Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
With familiarity, Jiang Mingshu pushed open the thick wooden door of Wu Shanjiao, a boring-looking pub.
Lin Yao followed behind her and walked into a dark, long hallway.
The only light source here came from the neon lights flashing under the glass floor beneath her feet, which gave her a strange sensation as she walked. It was as if she was floating through the air.
Noisy music and the sound of commotion mixed together, and since this was the first time Lin Yao had ever come to a pub, her ears were a little overwhelmed.
But what was most unbearable to her was that in the air, there was a very repulsive odor, a pungent combination of various perfume scents, cosmetics, smoke, alcohol, food, and sweat from the bodies of the people here.
An old love song was playing in the background, and after a remix, the rhythm sounded more upbeat, but it lost its original flavor as well.
The light on the dance floor appeared dim and mottled as men and women embraced each other while they danced together.
Lin Yao couldn’t clearly discern their faces, and she could barely make out their figures and their movements. It was as if everyone had turned into a hazy black shadow.
Jiang Mingshu shouted to the waiter at the bar, “Give me a glass of ice water, thank you!”
Lin Yao had never been to such a place, so naturally, she could only imitate the way she acted, and she shouted, “Two cups, thank you!”
Soon, the waiter placed two cups of ice lemonade in front of them. Jiang Mingshu took the cup in front of her and gulped down half of it. The drink looked very refreshing and delicious.
Lin Yao started to imitate her, and she took a big gulp from the cup as well.
“Ss—”
The icy and acidic liquid gave her a stinging toothache, and she quickly put down the cup.
“Haha, how hilarious!”
Someone was laughing out loud.
There were many people at the pub, so Lin Yao didn’t think that the person was laughing at her, but nonetheless, she felt a little awkward.
Jiang Mingshu stretched her neck as she looked around for a while, and she said, “Let’s go inside!” Then, she dragged Lin Yao all the way towards the dance floor.
The dance floor wasn’t big, and Lin Yao only discovered that it was a dance floor after stepping on to it. It turned out that the so-called dance floor was just an open space around ten square meters. She gradually began to see the people here more clearly probably because her eyes had adjusted to the lighting here.
The people on the dance floor weren’t actually dancing. They rubbed up against each other’s bodies from time to time and did some extremely provocative moves.
In Lin Yao’s eyes, these people were probably in a relationship. In line with the principle of looking away from inappropriate sexual conduct, she quickly averted her gaze.
There were many men sitting in the seats around the dance floor. In the dark, some were freely sizing up the provocatively-dressed women on the dance floor, some were glancing around like Lin Yao was, and others were obviously already drunk. With their eyes closed, they swung their bodies to the rhythm of the music.
This was the first time Lin Yao had seen these kinds of people, and although she was a bit nervous, she was also curious as well.
Not long after, they passed by the dance floor and went to the benches situated farther into the pub, where someone was already waving to them.
A tall, young boy greeted them with a huge grin on his face, “Hey! Sexy Mengmeng is here!”
“That is Hot Pot Is Too Hot,” Jiang Mingshu whispered in Lin Yao’s ear. “You should go over there and greet him.”
Lin Yao was taken aback. She only came here to have some light fun. Did she really have to do something so solemn like greet him?
Both Lin Yao and Jiang Mingshu were quite attractive, but Jiang Mingshu always had surprisingly good luck when it came to romance with men. When they were both in school, many boys had a crush on her. Whenever Jiang Mingshu was around, Lin Yao became an invisible nobody.
The only impression boys ever had of her was that she was Jiang Mingshu’s sidekick. If a boy came to her, there were only two possibilities: the first possibility was that they wanted to ask her for Jiang Mingshu’s contact information, or they wanted to ask her to hand their love letters to Jiang Mingshu.
But unlike Jiang Mingshu, Lin Yao received the affection of middle-aged and elderly people. For example, the cafeteria lady, the doorman, and the landlady—they were all especially fond of Lin Yao.
Lin Yao had become accustomed to this a long time ago. So when she came here, she was already prepared to be treated as a random passerby.
“Wow! Master, master… also came!”
Jiang Mingshu suddenly abandoned Lin Yao and Hot Pot Is Too Hot and ran towards a young man.
It seemed that Hot Pot Is Too Hot was already mentally prepared for this, and he didn’t look surprised as he led Lin Yao towards Mingshu’s master with a smile.
The “master/old man” that Jiang Mingshu spoke of was about 26 or 27 years old. He had a medium build, smooth skin, handsome features, and a friendly smile. Indeed, just like his ID name, his appearance truly gave off a vibe that made people feel “Like Spring Breeze.”
Yet his appearance was still quite different from the “drop-dead gorgeous hunk” that Lin Yao had imagined.
Jiang Mingshu’s eyes practically lit up when she saw Like A Spring Breeze, and it seemed like she no longer had eyes for anyone else.
Lin Yao felt that it was painfully obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes that Jiang Mingshu had a huge crush on Like Spring Breeze.
******
Whenever a group of young men and women sat together, there was never a thing such as a lack of topics.
Lin Yao found a seat and sat down to listen to them chat with each other.
“I just called Little Guliang, and she said she’ll come to 571 pub after singing Karaoke.”
“So she’s with him, right?”
“Of course, he keeps a close eye on her.”
“That’s boring.”
“By the way, Sexy Mengmeng hasn’t done an introduction yet, what is the name of your little friend that you brought along with you?”
“Little friend brought by Sexy Mengmeng…” Lin Yao was at a loss for words at being referred to like this. What made her feel speechless was that she had been listening to them as they gossiped, but then the topic suddenly turned to herself.
Couldn’t they just let her be a wallflower?
Jiang Mingshu seemed to have forgotten about Lin Yao’s existence until this moment, and she introduced her with a smile, “She is Peaches Aren’t Naughty.”
“What? You are Peaches Aren’t Naughty?” Hot Pot Is Too Hot suddenly became excited. “Peaches Aren’t Naughty reached the level of Hero after just one week of registration?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
Several young boys came over and asked around her, “Quick, spill it, how did you do it?”
Lin Yao was actually caught off guard by their dramatic overreaction. She didn’t expect that besides Jiang Mingshu, there were actually people who were paying attention to her ID status on the Hang City Forum. She didn’t expect for everyone to care so much about points and status.
With that being the case, she shouldn’t gloat about the underhanded way she scored so many points.
She blinked and said innocently, “Sexy Mengmeng insisted that I persistently post every day.”
Hot Pot Is Too Hot scratched his head and asked in bewilderment, “But then you would have to be making around two thousand posts a day, right?”
Others also nodded and said they couldn’t understand how she could post so many things in a single day. The key was that no one saw her “irrigating” everywhere, so how did she do it?
The higher the rank of the title, the higher the status in Hang City Forum. So how could the boys present not want to upgrade their status as well?
The question was, how would they find that many topics to post about?
Besides, no one spent all their time on the forum, right?
So whenever someone made a post, everyone would scramble to post the word “top,””like,” or “passing by…” This kind of behavior was usually referred to as “irrigation.”
Any behavior solely for the purpose of “irrigation” was despised and loathed, so everyone here was more restrained, and the speed at which they upgraded their status level was about the same.
Usually, those who reached the status level of “Hero” had been registered with an ID for more than one year, but the only exception to this was Peaches Aren’t Naughty.
As a newly registered ID, Peaches Aren’t Naughty had a mind-blowing 8000+ points, which didn’t make any sense.
Lin Yao explained, “I visited every single forum.”
“Oh, oh!”
Everyone suddenly realized.
Yes, the Hang City Forum had a total of nearly 100 subsections, and others only stayed in one section and made at most 100 posts a day. So if she visited a hundred subsections, it would be normal for her to be able to send thousands of posts daily.
It’s just that people who were able to do this must have a lot of free time or be bored out of their minds.
So the expressions on everyone’s faces changed as they looked at Lin Yao.
Lin Yao didn’t think about this for the time being, and she was simply relieved because they finally stopped questioning her.