The system also went silent.
Jiang You: ...
Upon hearing this, Xi Cheng seemed to smile faintly, but the expression was so fleeting it was almost as if it had never been there.
To seize the upper hand, Jiang You spoke haughtily. "Fine. If you want me to stay, then you’re not allowed to do your experiment."
’Let’s see if he still wants me to stay now.’
She had deliberately made this demand to make things difficult for him. She simply wanted to leave.
According to his character profile in the novel, Xi Cheng was someone who kept his work and personal life strictly separate.
A love-obsessed villainess like her was fundamentally a different breed of person from him.
The career-driven heroine was his type; they were the ones who were a match made in heaven.
’If I keep acting according to my spoiled rich girl persona, he’s bound to break up with me sooner or later!’
With that thought, Jiang You casually glanced at Xi Cheng.
He seemed to look at her for a moment without speaking.
"What if I still want to do my experiment?" Xi Cheng’s silver eyes shifted slightly. His posture was relaxed, and his words weren’t sharp—it was as if he were merely posing a hypothesis.
Jiang You: ...
Jiang You had been about to say she would just leave.
’But wouldn’t that bring things full circle, making it seem like *she* was the one who wanted to leave?’
’I can’t be the one to initiate leaving, or the system might glitch out and say I’m breaking character.’
Jiang You gave Xi Cheng a strange look. The system was an idiot; it usually wouldn’t issue a warning unless it detected a blatant deviation from her persona. Yet, she had a nagging feeling that something Xi Cheng said had triggered the system, causing it to scrutinize her recent actions and suddenly hit her with that OOC warning.
’Then again,’ she thought, ’that’s impossible. There’s no way he could know I have a system.’
’Something like that is just not possible.’
After thinking for a moment and composing herself, Jiang You looked at Xi Cheng and continued to act unreasonably. "In that case, I’ll just do what I did before. I won’t let you do your experiment. You’ll just have to keep me company."
Xi Cheng watched her for a moment, then slowly took off his white lab coat.
For a moment, Jiang You didn’t understand. ’What does this mean?’
After taking off the lab coat, Xi Cheng put on his cream-colored overcoat. The change made him look clean and gentle.
He took her hand, glanced calmly at the time on his terminal, and started leading her outside. "Let’s go. No experiments today. We’re going on a date."
’A date?’
The expression on Jiang You’s face froze for an instant.
’Ah, I didn’t actually want him to keep me company, and I definitely didn’t want to go on a date!’
’Also, isn’t he someone who can’t be disturbed while he’s experimenting?’
’Aren’t his experiments the most important thing to him?’
’How could he just drop his experiment to leave with me?’
’Ah, Mr. Protagonist, you’re not supposed to be this kind of protagonist!’
A series of expressions flickered across Jiang You’s face. She wanted to ask about his experiment but didn’t know how to bring it up.
’Am I, the villainess, actually more important than his experiment?’
Xi Cheng glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
Jiang You quickly schooled her expression.
"The experiment won’t be finished anytime soon," Xi Cheng said leisurely. "Besides, our date won’t delay it."
Jiang You paused, her lips twitching slightly as she said, "It’s not like I was worried about your experiment."
She fell silent as soon as the words were out. ’Why does that sound like I’m protesting too much?’
Jiang You’s face became even more expressionlessly cold and arrogant.
Meanwhile, Li Yu saw Xi Cheng emerge holding Jiang You’s hand and was completely stunned.
Neither Xi Cheng nor Jiang You looked at him. The two of them simply walked out of the research area and then left the office complex.
Li Yu stared at their retreating backs, unable to snap out of his stupor for a long time.
’I was still looking for a chance to convince Jiang You to give up. Who would’ve thought she’d actually won over God Xi?’
’Wait a minute, that acceptance list... God Xi was the one who chose it.’
’So it wasn’t an accident?’
Li Yu felt like he was onto something suspicious.
He didn’t dare to think about it too much. In any case, he was giving up on the idea of trying to talk Jiang You out of it.
Jiang You was oblivious. As she walked out with Xi Cheng, a cold wind blew past, and her face instantly stiffened.
’I don’t want to go on a date in the middle of winter.’
They left the school grounds.
Xi Cheng told her to wait and returned a moment later with a cup of low-sugar hot milk tea. The wind had slightly tousled his silver hair, making it sweep across his fair forehead.
He looked down at her, calmly and naturally taking her hand to place the milk tea in it. His voice was gentle. "Here, drink this. It’ll warm you up."
Jiang You hesitated before taking it with both hands. The warmth instantly seeped into her ice-cold palms.
Her eyes flickered, but she quickly suppressed her emotions.
Xi Cheng led her to his private car.
"Where are we going?" Jiang You asked.
"Hmm, this was a bit spur-of-the-moment, so I don’t have a concrete plan." Xi Cheng said as he drove, his silver eyes calm and gentle, his long, slender fingers gripping the steering wheel. "But I just gave it some thought. Let’s go to the science museum first, then get something to eat, and after that, we can see a movie."
’He planned all that in such a short amount of time.’
Jiang You just let out a soft "Oh." She had to maintain her spoiled-heiress facade.
The two of them went to the science museum.
Jiang You saw that everyone else was standing in line, but Xi Cheng led her straight through a separate entrance.
The science museum staff seemed exceptionally respectful when they saw him.
Jiang You blinked slowly. ’Great, more special treatment.’
Once inside the science museum, they saw small-scale demonstrations of hover cars, the manufacturing process for androids, the principles behind projected imaging...
In this interstellar age, all of these things were already integrated into daily life.
The museum, however, showcased the principles behind them: electromagnetic induction, optical illusions, and so on.
For example, Jiang You knew that terminals could cast projections, but the museum was where the principles behind it were put on display.
Jiang You was bad at math: ...
As they watched together, Xi Cheng slowly explained it to her. "Screen casting is essentially the cross-terminal transmission of multimedia audio and video signals... After the display terminal receives the data stream, it uses a hardware decoder for inverse quantization and entropy decoding... restoring the original audio-visual signal..."
"Uh, you can stop now," Jiang You said, her head spinning. She hadn’t even heard of some of the terms he was using.
Xi Cheng paused, glanced at her, and said no more. ’Perhaps the things that interest me don’t interest her, and she doesn’t understand them either.’
After a moment of thought, he took her hand and led her in another direction. "There’s an interesting experiment over here."
At his words, Jiang You grew a little curious about what kind of experiment it was.
Xi Cheng led her to a large crystal ball. It did, in fact, look like a crystal ball, with purple lightning constantly flashing inside.
Well, she wasn’t so sure it was lightning anymore. A little while ago, she had seen a device emitting purple flashes and had exclaimed in surprise, "This lightning actually stays constant!"
To which Xi Cheng had calmly replied, "That’s not lightning. It’s a radioactive imaging display of Y978 particles."
Jiang You: ...
So now, looking at this large crystal ball—one that was taller than a person—she slowly asked, "Then what’s the purple, lightning-like thing inside?"
Xi Cheng: "That is lightning."
Jiang You: ...