As a school-level competition, the finals of the Magnificence Cup Debate Competition was held in Lecture Hall 1 of the Entrepreneurial Center.
The hall was spacious, with seating similar to a movie theater. The armrests could be flipped open to reveal a small tray, perfect for holding a book or laptop.
“If I had known, I would’ve told you to bring your laptop,” Su Huaizhou said regretfully like a rciless boss as she flipped the tray out and then back. “What a pity.”
Jiang Miao: “…”
Having a girlfriend who constantly urged him for updates, he really didn’t know if he had made the right choice or not.
“Senior Sister, you could take out your iPad and work on your pending commissions.”
“That won’t work.” Su Huaizhou shook her head repeatedly. “As a vice-captain, I have to seriously observe how our team performs.”
“Then, as a team mber, I also have to seriously observe how my teammates perform.”
“You’re always spouting nonsense.” Su Huaizhou rolled her eyes at him. “I didn’t see you take the previous matches seriously.”
“What do you an? I was very serious.”
“Liar. You were on your phone the whole ti.”
“Senior Sister, you weren’t serious either. You were staring at the whole match.” Jiang Miao shook his head and sighed. He asked curiously, “How could you supervise and still observe the team’s performance?”
Su Huaizhou grabbed Jiang Miao’s hand and kneaded it hard as punishnt.
But he simply enjoyed Senior Sister’s massage and even held both her small hands in his palm.
If ti allowed, he wouldn’t mind holding her hand until it beca polished from his touch.
As it approached six in the evening, the mbers of the debate team trickled in one after another.
As the opposition side tonight, the Departnt of Accounting’s debate team had two reserved rows of seats at the very front on the right side of Hall 1.
In addition to the captain and two vice-captains, there were 13 first-years present, as well as several second-year senior sisters from the debate team who showed up after hearing about the event.
Yes, senior sisters. No male ones.
Apart from Zhao Lu, last year’s debate team didn’t have any other males.
And this year wasn’t much better. Of the 13 mbers, only Jiang Miao and Wang Xin were male, with the remaining 11 being all girls.
The saying about the School of Business flourishing with yin and declining with yang couldn’t be truer.
These senior sisters were clearly aware of Su Huaizhou’s old cow eating young grass feat. Upon arriving at Hall 1, they leaned in to whisper teasing remarks in her ear, leaving her blushing furiously and pushing them away embarrassnt. ʀαɴɵ𝖇ĘⱾ
After the senior sisters took their seats, Jiang Miao tried to hold Su Huaizhou’s hand again, but she swatted him away.
Clearly, she was too ashad and was now in cooldown mode.
After all, talk about harvesting junior brothers was just playful banter among the girls.
Who would have thought that the most straight-laced Su Huaizhou would strike first?
The new sester had just begun, but she had already claid a fresh and juicy junior brother like Jiang Miao, leaving everyone shocked.
Jiang Miao didn’t mind any of this. Sure, he’d once imagined his future girlfriend would be younger than him.
But once Su Huaizhou entered his life, those fantasies were overturned and shattered—and he didn’t feel the least bit disappointed.
“Senior Sister…” Ding Ning approached with Chen Haoshang and asked in a soft voice, “Is it okay for soone who’s not on the debate team to sit here? Or when I go on stage later, could I let my friend take my seat?”
“Just a friend?” Su Huaizhou looked at Chen Haoshang behind her and broke into a teasing smile. “It’s fine if it’s family.”
“Huh? Ding Ning’s face flushed bright red as she stamred, “T-that…”
While she was blushing and at a loss, Chen Haoshang calmly took a seat beside Jiang Miao, who had waved him over.
Seeing that Senior Sister Su didn’t object, Ding Ning realized she had been teased. She stomped her foot in embarrassnt and annoyance, then sat down beside Chen Haoshang.
Before Jiang Miao could stifle a laugh, the doors of Hall 1 opened, and in walked Wang Xin and Song Huanhuan—holding hands.
Jiang Miao’s smile froze as if he had just seen a ghost. He quickly nudged Chen Haoshang next to him.
“Brother Shang, look at that.” He pointed at Wang Xin. “Am I seeing things?”
Chen Haoshang glanced over and replied matter-of-factly, “You’re not seeing things. I saw them on my way here.”
Hiss… Jiang Miao pulled out his phone and took a photo of Wang Xin and Song Huanhuan holding hands.
He had no ulterior motives—just wanted to share the good news about their roommate with Dog back at the dorm later.
It was definitely a cause for celebration.
Who would have thought that Wang Xin, the one everyone expected to stay single until graduation, actually found a girlfriend in his first sester of college?
Dog would be thrilled to hear this.
But perhaps out of shyness, the two quietly let go of each other’s hands after taking just a few steps inside.
But this didn’t matter. Jiang Miao couldn’t wait. He imdiately posted the photo in their dorm room group chat.
[Miaomiao is Deep in Thought]: (Picture) @Ranran’s Dog
[Ranran’s Dog]: ???
[Ranran’s Dog]: What the hell?! My Prince!!!
[Ranran’s Dog]: (pretty woman crying.jpg)
Seeing his reaction, Jiang Miao was overjoyed and took another photo of Chen Haoshang and Ding Ning.
[Miaomiao is Deep in Thought]: (Picture) This is Brother Shang’s.
[Ranran’s Dog]: … Stop fucking posting!
How could Jiang Miao let him go that easily? He held Senior Sister’s delicate hand and took another photo.
[Miaomiao is Deep in Thought]: (Picture)
[Miaomiao is Deep in Thought]: This is and Senior Sister.
[Ranran’s Dog]:
System Notification: [Ranran’s Dog has left the group.]
[Miaomiao is Deep in Thought]: ???
Dog’s psychological endurance is a bit poor. Jiang Miao clicked his tongue, feeling a bit guilty for going too far.
But when he rembered how Xun Liang had shown off his girlfriend in the dorm all the ti at the start of the sester, Jiang Miao’s conscience settled down.
This must be retribution, right?
…
At 6:30 p.m., the finals of the Magnificence Cup Debate Competition officially began.
After so opening remarks from the moderator, she invited the school leaders to speak on stage and announce the start of the finals. It took over ten minutes before it was finally ti for the contestants to take the stage.
Jiang Miao stifled a yawn after hearing the first speaker from the affirmative side. Feeling drowsy, he decided to just close his eyes and rest.
Beside him, Su Huaizhou listened attentively, pen and paper ready to jot down the argunts of both sides in order to predict the outco of the debate in advance.
On his other side, Chen Haoshang listened carefully too. Especially when Ding Ning stood up to speak, his eyes shone exceptionally bright, as though she were the only person in his world.
But after the first speaker finished their speech, there were few opportunities left for them to perform.
As the second and third speakers began to clash, Chen Haoshang clearly lost interest. He occasionally glanced at Ding Ning on the stage, but most of his attention was on Jiang Miao.
“The book you’re writing is doing well, right?”
Jiang Miao had been dozing peacefully when this unexpected question startled him, making him shiver.
Opening his eyes and seeing Chen Haoshang beside him, he heaved a sigh of relief, his tense body relaxing.
But the next second, he tensed up again and asked nervously, “Did you read it?!”
“No.” Chen Haoshang shook his head. His ti and money were too valuable to waste on reading books. “Ding Ning said your book is doing really well.”
“Ah…” Jiang Miao realized it wasn’t his roommate reading his novel and finally breathed a sigh of relief, his tense body easing. “It’s okay… just so-so.”
“So-so…” Chen Haoshang fell into thought. “How much is so-so? Well… if you don’t want to say, it’s fine.”
Jiang Miao’s first reaction was that Chen Haoshang was about to ask to borrow money.
But after getting along with him for so ti, he felt that this guy wasn’t the type to ask for money.
So Jiang Miao decided to be honest. He gave him a wink and held up two fingers.
“Two thousand a month?” Chen Haoshang asked, surprised. He hadn’t expected Jiang Miao to earn that much casually writing online.
For an ordinary college student, this part-ti inco was pretty good.
But Jiang Miao cleared his throat a couple of tis and whispered in embarrassnt, “It’s missing a zero.”
Chen Haoshang: “?”
“Of course, that’s because I’ve been writing more the past few months,” Jiang Miao explained. “Normally, it’s about fifteen thousand a month.”
Chen Haoshang: “…”
Looking at Jiang Miao’s serious expression, he felt his mind go blank.
He worked tirelessly every day delivering food and boosting accounts, earning around six to seven thousand, with an extra two to three thousand on a good month. His monthly inco ranged from eight to ten thousand.
But it all ca from sacrificing his ti, energy, and physical strength.
But his roommate could make so much just by tapping away on a keyboard every day?
Chen Haoshang’s Adam’s apple moved, and his voice lowered as he tried to remain calm. “The kind of novels you write… do you think I could write them?”
Jiang Miao: “…?”
Startled by Chen Haoshang’s train of thought, Jiang Miao shook his head repeatedly and hurriedly tried to dissuade him, “No, no, no. Brother Shang, calm down.”
“Can’t I write them?” Chen Haoshang asked seriously.
“It’s not a matter of whether you can write…” Jiang Miao felt a headache. “The real issue is the ti cost. If you’re really in urgent need of money, writing web novels is probably the worst way to go.”
There was a saying in the web novel world—Advising soone to write web novels was asking for lightning to strike.
Currently, there were about ten million registered authors online. But after accounting for the inactive ones, it was already a lot for a single website to have fifty to sixty thousand active authors.
As for those who made it to the signing level, there might be around ten thousand at most.
Not to ntion, most of them didn’t even make it to having their works go premium.
Those with a four-digit monthly inco had already defeated more than ninety percent of the competition.
As for those earning over ten thousand a month, each site probably only had a few hundred.
It was unknown if there were even five figures worth of people making money across the entire network.
In any case, across the country, the number of food delivery drivers earning more than ten thousand a month was definitely much higher than that of web novel authors.
Jiang Miao patiently explained to Chen Haoshang, listing what seed like exaggerated yet truthful statistics. “I’ve been writing since high school, and only this recent book has started bringing in this kind of inco. The previous one was just a few thousand a month.
“Not to ntion my earlier books, they barely earned anything. I had to rely on a few perfect attendance rewards to earn back the cost of printing and shipping the contract.
“It wasn’t even enough to cover my monthly food expenses, let alone make money.”
After hearing all this, Chen Haoshang, who had initially been sowhat tempted, cald down and stopped talking about writing web novels.
But Jiang Miao’s heart was itching with curiosity, and he could not help but ask, “Besides saying my book is doing well, did Ding Ning say anything else?”
It was a rare opportunity to get feedback from a reader who knew him in real life, so he was genuinely curious.
Perhaps it was because of the ‘beauty in the eye of the beholder’ effect, but whenever he asked Senior Sister how his recent writing was going, besides saying ‘good’, Su Huaizhou only knew how to say ‘super good’.
After hearing it so many tis, Jiang Miao started to worry he might get spoiled by her praise.
“She just said it’s really good. She also said that the male lead’s character is a lot like mine, so it was very relatable,” Chen Haoshang said honestly. “She even asked if my friend wrote the story based on .”
Jiang Miao: “…”
He had been curious about how female readers found ways to relate to his novel.
But he never imagined it would be for this reason…
“She also said the author isn’t very proper and that it’s better for to spend less ti with him,” Chen Haoshang added after so thought.
Jiang Miao: “???”
What do you an by not very proper?!
Isn’t it because readers like you want to see that stuff that I wrote it?!
You clearly read my book with relish and even imagine that the male lead is Chen Haoshang, and now you’re slandering behind my back?
Jiang Miao glanced at Ding Ning on the stage and quietly noted her down in his notebook.
…
The match proceeded smoothly. Wang Xin led his teammates and dominated the debate from the start to the end, not giving the opponents any chance to turn things around.
When the moderator announced that the champion was the Departnt of Accounting’s debate team, the mbers imdiately jumped up and cheered.
Jiang Miao stood up with them and clapped along with the audience in celebration.
Zhao Lu and Qi Lianyue were calm. After all, they were the champions last year and were rely defending their title this year. Such a minor matter wasn’t worth getting too excited about.
On the stage, Wang Xin remained composed as he accepted the certificate and trophy from the school leaders. He handed them to a teammate standing beside him and silently waited to step off the stage.
In comparison, Ding Ning was much more excited. Her face was flushed with joy as she stood on stage and faced the audience, feeling nervous, shy, and excited. She even boldly waved at Chen Haoshang.
After the award ceremony, the audience gradually began to leave.
The mbers of the debate team stayed behind to take a group photo on stage.
Then Zhao Lu confird again, “Tomorrow afternoon, we have the two-day rental house event. I’ve posted the address and ti in the group chat. Is everyone good with it?”
Aside from two girls who had other commitnts and couldn’t participate, the other eleven first-year mbers were free and confird they could attend.
A blushing girl even raised her hand and asked boldly, “Um, Senior, can we bring family?”
“Sure. There won’t be many people,” Zhao Lu said lazily. “It’s not a problem to bring a few more.”
Bang!
Qi Lianyue smacked him on the back of his head. “Do you want them to find a bunch of boyfriends?”
“Maybe they’ll bring girlfriends instead?” Su Huaizhou grinned as she linked arms with Qi Lianyue and her leaned on shoulder, only to be pushed away with a look of disdain.
“Senior Sister.” Jiang Miao pulled Su Huaizhou back. “You can’t abandon .”
“Ew~” The crowd jeered, making her blush. She silently glared at him.
In a corner, Ding Ning shyly tugged at Chen Haoshang’s sleeve and asked softly, “Haoshang, are you coming tomorrow?”
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