The first week of military training was drawing to a close, but since there were no days off during the entire training period, even when the weekend rolled around, none of the students felt happy. On the contrary, the thought of two more weeks of training ahead only made their suffering feel twice as bad.
After a whole week like this, most of the new freshmen were about medium-well done — and that was referring to their tanned skin. Once the full three weeks of training were over, they would be fully cooked and even slightly charred.
Mu Yue's dorm mates fared much better, though, because the sunscreen they used actually worked as advertised. While everyone else was at a medium-well tan, their skin was only lightly tanned. As for the brave ones who skipped sunscreen entirely, they didn't even need to wait three weeks to be fully done — they were already as dark as could be right now.
As for Mu Yue herself, her skin was barely even tanned at all. This made her stand out extra noticeably every time they lined up for drills. She was not just paler than everyone else, she also never seemed to sweat, and if you stood next to her, you could catch a faint, soft fragrance, as if she was in a completely different layer of existence from the rest of the group.
No matter if they were standing beside her during drills, or randomly paired up with her for group activities, every single person, guy or girl, would find their face flushing without meaning to.
"Has that senior just walked past for the third time already?" Xiang Xin quietly whispered to Xiaoya. Xiaoya had been assigned to the same group as them early on, so they had gotten familiar with each other after spending so much time together.
"Yeah, I guess the campus is just so big he must have gotten lost by accident," Xiaoya joked, and everyone around who heard her laughed.
It was break time now, and the students didn't stand on ceremony, sitting in the shade of the nearby buildings. The trees on this sports field were all scrawny and weak, barely big enough to shade a single person, so the only spot they could rest was over by the bleachers. But everyone knew how those bleachers were — they barely blocked any sunlight at all, and they themselves were still scorching hot from the sun.
There was nothing else over on this side of the sports field, so walking past three times in a row was more than a little suspicious.
And he was dressed so flashily too, in a crisp white T-shirt and white sneakers, pretending to hold a leather-bound book in his hand. Xiang Xin and Xiaoya had already seen no fewer than three guys pull this exact same look over the past week.
Sure enough, when he passed by for the fourth time, the senior was holding a bottle of water in his hand, and he headed straight over to their group. Even if his target wasn't Mu Yue, it was definitely going to be one of the girls in their group.
When that senior walked over and found almost everyone staring at him, before he could even open his mouth to speak, his face turned bright red, as red as a boiled shrimp.
When Mu Yue looked up at him, the guy got so flustered he could barely even stammer out his words.
"Cl... classmate, this is for you to drink."
"Thanks, but no need," Mu Yue refused politely. She took a sip of her own water, didn't spare the awkward senior a single extra glance, and instead waved her hand towards the distance.
Everyone else immediately craned their necks to look, only to see it was just another girl, so they lowered their heads in disappointment. They had been hoping they'd get to see some juicy drama to gossip about.
They didn't get their show, but Mu Yue did get to enjoy something — watermelon, and it was ice-chilled too. Crisp, sweet and refreshing, on a sweltering hot day where the heat was enough to make you pass out, a few bites of that was way better than any half-hearted gesture from those generic senior admirers.
Xiang Xin and Xiaoya also got lucky and were each handed a slice of watermelon. The melon was brought over by Chu Xiaoshi. On the first day of freshman registration, she had been too busy to even get a few words in with Mu Yue, and later, remembering how miserable her own military training had been back in the day, she had specially chosen the hottest, most sweltering hour of the afternoon to come deliver the watermelon to Mu Yue.
You had to hand it to her, that move completely outdid every single one of those generic seniors. A plain old bottle of water could never hold a candle to the charm of ice-cold watermelon.
The other students were so envious that they kept licking their dry lips. Some bold, sweet-talking ones went up to her, calling "Senior, Senior" nonstop, saying they also wanted to eat watermelon and asked if she could help buy some, adding they would pay whatever price she named.
Chu Xiaoshi had nothing else going on anyway. Looking at this group of younger schoolmates, she felt a surge of fond, nurturing affection and agreed immediately. She even said she was going to borrow a trolley to haul the watermelons over for them, and told anyone who wanted some to place their pre-orders quickly.
The scene got lively in no time, which made Xiang Xin extremely anxious — she wanted a piece of that money too!
She immediately started weighing the feasibility of selling watermelons at the military training grounds the next day, wondering if it would be a good business move. But soon, she realized with disappointment that her classmates only wanted iced watermelon; unchilled ones would never sell. She was stuck in military training herself, so there was no way for her to get a large amount of ice or a fridge that she could haul over to the training field.
This made Xiang Xin think again about the money-making method Wen Xue had mentioned. She truly did not care at all about sleeping with someone — back in that village, her parents had sold her off like a pig, and she would have ended up sleeping with a man anyway, not to mention being treated like a pig or a dog for the rest of her life.
The training program Sister Xue had introduced was genuinely tempting to Xiang Xin. Right now, this training class only had Sister Xue as the sole boss and instructor, but Sister Xue said that in the future, she would hire a full team, including stylists, psychology tutors, acting coaches and the like.
This job did pay extremely well, of course, but the hours were far too inflexible. She would have to be on call 24 hours a day, and had to go the moment the client made a request. Right now, it was impossible for her to juggle that with her school schedule.
There was nothing she could do about it — she would have to wait until her junior or senior year, when her schoolwork was less hectic, to free up the time for it.
Luckily, while selling watermelons during the day was out of the question, the evening presented a great opportunity.
There was an event scheduled for that night, the drill instructor had hinted clearly earlier. It was a talent show, and everyone did not have to wear their military uniforms, which drew a round of cheers from the crowd.
Right after the afternoon military training ended, the female students scattered in a hubbub, excitedly chattering about the night's event. A few of them even mentioned that they would definitely start a ruckus later to make the drill instructor put on a performance too.
Mu Yue was walking unhurriedly towards the dormitory building, when she ran into another guy in a white T-shirt and white sneakers riding a bicycle. She was on the sidewalk, and the guy, with one hand tucked in his pocket, followed along at the same unhurried pace. Along the way, he let out several strange giggles for no apparent reason, as if he was lost in his own silly little daydreams.
Xiaoya had her period, so she had gone back to the dorm early. Xiang Xin had gone to pick up dinner for Mu Yue, so Mu Yue was alone at the moment.
Mu Yue did not hate being pursued, but all these guys were just too lazy. All she could see in them was silliness and overconfidence. They did not put any thought into courting her, nor did they show off any of their good qualities. They just stood right in front of her out of the blue, acting like they fully expected her to say yes, and she could never figure out why they thought that would work.
In a situation like this, where there were few people around and they could talk quietly one-on-one, Mu Yue would still be fairly polite. But in broad daylight in front of a big crowd, like what happened during the afternoon military training, if she was in a bad mood, she would not even bother giving those guys the time of day. That was one of Mu Yue's biggest pet peeves.
Romance was a private matter. What was the point of deliberately picking a crowded public scene to confess? To show off? To grab attention? Or to put psychological pressure on the other person, forcing them to give in to the crowd's expectations?
If you really wanted to let the whole world know about your relationship, you could do that after the other person had already agreed to go out with you. Of course, that would be a different story if one party clearly asked for or hinted that they wanted a public display of affection.
Right at that moment, the guy on the bike seemed to finally snap back to reality after zoning out in his little daydream. He slammed on the brakes, just about to call out to Mu Yue with a cool, suave pose, only to tilt his head and find she was nowhere to be seen. Where did she go? She was just here a second ago, right? How did she vanish in the blink of an eye?
Mu Yue had flipped on her low-presence aura, and no matter if the biker guy was targeting her or not, she couldn't be bothered to deal with him. She'd burned through all her energy running around the whole afternoon, and right now the only thing she wanted was to get back to her dorm for dinner. Tonight's spread featured a fresh pine crab, a huge platter of sweet shrimp, plus three small side dishes of crisp, refreshing summer vegetables.
She could reach her character cards through the system, and the auntie who took care of her had already told her she'd bought a three-pound crab, prepared in three different ways — all of Mu Yue's favorite cooking methods. Mu Yue's mouth had been watering for it for ages.
She couldn't help but pick up her pace. Thanks to the low-presence aura, she walked right up close to two girls ahead of her without them noticing a thing. One of them was talking to the other in a persistent, earnest tone.
"Jiang Yuan, look look, this is the photo I took today of our drill instructor's abs. Isn't he hot? I did my research specifically, the instructor's single, his family owns a house and a storefront, he's an only child, his circumstances are totally great. Aren't you even a little interested?" The long-haired girl leaned against the short-haired girl with a teasing, suggestive look on her face.
The short-haired girl looked hesitant. "I... I don't really feel like dating right now, and besides..."
"Ugh! Us girls have to seize the chance when it comes!" The long-haired girl kept pressing her, shaking the short-haired girl's arm as she went on. "Military training only lasts three weeks. If you miss this window, you'll never find a guy this good again. Jiang Yuan, you're the best, you're so charming and you have such a nice voice, all you'd have to do is act a little cute and coo at him and he'd be putty in your hands. Then the rest of us girls could ride your coattails and get special treatment too, right?"
"That's not true..." The short-haired girl's voice really was the type a lot of guys went crazy over — naturally soft and sweet with a little lilt. Mu Yue was behind them, so she hadn't gotten a look at their faces. But she'd already picked up on the long-haired girl's real motive, and the malice behind it.
The long-haired girl kept badgering her, going on and on about how they were supposed to be best friends and all that, trying to sway the short-haired girl's mind.
Out of nowhere, Mu Yue spoke up coldly. "If this is such a great deal, why don't you go after him yourself?"
Both girls jumped, startled out of their skins by Mu Yue. The long-haired girl had been about to snap at her, but the second she laid eyes on Mu Yue, she shut her mouth, only muttering under her breath, "Some rich little lady hiding behind people and eavesdropping on private conversations?"
Mu Yue looked her dead in the eye. "This your private property? I'm just walking down the public road, and if I happen to overhear people talking, I'm supposed to plug my ears up right away?"
The long-haired girl's lips moved a few times, but she couldn't come up with a single retort.
The short-haired girl gave an awkward smile, not knowing what to say, and then heard Mu Yue say to her, "Friends who push you straight into a mess like that? If I were you, I'd keep my guard up."
Jiang Yuan froze for a second, then glanced over at the long-haired girl, bit her lip, and said to Mu Yue, "Classmate, I think you misunderstood something. We grew up together, Yuanyuan isn't the kind of person you're making her out to be. But thank you anyway for —"
Mu Yue didn't even bother to listen, and just walked right past them. Some people were hopeless romantics, and some people were total blind loyalists to their best friends.
They'd only just started their first semester at University A, and this girl was already spouting lines about how girls had to lock down a good catch early, even encouraging her friend to hit on their drill instructor just to get an easier time through military training. As if just because you said someone wouldn't hurt you, that made it true.
None of this had anything to do with Mu Yue anyway. The only bit of kindness she had offered was that single word of caution, and she did not plan to stretch herself any further than that.
[Counterattack Points +200]
Huh? That was a nice little surprise. Were those two girls from that White Moonlight novel?
Mu Yue headed back to the dorm first, and Xiang Xin had already dropped off dinner. The portions were extra large tonight, but since the meal was all seafood, when Mu Yue offered to share it this time, her roommates and Xiang Xin both turned her down.
Mu Yue did not push the matter. She sat down at her desk, pulled on a pair of gloves, and started peeling crab sticks to dip in the sauce, while asking the systems to pull up the novel plot related to those two girls.
Sure enough, they were characters from that White Moonlight novel. The one who had just given her Counterattack Points was the short-haired girl named Jiang Yuan. Her arc did not show up until the middle to late part of the story, and when she first appeared, she was working as a suggestive live streamer.
That day, the overbearing president boy group had called in people to keep them company, and Jiang Yuan was one of the people they invited. When the female lead walked in, Jiang Yuan was kneeling right at the feet of one of the overbearing president members.
The female lead blew up at the scene in the private booth, getting into a huge shouting match with the male lead, the overbearing president. All the entertainers who had been called in that night were chased out. All the other streamers were calling the female lead a total killjoy, complaining that she had ruined their chance to make good money. Only Jiang Yuan, who stumbled out of the club shivering all over and nearly got hit by a car, was saved by that very same female lead everyone else had been cursing.
All the female lead said was, "I've seen you before at University A."
That suggestive live streamer broke down in tears, and poured out her whole life story to this total stranger. She used to be a student at University A. If she had just focused on her studies, she might not have had a guaranteed path to unlimited success, but a University A diploma would have put her far ahead of most other people, and at the very least, she would never have had to scrape by with no dignity at all.
But disaster struck back when she was still in college. She listened to her best friend's advice and started dating her military training instructor. At first things seemed fine. The instructor was a little rough around the edges, but he doted on her, and for a while she thought she had found true love, even thanking her best friend over and over again. Then she got pregnant, and she was still three months shy of the legal marriage age.
At first she wanted to get an abortion, but her boyfriend refused to let her, and his mother did too. They made her all kinds of grand promises, and kept persuading her that if she just waited a couple more months, they could get their marriage license, make everything official, and as a pregnant student she would even get to enjoy all sorts of special benefits at the university.
She wavered, and that was when her nightmare truly began. What kind of "benefits" could a pregnant student even get in class? Like the kind where you are sitting in a lecture hall full of people, and suddenly you have to rush out to throw up, drawing every single eye in the room straight to you? Her roommates had no idea what was going on, and got in trouble for not reporting it, until their relationship completely fell apart.
Jiang Yuan thought the solution was just to take a leave of absence from school to have the baby. But the moment she moved into her boyfriend's family home, she realized just how huge a mistake she had made. When you get something for nothing, no one is going to value it. Her boyfriend and his whole family completely dropped their nice act, and before long her whole life turned into a total mess.
Mu Yue was speechless after reading that part. So it wasn't just a silly college fling, she ended up pregnant, had the kid, and eventually became a suggestive live streamer.
She had been dealt an absolutely amazing hand of cards, and she had played it so badly it was a total disaster. Mu Yue felt no sympathy or pity for her. That part of the story mentioned that Jiang Yuan's parents, teachers, and a bunch of her close classmates had all tried to warn her to think twice, but she had still chosen to stand by her bestie and her dear boyfriend.
Mu Yue slurped up a sweet shrimp, and kept scrolling further through the plot.
After the female lead listened to Jiang Yuan recount her miserable life, she said sympathetically, "You poor thing," then added a couple of encouraging lines like "Life is still beautiful, you have to hold on," and finally handed her 100 yuan to take a taxi home. After that, the two never crossed paths again.
Yet Jiang Yuan ended up becoming a diehard fan of the female lead.
The development seemed pretty normal, and this plot point was supposed to highlight the female lead's beauty and kindness—she had not only pulled a soul teetering on the edge of disaster back from the brink, but truly saved a life. It made perfect sense that the person she saved would turn into a loyal fan.
But Mu Yue just couldn't shake the feeling that something felt off as she read it.
She peeled another shrimp, chewed it slowly—it was glutinous, sweet, and absolutely delicious. What was wrong here?
She re-read the female lead's final two lines of dialogue, and the part about the 100 yuan, and suddenly a lightbulb went off in her head.
No way! Based on the female lead's established character, this person had been so distraught that she was wailing in the street and nearly got hit by a car. How could the female lead just brush her off with a couple of empty inspirational lines and 100 yuan? She didn't actually help this part-time streamer solve any of her pile of real troubles at all.
Compare that to how the female lead treated another of her diehard fans: she'd been as bold and imposing as a valkyrie, getting into a full on public fight right there on the street with that fan's abusive boyfriend.
Mu Yue raised an eyebrow. This female lead didn't seem all that kind at all, nothing like the genuinely pure, good-hearted Lin Xiaoxiao.
The line "You poor thing" probably didn't mean the female lead felt sorry for how tough Jiang Yuan's life had been. It meant she thought Jiang Yuan was a pitiable person—pitiably stupid.
On a whim, Mu Yue closed the novel and started searching online for variety shows that the female lead Wen Xue had appeared on. She watched the clips while she ate, trying to dig up any little clues about the real Wen Xue.
A classic line popped into her head at that moment: Woman, you've successfully caught my attention.
When her lovely dinner time came to an end, Mu Yue in the dorm room could hear wails of distress coming from the other dorms. This sort of thing happened every so often. The dorm's decor was dreamy enough, but the soundproofing was terrible—even the slightest noise from the hallway or the neighboring dorms carried right through.
The weather had shifted so fast that most of the clothes the girls had brought with them when they moved in now looked terrible on them. Outfits that used to make their skin look bright now made them look unnaturally dark, and the only thing that actually looked good on anyone was their camouflage uniform.
Mu Yue didn't have this problem at all. She threw on a random T-shirt and shorts, tied her hair up in a bun, and was all ready to go.
Noticing Fang Baiwei standing in front of her open wardrobe, motionless for ages, Mu Yue called out to her. Fang Baiwei heard her, stopped overthinking what to wear, grabbed her phone and walked over, a complicated look on her face.
Mu Yue could tell right away that it almost certainly had something to do with the Fang family.
The first thing Fang Baiwei said as she sat down was, "Fang Surou's back at the Fang family's place."
Mu Yue was a little surprised. "That fast?"
Fang Baiwei nodded, her expression even more tangled. "She says she's pregnant with my good-for-nothing older brother's child."
Mu Yue was speechless for a second. What are the odds of running into one pregnancy plot right after another today?
"If the Fangs won't let her move back, she's threatening to kill herself and the baby, and completely ruin the Fang Corporation's reputation..." Fang Baiwei rubbed her temples, looking dazedly at the message on her phone. "I never thought she'd come up with a way to get out of that house this quickly."
The real daughter's adoptive parents are the very definition of a nightmare family, with every over-the-top toxic trope you could imagine: a gambling-addicted father, a money-grubbing mother, a coddled younger brother named Yaozu who the whole family pins all their hopes of carrying on the family line on, and doting grandparents who worship the idea of a male heir above all else.
Fang Baiwei grew up at the very bottom of the food chain in that household, beaten, scolded, and ordered around nonstop. The moment she started developing at the age of twelve, the whole family treated her like livestock to be fattened up, scheming nonstop to sell her off for a good price. She went through all those infuriating events that make your blood pressure spike: her parents pulled her out of school without her say-so, refusing to let her attend junior high just to force her to marry a middle-aged man who'd already been married once.
Worst of all, Yaozu found out Fang Baiwei wasn't actually his biological sister, and started trying to molest her. Even more disgusting, his mother and grandmother were willing to help him get away with it. If Fang Baiwei hadn't fought tooth and nail to save herself back then, she would have long ago turned into a hollow, walking corpse in that den of horrors.
Ever since she was reborn, Fang Baiwei has never once gone back to that house. It was her personal hell, the deepest, darkest shadow in her heart. The sadistic freak who tortured and abused her abroad only hurt her body, but that whole pack of beasts back at the adoptive home abused her both physically and mentally.
She had thought about reporting that family for the child swap that happened all those years ago, to send them all to prison, but Fang Surou wouldn't agree to it, and neither would the wealthy Fang family that the two girls were swapped into. There was no evidence left from events so long ago, and Fang Baiwei had no one to turn to for help to dig up proof on her own.
Mu Yue patted Fang Baiwei on the shoulder, pulling her back from the dark spiral of her thoughts.
"Actually, getting Fang Surou to come back to that awful house is easy. All you have to do is dangle a profit in front of her, and she'll jump at the chance."
Fang Surou never had to go through any of the beatings or verbal abuse that the real daughter in these stories usually suffers, right? The author would never write those scenes for her. Even in the original novel, when the female lead tricked the fake daughter back to the adoptive family's home, Fang Surou just had to say that going back to the Fang family would bring her endless piles of money, and she got to walk right back out safe and sound without suffering a single bit of hardship. Meanwhile, Fang Baiwei didn't even see Fang Surou coming back that soon, got ambushed out of nowhere, and ended up hurt again.
Just thinking about that garbage plot made Mu Yue's fists clench with rage. She took a deep breath, then said to Fang Baiwei, "Don't worry about it right now. She's not targeting you at the moment. Let them all fight each other slowly for a while."
Thanks to Mu Yue's meddling, Fang Surou's top priority right now is picking a fight with Yu Qingqing, the soon-to-be eldest daughter-in-law of the Fang family, instead of going after Fang Baiwei, who doesn't have much of a role in the family's current drama.
A showdown between the ultimate hopeless romantic and the ruthless fake daughter? Mu Yue had to admit, she was kind of curious to watch that play out.
She'd tell her system helpers to hack into all the electronics in the Fang family's house tonight, and she'd sneak a peek at the chaos. It was bound to be a hilarious, lively scene, no doubt about it!
Fang Baiwei thought it over for a second, then nodded. "You're right."
Mu Yue looked at the girl in front of her, who was so easy to feel sorry for, and said gently, "If you want to shake them off for good, you have to climb to a height where they can never reach you ever again. If you don't, the second they remember you exist, they'll drag you right back down into that muck with them."
"Focus on doing the thing you're best at."
Fang Baiwei had always dreamed of rising to that kind of height like Mu Yue said, but she couldn't even picture what that would look like. And the thing she was best at?
"I... I think the only thing I'm any good at is studying." Fang Baiwei said after thinking for a long time, looking a little embarrassed in front of Mu Yue.
After all, Mu Yue was good at everything besides just studying, she excelled at every single thing she tried. Fang Baiwei could barely imagine Mu Yue ever running into any kind of trouble at all.
Mu Yue smiled meaningfully. "Exactly. Studying. Sometimes, getting really, really far with your education really can change everything for the better."
Ever since she read the original story and saw how the female lead went through so much suffering, only to travel back in time to the day of the college entrance exam and still manage to get into a top 985 university, Mu Yue had been left deep in thought. As she read further about all the miseries the female lead endured in her past life, a solid suspicion began to take shape in her mind.
Before the female lead was taken back by the Fang family, how many hours a day did she even get to sit down and study to finish her homework? Even after she started school, she was constantly targeted and made trouble for, yet her grades always stayed at the very top. Mu Yue had always wondered, if the fake rich daughter hadn't sabotaged her college entrance exam back then, with the level of mastery she had over her studies, what score could she have actually gotten?
That original author was truly utterly detestable. The female lead needed to have a standout trait, so they made her academically gifted. But they wrote her as a top student while never giving her the time to actually study. In her past life, she was bullied so relentlessly that she had no time to hit the books. In this new life, she was so focused on plotting revenge that she still had no time to spare. The author just never wanted to let the female lead carve out a bright, successful path for herself through her own hard work, huh?
Mu Yue never liked this kind of fake "feel-good" story. She was determined to see what kind of incredible achievements Fang Baiwei could reach if she poured her entire heart and soul into her studies.
So Mu Yue guided her gently, "Baiwei, do you know where the most academically talented people in our country end up working?"
The first word that popped into Fang Baiwei's head was "university professor", but after a second of thought, she got the feeling that wasn't what Mu Yue was referring to. Before she could even answer, she saw Mu Yue slowly break into a warm smile, weaving a grand, magnificent dream right in front of her.
Mu Yue said to her, "They work to serve the motherland."
What's the biggest, most powerful backer you could possibly have? It's the nation, of course! No matter your deadbeat father, your heartless mother, that fake rich daughter, or any other lowlife out to get you, the full support of the country can knock all of them out in one go!
