Volume 1, Chapter 51: Beautiful Stumble

"What else is on your mind?" Zhou Yang asked, stepping right in front of Liu Qianqian and looking down at her.

"Huh?"

Liu Qianqian snapped back to reality, her legs trembling slightly. She wanted to run away now, but she couldn't.

"I was wrong!" Liu Qianqian said.

Zhou Yang pointed at the trash bag inside the room. "Were you quite keen on having me eat your sanitary napkin?"

"No, no, not at all!" Liu Qianqian waved her hands frantically, cursing Liu Dafai inwardly for abandoning his teammates at such a crucial moment. What a damn good-for-nothing.

"Big Brother, I sincerely apologize to you. I'll never dare to do it again!" Liu Qianqian said.

The only reason Liu Qianqian had bullied Bai Lu was simple: she felt that Bai Lu was too gorgeous and stunning, and she was jealous. In fact, as a woman, she even felt a strange urge toward someone like Bai Lu.

Of course, Liu Qianqian's personality had bisexual traits; she was attracted to handsome men and felt drawn to pretty girls as well. Therefore, bullying Bai Lu also stemmed from a very deep and complex emotion inside her, much like a child who loves to play pranks on the girl they like.

It was just that she failed to gauge the proper boundaries. Now, the appearance of Zhou Yang completely dispelled any remaining thoughts she had of bullying Bai Lu.

"Big Brother, I mean what I say. I won't bully Miss Bai in the future, and I certainly won't dare to offend you!" Liu Qianqian said.

"Look at you, you're quite pretty. If you had been this sensible earlier, it would have saved us so much trouble!" Zhou Yang said.

"Yes, yes!" Liu Qianqian nodded repeatedly.

Zhou Yang said, "Clean up this room for me, and pay for all the broken items at full price, and I'll forgive you this time!"

"Alright!" Liu Qianqian agreed.

Throughout the process, however, Zhou Yang's words kept echoing in her mind.

*"Look at you, you're quite pretty..."*

A sudden rush of excitement surged through Liu Qianqian's heart. "He said I'm pretty! He actually complimented me on being pretty!"

The entire time she spent cleaning the room, her mind was filled with that single sentence.

By one o'clock in the morning, everything was settled, and Liu Qianqian went back upstairs.

"Senior, I'm heading back!" Zhou Yang said.

"Huh?" Bai Lu was taken aback. Didn't he just say he was going to stay here?

Zhou Yang was testing Bai Lu. Seeing the surprise on her face, he asked with a mischievous smile, "What, senior doesn't want me to leave?"

"You really have a silver tongue!" Bai Lu pouted and said, "You were the one who said you'd stay, and you were the one who said you wouldn't. What do you take my place for?"

Zhou Yang replied, "Aren't I just worried about damaging your reputation? The most beautiful campus belle of Shen University spending the night with a strange man, dry tinder and raging fire..."

"Yuck, yuck, yuck! What dry tinder and raging fire!" Bai Lu said. "If you're staying, go take a shower. If you're not staying, I'm not stopping you."

"Staying, staying, staying!" Zhou Yang hastily said.

Bai Lu pursed her lips into a secret smile, then put on a serious expression and said, "I'll go get a towel for you!"

"Alright, senior!"

Zhou Yang smiled faintly. Having broken a sweat from fighting those people earlier, he stepped into the bathroom first.

As soon as he entered, however, he froze.

A row of garments was hanging from the rack above the bathroom. To be exact, it was a row of socks, undergarments, and other small items.

Zhou Yang's gaze instantly landed on that row of black lace items. Tiny, exquisite, and full of allure. It was hard to imagine what kind of exotic charm Bai Lu would exude wearing such things.

Then, Zhou Yang stripped off his clothes and stepped under the showerhead to wash up.

Before long, he finished and called out toward the door, "Senior, did you bring the towel?"

"I hung it on the handle outside your door!" Bai Lu called back.

Zhou Yang opened the door a crack, reached out a hand to grab the towel, and since he hadn't brought any pajamas, he had no choice but to dry himself off and walk out of the bathroom wrapped in the towel.

The sight of Zhou Yang's sturdy and well-defined upper body instantly made Bai Lu's heart skip a beat.

"Oh dear, why did you come out like this?"

Zhou Yang said, "I didn't bring any pajamas, and I was a bit wet, so I came out to air dry!"

Bai Lu kept her head lowered, her face flushed like a ripe peach, making her look even more tender and alluring.

"I'm going to take a shower too!"

She hurriedly ducked into the bathroom. Having been single for years, she was stirred by Zhou Yang's male hormones, awakening a deep internal longing for romance.

She forcefully suppressed the fluttering in her heart and prepared to shower, only to suddenly catch sight of that row of small garments on the drying rack. In an instant, she felt intensely and utterly embarrassed.

*"Zhou Yang must have seen them all!"*

At that moment, she was so shy she wished she could crawl into a crack in the floor.

That was her only set of intimate, alluring items. She was usually quite conservative in her mindset, but she couldn't resist the rise of short videos on new media, where girls showed off their figures with seductive poses. Bai Lu was extremely confident in her own physique. After all, in the flush of youth, the desire for beauty was strong, so she had wanted to try wearing them.

Thus, with a heart full of fluttering temptation, she had bought a set, intending to wear them purely for her own appreciation. The beautiful campus belle possessed more than a little bit of narcissism.

With a heavy mind, Bai Lu began her shower. Yet as the water glided over her skin, she suddenly felt an unusual sensation. Zhou Yang was arguably the first man ever to bathe in her bathroom.

The more she thought about it, the more her heart fluttered. She shook her head to clear away the thoughts and let the warm water flow over every inch of her skin.

When she finally emerged from the bathroom, Zhou Yang had already fallen asleep on the sofa. Having exerted himself earlier that day with the overexertion techniques from *The Golden Scales*, the exhaustion hit him hard once the adrenaline wore off, and he had drifted off without realizing it.

Bai Lu wanted to tell Zhou Yang to go sleep in the bedroom, but after calling out a few times and seeing how deeply asleep he was, she decided not to disturb him. After all, it was already the dead of night.

She brought out her own quilt, covered Zhou Yang with it, and then returned to her room to sleep under a blanket.

The night passed quietly. The next morning, Zhou Yang woke up early. Breathing in the lingering fragrance within the bedding, he felt instantly refreshed and invigorated.

It was senior's quilt, after all, draped right over him. Because he had been tossing and turning in his sleep during the night, his towel had fallen off, meaning he was sleeping completely naked inside Bai Lu's quilt.

Imagining how Bai Lu usually slept under this very quilt, with her skin pressed closely against the fabric, Zhou Yang felt an immense sense of happiness.

Just then, Bai Lu woke up.

Still half-asleep, she walked out of her room to see if Zhou Yang was awake yet.

Startled, Zhou Yang hurriedly closed his eyes and pretended to still be asleep. But someone as sharp as Bai Lu had already noticed his feigned slumber.

Bai Lu walked over to the window and pulled open the curtains. Sunlight streamed in, shining through her sleepwear and outlining her graceful, curvaceous figure to perfection.

Having just woken up in the prime of morning vigor, the sight of Bai Lu's back and her sexy silhouette triggered an immediate, intense physical reaction.

At that moment, however, Bai Lu walked over to Zhou Yang with a mischievous smile and suddenly yanked his quilt away. "I saw you pretending to sleep! The sun is already high in the sky, get up!"

Yet the very next second, what met her eyes was a man's sturdy, magnificent physique—and the unmistakable evidence of his morning vigor.

"Ah!"

Zhou Yang hadn't expected Bai Lu to pull such a playful stunt. And Bai Lu certainly hadn't expected Zhou Yang to be completely unclothed underneath.

At that exact moment, the atmosphere in the room turned both awkward and ambiguous. Flustered, Bai Lu turned on her heel and dashed back into her bedroom, but the scene she had just witnessed remained deeply etched in her mind, impossible to erase.