Tang San and Xiao Wu's Love? You Call This Love?

[If all my expenses weren't fully covered by the Haotian Sect, my father's meager income alone couldn't possibly support my spending at Shrek.

My father might be doing fairly well now. He'd risen from a steward of the Haotian Sect's outer sect to the city lord of a city, but the actual income in his hands could only barely, tightly support a student at Shrek Academy.

In the end, you still needed money and strength.]

The cafeteria was bustling at mealtime, filled with chatter and the aroma of food mingling with the students' laughter.

Lin Ye was just about to settle today's Diary rewards and see what good things he might get.

But just as he was about to do so, his ears twitched slightly. A voice from the next table, dripping with smugness, drifted clearly into his ears.

Lin Ye raised an eyebrow and followed the sound with his gaze.

Three children around eleven or twelve sat at the neighboring table, two girls and a boy. They were clearly newly enrolled students, dressed extravagantly and obviously from respectable families. Their faces still carried the excitement of having just entered the academy.

The little boy in the middle puffed out his chest and spoke animatedly. The two girls beside him watched him with sparkling eyes and faces full of admiration. Their gazes made the boy even more smug, and his voice rose several notches.

"Senior, Senior,"

one of the girls with twin pigtails asked sweetly, "when we entered the academy, we saw seven huge statues standing at the entrance. Who are they? They looked so impressive!"

The boy's eyes immediately lit up. He sat up straight, cleared his throat, and even struck what he considered a handsome pose, like a peacock spreading its tail.

For a boy his age, showing off his knowledge in front of girls was sweeter than honey.

"You've come to the right person!"

The boy patted his chest, looking immensely pleased with himself. "Those seven statues at the academy entrance are the famous Shrek Seven Monsters!"

As he spoke, he began introducing them to the two girls one by one.

From Oscar's Sausage Martial Soul to Ning Rongrong's Seven-Treasure Glazed Pagoda, he spoke with great fluency. But as he went on, the topic veered completely off course, his focus locking firmly onto the statue in the very center.

The leader of the first-generation Shrek Seven Monsters, the Sea God Tang San.

"If we're talking about the strongest among them, it has to be our Lord Sea God, Tang San!"

The boy's voice rose sharply. "He had Twin Martial Souls and Innate Full Soul Power. He rose against all odds, led everyone to destroy the evil Martial Soul Hall, and saved the entire Douluo Continent!

"But what people admire most is the moving love story between Lord Sea God and Senior Xiao Wu!"

Sure enough, the moment he said that, the two girls' eyes lit up.

They had felt nothing much while hearing about all those battles and killings, but the moment they heard there was a love story, they were instantly interested and kept urging the boy to tell it quickly.

The boy cleared his throat, growing even smugger as he vividly recounted the "inside stories" he had read in his family's miscellaneous records, exaggerating Tang San and Xiao Wu's love story until it sounded earth-shattering.

Love at first sight, following each other through life and death—it made the two girls' eyes turn red.

Lin Ye sat across from them, listening to the absurd nonsense. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he nearly sprayed out the food in his mouth.

When he looked up, he saw Wang Dong'er sitting opposite him. She had been sipping her soup in small mouthfuls, but now she had raised her eyes toward the table of new students. Her eating had slowed, and even the tips of her ears twitched slightly. Clearly, she was listening very carefully to the boy's story.

Lin Ye let out a heavy sigh in his heart.

What that little boy was saying couldn't be called entirely wrong. It was just that nine and a half out of every ten sentences were fabricated, while the remaining half-sentence was meaningless nonsense that barely brushed the truth.

But he couldn't exactly rush over and tell three newly enrolled students that Tang San was a petty hypocrite.

If he said that out loud, people would think he was insane.

Lin Ye rolled his eyes hard inwardly, sank his consciousness into the Diary in his mind, and began ranting furiously.

[Damn! What's with today? What rotten luck! I was just trying to have a decent meal, and I had to hear a few freshmen awkwardly hyping up the love story of Tang San and that Rascal Rabbit Xiao Wu.]

*[And if they were going to talk about it, fine, but every version passed down was more ridiculous than the last. They made it up more outrageously than storybooks.

What tragic, moving love? What ultimate devotion? It makes me want to puke up yesterday's dinner. Is this even Tang San?

The real situation was that Tang San, at six years old, was already sleeping in the same bed as Xiao Wu, a hundred-thousand-year-old Soft-Boned Rabbit who had just taken human form. When I read the original novel, I seriously couldn't hold it together.]*

*[One was a Soul Beast girl who had just transformed and knew nothing. The other had the body of a six-year-old, but his actual soul had transmigrated here and was over forty years old. Yet they just openly lay down together.

I figure Tang San was only six physically at the time and couldn't do anything. Otherwise, with his personality, he probably would have done something too explicit to write about the first time they shared a bed.]*

The instant this content appeared in the Diary, Wang Dong'er across from him had just lifted her cup and taken a sip of water before she could swallow it.

The explosive contents that suddenly surfaced in her mind left her stunned, and she choked directly on it.

"Cough, cough, cough!"

Violent coughing instantly rang out. Wang Dong'er bent over, coughing until her face turned red, tears nearly spilling from her eyes. She almost failed to hold onto the cup in her hand and nearly dropped it to the floor.

Seeing this, Lin Ye quickly handed her a stack of tissues. He leaned forward slightly and asked with concern, "Are you alright? How did you choke so badly?"

Wang Dong'er took the tissues, wiped her mouth haphazardly, and waved a hand. Suppressing the cough in her throat, her voice trembling slightly, she still forced herself to shake her head. "N-No, I'm fine. I just drank too quickly and accidentally choked."

Wang Dong'er had been finding the neighboring boy's account of Tang San and Xiao Wu's love rather interesting, but the moment she saw the contents in the Diary, her composure shattered.

What had she just seen? Six-year-old Tang San sharing a bed with Xiao Wu, who had just taken human form?

And if it had truly been an ordinary six-year-old boy sleeping in the same bed as a girl around his age, she naturally would not have thought too much about it. She might even have thought Lin Ye was overthinking things.

But Lin Ye had said that Tang San had transmigrated here, and that his past and present lives combined made him over forty.

How could a forty-year-old old man not understand what it meant to share a bed with a girl?

Yet Tang San had known perfectly well and still openly lain in bed with Xiao Wu. It was impossible not to suspect that Tang San had some ulterior motive in his mind.

Xiao Wu had taken human form from a Soul Beast, so it was understandable that she did not know. But Tang San, with a soul over forty years old—did he not know either?

At that moment, it was not only Wang Dong'er. Everyone who possessed a Diary copy mentally reviewed this passage at the same time, and every one of them was left dumbfounded by the shock.