Trapped in the Same Day for a Thousand Years: Don't You Know the Rules?

Welcome to Trapped in the Same Day for a Thousand Years, exclusively produced by Feilu Novel Network, written by Sang Ze and narrated by Wang Xiaomo and Lao He. Mu Qingqing stood to one side, frozen with fear.

She liked to live on the wild side, but she had never seen anything like this.

She wanted to run, but it felt as though every thug was watching her and Wu Chen.

Wu Chen's call connected almost immediately.

"Hello? How did you get this number?"

"Who are you?"

The voice on the phone was hoarse and wary. This was his private number, known to very few people. Only important figures could contact him through it.

"Zhao Guai, your men sure know how to stir up trouble. What did we agree on at the May Gathering?"

"Didn't we say we'd make money together?"

"Are you trying to start a war and throw East Sea into chaos again?"

Wu Chen hit him with a barrage of questions.

Zhao Guai was stunned. The caller knew about the May Gathering—and had this number?

"Then you're...?"

Zhao Guai asked cautiously.

"Young Master Li asked me to pass on a message. Keep your people in line. Next time, it won't end with a phone call."

"Understood?"

Wu Chen said. "Young Master Li? Then you're...?"

"Uh, yes, yes. Rest assured, I promise it won't happen again."

"This was my fault. I'll make sure it changes."

Zhao Guai had no idea what had happened, but he apologized first anyway.

"Mm. Hold on."

Wu Chen looked up at Liu Huzi. "Take the call."

He set the phone on the table and slid it over.

Liu Huzi put down what he was holding and picked up the phone. The moment he heard the voice, he became utterly respectful.

"Boss, it's me."

"Yes, yes, boss. Uh, boss, no, we're at Wang Zhuangyan's bar."

"Uh, it's nothing serious."

"It's—yes, yes, boss. Boss, I was wrong. Boss, uh..." Liu Huzi grew more frightened with every word. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.

When the call ended, he stepped forward and offered the phone to Wu Chen with both hands.

Wu Chen took it and held it to his ear. "This was our fault. Don't worry, it won't happen again. I'll leave Liu Huzi to you, Ning Chu."

Zhao Guai's tone was extremely cautious.

"Mm."

Wu Chen hung up and looked at Liu Huzi. Thud!

Liu Huzi dropped to his knees and begged, "Brother, I—I was wrong! I have a family to look after. I don't want to die!"

"Please forgive me. It was my fault. I admit it."

As Liu Huzi spoke, he slapped himself across the face.

The sight terrified his underlings. Some could barely bring themselves to look.

Wu Chen wanted him to apologize to her. Liu Huzi's heart sank.

Wu Chen tilted his head toward her.

Liu Huzi immediately shuffled over to Mu Qianqian and resumed begging and slapping himself.

"Sister-in-law, I was wrong! Please spare me. I'll never do it again."

"Sister-in-law, just say the word. I'll do anything you ask, as long as you don't let me die."

He called her "sister-in-law" because he had misunderstood her relationship with Wu Chen.

At a loss, Mu Qianqian looked to Wu Chen for help.

"That's enough. It's late, and I need to go home and sleep. We'll leave it at that."

Wu Chen spoke.

"Thank you, brother! Thank you, sister-in-law!"

Overcome with relief, Liu Huzi even knocked his head against the floor twice before Wu Chen and Mu Qianqian.

He got up to leave the bar with his men. He probably would never set foot in it again.

"Leaving just like that?"

Wu Chen's voice was mild.

Liu Huzi froze, then turned back with a broad, ingratiating smile. "Is there anything else you need?"

"Don't you know the rules?"

"You made a mistake. You can't just walk away without leaving something behind."

Wu Chen looked Liu Huzi straight in the eye. Liu Huzi understood. His face hardened. Gritting his teeth, he stepped forward and drew a knife. Mu Qingqing startled and edged toward Wu Chen.

Knife in his right hand, Liu Huzi spread his left hand flat on the table.

Thud!

With one stroke, Liu Huzi cut off his left pinkie. His face went deathly pale, but he made no sound.

He dropped the knife, pulled out several tissues, and pressed them to the wound. Looking at Wu Chen, he asked, "Brother, is that enough?"

"It is."

Wu Chen stood and stretched. "I'm heading home. Don't just leave like that, though. You disrupted their business. Remember to compensate them."

"Yes, yes. Whatever you say."

Liu Huzi bowed repeatedly. "We're leaving."

Wu Chen headed for the exit. The underlings parted for him, their heads lowered, none daring to look at him.

Mu Qianqian hurried after Wu Chen and linked her arm through his.

Even as she kept glancing back, Wu Chen did not take her away.

The matter was settled. No one would dare touch Mu Qianqian.

As the two left the bar, more than a dozen cars pulled up outside. Most were vans and SUVs, but there were also two sports cars: a white Lamborghini and a red Ferrari.

Forty or fifty people climbed out, each carrying a wrapped, rod-shaped object. They were almost certainly blades.

Their leader stepped out of the Lamborghini. He was short and thin, in his early thirties, with glasses and a scholarly air.

He was Wang Zhuangyuan, a man renowned in East Sea's underworld.

Wang Zhuangyuan was his underworld nickname. His real name was Wang Zhe, and fifteen years earlier, he had been East Sea's top science-track college entrance exam scorer.

Not long ago, Wang Zhuangyuan had finished arranging an elder relative's funeral and was eating with his trusted men when the bar staff called to report that Zhao Guai's men were causing trouble at his Huahe Bar. He had brought his men straight over.

Mu Qingqing looked under twenty, and Wu Chen looked like an ordinary college student.

Wang Zhuangyuan and his dozens of men paid them no attention as they headed into the bar.

As Wu Chen brushed past Wang Zhuangyuan, his hand flicked out. No one noticed.

The two went down the steps to the roadside. Wu Chen looked back. Once Wang Zhuangyuan and his men were inside, he pulled a key from his pocket and pressed a button. The white Lamborghini's lights flashed, and its doors unlocked.

"You..." Mu Qingqing stared at him.

"Just took it off him. Coming?"

Wu Chen turned to her.

"You're stealing his car."

Mu Qianqian hesitated, then nodded.

They got in, and Wu Chen drove the Lamborghini away with Mu Qianqian beside him.

Wu Chen stole cars often. Everything reset each day, so it hardly mattered. That was also why he dared to kill people so freely.

But although Wu Chen had done bad things, he had never slaughtered innocents. He had been trapped in the same day for over a thousand years.

He had despaired, gone mad, and killed himself hundreds of times. Yet he always woke at seven in the morning on a new July 7. He could not die.

Eventually, Wu Chen had worked something out: he would make every day count. He set himself all kinds of challenges, determined to make his endless life interesting and varied.

Half an hour later, the white Lamborghini tore along an elevated road at over two hundred kilometers an hour. Traffic was light in the dead of night, but they still had one close call after another.

"Wahahaha!"

Mu Qianqian laughed and cheered at the top of her lungs.

She had recovered from her fright. Wild by nature, she loved excitement, and everything she had experienced tonight made it the most thrilling day of her eighteen years.

She had met an extraordinary man.

After they came down from the elevated road, Wu Chen slowed and pulled over.

"Get out and take a cab home."

Wu Chen rested his hands on the steering wheel. "I'm taking a cab back."

Mu Qingqing blinked. "You're not taking me home?"

"It's too far. I'm tired."

Wu Chen spoke. "Do you know where I live?"

"Of course. How many times have I told you? We've met before. You're still lying to me."

Mu Qingqing gave a little snort, then smiled again. After a moment, she said with a curious expression, "I'm not going home tonight."

"Then where are you going?"

Wu Chen asked.

"Wait a second."

Mu Qianqian rummaged through her bag for a small bottle of makeup remover and some cotton pads. Using a little mirror, she quickly wiped her face clean.

"How many points do I get now?"

Mu Qianqian turned to him with a grin.

Wu Chen smiled and looked through the windshield. "Nine." He shifted into gear, and the Lamborghini set off again, this time for home.

Wu Chen lived in an alley in East District's old quarter. The road through the alley was uneven, and the sports car's low chassis made it hard to drive in, so he parked the Lamborghini by the road outside.

They walked in under the dim yellow streetlights, Mu Qingqing holding Wu Chen's arm and peering around curiously.

"You live here? Keeping such a low profile?"

Mu Qianqian asked.

"What low profile?"

"I've always lived here. It's my family's old house."

Wu Chen answered.

Then he laughed. "You don't think I'm some big shot, do you?"

"I'm not."

"You're not?"

Mu Qianqian laughed. "Hmph. Those people were terrified of you. You made one phone call and he bowed his head to you. You even dared to steal his Lamborghini. Do you think I can't tell?"

"I've been repeating the same day for a thousand years."

"Over those thousand years, I've been able to learn far too much, by any means I like, without worrying about the consequences."

"Take East Sea, for example. I know almost everyone with even a little social standing here extremely well."

"But I don't actually know any of them. I know them, but they don't know me. With the information I have, I can use one person's influence against another. And I don't have to worry about them taking revenge later, because everything resets. Understand?"

"So you were bluffing them?"

Mu Qingqing stopped and let go of Wu Chen's arm.

"More or less."

Wu Chen shrugged. "What, having second thoughts?"

"Now that you know I'm not some big shot, you don't want to come home with me? Suit yourself."

With that, Wu Chen put his hands in his pockets and strolled toward home.

Wu Chen never forced himself on women. It went against his moral code.

He had gone mad before. But afterward, to keep himself from sinking back into madness, from falling into depravity and eternal torment, he held fast to the morals a human being should have. He wanted to live like one.

Quick footsteps suddenly sounded behind him.

"Here I come!"

"Hey!"

A weight landed on Wu Chen's back. Mu Qingqing had run up and jumped onto him.

"Carry me. Why aren't you moving?"

Wu Chen reached back to support Mu Qianqian and kept walking with her on his back.

"Why did you come along?"

"I'm not a big shot."

"So what? You're interesting."

"Little girl, don't be so quick to trust someone."

"Ha! That's rich coming from a guy who claims he's slept with ten thousand women!"

"I thought you didn't believe me?"

"It doesn't hurt to believe you for now. I'll pretend what you said is true, so it's fine."

"No matter what we do today, it'll all reset when we wake up."

"I won't know you, and none of it will have happened. Right?"

"Mm. That's right."

Wu Chen carried Mu Qianqian home and only set her down after opening the door.

It was an old house, but the layout was good: three bedrooms and a living room, with plenty of space. The decor was plain and more than twenty years out of date.

"Your place is so clean. It really doesn't look like a bachelor's home."

Mu Qianqian wandered around. "It'd be hard to mess it up in a single day."

Wu Chen pointed. "The bathroom's over there. The hair dryer's inside, on the second shelf from the left. I don't have a spare towel, so use mine."

"Hm?"

Mu Qingqing turned around, confusion in her eyes.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"To take a shower. Aren't you going to?"

Wu Chen asked.

"Y-you! You bad guy! You've only just got here, and you're already telling me to shower. What's going through your head?"

Mu Qingqing hurried over and poked him again and again.

"What else?"

"Why did you come to my place?"

"To enjoy the view?"

Wu Chen smiled.

"Y-you're so direct. You don't understand girls at all."

Mu Qingqing blushed.

"You think I don't understand girls?"

Wu Chen gave her an odd smile. "I understand them all too well. That's why I don't need to tiptoe around this. Besides, we don't have much time."

"We don't have much time?"

"What do you mean?"

"I fall asleep at exactly four in the morning. Whether I want to or not, I'm out."

"And I wake up at seven. Do you understand?"

"But it's not even midnight yet. We've got more than four hours."

"Three times?"

Wu Chen held up three fingers.

"Three times what?"

Mu Qianqian didn't understand.

"Haven't you had a boyfriend before?"

"You don't know what I mean?"

Wu Chen looked puzzled.

"When have I ever had a boyfriend?"

Mu Qianqian was genuinely baffled.

Wu Chen froze.

His information was wrong. Over the previous thousand years, Wu Chen had met Mu Qianqian not just once or twice, but perhaps a hundred times, mostly at Huahe Bar.

He had also run into her by chance while pursuing other girls.

He had heard that Mu Qianqian had a boyfriend. But he had never intended to pursue her before, so he had never investigated her thoroughly.

"Then who's Sun Haoran?"

Wu Chen asked outright. "Wow, you even know that bastard? Just how much has my cousin told you about me?"

"Weren't you dating him?"

"No! Why would anyone say he was my boyfriend?"

"Oh, that? Our grandfathers arranged it when we were little, but how could something the old men said count? My parents don't even acknowledge it."

"Then, when I was in middle school, that bastard transferred to East Sea and went around telling our classmates I was his girlfriend. That was all."

"And then?"

"Then I had my cousin find some people to beat him up. He transferred away from East Sea after that."

"Oh, I see." Wu Chen nodded.

Sun Haoran wasn't from East Sea, so Wu Chen had never investigated him. And because Wu Chen had only heard bits and pieces about Qianqian from others, he had gotten the wrong idea.

"So you're still..." Wu Chen asked, his expression turning strange.

"Still what?"

Mu Qianqian stared at him, lost. Without explaining, Wu Chen suddenly swept her into his arms amid her startled cries and carried her straight toward the bathroom.

"Ah! What are you doing?"

"Taking a shower with you."

"You're so bad!"

"The worst!"

That night, Mu Qingqing finally understood exactly what Wu Chen had meant by "three times."

Day broke.

At exactly seven in the morning, Wu Chen woke on schedule and stared blankly at the ceiling.

Another cycle. Every day was the same.

Waking early and staring at the ceiling while he thought back over what he had done the day before had become a habit.

"Hey, you! Didn't you say July 7 kept repeating?"

"That every day Reset? It's July 8 today. How do you explain that?"

A girl's voice suddenly came from beside him.

Wu Chen's face changed with shock. He shot upright and turned toward the blanket-wrapped girl beside him.

Qianqian gripped a baseball bat in both hands and glared at Wu Chen, her cheeks puffed out.

That's all for this episode. Thanks for listening!