Jiang Yun continued, "Eventually, I realized my father’s life is what matters most. Money can be earned back, and I’m still young—there’ll be plenty of opportunities. But my dad only has one life. Five years is five years, right? Who knows, maybe his condition won’t worsen. Besides, with how fast technology and dicine are advancing—people can even live on Mars now—who’s to say they won’t develop a breakthrough treatnt in five years? Maybe my dad still has a chance. Two days ago, I ca back to list the house with an agent, planning to sell it cheap for a quick deal."
"And what did Wu Zhuo say? She hasn’t bought her own place yet, has she? If the house is sold, will the two of you rent together? Didn’t rents just skyrocket?"
"I was about to discuss it with her, but as soon as I got ho, I could tell sothing was off."
The group imdiately sensed the turning point.
"Don’t tell you caught her in bed with soone?"
Jiang Yun chuckled. "No way. Wu Zhuo isn’t that stupid—she even ca to pick up herself."
"Then…?"
"The problem was with the trash bag."
The others teased, "You didn’t actually dig through the trash for evidence, did you?"
"Of course not. I didn’t even have to. Even without rummaging, I found proof of her infidelity." Jiang Yun dropped a line that left everyone stunned. "The trash bag was tied in a square knot."
The group: "What the hell?"
"Wu Zhuo probably didn’t even realize it herself. She runs a flower shop, so she’s used to tying ribbons into bows. Our trash bags are the drawstring kind, and she always ties them in a bow. But this ti, when I ca back, the drawstring was knotted in a cross."
"Wait…"
"Clearly, soone else tied it." Jiang Yun pinched the bridge of her nose, her voice growing quieter. "Later, I confronted Wu Zhuo directly. At first, she denied it, but then I told her, ‘We’re not young anymore—we’re in our mid-thirties. If you’ve fallen for soone else, just say so. Why drag it out? A few more years, and we’ll be too old to start over. And if you don’t love anymore, what’s the point of forcing it? It’s just pathetic.’"
"And then?"
"Then she admitted it. I didn’t press for details—I didn’t want to know. I told her to move out. Today." Jiang Yun sighed.
"I still rember when sa-sex marriage was legalized—we stayed up all night. I’ll never forget how we drove from our rented place in the suburbs into the city before dawn. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. We blasted our favorite songs, sang until we were drenched in sweat and hoarse, so happy.
"Back then, all I could think was, ‘We can finally be together openly, legally, for the rest of our lives. No one can tear us apart.’ Who’d have thought that just ten years in, she’d change her mind? No one had to tear us apart—we fell apart on our own."
Xu Youyuan watched Jiang Yun and noticed she wasn’t crying.
All six or seven people in the room noticed.
"Strange, isn’t it? I thought I’d be devastated," Jiang Yun said. "And I am sad. But last night, while Wu Zhuo was packing to leave, I got a call from the real estate agent. They said the housing market is terrible right now—new policies keep rolling out to control prices, and buyers are holding off. Transactions are plumting. To stand a chance, I’d have to slash the price by another 500,000 yuan. I argued with the agent for a while, and by the ti I hung up, Wu Zhuo was already gone.
"I was late today because I t with the agent. My mind is completely occupied with selling the house and saving my dad—there’s no room for anything else." Jiang Yun sounded almost dazed. "A decade-long relationship just ended, and I don’t even have ti to grieve. All I care about are the imdiate, practical things in life. Why waste energy on what can’t be fixed? I’m only doing what’s useful now. I don’t know how you all feel, but at this point, I’ve beco ruthlessly pragmatic."
Soone muttered, "Sounds a lot like what Youyuan went through recently…"
Jiang Yun and Xu Youyuan, who had been silent until then, exchanged a glance. Xu Youyuan grinned.
"Nah, she didn’t have it as bad as . My disaster was like getting hit by a teor—divinely ordained."
Jiang Yun’s eyes, which had been reddening, crinkled with laughter at that.
"See? Even Birdie’s still hanging in there. You’ll be fine," Shi Ye said, using Xu Youyuan’s nickna to comfort Jiang Yun.
Xu Youyuan protested, "Hey, hey! Since when am I the go-to cautionary tale? Do any of you have a conscience?"
The somber mood lightened a little thanks to Xu Youyuan’s teasing.
The fabled crises of middle age were beginning to surface—this was perhaps just the tip of the iceberg. The real hardships, the ultimate fears of aging, sickness, and death, still lay ahead.
Soone tried to steer the conversation toward lighter topics. "Let’s not drown in misery every ti we et. It’s suffocating."
But the mont they opened their mouths, the sa old grievances spilled out.
At thirty, they hadn’t felt it yet. Back then, they’d dismissed "early aging" and "midlife crisis" as lodramatic.
Two years later, reality hit hard.
No more all-nighters, no more drinking—work the next day demanded sharp focus. Annoying bosses, difficult coworkers—every ounce of energy had to be conserved.
Quitting smoking, once thought impossible, happened effortlessly after a night of coughing half to death. The cravings were rare, easy to ignore. The only noticeable change? The scale creeping upward.
But even without quitting, their weight had been climbing year after year—once up, it never really ca back down.
Everyone except Gan lanted their slowing tabolism. In the past, no matter how tan they got, their skin would eventually lighten. No matter how late they stayed up, they could reset their sleep schedule. Not anymore. A tan now was permanent, stubborn even after three winters.
One sleepless night, and they’d feel like death.
One indulgent al, and they’d gain a pound—even if they skipped the next.
Hair fell out in clumps. Clothing sizes inched up. New fine lines appeared daily. The money they’d worked so hard for vanished into skincare, a painful but necessary sacrifice.
Every month, another nstrual horror story. One hadn’t had hers in three months, her face bloated. Another bled nonstop for three months, "like a river of blood."
Work was endless. Overti was the norm—no compensation, no ti off. Taking annual leave required favors, lest they earn the boss’s glare or coworkers’ scorn.
New aches erged monthly—a twisted muscle here, a strained tendon there. Wake up with a crick in the neck, spend a week unable to turn their head. Just as they’d recovered, a business trip would leave them with agonizing knee synovitis.
Allergies piled up—spring beca unbearable. Doctors, Western and traditional alike, offered no answers. "Why is this happening? I eat well, live normally. I never had these problems before."
The doctor smiled and said, "As age changes, so does the body. Illnesses you never had before might appear now—your immunity isn’t the sa anymore."
After turning thirty, the word "anxiety" looms over your head or etches itself into your heart, impossible to ignore.
Many troubles erge and, shockingly, refuse to vanish. They aren’t the kind you can solve by sleeping it off or "resetting" your body with a good night’s rest.
What’s even more terrifying is facing exhaustion, declining health, or emotional crises while everyone around you is still scrambling upward. The social and economic structures are evolving at breakneck speed, leaving no room to pause.
Thirty is a watershed mont in another sense, too.
You must have built sothing by now. You must have achieved so asure of success. There’s no more room for drifting aimlessly—there simply isn’t enough ti to experint, let alone make mistakes, because there’s no ti left to correct them.
At this stage of life, you must know where your path leads. After all, your peers have already sprinted far ahead on their own journeys.
If you don’t run—if you don’t push yourself to the limit—the next wave will be right behind you, ready to crush you in an instant.
Being replaced happens in a single mont of weakness.
Won and n no longer fight each other for "equality" because they’ve found a new rival: artificial intelligence.
AI, which began its widespread adoption five years ago, is rapidly displacing humans from their roles. Governnt agencies and public institutions were the first to replace simple, repetitive jobs. Then, in an astonishingly short ti, AI infiltrated most industries and social strata, spreading even faster than the internet did at the beginning of the century.
Mass unemploynt naturally led to severe financial and social crises. Joblessness soared, marriage rates plumted, divorce rates exploded, small and dium-sized businesses struggled to survive, and holessness surged. Arson, robberies, and other cris beca rampant.
Prisons overflowed, police forces were stretched thin, and every ti you turned on the TV, all you saw was unrest across the country. The announcents in subway stations and train terminals only deepened the collective dread.
The governnt implented countless asures to mitigate the damage, but to little effect.
So called it a new phase of human civilization, a revival of natural selection. The "inferior"—those deed lazy, unskilled, or unable to contribute aningfully to society—were being weeded out to make room for the "new humans" of value on an overpopulated Earth. The current chaos, they argued, was just the inevitable growing pains of progress.
Many agreed with this view. Just as many vehently opposed it.
Yet one thing was undeniable: the pressure to survive had intensified drastically. It magnified the horrors of a midlife crisis. One misstep could send you tumbling into the grimy, lawless underbelly of society, branding you as one of the "inferior."
Under such overwhelming stress, escapism fueled another explosive boom in the gaming and entertainnt industries. The launch of the first fully imrsive holographic gas, in particular, made developers fortunes overnight.
Xu Youyuan had dedicated the pri of her youth to SQUALL, the industry’s reigning titan. She was a legendary ga designer, the mastermind behind the groundbreaking sandbox ga *Reshape the Universe*. For 21 consecutive months, it dominated GMS—the largest professional gaming platform—topping both revenue and active users, a record no other ga had since matched.
The teoric success of *Reshape the Universe* catapulted the young Xu Youyuan to fa and beca her proudest achievent.
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