Chapter 19 : Woodpecker – New Release Period – Consolation
“Sister Gu, why does Snow White want to kiss the dwarf?”
“Be… because…”
“Because Snow White is fond of dwarfs.”
“……”
The morning after exams ended, her eccentric deskmate came to school and immediately told another cold joke.
Gu Youli shivered at the chill, wrapped her clothes tighter, but still felt cold.
She looked up and realized—of course, the temperature was dropping. And this seat was near the window, so it was bound to be drafty.
“...Achoo!”
“?”
A soft, crisp sound caught Guan Ren’s attention.
It was the first time he’d heard Gu Youli sneeze.
He was amazed. Her sneeze didn’t have any buildup.
She wasn’t like others who’d tilt their heads back, take a dramatic “Ah—” and then sneeze.
Instead, she did it in an extremely restrained, cautious way, afraid of disturbing anyone. She covered her nose and mouth with a tissue, and then abruptly nodded her head.
“Achoo~!”
“……”
How to describe it…
Like a little woodpecker.
“Guan Ren, what are you laughing at?”
“At the woodpecker.”
“Where’s a woodpecker?”
Gu Youli was surprised.
She had never seen a real woodpecker, only “Woody” from cartoons when she was a child.
“It flew away.”
“What a pity… Achoo~!”
“Hehe…”
Guan Ren leaned sideways on his desk, resting his cheek on one hand, grinning like an idiot.
“It flew back again.”
“……”
Gu Youli understood now. She gave him a cold look, then crumpled up the tissue and tossed it onto Guan Ren’s desk.
“Ew—!”
Guan Ren exaggerated a dramatic response, using two pens like chopsticks to pick up the tissue ball with a pained expression, and tossed it back onto Gu Youli’s desk.
“You!…”
Gu Youli bit her lower lip in frustration.
Because this was a different tissue. It wasn't the one she’d used when she sneezed! Did he… did he really have to be like that?!
“This one’s clean!”
“I know.”
Guan Ren nodded.
“But psychologically, I still feel grossed out.”
“Heh.”
Gu Youli scoffed.
If that tissue belonged to Luo… to someone else, would he still be grossed out?
“I’m going to read. You go worry about your woodpecker.”
She lowered her head and turned to her language textbook, beginning to review the mistakes she made on the monthly exam.
“Achoo~!”
She still sneezed occasionally.
But it didn’t distract her at all.
Until, at some point, someone gently pushed the window frame and quietly closed the window letting in the draft. Gu Youli’s hand, flipping through the pages, paused slightly.
……
“Damn it, Brother Ren, why’d you close the window? It reeks over here. I was trying to air it out.”
“Serves you right. Who told you to eat so much spicy beef tendon? It’s flu season. Don’t catch a cold.”
“Wait, you’re this afraid of the cold?”
“I’m not. Someone else is.”
“Who?”
“The woodpecker.”
“???”
……
Another déjà vu moment of accidentally overhearing something…
Another one of those careless actions by a certain eccentric person…
Beneath a fringe of hair, a pair of eyes shimmered like rippling water. A pair of soft lips lightly pressed together. Two faint dimples slowly bloomed into a smile—so beautiful. Yet the poor guy who had told so many cold jokes without seeing a single smile… missed it once again.
---
“Master, I’m here to pick up a package.”
After school in the evening, Guan Ren immediately headed to a package pickup station near the entrance of his residential complex.
At this time, e-commerce was just getting started, and the courier industry hadn’t yet reached its boom. Many people still had to pick up their deliveries at their workplace or school mailrooms.
Having a pickup station like this right downstairs was genuinely quite convenient.
“Phone number?”
“133…”
Guan Ren reported Luo Xiaobei’s number.
He still didn’t own a mobile phone.
And to buy one, he was counting on what was inside this package today.
“Signing a contract by hand... man, I miss this.”
Back home, Guan Ren looked over the contract and marveled.
“No wonder it’s Qidian Chinese NovelFire Platform—what a conscientious contract. No exploitative clauses at all!”
Swish, swish, swish—
He quickly signed it, kept a copy for himself, and ran downstairs to send a copy back.
Because of this back-and-forth, it would take a while for Supreme Confucianism and Taoism to update its contract status.
But that didn’t matter. Guan Ren was confident enough that even as a newcomer, he didn’t feel the need to rely on a contract status to retain or attract readers.
That night, back home, he opened the backend system and checked the latest stats.
“An increase of 500 in collections—acceptable. The recommendation tickets are looking good. I might even make it onto the leaderboard.”
At that time, recommendation tickets on Qidian still carried some weight. Before a book was officially launched, readers couldn’t vote with monthly tickets, so as long as no one was artificially inflating votes, the number of recommendation tickets could somewhat reflect the book’s quality.
He checked the comments. Nearly all were urging for more chapters.
【A Difficult dEcisiOn: More more more more more!】
【Sold a Kidney to Buy an iPhone: Shake the author—where’s the backlog?】
【Freaky Fly in the Dung Sea: When’s the protagonist going to become awesome?】
【Squeeze Hard, Snap the Heartbreaker: Either I urge for updates, or you play the flute. Author, pick one.】
...
【ChiChiChiChi123: Dear Author, I’m a high school sophomore girl. I don’t have money to donate, but I think about your book every day. Can you update faster? Mwah~】
“……”
Everything before that was fine, but when Guan Ren saw the last comment and its username, he fell into deep thought.
Somehow…
That ID looked very familiar…
Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect book, and no such thing as a perfect comment section.
As the collection count steadily rose, both fans and critics showed up.
Some complained that Supreme Confucianism and Taoism was just a re-skinned power-level-up story, lacking the depth they had hoped for.
There was even someone who demanded the author rewrite the story following his outline and promised, “Write it this way and it’ll definitely become legendary.”
Guan Ren immediately checked that user’s profile. No subscription history. He decisively issued a permanent ban.
“Anyway, the ratio of positive to negative reviews is fifty to five. I’m still ahead!”
Seeing so many people urging for updates, Guan Ren was also touched.
So he decided that starting tomorrow, instead of three daily updates totaling 10,000 characters, he would reduce it to just one chapter a day.
This was for the long-term development of the novel.
Because online novels thrived on a “new release period.”
If you updated too fast during that window, you might hit the launch requirements before getting many recommendation spots.
Guan Ren didn’t want to wait until he’d written four to five hundred thousand words before launching.
So he would start controlling the update pace now, and increase output again after the launch.
“Speaking of which… I wonder if the monthly exam results will be released in the next couple of days…”
Of course, whether they’d be released or not wasn’t that important.
What mattered was—the monthly exams were over, and Guan Ren could finally relax a bit.
So, for the first time in a long while, he opened that old website, 4399, browsed through it, and couldn’t stop grinning.
“Take down the boss… Beat up the teacher… The Dark Specter…”
Good lord, they were all still there.
Guan Ren had played many of them before, thinking that with his current mental strength, he could finally confront some of his childhood trauma. But soon, a few horror games scared him so badly he almost punched through the monitor.
It wasn’t that Guan Ren was timid—those jump scares were just too much. No matter how brave you were, those sudden eerie sound effects and face-popping ghosts would freak anyone out.
He calmed himself, opened QQ, and saw that a few others had the same idea. They wanted to relax after exams too.
But not many people had computers at home. Most, like Zhang Chi, were still online through their phones.
【Guanguan Jujiu: Brother Chi, not sleeping yet?】
【Zhang Chi, the Man of Moderation: Ugh, I can’t sleep】
【Guanguan Jujiu: Don’t tell me it’s because of that thing with Chang’e?】
【Zhang Chi, the Man of Moderation: Can you not bring that up again?】
【Zhang Chi, the Man of Moderation: I’m just super frustrated】
【Zhang Chi, the Man of Moderation: I was reading a novel and left a totally normal comment urging for more chapters, and that damn author muted me!】
【Zhang Chi, the Man of Moderation: Brother Ren, dodge this bullet. Don’t read that book called Supreme Confucianism and Taoism】
【Zhang Chi, the Man of Moderation: Brother Ren? You still there?】
Guan Ren silently switched his QQ status to "Busy," closed Zhang Chi’s chat window without a word, and opened another one.
【Guanguan Jujiu: You’re still up too? Perfect—I need something soothing.】
As soon as he sent that, a flurry of messages came through.
【At River’s Isle: Soothing?】
【At River’s Isle: Guan Ren, what happened?】
【At River’s Isle: Are you hurt? What happened to you?】
【Guanguan Jujiu: ……】
There was no helping it. Many internet terms hadn’t caught on yet, and Guan Ren often found it inconvenient.
【Guanguan Jujiu: By ‘soothing,’ I meant emotional comfort. I just played a horror game on 4399 and it scared the life out of me.】
【At River’s Isle: Oh. Then you deserved it.】
【Guanguan Jujiu: ?】
【At River’s Isle: I’m grinding in Ask the Sword OL. Go comfort yourself.】
Comfort yourself…
Guan Ren stared at those words, thoughtful.
Well, it wasn’t that big a deal.
But what he didn’t expect was for Luo Xiaobei to have a delayed and very intense reaction. She quickly followed up with several messages.
【At River’s Isle: Don’t take it the wrong way! I meant psychological comfort!】
【At River’s Isle: Not that kind of physical stuff!】
【At River’s Isle: And even if you do… you’re not allowed to think of anyone else】
【At River’s Isle: Wait no, I mean you can’t think of me. Think of whoever else you want】
【At River’s Isle: No, no—forget everything I said】
【At River’s Isle: Guan Ren! I command you to turn off QQ this instant!】
---
Right at that moment, in a bedroom full of girlish charm.
A certain bashful little pervert was nervously staring at her screen, cheeks flushed red, one hand clutching her soft chest, feeling like her guilty conscience was about to leak out through the internet and onto his monitor.
Only when the default QQ avatar grayed out did Luo Xiaobei finally breathe a sigh of relief.
“Phew…”
That was close…
She almost made her childhood friend think she had impure thoughts…
Thank goodness he obediently logged off~
Of course, Luo Xiaobei didn’t treat such matters like some sort of boogeyman. She knew Guan Ren was just an ordinary teenage boy. If he did resort to certain kinds of comfort… it was only natural.
It’s just…
It’s just that coming from her mouth, saying things like that felt a bit too intimate…
Because that sort of concern belonged in a much closer relationship.
Right now, she and Guan Ren were still just childhood friends.
Hugs, kisses—that was acceptable.
But anything spicy… wasn’t something to take lightly.
“Sigh…”
Thinking of this, Luo Xiaobei let out a sigh without even realizing it, and returned to Ask the Sword OL, continuing her conversation with her in-game master.
【Longing for You to Frolic by My Bedside: Shifu Shifu~ I’m back~】
【Pretty Lady Teacher: Was it your childhood friend again just now?】
【Longing for You to Frolic by My Bedside: Yup, had a bit of an awkward moment, but it’s fine now】
【Pretty Lady Teacher: So what’s going on between you two anyway? With a childhood friend that close, how is it so hard to just get together already?】
【Longing for You to Frolic by My Bedside: Oh come on, Shifu, you don’t understand. I really can’t figure out how he feels. It’s a long story, goes all the way back to middle school…】
…