That exact night.
Ren Kurogane didn't deploy a high-intensity late-night ambush protocol, nor did his perimeter face a surprise infiltration by alternative female profiles—the typical dramatic fan-fiction tropes entirely failed to log an entry.
Lying in his bed, his analytical core continued to run intense diagnostic loops on the anomalous variables he had intercepted deep in the forest earlier that day.
The mathematical probability of a black-ops military installation existing at those coordinates is solid. However, the data models are equally compatible with an unverified extraterrestrial sanctuary—something matching the structural logic of the '2:30 AM Club.'
Ultimately, the exact structural layout of that anomalous zone was irrelevant. The foundational variable that his systems had successfully verified was chilling: his profile had been targeted for permanent surveillance by an untouchable external engine.
And more importantly! His current parameters lacked the raw military weight to mount a counter-offensive!
If this world truly hosts the absolute framework of the 'Grave Robbers' Chronicles,' it signifies the legendary Bronze Gate is an active energetic anchor in this universe? The immortalized variant of the Little Brother... the highly cryptic Mystic Nine Gates family lines...
As the chronological vectors advanced, his cognitive processors systematically purged all non-essential data streams, leaving a single supreme keyword locked in his core:
Immortality...
Deep inside the pitch-black, infinite Multiverse Void.
Aside from guiding his beautiful partners across global travel matrices and executing deep meditation macros to elevate his Extra-Dimensional energy capacity day-by-day, Armor Ren's primary directive was anchoring his consciousness within the Good Brothers hub, waiting for alternative variants of his soul to clear verification.
Finally, a sudden structural distortion rippled through the void, and a completely fresh configuration materialized before his visors—a variant his sensors had never cataloged prior to this millisecond.
"Yo! Welcome to the cell, brother!" Armor Ren greeted enthusiastically, extending his hand.
The newcomer was, naturally, the entrepreneurial author variant—iPartment Ren.
However, even though his consciousness had successfully bridged into the localized hub, his cognitive processors were currently operating under a severe data corruption mask. His mind felt entirely chaotic and dreamlike—he could visually render the surroundings, yet his mechanical systems failed to register physical collision boxes.
The very next microsecond, his presence desynchronized, and his profile completely dropped out of the Multiverse hub.
Armor Ren scratched his helmet plate, his processors entirely unable to calculate the precise mechanics that had just caused the crash.
Suite 3601.
Ren Kurogane opened his eyes, his sleep macro hitting a natural termination point. A sequence of fragmented visual artifacts from his Multiverse transit still lingered across his memory buffers.
Why did my hardware compile such a surreal, heavily pixelated dream script first thing in the morning?
Shaking his head to flush the anomalous data from his cache, Ren dismissed the event from his core tracking.
Stepping into the central living room, his scanning arrays verified that the rest of the occupants were still deep within their sleep macros. He decided to execute a localized procurement loop down the street to secure a caloric breakfast packet for the suite.
The exact millisecond he cleared the front door threshold, he intercepted Lu Ziqiao, who was behaving like a cloaked stealth unit right outside the adjacent suite's door, meticulously calibrating his footsteps to slip back into his quarters without triggering an alarm.
"Ziqiao? Your profile failed to log a return vector to your unit last night?" Ren asked, his face locking into a deadpan expression as he cross-referenced the target.
Lu Ziqiao frantically brought a finger to his lips, his vocal processors dropping to a harsh whisper. "Shh—!!! Bro! Lower your audio output parameters immediately!"
The two rapidly mobilized toward the exterior corridor to insulate their dialogue. Once Ziqiao finished detailing his night-time deployment logs, Ren's jaw nearly hit the floor tiles. "Your system concurrently ran a connection script with four independent female targets within a single evening block?! Utilizing nothing but that leased business van?!"
Ziqiao offered an incredibly awkward laugh, scratching his head. "Well... the roommates flatly refused to back my premium commercial Pool Party blueprint, right? My station merely executed a real-world simulation to demonstrate the project's massive error tolerance and mass appeal!"
"Superb technical validation..." Ren mocked relentlessly. "So, break down your current stealth routine: why are your firewalls panicking? Did your profile anchor those four targets directly inside the suite's perimeter?"
"Negative! This complex represents my sovereign primary base of operations; my code would never leak our coordinates to unverified external profiles!"
"Then what exact variable is triggering a threat warning in your core? Don't tell me your system firewalls are panicking over Chen Meijia?"
"An absolute mathematical impossibility!" Ziqiao's optics flared with intense defiance, before his voice dropped back into a low whisper as he leaned closer to Ren. "Look... when I locked down that Apple stock position earlier, my account siphoned a massive capital loan directly from Kamiki Sekiya's ledger, right? My current strategy is simply delaying the repayment protocol for a brief chronological window!"
"Huh? What tactical utility does that execute?"
Ziqiao turned a deeply exasperated look toward Ren, as if his friend's economic processors had hit a bottleneck. "Analyze the variables, bro! If that liquidity is transferred back to Kamiki's account, it transforms into dead capital sitting idly inside a commercial bank's low-yield repository forever. But as long as those funds remain under the administrative control of my personal engine, I command absolute confidence to execute macro plays that will double the asset valuation!"
Gazing at the unmitigated, radiating confidence structural to Ziqiao's persona, Ren executed a massive eye-roll.
Seeing the feedback, Ziqiao added fiercely, "I acknowledge that my financial analytical vision doesn't scale to your elite parameters, but my code easily out-computes eighty percent of the civilian demographic inside this complex! In a hyper-accelerated metropolis like Shanghai, the more surreal and magical your project framing is, the higher the velocity of the profit capital you rake in!"
Regarding that specific sociological axiom, Ren's system logged absolute concurrence.
"Your processors have isolated a clean truth there," Ren smiled, a calculating glint touching his eyes. "Consider this vector: if your profile leaks an internal tip across the networks specifying that this upcoming high-ticket Pool Party will host a young billionaire whose private ledger just captured hundreds of millions from the stock charts... what tier do you calculate the scalper market will push the ticket prices to?"
Lu Ziqiao stood entirely frozen in place as the algorithmic loop completed its validation inside his brain. He slammed his palms together with absolute force. "Holy crap! How did my software engineering miss a hook of that caliber?! Your baseline processing is truly diabolical, Ren!"
Watching Lu Ziqiao sprint back into his suite at maximum velocity to re-code his marketing script, Ren let out a helpless sigh. "Requiring my engine to manually prompt your system on a basic commercial leverage macro like that... Ziqiao, your trajectory still has a massive developmental path to grind."
Ren finalized his procurement loop and returned to the suite with the fresh provisions. Hu Yifei had already pulled her systems online, her features sharp and alert.
Zeng Xiaoxian's operational routine had also shifted to a highly structured baseline lately. After all, having successfully absorbed the massive traffic surge from his late-night 'Mutual Destruction' broadcast, the network executives had officially reassigned his profile out of the dead midnight slot, transferring his contract to serve as an on-camera television host. Of course, at this stage, his status resolved strictly to an entry-level co-host assistant; scaling into an independent sovereign anchor with primary command of a broadcast remained a distant coordinate on his path.
"Morning, Ren! Your station went above and beyond to handle the logistics run again!" Zeng Xiaoxian laughed, his classic smirk clearing staging.
"If your profile genuinely registers the favor, execute a manual capital transfer to settle the breakfast ledger. Flashing an 'embarrassed' macro yields zero liquid utility," Ren laughed, dropping the food containers onto the table.
Zeng Xiaoxian pulled out a dining chair, delivering a rapid technical response as he engaged the food: "Let the record specify: my system firewalls are running absolute zero embarrassment sub-routines! Siphoning resources from a high-net-worth tycoon brings maximum gratification to my engine!" He immediately launched a total consumption offensive against the carbohydrates.
Observing his shameless behavioral metrics, Hu Yifei's eyes narrowed into razor-sharp focal lines, a cold, low-frequency wave of pure combat intent radiating from her coordinates.
Zeng Xiaoxian's physical chassis hit a sudden, violent hitch mid-chew. His sensory arrays flagged that his perimeter had been locked down by a catastrophic, high-mass threat entity. He slowly raised his visors, intercepting Yifei's murderous glare face-front.
"Zeng Xiaoxian! If your profile ever executes another unauthorized 'free consumption' script against Ren's provisions in my presence, I will manually crush your entire cranial framework into molecular shards!" Yifei barked, her voice echoing across the suite layout.
Zeng Xiaoxian shot a desperate look toward Ren, who remained entirely deadpan, methodically navigating his own breakfast intake.
"Understood..." the broadcaster whimpered, his internal firewalls completely folding under the pressure. He had calculated that after initializing an active romance sub-routine with Ren, her personality parameters would undergo a softening update to display a more gentle, ladylike demeanor. Yet, her raw physical threat scaling remained completely unaltered. She doesn't even bother deploying a fake cover profile to look gentle in front of her boyfriend...
But through Ren's optical tracking, this was the precise, unadulterated baseline of Hu Yifei. Had she omitted the aggressive roar this morning, his system would have logged a major environmental anomaly.
Despite the brief structural correction delivered to the broadcaster, the suite dynamics stabilized, and the cell happily engaged the meal. A moment later, Lu Zhanbo cleared his morning sanitation routine and sprinted into the zone, his face lighting up at the sight of the fresh spread. "Mmm! Initializing the daily routine with a heavy load of high-tier carbohydrates is pure joy!"
Following the meal macro, Yifei checked her schedule line; her university terminal required her presence for a lecture block today, so she gathered her assets and departed early.
The suite layout was left under the exclusive command of the three remaining bachelors. Ren retreated to his quarters to log an intense material farming session in his game, while Lu Zhanbo locked his optics onto the short-video platform's backend metrics to monitor traffic scaling. Finding himself entirely without an active task module, Zeng Xiaoxian drifted across the balcony bridge into the adjacent unit to siphon a secondary breakfast loop from Meijia's table.
While Ren was deeply embedded within his gaming loop, a sharp sequence of manual knocks vibrated the front door.
"Zhanbo! Clear the transit vector and unlatch the entrance!" Ren called out through his comms.
Lu Zhanbo dragged himself away from his workstation, his posture lazy as he unlatched the front door. The exact millisecond the entry cleared, his optical sensors registered the visitor's identification metrics, and his entire cognitive framework instantly crashed into sheer shock!
"Mom?!" Zhanbo shrieked, his audio processors spiking.
Standing on the threshold, Wan Chunli (Yifei's Mom) instantly raised a hand, forcefully clamping it over her son's mouth to suppress his audio output. She ran a rapid, highly stealthy reconnaissance scan across the interior living room layout, behaving exactly like a deep-cover operative breaching a hostile perimeter.
Zhanbo executed frantic structural movements to break the hold, but facing the sovereign authority of his maternal unit, his 180cm physical chassis completely lacked the leverage to mount an effective counter-offensive.
Dragging the boy into a blind coordinate corner, Wan Chunli dropped her voice to a low murmur. "Zhanbo, verify the data: is Yifei's new romantic partner currently anchoring his presence inside this unit?"
Zhanbo nodded frantically against her grip.
"Open your database and stream the parameters to me immediately: how does this youngster scale?"
Just as Zhanbo was prepping to compile a comprehensive verbal briefing, Ren cleared his gaming room, stepping into the living area as he called out, "Zhanbo, what profile initiated the door-knock sequence?"
Ren ran a rapid, 360-degree radar sweep across the main living room grid, but Zhanbo's physical signature was entirely absent from his primary line of sight. Scratching his head in mild confusion, he muttered, "Executed an exit macro?" He turned on his heel, returning to his terminal to resume his material grind.
Tucked away in the blind corner, Wan Chunli's visors remained locked onto Ren's departing silhouette, her internal processing units logging a highly optimal verification score.
"Excellent structural framing. His skeletal architecture is robust, and his optical focus displays intense internal energy. By the way... how do his professional career metrics scale?" Wan Chunli questioned in a whisper.
Zhanbo whispered back, "His ledger has already cleared absolute financial freedom parameters."
Hiss~ Wan Chunli inhaled sharply. An asset volume of that caliber at his age bracket?Her firewalls immediately flagged a secondary safety query. "Then what about his private lifestyle registry? Is his code running volatile concurrent loops with alternative targets?"
"Lower your anxiety, Mom. His baseline character settings are exceptionally clean; he runs a completely self-regulated, pristine lifecycle!" Zhanbo sighed helplessly. "Can your system not display basic confidence in Big Sister's validation screening?"
"What screening clearance does she possess? Her tracking log failed to deliver a single male profile to our family estate for consecutive decades!" Wan Chunli scoffed with pure maternal disdain. "Negative! My own station must personally execute a high-intensity deployment to run a face-to-face inspection on the candidate!"
Back inside his quarters, Ren's audio receptors isolated the distinctive click of the front door latch cycling open again. He stepped back out into the common room, his optics registering Lu Zhanbo standing alongside an older woman.
That distinctly eccentric, highly avant-garde hair design... if my historical lore database is functioning correctly, this identity maps directly to Yifei's maternal unit! Ren thought to himself. However, on the surface layer of his social interface, he had to simulate zero prior knowledge of her profile.
He turned a deeply confused gaze toward the boy. "Zhanbo, what identification metrics map to this guest?"
"Oh! This is my mom!" Zhanbo blurted out without a single firewall.
Wan Chunli shot an intensely shocked glare at her son. The boy just systematically dismantled my deep-cover infiltration script within a single microsecond!
"Zhanbo's maternal unit?" Ren simulated a brief cognitive hitch, before his features instantly filled with maximum, high-frequency hospitality metrics. He sprinted across the floor tiles to halt precisely before her, a brilliant smile on his face. "So it is Auntie clearing checkout at our sector! Please forgive my delayed reception! My system failed to run an early radar sweep to anticipate your arrival!"
Wan Chunli ran a micro-diagnostic on Ren's behavioral expression, successfully isolating a fractional trace of authentic social panic deep within his eyes. Excellent metrics. His code isn't arrogant despite his wealth wealth.
"Mmm. It has been a significant chronological block since my system last audited my children's statuses, so I routed a transit vector to inspect their perimeter. By the way... my network intercepted a tip specifying that you and Yifei..." Wan Chunli trailing off, leveling a highly calculated, probing gaze at him.
Ren held zero intent to run a concealment macro on his relationship. He smiled magnificently. "The data is completely authentic, Auntie! My profile operates as Yifei's official romantic partner! Please lower your maternal anxiety parameters to absolute zero: my connection loop with Yifei is being driven with the absolute strategic objective of clearing the Marriage Terminal!"
Wan Chunli's face instantly dissolved into a brilliant, triumphant laugh. "Superb! Your psychological resolve is exceptional! To be completely candid with you, the primary directive of my deployment to this complex today was executing an engineering audit on my future son-in-law!"
Ren smoothly guided her toward the premium sofa cushions. Once she settled into the unit, he manually filled a clean water glass, offering it with a smile. "Auntie, why did your command omit transmitting an advance notification to our station before your transit cleared?"
"Pff! Knowing that Yifei's unit had finally locked down a permanent relationship loop brought such a massive surge of joy to my core that my station simply fired its thrusters and sprinted to these coordinates without a second's delay!" Wan Chunli laughed boisterously.
Throughout the entire afternoon block, Ren dedicated his absolute, total processing capacity to managing her comfort, executing flawless hospitality macros that steadily pushed his favorability score across her database into the absolute stratosphere!
By the time Hu Yifei cleared her lecture block and returned to the apartment, she was greeted by the sight of a magnificent, master-tier culinary feast laid out across the dining table, all prepared by Ren.
Scanning the high-end dishes, Yifei laughed, asking, "What positive variable cleared the terminal today? Is my system missing a holiday marker on the calendar?"
Ren noted smoothly, "This date registers as an absolute, supreme milestone on our timeline!"
The technical phrasing left Yifei's processors running further confusion loops. Right on cue, Lu Ziqiao's booming voice drifted into the common room from the front threshold:
"Rest your maternal anxieties, Auntie! With our elite brotherhood managing the perimeter, we guarantee Yifei's chassis will be nourished until she reaches absolute peak fullness parameters!"
Yifei turned her head with a sharp, confused snap, and her optical sensors locked directly onto her own mother marching into the living area!
Walking right beside her mother was Lu Ziqiao, who had retrofitted himself into an incredibly sharp, tailored suit, projecting the absolute aura of an untouchable, ultra-successful corporate icon. And to be fair, his character currently possessed the liquid assets to back the play; having recently cleared hundreds of thousands from the stock charts, his accounts were entirely free from cash constraints.
The visual compilation caused Hu Yifei's entire cognitive engine to completely stall.
"MOM?!!!"
Wan Chunli waved a hand dismissively, her tone dripping with pure maternal critique. "Why is your vocal processor outputting at such a high volume? My audio receptors haven't hit a degradation threshold yet!"
Yifei dropped her handbag onto the console, rapidly moving to intercept her mother. "What parameters triggered your deployment to this city? And why did your command omit an advance notification to my station?"
"Does a mother require administrative clearance to run an observation audit on her own daughter? Besides, the primary directive of my transit today wasn't cross-referencing your file anyway!" Wan Chunli pivoted her optics toward Ren, a brilliant smile lighting up her features. "My deployment was strictly calibrated to inspect my future son-in-law!"
Yifei spun her head around, leveling a savage, hyper-lethal glare directly at Ren's coordinates.
But Ren's system was entirely immune to her standard physical threat matrices. He smiled smoothly. "Feifei, it is an incredibly rare milestone to host Auntie at our sector. Execute a rapid wardrobe shift and descend to the dining matrix; the feast is cleared for consumption."
Yifei pouted, but her code complied with the directive. She spun on her heel and retreated upstairs to swap her formal teaching attire.
When she descended back to the common area, she found the entire collective cell already huddled tightly around the dining table, waiting for her presence to initialize the consumption loop. Every single set of eyes in the room locked onto her coordinates simultaneously, causing even the ultimate, untouchable warrior Hu Yifei to feel a localized patch of social awkwardness.
Stepping off the staircase, she questioned with a furrowed brow, "What exact analytical purpose is behind your collective staring?"
Her optics isolated Ren, who was seated right beside her maternal unit, leaving a single vacant chair directly between them—clearly calibrated to serve as her anchor point. Ren stood up smoothly, pulling out the vacant chair as he smiled. "Come, anchor your position. The entire squad has been holding their intake macros waiting for your presence."
The exact millisecond Hu Yifei settled into the unit, Ren returned to his seat and initiated the protocol: "Alright, comrades! The feast is officially cleared for total consumption!"
With those words, Ren immediately launched a high-frequency offensive to serve choice delicacies directly onto Wan Chunli's plate. Within a few minutes, the dining table was completely dominated by her highly satisfied, boisterous laughter.
Yifei executed highly restricted, microscopic bites, her eyes scanning the entire table layout while she aggressively avoided initializing a direct dialogue module with her mother.
Suddenly, Wan Chunli delivered a sharp slap to Yifei's shoulder, dropping an absolute administrative command: "Yifei! Terminate the passive consumption routine! Open a dialogue with your mother: what exact chronological coordinate maps to the distribution of my future grandchildren?"
PFFF!!!
Hu Yifei spat a massive mouthful of rice directly across the table layout, right into Zhang Shan's face arrays! She coughed violently. "Cough... cough! Mom! Our profiles literally just initialized a verified relationship status days ago! Initiating a biological replication protocol... is light-years away on the chronological register~"
Hearing her defensive script, Wan Chunli's facial features instantly curdled into deep displeasure! She was an icon of hyper-velocity execution—operating on a baseline that made Hu Yifei's transit speed look like a total lag loop. According to her maternal logic, since the connection loop had successfully cleared verification, the two profiles should immediately process their administrative marriage certificates at the civil terminal, finalize the ritual loop, and output a child asset to give her retirement database something meaningful to process!
Neither Hu Yifei nor Ren had mapped out the depth of her maternal calculations. Yifei's features were trapped in pure social emergency; beneath the concealment of the tabletop, her fist delivered a sequence of heavy physical nudges against Ren's knee, commanding his terminal to deploy a defense script.
Ren did not let her firewalls down. He opened his vocal channel, stating with absolute, unyielding clarity: "If Yifei's core system authorizes the parameter, our profiles can report to the Civil Affairs Bureau to finalize the marriage certificates tomorrow morning! And we launch our global honeymoon transit vector the day after!"
Clap! Wan Chunli clapped her hands together in supreme triumph. Smack! Hu Yifei buried her face into her palms in total system despair.
"My processors must have hit a memory leak... I completely forgot your character hosts an absolute, unlimited capacity for shameless behavior!" Yifei hissed through her teeth, glaring at Ren with raw, hyper-lethal intensity.
Meanwhile, Wan Chunli was drowning in absolute maternal bliss, exclaiming, "Ren! My visual sensors truly didn't run a diagnostic error when I evaluated your character profile!"
Before the words could even settle, Wan Chunli stood up, exited the dining grid for a tight three-second parameter, and remanifested inside the zone. Clutching a bright crimson booklet in her hand, she slammed the asset directly into Ren's palm. "This represents our family's official Household Register (Hukou)! Thank the heavens my foresight algorithms mandated that I pack this data asset along my transit vector! It belongs to your station now!"
Accepting the crimson booklet from his future mother-in-law, Ren felt a subtle, physical tremor rippling through his chassis. He turned his optics toward Hu Yifei; the woman's eyes were entirely blank, her cognitive firewalls hitting a massive short-circuit as she stared at the official register sitting in his hand.
Marriage? My timeline is hitting the Marriage Terminal? Is that an acceptable parameter shift? It tracks as a highly optimal resolution... BUT THE VELOCITY OF THIS EXECUTABLE IS FAR TOO INSANE! Deep within Hu Yifei's core, a total, high-decibel psionic shriek was looping endlessly.
Across the table, Lu Ziqiao and Chen Meijia were executing a high-velocity offensive to empty the food platters, their eyes darting between Ren and Yifei as they absorbed the premium gossip slop at maximum data consumption rates! The two exchanged a look, their visors transmitting pure, shared comedic gratification.
Kamiki Sekiya and Zhang Wei—the two老实人 (straightforward, honest profiles)—maintained an entirely calm, undisturbed dining baseline. Zhang Wei even paused to offer a legal evaluation: "The underlying directive of initializing a relationship script is always clearing the marriage terminal anyway. Now that Auntie has manually delivered the official administrative clearance documents to your coordinates, your profiles should simply clear the verification queue and lock down the certificates immediately."
Zeng Xiaoxian let out his signature, highly punchable chuckle, adding to the flank: "Precisely! Your systems are mathematically guaranteed to merge your ledgers down the line anyway; executing an early registration loop merely optimizes your operational timeframe."
At that critical juncture, Hu Yifei flatly ignored the digital noise emitting from her degenerate friends. Her optics remained fixed with absolute rigidity onto Ren's features, waiting for his final system output.
Sensing the collective weight of the room locking onto his coordinates, Ren calmly set his utensils down. He reached across the table line, placing the crimson register smoothly back into Hu Yifei's hand. He let a gentle, reassuring smile spread across his features, his vocal processors outputting with absolute clarity:
"The exact millisecond your personal system calculates that my engine has demonstrated absolute, unshakeable reliability... we march to the Civil Affairs Bureau together."
Staring into the unyielding, serious depth of Ren's optics, Hu Yifei felt the sensory arrays across her cheeks hitting an intense hyper-thermal limit.
The thermal metrics are spiking... Her internal psychological architecture had completely entered a state of beautiful, uncalibrated chaos.