again. She kept her head down without a word, wildly wolfing down chicken soup rice noodles.

Jiang U's chicken soup rice noodles, as well as the tofu skin and hot dry noodles, were top-notch. The taste felt like those breakfast stalls that had been open in a neighborhood for many years, much better than those internet-famous shops that blew up in the social media era.

Even though today was for camping, she still wore a very complicated Lolita dress, which made Xue Tao dizzy just looking at it.

As everyone knows, there are many eccentrics in the Lolita circle. He didn't know if Old Chu bought this dress for her, but it was highly likely. Xue Tao noticed that Chu Mingzhe's recent spending at the cafeteria had dropped, going from the twelve-yuan deluxe version of two meats and two veggies to the six-and-a-half-yuan broke-boy combo of one meat and one veggie.

When a college student's dietary standards inexplicably drop, it proves that the money has definitely flowed somewhere else.

"Haha, by the way, Old Chu, do you have any camping experience? If there's anything you don't understand, you can ask me. I've been camping in various popular spots around Jiang City since junior high, and I've even climbed some relatively dangerous mountains. Well, although I'm not a professional mountaineer, I do have certifications."

"Really? Wow, that's great. I haven't been camping before, and yesterday's lecture left me completely confused. I'll have to rely on Tao Tao to take care of me," Huang Ran chimed in at the perfect moment.

Chu Mingzhe curled his lip and said, "Are there any dangerous routes at the campsites near Jiang City? Feels like they can't even compare to a single hair of the Aotai Trail."

"...Bro, the country has banned climbing that thing. How can you compare them?"

The two bickered as usual.

The Jirai-kei girl focused on slurping her noodles, as if she had activated some kind of barrier.