She sent a message to Zhou Wu, then pulled Jiang Minglang and Xie Tingting into a small group chat.
At that moment, Jiang Minglang was chatting with his roommates in the dorm. When he saw the notification that he’d been added to a group, he sent a question mark in the chat.
Li Xu came out to explain the reason, saying it was for him and Xie Tingting to hand over the clothes.
When Jiang Minglang saw what Li Xu said, he frowned.
He felt like Li Xu just didn’t want to chat with him alone.
So he sent Li Xu a message: [Can’t you deliver it to me? I’m not familiar with your roommate.]
Li Xu: [?]
Li Xu: [You’re not familiar with me either.]
Jiang Minglang was stumped.
He weighed his words and replied: [You’re the one who borrowed the clothes, shouldn’t you be the one to return them?]
Li Xu: [It’s my roommate who’s using them, not me.]
Jiang Minglang: [But you borrowed them for her to use, and besides, I have zero scandals. If someone sees her returning the clothes to me, it wouldn’t look good.]
Li Xu: [? If someone sees me returning your clothes, it wouldn’t look good either.]
Jiang Minglang: [No one would misunderstand you. You look very safe.]
Jiang Minglang actually wanted to make a joke, but as someone who’s been doted on by girls since childhood, he never really jokes with them.
Li Xu looked at the message he sent, raised her eyebrows, and asked: [Are you a celebrity?]
Jiang Minglang: [No.]
Jiang Minglang: [But I have baggage.]
Of course, he had no baggage.
He just didn’t want to meet Xie Tingting alone. If he had to meet someone, he’d rather see Li Xu…
At least Li Xu was interesting. Making friends wouldn’t be bad, but the look Xie Tingting gave him last time clearly had some other meaning.
Li Xu: [That’s pretty annoying.]
Jiang Mingming didn’t expect Li Xu to reply so directly.
Jiang Minglang: [After all, I let you use my clothes, and you treat me like this?]
Li Xu: [Then I’ll kowtow to you twice. I don’t have time. If you insist on me delivering, you’ll have to wait two days. We’re about to start military training.]
Jiang Minglang: [Alright.]
His roommate saw the smile on Jiang Minglang’s face and couldn’t help but ask, “Jiang, what happy event happened? Rare to see you this happy.”
Jiang Minglang: “Met a junior, pretty interesting.”
“? Are you going to start dating?”
Jiang Minglang: “No, just made a new friend. She’s in Class Z, really strong.”
“Is she pretty?”
Jiang Minglang: “Not pretty, just average.”
But her eyes are nice, the rest is pretty ordinary.
“Then it really sounds like just friends.”
Li Xu showed the chat record to Xie Tingting. Xie Tingting had been a bit disappointed, but seeing Li Xu looking rather annoyed, her disappointment vanished.
Li Xu was great, she didn’t hide anything from her at all.
“He’s got a bit of a prince complex,” Li Xu commented.
That precise description nearly made Xie Tingting burst out laughing.
“Hahahahaha, now that you say it, looking at the way he talks—totally a prince complex.”
“I can’t just fall for a handsome guy. Our roommate bond can’t be broken by a man.” “So over it.”
When Li Xu heard Xie Tingting say that, her expression turned odd. “So you were into him before?”
Xie Tingting was stunned, then patted her own head and said, “Yeah, when did that happen? How did I not know?”
Xie Tingting admitted she did feel a bit of a crush on Jiang Minglang at first, but after reading the chat, that feeling was completely gone.
She said, “I get ‘relationship brain’ when I see good-looking people. My beautiful fantasies about love are starting to defeat my rationality.”
Li Xu: “That’s normal, I used to be like that too.”
Li Xu still remembered the first time she saw Xu Hao from the protagonist group—she blushed and her heart raced, thinking he was like a movie star.
But as time went on, the filters she’d put on Xu Hao gradually faded away.
To her, everyone in the protagonist group was just ordinary, pitiable people—people who carried a so-called halo but couldn’t control their own fate.
She’d already done her best to give them the so-called “stimulus.”
Back in the real world, girls like Xie Tingting, who had good family backgrounds, looks, and education, could also easily fall into the trap of the halo. It was probably a path everyone had to walk.
“Really?”
“But you don’t seem like you have relationship brain at all.”
Li Xu squinted her eyes and smiled.
When she smiled like that, the certain aura she’d shown in the milk tea shop appeared on her again, making Xie Tingting freeze for a moment.
“I used to.”
“Later, something happened, and I realized that everyone in this world is just ordinary.”
“No matter what they look like, what kind of family they have, what school they go to, how much attention they’ve gotten since childhood… in the end, they’re just ordinary people, no different from anyone else.”
In the face of death, in the face of fate, these seemingly outstanding people had no power to resist at all.
That’s how it was in the transmigrated book world, and it’s the same in the real world—most people will spend their lives according to the personalities shaped since childhood.
When she said this, a kind of aura appeared on Li Xu that didn’t seem like it should belong to someone with her appearance.
Xie Tingting couldn’t describe this strange feeling, so she could only smile and say, “Yeah, when you put it that way, it really does feel like that.”
Xie Tingting knew she was just echoing Li Xu, not even sure what she was saying.
But something strange struck her—a kind of “tentacle” reaching out from Li Xu.
Xie Tingting scratched her head and sighed, but her mood was oddly good.
She felt like she was being led down a path she never would have walked otherwise.
After that feeling passed, she found herself a little annoyed at the question mark Jiang Minglang sent in the group.
No Idol fate, but he’s got Idol disease. Xie Tingting silently roasted Jiang Minglang in her heart.
***
The next evening, Li Xu was waiting for Zhou Wu at the dorm entrance.
A chubby girl in a black T-shirt curled two fingers and knocked on the window. Zhou Wu looked up and was stunned.
“You’re Li Xu?”
Li Xu nodded. “Yes.”
Zhou Wu looked a bit disappointed, but still said, “Get in the car.”
Li Xu got into the back seat with her usual expression.
The car started. Almost five minutes passed before Zhou Wu finally withdrew his gaze from the rearview mirror and said, with a hard-to-describe tone, “You don’t look anything like your brother.”
In Zhou Wu’s eyes, Li Xu was already a bookworm, so his purpose in saying this was to make the “bookworm” feel embarrassed.
What the heck, when chatting on WeChat, she sounded so confident and self-assured, but in person, he was totally let down.
With that face, Li Xu couldn’t make it into a boy group.
But before he could finish, Li Xu shot back from the back seat: “Oh?”
“Then Mr. Zhou, you really have no eye for people.”
“What do you mean? I have no eye?” Zhou Wu even found it funny.
“Do you know what level the people in your group are?”
“Their faces…”
Before Zhou Wu finished, Li Xu interrupted him: “I told you, give me two months.”
Li Xu frowned, looking quite unhappy.
“You think I’d let my brother’s lifelong dream be ruined?”
“I’ll lose weight, then join your so-called Training Camp.”
“There’s plenty of time.”
“And I look better than my brother.”
Li Xu thought of how her looks had been optimized after transmigrating into the book world, and said this calmly.
She was so confident that Zhou Wu, who thought it was hopeless, started to doubt his own judgment. Was she for real?
If she really lost weight and looked better than Li Fan, Zhou Wu thought of Li Fan’s face—if what she said was true, Li Xu’s future was promising.
But… she still had to be able to lose the weight.
“Want me to get you a nutritionist?”
At last, Zhou Wu gave in under Li Xu’s strong attitude.
But Li Xu refused, “No need, I can handle it myself.”
Now, her weight was already down to 141.
With ten days of military training, losing two pounds a day, she wouldn’t even need two months to slim down to Li Fan’s level.
“Just arrange housing for me. After military training, I’ll apply to move out.”
Zhou Wu: “Why move out? Once you’re slim, just stay in the dorm. Rent in Haishi isn’t cheap.”
Li Xu: “Help me find something cheaper. Doesn’t the company have a housing allowance?”
She gave instructions without a hint of guilt.
Zhou Wu found it odd. He felt like a tool, and when Li Xu spoke, she didn’t have any of the small-town kid’s pettiness.
It was strange—even Li Fan was more polite and courteous with him, but Li Xu was so natural, as if she were the boss.
“I’ll ask for you.” But he still agreed.
“But you have to tell me why you want to rent.”
“I’ll tell you when we get out of the car.”
When they got to the restaurant and were waiting for food, Li Xu handed her Moyin homepage to Zhou Wu.
“What’s this?”
Li Xu: “My Moyin account. Forgot to tell you, I’m a net celebrity.”
“Renting is because I need to shoot videos and livestream, to make money.” Actually, more importantly, to earn Yangshou.
This thing could help her gain Idol Value. For every 0.1 Idol Value she gained, her lifespan would increase by three days. It was a great deal.
Zhou Wu’s eyes landed on Li Xu’s follower count: “What? 1.3 million??”
“You’re a food blogger?”
“Catcat Xu… that name sounds so familiar… Have I seen you before…”
As he spoke, Zhou Wu pulled out his phone, searched for Catcat Xu, and found her livestream clips with Zhou Yi and others.
He clicked in to watch and was unconsciously drawn in by Li Xu’s “iron-blooded judge” attitude and her “high IQ but ruthless” style.
Then he kept watching several more clips in a row. By the time the food arrived, Li Xu was already eating, but Zhou Wu was still watching.
After a while, Zhou Wu finally looked up, matching the Li Xu eating across from him with the “Old Boss Mao Xu” in the clips.
Now he finally understood why Li Xu had given him such a strange feeling at first.
Because inside this bookworm shell, she was hiding a super invincible bking top-level a’s soul. No wonder she could boss him around so naturally.
This kind of character…
Was too rare.
Zhou Wu’s originally dull eyes were now sparkling.
He muttered to himself, “You’re basically a CP-shipping holy body… If you really end up as good-looking as your brother, even if you’re not as stunning as some in the group, your popularity definitely won’t be lacking…”
Li Xu: “Thanks for your kind words.”
Li Xu: “So, can you arrange free housing for me?”