Chapter 39: Convincing Oneself
Chapter 39: Chapter 39: Convincing Oneself
On the woodland path where Big Orange usually hung out, Zhang Yan searched carefully.
Cats liked to move around, especially stray ones. Unless it was feeding time, they wouldn’t just lie in one spot waiting for you. He actually spent quite a while looking for Big Orange before finally spotting it in a patch of tall grass.
At the time, the feline was playing and wrestling with a few of its buddies. However, sensing Zhang Yan’s approach, the other stray cats immediately scattered, vanishing without a trace. Big Orange had been happily rolling on the ground. Seeing its playmates run off, it tilted its head. Recognizing the newcomer as Zhang Yan, it instantly lost all interest and turned its head away.
"Hey, you little snob!" Zhang Yan pulled out his secret weapon: a lickable cat treat!
Although he had never owned a cat himself, he had seen others raise them. On a classmate’s recommendation, he had bought this Chunfu-brand chicken-flavored puree.
"MEOW!"
It seemed Big Orange knew exactly when to swallow its pride. The moment it caught a whiff of the treat, it eagerly trotted over.
PURR PURR!
While the cat happily enjoyed its snack, Zhang Yan ruthlessly petted its fluffy back a few times to collect his rightful reward.
"Oh, Big Orange, how soon I get my one million yuan reward all depends on you," he muttered.
Unlike the Partner System, rewards obtained from side quests were not only much larger, but they could also be deposited directly into his bank account. They weren’t restricted funds. Moreover, if his guess was correct, the two main targets of the side quests could also trigger the Partner System. Therefore, whether considering profitability or even physical attractiveness, Xia Xiqing should have been his absolute top priority.
But in his current state of mind, Zhang Yan didn’t actually desire her that much.
The system had issued this quest based on a scenario where a thirty-eight-year-old Zhang Yan, having witnessed the sudden collapse of a romance he had nurtured his entire life, was suffering from a massive emotional void. Only in that extreme emptiness did the longing to rekindle an old flame sprout within him.
You could say she was like a sixteen-year-old vintage wine named Xia Xiqing; it only smelled so mellow and sweet because it had properly fermented over the years. To the present-day Zhang Yan, however, Xia Xiqing—a girl he had barely spoken a few words to—couldn’t even compare to the junior schoolmate he had already practically won over.
It was just that Zhang Yan had always been an obsessive-compulsive gamer. He couldn’t stand seeing an unread red dot on his interface, nor could he tolerate leaving an unfinished quest lingering in his log. So, he would just have to reluctantly force himself to speed up his progress with her!
"Sigh, I really don’t want to two-time anyone. It’s all because of Brother Tongzi’s quests!"
After beating around the bush for so long, this was the exact conclusion Zhang Yan had wanted to reach. Having successfully convinced himself, he tossed the empty treat wrapper into a nearby trash can and bid farewell to Big Orange.
Big Orange let out a few soft meows at him, as if saying goodbye. It was clearly far more enthusiastic than before.
"What an opportunistic cat," Zhang Yan scoffed.
After returning home, Zhang Yan reviewed his past experiences with his ex-girlfriend, combining them with what he had recently learned from interacting with the junior schoolmate. Finally, he caught a spark of inspiration, single-handedly pushing his progress on the book *Art of Ambiguity* to the [Comprehension] stage.
Now, his quest progress in the cognitive aspect had reached 40%! He was getting closer and closer to completely finishing the first batch of main quests.
"I’ll stop studying here for today," he decided.
Taking a break, he leisurely scrolled through his Friends Circle. Suddenly, he noticed a somewhat unfamiliar avatar had posted a rather arousing artistic photo.
"Yanhua Xiaomeng? Who’s that?"
He flipped through their chat history, finding only a brief, mutual self-introduction. It suddenly dawned on him. "Oh, it’s her. I forgot to add a remark to her contact name."
Zhang Yan entered Xiaoyan’s name as a remark and, after a moment of thought, casually added an ’E’ next to it.
"Wait a minute," he thought. "I remember her Friends Circle should have been closed off to me. Did I misunderstand her back then? Was it hidden from all her friends before, and only now she’s suddenly opened it up?"
After pondering for a moment, Zhang Yan immediately shook his head. Not to mention that very few people hid their Friends Circle from absolutely everyone, this current risqué post was hardly the type suited to be blasted out to all her contacts. Furthermore, the fact that the junior schoolmate hadn’t liked this post spoke volumes.
"It must be set to ’visible only to me.’ That’s right, she definitely saw all those gifts I bought for Yuebao, so now she wants to pique my interest?"
Zhang Yan thought about it, the corners of his mouth curling up in amusement. Xiaoyan’s behavior was actually quite laughable; it carried a mix of transparent stupidity and pretentious affectation.
Not only was her complete 180 in attitude incredibly obvious, but if she wanted to seduce him, a simple private message would have sufficed. Instead, she had to post it to her Friends Circle so he could "passively" discover it.
"Brother Gan’s assessment of her was spot-on. She really is a conflicted person."
However, Zhang Yan had recently seen a saying online: "Never let down a good girl, and never miss out on a bad one." He felt it made a lot of sense. Brother Gan couldn’t be bothered to deal with girls like her because he didn’t want to waste his precious time, but time was exactly what Zhang Yan had the most of right now.
He dropped a like on Xiaoyan’s artistic photo without directly messaging her. Moreover, he decided to buy a few more things for the junior schoolmate soon just to keep provoking her.
Over in Xiaoyan’s room, the atmosphere was quite different from Chi Xinyue’s clean and minimalist space. Her room looked noticeably more "stuffed." It was filled to the brim with all sorts of clothes, hats, bags, cosmetics, plush toys, and hanging ornaments.
Whenever she acquired limited editions or rare variants among her beloved items, she would carefully take aesthetic photos of each one and post them to her Friends Circle to "share her life." She was a girl with strong material desires, as well as an intense sense of vanity.
Xiaoyan’s family background wasn’t bad. While they couldn’t be considered wealthy, they were comfortably well-off. Raised like a pampered princess, she had never lacked anything since childhood, giving her a solid degree of resistance to money. Therefore, when faced with the indecent hints from that so-called magazine editor-in-chief, her heart hadn’t wavered in the slightest. Even if the guy had just wanted to cop a feel, there was no way she would ever compromise.
But resistance was not immunity. Faced with Zhang Yan, who could casually drop over a hundred thousand yuan on gifts during a normal date, she was deeply shaken.
"She’s still calling him ’Senior,’ so they probably haven’t made their relationship official yet. In that case, it doesn’t count as stealing him," she thought.
Having convinced herself, Xiaoyan fondly recalled her first meeting with Zhang Yan. "Now that I think about it, he’s actually quite handsome."
Just then, the WeChat notification she had been obsessively waiting for finally popped up. Xiaoyan hastily tapped it open. Sure enough, Zhang Yan had liked her newly posted photo!
The corners of her mouth curled up uncontrollably, but she waited and waited, and a private message from Zhang Yan never came.
"Normally, shouldn’t a guy try to flirt a little right now? Is he actually not interested in me? Then why did he give me a like?"
Caught in a cycle of anxiety and doubt, Xiaoyan opened her chat with Zhang Yan. She typed a message, deleted it, typed again, and deleted it once more. Ultimately, she still didn’t send a single word.
Biting her lip, she uploaded another alluring portrait and posted it in the exact same manner.