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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 packet of ketchup randomly included with a McDonald's order!

[Tsk tsk tsk, why delete it? I still wanted to analyze the sweetness frame by frame.]

[Good thing I saved it, hahaha.]

That only made him angrier!

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

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

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

-

After leaving the ice cream shop, Shi Jihan hailed a taxi and rushed home. The moment the car door opened, he shot out.

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

[Ding, mission "Write a divorce declaration and deliver it to Shi Bochuan" completed. No mission reward.]

000 was speechless.

[I saw you leisurely eating in the shop. I thought you didn't care at all.]

Shi Jihan wiped the sweat off his forehead.

[What do you know? I like dancing around the deadline. I enjoy that desperate, fire-under-my-ass pressure when death is right at the door.]

That was how terminal procrastination worked. Every time he knelt down and begged himself not to procrastinate anymore, he realized that once he was on his knees, he could lie on the floor a little longer.

He darted straight from his eldest brother's bedroom back to his own room, rushed into the bathroom, and slammed the door shut, leaving 000 outside.

[What are you doing?]

Shi Jihan shouted back,

[Going to deal with an emergency in the restroom!]

The power of three cups of ice cream was terrifying.

000 was worried. This was his final dying struggle.

[Aren't you going to see what Dianjia Bro actually wrote?]

[I trust 707's writing skills!]

Having Dianjia Bro write a divorce declaration was overkill.

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

On the first floor.

Shi Bochuan, who was drinking tea in the living room, had yet to figure out what was happening when a stack of A4 paper was shoved 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, the later pages technically had writing too.

It was more Ye than a doctor's prescription. At first glance, all he could see were uneven loops of cursive like springs.

Shi Bochuan praised it, saying, "These springs really are springy," then began trying hard to decipher the first few lines.

"Discussion of 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 terminology, such an unfamiliar paper.

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

Shi Bochuan pondered for a long time before suddenly understanding.

So his wife wanted to try something different tonight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could 707's writing really be that good? Had it been so emotionally charged, so devastatingly tragic, so universally sorrowful that it had pierced his eldest brother's heart and skewered it like grilled chicken hearts?

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

Yes, he had decided to hold a belated wedding for them. A wedding of the century.

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

Shi Jihan said, "Huh?"

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

He hurriedly said, "No, didn't you see what this says?"

"I did."

"Swear you really read it?"

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

Aaaaaah, damn lovebrain!

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

Once he saw the title, knowledge delivered a heavy blow to his head.

000 clicked its tongue.

[N-no wonder it was 707.]

What a good brain for academia.

[Ding, reassessment complete. Mission "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 grabbed Shi Bochuan and manually forced his eyes open. "Big Brother, look carefully again! Look at what the first few words say! 'Dissolution of marital relations'!"

Shi Bochuan stared with his big Kazilan eyes and gave the three-part NPC response: "It's all foreplay."

Fuck you.

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

[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, intertwining with Shi Jihan's desperate cries into a symphony, mixed with Shi Bochuan's baffled, "Huh?"

"Third Brother, stop forcing them open. My eyes hurt." Shi Bochuan was now a fragile, teary-eyed man with sore eyes.

000 shouted in panic,

[We're doomed, doomed, doomed! The Main System urgently summoned me!]

[Host, we'll have money deducted! We definitely will!]

Amid the noise, Shi Jihan instantly caught the words "money deducted" and immediately asked,

[Yours or mine?]

000 said,

[...]

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

[It will be deducted according to a percentage of your current savings.]

That damned Main System. Like a dead turtle stewed in soup, full of bad intentions.

Now that money was involved, Shi Jihan desperately put his brand-new brain to work, bringing out the intelligence he had used to outwit his former boss, Boss Gou.

[I have an idea. Come on, to the bathroom!]

Shi Bochuan was discarded after being used, left on the sofa.

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 his chest, and lay peacefully on the sofa.

Meanwhile, chaos continued elsewhere.

[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 into 000's little cloth pouch, cramming in as much as he could.

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

[Three.]

[Two.]

A massive fortune of more than three hundred Malice Points!

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

[One.]

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

The mechanical voice stalled.

[Current savings: 0.78 Malice Points.]

[Estimated deduction: 0.39 Malice Points.]

Half of it!

Shi Jihan hit the curse button, passively triggering the good morals within him.

Fairness.

They could all go die.

He turned around, left the bathroom, and went downstairs.

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

-

But it wasn't over yet.

That evening, 000 returned from its performance review with bad news.

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

Shi Jihan crawled along in gloom and asked,

[How will it correct things?]

000 said,

[Wedding invitations will be sent out, and your second brother will return then.]

[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 hot-tempered perfectionist. He was also the bottom protagonist of the second novel, "Burning Bones." His relationship with the two Shi brothers was not good. After becoming an adult and leaving the family, he had spent all year stationed with production crews and never returned home.

The reason was that the original Shi Jihan had deliberately excluded this second brother to compete for their parents' affection. Whenever he did something wrong, he would deliberately frame Shi Zhongye and get him scolded, making the child's small shoulders bear blame that he should never have had to bear.

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

Shi Jihan opened his phone. It was still on the conversation between the original owner and Shi Zhongye during 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 for 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 did you lay an egg for me?]

After reading that exchange, 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 blurry fragments from years ago. Even the character's personality was less clear than in the original novel, so he simply asked 000,

[Tell me about him.]

000 saw his intense career 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 overthinking it,] Shi Jihan said. [Sixty points is enough. Why aim for full marks? Every point above that is wasted.]

What were the rules for university final grades?

Thirty percent luck, seventy percent hard work, and the remaining fifty percent was the deep bond between teacher and student.

000 immediately wilted again.

[If you ask me, I can only give you information from the internet. You might as well ask 707.]

Shi Jihan quickly accepted this new form of address.

[Him? What would he know?]

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