After applying medicine to Lin Hanzhi, Qi Gu discovered that the guy had become even clingier. Fortunately, he was quite good-looking.
Having him nearby was no eyesore, so Qi Gu could not be bothered to do anything about him.
More importantly-
Lin Hanzhi took out a lollipop. "Want one?"
Qi Gu said, "...Yes."
He felt as though Lin Hanzhi had already worked out a pattern from the order in which he asked for snacks. Now he could even predict what Qi Gu wanted.
Still... it was not much of a problem.
He merely had a handle on Qi Gu's tastes, not his fatal weakness.
Qi Gu held the lollipop in his mouth, the candy bulging out one cheek, making it look plump and very pinchable.
Lin Hanzhi's gaze darkened, and he quietly rubbed his fingertips together inside his pocket.
[Ah, sure enough, nothing can stand in the way of Qi Gu's healthy appetite.]
[I'm jealous. If I had an appetite like that, I wouldn't have ended up hospitalized on an IV for malnutrition.]
[He really is as steady as an old dog. With how often they're running into ghosts now, never mind getting me to eat-just calling my name would make me jump three feet into the air.]
[A good mindset determines a man's entire life. (Not really.)]
[He's a bit like that capybara. Frighteningly emotionally stable.]
[Watching this makes me want to ask for a tutorial. How exactly do you stay so calm and unruffled no matter what happens?]
The staff member monitoring the screen in real time saw that quite a few people were discussing the topic and asked the question on the viewers' behalf.
Hearing the question, Qi Gu gave a faint laugh. "Simple. Just be unlucky enough."
"Once you've experienced your dorm catching fire during your high school entrance exams and burning up your admission ticket, being in the first cohort under a new college entrance exam policy, your company going under right after your three-month internship ends, and having a passing extra step on your hand and break your finger while you're playing a corpse... I believe you'll be just as emotionally stable as I am."
Qi Gu spoke with complete composure, as though none of those unfortunate things had happened to him.
Lin Hanzhi gave him a long, searching look. "Want more candy?"
"Chocolate, please."
[Holy shit... any one of those things could take me out on its own. How can Qi Gu still smile after going through all that?]
[Uh, no wonder he's so emotionally stable. I can't imagine how withdrawn I'd be by now if all that had happened to me.]
[Help, emotional stability bought at that price is something I really can't afford.]
[Oh, baby, that's just too awful. Hugs.]
[Now I genuinely feel bad for him. What kind of crap is all this?]
Of course, amid all the sympathy, there were also discordant voices.
[That unlucky? Could it be karmic payback for doing too many bad things?]
[Possibly. Maybe it's payback for bad-mouthing people everywhere. (Softly.)]
[That was so satisfying to hear. Knowing you're that unlucky puts my mind at ease, hehe.]
Qi Gu did not care how others judged him. To him, having lived to this age was already a victory.
He was an orphan, abandoned on a snowy night with a bitter wind. If Shifu had not picked him up and taken him home back then, he would long since have become a tiny, lonely soul in that day's deep snow.
That was precisely why Qi Gu had softened and taken Green Ghost home back then-he had put himself in his shoes.
Qi Gu was very happy that Green Ghost could go home, happy that, unlike him, Green Ghost had family who truly loved him.
And the person who had truly loved him had now become a mound of earth beneath the peach tree in Floating Mist Temple's backyard.
"Fortunes turn. The day when your bad luck gives way to good will surely come," Lin Hanzhi said softly. It sounded like a blessing, yet his tone was certain.
Qi Gu looked up at him and said a very soft, very quick "Thank you."
Listening to Qi Gu, Sha Chuan had to try very hard not to laugh aloud.
Just as he had thought, how much ability could someone as young as Qi Gu possibly have? If he really were that capable, why did he not turn his own luck around? How else could he have ended up so unlucky?
Just then, Sha Chuan's phone beeped twice. It was a message from one of his girlfriends.
Sha Chuan had long since discovered that girls liked devoted men.
So he deliberately played the devoted ex-boyfriend online, presenting himself as someone desperately in need of saving and warmth. Combined with his reasonably handsome face, his subtle tenderness, and his flirting tactics, this had attracted several young, wealthy girls from rich families. He maintained romantic relationships with all of them at once and had obtained plenty of luxury goods and monetary gifts from them.
That was why Sha Chuan did not dare neglect his girlfriends in the slightest. He found an angle the cameras could not capture and hurriedly took out his phone to reply.
[Lili: What did Qi Gu mean? You're seeing someone besides me?]
Sha Chuan's eyelid twitched hard, and his face turned ashen, but he quickly replied: [How could that be? He's just a charlatan spouting nonsense. Don't you know who I love? If you hadn't been willing to stay by my side, I honestly don't know how I would have made it through this past year and more...]
[Sha Chuan: Lili, you're the most important woman in my life. My everything.]
Sha Chuan had just turned off his screen when a message from his second girlfriend popped up.
[Xiao Mo: Baby, are you okay? It's way too dangerous up on that mountain. How about we stop filming this variety show? Wouldn't it be better if I supported you?]
[Sha Chuan: But I want to marry you and prove to your parents that I'm worthy of you. I need a career of my own!]
[Sha Chuan: I'm working hard for our future, baby.]
What Sha Chuan did not know was that, somewhere he could not see, his three girlfriends were currently sitting at the same table. Three phones lay on it, each displaying one of their chat histories with Sha Chuan.
All three were financial backers on Sha Chuan's livestream donation leaderboard. They knew one another and had even added one another as friends, but because Sha Chuan had separately told each of them that their relationship had to be kept secret and could not get out, all three had kept their mouths shut without any prior agreement, never revealing a thing.
It was only when Lili heard what Qi Gu had said during the livestream earlier that she became more wary.
Lili and Vivian were distant relatives. When she saw Vivian announce her pregnancy on her social feed, she was shocked and had asked about it.
Vivian then told her the whole story. Lili was stunned, but she also came to believe to some extent that Qi Gu really did have genuine abilities.
So when she heard Qi Gu say that Sha Chuan had plenty of romantic prospects, she immediately connected it to little details from their time together. For instance... Sha Chuan never let her look at his phone; at eight in the evening, he said he was busy even when he was not livestreaming; and the luxury goods she bought him would appear on the secondhand luxury market before long.
With all these things piling up, Lili could no longer ignore the doubts in her heart.
So she arranged to meet up with several of Sha Chuan's financial backers from the group chat, then admitted that she was dating him.
The other two looked utterly shocked, each more so than the last, and both said that Sha Chuan was dating them too.
The three compared timelines and discovered that Sha Chuan was practically a master of time and resource management. He had assigned the three girls different time slots for video calls, and he always replied to their messages instantly.
Some of the unisex luxury accessories Lili gave him would not fetch a good price, so he passed them on to the other girls. Things the other girls gave him, he passed on to Lili.
Even the sweet nothings he sent his girlfriends were inspired by things his other girlfriends had said, which he then edited and sent to the others!
Once the three girls compared notes, they even felt as though the three of them were the ones dating one another.
As for Sha Chuan, he seemed to serve as little more than decoration in their romantic relationship.
Before you continue