My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 18

He Who Is Near Ink Becomes Black¹

“Go right up ahead. See that cluster of weird, giant leaves? Go around it, and there’s a road that leads straight to H City.”

Ren Chenxi was the one to finally break the long silence. She was in a terrible mood and didn’t feel like talking, but as the navigator, she had to give Chang Ling directions.

On the mini-map, Ren Chenxi could clearly see a narrow path. Once the bus turned onto the small road she had pointed out, the atmosphere inside finally livened up again.

“Hey! Xi-jie,² your eyesight is amazing! How did you even see this little road with all these dense trees?”

“I feel like… this path must have been cleared by people, right? Look, you can still see clear tire tracks on the road up ahead!”

“Maybe… it was Espers from H City? They might have cleared this path to get in and out since that major highway collapsed.”

Perhaps sensitive to Ren Chenxi’s mood, the group collectively avoided the topic of Ren-xuezhang³ that they had been discussing earlier and moved on to something new. However, it was Ren Chenxi herself who steered the conversation back—not to Ren-xuezhang, but to Mu-xuejie.⁴

“I heard Jian Dan and the others say before that your Mu-xuejie went to H City to find her boyfriend. If she already has a boyfriend, why did you say she liked my brother?” The Wooden Goddess’s⁵ Favorability Value was still displayed brightly at the top of her mission list, so Ren Chenxi didn’t doubt what the young Tang Ying had told her. She was just curious.

“Um… Mu-xuejie said it herself. After the apocalypse started, she rescued us from S University and was about to leave for H City. Fan-xuezhang tried to get her to stay and even confessed to her, but Mu-xuejie said she already had a boyfriend, and that her boyfriend was Ren-xuezhang. She said she was going to find him…”

“…”

Ren Chenxi was once again reminded of that nightmare: the dripping wet Wooden Goddess, a rattan whip in her hand, whispering word by word, “Where did you go? I’ve been looking for you for so long… You’re so cruel. You finally won my heart, only to throw it away! In that case, I’ll just have to dig out your heart and make it stay with mine forever…”

The bus was nearly out of the jungle and about to enter H City, but now, Ren Chenxi didn’t want to go to H City at all…

Why did your Mu-xuejie have to go to H City…

Ren Chenxi sighed softly, a mix of annoyance and resentment in her breath.

However, Tang Ying didn’t catch the bitterness in Ren Chenxi’s tone and answered her with complete sincerity. “Mu-xuejie asked Ren-xuezhang’s friends. She heard from one of them that he wanted to see the ocean and had once mentioned going to H City to see it. That’s why everyone guessed that Ren-xuezhang might have gone to H City for his summer vacation.”

…Did I tell a friend that? Which friend? Why does that damned friend talk so much! Why tell people everything!

Ren Chenxi started sighing again.

Tang Ying, whose idol’s image had just collapsed and whose favorite CP had just BE’d,⁶ sighed along with her.

“Sigh, Xi-jie, when you get to H City and meet Mu-xuejie, you should just tell her that Ren-xuezhang is gone… Back when the apocalypse first started, it was so dangerous, but Mu-xuejie didn’t care about her own safety at all. She insisted on going to find him… Two years have passed. I’m afraid she’s still out there looking for him! Actually, when Ren-xuezhang hadn’t returned to school two months after the semester started, someone told Mu-xuejie he might have gotten into an accident, but she refused to listen… But if it comes from his twin sister, Mu-xuejie will definitely believe you, right?”

Tang Ying’s words were like a flash of light, pulling Ren Chenxi back from the darkness of that terrifying nightmare. That’s right! How could I forget again? I’m Ren Chenxi now, not Ren Muhui. I just have to live my own life and work hard in this apocalypse. The Wooden Goddess and all that has nothing to do with me anymore!

So… even if the Wooden Goddess is in H City, even if I really run into her, I’ll just treat her like a complete stranger I’ve never met before!

Having figured this out, Ren Chenxi turned to the little cutie⁷ Tang Ying who had reminded her and gave her a brilliant smile. “Okay~ If I see your Mu-xuejie, I’ll be sure to tell her~” She would tell the Wooden Goddess that Ren Muhui was gone and that she was Ren Chenxi.

All of Ren Muhui’s past relentless pursuits had nothing to do with her anymore~

That smile from Ren Chenxi was enough to chase away Tang Ying’s gloomy mood and make her world bright again. Blushing, she squeezed in next to Yang Xiangrui and nudged him with her elbow, whispering, “You know, I think if Mu-xuejie meets Xi-jie, it could turn into a substitute tragic love⁸ story. That would be so… so beautifully heartbreaking…”

…But from the look on your face, why do you seem so excited???

Yang Xiangrui shot a speechless glare at Tang Ying, who had gone mad from shipping CPs.⁹

The bus finally broke through the dense, dark jungle where the sky was barely visible. Just before sunset, they saw the last rays of light, and the entire bus erupted in joyful cheers.

Upon entering the suburbs of H City, Jian Dan and the others found their map collection was somewhat usable again. The problem was, they had no idea where the Nanhai Base¹⁰ they were heading to was located. A pre-apocalypse map wouldn’t be marked with survivor bases, but Ren Chenxi’s game map showed it clearly.

“Tang Ying, do you know where in H City your xuejie is?” Jian Dan asked, staring at the map with a growing headache.

“I don’t know… we haven’t been in contact for two years…”

“I know. She’s at some middle school in Yanghu Village, in Zuoning Town…” a quieter boy answered.

All the students from S University whipped their heads around to look at him. “Fang Hong, how do you know that?”

The boy, Fang Hong, pursed his lips, a look of disgust on his face. “Li Jie¹¹ mentioned it before.”

“Tsk! Li Jie, huh. How would that guy know?”

The mention of Li Jie soured everyone’s expressions. Song Xin, a little slow on the uptake, asked, “Li Jie? Is that the loud, arrogant guy? Right, why isn’t he with you? And… I think a few others are missing too…”

As soon as she finished speaking, the mood turned even uglier.

“We… we had a dispute with Li Jie and his group on the road. That night, they took all the stored grain and water and just ran off. Without food or water, we wasted a lot of time searching for supplies in small towns and villages. That’s why it took us so long to get to H City…”

In the apocalypse, stealing all of someone’s food and water was no different from murder. No wonder these students looked so grim when talking about that group.

Silence fell over the bus once more. After a while, Yang Xiangrui continued questioning Fang Hong. “How would that stupid cunt¹² Li Jie know Mu-xuejie is at some middle school? If they get there before us and try to latch onto Mu-xuejie, she’ll be the unlucky one to get tangled up with trash like that!”

“They probably aren’t going to her, but to Fan-xuezhang. His family is from M City, right next to H City, remember? A year into the apocalypse, people from his hometown came and picked him up to go to H City. Didn’t he brag to us back then that he was going to win Mu-xuejie back? He probably told Li Jie when he left. You know how close Li Jie and Fan-xuezhang were…”

“Pah, Fan-xuezhang never successfully pursued Mu-xuejie in the first place, did he? How does he have the face to talk about ‘winning her back’?” As a shipper, Tang Ying was most disgusted by third wheels. “I used to think Fan-xuezhang was just shameless and unscrupulous in his pursuit of Mu-xuejie, but now that I think about it, anyone who could be good friends with a rotten person¹³ like Li Jie can’t be a good person himself!”

“He never was!” Yang Xiangrui rolled his eyes. “Calling him xuezhang was giving him face. We’re not students at S University anymore, so Laozi¹⁴ isn’t calling him xuezhang again!”

Ren Chenxi listened from the side, feeling rather speechless. Truth be told, back when I was trying to complete the mission and conquer the goddess, I was pretty shameless myself. However, Fan Juntian’s methods for competing with her over the Wooden Goddess had indeed been despicable. Ren Chenxi remembered that at first, Fan Juntian hadn’t even considered her a threat. Then one day, he suddenly saw her as his biggest rival and even sent a group of hooligans¹⁵ to warn and rough her up.

And how did she escape? Simple: she threw money at them. The hooligans had been paid to warn her, to teach her a lesson. So, she simply used money to make them go away. As for why she didn’t just pay them more to turn on Fan Juntian? Easy. She couldn’t compete with his family’s wealth. Besides, there was no guarantee they could be bought. They might even snitch on her, thoroughly offending the guy. Then he’d use even dirtier tricks on her, and she’d end up expelled from school before ever completing her mission.

Although she couldn’t confront Fan Juntian head-on, she could use some tricks of her own in the shadows. Since you, Fan Juntian, are heartless, don’t blame me for being ruthless!¹⁶

What was the fastest way to ruin a top student’s future? Get him addicted to drugs. Fan Juntian had hired the hooligans to force her to take White Powder.¹⁷ From the moment he decided to do that, Ren Chenxi knew this guy was no good, and naturally, she wouldn’t be polite in dealing with him from the shadows.

Using the miraculous function of her backpack, the instant the hooligans took out the White Powder to force it on her, she tossed out a huge handful of cash. Afraid it wouldn’t be enough to distract them, she threw out a lot more. While the hooligans were scrambling to pick up the money, Ren Chenxi swept the packets of White Powder into her backpack. She returned to her rented apartment, carefully cut open the packaging, poured out the contents, and then stored the unpackaged White Powder back in her inventory.

With the unpackaged powder in her backpack, the next step was simple. That guy Fan Juntian never ate in the cafeteria, but he loved showing off his charm by playing basketball on the court, basking in the infatuated screams of the girls around him. All Ren Chenxi had to do was wait until he finished playing and was drinking water. Then, from a precise three-meter distance, she “returned” the White Powder from her backpack right into the mineral water bottle in his hand.

Universities in this era weren’t like those in Ren Chenxi’s real world, with surveillance cameras everywhere. So, wearing a hat and a scarf, the “casually passing by” Ren Chenxi didn’t arouse anyone’s suspicion.

After that, Fan Juntian suddenly collapsed to the ground, convulsing. Ren Chenxi had returned all the White Powder to him, so the effects kicked in quite quickly.

The school later suppressed the incident, claiming that Fan Juntian had a hereditary disease that had suddenly flared up. The naive university students didn’t suspect a thing, never imagining that something as dangerous as drugs could find its way into their campus life.

Later, Fan Juntian took a long leave of absence to be “hospitalized.” When he returned to school a year later, he was much more sullen and subdued. He had probably been warned by his family. After all, the Fan family had gone to great lengths to “clean up” after him. Even if Fan Juntian had his suspicions about her, he had no evidence.

And after that lesson, Fan Juntian didn’t dare try any more big moves. Just like that, Ren Chenxi had another year of smooth sailing to lavish attention on the Wooden Goddess.

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The author has something to say:

Tang Ying: My CP BE’d…… (sang xin¹⁸) But it looks like I have a new CP to ship!!! (excited)

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