Chapter 29

Ruan Ning stared at the screen. The anticipated message that read “You are no longer friends with this user” never came. She slowly let out a shaky breath, her shoulders relaxing.

Outside, it was pitch black, punctuated by the occasional hoarse caw of a crow.

Only then was Ruan Ning convinced that what had just happened was a dream. She’d been too tense, and she hastily withdrew the string of nonsense she had sent.

These days, she treated Bai Xingmiao like a deity. Every conversation was strictly limited to gaming topics, and she never dared add a single extra word. Scrolling up through their chat history, the screen was filled with her respectful queries:

[Great One 00, are you there?]

[Great One, want to play ranked? We’re short one person.]

[Wuu, Great One, please notice me~]

Naturally, this mysterious string of gibberish couldn’t remain in that sacred chat window.

Ruan Ning long-pressed on the garbled text, but before the command menu even popped up, Bai Xingmiao’s plain white avatar sent a 【？】right under her hysterical code.

Ruan Ning jolted as if she’d seen a ghost.

Bai Xingmiao, who should have been asleep at this hour, was not only online but had replied instantly—it felt more and more like that dream.

Panicking, she sent a pitiful cat meme to brush it off: [Sorry, that was just me mashing the keys before I was fully awake. Please ignore it, Great One...]

Bai Xingmiao was a person who maintained distance. Since becoming friends, their meaningful exchanges could be counted on one hand. And since Ruan Ning was thin-skinned and had a strong sense of boundaries, whenever the other party showed no interest in chatting, she would back off without bothering them with a single extra word.

And so they had exchanged terse, businesslike messages for several weeks. Aside from each other’s handles and avatars, they knew nothing about one another.

Ruan Ning planned to explain herself and then go to sleep, when Bai Xingmiao suddenly asked: [Under a lot of pressure lately?]

Ruan Ning’s eyes widened. If she remembered correctly, this should be the first time since they’d become friends that Bai Xingmiao had initiated a question to her.

Not knowing what it meant to be told she seemed stressed, she thought it over briefly and answered:

[Not really. It’s just that I dreamed you deleted me from your friends list.]

She always felt that since her IQ was already outmatched, she might as well be honest and lay her cards on the table.

Bai Xingmiao asked again: [Why would I delete you?]

This was truly strange. Bai Xingmiao never asked about such small matters, and one could almost read a hint of concern for Ruan Ning in his plain tone.

Ruan Ning dared not overthink it, afraid it was just her imagination, so she sent a smiley face: [Haha, so you mean you’d never delete me, right?]

Bai Xingmiao, like an impenetrable wall, tossed the question back at her.

[Are you very afraid I’ll delete you?]

Ruan Ning’s breath caught. Of course she was afraid. The thing she feared most right now was that Bu Chen hadn’t kept his promise and had spilled the beans about her. Bai Xingmiao knew everything, and her nightmare had come true.

But Bai Xingmiao’s reaction seemed normal, so she couldn’t tell whether he actually knew her secrets or not.

Ruan Ning sent another cute cat meme: [Of course I’m afraid. I worked so hard to get you as a friend, and that alone is enough to brag about in our group. Please, Great One, do me a favor and don’t take away my bragging rights, okay?]

Bai Xingmiao rejected her flirty cajoling: [You’re overthinking it.]

That finally put Ruan Ning at ease. She sent a series of cute memes: [Haha, I knew dreams were the opposite. After all, we just got first place in ranked together a few days ago. You must not want to lose such a good teammate, right?]

Ruan Ning thought it odd. Normally, she was terrified of saying a single wrong word in front of Bai Xingmiao, but tonight she had loosened up a lot, showering him with compliments and memes alike, and the lines just kept coming.

Maybe that phrase from her flirting class was right: in the dead of night, even the hardest, strongest person becomes gentle and sentimental, so the best time to win someone over is in the deep hours.

Bai Xingmiao replied with a series of 【……】, clearly exasperated with her rambling.

Ruan Ning wasn’t discouraged; in fact, she felt a subtle sense of pride at having taken the initiative.

From her observations these days, Bai Xingmiao wouldn’t waste a single word on things that didn’t interest him and would simply leave. Yet he hadn’t left. Instead, he’d kept up this desultory chat with her until now.

Feeling emboldened, Ruan Ning probed with a laugh: [Of course, what I’m most afraid of is that if you delete me, I’ll never get to meet you in person.]

[Why would you want to meet me?]

[Not just me—the whole group wants to meet you!]

[Everyone’s curious what the handsome, low-key Great One 00 actually looks like.]

[They say no one in the group has ever seen you, so of course I want to.]

[Great One, why do you never post any photos?]

By the end, Ruan Ning felt disgusted with herself, like some creepy netizen hitting on a girl for pictures. Still, she kept sending messages. Bai Xingmiao was a thousand-year-old glacier, and she would just have to work harder to melt him.

Whether with chisel or axe, she was determined to crack a fissure in that hard, unyielding shell.

[Great One, do you know? Some people say you’re disabled and that’s why you never show your face. You should come out and clear that up.]

[Great One, there’s a comic convention coming up. Are you interested?]

Ruan Ning fired off several messages, losing track of time until the other side fell silent for a long while. She tapped his avatar again.

Bai Xingmiao had gone offline at some point. How sneaky—with a black-and-white avatar, you couldn’t even tell when he’d left. She’d been talking to the air for over ten minutes.

Sleepiness finally hit, and she yawned, rubbing her eyes, then drifted off to sleep, content at last.

The next morning, Ruan Ning was woken by a long-missed system alert, the device creaking with mechanical electronic sounds.

[Triggered Task: Impersonate the heroine Zeng Shuya’s event.

Task Requirements: Take credit for saving Male Lead #2, earn his reward.

Failure Consequence: Consciousness erasure.]

Ruan Ning swallowed hard. So this was it?

The new task arrived so suddenly that she hadn’t had a chance to fully understand the system’s instructions for Bai Xingmiao yet.

As expected, the system’s final task was just as scummy.

In the original novel, after the villainess discovered that all her hard work had only served to dress Zeng Shuya’s victory, she hated Zeng Shuya with all her being and resolved to find a chance to humiliate her.

It just so happened that the school charity gala was approaching. The villainess plotted a nasty scheme to make the original heroine look ridiculous in front of the entire school.

Meanwhile, the oblivious Zeng Shuya, blissfully unaware of the scheme, attended the gala full of anticipation.

The original heroine was kind-hearted. She’d had smooth sailing in study and life thanks to patrons who came to her aid at every turn. Hoping to give back to society, she had long prepared a sum of money to donate at the gala.

The despicable villainess, on the other hand, had no interest in the school charity gala at all. None of the three male leads would attend, and the scale was smaller than the freshman ball. If it weren’t for her scheme, she’d rather spend the night clubbing.

The villainess endured the boring banquet, keeping a close watch on the original heroine. Finally, she spotted an opportunity when Zeng Shuya stepped out to use the restroom during a break.

The villainess followed Zeng Shuya out of the hall and was shocked to discover that she had saved the unconscious Male Lead #3, Bai Xingmiao.

Zeng Shuya, frightened out of her wits by the stranger collapsed on the ground, quickly ran to call for help. Seizing the opportunity, the villainess slipped in. By then Bai Xingmiao had come to, and with a guilty conscience for the sake of her task, she lied to him and claimed to be his rescuer, stealing all the credit.

However, in the end, Bai Xingmiao was still drawn to the virtuous, kind heroine and fell for her by a twist of fate. This infuriated the villainess to no end.

At the finale, it was Bai Xingmiao who first exposed the villainess’s true face. With his superior intellect, he tracked her down in some distant foreign land, and gave an extra push down her path of certain death.

After reviewing the plot, Ruan Ning felt a chill run down her spine and rubbed her aching temples.

She hated owing favors—she’d rather skip free samples at the mall than feel awkward for not buying anything after tasting. The system’s fraud script was practically stomping all over her principles.

But she swallowed the familiar frustration, thinking that this was the last task.

Her plan to get closer to Bai Xingmiao in person had been ruined by the incident at Jiang Yihao’s place, but their online connection was progressing smoothly enough. Ruan Ning sighed, and prepared for the final task.

A few days later, at the school charity gala.

It was the same familiar auditorium, the same familiar scene.

The whole room buzzed with lively chatter and laughter. Ruan Ning could barely tell it apart from the freshman ball.

She looked up at the portraits that had hung on the walls for centuries, wondering whether the people in the paintings ever got bored of watching banquet after banquet.

But this time, the atmosphere was noticeably more animated. Conversations were enthusiastic and eager, because a third of the semester had passed and classmates had grown much closer, gathering in small groups rather than standing stiffly as they had at the opening ceremony.

Ruan Ning felt a pang of guilt. She’d devoted all her energy to system tasks and missed the chance to get to know people. Seeing everyone chatting happily with friends, she felt an intense discomfort and loneliness.

With no one to talk to, Ruan Ning stood alone at the side, observing the crowd. The most dramatic change was in Zeng Shuya.

It had been a month since she’d last seen her. Zeng Shuya’s complexion was much rosier, and she wore a more refined dress, clearly from some upscale brand. After entering the cleaning company, she had saved up quite a bit of money and was gradually learning to dress well. She walked with more confidence and grace, hardly looking like the poor, desperate girl from before.

Clearly, she’d been doing well.

Ruan Ning, by contrast, had dark circles and a haggard look, with none of the vitality expected of a freshman. She looked like she’d just been released from prison. When she’d gone home last time, her parents had asked whether Iya was really that stressful.

Ruan Ning also noticed that almost no one was talking about Bai Xingmiao. Apparently, no one knew he’d be showing up tonight. If the girls knew the legendary genius was coming, the noise level would have been an octave higher.

Ruan Ning had been gaming with Bai Xingmiao online for so long that she’d almost forgotten he was that legendary academic genius everyone wanted to see. While all three male leads were popular on campus, Bai Xingmiao’s popularity clearly outpaced the other two.

After all, Iya was a top school packed with brilliant students, and people tended to put academic stars on an even higher pedestal.

And this mysterious male lead, so widely admired and talked about, was rescued by the heroine alone, sparking their connection. A classic otome romance.

Bored, Ruan Ning took a sip of the wine, but found it bland and uninspiring.

Before long, Ruan Ning noticed Zeng Shuya rise from her seat as if to step outside. The string inside her tightened. She put down her glass and followed.

Ruan Ning followed Zeng Shuya out of the auditorium and into the courtyard.

It seemed Zeng Shuya had drunk a bit too much and wanted some fresh air. She made her way down a long stone corridor, preserved with ancient characteristics, with only dim old-fashioned electric lights every few meters. A person could easily hide in the shadows without being noticed.

The laughter and music from the ballroom drifted faintly, making the courtyard feel even quieter.

Ruan Ning didn’t dare approach. She hid behind some bushes, watching from a distance.

Sure enough, after a few steps, Zeng Shuya suddenly stumbled upon a dark figure collapsed by the roadside, writhing in pain, then going still.

Ruan Ning held her breath, eyes wide, ready to spring into action at any second.

Zeng Shuya, who had been slightly tipsy, sobered instantly. She crouched beside the fallen figure and shouted, “Help! Someone’s fainted!”

But this spot was secluded, and the raucous music from the banquet drowned out her cries. Seeing no one respond, she dragged the unconscious figure with all her strength to a lamppost, then ran back into the auditorium to call for help.

Only Ruan Ning and the two people on the ground remained. Her heart raced as she crept cautiously toward them.

There, lying on the ground, was Bai Xingmiao. Though she had never seen his face before, in the dim lamplight she could make out his high-bridged nose and long, thick lashes. Lying flat, his waist was taut and lean, like a finely sculpted work of art.

Ruan Ning summoned her courage and walked over, calling out from a distance.

“Hey, are you okay?”

No response.

She crept closer and gently shook his shoulder. When she finally saw his face clearly, her heart nearly jumped out of her mouth.