"Who are you calling your fiancée!"
Lin Wan'er retorted, embarrassed and annoyed. Then she sank into utter bewilderment.
"Third Brother... he clearly knew you were Fan Xian, and that I was Lin Wan'er. Why did he do this? Why did he make you write an Engagement Cancellation Letter, and why did he arrange for us to meet? What on earth is he trying to do?"
She remembered how Zhou Cheng had come to her home yesterday, shown her the Engagement Cancellation Letter "written by Fan Xian himself," and encouraged her to come to this meeting.
Fan Xian had racked his brains too, but still could not make sense of Zhou Cheng's actions.
"If Prince Cheng didn't want us together, why go out of his way to arrange this meeting? If he wanted us together, why trick me into writing an Engagement Cancellation Letter first and try to ruin the marriage? What does he gain from any of this?"
Both moved to the table and sat across from each other, separated by the verses written in water across its surface. Taking turns, they pieced together every encounter, conversation, and detail involving Zhou Cheng before and after this meeting, holding nothing back.
"He saw both of us on the day of the Poetry Gathering, yet never said a word."
"We'd already missed our chance, and we both wanted to cancel the engagement. Meeting again should have been nearly impossible, but then he stepped in and brought us together..."
Fan Xian raked a hand through his hair in frustration. The more they analyzed it, the more illogical Zhou Cheng's behavior seemed. It was completely beyond the bounds of any normal person's thinking.
He had always prided himself on his wits, but now he felt utterly helpless.
"I don't know either. The Third Prince... he's only my cousin. We rarely get a chance to talk." Lin Wan'er knitted her delicate brows, equally bewildered.
It made no sense. None at all. It was like facing a tangled mess without a single loose end to grasp.
At a loss, Fan Xian sighed.
"What does this Third Brother of yours even want? Is he out of his mind?"
Lin Wan'er could only give him an innocent, helpless look.
Unable to figure it out, Fan Xian decided not to keep trying.
He gazed affectionately at the woman before him. "Thank goodness you're Lin Wan'er."
Lin Wan'er returned his loving gaze. Suddenly, her expression changed. "Oh no, the Engagement Cancellation Letter!"
"The Engagement Cancellation Letter? What about it?"
Now, merely hearing those words made Fan Xian grit his teeth in anger.
Lin Wan'er sprang to her feet and said urgently, "Third Brother said he'd deliver it to my mother. She might request an audience with His Majesty today and ask him to dissolve our engagement!"
"What!" Fan Xian jumped up too, his expression changing instantly.
Lin Wan'er hurried toward the door. "I have to go to the palace now. I hope there's still time."
Hearing that, Fan Xian understood how urgent things were.
But he could do nothing to help her stop the Eldest Princess inside the palace.
He escorted Lin Wan'er to her carriage, then could only watch as it swiftly disappeared down the street.
Feeling bereft, Fan Xian returned to the private room.
He looked down at the dried tea and blurred writing on the tabletop, then slammed his palm against it.
"Li Chengcheng, you bastard! You're fucking insane!"
Chapter 25: Ten draws
The morning light flowed like water, gentle enough to drown a man in bliss.
Zhou Cheng watched through half-lidded eyes as Sang Wen sat on the edge of the bed, stretching her lovely curves.
Soon, her blue-green jacket and skirt concealed her fair skin, and she tightened the sash at her waist. Her movements were featherlight as she pinned up her hair. Her raven-black locks wound twice around her fingers before settling obediently behind her head, leaving only a few wisps beside her ears that swayed gently as she lowered her head.
Just as Zhou Cheng was losing himself in this beautiful scene, unwilling to wake, a familiar mechanical voice shattered the moment in his ears.
[Negative emotions from Fan Xian +666!]
Zhou Cheng's mind cleared. He immediately knew that the "magpie bridge rendezvous" he had arranged had worked.
Fully dressed, Sang Wen came over to give him a kiss, then headed lightly toward the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
The door curtain fell, stirring the scattered light and shadows.
Zhou Cheng slipped on a light robe, sat up, and willed the system into action.
A translucent screen spread out before his eyes.
He glanced at his emotion-point balance: 10,545.
He had not used the draw feature once since unlocking it. With Fan Xian's latest contribution, he now had enough for ten draws.
The system's prize pool consisted of things he had once owned.
On Earth, he had been an ordinary person with an ordinary life and an ordinary past. Naturally, the things he had owned were ordinary too, so his expectations for these draws had always been modest.
He had spared no effort in accumulating emotion points mainly because he wanted to unlock new system features.
Unfortunately, the requirements for unlocking them were unknown. All he could do was try everything he could.
With a thought, he focused on the prize wheel.
[Draw once] [Draw ten times]
He chose the latter and silently said, Activate.
The wheel immediately began spinning, faster and faster. The prize icons blurred into a colorful ring of light, like shards of glass whirling inside a kaleidoscope.
In less than three seconds, the wheel stopped, and ten items appeared in his system storage.
The whole process was plain and unceremonious, taking less than five seconds. It was certainly quick and clean.
Zhou Cheng peered into the storage. One look was enough to darken his face with disappointment.
All ten were indeed fine "treasures" he had once owned!
"Toilet paper, nail clippers, Mayinglong hemorrhoid ointment... great, just great. Even a group-buy takeout meal. Huh, it's still hot..."
Zhou Cheng took a deep breath, reached into empty space, and pulled out a mask.
It had a bright red base edged in gold paint, depicting the classic face of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, with slightly misaligned printing around the brows and eyes. The plastic was flimsy and light, and the strap was a cheap red cord.
After studying it for a moment, he remembered.
If he recalled correctly, he had bought it at the little shop outside his elementary school after painstakingly saving up one yuan.
But someone had swiped it before he had worn it more than a few times.
He held the mask up to his face and saw the bright daylight outside through its hollow eye sockets. A wave of nostalgia washed over him, swirled briefly, then quickly receded.
He tossed the mask back into storage and moved on to the next item.
His fingertips touched a cold metal frame.
It was a rose-gold iPhone 6, its screen covered with a brand-new protector and its corners free of scratches.
He tried turning it on without much hope. Before long, however, the familiar white icon appeared, followed by a loading progress bar.
It booted successfully, though the signal bars were naturally empty.
He opened the photo gallery. There were only a few dozen pictures.
There was a sunset outside a classroom window, a greasy cafeteria tray, a messy dorm bed, a tacky selfie of him flashing a peace sign, and a secretly snapped picture of a certain lovely figure...
Everything felt both familiar and foreign, lifting a corner of his buried memories. For a moment, it seemed like another lifetime.
Back in secondary school, his vanity and desire to keep up with others had still been strong.
He had scrimped and saved for more than half a year for this phone. In the end, he had still begged his family to cover most of the cost before he could barely afford it.
Less than a week after he bought it, the new iPhone 7 came out.
Even now, he remembered a blurry face wearing an obnoxious grin. "Hey, Cheng, a 6? Secondhand, right? Looks pretty new."
He closed the gallery and opened the music app. There were not many locally stored songs either, all hits from back then, including things like "I'm No Legend"...
He lowered the volume and selected a song. The intro began, with its familiar drumbeat and familiar guitar, and an invisible hand seemed to give his heart a gentle squeeze.
When the song ended, the next one played automatically.
"Forget Time."
He leaned back against the headboard and truly forgot the time.
Until light, familiar footsteps sounded outside the door.
Zhou Cheng snapped out of his reverie. His hand emptied as he sent the phone into his system storage.
Time stood still inside the storage, so he was not worried about wasting battery power.
But the thought of the battery left him rather speechless.
The damned system had given him a phone without a charger!
Charging a phone in the world of Joy of Life was not some impossible fantasy.
Even setting aside the possibility of building a generator by hand using his knowledge of electromagnetism, martial arts practitioners' true qi could itself produce an electrical current after a special conversion.
In the world of Joy of Life, the Western Continent lay across the sea.
Its cultivation system centered on spell arts.
Cultivators on the Western Continent also used Heaven and Earth Vital Energy-in other words, nuclear radiation-but had forged a different path through magic. By channeling it through specific spell formations and mental power, they could convert it directly into wind, lightning, water, and fire.
However, those spells were slow to cast in battle, and their killing efficiency fell far short of martial arts on this side. With no Grandmasters among them either, they had always been looked down upon here.
The Western Continent's spells might not be much good for killing, but studying them to charge a phone should be feasible.
Still, having only the phone, without a charger as a safeguard, would make experimentation considerably more troublesome.
"Your Highness, I thought I heard something just now?"
The door opened gently. Sang Wen stepped sideways inside carrying a red-lacquered tray. On it sat a plate of sandwiches cut into neat triangles, alongside a steaming bowl of century egg and lean pork congee.
Zhou Cheng composed himself, putting away the lingering disorientation of those memories across time and space, and smiled. "I was listening to a song."
"Listening to a song?" Sang Wen blinked.
Didn't he mean singing?
"Mm. A song called 'Forget Time'... I can teach you when we have time."
"'Forget Time'?" Sang Wen tilted her head, turning the title over in her mind as puzzlement rose in her eyes. "What a strange song title."
Before you continue