Chapter 562: Chapter 205: High-IQ Girlfriends, Who Do I Take Home Tonight?_3

Listening to Li Yuan spout increasingly outlandish claims, Zhong Tingyue glared at him and feigned a pitiful expression.

"Director Li, you really have a sense of humor. Is it fun for you to bully a weak woman like me?"

Li Yuan laughed heartily and answered with a straight face, "Hehe, you know me. I always tell the truth and never lie. If you don’t believe me, just ask Zhijin. She knows perfectly well."

"Right, Zhijin?"

"Huh?" Xia Zhijin had been listening intently and was completely caught off guard when the topic suddenly shifted to her. With a bewildered expression, she asked timidly, "Li Yuan, what am I supposed to know?"

Seeing Xia Zhijin’s adorably clueless expression, Li Yuan subconsciously patted her head, smiled, and offered a little reminder.

"Zhijin, you attended the company’s planning meeting for the launch of the Zhihu website. Do you remember what I said then?"

Xia Zhijin nodded. "I remember!"

Li Yuan asked again, "The general idea of what I said then, wasn’t it similar to what Weixi and Tingyue were saying?"

Xia Zhijin nodded again. "Yes, it seems to be quite similar!"

Li Yuan spread his hands and said with a chuckle, "Well, there you go. Zhijin, now you can testify that I didn’t lie to Tingyue and Bai, right?"

Understanding now, Xia Zhijin looked at the slightly shocked Zhong Tingyue and answered softly, "No, he didn’t."

Li Yuan looked cheerfully at Zhong Tingyue and Bai Weixi. "See? I didn’t lie to you. You two are practically mind readers; you guessed all my thoughts."

As he spoke, Li Yuan put on a helpless look and sighed with melancholy.

"Ah, what am I to do when my girlfriends are too smart? I never get to experience the feeling of being admired."

Zhong Tingyue chuckled, rolled her eyes at Li Yuan, and snorted coyly. "Hmph, you’re just a smooth-talker, saying things to make us happy."

Li Yuan cried out in protest, "That’s not true at all! I’m terrible with words, and my emotional intelligence is very low. You don’t know this, but on the first day of school, I went with a roommate to the mall next door to buy bedding sets. I saw one I liked that cost several hundred and just bought it..."

Li Yuan then briefly recounted the incident of going with Yi Jing to buy bedding sets on the first day of school.

"At the time, I didn’t consider that his family wasn’t well-off financially, so I took it upon myself to buy an extra set for him. Alas, I completely failed to consider his pride. For the past few days, I’ve felt our relationship grow distant. He didn’t even come to cheer for us at our class basketball game... You tell me, is my emotional intelligence low or not?"

This was the first time Zhong Tingyue had heard this story, and she nodded earnestly.

"Looking at it that way, your emotional intelligence really is quite low, Senior. Back then, you should have asked for your roommate’s opinion before making a decision."

"See? I told you my emotional intelligence is rock bottom," Li Yuan quickly interjected.

"Let me finish!" Zhong Tingyue shot Li Yuan a look, suppressing a smile. Her tone shifted as she teased, "Senior, perhaps all of your emotional intelligence points were spent on learning how to sweet-talk girls. You only know how to be a smooth-talker with us..."

"Weixi, Zhijin, do you think I’m right?"

"Mhm!" Xia Zhijin, for once, actually nodded in agreement. Her mind flashed back to how Li Yuan had used the "part-time job" as a pretext for the things he did to her. A pure and simple girl like her, a blank slate when it came to romance and utterly clueless about such matters, was easily coaxed by Li Yuan’s sweet words, falling into the abyss of love.

Seeing his treasured girl Xia Zhijin "turn traitor," Li Yuan rubbed his forehead in embarrassment and turned to Bai Weixi.

"Weixi, be honest. Am I really that good at sweet-talking girls?"

Bai Weixi glanced at the expectant Li Yuan, then shot a look out of the corner of her eye at Zhong Tingyue and Xia Zhijin, a sour feeling welling up inside her. Just a moment ago, when she heard Li Yuan mention that Xia Zhijin had attended a company meeting, she had felt incredibly wronged and sad. She had known Li Yuan the longest and was recognized by everyone as his childhood friend, yet she was the one who knew the least about his current life. The realization hit her hard.

Bai Weixi forced a faint smile onto her face, nodded at Li Yuan, and replied with a meaningful tone.

"Actually, Li Yuan is really quite dense."

"You probably don’t know this, but one night during self-study in our second year of high school, the power went out in the classroom. He secretly grabbed my hand, and I didn’t resist. Then, after the lights came back on, he waited a little while before asking me, ’Can I hold your hand?’"

"Haha, so you tell me, is Li Yuan’s emotional intelligence low or what?"

Listening to Bai Weixi recount their past embarrassing moment, Li Yuan looked even more awkward.

In his previous life, he’d had many such moments that seemed incredibly foolish in hindsight. This was also why he could never get Bai Weixi off his mind. If he had truly never had a chance and was fated to be just a loyal admirer, that would have been one thing. A first love would just remain a first love—a memory that wouldn’t fester into an inner demon. But this was an inner demon that was difficult to dispel, even after being reborn. He’d had so many opportunities, and he had squandered every single one. Looking back now, the main reason was that in his past life, he had loved Bai Weixi too much and felt deeply inferior. His pretense of being a rich heir in a massive metropolis like Modu was all too easy to see through...

Listening to Bai Weixi recount her past with Li Yuan, Zhong Tingyue and Xia Zhijin had identical expressions of disbelief.

Considering Li Yuan’s smooth, almost manipulative methods with them, calling it "coaxing and deceiving" was no exaggeration. It was as if he were a completely different person.