What do you mean you also want to return to the world?

"No, do you really need to get so worked up?" Qi Fei took a tissue and wiped the spit that Shi Yan had sprayed on his face with disgust. "Alright, alright, you can have it all by yourself. I won't fight you for it."

"Is this all you're focusing on?!"

"What else could it be? You're just here to show off that you have beautiful girls to sleep with, aren't you?" Qi Fei curled his lip. "Let me tell you, don't look at me like this now. A few years ago, no, a dozen years ago... at most twenty years ago, there were beautiful girls fighting to sleep with me. I'm not envious of you."

"...I won't even comment on whether your focus is off-topic or not. You were only a few years old twenty years ago, right? Did you already have beautiful girls sleeping with you back then?"

"Of course," Qi Fei said with considerable pride. "When I was just a few years old, beautiful girls in their twenties wanted to sleep with me. Isn't that amazing?"

"That's obviously an elder! Like the kind of older sister next door who thinks, 'Wow, this potato-face is so cute,' and teases you a bit!"

Qi Fei turned his head away: "No, that's not how it is."

"That's exactly it! Your reaction has already given you away! Can't you, an old man, stop making that shy face?!" Shi Yan said. "This is completely different from my situation!"

"You admit it! You admit you came here to show off!"

"Admit it my foot!" Shi Yan felt a vein throbbing in his temple. "Can't you be normal? I'm talking to you about serious matters!"

"I'm perfectly normal." Qi Fei put his hands behind his head, leaning back leisurely in his chair. "A little girl, after being tormented by a monster for so many days, is too scared to sleep. So she cautiously sneaks into the next room to sleep next to the exorcist, just to get a moment of peace... Isn't that a perfectly normal thing?"

Shi Yan was taken aback: "What you said actually makes a lot of sense?"

"That makes no sense at all. If that were true, then it would have been Fahai who slept with Xu Xian." Qi Fei rolled his eyes. "Young people should just masturbate more and think less about nice things."

Shi Yan: "..."

His fist hardened. He was already thinking of calling Crimson out to give this guy a good beating.

"Really?!" Upon hearing her thoughts, Crimson was overjoyed. "Then let's get started! I'll give this idiot a 50% discount!"

After all that fuss, Qi Fei finally agreed to speak properly.

"If I'm not mistaken, it was your scent that attracted her," Qi Fei said. "Remember what I told you before? Your body is like... to a demon."

"Alright, alright, no need to describe it so vividly." Shi Yan raised his hand to stop Qi Fei from making any more lewd remarks. "So, you're saying she also came to take my body last night, but she just didn't succeed?"

"Yeah, after all, there's already a demon inside you." Qi Fei shrugged. "But it probably didn't sense it, otherwise it wouldn't have made this attempt. Theoretically, it's impossible for one demon to expel another from the original body."

"I see." Shi Yan said thoughtfully, "So, the personality that came to me last night was the demon itself?"

"That's basically how you can think of it." Qi Fei nodded slightly. "So as long as you know who came to see you last night, you can determine who the demon is... You really are something else, making such a big progress just from sleeping."

Shi Yan always felt that Qi Fei was mocking him. After all, it was a choice between two options before, and it was still a choice between two options now, so there was no difference at all.

Forget it, I'm not going to waste my breath arguing with Qi Fei; it's pointless. I'd better go back to school and find out what's going on.

But just as he was about to leave, Qi Fei stopped him: "Don't go to school, go here instead."

Shi Yan turned his head and saw Qi Fei place a photo on the table.

It was less a photograph and more a screenshot from a surveillance camera. In the image, a middle-aged man with a disheveled look was furtively turning into an equally dilapidated alley.

Shi Yan immediately realized something: "This is Lin Xiaoyue's father, Lin Anshan?"

"Yes." Qi Fei nodded slightly. "Lin Xiaoyue's parents got into trouble with loan sharks and disappeared a month ago. But yesterday I asked a friend at the police station, and after checking all the surveillance footage in the city, we finally found his last trace. It was a week ago, in an alley in Ankang."

"Ankang Alley?" Shi Yan recalled for a moment, "That's the old town, isn't it?"

"Yes, the old town. Not many people lived there after the new town was built," Qi Fei said softly. "But because of that, some shady things started to appear there."

……

……

The following is the author's statement, not part of the main text.

I'm so sorry, I was planning to take the day off today, but I can't take leave during the new book release period. I'm in such a bad state that I can't even squeeze out 4,000 words, so I'll just put this in the main text to make up for it.

The reason is simple: the editor told me today that this book failed the recommendation competition and will not be recommended anymore.

To be honest, I'm a bit bewildered. Since I've already cut several books in a row, I genuinely wanted to finish this one properly. Therefore, my expectations for this book are very low; I'd be happy with just a thousand initial subscriptions. It's not that I'm giving up or accepting my fate, but the book's structure is methodical, with a stronger focus on the later stages, and a fairly orthodox storyline, so lower initial subscriptions are acceptable.

But I didn't expect it to have gotten so low that I couldn't even get a recommendation.

It's not even a big recommendation like Sanjiang or Xiaolaba; it's just a trial run in the third round, which isn't even qualified. It's really... I don't know what to say.

So I asked the editor if it was necessary to continue writing the book, and the editor's answer was that if there were new ideas, then it could be cut.

But I'm still hesitant. Looking at the beginnings of my books on Qidian, not counting "The Corpse," since it had over 10,000 first-day subscriptions, which is something I can't replicate.

The beginning of "The Girl" was decent, but its strength lay in its sales figures and hype. The story and characters were relatively weak. Plus, I was frantically speeding up the writing process; before it was even published, I was already involved with three girls, even living together with them, which made it impossible to continue writing. (Of course, I know this isn't an excuse; I apologize again.)

There's not much to say about the book on IQ; it's just boring. If this book only failed to make it into the third round of recommendations, that one wouldn't even make it into the first round.

Finally, there's this one. To be honest, I think the beginning of this one is the best among these books. Both the character development and the plot progression are written very smoothly and fluidly. But unfortunately...

Anyway, it's pretty clear now. I've already written 120,000 words. If there are no recommendations next week, I'll basically maintain the current performance, write for another week or two before putting it on the shelves, and then get around 400 or 500 first-time subscriptions.

So now I need to think about whether this result is acceptable.