Before transmigrating into a novel, Jiang Yuqiu had been a college student—clear-eyed but far from foolish, with a score of 695 on the national college entrance exam.
Transmigrating into a book was something anyone could experience. It was no big deal. He had only spent three grueling years in high school, taken the exam for nothing, and wasted a score of 695.
He didn’t care. Really.
Sure, he’d lost the chance to attend a prestigious university, but he now held the vital position of hand-shaking lemon tea specialist at a bubble tea shop!
Wasn’t the whole point of going to college to make money? He was earning four thousand yuan a month now. What more could he want?
Besides, in the real world, he had merely been an unremarkable student at a famous university.
But here, without him, how many people would be unable to drink his hand-shaken lemon tea?
Jiang Yuqiu pounded the fragrant lemons in his shaker and smiled faintly.
“It’s only 695 points. Nothing special.”
A startled cry rang out behind him.
“Yuqiu!”
Jiang Yuqiu turned around, still smiling. “What is it, Manager?”
Manager: “!”
Why was he smiling so frighteningly? I haven’t even started exploiting him yet. How has he already lost it?
The manager took the shaker from Jiang Yuqiu’s hands. The lemons inside had nearly been pulverized into mush.
Looking at Jiang Yuqiu’s expression, the manager asked cautiously, “What’s wrong with you lately? Are you in a bad mood, or are you tired? Do you want to take a break?”
“Nope.” Jiang Yuqiu picked up another shaker and dropped in several slices of fragrant lemon. “I’m in a great mood.”
Accompanied by the bang, bang, bang of the lemons being mercilessly beaten, Jiang Yuqiu smiled brightly.
“And I’m not tired at all.”
Manager: =。=
That strength…
He certainly didn’t sound tired. It felt like Jiang Yuqiu had enough power to pound the manager’s skull into powder.
Just then, a girl with a ponytail walked in and said to the cashier, “Hi, I’d like a Spring River Peach—”
When she spotted Jiang Yuqiu behind the counter, her eyes lit up. She immediately changed her order.
“No, no, I want a hand-shaken lemon tea. Handsome, please beat the lemons for a little longer. I like it sour—the more sour, the better.”
The manager hesitated, unsure what to say.
Jiang Yuqiu gave the girl a faint smile. “Of course.”
As she watched the pretty young man rhythmically smash the lemons in the shaker, the girl’s expression grew increasingly complicated.
Even die-hard fans didn’t hate their idols’ real-life girlfriends this much. Handsome, what did the lemons ever do to you?
After receiving her lemon pulp tea, the girl quietly exited the shop.
Once she was gone, Jiang Yuqiu held up the cracked shaker and said mildly, “Manager, this shaker is a little flimsy. I’d like to request a sturdier one.”
Manager: “...I’ll get you an iron one. Actually, forget it. You should switch to a different position.”
—
After finishing his 9-to-9, seven-days-a-week shift, Jiang Yuqiu made his way through the city at night.
Although the job only paid fourteen yuan an hour, he had still managed to take home a full load of exhaustion and resentment.
What a fulfilling day.
Jiang Yuqiu rode his beloved secondhand Giant bicycle, full of energy and in an excellent mood.
He turned into a narrow alley to take a shortcut. There had originally been two streetlights here, but for some reason, neither of them was working tonight.
As expected, every day after transmigrating into a novel was filled with racing blood pressure, heart attacks, and cerebral thromboses.
Hee-hee!
Jiang Yuqiu cheerfully fiddled with his bicycle bell twice, then called out in a friendly tone to the empty darkness of the narrow alley:
“Excuse me, are there any wandering ghosts around here? If not, I’ll be coming through!”
The alley remained completely silent.
Well, of course. How could any wandering ghost have more resentment than he did?
Jiang Yuqiu asked again, “Not even Ox-Head and Horse-Face?”
The narrow alley: …
Looks like the oxen and horses down in the underworld don’t need to work overtime. Unlike the ones in the mortal world.
Jiang Yuqiu: “Then what about the God of Wealth?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, a black shadow appeared at the mouth of the alley. It swayed toward Jiang Yuqiu like a zombie from a zombie movie.
Jiang Yuqiu: ?
The figure stopped in front of Jiang Yuqiu, then swayed and collapsed across the ground, blocking the Giant bicycle’s path.
Jiang Yuqiu slammed on the brakes and leaned over to take a look at him.
What was going on? Was this guy trying to stage a fake accident?
Jiang Yuqiu silently pulled out his phone, aimed the camera at the man lying on the ground, and snapped a nine-grid collage of photos.
When something happens, don’t panic. Take out your phone and post to Moments first.
He pretended to compose a caption: “The first corpse of autumn. So cool, yet somehow heartwarming. Thanks to Mother Nature for the gift.”
Jiang Yuqiu secretly glanced at the man on the ground, but the other person showed no reaction.
Jiang Yuqiu had no choice but to keep acting. He put on a villainous smile and spoke in a deliberately raspy voice. “Since you came looking for trouble yourself, don’t blame me for being merciless. Heh heh heh.”
A stray cat by the roadside jumped in fright, its fur standing on end as it bolted away.
Jiang Yuqiu: …Sorry.
The man on the ground still showed no reaction. Jiang Yuqiu began to suspect that the man had quit watching short videos. Otherwise, how could he be this calm?
Unable to keep playing a murderous psychopath, Jiang Yuqiu’s expression turned cold. “If you don’t get up right now, I’m calling the police.”
The man continued lying there without moving. His tall body sprawled across the narrow alley, almost completely blocking Jiang Yuqiu’s way.
Jiang Yuqiu’s patience ran out. “So you’re not getting up? Believe me, I’ll run your face over with my bike.”
A car drove past the mouth of the alley with its high beams on, briefly illuminating the corners of the man’s eyes and brows.
When Jiang Yuqiu saw the bloodstains on the man’s shirt, he froze.
-
Jiang Yuqiu tossed the bloodstained towel into a basin and rubbed his aching arm.
A tall man lay on the hard bed beside him. The low-wattage incandescent bulb shone across his high, straight nose, making it look as though a layer of frost had settled over it and emphasizing how pale his face was.
Jiang Yuqiu touched the wound on the man’s head, then checked his breathing.
If Jiang Yuqiu had encountered someone like this in the real world—a mysterious, injured man with no clear identity—he would have called the police immediately. But this was a novel world.
He didn’t know how other people had transmigrated into books, but his own experience had been absurdly ridiculous.
Half a month earlier, Jiang Yuqiu had been playing a game in his dormitory when Lin Zhaozhao sent him a link to a novel. There was a cannon-fodder character in it who shared his exact name, and Lin Zhaozhao told him to read it when he had time because the plot was deliciously melodramatic.
Jiang Yuqiu casually asked, “Just how melodramatic are we talking?”
Lin Zhaozhao replied with a lewd cat meme: “Sister-in-law, open the door. It’s your brother-in-law.”
Jiang Yuqiu: …
He had to admit, Lin Zhaozhao knew his tastes all too well.
Besides being an academically outstanding top student, he was also clever, talented, handsome, and easygoing. He got along with every classmate.
He could discuss refined literature with scholars above, gossip and shoot the breeze with Lin Zhaozhao below—in short, his interests were broad, and he was practically perfect.
Intrigued by Lin Zhaozhao’s bait, Jiang Yuqiu clicked the link, hoping to explore the repressed human nature hidden beneath the constraints of a moral society.
After all, top students were naturally eager to learn.
Jiang Yuqiu had barely clicked open the link and skimmed through half the synopsis when the dormitory suddenly lost power. When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived in this world.
If Jiang Yuqiu hadn’t been so certain that Lin Zhaozhao was a complete computer novice, he would have thought she’d cracked some kind of high-tech system just to prank him.
Although he had no idea where the plot of this novel was headed, he remembered one key word—melodrama!
Melodrama was great. Jiang Yuqiu was grateful for melodrama!
It was melodrama that had led him to pick up a man who looked like he came from an impressive background in the middle of the night!
Although the man had nothing on him to prove his identity, his bearing, clothes, and overall appearance practically screamed domineering CEO. He was a walking gold bar.
The identity Jiang Yuqiu had taken over had no education, no connections, and barely managed to achieve financial freedom by making lemon tea by hand. There were enough lemons to circle the earth.
Fortunately, a giant gold bar had fallen from the sky.
In Jiang Yuqiu’s eyes, the man on the bed glittered like gold. He stood guard beside his “gold bar” and poked the man’s cheek.
“I dragged you back here, bandaged your wounds, changed your clothes, and wiped you down. When you wake up, you’d better know how to repay a debt of gratitude. Don’t turn out like Li Mouyin or Fu Mouxing…”
Before he could finish, his finger was suddenly caught in a firm grip.
The man on the bed had opened his eyes at some point. His pitch-black pupils flickered twice.
Jiang Yuqiu brightened. “You’re awake?”
The man didn’t respond. His gaze gradually lost focus, and then his eyes closed once more.
Disappointed, Jiang Yuqiu pursed his lips and pulled his finger free from the man’s palm.
The rental apartment the original owner lived in had only one bed, so Jiang Yuqiu had no choice but to climb onto the hard mattress and squeeze in beside the man.
He didn’t know how much time had passed before daylight burst through the window. The harsh rays pierced the thin curtains and spilled into the room.
After sleeping like that, Jiang Yuqiu’s back and legs ached all over. He turned his head and discovered that one of his legs was draped over the strange man’s waist, while his arm was twisted into an extremely awkward position against the man’s chest, his palm resting on his own right shoulder.
…No wonder he was so uncomfortable.
The main problem was that the bed was too small. It had cramped his sleeping style.
Rubbing his shoulder, Jiang Yuqiu sat up. The quilt draped over his shoulder slipped down, and his pajamas were wrinkled into a hopeless mess.
He had just gotten out of bed and was about to wash up when his sleeve was suddenly tugged.
Puzzled, Jiang Yuqiu turned around and met a pair of pitch-black eyes.
