Viewpoint 2 (Thanks to the Alliance Leader, Unworried Fried Dough Stick)

"Do we still have to pay?" Xue Ruihua frowned. She hadn't received any notification about fees before coming here.

Her parents were both absent again this time.

She had no choice but to look at Wang Yiyang for help.

"I'll pay first, and you can just reimburse me later, cousin," Wang Yiyang said with a casual smile.

"Alright, thank you, Brother Yangyang," Xue Ruihua quickly thanked him.

She still possessed these basic manners.

"By the way, Brother Yangyang, do you know any professional photo editors? We want to get a set of photos retouched and were wondering about the prices."

"Retouching? You mean a photo editor? How many photos do you have, and what is the standard? If the standard is average, it's just a few bucks per photo. If the standard is very high, the price will skyrocket; one or two thousand per photo might not even be enough," Wang Yiyang replied offhandedly.

He then saw Xue Ruihua and the two girls beside her look somewhat startled, and the three of them quickly began whispering to each other.

Wang Yiyang couldn't help but chuckle.

Xue Ruihua's two other classmates didn't look bad at all.

One had a cute, dimpled look with her hair in a bun. The other had a charming, gentle style with skin so fair it was almost blinding.

On a scale of ninety, both of them were at least a seventy or eighty.

Come to think of it, since his cousin had a good figure, she was probably considered one of the pretty girls at school, right? So, the circles of pretty girls were all of similar quality?

Wang Yiyang smiled, his mind wandering in boredom.

While he was idle, Xue Ruihua and her two friends were feeling curious.

As the parent-teacher meeting drew to a close, the atmosphere wasn't as rigid as it had been at the start, so the three young girls began to comment on the parents of their various classmates.

"Xiaoxiao, your mom looks so serious. Your grades were actually pretty good this time, so why is her expression so scary? Is it the nature of her job?" the cute girl with the bun asked, clicking her tongue.

"It's alright. My mom is a lawyer; it's just a professional habit..." the charming girl named Xiaoxiao replied with a wry smile.

"Doesn't being a lawyer mean constantly dealing with criminal disputes and all sorts of cases? Having to find ways to defend people from every angle—isn't that mentally exhausting?" Xue Ruihua wasn't as cold as she appeared when she was with her close friends.

"It's actually okay. Aside from the logical thinking and a level of clarity that makes you want to die, my mom is still very doting on me in other aspects," Xiaoxiao said helplessly.

"So, you mean your mom is the type of person you absolutely can't lie to?" the girl with the bun asked in shock.

"Pretty much... Your dad looks very gentle, too," Xiaoxiao said, changing the subject. She clearly didn't want to talk more about her mother, as it made her feel drained.

"My dad... he's super nice when he's in a good mood, but if you make him angry—hehehe." The girl with the bun sneered a few times and used her hands to gesture a diameter. "The whip at my house is this thick."

"...Terrifying..." Xue Ruihua's face twitched.

"It's fine. I've been whipped since I was little; I'm used to it. At least he doesn't tie me to a tree to whip me anymore," the girl with the bun said with a carefree grin.

"...Your dad is so scary..." Xiaoxiao was speechless.

"Ruihua, how about your brother? He looks quite refined, too," the girl with the bun said, turning her attention to Xue Ruihua.

"I'm not very familiar with him. My parents really couldn't make it this time, and he just happened to be nearby, so I asked him to come help. I've actually rarely seen him in the past," she explained softly.

"Is that so? Your brother looks like he has a very good temper. He should be a very easy person to get along with, right?" the girl with the bun asked curiously.

"I suppose so..." Xue Ruihua hesitated.

In her impression, her cousin Wang Yiyang had always worn a gentle smile from childhood to adulthood.

That kind of smile always made people want to get close to him.

Moreover, in her memory, her cousin Wang Yiyang never seemed particularly interested in anything. Whenever she heard about him from her parents, it was the same—plain and ordinary, just like listening to the growth story of an average student from another family.

Not outstanding, but not falling behind either.

"But I've been self-studying psychology lately, the dark psychology kind. Let me tell you, people like your brother who are gentle on the surface definitely have a little monster hidden in their hearts!" the girl with the bun lowered her voice to a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard by Wang Yiyang.

"What little monster?" Xue Ruihua was speechless. The girl with the bun's name was Song Yuandu, nicknamed Dudu.

This girl had recently become obsessed with psychology and ended up spouting all sorts of messy psychological 'common sense' she found God knows where. She had even started acting a bit delusional.

"It means being gentle on the surface but incredibly dark inside," the girl with the bun continued. "I'm telling you, people like your cousin who look very amiable are actually the most terrifying. He might even have a hidden pathological personality!"

The more the girl with the bun spoke, the more convinced she became.

Then, she stared fixedly at Wang Yiyang.

Wang Yiyang, who had been zoning out, noticed her and responded with a gentle, friendly smile.

!!!

The girl with the bun shuddered, seemingly associating this with some bad psychological case studies, and quickly looked away.

However, she felt even more energized about her judgment.

"Did you see the smile on his face? Doesn't this standardized smile give people a very friendly feeling?" the girl with the bun asked her two friends carefully.

"Yes... what about it?" Xue Ruihua asked, puzzled.

Xiaoxiao, standing to the side, also looked confused, not knowing what the problem was.

"That's exactly it!" the girl with the bun said with absolute certainty. "The friendliness on his face is actually just a disguise for the darkness in his heart!"

"..."

"..."

Xue Ruihua and her friend were speechless.

"You're overthinking it... My cousin has been a very gentle person since he was a child. He doesn't like arguing with people; he's always patient and humble. I've never even seen him get red in the face with anyone," Xue Ruihua retorted.

But no matter what she said, Dudu remained convinced that Wang Yiyang was exactly the type of person she had theorized.

"Think about it, everyone has a temper. What kind of reason would a person need to persist in rarely arguing or getting into a heated conflict with others from childhood to adulthood? Why would he do that?

If his heart wasn't incredibly dark and cold, he wouldn't need to go to such lengths to hide himself, right?" Dudu's reasoning was smooth, yet she still felt like something was off.

Xue Ruihua and Xiaoxia were unable to refute her, but after listening to their friend's twisted logic, they looked at Wang Yiyang again and vaguely felt that something seemed to be hidden beneath his smile.

However, the two of them immediately corrected themselves.

They realized they had been influenced by Dudu's twisted logic to make wild associations—in other words, they were overthinking it.

Therefore, they had arrived at an incorrect conclusion.

"Dudu, you're overthinking it. My cousin is just an ordinary office worker. He has a good temper, a good personality, and he loves his family and his job. He's responsible. How could he be as dark as you say?" Xue Ruihua countered.

"Have you been reading too many novels? In real life, everyone is just a normal person. How could there be so much drama like you imagine?" Xiaoxia chimed in, nodding.

"Don't you guys understand? Many things can actually be judged through details. The appearance you see is just an appearance; what it hides is actually shocking!" Dudu tried to convince the two.

But her two friends didn't believe a word of it.

The three of them chattered and argued for a long time, but Xue Ruihua and Xiaoxia still shook their heads in disbelief. Instead, they felt that Dudu had become obsessed.

Dudu had only been analyzing it casually at first and didn't really take it seriously herself. But the argument with her two friends made her feel even more unwilling to let it go.

She felt she wasn't wrong. Her analytical theory was flawless! Why couldn't the two of them believe it?

The more she looked at Wang Yiyang, the more she felt there was a problem. But she just didn't know how to convince her two friends to see the issue clearly.

"What's wrong?" Wang Yiyang noticed the three girls constantly looking at him, so he smiled back at his cousin and her friends, only to see them avert their gazes with an awkward, unnatural air. He felt puzzled.

He touched his face; his smile was very natural, wasn't it?

He had practiced it since he was a child; this friendly smile had always been his foolproof trump card. It could increase his affinity by one point upon meeting someone.

How could it have failed this time?

However, the parent-teacher meeting was almost over. His task was complete, and now he just had to wait quietly for the assembly in Guixi Town to be finished.

The people from Mister's side had actually all arrived an hour ago. Now, they were waiting for the Yanhu Sect and the Limit Martial Artists from the Martial Alliance.

Some of the Limit Martial Artists were temporarily away and were currently at a distance, so it would take time for them to return one by one.

Finally, the homeroom teacher took the stage to summarize. Then everyone applauded and scanned the QR codes on their phones to pay the fees.

With that, the parent-teacher meeting came to a successful conclusion.

Wang Yiyang stood up and turned to look at Xue Ruihua.

"Are you going to buy a ticket home directly, or are you staying at school for a few days?"

"I'll go back with my classmates in a bit, don't worry. I bought my ticket online in advance," Xue Ruihua answered briefly.

"Alright then, I'll call your dad first." Wang Yiyang nodded with a smile and took out his phone to call her uncle.

Xue Ruihua, standing to the side, watched him dial and talk, and compared to the other parents around, he looked no different.

At most, he was just a bit younger and more energetic than the people around him.

She felt that for Wang Yiyang to take the time to come over and attend the parent-teacher meeting for her, his personality was truly very good. He was very kind to people. He couldn't possibly be the type of person who was dark on the inside but gentle on the outside.

Xiaoxia, standing beside her, reached the same conclusion at that moment.

The two looked at each other and shook their heads helplessly, having no way to deal with Dudu's wild imagination.

Dudu was also helpless.

The more she observed Wang Yiyang, the more she discovered the correctness of her theory.

It was just that her two friends wouldn't believe her no matter what, and all her talking had been a waste of breath.

Soon, the parent-teacher meeting dispersed, and the crowd scattered, leaving the classroom.

Dudu's mother was in a rush to get back to the office, so she told Dudu to eat with her classmates and then head back. She left in a hurry on her own.

This was exactly what Dudu wanted.

After getting rid of her meddlesome mother, she kept her eyes locked on Xue Ruihua's cousin, Wang Yiyang. She watched him walk out of the classroom, his pace calm and composed, walking toward the school gate without haste.

"This guy definitely has a problem!" Dudu decided in her heart to follow him for a little while to see if she could find evidence to convince her two friends that her theoretical deduction was correct.

After following for a while, she trailed Wang Yiyang out of the school gate and toward the nearby taxi stand.

Then, halfway there, Wang Yiyang seemed to run into an acquaintance—a young woman who looked to be about his age.

Dudu pretended to be playing a game on her phone, slowly pacing along the side. Her gaze, however, was extremely carefully fixed on Wang Yiyang's direction.

Wang Yiyang seemed to be chatting with the woman.

The other party was holding a white student backpack, wearing light makeup, and her appearance was barely passable. She was dressed in a meticulously crafted gray suit skirt and appeared to be a working professional as well.

What struck Dudu as strange, however, was that the woman looked incredibly haggard, as if she hadn't rested well in a long time.

To avoid being discovered, Dudu pretended she had forgotten something and doubled back after walking a short distance away.

This time, the woman had her back to Dudu, so her expression was hidden, but Dudu could see a smile on Wang Yiyang's face; the two seemed to be chatting quite peacefully and pleasantly.

They didn't talk for long before the woman lowered her head slightly and fell silent, seemingly checking the time on her phone.

Wang Yiyang smiled and brushed past her just as a black sedan pulled up beside him.

He reached out, opened the car door, and climbed in; the vehicle started silently and slowly pulled away into the distance.

Dudu frowned, knowing she hadn't followed them long enough to uncover the true nature of Xue Ruihua's cousin.

She felt a bit helpless, but she was still a student, after all, and lacked the time and energy for this.

Since there was nothing to gain, she took one last glance at the woman who had been talking to Wang Yiyang, preparing to head back to school to find her friend.

Yet, this final glance revealed that something was wrong.

Even though Wang Yiyang had already left, the woman remained standing in the same spot, head bowed, not moving an inch.

Curiosity piqued, Dudu quickly took a few steps forward, wanting to circle around to get a better look at her.

As soon as she rounded the corner, she saw the woman's face, twisted and streaming with tears.

Pain, regret, fury, ferocity—Dudu had never seen so many emotions condensed onto a single face.

But now, she was seeing it.

Plop.

A raindrop hit the back of her hand, and immediately after, the rain grew heavier and more frequent.

Dudu couldn't move her feet; her vision was entirely filled with the woman's distorted expression.

The light drizzle quickly turned into a downpour, and amidst the curtain of rain, the woman clutched her face and slowly crouched down.

"Ah!!!"

Suddenly, she let out a sharp, piercing scream.

Dudu was startled, her mind instantly flashing back to Wang Yiyang's gentle, kind smile from just moments ago.

That gentle smile and the ferocity on the woman's face formed the sharpest of contrasts in that moment.

The smile that had felt so kind to Dudu before now seemed inextricably linked to the woman's shrill scream, sending a chill down her spine.

Her mind was a tangled mess; unable to think any further, she turned and bolted.