The club activity building at Minghai University was huge. Just standing outside and estimating, Shu Yuxin felt it had to be at least twice the size of Nanhai College’s activity building. The exterior looked very new as well. Overall, it was far more imposing than Nanhai College’s.

The activity building had seven floors and was equipped with two elevators. The E-sports Entertainment Club was on the fifth floor. It had to be said that not only did the building look new from the outside—it also looked extremely high-end inside. Just the hallway décor alone resembled the kind of commercial office buildings Shu Yuxin had seen on TV. On both sides of the corridor were the various clubs’ activity rooms. Some clubs even used full glass doors; from the outside, their interiors looked like corporate reception areas, with the club names written on the wall behind, such as the Handicraft Club and so on.

In short, everything looked very upscale.

From the moment she entered the building, Peng Xiaoxiao hadn’t stopped exclaiming in amazement. She looked around the whole way, her expression a mix of envy and something else. “Wow! This is really a club activity building? You guys are way too rich! It’s decorated just like an office building!”

“It’s not our money,” Yan Zhikai explained honestly. “Minghai University’s activity building was designed to mimic a commercial building from the start. That was the original concept. Later, when students apply for activity rooms, as long as there’s this foundation, interior decoration doesn’t cost much. Plus, every semester Minghai University gives each club a bit of funding as a subsidy. All things considered, we didn’t actually spend that much on renovation ourselves.”

“That’s still impressive!” Peng Xiaoxiao exclaimed, then suddenly remembered something. “Hey, our school also gives club subsidies, right? Then we should be able to set up our activity rooms like this too!”

Hearing that, Yan Zhikai snorted lightly. “Give it a rest. Let’s talk about that when the student union at our school stops pocketing the club activity funds.”

“Huh?” Peng Xiaoxiao froze.

Yan Zhikai waved his hand, clearly not too bothered by the issue. “It has nothing to do with us anyway. We don’t really care about that little bit of subsidy.”

“Doesn’t the school know?” Shu Yuxin asked curiously.

Yan Zhikai smiled with a hint of sarcasm. “How could the school not know? They just don’t want to deal with it. Let the student union take some money that isn’t theirs and use it to handle all sorts of messy errands. Isn’t that great? Everyone benefits.”

Seeing the thoughtful looks on their faces, he waved his hand again. “This kind of thing has existed for ages. We can’t change it. Might as well pretend there was never any activity funding to begin with. It’s not like we can’t keep going without that money.”

“Tch, what a shady mess…” Peng Xiaoxiao sighed.

“It doesn’t really count as shady,” Yan Zhikai said in a somewhat world-weary tone. “You’ll run into plenty of things like this once you enter society.”

As he spoke, he stopped in front of a door. “We’re here. This is our club.”

Shu Yuxin and Peng Xiaoxiao stopped behind him. Shu Yuxin glanced down both ends of the corridor, then turned back to look ahead. Compared to the distinctive doors of the other clubs, this one was extremely inconspicuous. There was only a plaque on the door that read “E-sports Entertainment Club.” Other than that, there was nothing.

Peng Xiaoxiao smacked her lips. “So shabby…”

“You can tell anything just by looking at the door?” Yan Zhikai shot her a sideways glance, then opened the door and walked in. “Come in and take a look. I guarantee you’ll be satisfied.”

After entering, they found themselves in a space resembling a corporate reception area. The walls were covered with various game posters and logos, and several articulated figurines of game characters were displayed on the front desk counter.

Just from the posters on the wall and some of the random phrases mixed among them, any slightly seasoned gamer could catch a lot of in-jokes, such as—“White Pants Cold Winter Strike!” “Buy a BUG, Get a Game Free!” “Medic, Get Over Here!” “A Bro Pulled My Zipper!” “Theresa Is the Cutest in the World!” “VV Is a Destroyer!”

Shu Yuxin suddenly felt like adding another line under the last one: “Drug-Cannon Warning.”

“Wow, nice atmosphere!” Peng Xiaoxiao looked around and praised it, then frowned slightly. “By the way, do you guys only play FPS games? All these posters are shooting games.”

“Of course not. There’s a reason for the posters… Anyway, I just remember that on the day we were doing the design, some guy wanted to hang up a Dark Souls 3 poster and realized there was no space left.” Yan Zhikai spread his hands, his face still wearing that eternally serious expression.

For some reason, when his flippant words were paired with that inexplicably serious tone and expression, it created a particularly funny, absurd effect.

Suppressing the urge to laugh, Shu Yuxin asked, “So… where are the devices you mentioned earlier?”

“Inside. Follow me.” Yan Zhikai gestured for them to come over and turned into a passage on the right side of the reception area.

The passage wasn’t long, but it had no windows and no lights, making it very dark. Perhaps because the building had excellent soundproofing, as they walked through it, Shu Yuxin couldn’t hear any sound at all. The feeling was a bit eerie, making her instinctively grab the corner of Peng Xiaoxiao’s clothes.

Peng Xiaoxiao tilted her head to look at her but didn’t say anything.

Walking in front, Yan Zhikai was clearly familiar with the place. He reached the inner door and stretched out his hand to open it. As light from inside spilled into the corridor, an extremely sleazy burst of laughter came out as well.

The three of them didn’t linger in the corridor and quickly entered the room. The room was very large, decorated in dark tones, but under the lighting it didn’t feel oppressive. Inside, five neat rows of computers were arranged much like in an internet café. The chairs were also the kind commonly seen in internet cafés—gaming chairs—but the environment here was well maintained and didn’t feel dirty or chaotic like a typical net café.

There weren’t many people in the room at the moment. Aside from one or two people playing games, there were two guys huddled together looking at a phone. The earlier laughter had come from them. They were turned sideways with their backs to the three newcomers, so they hadn’t noticed anyone entering and were still enthusiastically discussing their topic.

“Come on, check this one out—ranked third! I thought highly of this girl before; she’s totally my type,” the fat guy said, pointing at the phone screen and laughing sleazily as he spoke.

“Let me see… Shu Yuxin? Hey, isn’t this that so-called cold goddess?” the thinner guy laughed loudly, then patted the fat guy on the shoulder. “Damn, Old Mei, didn’t expect this—so you’re into the cold type?”

The fat guy’s laughter grew even more obscene. “Heh, it’s not her personality I like. Look at her body—those curves, man, front and back in all the right places. Tsk tsk, you can tell she’s hot as hell! And I heard she always goes bare-faced. You know what that means? She’s already at this level without makeup—if she dressed up properly, she’d be unreal. I think she’s way better than those other flashy sluts!”

Then he added with a sigh of admiration, “Man, if I could hook up with a girl at that level, these four years of college would totally be worth it…”

Shu Yuxin, standing right behind them: “……”