"Undercover? The novel Li Ye wrote was actually called Undercover?"
"..."
After learning that Li Ye's novel was called Undercover, Lu Jingyao did not say another word all night. It infuriated her younger brother, Lu Zixue, who said she had "grown wings, gotten a big temper, and stopped recognizing people."
But after the "royalty payment incident," Lu Jingyao was no longer the same as before. She no longer wished to wrong herself just to accommodate others. She simply pretended not to see her brother's disdainful looks.
After tossing and turning all night with scarcely any sleep, Lu Jingyao got up before dawn, slipped out quietly, and walked all the way to the county town.
The thirty-li journey took three hours. At eight in the morning, Lu Jingyao arrived at the Qingshui County Xinhua Bookstore.
She took off her scarf, rubbed her face numb with cold, and asked the clerk, "Hello, do you have Undercover here?"
The clerk sat behind the counter with a blank face and answered impatiently, "No, no. People come asking about it all day long. Aren't you sick of it?"
Lu Jingyao had not slept all night and had walked for three hours, only to encounter such service. A fire immediately rose in her chest.
Clerks were indeed pretty high and mighty these days, but did that mean college students had to take it lying down?
"Who comes asking all day? What kind of service attitude is this? Is that 'Serve the People' sign on your wall fake? Who are you putting on that sour face for?"
"Hey, how do you talk? Who are you calling sour-faced?"
"Putting on a sour face" was a northern dialect expression. The locally born and bred young clerk did not understand it and assumed it was an insult, immediately standing up