Chapter 39

Hmm…

Li Shuoxing looked at the newly acquired title with a subtle expression.

Why would I get a title and a reward even with a favourability of -1000?

It can’t be that my message during the day was finally seen by the developer, so they urgently gave me a patch to keep me?

Li Shuoxing thought that was really possible.

Although this patch had an implication of not shedding tears until you see the coffin ¹ 不见棺材不落泪 [bù jiàn guān cái bù luò lèi] is a metaphor for not giving up until complete failure. , it could correct its mistakes, which proved there was still saving the system.

Li Shuoxing gave it some thought then received the title.

The moment he received it, a starry cloud of light smoke separated from the title panel, changing into different colours. After making several beautiful circles in the room, it suddenly jumped onto the little person who’d just come out of the bathroom and merged into his body.

The moment it merged, the colour of the smoke was fixed on light pink.

The light wasn’t abrupt, but just like a lamp at night, making him brighter in the darkness.

Li Shuoxing: “…Cub.”

Su Mingqian: “What?”

Li Shuoxing looked at the “Dreaming (1/5)” sign slowly emerging and fading above the little person’s head and said, “…Well, have a good dream. I hope you can dream of the past.”

He was quite curious as to what effect would appear in the game after dreaming was triggered.

Su Mingqian was already in bed.

He was in his pyjamas and was pulling up the blanket when he saw the sentence appear on the screen and suddenly stopped.

He stared at the screen for a couple of seconds, then suddenly raised his hand and touched the screen.

When the light screen was touched by his finger, ripples like water emerged.

Such ripples woke Su Mingqian up.

Su Mingqian put down the blanket and sat upright on the bed. His posture became formal, and his voice was also extremely serious. “Ximu, if my behaviour this morning has hurt you in any way, I solemnly apologise to you.”

Li Shuoxing: “???”

He was a little confused.

He wondered if he’d gotten distracted halfway through causing him to miss something.

Li Shuoxing: “Cub, why are you so serious all of a sudden…”

Su Mingqian continued, “From the moment I woke up until now, you’ve always been there for me. You’ve helped me very much…”

And it’s not because you want something from me.

Admittedly, you may have liked me a little.

But after being rejected by me, your attitude towards me hasn’t changed.

You’re still as concerned about me as always.

Su Mingqian felt profoundly sorry.

And this was directly expressed in his favourability.

+50+50+50!

Another combo of three 50’s.

Li Shuoxing watched as the -850 in the favourability pool became -700 before even staying steady for two minutes.

How can I put it… It suddenly feels that there’s in fact nothing bad with a favourability of -1000. In addition to getting a new achievement and a new skill, doesn’t it look that it’s gonna be added back before I even know what’s going on…

Su Mingqian: “So, if there’s anything I can do from now on, Ximu, you must not be polite to me.”

Li Shuoxing: “Mm…”

Su Mingqian: “I’m going to sleep, you should go to sleep early too. I hope you have a good dream too.”

Li Shuoxing: “Mm…”

Su Mingqian: “And, if you come tomorrow, you can just use your voice. It’s more convenient.”

Li Shuoxing: “Mm…”

Su Mingqian: “Also.”

Li Shuoxing copied and pasted, like second nature. “Mm…”

It was truly an evening of never being able to say goodbye.

A hint of a smile was added to Su Mingqian’s voice. “I forgot to tell you, your voice is very nice too.”

+50!

After that sentence, there was finally no sound from the game.

The little person lying in bed closed his eyes. His sleeping posture was very good, just lying flat on the bed, the blanket pulled up to his chest, his two hands stretched out from inside folding over the blanket.

He also exhaled a breath.

That breath carried a little heaviness at first, then became lighter and lighter, slowly becoming lazy, just like its owner when he was sleeping, who was finally relieved of all the burdens in his mind and could dream soundly.

The system narration refreshed a sentence at the right time.

[Su Mingqian falls asleep.]

Li Shuoxing also went offline.

He lay in bed and looked at the time on his phone.

1:38am.

It was past his usual bedtime, but Li Shuoxing wasn’t sleepy at all.

After thinking silently in bed with is arms crossed for a moment, he suddenly got up from the bed, went to the computer, turned it on, brought up the document, and checked the chapters to be published tomorrow.

No mistake.

In the chapters to be published tomorrow, there was indeed a plot about Su Mingqian’s rusty copper strip identifying the different grades of items.

In the original novel, the way the rusty copper strip identified items was to mark them with different colours in Su Mingqian’s vision, with white representing items of little to no value and gold representing the highest value items.

But now…

Li Shuoxing tweaked a few words in this section, turning gold into pink.

Then he added Su Mingqian’s dumbfounded reaction to this.

[Su Mingqian frowned with bafflement. “Why are the highest grade items represented by pink?”]

[The rusty copper strip didn’t give an answer to this.]

The corners of Li Shuoxing’s mouth lifted slightly. After changing these two small points, a new idea flashed in his mind.

So, he then added some small plots in the following two chapters.

First, was Su Mingqian accepting this setting, albeit with bafflement.

Second, was the aftermath of accepting this setting. From then on, whenever he saw something pink, he couldn’t help but stop and stare at it for a couple of seconds to determine whether it was a treasured item or not.

Over time…

Alas.

Cub Qianqian just doesn’t understand.

The sweeter and cuter he acts, the more people want to cue him—

The corners of Li Shuoxing’s mouth rose higher and higher. As he wrote and wrote, he got high from writing again, and the sky outside the window had inadvertently become bright.

It was only when he noticed that the sun was shining down on his desk and the lights in his room were dimmed by the sun’s rays that Li Shuoxing snapped out of this strange state.

He checked the results of his night’s work.

In addition to adding and revising some of the previous content about Su Mingqian, he’d written three more chapters of the subsequent plot, a total of 8,000 words.

In other words, in one day yesterday and early morning today, he’d written 20,000 words!

Li Shuoxing sucked in a breath when he calculated it.

Turns out I never knew my terror…

The number 20,000 was indeed a bit beyond Li Shuoxing’s expectations, giving him a sudden feeling of overnight wealth. When he put the document into the backend, he hesitated a little. Considering that this pink light spoof might make some readers uncomfortable, he simply added an extra chapter, putting in three chapters with a total word count of 8,000.

An extra chapter.

Nothing ever happened.jpg

Li Shuoxing reviewed the document again and kind of wanted to see readers’ reactions to this content. However, at nine o’clock, there was still a red envelope rain in the game, so he had to post a little earlier than usual and set a wave of updates at 8:30 first.

Ten minutes later, it was time for the update.

The three chapters were released at once.

Li Shuoxing reckoned it was still early and people wouldn’t see the update so fast, so he simply got up from his seat, went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face, and made himself cereal for breakfast.

Fifteen minutes later, when everything was done, Li Shuoxing returned to the computer. He noticed the novel discussion forum beginning to stir, as if the readers had been shocked by this morning’s update.

“I was still lying in bed when I was woken up by the update reminder. Have I lost my eyesight, has Eunuch actually updated 8000 words in one wave today?”

“I specially went to the web page and clicked into each one to see the word count, and there’s actually 8000 words in total! Not two chapters turned into three, nor one chapter turned into three!”

“Did Eunuch take the wrong medicine today? He hadn’t even updated this much for the opening screen recommendation before.”

“Eunuch, tell us the truth. Do you have anything against the opening screen recommendation?”

“Oh wow, pink light?”

Skimming to here was equivalent to seeing a keyword. Li Shuoxing was energised. He clicked into the post and saw that just fifteen minutes after the update, this post had not only appeared but also had 34 replies, a very difficult deed.

Original Poster: “Is this Ximu’s bad taste?”

#1: “Look, a pink light is shining on the horizon.”

#2: “I feel as baffled as Sister Qian.”

#3: “I seem to have peeked into Eunuch’s mind.”

#4: “Come to think of it, it’s actually kinda funny, especially when Sister Qian is standing in the square, staring seriously at the pink piggy, itching to throw an identification skill.”

#5: “Are you all little girls? Actually liking pink. [dog head]”

#6: “Men can’t like pink? You’re discriminating. [meow head]”

…

Li Shuoxing skimmed over it for a few minutes, reading the first few replies. He was kinda itching to say something.

But… I’m the author of the book. It’s not very good to leave a comment with a throwaway account.

How about this, I’ll add a tag to a character with a throwaway account.

Terminal’s app had a character column in the novel interface of every novel. As long as the reader had a certain fan value of the novel, they could freely add tags and character relationships to the novel’s characters, upload pictures for the characters and so on in the character column.

Once a tag appeared in the character interface, Terminal users could give it a heart, and everyone could give one heart per day. Like a combination of check-ins and likes, the one with the most hearts would be displayed under the name of the respective character in the character column on the novel’s home page.

Now, the first tag under Su Mingqian’s character card was “Sister Qian”.

Li Shuoxing opened the character details, selected Su Mingqian, and prepared to add a tag.

At first, he typed the two words “Pink Beauty”, but after some thought, he found it a little feminine. He pondered for a while and changed one word.

“Pink Sweetheart”.

Then he added two more words.

“Pink Sweetheart Su Mingqian”.

Good, perfect, that’s it.

Li Shuoxing snapped his fingers and submitted his impression with satisfaction.

After submitting, he looked at the time and thought it was about time.

So he took his phone, went to the couch in the living room, chose a comfortable position to nestle down, got on the game, and prepared to start the Double Eleven event.

Time moved quietly.

Not long after Li Shuoxing went online, a secret meeting was taking place in the silent Terminal Food Group.

Calm Egg: “Pink Sweetheart.”

After he sent that message, he withdrew it in seconds and changed to coded wording.

Calm Egg: “Light red.”

Although he typed code, the others seemed to understand what Calm Egg was saying in a second, completely seamless.

Interfinger Storm stifled a laugh. “It’s leapt to second. I’m gonna give a heart too.”

Ten Zero Ling: “Tsk, solid proof.”

Sang Wugui lamented, “That light red haze on the horizon has entered the hearts of the people.”

Soren: “I didn’t expect that he really is a pervert.”

Deer Over Fragrant Grass: “Why do you all know?!”

Six Flavour Monk popped up at this point.

He was confused. “The almsgivers’ conversation today seems to be quite mysterious. What does everyone know? What is light red?”

Calm Egg was serious. “Master, we are indeed enlightening ourselves about a heavenly mystery today.”

Six Flavour Monk: “Dare I ask what heavenly mystery?”

Interfinger Storm: “Pink girl mystery.”

Six Flavour Monk: “…???”

Six Flavour Monk sent out several confused pictures in succession, causing laughter in the group.

After the laughter, Calm Egg spoke again, sighing and yearning, “It’s even written into the novel. I didn’t expect Eunuch really wanted a little dress, and the pink kind at that. I really should give Eunuch the title of Pink Sweetheart…”

As the messages appeared in the chat group, a suppressed screaming chicken-like voice suddenly rang out in a room somewhere in the city.

Deer Over Fragrant Grass was screaming, “Ahhhh Eggy hurry up and withdraw it! Don’t hurt me! I never said he was a pervert for loving little dresses!”

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不见棺材不落泪 [bù jiàn guān cái bù luò lèi] is a metaphor for not giving up until complete failure.