"Then it's settled! Bye!"
The cheerful voice on the other end hung up.
Yun Mingxin’s mood suddenly turned gloomy.
For some reason, he felt like something inside him had snapped.
His principles, perhaps.
But those could be fixed, right?
Nothing beat the allure of figurines and VR.
He’d been itching to try top-tier VR games for ages—fully immersive virtual worlds.
*Marital Grievances* was a famously terrifying game, with exquisitely detailed character models. Most importantly, he could manually grope the female characters anytime. Even if it wasn’t real touch, the fantasy was irresistible.
The game itself wasn’t expensive, but the machine required to run it was nearly impossible to get.
Bai Ziyi’s move was ruthless.
Utterly irresistible.
*Well*, he thought, *there’s a saying: when you find something you love, learn to surrender to it. Especially when it’s a double win.*
“Wait—did I forget something?” Yun Mingxin muttered to himself, a flicker of worry crossing his face.
---
At Bai Ziyi’s apartment.
Bai Ziyi grinned smugly after hanging up.
No matter how different this world’s story was, Yun Mingxin remained Yun Mingxin.
She knew his weakness cold.
She’d even used it to make him temporarily forget about Zhan Mengxi.
*Poor loser waiting by the phone*, she mused. *I’ll pile extra rabbit meat on your plate today.*
She felt invincible. In her past life, Zhan Mengxi had been her only real rival. Plenty liked Yun Mingxin, but no one dared challenge her—except that fat woman.
Zhan Mengxi wasn’t just absurdly curvy and athletic; her persistence was monstrous. Even after years of Bai Ziyi dating Yun Mingxin, before they’d even gotten married, Zhan Mengxi kept scheming to wedge herself in.
*Wasn’t that ridiculous?*
Later, she’d toned it down—but whenever Bai Ziyi and Yun Mingxin argued, Zhan Mengxi would magically appear to comfort him. It made Bai Ziyi grind her teeth.
Zhan Mengxi was apparently a manga artist too. Her favorite rant? *“Maruto Hiroyuki’s just a novelist. What does he know about ‘side heroine’ tropes? How did Emilia even lose?”*
Bai Ziyi knew all her quirks, her speech patterns, her personality. Meanwhile, Zhan Mengxi knew nothing about *her*. Barring accidents, Bai Ziyi would absolutely win this lifetime.
And Zhan Mengxi? She’d just have to *be Emilia*.
“Hahaha!” Bai Ziyi burst out laughing.
But…
What she didn’t know was that she had another enemy.
---
Inside a high-end internet café.
Su Xiaoyue’s fingers flew across the keyboard, the screen a blur of text and graphics.
Beside her, Wei Lu dozed off, baffled. *What is she even doing? And how isn’t she dizzy from scrolling that fast?*
Exhausted, Wei Lu finally snapped awake. “Xiaoyue! What on earth are you searching for?!”
“Data,” Su Xiaoyue replied without looking up.
“Online answers are unreliable! You can’t use this to understand Yun Mingxin!”
Su Xiaoyue froze. She turned slowly, staring at Wei Lu like she was an idiot—until Wei Lu shivered and scratched her arms, riddled with goosebumps.
“I’m not using this to understand Yun Mingxin,” Su Xiaoyue said calmly. “I’m figuring out *how* to understand him.”
Even with low emotional intelligence, she wouldn’t fall for the same trap twice.
After all, even solutions for “red exclamation mark” problems only ever said:
*No cure. Just wait to die.*
Wei Lu gave up. *This girl still hasn’t grasped the golden rule: Truth comes from practice.*
She sighed like a worried mother watching her child drown in chaos. Then, resigned, she curled up in a comfy chair and fell asleep.
From the corner of her eye, Su Xiaoyue noted Wei Lu’s slumber. Her jade-like fingers danced across the keyboard, lines of code swirling like demons.
*She, Su Xiaoyue, was a pigeon hacker.*
Her custom script would now auto-search keywords, tallying click rates and upvotes to surface the best answers. Manual searching was too slow—and typing long phrases often dragged up irrelevant junk.
Her program worked flawlessly. She scanned the results, cross-referencing click-to-upvote ratios. A ratio near 1.0 meant near-universal approval.
Her search query: *“How to quickly understand a man and win his affection?”*
Last time on Zhihu, she’d ignored the ratio. This time? Foolproof.
Her scrolling stopped abruptly.
One answer had a 97.3% approval ratio.
*Nine hundred seventy out of a thousand readers agreed.*
Terrifying. Previous answers barely hit 70%.
Su Xiaoyue leaned in, reading aloud:
*“To bond deeply with a man fast, you must first understand his XP…”*
—Comment by Zhang San
“…XP?” Su Xiaoyue frowned.
After looking up the term, she remained perfectly calm—no blushing, no fluster.
*Logically*, she reasoned, *it’s just biological stimuli triggering reproductive hormones. The strongest triggers—visuals, actions, voices, appearances—are called XP.*
She searched her memory. When had she ever studied this?
Staring blankly at her keyboard, she suddenly remembered:
Yun Mingxin was a novelist.
Writers often poured their personal tastes into heroines.
Early in their relationship, he’d given her his author account credentials.
Pen name: *Xinhuo*.
For Su Xiaoyue, another sleepless night began.
Wei Lu slept soundly.
