When Lu Li got home that evening, he went to his sister’s place for dinner. After watching TV with her for a while, he returned to his room, turned on his computer, and logged into the Valve platform.
The moment he signed in, more than a thousand unread messages popped up. Lu Li nearly jumped.
He clicked in and discovered that his game page had suddenly gained over nine hundred negative reviews. Its rating had become “Overwhelmingly Negative.”
That wasn’t all. On the weekly chart for rising negative reviews, his game had “proudly” climbed to fourth place.
Something was definitely wrong.
The nine hundred-plus bad reviews were clearly copy-pasted. Every one of them accused the game of having terrible writing, poor optimization, and ugly artwork. Most of the reviewers were using newly created Level One or Level Two accounts.
It had to be Chen Jianing’s doing.
Buying a smear campaign was exactly the kind of tasteless thing she’d do. Lu Li had probably angered her too badly last time, so she’d deliberately come after him.
Still, thanks to Chen Jianing’s negative marketing, plenty of passersby clicked over from the bad-review chart and left fair comments instead.
“It’s not that bad, is it? Who did the devs offend to get this many negative reviews?”
“The atmosphere is incredible! I’m keeping an eye on this!”
“Why is it another DEMO? Don’t tell me they’re crowdfunding again?”
Well done, Little Chen.
Lu Li silently gave her a thumbs-up.
The thing indie games lacked most was exposure. Many independent titles had plenty of word-of-mouth, but not enough visibility. Lu Li’s game had an excellent foundation, yet it hadn’t even reached fifty downloads during its first week.
After Chen Jianing’s little rampage, downloads shot past two thousand.
Most players didn’t leave reviews anyway. They could judge for themselves whether the game was good or bad. A few paid reviewers couldn’t sway them.
From the backend, Lu Li saw that the positive-rating percentage was still slowly climbing. If it kept up, the game could return to “Mixed” by the latter half of the month.
Cheerfully, he opened Chen Jianing’s private messages, removed her from his block list, and sent:
“Thanks, Boss Chen!”
Chen Jianing replied almost immediately.
“???”
Lu Li had no ill will toward her, so he promptly sent over a screenshot of the backend.
“Thanks to you, the traffic has increased quite a bit.”
“Are you insane? You’re happy that your positive rating dropped this much?”
Chen Jianing couldn’t understand him at all.
Lu Li shook his head at the screen.
Chen Jianing was still too naïve. In the internet age, traffic was king. What good was a perfect rating if there was no market for the game?
He hesitated for a moment, then sent her his thoughts. If Chen Jianing understood a few things earlier, she’d suffer fewer losses in the future. It would also save everyone from watching her lose her mind online every day.
“Oh.”
She replied with a single, simple character.
An ordinary person might have thought she was being dismissive or disrespectful. But Lu Li understood her.
Chen Jianing was actually a very awkward girl. She was introverted, socially anxious, and had a slight tendency toward psychological self-abuse.
That didn’t mean she hurt herself physically. It meant she liked someone without saying so, agreed with them while arguing back, and cared deeply while pushing them away.
Her obedient little “Oh” actually meant that she accepted what Lu Li had said. She simply had to pretend that she didn’t care.
Spending a lifetime with a girl like that would be exhausting. No wonder Chen Jianing hadn’t found a boyfriend or gotten married in his previous life.
Lu Li sighed inwardly.
“Apologize to me and say that I didn’t plagiarize you. Then I’ll forgive you and delete the bad reviews.”
Chen Jianing suddenly sent him another message.
She was clearly planning to make peace. She just cared too much about her pride and insisted on making Lu Li apologize, giving herself a graceful way down.
Lu Li refused to indulge her. He typed a single line.
“No.”
“Hmph. Just you wait.”
Some girls were smooth-coated. If you yielded to them and went along with them, they’d only become gentler. Chu Jingyi was that kind of girl. If you listened to her in everything, she’d actually turn around and show consideration for you.
Other girls were rough-coated. If you truly obeyed them, things would only get worse.
Chen Jianing belonged to the latter type.
Lu Li remembered that once in his previous life, Chen Jianing had lost her temper for no apparent reason. She deleted his contact information and warned him never to look for her again. She was going to leave the city and start over somewhere far away.
She even gave up the apartment she shared with An Baili and Lu Li.
Yet when heavy rain poured from the sky, Lu Li found a petite, bewildered girl downstairs, staring blankly outside a breakfast shop while dragging an enormous suitcase.
Thunder roared through the downpour. The air was cold and damp.
Ten hours had passed since Chen Jianing decided to cut all ties. Lu Li didn’t ask why she still hadn’t left. He simply took her suitcase and silently carried it upstairs.
“…”
Perhaps because she felt ashamed, Chen Jianing’s ears were bright red.
“I don’t need you to take care of me! Go take care of your girlfriend!”
“Have you eaten dinner?”
“…”
She didn’t answer.
“Want some malatang? I’ll order extra fish tofu for you.”
“…I don’t want any.”
He could practically hear her salivating.
“Come home.”
“…Oh.”
If Lu Li hadn’t braved the rain to find her, how could he have guessed that she was hiding downstairs in a breakfast shop, staring into space?
The Chen Jianing in Lu Li’s memory was a painfully complicated girl. If they hadn’t been business partners, honestly, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with someone like her.
Unfortunately, fate was a strange thing.
He suddenly wondered what Chen Jianing would’ve done if he hadn’t been reborn. How would she have reacted after learning of his death?
She’d probably be sad.
Would she cry for him?
What would she say at his funeral?
And what about Wen Amber?
She should’ve been very happy. Happy that the liar had finally received his punishment.
Sure enough, being reborn was unbelievably lucky.
Lu Li closed his laptop. Then he heard someone knocking on the door.
It was Zou Yameng’s voice.
“Lizi, are you there?”
Lu Li hurried over and opened the door.
“Of course I’m here.”
The instant the door opened, his eyes went straight.
Yameng-jie was dressed unusually lightly. She wore a gray tank top that emphasized her full chest, while the soft skin at her waist was left bare. Two distinct lines of abdominal muscle made it hard not to reach out and touch.
Her shorts had a drawstring waist and barely contained her taut curves. Her athletic thighs were especially eye-catching. If one’s gaze wandered just a little farther, the shorts were tight enough to faintly outline the shape of her crotch.
Lu Li remembered that his sister had bought those shorts the year before last. She couldn’t bear to throw them away, so she often wore them around the house.
Lu Li felt he should remind her to get a new pair. Being too frugal wasn’t always a good thing.
“Where are you looking?”
Yameng-jie lightly smacked Lu Li on the head. She was tall enough to reach him without standing on tiptoe.
Unfortunately, her arm swung too widely. The softness before her chest trembled slightly, like jelly.
A line of poetry flashed through Lu Li’s mind:
*Like willow ribbons and silk threads,
like soft snow held within one’s grasp.*
“N-nowhere.”
For once, Lu Li sounded flustered.
He was filled with remorse. He’d forcibly kissed that silly goose earlier today, and now he was lusting after his own sister that evening.
Lu Li, Lu Li—you’re a beast driven by your lower half!
As he lowered his head, a trace of slyness passed through Zou Yameng’s eyes.
“Let’s sleep together tonight.”
“Mm… What?!”
“I can’t sleep alone. I want to talk with you. Besides, it’s been a long time since we slept together, hasn’t it?”
Sweat began to bead on Lu Li’s forehead.
Sleeping together was one thing, but Sister, couldn’t you have worn something less revealing? Did you really think I was harmless?
*
The next day, at Chuanhai No.1 High School, Chu Jingyi was cramming before the exam. Pages fluttered loudly as she flipped through her book.
Then she suddenly noticed Lu Li trudging into the classroom. She looked at him strangely.
“Lu Li, did you sleep badly last night? Why are your eye bags so dark?”
“Last night, I held an in-depth philosophical discussion with the sages of antiquity. I thought too deeply.”
Lu Li felt that last night had been the most steadfast night of his entire life. Even he had to respectfully call himself “Saint Lu.”
From Freud to Hegel, from Zhu Xi, Cheng Hao, and Cheng Yi to Confucius, Mencius, Zhuangzi, and Laozi—he’d traveled through human history in a single night, chatting and laughing with all of them.
Who else could be exhausted after that?
The silly goose’s eyes sparkled.
“You’re so hardworking!”
“You flatter me, you flatter me!”
