"Can’t I?" Song Yuncheng sat up, leaning over his chest and retorting defiantly.

"Sure you can. But I might have a few other girlfriends by then. Can you support all of us?"

Chen Yansen grinned mischievously, his hands roaming downward.

"You’ll be broke, and you’re still thinking about cheating?" Song Yuncheng pouted, her brow furrowed. Her eyes were red, and her heart ached terribly.

"I was just kidding. You actually took me seriously? A fortune teller once told me I’m allergic to poverty. I’m destined to be a rich man."

Chen Yansen gave her a light peck on the lips and said with a confident smile.

"Chen Yansen, I wish time could just stop, right here in these two days." The thought of returning to school tomorrow made the tears welling in Song Yuncheng’s eyes finally fall. One dripped into the hot spring with a soft splash.

Chen Yansen chuckled, scooped up Song Yuncheng, and carried her toward the large bed on the first floor.

「Meanwhile.」

Meng Jie had just gotten out of a car. Carrying takeout containers of beef soup and fried dough sticks wrapped in tofu skin, she hailed a cab back to Xucheng Academy and eagerly ran up to the fourth floor of the faculty apartments.

She pulled out her key and opened the door, but the apartment was empty. Chen Yansen was gone.

She had planned to surprise him, but her plan fell flat.

Resigned, Meng Jie pulled out her phone and called Chen Yansen.

"Hey, I’m back. Why aren’t you home?" Meng Jie asked, her voice tinged with disappointment. She sat on the sofa, her legs swinging restlessly.

Chen Yansen looked down at Song Yuncheng beneath him and let out a long sigh before answering truthfully. "I got bored at school, so I came to Shidu to soak in the hot springs. You want to come over?"

"Nah, it’s too late," Meng Jie said with a giggle, completely unsuspecting. "I brought you some yummy food, though. Come back early tomorrow."

Listening to them talk, Song Yuncheng felt a pang of jealousy. She wrapped her arms around Chen Yansen’s waist and bit down hard on his shoulder.

With Chen Yansen’s 6.47 constitution, the density of his skin and muscle was far from ordinary. To Song Yuncheng, it felt like biting into tough leather.

After biting for what felt like an eternity, she had only managed to leave a faint set of teeth marks.

Seeing her acting up, Chen Yansen immediately pinched one of Song Yuncheng’s sensitive spots and began to gently caress it.

"Alright, see you tomorrow," Chen Yansen said before hanging up. He scooped up the flushed Song Yuncheng and dove under the covers with her.

「The next morning, at the crack of dawn.」

Chen Yansen was already awake, full of stamina and his Spirit vigorous. ’Looks like getting stronger has its pros and cons,’ he thought.

’Sleeping in has become a luxury. I naturally wake up after just four or five hours now.’

He glanced down at Song Yuncheng, who was lying beside him, fast asleep.

Chen Yansen got up, walked over to the desk, and sat down. He casually picked up a book, *ARM Architecture and Programming*, and began flipping through it at a rate of one page per second.

His brain worked like a scanner, absorbing all the text and images his eyes swept over. The information was rearranged in his mind, gradually forming a complete framework of knowledge.

By the time Song Yuncheng woke up, Chen Yansen had already finished about ten books—some borrowed from the library, others he’d bought on Jingdong.

After he finished the ones he’d purchased, he would take them to the second floor of the Innovation Park to serve as a public library for his project team, putting them to good use.

"Why are you studying so hard all of a sudden? Are you planning to go to grad school?" Song Yuncheng asked curiously as she walked up behind him. She was wearing only a short T-shirt, her long, fair legs bare.

"Just killing time," Chen Yansen said with a shake of his head and a smile, flatly denying it.

"Me? Grad school? If I weren’t afraid of Lao Chen nagging me, I wouldn’t have even gone to college."

"But if you hadn’t gone to college, how would we have met?" Song Yuncheng rested her hands on his shoulders and began giving him a proper massage.

’Then I definitely would have met a Zhang Yuncheng, a Li Yuncheng, or a Wang Yuncheng somewhere else,’ Chen Yansen thought.

But he kept that thought to himself. Song Yuncheng looked tough, but she cried easily. If he teased her to tears, he’d be the one stuck consoling her, and he didn’t want that hassle. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"You’ve never told me about your family. And who’s this Lao Chen?" Song Yuncheng knew that Chen Yansen and Meng Jie had been high school classmates, so Meng Jie surely knew much more about him. She, on the other hand, was completely in the dark.

Chen Yansen wasn’t secretive about his family. He briefly told her about Chen Guobin and his bookstore, and how Lao Chen used to kick him around when he was a kid.

Song Yuncheng giggled at the stories, but when she learned that Chen Yansen’s mother had passed away when he was born, her expression filled with sympathy and she hugged him tightly.

Chen Yansen turned, pulled Song Yuncheng onto his lap, and put on a pitiful expression. "I never got a single drop growing up. Could you grant my wish?"

Song Yuncheng froze for a second, confused. Then she followed his gaze, and her face instantly turned crimson. Her body went limp as she chided him coquettishly, "Chen Yansen, you’re unbelievable."

For some reason, she was reminded of the dream she’d had, the one where Chen Yansen was destitute and she was supporting him, where he lay in her arms calling her "mama."

The atmosphere instantly turned sultry.

It was already one-thirty in the afternoon when the two of them finally left the hotel.

"You drive. I’m going to read for a while."

Chen Yansen tossed the car keys to Song Yuncheng without any ceremony.

"I only got my license a month ago. Aren’t you afraid I’ll drive us into a ditch?"

Song Yuncheng caught the keys, joking.

"Then I’ll just deduct it from next month’s commission," Chen Yansen said with a smile, settling into the passenger seat nonchalantly.

Song Yuncheng glared at him, so angry she wanted to curse. ’For a second there, I almost wanted to quit. This bastard is always threatening me.’

In the end, however, she obediently got into the driver’s seat, started the car, and headed for Xucheng Academy.

Along the way, Chen Yansen got a call from Zhou Hongyi, who invited him to an Internet Open Conference at the end of the month.

’He just wants to show off his company’s IPO,’ Chen Yansen thought dismissively. But when he heard that the bosses or senior executives from Jingdong, Lenovo, Sina, and Shanda would be there, along with partners from several investment firms, he readily agreed.

’It’ll be a good chance to network and maybe pick up some resources.’

A lot of financing and partnership deals were made at events like this.

Although their first meeting in Yanjing had been unpleasant, for businessmen, anyone who wasn’t a direct competitor was a potential friend.

An hour later, Song Yuncheng parked the car at the entrance to Xuyuan. She grabbed her backpack, got out, and handed the keys back to Chen Yansen.

"Come to 0418 tonight. I have a design assignment for you."

Chen Yansen said in a dead-serious tone.

"You think I’d believe you? Anyway, here at school, you’re my boss and my mentor."

Song Yuncheng waved him off and said goodbye with a smile. She knew exactly what he was thinking.

’Even if I had a key to room 0418, I wouldn’t go.’

"I’m serious," Chen Yansen stressed.

Song Yuncheng turned back, her face a mask of disbelief. "Do you even believe that yourself?"

"I’ll dock your pay if you don’t show up." Chen Yansen rolled up the window and drove off toward the faculty apartments.

He really did have a design request, one he couldn’t just hand off to the designers at FoxTao. ’Based on Wang Teng’s current progress, the beta version of the Aurora System should be ready by early June,’ he mused.

’But the phone doesn’t even have a brand logo, or even a name yet. It’s time to get that on the schedule.’