[Ding—]
[Feng Xueping’s favorability: 80. Achievement unlocked: More than Friends, Less Than Lovers. Side quest: Gain the protagonist top’s favor — Completed. Congratulations, Host. Please continue your hard work~]
The next morning, Gong Ze woke up to the favorability announcement.
In the soft cotton bedding, the young man in his arms rested his head on Gong Ze’s chest. The drowsiness in Gong Ze’s eyes gradually faded as his hand stroked the young man’s smooth back. His voice was lazy and languid. “System.”
[Here, Big Boss.]
“Check Lu Youling’s favorability.”
[Will do~]
[Ding—]
[Lu Youling’s favorability: 99. Achievement unlocked: Love of a Lifetime, Until Death Do Us Part.]
[You have currently completed one main quest and one side quest. One side quest and obtaining the protagonist’s spiritual spring water remain incomplete.]
“Spiritual spring water is something you can’t see or touch. How exactly are you supposed to obtain it?”
The system fluttered its little chicken wings. [I don’t know that either. The spiritual spring water is currently inside Lu Youling’s body. As a mystical spiritual object, I imagine it requires Lu Youling’s willing gift.]
Gong Ze didn’t say anything more.
Perhaps the day Lu Youling confessed to him about the existence of the spiritual spring water, the day his favorability maxed out and Gong Ze obtained the spring, wouldn’t be far off.
As for the fact that Lu Youling was still hiding his golden finger from him, Gong Ze wasn’t angry.
This thing was far beyond human comprehension. It could not only cure diseases but also extend one’s lifespan. If it were revealed, who knew how many powerful and wealthy people would become greedy?
At the same time, it came with enormous danger.
Even the closest person could turn against you over a lottery ticket or a huge insurance payout, let alone a single drop of spiritual spring water that could sell for a fortune and attract countless covetous and ill-intentioned eyes.
Gong Ze thought Lu Youling was very smart.
“Youling, time to get up.”
Gong Ze gently shook the young man in his arms awake.
“Mm…”
Without opening his eyes, Lu Youling kissed his boyfriend’s chest and mumbled, “Five more minutes…”
Gong Ze was amused. His voice was laced with helplessness as he continued calling him.
Only then did Lu Youling reluctantly rub his eyes and wake up. Looking at Gong Ze holding him, he suddenly grinned mischievously, put on a pitiful expression, and looked at Gong Ze. “Husband~ You hurt me so much yesterday~”
Gong Ze knew that this little rascal loved to tease him and watch him flounder.
Sure enough, the man’s face instantly turned red.
The restrained, gentle man shyly covered Lu Youling’s mouth.
And Lu Youling absolutely loved the feeling of teasing his boyfriend. He naughtily stuck out the tip of his tongue and licked the man’s palm.
“Youling!” Gong Ze warned in a low voice.
“Hee hee.”
Grinning mischievously, Lu Youling pulled down his boyfriend’s hand. “Why are you worried? We still have a long time until work. Even if… we’re not late.”
He reached out, groping around.
Just as Gong Ze, caught between exasperation and amusement, moved to grab him, the young man burst out laughing and rolled around on the bed.
“Stop fooling around. Get up. Aren’t you going to the Capital University of Medicine today?”
“Yeah, I’ll look around, get familiar with the place, and handle my enrollment.”
And with the new shop opening yesterday, Gong Ze had plenty to do as well.
The two exchanged a glance and reluctantly dragged themselves out of bed.
They washed up and got dressed.
From the bathroom came the young man’s playful laughter and the man’s embarrassed scolding.
The reason was that a certain bold, mischievous little rascal had knelt on one knee, cupped Little Gong Ze in his hands, and said with a deadly serious expression: “I am your master. While I’m away, you’re not allowed to cheat. You’re not allowed to get hard when you shouldn’t! Otherwise, I’ll dissect you myself and turn you into a specimen!”
Feeling a chill down below, Gong Ze: …
Is my wife secretly a yandere?
“…Youling.”
“Pfft, hahaha.”
·
In the 1950s, the Hua nation was rebuilding itself after years of neglect.
Lu Youling went to study at the Capital University of Medicine, beginning his legendary life as a future medical master. Meanwhile, Gong Ze, as a bystander in this era, witnessed the nation transform from a frail, weakened country into the future behemoth it would become.
It was quite interesting.
Walking down the street, Gong Ze felt as if he were walking through a history book.
He watched young women in cheongsams, Western dresses, student uniforms, and new modern attire pass by. Foreign-branded cars drove along the roads of the capital.
Prices were very low.
There were no modern machine tools. Whether furniture or small trinkets, everything was sturdy and exquisitely made.
But poverty was also visible on every street and alley.
Lu Youling had a very independent personality. Except for the first day of school, when he came home and chattered to Gong Ze about how many students at the university were already married, and some even brought their children to class. The campus even had dedicated family housing—he had seen an entire residential area on school grounds.
The labs were very rudimentary, and the ordinary single dormitories were just large communal bunk rooms.
But the students there—when they listened to lectures, their eyes seemed to burn with fire and light, like greedy beasts devouring knowledge. It gave Lu Youling goosebumps.
“This is the unique drive of this era,” Gong Ze told him.
“Everyone has a burning, sincere fire in their hearts, wanting to make this country better. And in this era, knowledge is incredibly precious—far more valuable than gold.”
Because attending school was very difficult.
Modern people couldn’t imagine it.
A family would have seven or eight children. The more children they had, the poorer they were, and the less willing they were to support their children’s education.
In an ordinary family, someone who had finished elementary school could already become a teacher. To attend middle or high school, one needed a wealthy, doting family. Those who went to university were as rare as phoenix feathers.
After hearing this, Lu Youling felt a complicated mix of emotions.
In his previous life, nine years of compulsory education had been in place for a long time. Illiteracy among people in their twenties and thirties was almost nonexistent. Educational resources were very abundant.
Capital had gradually come to dominate society.
Everyone was exhausted from chasing money.
Money was the most important thing.
Gong Ze watched as Lu Youling’s casual, joyful, and novel attitude toward studying faded, replaced by a stronger, more steadfast motivation.
Gong Ze knew that he was starting to figure out how to disseminate the knowledge he had learned from the future into this era. He couldn’t help but smile.
After two years at the Capital University of Medicine, Lu Youling began interning at a hospital with his teachers.
He summarized his knowledge and published many papers.
There were also times when Lu Youling felt lost.
After all, his knowledge came from the future—he had learned it from senior experts and big shots. He was just a conveyor, yet he was enjoying an honor he didn’t deserve.
Lu Youling came to Gong Ze and started with “I have a friend,” talking about his troubles, hypothetically asking about someone who had time-traveled from the future, and so on…
Gong Ze thought for a moment, then said, “If it were really as you say, I think that with the knowledge this person brought over, those big shots would be able to research even better things. Those big shots are very smart. If given better fertile ground, they might be able to develop even more advanced things based on this foundation.”
Every era lacks not brilliant, star-like geniuses.
Bringing something advanced from the future to the past.
They would study and analyze it.
Then, even more advanced knowledge would emerge in the future. That would be the proper outcome.
Lu Youling had an epiphany. He kissed Gong Ze excitedly, shouted, “I get it! Thank you, darling!” and then ran off to find his teacher.
Gong Ze smiled and secretly tucked the key to a newly purchased laboratory into Lu Youling’s textbook.
It was his birthday gift to him.
The lab was equipped with the best instruments of the era that Gong Ze had gone to great lengths to acquire from abroad. With these, Lu Youling and those future big shots would be able to soar.
Meanwhile, Gong Ze’s business continued to grow bigger and bigger.
Their shops expanded from the capital to a nationwide chain. Gong Ze contacted lawyers and registered a company, keeping the previous brand name and the characters “Gong Lu” (宮鹿).
Finally, Gong Ze also bought a factory to produce milk tea powder and raw materials, established a truck fleet to supply their branches nationwide, and set up branch offices and distribution centers in several major cities.
Money had become the thing they least lacked.
Even though Lu Youling’s laboratory was a money-eating beast.
He and his like-minded friends at the university were like hungry baby birds every day, craving better research materials. Gong Ze could still afford it.
The most advanced private laboratory in the country at that time had Gong Ze as its sole investor.
Seeing how hard Lu Youling was working, Gong Ze felt inspired to do something for the Hua nation of this era.
So he invested in the Capital University of Medicine.
At the new student orientation that year, the dean specially invited him to give a speech.
Perhaps because of this, one day when Gong Ze was out eating with Feng Xueping, Feng Xueping awkwardly introduced him to a middle-aged woman. Her grandfather was a figure whose name would be familiar to people from the future.
Unfortunately, due to certain historical changes, she was now living in poverty.
She had originally had some money, but she had used it to start a women’s school, fighting for women’s equal right to education. She had run through almost all the connections left by her ancestors, seeking investment and sponsorship everywhere.
But she had been turned away at every door.
Apart from the children of wealthy families, no one was willing to waste money sending girls to school.
As far as Gong Ze knew, this struggle was incredibly long. Even around 2012, there were still many cases of families secretly hiding their daughters’ admission letters or having sons take their place. And there were many such cases.
In the 1950s, the level of female education was staggeringly low.
“Mr. Gong, I wonder if you might be interested in investing in our nation’s education…” The woman wore a neat but visibly old, plain linen cheongsam, nervous yet full of hope as she spoke.
“Of course. I’m very interested,” Gong Ze replied with a smile.
“Wonderful!” The woman was overjoyed. Then, suddenly deflated, she clutched the documents in her hand tightly. “It’s just… Mr. Gong, I want to start a school. Not the kind of private university you see nowadays, but a women’s school…”
She had encountered people before who, out of respect for her grandfather or a desire to do charity, had agreed to invest. But as soon as they heard it was a women’s school, their faces would darken and they would throw her out.
“Nonsense,” “A foolish attempt at women’s education and independence,” “Can you women just behave and stop causing trouble?”—she had heard too many such words.
She hoped women could awaken.
That they could realize they too could work and choose how to live their lives.
Instead of being appendages to men, invisible people doing the heaviest work at home without respect, unable to survive without a husband.
She had seen many women endure domestic violence and suffering, yet still choose to remain silent. In her view, this had a lot to do with the fact that women were uneducated and couldn’t work independently.
If girls could work like men and achieve financial independence, perhaps when faced with family misfortune, they would have the confidence to say no.
But even with the slogan “Women hold up half the sky,” society still believed that women should only do housework and bear children.
She tentatively explained her philosophy to Gong Ze.
Because Gong Ze was also a man.
So she was nervous, unsure if he would get angry and throw her out after hearing her out.
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