I was approached by a cat-eared girl.

Although the girl didn't say anything, Chen Shuo was able to tell what she was thinking, and he turned his gaze away guiltily. He coughed twice and explained, "That kind of thing is normal between couples. When you like someone to a certain extent, it will happen naturally, just like when you helped me with that. It's liking someone, not perverted."

"...Why are you explaining this to me?"

Bai Xiaoqi blushed and turned her head back, her gaze returning to the workbook. She murmured, "I didn't say anything."

"I just thought of it and said it offhand. Anyway, hurry up and do your homework, I'll be checking it later."

Chen Shuo ended the somewhat awkward topic with a light cough, turned on his computer and started typing, and the two went about their own business.

Writing is a very tiring job. It requires updating every day without interruption. The next few days may be a bit busy. I need to go to the hospital during the day to visit Director Nie and spend some time with him. I need to make the most of my free time to keep updating.

This situation is expected to continue until Mr. Nie is discharged from the hospital. Fortunately, the small tweezers only caused a fracture, so he only needs to stay in the hospital for observation for a period of time, and then he can recover at home.

I'll go over tomorrow morning to ask about the situation and see what happened to the little tweezers last night.

Chapter 219 That's too much!

The following morning, Chen Shuo went to the hospital to see Nie Xi again, carrying his pockets. He bought breakfast on the way and went into the hospital ward. Nie Xi was still lying in bed wearing a hospital gown.

There was also a middle-aged woman sitting to the side, his mother Liu Yuying, who was feeding him porridge with a grim expression and lecturing him. She stopped talking when she saw Chen Shuo come in.

"Auntie, have you eaten yet?"

"I've eaten, come sit down."

Chen Shuo, carrying the breakfast bag, looked at Nie Xi again. "I originally bought this for you, but... never mind, I'll eat it myself."

"Tell your aunt what exactly happened to him?" Liu Yuying looked at Chen Shuo.

Didn't he tell you?

"What are you saying? I've asked you for ages and you won't say a word. All you said was that there was a little accident." Liu Yuying glared at Nie Xi with annoyance. "What kind of accident could cause this? Did you get hit by a car?"

"Uh..."

Seeing Nie Xi constantly giving him meaningful glances, Chen Shuo looked away and said ambiguously, "I don't know much about the situation either."

"You don't understand either?"

"Little Tweezers is a man of few words, you can't get a word out of him even if you hit him three times. I asked him for a long time last night but I couldn't get anything out of him. But it's good that he's alright."

"You call this nothing?"

"It takes a hundred days to recover from a broken bone, but you'll be fine after a while," Nie Xi interjected.

Seeing that she couldn't get an answer from him, Liu Yuying started her lecturing mode again, "Your father died early, and I raised you all by myself with great difficulty. You've always been a good person, and now you have a decent and stable job. I was hoping you'd get married soon, and I would consider that my mission accomplished. But when I sent you out on a blind date, you ended up in the hospital! What kind of person are you...?"

Nie Xi slurped down her porridge and then listened quietly.

"You dress up like a big shot every day. Go out and see who dresses like you every day. Arrogance brings no good. An arrogant dog will bring bricks. You deserve it."

Seeing that Liu Yuying had brought up this topic again, Chen Shuo nodded in deep agreement, stuffing a steamed bun into his mouth. Indeed, this girl always dressed herself up like a magician.

The high-intensity output continued until noon, and Chen Shuo was getting a little tired of listening. He wondered how Director Nie was doing.

However, this guy has a problem: when people close to him say or criticize him, he doesn't argue back, he just listens quietly.

You can't tell if she's happy or not; she always has that expressionless look on her face.

To put it nicely, it's called keeping your emotions in check; to put it bluntly, it's called facial paralysis.

One-sided attacks seem pointless, so Chen Shuo suggested, "Auntie, why don't you go out and get some food and water first, and I'll put in a good word for you with him."

"Okay, you stay here and keep an eye on things. I'm going out to grab a bite to eat and I'll be right back." After talking all morning, Liu Yuying was indeed a bit parched. Before leaving, she gave Nie Xi one last sidelong glance before turning and heading out the door.

Watching Liu Yuying leave, Nie Xi laboriously shifted her body to a lying position, staring at the ceiling without saying a word.

"She didn't do anything to you last night, did she?" Chen Shuo lifted his blanket to check, and it seemed there were no new injuries.

"Tell me if you have any grievances, and I'll help you get revenge."

“…” Nie Xi turned her head and looked at him without saying a word.

"It wasn't that I deliberately left you behind last night, but she was carrying food, and I could tell at a glance that she came specifically to bring you food and apologize. Maybe she even wants to confess her love to you or something. I felt bad about being a third wheel for you two, that wouldn't be appropriate..."

Rebirth in the Great Era of Surfing Waves

"That was a late-night snack she bought for herself."

"...That's too much. Wait for her to come over, and I'll definitely help you scold her."

Chen Shuo, filled with righteous indignation, pulled the blanket back over him and tucked the corner of the blanket in for him. He then took an orange from the bedside table and asked, "Want an orange?"

Before he could even peel an orange, the ward door opened again. Chen Shuo turned his head and saw Su Yu, carrying a large bag of fruit. He then glanced at Nie Xi.

Both of them had expressionless faces, and it was hard to tell who had copied whom.

"That...is here?"

"Ah."

Chen Shuo hesitated for a moment, then said, "I heard from Xiao Niezi that the food you brought last night was a late-night snack for yourself? That's a bit much. You beat him up like this, and not only did you not help him bring food, but you also bought him a late-night snack and ate it in front of him, deliberately trying to make him jealous. That's really not..."

Su Yu frowned as she listened, then looked at Nie Xi on the bed and asked, "You haven't eaten?"

“…Little Tweezers, you’re going too far. This one, uh…she said she bought you a late-night snack, but didn’t she give it to you? Now she’s bought you fruit too.”

With that, Chen Shuo stood up, quickly peeled the orange, stuffed it into his mouth, and said, "I don't even want to talk to you. You can't even speak clearly. I'm leaving!"

Turning around and going out, I looked left and right in the corridor and saw Liu Yuying carrying food and walking towards me.

"You're leaving already?"

“Oh, he has a friend visiting him, a woman, so it’s not appropriate for me to stay.”

"A woman?" Liu Yuying's expression clearly showed surprise and delight.

"Hmm." Chen Shuo leaned closer and lowered his voice, "And that woman also likes our little tweezers..."

Upon hearing this, Liu Yuying was even more delighted and stepped in to see what the other person looked like, but Chen Shuo stopped her, saying, "Auntie, I need to tell you a few things first."

"What's there to explain?"

"Well... young girls are all shy, so please don't go in and ask them a bunch of questions and make them feel awkward. Just say hello casually."

It's hard to say whether she's a young girl or not, but Chen Shuo sees that she looks like a young girl, so let's just say she is.

Then there's Liu Yuying, who is the same age as Wu Yulan. Both of them have a habit of being talkative. Once they enter a room, they will keep asking people questions, and they might easily annoy them after a few sentences.

"And don't mention the hospitalization and fracture either," Chen Shuo continued to instruct.

"What's wrong with saying this?"

"Um... let's give Tweezers some face, after all, this isn't exactly honorable." Chen Shuo was a little nervous. If he accidentally found out the truth, that it was Su Yu who beat him up like this, Liu Yuying would definitely explode on the spot.

"Alright then." Liu Yuying stared at Chen Shuo suspiciously for a moment before reluctantly accepting his explanation.

.....

It was past lunchtime when Chen Shuo left the hospital. He called Bai Xiaoqi from the front door, and she said that she had already eaten lunch and was working on her workbook.

Chen Shuo automatically switched from doing his workbook exercises to playing games, and told me to cook some dumplings for him, saying he'd be right back, before taking the bus home.

On the way, he took out his phone and sent a few WeChat messages to Director Nie. He didn't explain things too clearly, but just told the guy to be smarter and not to be silent like a block of porcelain. He didn't need to explain the rest in detail, as he was sure Nie would understand what he meant.

After waiting for a while without receiving a reply, Chen Shuo put his phone back in his pocket, looked out the window, and sighed.

The little tweezers are like a porcelain hammer, and I have to smooth things over and clean up after them myself, which makes me, as the father, very tired.

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Chapter 220 Praise to Death

Back home, Chen Shuo's guess was right. Bai Xiaoqi was indeed not studying, but was curled up on the sofa playing on her phone. She wasn't playing games, but watching short videos.

If I'm not home, it would be a miracle if she studied on her own initiative. Who's she going to show me her homework? Who's she going to show me her studies? If no one's watching me study, what's the point of me doing homework?

Little A Miao held this foolish idea—she always believed that she was studying for Chen Shuo's benefit.

Steam rose from the kitchen as dumplings tumbled in a pot. Chen Shuo added a bowl of cold water, and once the water boiled again, he scooped the dumplings onto a plate and brought them out. "Actually, I don't really recommend you use this every day. Playing games is better than this."

"why?"

"Because it contains fragmented information, and whatever you want to watch is available on it."

"Isn't this better?"

"You think it's good, but it's actually not good at all."

Chen Shuo stuffed the dumpling into his mouth, exhaled twice because it was hot, and then continued, "If you do too much of this, you will become less willing to study, because this kind of thing will subconsciously make you used to this high-frequency, fragmented stimulation, so it will be difficult for you to settle down for in-depth reading. Reading books and doing exercises are both forms of in-depth reading."

"is it?"

"Yes, and it can even cause you to have a mental breakdown. One minute they'll say you want to start your own business, so take advantage of your youth and drive to go for it. You can't be an employee forever. You'll face layoffs later. If you don't go crazy now, you'll be too old. You'll definitely regret it if you've accomplished nothing by middle age."

One minute they're saying a stable job is better than anything else, and that business is tough these days; you might lose everything and end up with huge debts. Both of them make sense, so who do you listen to?

Bai Xiaoqi thought for a moment, then threw the question back at her, "Whose advice should I take?"

"Of course you should listen to me." With that, Chen Shuo reached out and tapped her phone screen twice to turn off the short video app. "So listen to me, don't use this stuff unless you have to, it's bad for your brain."

Bai Xiaoqi glanced at the screen, then looked up at him, "Are you afraid I'll learn from this?"

"What should we learn?"

"There's a woman on this platform who always bullies her husband, doesn't give him money, and makes him kneel on durians or keyboards all the time..."

"Oh, the kind of video you're talking about is actually trying to flatter women to their detriment. Any smart girl can see that."

"To praise someone to death?"

“Yes, it’s called ‘praise to death.’” Chen Shuo put down his chopsticks, raised his hands, and made a gesture of lifting someone up. “It’s about praising someone up high and then dropping them. The higher you lift them up, the harder they fall. If you lift them up to a certain height, they will die when they fall. That’s called ‘praise to death.’”

"For example, a not-so-bright girl might watch too many of these videos and then think that men should be like that and deserve to serve her, but every time she finds a boyfriend, he can't tolerate her brainless ideas."

So she kept going back and forth between breaking up and searching. After a few years or even more than ten years, her youth faded and she became a middle-aged single woman who couldn't get married. Then she would fight online every day, shouting and killing men.

She denounced all men as scum, and lamented why no man with a car, a house, and was tall and handsome was willing to serve her back then. Of course, she might regret her past thoughts, but unfortunately, there's no going back.

"Is this what they call 'killing someone with praise'?"

“That’s right, but you could also call it how a boxer is trained.” After a pause, Chen Shuo asked, “So you realized this was a case of flattery to kill?”

"I..." Bai Xiaoqi opened her mouth, she really wanted to be called a smart girl, but she couldn't see what kind of praise was intended to kill. After a while, she said, "Anyway, I won't learn from those girls."