Ning Yu carefully pondered this question.
After quite a while, she answered sincerely and directly:
"I would be sad."
She didn't hide her feelings, because that sensation had been very clear in the dream.
Shen Yiyue hadn't expected Ning Yu to be so straightforward; she had thought Ning Yu would beat around the bush.
"So... am I an important person to you too?"
She tentatively asked a question she had always wanted to ask but never dared to.
"Of course."
This time Ning Yu didn't hesitate, but nodded directly.
Shen Yiyue, as if she had been waiting for this answer for a long time, suddenly covered her mouth, looking like she was about to cry.
"Did I say something wrong? Why are you suddenly..."
Ning Yu, seeing her like this, thought she had made her sad.
"No, no, I just... I'm just really happy..."
Shen Yiyue quickly shook her head.
"I just received an answer I didn't dare hope for, so I'm very happy."
She showed a genuine smile and said to Ning Yu:
"So I won't disappear, and you can't disappear from my side either."
She wrapped both hands around Ning Yu's arm, acting coquettishly, making a sort of promise with Ning Yu.
"Alright."
Ning Yu agreed and turned to look at her, noticing Shen Yiyue's black hair was somewhat messy from sleep, and reached out to gently tuck it behind her ear.
This revealed her cute ear, which was already slightly red at the base.
Shen Yiyue seemed to realize her shy reaction had been noticed, so she turned her head away again, feeling too shy to look at Ning Yu.
However, seeing how gently Ning Yu helped arrange her hair made her heart feel warm.
Although Ning Yu usually appeared cold, now she could occasionally see emotions flowing from her heart.
She didn't want to be greedy; Ning Yu was already changing, and that was enough. She could and was willing to wait.
The night was still long, and Ning Yu didn't return to her own room to rest.
They chatted casually until the sky began to lighten, when Ning Yu realized Shen Yiyue had accidentally fallen asleep while listening.
She looked at Shen Yiyue's cute appearance as she slept sitting up and shook her head with a smile.
This silly girl didn't say anything even when she was tired, just forcing herself to stay awake to talk with her.
Ning Yu gently helped her lie down, covered her with a blanket, and then left her room.
Now she no longer had any doubts.
Because she had an unprecedented sense of existence.
......
Several days later.
Ning Yu sat in an empty apartment, waiting for Lin Hao.
He had contacted her again today, seemingly having made new discoveries. Ning Yu guessed it was about the virus metadata information.
Ning Yu had arrived at the agreed apartment early in the morning, waiting for Lin Hao.
Today was also Ji Mengyao's birthday. Last time, Shen Yiyue said Ji Mengyao had invited them over for drinks and dinner, so they would be going to Ji Mengyao's place tonight.
She and Shen Yiyue had both prepared simple birthday gifts for her.
Ning Yu was wearing the black baseball cap that Ji Mengyao had given her last time, though this time she hadn't tied her hair in twin tails. Ning Yu thought it was too troublesome, so she simply let her silver hair fall loose from behind the cap.
However, this did nothing to hide her beauty; in fact, her charm had been increasing lately.
After waiting a while longer, Ning Yu checked the time and noticed it was about 30 minutes past the agreed time, which seemed a bit odd.
Lin Hao was never late, and she usually arrived about 15 minutes early.
Such a long delay today was quite unusual.
Ning Yu narrowed her eyes in thought and waited another 10 minutes. By now, she had a thoroughly bad feeling.
Could it be... he had discovered something extraordinary?
This strong intuition made Ning Yu absolutely certain that something might have happened to Lin Hao.
She didn't hesitate any longer, left a note on the table in their special code that only the two of them could understand, and then climbed out through the window.
......
In a dark room, Lin Hao groggily woke up.
He felt a splitting pain in the back of his head, and his whole body felt dizzy with a strong sense of vertigo.
Where was he?
He touched the back of his head, and immediately felt something wet and warm, which alarmed him.
Looking at his hand, it was covered in blood.
His head must have been struck by some heavy object and was now bleeding, which was a very dangerous situation.
He struggled to stand up, having just pulled in his outstretched legs and trying to use his core muscles to rise.
"Bang!"
Intense light suddenly blazed on, making his eyes blur, forcing him to shield them with his hand.
"You're awake?"
A man's cold voice rang out.
Lin Hao's eyes hadn't adjusted yet, making it impossible to see who was there, but hearing that voice felt incredibly familiar.
"Yan Xing?"
Lin Hao spoke the person's name, and his eyes finally slowly adjusted, revealing a man wearing the same research team clothes as him.
He had short hair and slightly chubby cheeks, looking honest and simple, but his eyes now held cruelty and playfulness.
"What did you do to me? Wasn't I supposed to be in the team..."
Yan Xing was his colleague from the same research team, and like him, one of Zhuang Wugou's right-hand men.
However, Lin Hao's knowledge and talent far exceeded Yan Xing's, so Zhuang Wugou often favored Lin Hao, giving him many privileges and important tasks.
"I never thought you would do such a stupid thing."
Yan Xing said with a gloomy smile.
"Wh...what?!"
Lin Hao was shocked, not understanding what stupid thing he was referring to.
But he had indeed been keeping secrets from the Ark Organization, researching the virus serum's secrets, and had left a backdoor in the system database machine.
"You thought no one knew what you were doing, but old Zhuang discovered you long ago."
"I thought I had no hope of being valued and would have to work under you, following your orders."
"You, you, you just handed over this great opportunity to me? Hahaha!"
Yan Xing blurted out everything, seeming delighted at Lin Hao's misfortune.
"What... what are you talking about? What do you mean working under me, what opportunity?"
Lin Hao felt a chill in his heart, knowing he had been exposed. He hadn't expected Zhuang Wugou to have discovered him so early, so why act against him only now?
But he really didn't understand what Yan Xing was talking about, what opportunity, what about being above or below.
"You're still pretending?!"
Yan Xing seemed triggered by Lin Hao's questions, gritting his teeth and saying viciously:
"All your hard work and research, trying to curry favor, wasn't it just to gain old Zhuang's trust and become the second-in-command of the base! Stop acting like a good person!"
Lin Hao looked at him and finally seemed to understand what he was talking about.
Unfortunately, he had never thought about any of these things. Everything he had done was for his wife, Lin Xiaolu.
He just wanted to avenge her with his own hands.

s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!

he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...

nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.

d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!