Chapter 436 - 212: Li Zhi Decides to Take the Initiative

Chapter 436: Chapter 212: Li Zhi Decides to Take the Initiative

Shen Yuan’s face was taut. The tip of his thumb unconsciously dug into the edge of his phone, as if trying to press the victorious number right into the screen.

Beside him, Li Zhi still had her hood pulled over her head. The tip of her pen hovered over her open workbook, unmoving for a good while, as if she were waiting, or perhaps stubbornly resisting something.

A strange silence lingered between them.

It was neither the heavy gloom that followed an exam, nor the boisterous celebration of a wish fulfilled. Instead, it was like a taut, unspoken string that neither dared to pluck first.

Just then, a fluffy head, accompanied by a boisterous shout, suddenly poked out from Shen Yuan’s side, carrying a wave of post-nap warmth. It was Ah Jie.

"Yuan! Yuan! What’d you get?! What’d you get?! Don’t hide it! Spit it out!"

Ah Jie’s booming voice instantly shattered the zone of silence around the two. His face was a canvas of urgency and gossip, his entire upper body practically leaning over Shen Yuan’s desk.

Ah Jie’s sudden appearance and rapid-fire questions were like a stone tossed into a calm lake.

Caught off guard by the sudden assault, Shen Yuan’s arm jerked, and he nearly dropped his phone.

He instinctively tried to hide the screen, but seeing Ah Jie’s impatient eagerness, he found it a little funny. The calm facade he had been struggling to maintain cracked.

"Tch!" With a look of disdain, Shen Yuan raised a hand to shove Ah Jie’s large, overly-close head away.

"I’m hiding it because I’m afraid your Dao heart will crumble when you see it."

"My Dao heart will crumble?"

Ah Jie chuckled. "My, Zhou Shaojie’s, Dao heart is stable and firm. How could a minor demon like you possibly shake it? Let me see!"

Shen Yuan showed the phone screen to Ah Jie. Ah Jie stared at it, and the next second...

"Holy shit! Holy shit!"

Ah Jie’s unrestrained cry was like flipping a switch. Yang Ze and Chen Mingyu, who had already been listening with pricked ears nearby, immediately crowded around.

"What is it? What’s the score?"

"What are you yelling about!"

After seeing the score on Shen Yuan’s phone, the two couldn’t hold back either.

"Damn!"

"The hell!"

In an instant, the small corner was flooded with gasps of amazement and teasing.

Seeing the incredulous looks on his friends’ faces, Shen Yuan could no longer maintain his feigned composure. A smug smile bloomed across his face, but he still tried to play it cool.

"Hey, hey, keep it down, keep it down! Just a basic operation, nothing to see here!"

"663? How the fuck did you manage that?"

"You’re the man, Lao Yuan! Goddamn, it’s the rise of the stray dog!"

At the center of this small commotion, only Li Zhi, sitting next to Shen Yuan, reacted differently. The moment Ah Jie shouted the exact score, the shoulders under her hood relaxed ever so slightly, as if the last tiny speck of doubt in her heart had finally settled.

The girl’s pen tip, which had been hovering over her workbook, finally touched down, unconsciously tracing a faint line on the paper.

No one saw the blush that quietly bloomed on her cheeks, completely hidden by the shadow of her hood—a color more brilliant than the winter sunset outside.

Nor did anyone see the fingers hidden under her thick sleeve gently curl.

While dealing with Ah Jie and the others’ teasing, Shen Yuan couldn’t help but sneak another glance at the small figure beside him, who seemed completely cut off from the surrounding excitement.

’That "650" promise... I really did it.’

Shen Yuan thought to himself, the smile on his lips deepening with a warmth only he could understand.

After the small disturbance over the score died down, the clamor gradually receded like an ebbing tide.

Ah Jie, Yang Ze, and Chen Mingyu made a few more amazed comments before returning to their seats, each with a mix of complex emotions.

The classroom returned to an atmosphere of hushed discussion, but the two in the corner were enveloped in an even stranger silence.

A victorious curve still played on Shen Yuan’s lips, but when he turned back and his gaze fell upon the figure beside him, the urge to see her reaction was replaced by a strange sense of panic.

He opened his mouth, the usual names he called her rolling around in his throat, but they seemed to get stuck, refusing to come out.

’650! I hit it again! And I even scored higher, 663!’

’I really, truly surpassed it.’

This should have been the moment to confidently demand an answer, but for some reason, in this situation, the words suddenly felt as heavy as lead.

He’d wanted to poke her arm with his fingertip like he usually did, or maybe call out to her in a deliberately low voice.

But seeing Li Zhi completely hidden in the small shadow created by her hood, cutting herself off from the outside world—and from him—Shen Yuan felt a slight tug somewhere in his heart. It wasn’t painful, just an unprecedented feeling of helplessness.

Meanwhile, under her hood, Li Zhi could only feel her cheeks burning hot, so much so that even the tips of her ears felt like they were on fire.

663. The score had slammed right into her heart.

The thin ice of self-imposed rules she had encased herself in seemed to have silently shattered at that moment.

The girl pressed her lips together firmly, trying to maintain her usual, matter-of-fact calm, but her heart was beating uncontrollably, thumping like a drum in her chest.

She could clearly feel Shen Yuan’s gaze on her—a gaze filled with warmth and obvious emotion—and it made her feel more lost than ever before.

She didn’t even dare to raise a hand to brush away a stray strand of hair that might have fallen across her forehead, afraid that the slightest movement would draw his even more focused gaze.

Li Zhi wanted to turn her head, and just like countless times before, break the strange atmosphere with a disdainful "idiot" or some other deliberately cold remark.

But then she remembered what she had said on the stone steps of Faxi Temple, and the promise she had agreed to.