[The first five million]

[Just one step away from clearing! Getting scared offline at the last moment, Brother Big Bear is truly too tragic.]

[Can’t blame him, that curse was just too malicious.]

[Following you for all eternity, anyone would be scared.]

[Right, right, I feel like the Ghost Bride’s voice had tentacles, sticking to my scalp, chilling, can’t rub it off.]

[Upstairs, you’re not alone. My energy levels are still dropping right now; the lingering effect is too strong.]

[I don’t know why, but I feel completely refreshed now.]

[Me too, me too! Unlike other games that leave you feeling tired, this one is scary, but after being scared, it feels inexplicably good. What’s going on?]

[I want to replay it.]

[+1]

[+2]

…

As netizens enthusiastically exchanged their feelings, Tong Yu was already waiting at the exit, personally helping the few individuals out.

Yes, the moment the five people walked out, not one of them had steady legs.

“Is there anything to drink? I want something hot.” Just like Zhang Huai and his group when they exited the escape room, they also wanted something warm to calm down.

Tong Yu apologized profusely: “I’m really sorry. It’s the first day of business, and I wasn’t prepared. Next time, definitely.”

He had originally intended to prepare it, but the second batch of guests arrived too quickly, and he didn’t have time.

Upon hearing there was no hot water, the few of them couldn’t sit still and all declared they needed to go offline to drink something warm, otherwise, they wouldn’t recover.

Tong Yu suddenly had an idea: selling hot water at the escape room exit. He estimated they’d buy it even at 100 star coins a cup.

‘No, no, that’s earning money too unconscionably.’

Tong Yu quickly reined in his “black-hearted capitalist” thoughts, then called his shop assistant and told him to quickly get a water dispenser for the shop.

“Master, private messages in the backend have exceeded 10,000. Would you like to view them?”

“10,000 messages? What are they about?” Tong Yu asked casually.

Private Messages (Read by shop assistant)

“Hey boss, if you’ve got the guts to livestream, then drop the damn address! How the hell am I supposed to play if I don’t even know where to go?”

“Boss, I give you three minutes to post the address, or I’ll kill your whole family.”

“You scared me and made me lose 20,000 R of energy. If you can’t make me lose another 100,000, I’ll become the Ghost Bride and haunt you.”

“Boss, I want to charter your, shop. How much do you want?”

Tong Yu looked strangely at the shop assistant: “Why are you stumbling over a message? Bad internet? Did we not post the address? Quickly put up our shop’s address. We’ll start operating tomorrow, hosting eight groups of guests a day. Reservations allowed.”

As Tong Yu arranged things, he checked his live stream earnings in the backend. The more he looked, the better his mood became.

It was only a soft opening, and from just one live stream, he had already earned a full five million star coins, and the amount was still growing. There were still viewers sending him gifts through the live stream replay channel. This was truly… the friends in the interstellar community were too enthusiastic.

Tong Yu couldn’t wait to withdraw the money, but then he suddenly realized something: he didn’t know the payment password. So even if he withdrew it, he couldn’t spend it. He needed to reset the password first.

‘I’ll go to the bank now.’

Tong Yu looked up, about to give a few more instructions to the shop assistant before going offline, but saw the shop assistant hovering in front of him with a line of text. Tong Yu glanced at it and realized it seemed to be a netizen’s message: “Why are you holding up a message?”

“I didn’t stumble.”

“Huh?”

“Boss, I want to charter your, shop. How much do you want? I didn’t stumble,” the shop assistant repeated.

Tong Yu paused, then looked at the message again, especially the enlarged comma after “your.” He finally understood what it meant. ‘So, the assistant is annoyed because he just said he was stumbling.’

‘Are AI assistants really this petty now? I was just making a comment.’

After going offline, Tong Yu went to the Lan Hai ^[1] Blue Ocean Bank headquarters.

Resetting the password wasn’t complicated and didn’t require too much information. As long as he was physically present, the bank had many ways to verify his identity. After identity verification, the password could be reset quickly.

After resetting the password, Tong Yu’s first action was to log into his account and check his balance. The lonely two-digit star coin balance highlighted the original owner’s poverty.

‘This Sheng Jing is too stingy! The original owner was at least his partner. Even if he was a house husband with no job, he should still be given pocket money, right? But this Sheng Jing would rather transfer living expenses to Little Fatty than to his partner.’

‘This kind of person, no matter how handsome, is a scumbag!’

‘So, my dear friends, having your own money is better than your husband having money. No matter what, having your own money is the ultimate truth!’

Tong Yu connected his light-brain to the virtual helmet, withdrew 5 million star coins from the backend, and immediately transferred 80,000 star coins to Sheng Jing’s account. After some thought, he calculated the interest for the past two days based on the bank’s daily interest rate and transferred that as well. Then, he walked home with a straight back.

—-

Sheng Jing discovered the transfer at 2 AM. For the past two days, he had been in excellent mental health, so he had plunged into the lab, working day and night. If his assistant hadn’t noticed he hadn’t eaten for over a dozen hours and forced him out of the lab, he would still be calibrating numbers there.

Upon leaving the lab, Sheng Jing went directly to the medical room. He skillfully took out a packet of equilibrium solution from a drawer and drank it, while allowing the nurse to attach instruments to him. To ensure that the scientists in the research institute did not develop mental problems, they had to undergo two spiritual sea check-ups daily: once before work and once after. If any abnormality was detected, the scientist would be forced to rest.

Dr. Cui glanced at the values on the instrument and signaled the nurse to remove the equipment: “Could I meet your contractor?”

Sheng Jing frowned: “Why do you want to meet him?”

Dr. Cui: “Your spiritual sea health has jumped to first place in the research institute.”

With that, Dr. Cui displayed a virtual screen showing an analysis chart of Sheng Jing’s spiritual to Sheng Jing.

Sheng Jing scanned the series of values, stopping at the final comprehensive assessment.

Spiritual Sea State: Excellent.

‘Excellent?’ Except for the first six months after he awakened, his spiritual sea had never been excellent! For a moment, Sheng Jing thought he was hallucinating.

Dr. Cui said sincerely: “You’ve been in the lab for an average of over twelve hours a day recently. Your spiritual sea’s activity is the highest in the entire research institute, generating over 100,000 R of spiritual riot energy daily. Most importantly, two days ago, the riot value in your spiritual sea was clearly over 500,000 R, and now it’s only a little over 100,000 R. I’m truly curious how your contractor managed this. Or did you go home in the middle of your work to perform a spiritual cleansing on your contractor?”

“No!” He would never again use the spiritual cleansing skill on Tong Yu in his life.

About a year ago, shortly after he and Tong Yu married, he was busy with research. Due to prolonged work, his spiritual power was overused, leading to an excess of riot energy in his spiritual sea. He could normally endure it, but Dr. Cui suggested he go home and perform a spiritual cleansing with his contractor.

“You’ve been in a spiritual contract for a month now. In this month, your contractor has consumed too little energy; he’s insufficient to support your spiritual consumption,” Dr. Cui explained. “I recommend you go back and complete a spiritual cleansing with him.”

Sheng Jing frowned: “I heard spiritual cleansing is very painful. I don’t want to use it unless absolutely necessary.”

Dr. Cui advised: “You’re mistaken. On the contrary, spiritual cleansing is only painless if used frequently. The longer you suppress it, the longer the cleansing will take. For example, your spiritual power is like water, and the contract connecting you two is like a water pipe. You need to use this water pipe to flush his spiritual sea. So, do you think flushing one ton of water will be more painful for him, or ten thousand tons? Most importantly, he is insufficient to support your spiritual consumption. Only by expanding his spiritual sea will you two be able to manage, otherwise, your spiritual contract must be terminated.”

Simply put, Tong Yu’s spiritual sea was too small, and its outlet wasn’t large enough. If he couldn’t release more “water,” he would have to expand his spiritual sea to store more.

For this matter, Sheng Jing specifically took leave and went home to inform Tong Yu. Tong Yu listened and readily agreed to the spiritual cleansing, saying that his original dream was to achieve awakening through spiritual cleansing. After Sheng Jing confirmed multiple times, the spiritual cleansing began.

That single spiritual cleansing session, where Sheng Jing only released about a third of his full spiritual power, was enough to make Tong Yu unconscious for three full days. When Tong Yu finally woke up, his gaze toward Sheng Jing was filled with fear, then later resentment, and slowly turned into a form of emotional blackmail. Every time they had a disagreement, or if Tong Yu wanted something Sheng Jing didn’t agree with, he would bring up the spiritual cleansing, repeatedly using it to manipulate him.

“Do you know how much pain I was in? I almost died.”

“Just because you’re an Awakened and I’m a Contractor, you can spiritually abuse me? I’m going to report you to the Contractor Association.”

“If you don’t agree to this, I’ll kill myself right in front of you.”

“Yes, I’m sick! I have a mental illness, and it’s all your fault, all because of your spiritual cleansing!”

“Brother Sheng Jing, I didn’t mean to, but I can’t control myself.”

Sheng Jing closed his eyes tightly, trying to shake these memories from his mind: “I’ve been at the institute this whole time; I haven’t gone home.”

“That’s why I’m so curious,” Dr. Cui said with anticipation. “How did he do it? If this skill can be mastered and widely adopted, all those trapped old experts in our institute would be saved! Ask him how he did it. This would be a great contribution to the institute.”

Personally, Sheng Jing didn’t want to contact Tong Yu. He wished he could terminate their contract tomorrow. But then he thought of the old experts at the research institute, brilliant scholars trapped by their rampaging spiritual seas, unable to work. Sheng Jing hesitated.

Many of these old experts were already in their sixties or seventies. Due to years of continuous work, their spiritual seas were already severely damaged. They might only be conscious for an hour each day, spending the rest of their time enduring spiritual torment. And that one hour, they dedicated to work. In the Interstellar Era, with advanced technology, human lifespans had already exceeded 130 years. People in their sixties or seventies were considered middle-aged outside, but in the research institute, they were already frail and elderly.

Awakened individuals generally had shorter lifespans than ordinary people. They were sacrificing their lives to secure a future for Shui Lan Star.

If Tong Yu truly had a solution, Sheng Jing would agree to any conditions.

“I’ll ask,” Sheng Jing said, activating his light-brain.

Inside the research institute, bringing any communication devices into the lab was forbidden.

He turned on his light-brain and quickly scrolled past his parents’ routine greetings. His gaze landed on a transfer message.

This afternoon, Tong Yu had transferred two sums of money to him: 80,000 star coins and 28 star coins. They were labeled “loan” and “interest,” respectively.

Sheng Jing suddenly remembered the message Tong Yu had sent him two days prior when borrowing money, saying he’d pay it back. At the time, Sheng Jing hadn’t paid it much mind, but now he realized Tong Yu had actually repaid it, even calculating interest.

Twenty-eight star coins—that was two days’ worth of interest calculated at the bank’s daily rate. It seemed he had even overpaid by 0.6 star coins.

Sheng Jing hadn’t intentionally calculated it, but his math skills were so good that he could instinctively compute simple numbers with just a glance.

Having spent a year with Tong Yu, Sheng Jing was now unsure of his intentions. After some thought, he sent Tong Yu a message and waited for a reply, but none came.

“He’s probably asleep. The weekend is in two days, I’ll go back myself then.” Given Tong Yu’s personality, he would definitely set conditions. Communicating over the phone definitely wouldn’t work; Sheng Jing had to go back in person. Perhaps, this was precisely Tong Yu’s objective.

—-

Meanwhile, Tong Yu was dreaming sweetly, happily counting money. The money was so abundant he couldn’t count it all, eventually his hands cramped from counting, yet he still chuckled merrily. And while he slept, the Ghost Bride’s live stream video had completely exploded after fermenting overnight, with the number of escape room reservations increasing at an astonishing rate.