With the meticulous planning of Huanyu, the grand opening of Teacher Fish Soup Noodles’s novel IP-themed amusement park became an instant hit throughout the universe.
Each time the lottery results for park tickets were announced, the star network would erupt in a mix of despairing wails from those who lost and the ecstatic cheers of the lucky winners.
As for the limited-edition challenge prize, the mermaid plushie, it had instantly become the top trending item in the universe.
Many netizens who had never read the novel saw the leaked images online and began frantically inquiring across all major platforms about where they could buy this mermaid plushie.
After all, it was just too cute!
Veteran fish fans could only sympathize with these newcomers and inform them:
[You don’t need to buy it; it’s a free gift.]
[What!? Such a finely crafted doll is actually given away for free!?]
Before the newcomers could fully process their shock, the fish fans would then deliver the second half of the information:
[But first, you need to be well-versed in all of Teacher Fish Soup Noodles’ novels… and then you need to be lucky enough to win the amusement park lottery ticket QwQ. After all, our Teacher Fish Soup Noodles is a mermaid who excels at writing novels.]
[Also, make sure to catch up on all the past merchandise, the offline meet-and-greets, and, of course, the promotional video from the press conferences, etc.]
[Honestly, I’m so jealous of you newcomers. I wish I could erase my memory and experience it all over again!]
With such passionate recommendations, netizens who had previously missed out quickly and decisively fell headfirst into the pit.
Not only could they see mermaids, but they could also read incredible novels…how could such a wonderful thing exist in the universe?
As a result, subscriptions for Yu Mian’s works skyrocketed.
After all, who could resist the temptation of a mermaid plushie?
The answer was clear, no one!
The unexpected frenzy over the mermaid plushies led to a continuous surge in subscriptions for “The Vast Immortal Path” and other completed works, which exceeded the expectations of everyone in the Huanyu editorial department.
“I’ve realized that people’s enthusiasm for mermaids is really beyond estimation!”
One of the editors sighed thoughtfully.
The potential fanbase for mermaids across the star systems was enormous. And once people learned that Teacher Fish Soup Noodles was a mermaid, their interest in his works seemed to deepen subconsciously.
This sequence of events led many to automatically become addicted to his novels.
“Should we ask Teacher Fish Soup Noodles if we can produce more cute mermaid-related merchandise for giveaways?”
“And what about Teacher Fish Soup Noodles’s new book!? I’ve been waiting so long that I’m almost sick.”
In the past, Teacher Fish Soup Noodles had been a workaholic who seamlessly transitioned from one book to the next. But this time, he had unexpectedly left everyone without any new food.
Or… was he secretly feeding another fanbase, just like those few times before?
“Uh, Teacher Fish Soup Noodles said he might be going on a trip for a while, and his return date is currently undecided.”
Editor Shaxs took the opportunity to announce a heartbreaking piece of news.
“But there’s also good news, Teacher Fish Soup Noodles has decided on the theme for his new book! He said that once he returns safely from his trip, he’ll start writing!”
‘A new book theme!?’
“Is Teacher Fish Soup Noodles going somewhere far? What does ‘return safely’ mean?” QwQ
However, some details in Shaxs’ words made everyone sense that something was off.
“Uh, I don’t know either. He really didn’t say.”
Shaxs scratched his head, looking just as curious.
But the universe was vast, maybe Fish Soup Noodles planned to travel to some mysterious place?
Meanwhile, in his study, Yu Mian was lying beside the aquarium at home, carefully examining the golden conch shell.
The little system had said before leaving that the final reward would be delivered in the coming days. But how exactly would it be delivered?
Previously, the conch shell already had the ability to teleport things. This time, because Lady Landis had given him special coordinates, did the upgraded reward allow teleportation beyond the interstellar space?
“But this coordinate of yours is truly strange. The instruments can’t pinpoint it accurately.”
Secretary Hals looked at the blue halo inside a nearby box with a cautious and puzzled expression.
Lady Landis had marked a location using her mental power, and this glowing halo represented the coordinate.
However, even using the official military detection instruments for analysis and decryption, they still couldn’t precisely determine the location.
If not for the fact that Lady Landis was highly trustworthy, Secretary Hals would have considered this mysterious coordinate a potentially dangerous item.
After all, space was filled with chaotic currents. If the coordinate was damaged or targeted a dangerous area, wouldn’t that cause serious misdirection?
Huo Ting looked at the coordinate in silence.
But the mental power was indeed gentle, at least when one came into contact with it, there was no sense of hostility.
“Maybe it’s because… uh… the usage method is incorrect? How are coordinates usually used?”
Yu Mian took the glowing halo from Huo Ting’s hands, planning to study it carefully.
The little system wouldn’t lie to him, right?
But just as he approached the aquarium, a miraculous phenomenon occurred.
The blue halo was instantly absorbed into the golden conch shell. In an instant, a vast expanse of blue light filled the entire room.
Yu Mian’s last memory was of Huo Ting gripping his wrist tightly and pulling him close.
Then, in the next second, the two of them disappeared together under Secretary Hals’ shocked gaze.
“Hiss!”
It wasn’t until they landed heavily onto a soft bed that Yu Mian instinctively propped himself up on his arms in front of Huo Ting. Rubbing his head, he looked around the bedroom.
“Huh? I actually came back?”
His large, high-rise apartment in the city center!
Yu Mian had an inexplicable urge to cry from the excitement.
Huo Ting also began scanning the surroundings of the place they had been sent to.
He quickly noticed something unusual.
The decorations and layout of the room closely matched many of Yu Mian’s habits.
Including the family photo in the frame by the bed, where a smiling couple was holding a small, round child in the center.
Even though Huo Ting was seeing this for the first time, he had a strange, indescribable feeling.
Could this be the mermaid couple that his grandfather had encountered back then?
“This place is…”
Before Yu Mian could explain, the doorbell rang urgently.
A frantic and grief-stricken voice could even be heard outside: “Fish Soup Noodles!”
Both Yu Mian and Huo Ting froze.
Could it be that Editor Shaxs had been sent here too?
No, wait, this was the voice of his editor from Earth!
Realizing this, Yu Mian quickly fumbled around the bedside. Sure enough, he found his phone still charging. When he glanced at the screen, his messages had exploded.
Back then, he died suddenly, then went off to the interstellar era to write novels. Of course, his novels on Earth had been left unfinished!
“Fish Soup Noodles! Where the hell have you been!? Your house seemed empty too. If this keeps up, we really will have to call the police!”
Just as the young editor outside, wearing black-framed glasses, was on the verge of breaking down, the door suddenly swung open.
Yu Mian peeked out with a guilty expression. He never expected that the moment he returned to Earth, he would be urged for updates.
“Hello, Lin Sen. Long time no see.”
Editor: !??
“You were home this whole time!?”
The editor named Lin Sen was one of Yu Mian’s closest contacts on Earth. Seeing Yu Mian now, he was almost moved to tears on the spot.
Heaven knew how much chaos the fans had caused at the publishing house while Fish Soup Noodles had been missing!
After all, his ongoing novel had just reached a major climactic plot point!
The publishing house had been bombarded with inquiries from readers, and even wild rumors had begun to spread, like whether their Fish Soup Noodles had been secretly blacklisted.
Some of the more extreme fans were even on the verge of storming the publisher’s office in B City to demand justice in person.
“You… do you even realize how terrifying your disappearance was!?”
But before Lin Sen could condemn Yu Mian with resentment and anger as if he was condemning a scumbag, he suddenly got stuck and looked up at Huo Ting who was standing behind Yu Mian naturally.
His brain short-circuited.
It was common knowledge that Fish Soup Noodles was a typical homebody who never had strangers over at his place.
Moreover, the clothes on this man…why did they look so unusual?
It didn’t resemble casual wear or formal attire, but just from the cut, it was clearly an expensive custom design. The style, however, bore an uncanny resemblance to a strikingly cool military uniform.
“Are you… cosplaying a uniform at home? Or did you hire some kind of…private instructor?”
Lin Sen’s voice became lower and lower, speaking tactfully and with a guilty conscience.
Had he just stumbled upon Teacher Fish Soup Noodles’s secret hobby?
But this person was too good-looking, like an actor or a model. No, he was more handsome than the hottest celebrities right now. It was like the real-life version of a uniform cosplay!
After noticing Lin Sen’s odd and awestruck look, Huo Ting raised an eyebrow at Yu Mian, about to ask something.
“Ahem! What kind of nonsense is this?! Things are complicated right now, let me think! Both of you, just stay quiet for a moment…”
Yu Mian quickly reached out to cover Huo Ting’s mouth, afraid that if they kept talking, they’d end up having a conversation across completely different wavelengths.
To be fair, Huo Ting’s outfit did seem a bit misleading…
“Editor, just wait for me a bit.”
With a “click”, the door shut, leaving Lin Sen alone in a state of mental turmoil.
Because if he hadn’t seen wrong, Fish Soup Noodles was wearing a matching ring on his hand?
Fish Soup Noodles had never worn any accessories before.
Could it be, this eternally single person actually got into a relationship?!
And the partner was this ridiculously handsome guy? Standing together, they somehow looked strangely well-matched and pleasing to the eye.
The fans were going to be heartbroken, right?
After all, even though Fish Soup Noodles rarely attended offline events, those few appearances had still gathered a loyal following of both “boyfriend fans” and “girlfriend fans.”
As an editor accustomed to handling all kinds of bloody storms, Lin Sen was already mentally preparing for the inevitable hot searches and how to deal with them.
Meanwhile, Yu Mian dragged Huo Ting back into the bedroom and started rummaging through his closet.
A few minutes later, he finally found a set of new clothes his father hadn’t worn before. When compared against Huo Ting, the size seemed to barely fit.
“Change into these first. Once you’re dressed, I’ll explain everything. Though you’ve probably guessed by now that this is the planet where my parents and I used to live. In other words, my hometown.”
“So Aunt Landis’ coordinates actually sent us back here.”
Yu Mian figured this was the simplest and fastest way to explain it.
“Hometown? A planet full of mermaids?”
But after a moment of silence, Huo Ting glanced at the editor outside the room. That guy didn’t seem like a mermaid.
Yu Mian: …Orz
“Not exactly! But we’ll have to wait for my parents to come back before I can ask more details. Just change first, this is the dressing room.”
A few minutes later, Huo Ting, who had changed his clothes, and Editor Lin Sen, who was called in, sat on either side of the sofa in the study.
For some reason, Lin Sen felt like he had been called in for a serious meeting, making him sit stiffly until he finally saw Yu Mian appear and immediately shot him a desperate look asking for help.
Yu Mian walked in carrying a glass of water and couldn’t help laughing when he saw this scene.
But after a brief conversation, he was completely shocked.
“You’re saying… I’ve been missing for three weeks?”
So the flow of time in different spaces wasn’t the same?
One was fast, and the other was much slower?
“Yeah! A full three weeks! We were running out of ways to find you. If you hadn’t shown up soon, we were seriously about to call the police!”
Lin Sen took a big gulp of water before venting his frustration.
Yu Mian felt both relieved and slightly pained.
As an author, you could disappear for three days, or even three years. But three weeks?
Three weeks of hiatus was an awkward length of time, it meant he had to resume updating quickly while also explaining where he had been.
“Don’t worry, tomorrow…wait, no, tonight, I’ll update 3,000 words first.”
Holding his head in his hands, Yu Mian finally relented under Lin Sen’s resentful gaze, agreeing to resume his updates as soon as possible.
“As for why I disappeared for three weeks… well, it’s a long story.”
So Yu Mian, who thought that he could take Huo Ting to appreciate his home planet on the first day after returning to Earth, never expected that not only did he not go anywhere, but he was squatting in the study room typing frantically to pay off his “debts”.
By the heavens, no, by the universe, he had forgotten he had fans on both sides.
And clearly, the Earth Fish fans were much more resentful.
His longest hiatus in the interstellar era had only been those few days when he was unconscious at the beginning.
But on Earth, he had disappeared for three whole weeks.
The worst part? Yu Mian suddenly felt extremely lucky that the two groups of fans didn’t know about each other.
Otherwise, if Earth’s fans ever found out that he had been busy writing multiple serialized novels in the interstellar…
Uh, the sheer chaos would be unimaginable.
Just thinking about it made his scalp tingle, and his typing speed increased even more.
Meanwhile, Huo Ting studied the golden conch shell, confirming that it now contained two strange coordinate points. He then turned to look out the study’s large window, deep in thought.
Rather than thinking of this as another planet in the universe, it felt more like a completely different dimensional space with an entirely different civilization and social system.
Just like how Yu Mian had once appeared in the aquarium in the study, perhaps now he himself had appeared in Yu Mian’s study?
But when Huo Ting’s gaze landed on the lavish bookshelves in the room, his footsteps paused slightly.
The shelves were filled with an extensive collection of Earth’s most popular manga, novels, anime DVDs, and other collector’s items–a paradise for any otaku.
And the book titles were… quite bold and unusual.
If Yu Mian’s novels in the interstellar were already considered unconventional, then the titles on these shelves were even more shocking.
For example…what was “ABO”?
Huo Ting’s eyes finally stopped on a book with a cover featuring two protagonists in military uniform.
After a moment of hesitation, he reached out to take it off the shelf.
Maybe it was time to learn about this planet’s military district system.
“What does ALPHA mean?”
Yu Mian, who was typing away frantically at the keyboard, froze for a moment upon hearing Huo Ting’s serious question from behind.
Wait a minute, how did Huo Ting even know the word ALPHA?
He had never written ABO in the interstellar.
Yu Mian suddenly felt grateful that he hadn’t. Otherwise, if he got exposed, it would be a social death scenario straight out of hell. After all, that was a classic theme for smut.
Considering the interstellar era’s strict age rating system, Yu Mian figured he could go all out and write tens of thousands of words of luxurious car rides, just like the special edition manga and novels in his bookshelf collection.
Wait.
No way.
Realizing something, Yu Mian spun around and saw Huo Ting seriously examining his massive bookshelves filled with private collections. His fish tail nearly exploded.
!! Wasn’t that the special edition smut collection he had specifically carried back from overseas!?
Damn it. Nobody warned him that coming back to Earth would be filled with this many social death traps.
[Fish sweating profusely jpg]
The next second, Huo Ting noticed a shadow lunging toward him, swiftly confiscating the book from his hands.
Huo Ting: ?
