Ran Muqiu was burning with embarrassment over Li Zhu’s massive misunderstanding.
He wished the earth would swallow him whole—or better yet, that he could travel back a month and sew his own reckless mouth shut.
“We’re not doing that sort of thing yet.”
“Sleeping with a minor is against the law.”
To Li Zhu’s ears, hadn’t that sounded like he was just counting down the days until the boy turned eighteen to have his way with him?
Flushed to the tips of his ears, Ran Muqiu scrambled for an excuse, only for Li Zhu to ask again:
“So, are you coming over to my place?”
Ran Muqiu looked into the boy’s eyes and forced himself to calm down. This whole arrangement—a mistake from the very start—needed to end tonight.
If this dragged on, the protagonist shou would only develop more absurd misconceptions about him.
“Li Zhu,” Ran Muqiu began, carefully choosing his words. “Actually, there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, but I never found the right time.”
He took a deep breath. “Let’s end this arrangement!”
The air fell dead silent.
“What do you mean?”
The faint trace of a smile on Li Zhu’s lips hadn’t even faded. He repeated the words slowly, evenly: “End the arrangement?”
Something shifted in the boy’s expression.
Ran Muqiu hesitated, wondering if Li Zhu simply disliked the bluntness of the term. Hoping for an amicable breakup, he quickly added, “I mean—it’s just that you won’t have to wait around for me anymore, or do my homework, or run errands. And I won’t come looking for you at the faculty dorms for dinner. Basically, from now on, we’re just regular classmates.”
His voice trailed off until it vanished completely.
Ran Muqiu wasn’t sure if it was because his explanation sounded less like ending a transactional sugar-baby setup and more like a messy personal breakup, or because of the dark chill settling over the boy’s face.
Li Zhu possessed striking, aristocratic features, anchored by remarkably captivating eyes. Yet he rarely smiled and kept strictly to himself, carrying a perpetual air of gloomy, brooding reserve.
Because of this, whenever he did smile, it was like spring flowers bursting into bloom—captivating enough to make even an oblivious person like Ran Muqiu stare.
Most of the time, however, he resembled a dark shard of ice: cold, aloof, and utterly unapproachable.
Right now, a heavy tension hardened his brow, and his lips were pressed into a flat line. Standing this close, his downward gaze cast an overwhelming, suffocating pressure over Ran Muqiu.
Frightened by an expression he had never seen before, Ran Muqiu whispered his name: “Li Zhu.”
“Yeah.” Li Zhu closed his eyes for a brief second. When he reopened them, his furrowed brow smoothed out, slipping back into the usual gentleness he reserved solely for Ran Muqiu. “What’s the reason?”
Ran Muqiu had heard of needing a reason to break up, but he had never heard of a sugar daddy needing to justify cutting off a financial arrangement.
“Well.” Trapped beneath Li Zhu’s unwavering stare, Ran Muqiu fumbled for words. “It’s just, I suddenly realized that acting like this is too childish. And really disrespectful to you.”
Li Zhu let out a soft laugh, devoid of any genuine amusement. “Suddenly?”
Ran Muqiu fell silent, realizing how pathetic his excuse sounded.
After pulling so many cruel stunts and throwing so many vile insults at him, claiming out of nowhere that he felt it was “disrespectful” carried zero sincerity.
It sounded just like another whimsical prank.
Ran Muqiu had no idea how else to explain himself. In a panic, he tapped into the system to confirm his standing.
‘System, as long as I max out one target’s Heartbreak Value, the mission counts as complete, right?’ Ran Muqiu asked. ‘If the other target’s Value stays at zero, it won’t affect my mission clearance, will it?’
【It will not affect clearance,】 233 replied promptly. 【However, when a world contains multiple conquerable targets, maxing out the Heartbreak Value for multiple targets simultaneously will yield multiplier rewards.】
Ran Muqiu: ‘Oh.’
Double rewards were undeniably tempting. But when it came to Li Zhu, Ran Muqiu felt a lingering pang of guilt.
Ever since getting dragged into the world-hopping system, Ran Muqiu’s life had been a blur of constant, tedious hustle.
He was merely a passerby and a bystander across countless sub-worlds. Because he never truly invested himself, the people and events were fleeting clouds that left no real mark on his heart.
This was the first time he had been assigned such a pivotal role, and the first time he had grown close to characters who might be generated data—or perhaps living souls played by real people.
Initially, he had treated Li Zhu as his sole mission target, subjecting him to every form of humiliation imaginable short of physical contact. Later, he used Li Zhu as a pawn to provoke the protagonist gong, driving his mission progress forward.
The strategy had been wildly effective, advancing his progress at breakneck speed. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before Feng Qin’s heartbreak meter maxed out, allowing him to clear the world.
If conquering a single person was enough, Ran Muqiu had no desire to go out of his way to break another heart.
Besides, Ran Muqiu was soft-hearted by nature, and breaking Li Zhu’s defenses had proven nearly impossible anyway.
He had never been the type of overachiever who insisted on a perfect score; in his eyes, simply clearing the stage was good enough.
Fortunately, Li Zhu’s Heartbreak Value had remained completely flatlined, showing zero fluctuation from day one. Ending this childish game between them now shouldn’t be too late.
“I’m serious.” Having resolved to drop the protagonist shou route, Ran Muqiu shed his obnoxious scumbag persona. His voice softened into an earnest plea. “I really don’t want to keep up this relationship anymore. I’m not lying to you. Can we, can we just be friends from now on, please?”
“Being friends” was, of course, a lie. Once the mission was complete, he would vanish from this world entirely, leaving no chance for friendship.
Yet in this moment, his tone sounded completely sincere.
Li Zhu said nothing.
After a long pause, he finally asked, “Is it because of those texts?”
His voice sounded unusually hoarse, though Ran Muqiu couldn’t tell if it was just his imagination.
“Huh?” Stunned, Ran Muqiu blurted out, “What texts?”
Li Zhu did not miss the genuine confusion written across the boy’s face. “You didn’t see them?”
Ran Muqiu blinked, even more bewildered.
What was he supposed to have seen?
Lu Min had confiscated his phone last week and only returned it today.
Having sat in Lu Min’s desk drawer for an entire week, the battery was completely dead. Ran Muqiu hadn’t even had the chance to charge it yet, so naturally, he had no idea what messages might be waiting for him.
Why was Li Zhu suddenly bringing this up?
Ran Muqiu stared at him blankly, his mind racing through everything that had happened while he was without his phone.
First, he and Li Zhu had been texting back and forth during class, which led to the phone being confiscated. Then, he had secretly followed Li Zhu to the Twilight Bar, where he was caught red-handed by Lu Min and Feng Qin in turn.
Right! Twilight!
Ran Muqiu stiffened, staring speechlessly at the silent boy before him.
That night, Li Zhu had called his phone repeatedly outside the private booth. Had he sent a string of text messages after failing to get through?
Putting the pieces together, Ran Muqiu could easily guess what the texts contained:
Li Zhu had surely been asking whether it was him behind the door, and why he was there.
The memory of Feng Qin kissing and biting him against that thin wooden door flashed through his mind. Panic surged, and Ran Muqiu stammered nervously, “I—I saw them! I saw your texts right when they came in that night, I, I just forgot to reply.”
Li Zhu froze, staring at him in disbelief. “You forgot?”
Unable to come up with anything better, Ran Muqiu doubled down: “Yeah, I just forgot!”
Li Zhu fell completely silent.
The suffocating quiet sent a spike of anxiety through Ran Muqiu’s chest.
Afraid that saying anything more would expose his lie, he avoided Li Zhu’s eyes, blurted out a hurried “Bye then,” and bolted across the street to hail a taxi.
Only after collapsing against the cab’s back seat did he let out a long, quiet sigh.
High-reward mission worlds truly were far more exhausting than ordinary ones.
Every interaction with a target demanded razor-sharp focus—he was constantly terrified of breaking character or slipping up with his words.
And here, he had two targets to manage.
Still, now that he had ended the arrangement with Li Zhu, the protagonist shou route was officially closed.
All he needed to do was focus entirely on Feng Qin, max out his heartbreak meter, and clear the mission.
Turning the plan over in his mind, Ran Muqiu couldn’t resist glancing back through the rear window as the cab pulled away.
The sight made him freeze.
Li Zhu was still standing in the exact spot where they had parted, motionless, staring straight after him.
Though tall and lean, the boy stood with his shoulders slumped and his arms hanging limp at his sides. He looked heartbreakingly forlorn—like a dog abandoned by its master.
For as long as Ran Muqiu stared back in a daze, Li Zhu kept his unblinking gaze locked onto him.
A strange sensation tugged at Ran Muqiu’s chest, as if a hand were gently squeezing his heart.
It felt oddly soft.
The car began to pick up speed.
With both hands pressed against the glass, Ran Muqiu watched Li Zhu’s figure shrink into the distance. His lips parted, wanting to say something, but logic held him back. That person was just a cluster of game data—data he hadn’t even managed to crack, sitting at a flat zero. There was no reason to feel guilty just because the boy looked pitiful.
【Target [Li Zhu] Heartbreak Value +35!】
【Congratulations, Host! You have unlocked the Heartbreak Value for all ‘2’ targets in this world. Keep up the good work!】
Ran Muqiu went numb.
Before he could even process if he was hallucinating, the mechanical voice chimed again:
【Target [Li Zhu] Heartbreak Value +5!】
【Target [Li Zhu] Heartbreak Value +5!】
【Target [Li Zhu] Heartbreak Value +5!】
‘System.’ It took Ran Muqiu a long moment to find his voice. ‘I-is that Li Zhu’s heartbreak meter rising?’
The very same protagonist shou whose meter hadn’t budged a single point after months of effort?
Why was it that after months of fruitless labor, the numbers suddenly spiked the second he decided to give up?
More importantly, he hadn’t even tried to act like a cruel scumbag just now. Why had Li Zhu taken it so hard?
This made no sense!
“Driver!” Ran Muqiu’s thoughts scrambled into a panic. Unable to let it go, with that lonely silhouette burned into his mind, he blurted out, “Please turn around!”
Twilight Club, Back Alley
Several burly men hauled a few stumbling, unruly drunks through the heavy back door, tossing them onto the pavement one by one.
Dull thuds echoed as flesh struck the concrete, followed by a chorus of slurred, toothless curses.
The man leading them, dressed in a sharp suit, kicked a green-haired drunk out of the path. He shook his head at the muttering mess before turning to the slender youth leaning nearby.
“Xiao Li, keep an eye on them for a bit, will you? Just make sure they don’t start a riot.”
Leaning against the brick wall with one leg bent, the lean youth pulled a cigarette from his pocket and flicked a lighter. Hearing the request, he answered with a low, muffled grunt: “Don’t worry about it, Brother Xu.”
The suited man dabbed the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and smiled. “With you on it, I never worry.”
Located near a major seaport, City C was the region’s largest metropolis—a bustling, chaotic melting pot. Back in the eighties and nineties, street thugs engaged in theft, extortion, and violent turf wars rode the economic boom to amass staggering fortunes.
When policies tightened and authorities cracked down with iron fists, some went behind bars while others laundered their assets. The few who survived the purge transformed themselves into local titans capable of shaking half the city with a single footstep.
Today, high-end nightclubs dotted City C, but the truly massive establishments could be counted on one hand. Every single one was tied, directly or indirectly, to those shadowy figures.
Twilight was one of them.
Venues rooted in that era were never entirely clean. Even if Twilight now marketed itself as an exclusive, upscale lounge, beneath the gilded surface, it remained a creature of the underworld.
Especially in the South District. Less developed than the East District, this area was crawling with petty thugs and troublemakers—one moment of carelessness, and a brawl would break out in the venue.
Li Zhu had come looking for work here on his own about a year ago.
The kid was ruthless and vicious. Clearly just a high school student, he fought with a brutality that rivaled any seasoned bouncer hired from the streets. The boss trusted him and fully intended to promote him.
Once Brother Xu left, dead silence settled over the alley. A few of the drunks sprawled on the pavement were even snoring.
The narrow backstreet hung heavy with the pungent stench of stale liquor, cheap perfume, and cigarette smoke.
After a while, the green-haired punk—less thoroughly wasted than the rest stirred awake first.
Having taken the steel-tipped toe of Brother Xu’s dress shoe to his tailbone, a sharp ache flared the moment he moved, drawing a muffled curse from his throat.
Scanning his surroundings, Green-Hair realized the men in black suits were long gone. The only one left was a tall, lean silhouette crouching near the wall beneath the streetlamp.
A closer look revealed a young boy. His arms hung loosely over his bent knees, slightly overgrown bangs shadowing his eyes like a dispirited stray dog.
He held a cigarette between his left fingers, though he hadn’t taken a single drag. He simply stared blankly into the distance, letting the wisps of smoke curl upward and veil his face.
After watching him for a moment, Green-Hair crawled into a sitting position and barked, “Hey, kid.”
Seeing how young he was, Green-Hair assumed he was just a low-level lackey tagging along behind the venue bouncers to earn some pocket money.
Li Zhu didn’t speak.
It was as if he hadn’t heard a thing.
With a cold sneer, Green-Hair cleared his throat and raised his voice, calling out once more.
This time, Li Zhu finally reacted, though he merely cast an unreadable glance his way.
“Hey, kid.” Green-Hair squinted at him, raising an eyebrow as he pointed toward the cigarette between the boy’s fingers. “Hand one over to your big bro.”
Li Zhu’s motion of flicking the ash paused. He looked at him again, remaining crouched and motionless.
“Little bastard.” Green-Hair chuckled a coarse insult, followed by a seamless string of vile curses rolling off his tongue.
Only after he finished creatively insulting every branch of the boy’s maternal ancestry did the figure by the wall finally stand up. He walked over, crouched down, and handed over the half-burnt cigarette.
Green-Hair let out an arrogant scoff, barking bossily, “Light a fresh one for your grandpa.”
The boy didn’t answer, nor did he light a new one. Instead, with agonizing deliberation, he pressed the glowing cigarette cherry straight into the tenderest flesh on the inside of Green-Hair’s forearm.
A bloodcurdling shriek instantly pierced the narrow alley.
“Fuck your—”
He didn’t get to finish the curse.
Green-Hair’s head was slammed violently against the ground several times, followed by a barrage of knee strikes to his gut—each blow delivered with lethal intent.
Green-Hair collapsed into a limp heap.
Seconds later, he was hoisted up by his collar. The boy’s strikingly handsome yet chilling face loomed close, while his other hand held the dying cigarette butt. In a completely flat tone, he asked, “Still want it?”
Green-Hair’s face contorted in agony. “No, no, no—I don’t want it!”
Only now did real terror sink in.
Out on the streets, thugs didn’t fear the reckless, nor did they fear hotheaded brats—they feared reckless hotheaded brats.
People like this had no weaknesses, zero sense of restraint, and were the quickest to rack up a body count.
Green-Hair clearly hadn’t expected Twilight to harbor such a psycho. Spitting a mouthful of bloody saliva, he began whining for mercy.
The boy’s brow furrowed, as if irritated by the noise. He reached out and clamped his hand tightly around Green-Hair’s neck and jaw, choking the sound right out of him.
His grip was terrifyingly strong and utterly merciless. Green-Hair’s face turned the color of raw liver, unable to squeeze out a single syllable. Feeling his windpipe on the verge of snapping, he genuinely thought his life would end in this alley tonight.
Suddenly, the suffocating grip loosened.
Out of the corner of his eye, the boy glanced toward a distant corner. A flicker of dazed realization passed over his brow, instantly dispelling the murderous aura from his face, replaced instead by a trace of fluster and bewilderment.
Green-Hair clutched his neck, gasping desperately for air. He tried to follow the boy’s gaze to thank whichever passerby had unknowingly saved his life.
Yet he only managed a fleeting glimpse of a slender silhouette before taking another kick.
“Don’t move.”
The boy seized Green-Hair’s wrist again, pinning him completely. But instead of beating him further, he pulled the punk’s fist toward himself.
Green-Hair stared at him in absolute terror, his drunkenness instantly evaporating.
“Hit me right here.” Li Zhu tilted his face slightly, paused for a beat, and added, “Don’t touch the face.”
His tone was detached, yet laced with a bizarre undercurrent of manic excitement that made Green-Hair’s blood run cold. Paralyzed with fear, he didn’t dare move a muscle.
Blood was still trickling from the gash on Green-Hair’s scalp, running past his temple down to the corner of his mouth. Paired with his wide eyes and agape jaw, it painted a grotesque mask of pure dread.
“Are you deaf? I told you to hit me.” Gripping the punk’s wrist, Li Zhu’s lips curled upward, a nearly euphoric smile spreading across his pale, handsome face. “Put some weight into it. Make it bleed, and you can leave. Understand?”