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In a fit of rage, he deleted the video.

No one cared about his feelings at all. He was just the random packet of ketchup that came with McDonald's!

[Sheesh, why delete it? I was going to analyze the sweetness frame by frame.]

[Good thing I saved it, hahaha.]

He got even angrier!

Pei Mingxuan threw a punch at the air. A lonely night, a heartbroken man, silent tears!

Looking at the sexy dance video he had contributed yesterday, then at the positive buzz rising around the two of them, he was extremely unwilling to accept it. After thinking for a long time, he contacted someone who had been sitting in his contact list for ages.

Just wait. He would hire internet trolls to spread rumors about them!

Shi Jihan left the ice cream shop, hailed a cab home at top speed, and bolted out the moment the car door opened.

He barely made the task deadline, shoving the divorce declaration into Shi Bochuan's hand and shouting, "Brother Huai gave this to you. Hurry up and read it." Then, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, he shot upstairs.

[Ding. Task "Write a divorce declaration and hand it to Shi Bochuan" completed. No task reward.] Zero-Zero-Zero was speechless. [I watched you leisurely eat at the shop. I thought you didn't care at all.]

Shi Jihan wiped the sweat from his forehead. [What do you know? I like dancing back and forth on the deadline, enjoying that crushing pressure of imminent death and fire under my ass.]

That was what terminal procrastination was like. Every time he got on his knees and begged himself to stop procrastinating, he realized that kneeling meant he could lie on the floor a little longer.

He darted straight from his eldest brother's bedroom back to his own room, ran into the bathroom, and slammed the door shut, leaving Zero-Zero-Zero outside.

[What are you doing?] Shi Jihan shouted back, [Going to deal with an emergency in the toilet!]

The power of three cups of ice cream was truly terrifying.

Zero-Zero-Zero was still worried. This was their final desperate struggle. [Aren't you going to take a look at what Dianjia Bro wrote?] [I believe in 707's writing skills!]

Making Dianjia Bro write a divorce declaration was overkill.

It was absolutely reliable. There was no way it could go wrong.

Downstairs.

Shi Bochuan, who had been drinking tea in the living room, had yet to figure out what was happening when a stack of A4 paper was stuffed into his hands.

"A-Huai gave this to me? What is this?" He flipped through it. The handwriting on the first few pages was barely legible. As for the later pages... well, they were writing too.

It was wilder than a doctor's prescription. At a glance, it was nothing but springs of connected handwriting bouncing at uneven heights.

Shi Bochuan praised it. "Those springs sure look springy." Then he began trying hard to decipher the first few lines.

"Exploring Resource Games in the Dissolution of Marital Relations: An Analysis of Marriage Investment Returns Based on Nash Equilibrium in Repeated Game Theory."

Shi Bochuan:?

Such familiar terms, such an unfamiliar paper.

A-Huai wrote this? Was this really not an academic economics report?

Shi Bochuan pondered for a long time before suddenly understanding.

So his wife wanted to try some different bedroom fun tonight.

His wife was so thin-skinned, yet he had actually indirectly asked his third brother to hint at it.

Shi Bochuan's face reddened slightly as he considered whether he should play the student or the advisor.

The advisor, then. His wife would definitely look good in a student uniform XD

He would look good in other outfits too. Preferably...

When Shi Jihan came downstairs after handling one of life's major matters, he saw Shi Bochuan immersed in his own world.

He cautiously asked, "Big Brother, are you okay?"

Please don't let 707's writing be so brilliant, so emotionally charged, so miserably heart-wrenching, so universally tragic that it shot through his eldest brother's heart and skewered it like grilled chicken hearts.

"Third Brother," Shi Bochuan said, snapping back slightly. His face was faintly red as he softly asked, "What kind of wedding attire do you think A-Huai would look good in?"

Yes, he had decided to hold a make-up wedding for the two of them. A wedding of the century.

He had even thought about where their graves would be after they died a hundred years from now.

Shi Jihan: "Huh?"

No, what part of the plot had just blasted him into?

He hurriedly said, "No, did you even read what this says?"

"I read it."

"Swear you really read it?"

Under Shi Jihan's intense scrutiny, Shi Bochuan continued blushing and turned his head away. "Kids shouldn't ask so many questions. It's all bedroom fun."

Aaaaaah, damn love-brain!

Shi Jihan puffed up like a pufferfish and grabbed the eight-thousand-word... paper? off the table.

When he saw the title, knowledge hammered his brain hard.

Zero-Zero-Zero clicked its tongue. [As expected of 707.]

What a brain for academia.

[Ding. Rechecking. Task "Final Struggle" has failed.] [Important dialogue triggered: "Shi Bochuan's Wedding of the Century."]

[Warning, warning! The original novel, "The Contract Marriage with a Cold CEO," has severely deviated from the main plot!]

Shi Jihan decided to struggle one more time. He pulled Shi Bochuan over and manually forced his eyes open. "Big Brother, look carefully again. What do the first few words say? 'Dissolution of marital relations'!"

Shi Bochuan stared with his huge Kazilan eyes and replied like a malfunctioning chatbot, "It's all bedroom fun."

Fuck you.

Shi Jihan grabbed his collar and shook him hard. "Transfer me to a human! Hurry up and transfer me to a human!"

[Warning, warning! The original novel has severely deviated from the main plot!] [Warning, warning! The original novel has severely deviated from the main plot!]

The beeping alarms rang nonstop beside his ears, weaving together with Shi Jihan's desperate screams into a symphony, mixed with Shi Bochuan's baffled, "Huh?"

"Little brother, stop forcing them open. My eyes hurt." Shi Bochuan was now a fragile, teary-eyed man suffering from sore eyes.

Zero-Zero-Zero cried out in panic, [We're doomed, doomed, doomed! The Main System is urgently summoning me!]

[Host, we're going to have money deducted. We definitely will!]

Amid all the noise, Shi Jihan instantly caught the words "deducted money" and asked, [Yours or mine?]

Zero-Zero-Zero: [...]

[Ahem, I mean, how will it be deducted?]

[According to a percentage of your current savings.]

That damn Main System. A dead turtle stewed in soup, full of bad intentions.

Once money was involved, Shi Jihan desperately spun his brand-new brain, bringing out the intelligence he had used to fight wits and courage with his former boss, Boss Gou.

[I've got an idea. Come on, to the bathroom!]

Shi Bochuan was tossed aside onto the sofa after being used up.

Watching his third brother dash to the second floor, he had never felt that being able to close his eyes was such a blessing.

Shi Bochuan closed his eyes, folded his hands in front of him, and lay peacefully on the sofa.

On the other side, chaos continued unabated.

[Performance Review System not detected. Automatically deducting the host's Malice Points.]

[Five.]

[Four.] Shi Jihan was urgently transferring assets.

He took out all his Malice Points in the form of virtual gold coins and stuffed them all into Zero-Zero-Zero's little cloth pouch, cramming in as much as possible.

[Here, here, here. It's all your spending money. Don't say it was my money later.]

[Three.]

[Two.]

More than three hundred Malice Points—a massive fortune!

Zero-Zero-Zero clutched its little pouch, rich beyond measure, and turned into a runny-yolk egg.

[One.]

[Scan successful. The host's current savings are—]

The mechanical voice paused. [Current savings: 0.78 Malice Points.]

[Estimated deduction: 0.39 Malice Points.]

Half of it!

Shi Jihan hit the switch for cursing, passively triggering the fine virtue within him.

Fairness.

They could all go to hell.

He turned around, walked out of the bathroom, and headed downstairs.

He was going to ask Shi Bochuan for a 0.39 subsidy.

But it wasn't over yet.

That night, Zero-Zero-Zero returned from its performance review with bad news.

[Host, the Main System has activated an automatic correction mechanism. Your eldest brother's wedding cannot happen.]

Shi Jihan crawled around in the darkness and asked, [How will it correct things?]

Zero-Zero-Zero said, [The wedding will send invitations. When the time comes, your second brother will return.]

[He won't want Shi Bochuan to live happily. Just cooperate with him when the time comes.]

The Shi Family's second brother, Shi Zhongye, was an extremely irritable perfectionist and also the bottom protagonist of the second novel, "Burning Bones." His relationship with the two Shi brothers was poor. After becoming an adult and leaving the family, he had spent years stationed with film crews outside and never returned home.

The reason was that the original Shi Jihan had deliberately excluded this second brother in order to compete for their parents' affection. Whenever he made a mistake, he would intentionally pin the blame on Shi Zhongye and get him scolded, making that child's small spine bear burdens it should never have borne.

Later, he had fought for his eldest brother's attention too, causing Shi Bochuan to unintentionally neglect his second brother and gradually making Shi Zhongye invisible and marginalized within the family.

Shi Jihan opened his phone, which was still displaying the original owner's conversation with him from the Spring Festival.

[Jihan: Second Brother, are you coming home for the New Year this year?]

[Ye: No. Pretend I'm dead.]

[Jihan: We haven't seen each other in so many years, Second Brother. I miss you.]

[Ye: Listen. What's that sound outside?]

[Jihan: What sound? Firecrackers?]

[Ye: The sound of you farting.]

[Jihan: .]

[Ye: I said you were farting. Why'd you lay an egg for me?]

After reading that conversation, Shi Jihan laid three eggs in a row: ...

He tried hard to search his mind for the original owner's memories of this second brother, but he could only find vague fragments from a few years ago. Even his personality was less clear than in the original novel, so he simply asked Zero-Zero-Zero, [Tell me about him.]

Zero-Zero-Zero saw his intense ambition and perked up. [Is the host planning to get full marks at your second brother's plot point, avoid derailing the main plot, and smoothly make it all the way to the end?]

[You're thinking too much,] Shi Jihan said. [Sixty points will do. Why aim for full marks? Every extra point is a waste.]

What was the rule for university final grades?

Thirty percent luck, seventy percent hard work, and the remaining fifty points—deep teacher-student affection.

Zero-Zero-Zero immediately wilted again. [If you ask me, I can only give you information from the internet. You'd be better off asking 707.]

Shi Jihan quickly accepted the new nickname. [Him? What would he know?]

[Among you three Shi brothers, he has the best relationship with your second brother. The money your second brother uses to make films was invested by him.]