Song Kening suddenly thought of a question she had been afraid to consider.
Could it be because she had entered the novel and disrupted the plot, causing Lu Zhiyu to become this unlucky?
What if, because of her appearance, Lu Zhiyu really couldn’t make a comeback?
If he couldn’t rise again, would she still be able to go home?
In this world, she had no education, no money, and couldn’t even find a job at a milk tea shop.
Lu Zhiyu was her only hope. She was counting on him becoming successful three years later and helping her find a way back to the real world.
If even he couldn’t turn things around, she would never be able to go home.
Suddenly, her nose felt sore, and tears welled up without warning.
Song Kening desperately tried to hold them back, but she couldn’t. Her eyes burned, and tears began rolling down her cheeks.
She raised her hand to wipe them, but the more she wiped, the more they came.
In the end, she simply stopped trying and crouched on the floor, burying her face in her knees as she sobbed.
Her crying grew louder and louder—from suppressed sniffles, to quiet sobs, and finally to uncontrollable wailing.
Lu Zhiyu froze.
He looked down at Song Kening crouched on the floor.
The hem of her floral dress dragged across the floor. A few strands of hair had come loose from her bun and stuck to her tear-stained, flushed ears.
“W-why are you crying?”
For once, there was a trace of helplessness in Lu Zhiyu’s voice.
Song Kening lifted her face.
Her cheeks were covered in tears, the tip of her nose was red, and her eyes were swollen like walnuts.
“I dragged you down.”
Her voice was hoarse and muffled, thick with tears.
Lu Zhiyu frowned.
“Zhou Yuqing did this to me. What does it have to do with you?”
Song Kening couldn’t answer.
She couldn’t tell him that she had come from another world.
She couldn’t tell him that she had replaced the original female lead.
She couldn’t tell him that she suspected her appearance had completely disrupted the original plot.
All she could do was bury her face back into her knees and cry even harder.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find a way to make money.”
Lu Zhiyu’s tone was softer than usual.
Song Kening sniffled and raised her head, wiping her face messily with her sleeve.
“But with him interfering like this, you can’t even find a job related to your field. The platform froze your money, and companies are rejecting you. What else can you do?”
As she spoke, an idea suddenly popped into her head.
“How about delivering food first?”
Lu Zhiyu’s expression visibly froze.
“Delivering food?”
“Yeah, food delivery.”
The more Song Kening thought about it, the more practical it seemed. Her tears hadn’t even dried as she began calculating.
“Food delivery has a low barrier to entry. You don’t need an education. As long as you have an electric scooter, you can work.”
“You make a few yuan per order. If you do dozens of orders a day, you can easily make two or three hundred yuan.”
“We can use that to cover our living expenses first. Once we save some money, then—”
She suddenly stopped.
“No, wait. Food delivery requires an electric scooter. We don’t have money to buy one.”
Lu Zhiyu looked at her strangely.
“No. What food delivery? What are you talking about?”
Song Kening looked at him.
His expression wasn’t asking what kind of job food delivery was.
He seemed to be asking what the very concept of food delivery meant.
She suddenly remembered something from when she had been following this novel.
The author had once posted a note saying that when they ordered food delivery, the delivery rider had arrived twenty minutes late, and the two of them had gotten into an argument at the entrance of the residential complex.
The author had gotten so angry that they decided this novel’s world wouldn’t have food delivery or courier services.
At the time, Song Kening had laughed in the comments, saying the author was using the novel to take revenge for a personal grudge.
There was no food delivery.
No courier delivery.
No ordering milk tea to your home.
No online shopping with packages delivered to your doorstep.
In this world, the logistics system only existed between businesses. It had never expanded into ordinary people’s daily lives.
Song Kening stood frozen.
The tears on her face hadn’t dried yet, but her expression had changed from sadness into strange excitement.
“Lu Zhiyu.”
Her voice still carried a hint of tears.
“Listen to me.”
“You see this recruitment app on our phones? What if you developed an app like Meituan or Ele.me?”
“Restaurants could register on the platform and upload their menus and prices.”
“Then consumers like me could use the app from home. For example, I could order a cup of milk tea, choose what I want, place the order, and pay.”
“Then the system assigns the order to a nearby delivery rider. The rider picks up the food from the restaurant and delivers it to my home.”
“Do you understand?”
As she spoke, she gestured with her hands, drawing one line from the restaurant to the customer, then another from the rider to the customer.
Finally, she connected the three lines into a triangle.
Lu Zhiyu said nothing.
He leaned back against the chair, his brows slightly furrowed.
His eyes fell on the triangle Song Kening had formed with her thumbs and index fingers.
After a moment of silence, his eyes suddenly lit up.
“I understand.”
“Merchant side, user side, and rider side—three separate interfaces, connected through a dispatch system.”
“The user places the order, the merchant accepts it, the system assigns it, and the rider picks it up and delivers it.”
“Money flow, information flow, and logistics flow operate separately before converging in a central backend.”
Song Kening secretly marveled.
She had only explained the basic idea, yet he had already worked out the entire architecture.
As expected, he really was the smartest male lead in the novel.
“But—”
Lu Zhiyu changed the subject.
“I need a computer. I only have a phone right now. I can’t build anything with this.”
“Development will take at least six months. Without several million yuan in startup capital, there’s no way to get it running.”
The hope that had just ignited in Song Kening’s heart instantly went out with a pop.
Several million yuan.
Right now, they were struggling to hold on to even 900 yuan.
She bit her lip and started thinking again.
A computer.
Capital.
Time.
None of these three problems could be avoided.
Suddenly, her eyes lit up.
“How about you go to a construction site and carry bricks first?”
Lu Zhiyu’s expression visibly froze.
“Carry bricks?”
He repeated those two words as though he hadn’t heard correctly.
“Yeah, carry bricks.”
Song Kening counted on her fingers.
“Construction workers can make at least 200 yuan a day.”
“Thirty days a month—that’s 6,000 yuan. Work for two months and you’ll have enough for a computer.”
“Construction sites usually pay daily or weekly, so you won’t have to worry about delayed wages.”
“You can work at the construction site during the day and work on your project at night.”
“Carrying bricks is tiring, but you don’t have to use your brain. That way, you can save your mental energy for coding at night.”
“And besides, if you go somewhere like a construction site, Zhou Yuqing definitely won’t expect it. He won’t be able to target you.”
“Even if he finds out, all he can do is laugh at you.”
“That way, you can endure the hardship now and make a comeback later.”
Lu Zhiyu’s expression became complicated.
He remained silent.
Song Kening could tell what he was thinking.
A graduate of Peking University.
Founder of NEX Technology.
Developer of a military-grade chip.
A man who had once been worth hundreds of billions.
Putting the words construction worker and Lu Zhiyu together felt like an absurd joke.
“I know it’s hard for you to accept right away.”
Song Kening carefully tried to persuade him.
“It’s only temporary. There’s nothing shameful about it.”
“Once we have a stable income and our living expenses are covered, we’ll have the energy to figure out how to take on small projects. Right?”
The final word carried a slightly coaxing tone.
Lu Zhiyu still didn’t answer.
The silence stretched on.
Song Kening didn’t dare say anything else.
She crouched on the floor, looking up at him. There were still traces of tears on her face, her eyes and the tip of her nose red from crying.
After a long while, Lu Zhiyu finally spoke.
“You go make dinner first.”
Song Kening knew this wasn’t the time to pressure him anymore.
She nodded and used the wall to pull herself up.
But the moment she stood—
Her vision suddenly went black.
It wasn’t the ordinary lightheadedness that came from standing up too quickly.
It was a powerful wave of dizziness pressing down from the top of her head.
The entire room seemed to spin.
The floor rushed toward her face.
She instinctively reached for the wall, but her hand was weak and merely landed limply against it.
Then her stomach began to hurt.
Another wave of coldness surged from deep inside her body.
Even though it was the middle of summer, with temperatures around 36–37°C, she suddenly felt freezing cold.
So cold that goosebumps covered her skin.
Cold sweat broke out almost instantly—on her forehead, her back, and her palms.
“What happened to you?”
Lu Zhiyu’s voice seemed to come from very far away.
Song Kening wanted to say she was fine, but her lips moved without producing a sound.
Her face became visibly pale, and even her lips lost their color.
Lu Zhiyu had already stood up.
He took one large step toward her, reached out, and grabbed her shoulders.
The moment his palm touched her arm, he could feel her trembling even through her clothes.
“Why are you so pale?”
Song Kening leaned against the wall.
Her voice was weak and faint.
“I don’t know… My stomach hurts so much… I’m so cold…”
As she spoke, her body slowly slid downward.
“I don’t know if I got heatstroke…”
Lu Zhiyu didn’t ask anything else.
He immediately pulled out his phone and dialed 120.
After hanging up, he slipped the phone into his pocket.
Then he bent down, wrapped one arm around Song Kening’s back, slipped the other beneath her knees, and lifted her completely into his arms.
She was so light.
After half a month of eating mostly vegetables, her already small frame had become even lighter.
She weighed almost nothing in his arms.
Lu Zhiyu carried her and rushed downstairs.
He pushed open the iron gate.
People in the alley turned to look at them one after another.