Chapter 6: Our Love

Her skirt, which reached past her knees, swayed slightly, and her long, jade-carved legs were dazzlingly white.

Ying Ziyun just stood there straight, waiting until Xu Heng turned around to see her, before casting a faint glance at him.

"Did you find a new girlfriend?"

Xu Heng was stunned for two seconds, then realized that Ying Ziyun must have seen him escorting Fan Xi back to the women's dormitory and assumed as much.

"That was our Class Monitor; I was just discussing some class business with her, and it was on the way, that's all."

"You don't need to explain so much to me. We don't have any relationship now, and it would be quite good if you could find a new girlfriend."

"Mm." Xu Heng nodded. He wanted to reminisce with her, but discovered that they seemed to have lost all common topics; clearly, he could chat with Fan Xi, but he couldn't find an entry point to talk to Ying Ziyun at all.

Especially since Ying Ziyun likely still felt disgusted by his pursuit in her heart, and it was uncertain if he would be rejected if he chattered about the past, so Xu Heng exchanged a brief look and left, leaving Ying Ziyun alone at the entrance of the women's dormitory in a daze.

The two had a peaceful breakup, but in his past life at this point in time, Xu Heng was still pestering Ying Ziyun, so she had hoped Xu Heng would let go. Yet now that Xu Heng was truly indifferent and wouldn't say two more words to her, Ying Ziyun was instead somewhat taken aback.

People are such contradictory creatures; when you once possessed everything you expected, you were more disdainful than anyone, but when you lost the adoration of the crowd, you stirred up regret in the sea of your heart.

It was just that Ying Ziyun had always controlled her emotions well; even if there was a tiny thought of getting back together, it was suppressed by her.

She didn't want to fall in love with Xu Heng like an ordinary couple, get married plainly, and then live a plain life for the rest of her days.

Her family was indeed in a small city, but she was a girl with pride in her heart, always wanting to see a wider world.

Ying Ziyun also understood that Xu Heng couldn't give her these things, so she took the initiative to propose the breakup. After the breakup, perhaps Xu Heng could find a girl whose personality suited his to spend the rest of his life with, but that person just couldn't be her.

Their love, like that of thousands upon thousands of ordinary couples, once passed, would never return...

When Xu Heng returned to the dormitory, only a boy with a slightly chubby face was sitting in a chair reading a book.

This was the fourth person in their dormitory, Sheng Bo, whose home was in a small county in the south of Jiangsu Province. It was said he was the son of a large farm owner, with parents who leased several thousand acres of fertile land; he counted as a minor rich second generation, but he was very humble and loved telling off-color jokes, so his personality got along well with Xu Heng.

Every day in the dormitory, besides watching Tiga back and forth, he played Cheng Hai; today he changed his nature to read books because the final exams were approaching, and he had to cram a semester's worth of knowledge.

"Old Xu, didn't you go to the internet cafe with Cheng Huaiyu and the others?"

Sheng Bo looked surprised when he saw that the person who opened the door and came in was Xu Heng.

The dormitory only had three computers, and their configurations weren't great. Usually, at this hour, Xu Heng would be at the internet cafe with Cheng Huaiyu and Zhao Gaoyang, pulling an all-nighter and climbing over the wall to get back at dawn. Today, the internet cafe trio had actually split up, which made him somewhat surprised.

"Had some things to do."

Xu Heng didn't explain too much, found an excuse, and sat down at his spot.

His computer was an antique, bought from the second-hand market; in the parlance of the future, it would be "Little Fairy's second-hand self-used 3060, ninety percent new."

In this era where everyone generally didn't know much about graphics cards, CPUs, and the like, it was normal to be swindled. Even in later generations, there were many older uncles and aunts who didn't understand computers, which was how the "ninety percent new" meme came to be.

Xu Heng, who had just started university, naturally didn't understand computers. This old HP was bought for him by his father for over a thousand yuan, though it was barely usable for typing.

The boot time was 1 minute and 46 seconds, beating 18% of the world's users, hmm...

He started to get a little afraid that while he was typing, it would go "buzz" and blue-screen.

Still have to buy a good computer~

Xu Heng sighed slightly.

Whether it was typing or buying stocks, one couldn't operate on a broken machine, especially with something like stocks, where one could miss a lot in a single second, and Xu Heng didn't have that many opportunities to miss anymore.

He opened a webpage and searched for the website. At this moment, the most popular thing hanging on the front page was Fo Ben Shi Dao, with a big cover recommendation and promotional slogan.

One had to admit that Shenji Niangniang had talent, pioneering the Primordial genre to achieve enlightenment, becoming a Platinum author in half a year—the fastest Platinum legend in the many years of web literature's development. It was a pity that later, for the sake of development, he went to Zongheng, and eventually gradually faded into the crowd. Over the course of several decades, his peak was long-lasting enough, and he didn't ruin his reputation like San Tang; he could be considered to have had a beginning and an end.

Looking at the slightly rustic page, Xu Heng couldn't help but sigh at the past.

Nowadays, Zongheng hadn't appeared yet, and Shenji was still rising step by step on Qidian. This was the best era for web literature, and there was no worse one.

Xu Heng created a Qidian account, built a document, and began to construct an outline.

To be honest, in his past life, he never made outlines when writing urban novels, but he had heard that editors in this era would ask if you had an outline to facilitate giving resources later, so he reluctantly started by writing an outline.

An outline was much simpler than the main text, especially since he was writing an urban novel. Basically, outline what female characters the protagonist meets, then set some exclusive plots for these female characters, and finally "combine"—one female character could be written for over a hundred thousand or several hundred thousand words. With a dozen or so female characters, you could have a million-word foundation. In between, fill in the protagonist's career, rich second-generation or military second-generation enemies, etc., to create conflict or create opportunities for the protagonist to act cool and slap faces. An urban rebirth novel of this era was finished.

Xu Heng was already an old hand who had written several urban novels; writing this kind of straightforward, satisfying "cool novel" was a piece of cake for him. Moreover, his skill in describing female characters was very strong; he could design the characters' personalities and appearances to be quite distinctive, and added with his unique method of describing their features, he was like a breath of fresh air in today's cookie-cutter, brainless urban "cool novels."

With the flow of inspiration, he only spent three hours on the ten-thousand-word outline and twenty-thousand-word main text.

Even the "tentacle monster" Lao Ying would have to bow down to this speed.

In '07, most full-time writers on Qidian were still doing two updates of six thousand words; someone like San Tang doing ten thousand words a day was "godly speed."

There were also part-time writers like Yu Da who did four thousand words a day and were often criticized by readers for "turtle speed."

Of course, after he finished writing "The Great Family Servant," he retired from the circle, and later, even if they wanted to complain, they had nowhere to complain.

Xu Heng revised the twenty-thousand-word main text and published ten thousand words. He borrowed the title from a later web novel, calling it "Niuliu Qingchun 2007," but after careful thought, he felt this name wasn't very good and changed it to "Rebirth: The Ultimate Male God."

Although he personally liked the former name, the latter was more suitable for the current urban novel market.

Because of the existence of "The Great Family Servant," the keyword "Ultimate" in book titles currently allowed new novels to have their search rate increased quite a bit.