Adrian lingered in the dim bar for another hour, nursing a glass of bourbon and calculating his angles before finally taking his leave. He was merely there to conduct reconnaissance; hovering too long would ruin the detached, untouchable aura he had just violently established.
Besides, given the complex, chaotic social dynamic of the girls currently residing in the iPartment complex, there was no clean opening for him to strike immediately. He was a patient predator. There was plenty of time on the calendar, and the hunting ground was brimming with ripe targets. He would simply pivot his focus and test the waters with the other livestock first.
However, the second the heavy bar doors swung shut behind him, the iPartment crew exploded into a frenzy of gossip.
"I never expected our landlord to be so... so lethal!" Meijia exhaled, her eyes practically sparkling with heavy, barely concealed lust.
Admittedly, in Yifei's eyes, Adrian was a reclusive shut-in who happened to know martial arts. But to Meijia, he was a tall, handsome man with sharp, aristocratic features. In this modern, hyper-capitalist era, raw wealth was the ultimate aphrodisiac. The moment Meijia realized he casually owned eight luxury properties in their building, his physical attractiveness had instantly spiked from a passable 65 to a dripping 85 in her greedy, calculating eyes.
While Meijia certainly lacked the ruthless, transactional coldness of the Tiny Times gold-diggers, how could violently admiring a billionaire's wallet not be considered a mild form of prostitution?
"Yeah! That was the first time in my life I've ever seen someone fight the demon king to a dead draw!" Zeng Xiaoxian smoothed his hair, puffing out his chest with a pathetic, sly grin. "Especially the way the boss reset his own dislocated shoulder with one hand. It was so raw and manly. Just like me!"
"You?" Yifei sneered, her lip curling in absolute, castrating disdain. "If she had grabbed your arm, you would be crying for your mother right now, Zeng Xiaoxian. You call an ambulance over a papercut."
"The landlord mentioned he was bored and looking to aggressively invest in some new ventures," Tang Youyou suddenly spoke up, her eyes darting around as her desperate ambition kicked into overdrive. "What do you guys think about pitching him a movie production? The film industry is practically printing money right now. If he funds a project, I bet he'll make a fortune!"
Before he left, Adrian had casually dropped the bait that he was looking to throw some of his massive cash reserves into entertainment investments.
"You just want him to finance a vanity project with you as the leading actress, don't you?" Guan Gu tilted his head, seeing right through his girlfriend's scheme.
"Oh, please! I am a highly trained, dramatic talent! If I were the female lead with a proper budget backing me, the show would absolutely shatter the box office!" Youyou declared proudly.
"Wait, what?" Ziqiao slid into the booth, his sleazy ears perking up at the conversation. "A director is actually blind enough to want you as a female lead, Auntie? Did you finally give in and let him fuck you on the casting couch?"
"I will commit seppuku in three seconds! What kind of filthy garbage are you spouting about my girlfriend, Lu Ziqiao?!" Guan Gu erupted, leaping over the table, entirely ready to strangle the parasitic playboy.
Leaving the unreliable, idiotic sitcom cast to bicker among themselves, Adrian rode a sleek, heavy street bike directly toward the Ode to Joy residential complex.
The Ode to Joy towers and the iPartment complex were not far apart—a mere two kilometers separated them in a straight line. However, in a suffocatingly dense, hyper-stratified metropolis like Shanghai, a distance of two kilometers might as well be an ocean. Neighbors separated by a single concrete wall could live their entire lives without ever crossing paths. The two complexes operated in entirely different sociological ecosystems.
Standing in the manicured courtyard beneath the towering Ode to Joy buildings, Adrian looked up at the glass facades, feeling a slight pang of analytical melancholy.
'What sort of psychological trap should I use to ensnare this specific breed of livestock?' he mused.
The characters in iPartment operated on bizarre, sitcom-logic thought processes; he could violently brawl with Hu Yifei, and they would accept him into their circle without questioning his darker motives. But the women residing in Ode to Joy were fundamentally different. They were grounded in the crushing, hyper-realistic meat grinder of the corporate world. They were desperate, cynical, and driven by raw survival.
"La la la la la..."
Just as he was calculating his angle of approach, a cheerful, entirely oblivious singing voice echoed from the sidewalk behind him.
Adrian turned to see Qiu Yingying skipping toward the entrance. She was dressed in a cheap, poorly fitted pullover. Although Adrian hadn't possessed a deep knowledge of women's fashion in his past life, the cheap fabric and generic stitching screamed of a bargain bin. Her entire outfit couldn't have cost more than two hundred yuan. Moreover, the canvas sneakers she wore were visibly scuffed and worn down at the heels, suggesting the girl had been walking in them for a very long time.
Adrian's dark eyes swept over her with cold efficiency. She possessed a slightly pointed, oval face, small eyes, and thin lips. Her figure was slender, utterly lacking the heavy, plush curves of the prime women he preferred.
'If judged purely by meat-market aesthetics, she is absolutely at the bottom of the food chain among the hit list targets,' Adrian analyzed ruthlessly, scratching his chin.
Of course, that was only because he was comparing her to top-tier, flawless beauties. Strictly speaking, Yingying was passable—the quintessential, unremarkable girl next door. But compared to the terrifying, elite allure of someone like Saeko, Yingying looked like a starved stray dog.
Yingying, however, was blissfully unaware of the predator assessing her worth. She was ecstatic today. She had finally survived her corporate probation period and secured a permanent position at her firm. Her meager salary had been bumped from a pathetic 3,200 to 4,000 yuan a month. To celebrate this 'massive' wealth, she had splurged twenty yuan on fresh fruit. She was currently skipping toward the elevators, as happy as a pig in mud.
Unlike the iPartment crew who seemed to have zero real financial anxieties, the residents of Ode to Joy were chained to the relentless grind of rent, debt, and corporate survival.
"Yingying! Why are you so happy today?"
Just as Adrian was considering stepping forward to intercept her, another girl in sensible office wear walked briskly up the path, greeting her.
This newcomer wore a pair of massive, round, black-rimmed glasses that obscured a third of her face. Her features were soft, shaped like a duck egg, and her shoulder-length hair was slightly tousled.
'Guan Juer,' Adrian noted, recognizing the target.
To be brutally honest, Adrian had absolutely zero fetish for the timid, bespectacled 'good girl' archetype. In his predatory eyes, Guan Juer and Qiu Yingying were basically the exact same low-tier livestock. They were the kind of pathetic, ordinary women he wouldn't even bother looking twice at if it weren't for the System's arbitrary points forcing his hand.
"Guan Guan! I got the permanent position! I got a raise!" Yingying squealed, turning and looking at her roommate with unhinged excitement, drawing annoyed glances from the passing corporate drones.
"Ah! I am so happy for you, Yingying!"
The two girls immediately threw their arms around each other, jumping up and down and screaming on the pavement.
However, as Adrian watched them embrace, his gaze dropped to their chests, and a heavy, profound sense of disappointment washed over him.
Even the athletic Yifei was considered rather thin, but these two girls were practically concave. Their chests mashed together without even a hint of plush resistance.
'The biological constraints of this mundane reality are truly depressing,' Adrian sighed internally, a cynical frown pulling at his lips.
He knew perfectly well that the real, modern world couldn't be compared to the exaggerated physics of the two-dimensional apocalypse he had just conquered. But the gap was simply staggering. In the world of the dead, Shizuka possessed impossibly colossal, basketball-sized tits, and even the athletic Saeko's breasts had naturally swollen to a massive, veiny F-cup by the end of her pregnancy.
Now, looking at his current roster of viable targets, there wasn't a single natural D-cup in sight.
'The real world,' Adrian thought, turning away from the two squealing girls, 'is just too fucking cruel.'
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