Chapter 11

Two days later, Lin JunYi sat behind the driver’s wheel of Xie Xian’s car as he watched through the window as Xie Xian and Chen Heng met in the outdoor area of an upscale cafe.

“The protagonist really doesn’t have any common sense. How can you build tension in a busy, outdoor area like this?” Lin JunYi sighed as he stretched lazily. “If it were me, I’d meet in a dark, underground club. Then if the opportunity arises, we could directly take off our clothes and…”

“Stop stop stop stop stop~!” 729 interrupted, blushing. “I don’t want to hear about this, lalalala!”

Lin JunYi was surprised. “Aren’t you an AI? Why are you getting embarrassed by something like this?”

“I’m… I’m programmed to respond like a regular human.”

Lin JunYi raised his eyebrows. “Is your ‘regular human’ by any chance a teenage girl?”

“Shut up!” 729 actually felt quite miserable. If the dark system space was a room then it would be undoubtedly squatting while facing the wall and hugging its knees. “I still don’t know about your plan. I think you and the second male lead have great chemistry… I think he also likes you a little bit so why don’t you give it a go with him…”

Lin JunYi smiled. “It wouldn’t work out.”

“Wuwuwu… how do you know if you haven’t tried?”

Lin JunYi shook his head. He watched the scene outside the window quietly, a small, slightly mocking smile on the corner of his lips. He was impressed to see that Xie Xian was following instructions. Originally he wasn’t confident about how much of his teachings that impassive block of wood had managed to absorb but now it seemed he had worried too much.

Initially Chen Heng - who had ostensibly come to ‘break up’ - sat stiffly in his chair with his arms around himself in a standoffish posture. His mouth was also thinned into a line while he gazed coldly at Xie Xian.

But as time went on and Xie Xian remained calm and collected, Chen Heng’s posture softened. A lost and desperate light began to leak from the corner of his eyes and his body subconsciously leaned forward.

Lin JunYi couldn’t hear what they were saying but he could approximately guess it.

The protagonist shou was definitely saying something like, “So that’s it? You’re not even going to try and keep me? Is your love for me so shallow? Or is it that you never loved me at all?!”

Xie Xian, if he knew what was good for him, was hopefully following his instructions and responding, “Of course I love you. In my life, there’s no one I love more than you.”

Chen Heng would begin to cry. Deep inside he’d feel a gush of relief but his mouth wouldn’t soften just yet. He’d say aggressively, “Really? Then why did you fuck your secretary?!”

Maybe he wouldn’t say fuck. That word probably wasn’t in Chen Heng’s dictionary. Maybe he’d use “push down” or some other type of bland euphemism.

Xie Xian would hopefully reply as Lin JunYi had taught him, “Of course it was because I couldn’t get you. I was desperate and I wanted to let you go. Isn’t that what you want? Don’t you want me to let you go?”

This would flabbergast Chen Heng and he’d whisper, “Yes… no… I don’t know…”

Then Xie Xian should say again, “I love you.”

He was a block of wood after all. Lin JunYi definitely didn’t dare to have too high expectations of him so he only taught him a few sentences and just told him to repeat them in various iterations. Anyway it didn’t matter what he said exactly. According to intel that Xie Xian gathered, yesterday Chen Heng and Sun YuZhu had already had a huge fight and Sun YuZhu had actually slapped Chen Heng in the face.

There was no way that a spoiled princeling like Chen Heng, who was used to being treated like a priceless treasure by Xie Xian, could tolerate something like that. That slap, along with Lin JunYi’s words to him before, should hopefully have knocked some sense into him. So right now, no matter what he said with his mouth, Chen Heng probably desperately wanted to get back together with Xie Xian.

Speaking of Sun YuZhu… 

Lin JunYi looked down at his phone where he’d gotten six missed calls in the last two days from the male lead, as well as a series of more and more angry text messages. The last one simply said, “Zhou Yi if you don’t fucking pick up your phone, I am going to fuck you to death!”

Lin JunYi laughed coldly. I’d like to see you try. Out loud he said, “This guy is so crude. I wonder what Chen Heng saw in him. Love really makes you blind.”

729 was a bit surprised by how the events had unfurled too. “But under the original storyline, the protagonist shou and gong were very much in love with each other and had a happy ending…”

“Well, their ‘love for each other’ was built on conflict right? Throughout the entire book, they hardly had any time to really be together peacefully. If one person wasn’t being pressured by their family, the other person was being imprisoned. Perhaps it was precisely because they were constantly being torn apart that it made them feel like they were destined to be together.”

729 sounded a bit sad. “Is human love really something that’s that fickle…?”

Suddenly Xie Xian’s face flashed in Lin JunYi’s mind. His cold, handsome face and his serious eyes as he said, “I don’t think love is that complicated.”

Something fluttered in Lin JunYi’s heart. It was an uncomfortable and strange feeling and it made him frown. Ruthlessly he suppressed it and then said flippantly to 729, “Then as soon as the conflicts ended, so did the book. After that there was only an epilogue that quickly skimmed over the events. All it said Zhou Yi went insane, Xie Xian went bankrupt and the protagonists stayed together right? But who knows if they were really happy or not. After all this world is a real flesh and blood place and it’s not as simple as black and white words written in a book.”

“That’s true…” 729 replied thoughtfully.

“So you admit this world is real? It’s not just a book?”

729 froze. “I… I didn’t say that! I.. I don’t know about those kinds of things. I’m just a subsidiary system!”

Lin JunYi laughed to himself. “Don’t panic. It’s okay I can come to that conclusion myself. No matter how well a book is written or how imaginative an author is, it can only have a limited number of characters and locations. But over the last few weeks here, I can already tell that this world doesn’t have any limits and seems just as real as the world I’m from. Your main system must be amazing if it can create a place like this.”

“Yes…” 729 didn’t dare say much as if it were scared the host would try to trick more information from it.

“But it does seem like what you said is true about the protagonists having special treatment in this world and that the ‘setting’ of the world is very strong indeed. It seems that it primarily affects the people around them: the people mentioned in the ‘book’. I wonder why that is?”

729 coughed and didn’t dare reply. Lin JunYi also just laughed and didn’t try to get any more information out of it. Staring out the window of the car again he saw, just as he predicted, Chen Heng began to cry.

The protagonist shou really was a vision to behold. Even when he cried he didn’t look ugly at all but looked even more beautiful. His tears slid down his porcelain cheeks like crystals, reflecting the mid-morning sunlight in a dazzling manner.

Since an incident that happened when he was a child, Lin JunYi never cried again. Not until he’d joined the entertainment industry and been given a crying scene.

Lin JunYi was a consummate professional. After experimenting with various physical stimuli, he eventually found one that would make him cry. After that he had worked hard to make his crying look as good as possible while still maintaining a genuine, raw quality.

But Chen Heng, it seemed, didn’t need to practice. The protagonist’s halo took care of it for him.

Xie Xian said a few more words. Chen Heng cried harder. After a moment’s pause, Xie Xian got up out of his seat and knelt down next to Chen Heng’s chair. Even from this distance, Lin JunYi could see the absolutely soft and gentle expression on his face, the tenderness leaking out of his eyes that couldn’t be concealed.

That annoying twinge in his chest was back. Lin JunYi grimaced and shifted restlessly.

Outside, two gorgeous and eye-catching young men were talking and one was even crying sorrowfully. It really attracted a lot of eyeballs. And when Chen Heng finally broke down and threw his arms around Xie Xian’s shoulders, a few young girls gasped and clutched each other in joy and excitement. A male and female couple, who were sitting next to Chen Heng and Xie Xian and not-so-surreptitiously spying on them, even clapped and cheered.

It was a beautiful scene of reconciliation.

At this moment 729’s voice spoke again, this time in a doubtful tone. “Wait, host, did you say the world’s setting was strong? That’s not what you said before.” The system remembered clearly after the host and the second male lead slept together for the first time a mere few days after beginning the mission, Lin JunYi had made fun of the supposedly ‘strong storyline setting’. 

Lin JunYi looked away from the window and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel rhythmically. He narrowed his phoenix eyes against the glare of the sun and said, “Mmm… well, I changed my mind.”

“What made you do that?”

“Because… if not for the world’s setting, then how could that man bear to leave me after sleeping with me?”

729 really wanted to kneel down to this self-absorbed host!

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A/N: Sorry this chapter is late!! I went away for a short trip. I will upload two chapters to make up for it so please read on~~