I met my whole family through Baidu Tieba.

Wang Pan was taken aback when he saw that Shen Kang wasn't asking him for anything and was instead playing on his phone.

But soon, he realized: "Okay, okay, Lao Shen, you're playing the 'retreat to advance' game with me, aren't you?"

Once he understood this, Wang Pan was no longer in a hurry. He smiled and continued to rest, leaning back on the table.

The only difference was that before, his face was facing outwards, but this time, his face was facing inwards, and he wasn't asleep either; his eyes were fixed on Old Shen.

"Let's see how long you can keep this up," Wang Pan thought to himself.

Shen Kang's patience was clearly greater than he had imagined.

Wang Pan noticed that Shen Kang was completely absorbed in his phone, showing no signs of being distracted. This made Wang Pan unable to contain himself any longer, so he lifted his head off the table and leaned closer.

Then I saw a refreshing picture.

Seeing such pictures in the dead of winter truly brings a touch of coolness to this sweltering season.

"Why are you taking this so seriously, Lao Shen?"

Wang Pan stared at the picture and said this, his eyes filled with disdain.

Seeing Shen Kang's finger move to press the button, Wang Pan immediately stopped him: "Don't cut yet! I haven't seen it clearly yet."

The two of them put their heads together and stared at their phones.

They watched while whispering among themselves.

"Old Shen, is this how you study? I despise you."

"It's better than getting knocked out the moment you walk into the study room."

"I was conserving my energy... Lao Shen, what do you think of this pure text? I can't understand it without pictures."

"I'm not here to look at the pictures, I'm here to understand the business ecosystem."

"I'll press it, I'll press it."...

The two of them huddled together, and before they knew it, Wang Pan was the one pressing his phone, looking for posts he liked and reading them with great interest.

Shen Kang was speechless. "Don't you have a phone yourself?"

Wang Pan just stared at his phone screen and chuckled.

He does have a cell phone, a pretty high-end one, and he doesn't seem to care about the data usage. But, hey, it's really strange: when he watches these things by himself, he doesn't seem to be very interested, but when he watches them with other people, he finds them incredibly fun, like when two kids were kids taking turns playing on an FC console.

Wang Pan kept talking, occasionally lowering his voice to say something.

"This one's good, a new face, a rising star... This one's too ordinary, all I can say is commendable courage... Wow, has Zhong Lin gone through a second growth spurt? Why does she seem bigger than before?... "

Shen Kang watched as Wang Pan opened Zhong Lin's new post, and when he heard Wang Pan say it aloud, the corner of his mouth twitched involuntarily: "Brother, why didn't you just read it quietly by yourself?"

Old Feng was right there. And you even said it out loud. Even though Old Feng and Zhong Lin never really talked, wasn't it still a bit awkward?

that's the truth.

Shen Kang glanced at Feng Moquan out of the corner of his eye and saw him temporarily look up from his review materials, his eyes filled with complicated emotions.

Wang Pan, oblivious to his own predicament, continued looking at the next card, the next one…

Fortunately, Wang Pan quickly finished looking at Zhong Lin's pictures and clicked into the next post, no longer mentioning Zhong Lin.

Feng Moquan also turned his gaze away and lowered his head to silently review his studies again.

Shen Kang and Wang Pan huddled together looking at their phones. After a while, Wang Pan pulled his head back and handed the phone back to Shen Kang.

"Not watching anymore?"

Shen Kang casually asked a question.

"I had an upset stomach at lunch, I need to go to the bathroom."

Wang Pan spoke in a muffled voice, then got up and left through the back door of the classroom.

Shen Kang glanced twice at Wang Pan's retreating figure as he disappeared through the back door, thinking to himself, "Young people are just too hot-tempered."

Thinking it over, Shen Kang took back his phone and continued his research into the frontline operations of the Beiming community, immersing himself in the lives of the people. After all, it's about coming from the masses and going back to the masses.

Shen Kang always kept this in mind, which is why he frequently came to Beiming Community to conduct various market surveys. He didn't want to become detached from the masses as the boss, resulting in the products failing to satisfy them.

He himself was genuinely uninterested in these revealing pictures, viewing them with an investigative mindset and a sense of helplessness.

After investigating for a while, Wang Panhui arrived.

Shen Kang glanced at the time on his phone subconsciously—three minutes had passed.

They've gotten to know each other better. Shen Kang remembers that when everyone first arrived at school, Wang Pan would sit in the toilet for half an hour just to save face. Now, if he says three minutes, he really does come out in three minutes.

Shen Kang continued his investigation.

After Wang Pan returned to his seat, he stopped looking over and sat there blankly for a while, lost in thought, reminiscing about the time when human ancestors were hunted by the terror cat, starting from the origin of the universe.

It is said that the reason humans find sounds like fingernails scraping glass so unpleasant is because that's how saber-toothed cats crushed human skulls. People who developed a fear of sound survived and etched this fear into their genes.

Imagine such a scene:

On a dark and windy African savanna, where you can't see your hand in front of your face, you and your companions rest on different branches of a tree.

Suddenly, a slight noise comes and wakes you up.

Before you could even react, you heard a piercing, terrifying sound, accompanied by a very short scream.

You are instantly wide awake, too terrified to move or make a sound.

You know, he's finished.

All you can do is prevent that terrifying hunter from finding you.

That terrifying hunter may not have noticed you, or it may have noticed you but already has prey and can't care about you anymore.

You hear the sound of it dragging something heavy down the tree, walking away into the distance, the sound growing fainter and fainter...

"The fact that humanity has survived to this day is truly the greatest miracle in the universe."

Wang Pan couldn't help but sigh.

"..."

Shen Kang temporarily looked away from his phone screen, glanced at Wang Pan, and thought to himself, "They're really fighting now, they're even starting to think about the macro-level question of humanity."

Then he turned his attention back to the investigation.

After sighing for a while, Wang Pan got bored again, lay on the table, turned his face towards Shen Kang, and finally slapped his forehead, remembering the important matter: Wait, wasn't Old Shen playing the game of retreating to advance, and he was going to counter whatever move Shen Kang made? How did he end up looking at pictures and going to the bathroom again?

Wang Pan, finally remembering the important matter, stopped thinking about those messy things like fearing cats and humans, and continued to lie on the table with his face towards Shen Kang.

As a result, Shen Kang spent half an hour looking at his phone.

Wang Pan finally couldn't hold back any longer, "Seriously, Lao Shen, are you just going to keep looking at your phone like this?"

Shen Kang asked, somewhat puzzled, "Otherwise what?"

Wang Pan lost his patience and said bluntly, "Are you really closing your store in Anfang City?"

"Yes."

Wang Pan tried to persuade him: "If you lose a store, you'll lose a lot of money. Isn't that a pity?"

Shen Kang didn't care: "I have more than a dozen stores, and more in the future. What's there to regret? It's good if we can open them, but it doesn't matter if we don't."

"……All right."

Wang Pan was helpless.

He realized that Old Shen seemed genuinely indifferent, while he himself cared more. It seemed that trying to control Old Shen with this tactic wouldn't work.

Thinking about this, Wang Pan felt extremely depressed.

Since things have come to this, it seems I have no choice but to help for free... Wait, Wang Pan suddenly remembered something and asked Shen Kang, "Old Shen, you just said that if I help, you'll owe me a favor, right?"

Shen Kang nodded. "Yes."

Wang Pan didn't say anything more, feeling a bit better: although he couldn't get Old Shen to kneel down and beg him, he could at least gain a favor, so it wasn't a loss.

However, Wang Pan wasn't sure if he could be of any help, so he didn't say anything and went to the restroom again. After he left, Feng Mo couldn't help but glance at the back door, wondering, "Is Wang Pan urinating too often?"...

Wang Pan went to the toilet again, then went downstairs, found a secluded spot, and took out his phone to call his father.

As soon as the call connected, Wang Pan told his father about Shen Kang's situation.

Wang Pan was afraid his father would disagree, so he had prepared a speech, but it turned out that his father's focus was completely on a different wavelength.

"Xiao Pan, that's too general a statement."

Is it too general?

"Vague. It's more than just vague; you haven't mentioned a single key point. Everything you saw him saying to you after you opened your eyes... Oh, right..."

On the other end of the phone, Mr. Wang suddenly realized something, "What do you mean by 'opening your eyes in the study room and seeing Shen Kang standing in front of you'?"

"..."

Wang Pan was at a loss for words and stammered.

Mr. Wang sighed, but didn't dwell on it. Business was more important. "Alright, alright. Next time you want to sleep, go back to your dorm. Everyone else is studying, it looks bad if you're sleeping alone. Let's get down to business. Tell me everything he said to you after you woke up, his expressions and actions at the time, as long as you remember it."

"?"

Wang Pan was a little puzzled, wondering why his father didn't care about important matters but instead cared about these trivial things. Nevertheless, he obediently began to explain.

Fortunately, it had only happened a couple of hours ago, so he remembered it clearly and told his father everything.

After listening silently on the other end of the phone, the father finally spoke: "Now I truly believe that Anjia Housekeeping was started by your classmate on his own."

"?"

Wang Pan was filled with questions again, not understanding what his father meant by saying that.

No one knows a son better than his father. When the father heard that there was no movement from this side, he probably guessed what state his son was in.

If it were someone else, Mr. Wang wouldn't have said anything more, but since it was his son on the other end of the phone, and the other person was his son's roommate, it was quite educational, so Mr. Wang said a bit more.