“Bar.” Fu Chengyan rarely corrected him.
Li Zhuo didn’t see much difference—both were places to drink and brag.
“The last time I saw him, he ran off like a rabbit, and his hair was dyed pink.” Li Zhuo found him a bit hard to understand. “He just finished the college entrance exam.”
His rebellious phase wasn’t over yet.
His defiance was quite strong.
Fu Chengyan: “Who knows? Maybe he thinks it’s cool.”
“Don’t understand you young folks.”
Hearing this old-fashioned, self-important tone, Fu Chengyan couldn’t help but glance at him. “With that tone, how old are you this year?”
Li Zhuo: “…”
After the meal, Li Zhuo left. Fu Chengyan had taken out a bottle of fine wine, but he didn’t drink it.
Fu Chengyan drank a few glasses alone and found it rather dull. He was still puzzled about why the girl had deleted him as a friend.
At 11:30 p.m., staring at the red exclamation mark, he called his assistant.
“Look up someone. I’ve sent you the WeChat ID.”
The assistant blinked for a moment before snapping back to attention, cautiously asking, “Boss, is it urgent?”
A warm, magnetic voice, tinged with a hint of imperceptible coldness, replied, “Is getting married urgent for you?”
Oh, so it was very urgent.
He scrambled to his feet. “Received, boss. I’ll get on it as soon as possible.”
The assistant got up and went to work. Fu Chengyan was in a good mood. He set down his wine glass, took a shower, and went to sleep.
Early the next morning, detailed information about Xu Zhizhi was placed on Fu Chengyan’s desk.
His slender fingers flipped through the pages. So her name was Xu Zhizhi—no wonder.
He’d said he wouldn’t look into her background, but he’d ended up stepping on a landmine himself.
Her name was quite cute, and the girl looked cute too.
Small, fair-skinned—a bit too small, but not to the point of breaking the law.
Jiangcheng, Xu Family.
Xu Pingsheng… sounded somewhat familiar.
He seemed to be a neighbor from before his grandmother moved. His 70th birthday banquet had been quite lively. Fu Chengyan had gone to congratulate him while staying at his grandmother’s during winter break.
The girl was quite a homebody, going out less than ten times a year.
Could it be that she was afraid of others looking at her differently due to her congenital condition?
Her academic performance was good. She started university in her teens and stopped after her master’s degree, focusing on—writing novels.
She was also obedient. Fu Chengyan nodded. It was a way to vent, at least.
The information was thoroughly researched, but how should he pursue her?
Creating a chance encounter was clearly impossible. He was blocked on WeChat, and calling her directly would be too presumptuous.
He made a call. “Assistant Lin, come in for a moment.”
Assistant Lin had waited for an hour without any movement from the boss’s side. Just as he was about to make a cup of coffee, the call came in.
High income demanded high returns—always on call.
The door was half-open. He knocked politely. “Boss, you asked for me?”
“I have a personal question unrelated to work.”
Assistant Lin was puzzled. “Go ahead, boss.”
“How do you pursue a beautiful girl who has no desires, no wants, and just wants to stay home and create?”
Assistant Lin glanced at the information he’d compiled all night and respectfully placed on the boss’s desk early in the morning. He understood.
“Boss, even if she’s a homebody, she still has to go out to eat, right?”
Fu Chengyan shot him a look. “Don’t you know that the world already has convenient and fast services like food delivery?”
Assistant Lin certainly knew, but he didn’t dare argue.
“…Then she must buy clothes, right?”
“I’ve never been to a mall either.”
Assistant Lin was speechless. That was true. The boss’s clothes were all delivered directly to his home and taken care of by the servants.
“Then there must be something else, right? Like being sick or feeling unwell?”
Fu Chengyan frowned. “You’re the one who’s sick.”
Assistant Lin silently maintained a smile. Damn, this is really tough.
“Boss, you could start with things she likes. She enjoys writing novels, so talk to her about novels, discuss the plotlines in her stories, and then praise her work.”
Fu Chengyan rubbed his temples. Of course, he could think of these things himself, but the girl had blocked him.
He cleared his throat. “After being blocked on WeChat, if you try to add the person again, will they receive a notification?”
Assistant Lin understood, a faint smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “No, Boss. The other person needs to remove you from their blacklist first.”
Fu Chengyan waved his hand. “Got it. You can go back to work.”
He had nothing to do in the morning, so he downloaded a reading app and searched for Xu Zhizhi’s ID. He discovered she had been writing for five years and had already completed nine novels.
Each one was several million words long.
Fu Chengyan chose one of Xu Zhizhi’s novels that had been completed last month and started reading. It was a tragic, heart-wrenching story with a group of characters—the male lead died, the female lead went insane, and the supporting characters either died or were left disabled. It was a complete tragedy.
The beginning was filled with laughter and joy, starting from their youth. More than the romance between the male and female leads, it focused on their friendship.
The writing was brilliant, the plot clear, and everything unfolded step by step, intricately connected.
After reading for a while, Fu Chengyan noticed the comment section was chaotic. He couldn’t resist flipping to the ending. Well, his heart was already broken.
Wouldn’t her readers send her death threats?
The comments on the final chapter were surprisingly numerous—over a hundred thousand. Half of the readers were crying their hearts out, cursing the author between sobs. The other half were calmer, but they had torn the author apart in the Weibo fan community.
Someone reminded them that the author didn’t have a Weibo account.
This only made everyone angrier.
There were also hundreds of comments hoping the author would publish the book or adapt it into a movie or TV series.
Luring innocent readers in only to break their hearts.
Well, they couldn’t be the only ones crying their eyes out. They recommended the book to their friends, siblings, and close companions—sharing the misery, as they say.
Fu Chengyan, without hesitation, recommended the book to his older brother.
As an actor, he should be able to empathize well, right?
y.: [You’re welcome, big bro!]
But the netizens actually gave him an idea. This novel had the highest popularity and was still in the top three on the ranking charts.
Adapting it into a TV series might not be a bad idea.
He spent nearly half an hour typing and editing on his phone, finally asking the author in a very sincere tone if she would consider selling the copyright.
Unexpectedly, netizens immediately commented on his post.
[Friend, I advise you not to get your hopes up. The author never replies to reader comments. She doesn’t even read them! I suggest you track down the author in person and let us readers know. I’ll bring a knife to wish the author a happy birthday.]
[OP has good taste, but the first commenter is right. You’ll never catch the author in the comment section in this lifetime. Also, why bring a knife? If you’re sure you won’t get caught, I’m a Taekwondo black belt—let me handle it.]
[What? What? I’m late. Is the author going to respond? (I grew up in a Taekwondo gym.)]
[The person above is dreaming. (I know wrestling.)]
[If the author actually replies, I’ll be shocked for the next eight hundred years!!! (I’ll bring a bucket of popcorn to watch the show.)]
[Epitaph: Don’t believe rumors~ Don’t spread rumors~]
[Hey, hey, how are you able to send voice messages?]
[“I wholeheartedly support this book being adapted into a film, but please, just let Xiao Yi keep his body intact, ahhh—”]
[“Our Little Feng needs to keep his body intact too!!!”]
[“You think just because we have protagonist halo we don’t need intact bodies? Arrange it for us too!”]
[“Get lost, you upstairs! At least one or two of your protagonist group are still alive and well.”]
[“Wow, buddy, you call missing limbs, half-dead and unable to move ‘alive and well’?”]
[“At least they’re breathing!”]
[“Well, that’s not wrong either. In the author’s book, as long as a character is still breathing, they count as healthy~”]
Fu Chengyan: “…”
Is this what they call fans taking after their idol?