Master Actor Mode, Roommate Agreement!

Room 109 was a complete mess.

The wreckage of wooden tables and chairs lay scattered across the floor, while choking dust hung in the air.

Wang Dong sat sprawled on the floor amid the wood chips, her back pressed tightly against the cold wall.

She clutched her faintly aching chest and gasped for breath, her eyes filled with terror as she looked at Yun Yi.

Yun Yi stood there, looking down at her, his earlier words still echoing through the cramped room.

A thunderclap suddenly exploded in Wang Dong's mind.

She abruptly recalled what Yun Yi had said when he pushed open the door—"We're all grown men here. Who are you putting on this coy act for just to change clothes? So what if someone sees?"

He saw it! He definitely saw her changing clothes!

The moment that thought surfaced, Wang Dong's exquisitely beautiful face instantly flushed crimson, and even her slender neck was tinted pink.

An unprecedented wave of humiliation and fury shot straight to her head. She had never, in all her life, been bullied like this by a boy her age!

"You bastard!"

Wang Dong gasped heavily, her chest heaving violently.

Tears welled in her eyes, but she bit down hard on her lip and forced them back.

She thought of her Eldest Daddy and Second Daddy far away in the Clear Sky Sect. If she caused trouble by fighting with her roommate on the very first day and exposed her identity as a girl, they would surely be deeply disappointed.

She absolutely could not reveal her identity!

At last, practical concerns overwhelmed the rage filling her heart.

Wang Dong stopped struggling, and her tense body gradually relaxed.

She turned her head away to avoid Yun Yi's gaze and nodded heavily.

She was clearly furious to the point of death, yet she could not beat him and could only swallow her grievances.

The sight involuntarily reminded Yun Yi of the spoiled Wang Dong from the original story, the one who had imposed those domineering terms on Huo Yuhao.

Then he looked again at the pink-and-blue-haired "boy" before him, who looked as wronged as a punching bag.

Yun Yi shook his head helplessly, then stepped forward and extended his right hand toward Wang Dong.

Wang Dong stared at the distinctly jointed hand before her. After hesitating for a long while, she cautiously placed her own hand in his.

Yun Yi exerted a slight force with his wrist and pulled her up from the floor in one motion.

Once she was steady on her feet, the smile on Yun Yi's face faded, and his previously casual, arrogant demeanor vanished.

He turned around and looked at the mottled shadows of trees outside the window. Even his straight back carried a trace of loneliness.

He knew that since Tang San had sent this chess piece over, simply suppressing Wang Dong with force would only provoke her rebellious nature. It would treat the symptoms, not the cause.

If he wanted to completely dismantle Tang San's scheme, he had to break down this chess piece's psychological defenses.

When it came to acting, he would not lose to anyone.

"Do you think I have an awful personality, that I'm some bully who throws his weight around?" Yun Yi did not turn back, his voice low.

Wang Dong rubbed her wrist and retorted irritably, "Aren't you? You barged in without knocking, and you didn't hold back at all when you attacked!"

Yun Yi turned around, his black eyes filled with depth and sincerity.

Leaning against the windowsill, he spread his hands and tugged at the corner of his mouth in self-mockery.

"If I told you that every reaction I had today was just a protective facade forced out of me, would you believe me?"

Without waiting for Wang Dong to speak, Yun Yi continued on his own.

"I have no parents. I'm an abandoned orphan. Ever since I can remember, I've never known what they looked like."

Yun Yi's tone was calm, yet beneath that calm lay a sorrow impossible to ignore.

This was not entirely a lie. As a transmigrator, he truly had no parents in this world.

Wang Dong froze.

She had originally assumed that someone as powerful as Yun Yi must have been a prodigy carefully raised by some great clan.

The word orphan simply could not be connected to the dazzlingly handsome boy before her.

"The person who adopted me was an old man over a hundred years old." Yun Yi continued constructing his half-true, half-false tragic background.

The old man he spoke of was naturally Mu En.

"That old man treated me very well, but he suffered from an extremely serious hidden illness. Most of my childhood memories are of watching him sit paralyzed in a wheelchair, tortured by pain until he could not even stand."

"Do you know what that means in a world where the strong devour the weak? A young master like you, who has never wanted for food or clothing, could never understand."

Yun Yi stared into Wang Dong's eyes, every word striking at her heart.

"Every day, I had to guard against other people's schemes. Every day, I had to fight desperately just to survive. I had to disguise myself as a hedgehog covered in spines. Whoever dared come close, I pricked them. Even after a kind person intervened and miraculously cured the old man's hidden illness, that extreme lack of security rooted deep in my bones had long become impossible to change."

At that point, Yun Yi took two steps forward, closing in on Wang Dong.

"So when I pushed open the dormitory door and saw a girl disguised as a boy sneaking into the male dormitory, who had even been assigned to my room, my first reaction was to think it was a conspiracy!"

Yun Yi's gaze sharpened.

"I suspected it was a trap set by my enemies. I suspected you had ulterior motives toward me. In that state of extreme tension, I became so agitated, struck so heavily, and spoke without leaving any room for mercy. Striking first and suppressing every uncertain factor in the most domineering way possible is how I survived until today."

That explanation was practically flawless, its logic perfectly airtight.

It explained his overbearing brutality as the aftermath of trauma and packaged his attacks as excessive self-defense born of insecurity.

Yun Yi took a step back, and his gaze softened, carrying a deeply sincere apology.

"But after seeing your reaction, I realized you probably weren't what I thought you were."

"I'm sorry. I was overly sensitive today. Don't worry, I'll keep your secret of disguising yourself as a boy buried deep inside me. I will never reveal it to anyone."

After a pause, he sighed, a hint of vulnerability appearing in his eyes.

"But I have a request as well. I hope you can keep what I just told you about my background a secret too. I don't want anyone at the academy to know that I'm an orphan who does not even know who his parents are. I don't want to see pity or contempt in their eyes. In this world, I rely only on my fists to speak."

Wang Dong stood where she was, her large eyes fixed unblinkingly on Yun Yi.

There was not the slightest trace of pretense on that handsome face. The sincerity in his eyes, along with that deliberately concealed vulnerability, struck directly at the softest place in her heart.

Though she was willful and spoiled, she was still, at heart, an innocent girl who had never experienced the ways of the world.

Faced with such heartfelt words, a confession that could even be called exposing the scars in his heart, all the anger and grievances in her heart instantly vanished.

An orphan... no parents...

Those two words struck hard at Wang Dong's heartstrings.

She had grown up in the Clear Sky Sect. Although her Eldest Daddy and Second Daddy had spoiled her beyond measure and would give her anything she wanted, whenever night fell and she saw the other disciples in the sect accompanied by their parents, only she knew the emptiness that could never be filled.

She had never seen her biological parents either.

A powerful sense of shared misery arose within Wang Dong.

Looking at the boy before her, who used coldness and dominance to conceal the pain in his heart, all her resentment completely transformed into guilt and understanding.

"I... I was wrong too." Wang Dong lowered her head, uneasily scuffing her toe against the broken wood chips as her voice became somewhat awkward.

"I've never seen my parents either. I was raised by two elders in my family. Earlier... earlier, I was too hot-tempered. I shouldn't have hit you without saying a word. Don't worry. You'll keep my secret, and I definitely won't tell anyone about your background either!"

She raised her head, and light returned to those large pink-and-blue eyes as she extended her right hand toward Yun Yi.

"Let's put what happened before behind us. Since we've been assigned to the same dormitory, we're roommates from now on. We should look out for each other!"

Looking at the hand Wang Dong offered and hearing her comfort him instead, Yun Yi chuckled inwardly. This girl was so easy to fool.

Still, Yun Yi also harshly condemned his own despicable shamelessness. But there was no helping it. He did not want Tang San to resort to some underhanded tactic after seeing that this move had failed.

After criticizing himself, Yun Yi continued his masterful performance, keeping his facial expression under perfect control.

His gaze was deep, brimming with the emotion and sincerity of someone who had endured life's hardships and finally found a person who understood him. He nodded firmly and took Wang Dong's hand.