Unlike in the original timeline, when Huo Yuhao had instinctively kept his distance after meeting Bei Bei and Tang Ya.
Perhaps Lu Chen's exceptionally pleasing face had played a part.
Perhaps his age was too misleading.
Or perhaps he was the first person to treat Huo Yuhao well after his mother's death.
In any case, Huo Yuhao had not rejected traveling with Lu Chen.
Over the next two days, their arrangement basically consisted of Lu Chen providing ingredients and Huo Yuhao doing the cooking.
They traveled together, cultivated together, and chatted about the amusing things they had encountered along the way, their friendship gradually growing warmer.
At least, that was how it looked on the surface.
[Huo Yuhao (phantom) favorability: 20 (new acquaintance) → 30 (new acquaintance) → 20 (new acquaintance) → 30 (new acquaintance)]
After checking Huo Yuhao's favorability panel again, Lu Chen was honestly a little speechless at the changing numbers.
This isn't right. That's not how dating sims taught me it worked-
In the original timeline, when Tang Ya and Bei Bei treated you well, didn't you bare your heart to them?
Why am I getting different treatment?
Ever since he had treated Huo Yuhao to their first meal, the other's favorability had been stuck bouncing back and forth between 20 and 30, never rising any further.
And that favorability meant Lu Chen did not even count as a particularly close friend in his eyes.
In other words, if a thousand-year Soul Beast suddenly jumped out in front of them and bit him, Huo Yuhao's reaction would absolutely be to turn and run, saying as he fled, "You've bitten him, so you can't come bite me now~"
Fine, fine-so all that wariness of a revenge-story protagonist is being spent on me?
He could understand it.