With twenty minutes left before the second period ended, Feng Qin checked his phone for the twenty-fifth time.
Evidently failing to see what he wanted, his brow furrowed with impatient irritation. With a sharp snap, he locked the screen and shoved the phone into his desk.
Physics class in Class 3-2 was notoriously quiet; apart from the teacher’s low, measured lecturing, not a whisper broke the silence. With Feng Qin shifting around repeatedly, quite a few classmates stole glances back at him.
Feng Qin kept his eyes lowered without a word, radiating an oppressive, suffocating chill.
Half a minute later, he shot his hand up into the air. “Teacher, I’m requesting to go to the bathroom.”
Before the teacher could even answer, he pushed his chair back and stood up.
Halfway to the door, a voice called him to a halt.
“Student Feng, stop right there.”
The tall boy acted as if he hadn’t heard a thing. With long, urgent strides, he walked straight out of the classroom.
Lu Min frowned. Dropping a curt “self-study” to the suddenly murmuring classroom, he strode quickly after him.
He caught up to Feng Qin at the bottom of the Senior Three academic building.
The boy was leaning behind the corridor eaves on a phone call. After hanging up, his face was storm-cloud dark, and he slammed a brutal fist against the brick wall.
Lu Min walked over and stopped in front of him. “Student Feng, do not wander outside during class hours. Come back with me.”
Feng Qin had seen Lu Min approaching in his peripheral vision, but right now, he didn’t have the patience for small talk.
“Urgent business, Brother Lu. Just pretend you didn’t see me.” Feng Qin didn’t even look up. “If Old Man Zhong comes asking, just tell him I insisted on leaving and you couldn’t stop me.”
“What urgent business could you possibly have?” Lu Min cut him off, expressionless. “And mind your address.”
In his less than a year of teaching, Lu Min had dealt with plenty of troublemakers. Most of them learned to dial back their attitude once they realized which “Lu” family he belonged to.
The only two exceptions were Ran Muqiu and Feng Qin.
The former usually looked completely dazed and oblivious, but the second he did something wrong, he became remarkably adept at using his charms.
He seemed to know that whenever he turned those large, round, doe-like eyes on someone, nobody could stay mad at him. Even when caught red-handed at a nightclub, he had the brazen audacity to tug at the sleeve of a teacher no one dared approach and softly ask, “Please?”
The latter, meanwhile, was backed by a family background prominent enough to fuel boundless arrogance.
City C wasn’t huge. Tracing back a few generations, the Lu and Feng families shared tangled ties of kinship and business. They frequently crossed paths at year-end galas; technically speaking, Feng Qin was supposed to address Lu Min as “Young Uncle.”
“Oh—Teacher Lu.”
Feng Qin lifted his head to meet Lu Min’s gaze. A lukewarm smirk tugged at the corner of his lips as he drawled, “Then tell me, Teacher: my wifey is about to elope with someone else. Does that count as urgent business?”
Though he was smiling, there was zero amusement in his eyes; his raw anxiety was on full display. His tone carried none of the deference expected toward an elder.
Lu Min’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Such childish teenage romance drama would have earned a severe tongue-lashing from any other teacher.
While Lu Min had little interest in policing his students’ private lives, he could clearly sense the heavy hostility the boy harbored toward him.
This hostility wasn’t new. It had been there from the moment Feng Qin transferred into his class, originating from an unknown grudge, and was glaringly obvious right now.
Standing against the sunlight, the boy’s dark, sharp features were partially cast in shadow. In that instant, a realization struck Lu Min.
The silhouette of the boy who had reached out and dragged Ran Muqiu into the private booth at Twilight was identical to Feng Qin right now.
Lu Min pressed his lips into a tight, silent line.
Seeing that the man had finally fallen quiet, Feng Qin pocketed his phone, gave him a perfunctory wave, and said, “I’m off, Teacher Lu.”
True to form, Lu Min didn’t follow.
After a moment, he pulled out his phone and dialed a number.
“Someone’s heading over,” Lu Min instructed. “Just tail him. Don’t follow too closely—let him go in first.”
“The hell?” The volume on the other end spiked two octaves. “It’s rare to see you abuse your power for personal reasons. I thought I was finally going to meet my little sister-in-law! Hey, give it to me straight—is the one you’re looking for that same boy we saw at Twilight last—”
“Shut up,” Lu Min cut him off coldly. “No.”
Ignoring his friend’s exaggerated howling on the other end, he hung up immediately.
Standing in place for a few seconds, he pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose before turning back toward the classroom.
Ran Muqiu spent two chaotic, disorienting days inside the low-rent apartment, losing all concept of day and night.
At first, he was dazed by the barrage of heartbreak alerts, and then utterly terrified by the “Berserk Mode” warning.
The term naturally conjured grisly images of violent crime. Yet looking at Li Zhuo, Ran Muqiu felt that what the protagonist shou was doing to him wasn’t much better.
His skin was delicate, making the fading marks left behind glaringly obvious. Li Zhu, however, couldn’t wait a single second, determined to scrub them clean through sheer force.
His clothes having vanished in the earlier struggle, Li Zhu had stepped out briefly, only to return, scoop the curled-up boy from the bed, and carry him straight into the bathroom.
Without a washcloth, Li Zhu worked up a rich lather between his palms and stepped toward Ran Muqiu.
Outmatched in strength, Ran Muqiu curled into a tight ball amidst the steaming mist. Yet his tucked elbows and bent knees were gently but unyieldingly pried apart, and bit by bit, he was washed clean.
Over and over again.
In a haze, Ran Muqiu felt like a peeled peach. His thin skin grew feverishly flushed under the steam, the moisture dripping heavily over his delicate kneecaps.
Lowering his head to stare at them, he realized it wasn’t just water—his own tears were streaming down uncontrollably.
He felt utterly wronged.
He had to be the most pathetic failure of a scumbag gong in existence.
The kind destined to be publicly criticized by the Main System.
Before he could cry for long, his face was gently cupped and lifted.
Using his thumbs, Li Zhu wiped away the tears on both sides. Pausing briefly, he brushed his fingers against the boy’s clumped eyelashes. “Why are you crying?”
Ran Muqiu peeked at him, assessed the dire situation, bit his lip, and chose silence.
If the protagonist shou’s [Berserk Mode] is only this much, I-I’ll just endure it, Ran Muqiu thought through reddened eyes.
He soon realized how wrong he was.
At ninety-nine heartbreak points, the other’s objective went far beyond giving him a bath.
When he was carried back to bed, Ran Muqiu thought he was truly about to lose his innocence in this world. Tears poured down like an open faucet. Only later did he realize the boy was genuinely just kissing him.
Even if those kisses were terribly excessive.
With his lips, his fingers, and other things Ran Muqiu had never dared look at, Li Zhu touched every single spot that had just been washed with water.
It was like re-marking his territory, stamping down his own brand.
Even so, it truly remained just touching.
Much like his Heartbreak Value, which hovered stubbornly at ninety-nine without crossing into one hundred, Li Zhu held fast to a final line, never stepping over it.
He was the protagonist shou, after all; Li Zhu was far gentler than Feng Qin.
From beginning to end, he never spoke a harsh word to Ran Muqiu. Even when his grip tightened past his control and hurt him, he would quickly lean down to shower him with soothing, apologetic pecks.
Even if he couldn’t help losing control again shortly after.
If one ignored the bruising marks left on Ran Muqiu’s skin—far more intense than Feng Qin’s—he was practically the ideal, tender lover.
Ran Muqiu was drowning in shame. If his stamina hadn’t been completely drained, he would have dug a hole in the ground and buried himself whole.
Nothing was more suffocating than completely derailing the relationship between the protagonist gong and shou.
Although the role he was assigned was explicitly that of a third party, the plot had veered into territory he had never anticipated.
Unlike that night of drunken haze, he was forced, in a state of absolute sobriety, to cooperate with an equally sober Li Zhu.
And gradually, things began to shift.
To keep from falling, or to keep it from hurting, Ran Muqiu had to wrap his arms around the boy’s waist, pulling himself closer.
If one looked past the stray tears clinging to the corners of his eyes, his compliance didn’t even look forced.
It wasn’t even half-hearted resistance anymore.
He had become a genuine heartbreaker—a two-timing, fickle flirt through and through.
A hundred times worse than the original script’s arrogant school bully.
Late at night, Ran Muqiu curled up on the sofa beneath a thick blanket, his head nodding off as sleep pulled at his eyelids.
Faint sounds drifted from the kitchen.
Wearing an apron, Li Zhu was cooking porridge for him.
Ten minutes later, he walked over holding a bowl of steaming porridge.
The protagonist shou’s cooking cheat remained as reliable as ever. Genuinely starving, Ran Muqiu dropped his stubbornness, holding the bowl with both hands and taking small, careful sips.
His eyes were red-rimmed and his eyelids swollen like little walnuts, carrying a lingering trace of grievance. Yet the way he curled up, resting his lips against the rim of the bowl, made him look thoroughly well-behaved.
Lowering his gaze to the boy’s bare ankles peeking out from the blanket, Li Zhu reached out and touched them.
Ran Muqiu was already eyeing him from the corner of his vision. Having grown wary, the moment Li Zhu touched his foot, countless absurd memories flooded his head. He flinched, trying to pull his foot back.
He didn’t succeed.
The boy’s ankle was delicate and slender; Li Zhu’s hand circled it loosely, leaving room to spare.
“Are you cold?” Li Zhu asked.
The heating system in the low-rent building was old and failing, unable to produce real warmth. Sitting in the living room for a while allowed the chill to seep under the blanket bit by bit.
Ran Muqiu was cold, but he was far more terrified of Li Zhu starting something again. Biting his lip, he followed the momentum of the hold and kicked out at him.
He put all his remaining strength into it, but because he was thoroughly exhausted, it landed off-target as a soft, harmless nudge.
Li Zhu froze.
Ran Muqiu blinked, instantly realizing how wrong that kick had looked. Taking advantage of the boy’s daze, he swiftly retracted his leg, cocooned himself entirely in the blanket, and turned his back on him.
After a moment, hearing no movement, Ran Muqiu peeked over his shoulder. The young man had his head lowered, the faint curve of an amused, pleased smile playing at the corners of his lips.
Ran Muqiu muttered to the system: ‘Is the protagonist shou actually a masochist?’
Li Zhuo’s heartbreak value had reached ninety-nine last night—meaning Ran Muqiu was just one point away from clearing the mission.
Throughout the past day and night, Ran Muqiu had constantly tried to farm that final point so he could vanish on the spot before Li Zhu’s eyes.
Especially during Li Zhu’s most excessive moments.
He had hit him, cursed at him, and had even been coerced while half-delirious into admitting that he was the one behind the door at Twilight that night.
Yet other than earning firmer, more relentless teasing, it yielded nothing.
For reasons unknown, the heartbreak value remained stubbornly stuck.
Li Zhu knelt before Ran Muqiu to pull a pair of socks over his feet.
Watching the handsome contour of the boy’s nose and brow from this angle, Ran Muqiu felt more and more that he had never truly understood the protagonist shou.
His heartbreak value had stayed flat for months without reason, shot up to ninety-nine over two days, and now ground to a dead halt. Ran Muqiu had zero clues.
Perhaps the only way to uncover the truth was to check the “texts” Li Zhu kept bringing up.
Unfortunately, his phone still had no battery and couldn’t power on.
Just as Ran Muqiu was plotting to secretly borrow Li Zhu’s charging cable, the rapid clatter of hard-soled shoes echoed up the stairwell, sharp and jarring in the dead of night.
Moments later, violent pounding rattled the front door. After several heavy thuds, the person paused, their deep voice barking through the wood: “Open up.”
Recognizing the voice instantly, Ran Muqiu and Li Zhu froze at the same time.
Li Zhu’s brow furrowed, his expression darkening instantly.
“It’s Feng—”
“Yeah.” Li Zhu stood up, took the empty porridge bowl from Ran Muqiu’s hands, and set it calmly in the kitchen sink.
His movements were unhurried. By the time he walked back out, the pounding had escalated into furious kicking against the metal door.
The person outside seemed driven to pure madness, striking the door with enough force to splinter the frame off its hinges.
Li Zhu walked over and pulled the door open.
The visitor was indeed Feng Qin.
As their eyes met, neither looked surprised to see the other behind the door, offering no words of greeting.
Because without a second’s hesitation, Feng Qin drove a vicious front kick straight into Li Zhu’s chest.
He held nothing back. Caught off guard—or perhaps, for reasons of his own, never intending to dodge—Li Zhu was sent flying backward.
His body slammed against the wall with a sickening, heavy thud.
Only now did Ran Muqiu’s brain, blanked out by Feng Qin’s sudden intrusion, snap back to life.
Throwing off the blanket, he scrambled off the sofa, rushed to Li Zhu’s side, and struggled to pull him up.
When he looked up, moisture shimmered in his eyes, whether from terror or raw shock.
“Why are you hitting him?” Ran Muqiu yelled at Feng Qin, his hands trembling violently.
Yet Feng Qin’s current state was dreadful—hardly looking much better than Li Zhu.
He was still in his school uniform, but the hem was caked in dust and his face bore fresh bruises. His bloodshot eyes were laced with scarlet veins, yet his gaze hadn’t shifted away from Ran Muqiu for a single second.
The boy was wearing an oversized T-shirt that clearly wasn’t his size as makeshift sleepwear. Only one foot had a sock on, while the other pale, bare foot rested flat against the cold floor, his toes curling inward from sheer fright.
Looking further up, that gorgeous little face was filled with panic. His eyes and lips were swollen, blooming with a tender, petal-pink flush.
Feng Qin had kissed him before; he knew better than anyone what those lips looked like after being sucked and kissed thoroughly. Not to mention the slender white neck exposed by the loose collar of the oversized shirt—it was dotted with dark marks, making it painfully obvious what had transpired.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Feng Qin jerked his chin toward Li Zhu, offering a cold, mirthless sneer. “You vanished for two whole days without answering a single call. I was going out of my damn mind. The second I traced you to Twilight, I got ambushed by his people in the dark.”
“I’d like to ask, too.” Feng Qin scanned the modest, cramped apartment and let out a vicious laugh, his expression contorting with fury. “What, it’s the twenty-first century and we’re playing kidnapping now?”
Li Zhu wiped the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand. Bracing against the floor, he pushed himself upright with deliberate slowness.
The moment he moved, the group standing behind Feng Qin took a synchronized step forward.
Only then did Ran Muqiu notice the men flanking Feng Qin. Every single one was clad in a sharp black suit and stood well over 1.9 meters tall. If they tucked handguns into their waistbands, they would look like a full-blown mafia syndicate.
Ran Muqiu’s head buzzed.
It’s over, it’s over, it’s completely over.
This time, the plot had derailed beyond recognition.
As the protagonist gong holding the lion’s share of the spotlight in the original script, considerable ink had been dedicated to establishing Feng Qin’s formidable background.
Aside from classic, over-the-top tropes like owning multiple downtown shopping malls, the author had sprinkled in a few shady underworld connections that usually skirted the edge of censorship.
Even so, having “ties to both the underworld and legitimate business” had only been a throwaway world-building detail in the original text. The protagonist gong running the scumbag cannon fodder out of the country to study abroad hadn’t actually relied on those syndicates.
In short, these men in black suits should never have appeared in this place at this moment.
Much less point their weapons at the very person meant to be their future “Young Mistress”—the protagonist shou.
‘System, isn’t this plot completely messed up?’ Ran Muqiu whispered frantically. ‘The protagonist gong and shou are about to kill each other.’
233’s mechanical voice carried a rare trace of hesitation: 【A diagnostic was just run; the sub-world’s operational framework is stable. On the contrary, Host, you—】
‘Can you initiate emergency measures?’ Ran Muqiu pressed urgently. ‘They’re actually going to beat Li Zhu to death! There are so many of them and Li Zhu is all alone. He’s the protagonist shou—if anything happens to him—’
【Apologies.】 233 sounded genuinely conflicted. 【The sub-world has not triggered any structural collapse alerts. I am only authorized to protect the host’s safety and have no clearance to intervene in the actions of other characters.】
Ran Muqiu was terrified out of his mind.
Meanwhile, Feng Qin’s patience had run out.
Fixing the two inside the apartment with a murderous glare, his face twisted with malice as he pointed at Li Zhu. “See him? Beat him to death for me.”
Trained and disciplined, the men in black surged forward at the young master’s command.
Li Zhu watched them with icy detachment. Gently nudging Ran Muqiu out of harm’s way, he rose to his feet, showing not a flicker of fear for what was about to unfold.
His eyes burned with equal ferocity. From the look on his face, he intended to slaughter Feng Qin right here.
What happened next became a blur in Ran Muqiu’s memory.
All he saw were those tall, wall-like men swinging their fists toward Li Zhu. Without a second thought, Ran Muqiu hurled himself straight into the fray.
Amidst the chaotic brawl, someone swung a broken wooden stool leg, slamming it squarely across Ran Muqiu’s back.
A sickening, heavy crack resonated through the room.
First came a horrified gasp: “Xiao Qiu, you—”
Then, another furious roar erupted.
“Ran Muqiu, are you an idiot? Why the fuck are you taking hits for him? Do you have no idea how frail you are?”
The enraged voice barked at the men behind him: “Get out, all of you get out! Go call an ambulance, now!”
Both voices faded in and out, sounding distant and muffled. Ran Muqiu couldn’t make them out clearly as his body went limp, sliding down from someone’s arms.
His ears rang with deafening static—perhaps from the blow drawing blood, or perhaps because two distinct system alerts were firing wildly in his mind, throwing his senses into disarray.
【Target [Feng Qin] Heartbreak Value +3!】
【Target [Feng Qin] Heartbreak Value +3!】
【Target [Feng Qin] Heartbreak Value has reached 95!】
【Target [Li Zhu] Heartbreak Value +1!】
【Target [Li Zhu] Heartbreak Index has reached 100!】
【Congratulations, Host! You have successfully conquered ‘1’ target, meeting the world-line completion criteria! Would you like to extract from this sub-world?】
【Yes: Extract from sub-world】 / 【No: Continue mission】