At the start, I had to choose one of four options, and I immediately picked the Brahmin from the cou

When Lin Miaomiao woke up again, it was almost noon.

The curtains weren't fully drawn, and a blinding beam of white light pierced through the gap, lying across the messy silk quilt and illuminating the dust floating in the air.

She squinted for a few seconds to adjust before realizing that the space beside her was empty; Zheng Hao had gotten up sometime earlier. The master bedroom door was ajar, and she could faintly hear the sound of a kettle boiling and slippers clicking on the floor.

She turned over, feeling as if all the bones in her body had been taken apart and put back together, leaving her feeling sore and weak.

The images from last night kept flashing through her mind: the entryway, the sofa, the bathroom, the bed—she couldn't quite remember what time it ended.

Lin Miaomiao propped herself up on her elbows, the silk quilt slipping off her shoulders, revealing deep and shallow marks on the back of her neck and collarbone—the most powerful proof of last night's frenzy.

Lin Miaomiao withdrew her gaze, threw off the covers, and got out of bed. Her legs went weak as soon as they touched the ground, but she quickly regained her balance, grabbed a pure white high-end bathrobe, and wrapped it around herself, tying the belt just right—it could cover a large part of her body while revealing her alluring curves as she moved.

Pushing open the door to the master bedroom, Zheng Hao was standing in front of the living room's French windows, wearing loose pajama pants, making a phone call. Hearing the noise, he turned his head and looked at Lin Miaomiao, who had just woken up and whose long hair was lazily draped over her shoulders. His eyes immediately lit up with a hungry wolf-like glint. He quickly said a few words into the phone and hung up.

"Baby, you're awake?" Zheng Hao walked over, put his arm around her waist very naturally, and kissed her forehead.

"Haohao, you got up so early, why didn't you wake me up?" Lin Miaomiao leaned into his arms, her voice soft and sweet from just waking up, with just the right amount of coquettishness. "You tormented me so much last night, I'm almost falling apart."

"My bad, my bad, I'll be gentler next time." Zheng Hao laughed smugly, his vanity greatly satisfied.

This subtle flattery made Zheng Hao feel incredibly comfortable. He pulled out a chair and sat opposite Lin Miaomiao, waving his hand dismissively:

"So what? You're with me, Zheng Hao, how could I possibly mistreat your best friend? I'll take you to Henglong Plaza this afternoon. You were so good last night, you deserve a real reward. Buy whatever bag or jewelry you like, don't try to save money for your husband."

"Thank you, honey, you're the best to me!" Lin Miaomiao immediately showed a look of surprise and emotion, her red lips slightly parted, her eyes full of charm.

Why did she follow Zheng Hao? Wasn't it just for this little thing?

After brunch, Lin Miaomiao took a long bath in the suite's spacious bathroom, washing away the smell of alcohol and her fatigue. She changed into a fitted French tea dress, casually pulling her hair up, and her slightly languid and aloof temperament once again captivated Zheng Hao.

At 2 p.m., the Audi RS7 came to a smooth stop in the underground parking garage of Hang Lung Plaza.

This is Jianye City's long-established hub for top-tier luxury goods. Compared to the more youthful atmosphere of Deji Plaza, this place offers a greater selection of haute couture jewelry and limited-edition watches. Zheng Hao expertly led Lin Miaomiao by the hand straight to Bulgari's VIP area.

"Bring out your latest snake bone bracelets and necklaces for us to look at," Zheng Hao said, leaning back on the leather sofa and giving the sales assistant the order.

Lin Miaomiao stood in front of the glass display case, her heart pounding uncontrollably as she gazed at the diamonds and rubies sparkling brilliantly under the spotlights. She had seen this collection in magazines before; any single piece cost tens of thousands, and those with a few full diamonds could cost hundreds of thousands.

Wearing white gloves, the sales assistant carefully presented a velvet tray, on which lay a classic Serpenti snake bone necklace inlaid with diamonds and emerald eyes.

"Ms. Lin, this necklace really complements your collarbone and overall look. Would you like to try it on?"

The sales assistant's voice was just the right gentleness.

"I'll wear this," Zheng Hao decided immediately.

As the cold, expensive necklace encircled her neck, Lin Miaomiao looked at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath.

Zheng Hao didn't even blink at the price of 118,000. Looking at the receipt that the card reader spit out, Lin Miaomiao's smile almost spread uncontrollably.

The top floor of the Industry-University-Research Joint Experimental Building on the West Campus of Huaqing Business School.

The entire building appeared exceptionally empty and quiet on the weekend, but the core server room at the far end of the top floor was a scene of bustling activity.

Dozens of high-performance servers emitted a low, continuous buzzing sound, and the dark blue code on the screen refreshed frantically like a waterfall, weaving together a vast and complex underlying data network.

This is Xinglan Technology's headquarters in Jianye City, and also Li Xiao's true heart in this provincial capital.

"Mr. Li, the V2.5 algorithm iteration has finally run successfully!"

Dr. Chen Qiming had two huge dark circles under his eyes and his hair was as messy as a bird's nest, but his bloodshot eyes were flashing with an almost frenzied excitement.

"This time, we adopted a distributed cleaning logic to slice and reduce the dimensionality of those unstructured spam resume data. Now, under the extreme environment of simulating a province-wide population of 80 million and millions of concurrent calls from enterprises, the system latency has been successfully compressed to less than 50 milliseconds! The error rate is less than three per thousand."

Chen Qiming's voice trembled with excitement. For a tech enthusiast, nothing is more captivating than personally creating an algorithmic behemoth capable of navigating the vast ocean of data at the provincial capital level.

Don't be fooled by the fact that the limit was 28 milliseconds in the previous demonstration. That was under ideal conditions. In real-world operation, it would be impossible to achieve that reaction time.

Li Xiao wore a soft black turtleneck sweater, one hand casually in his trouser pocket. He stood quietly in front of the huge curved central control screen, the soft blue light reflecting on his face.

"50 milliseconds, a fault tolerance of three per thousand. Dr. Chen, thank you for your hard work these past few days."

Li Xiao's voice remained steady, but his tone carried an undeniable certainty. He knew very well that, amidst the complex network fluctuations and massive amounts of redundant data in reality, this technical team had already created a miracle in the domestic SaaS architecture field by managing to reduce concurrent latency to within 50 milliseconds.

"This far exceeds the highest level in the industry; it's a perfect result."

Li Xiao turned around, his gaze sweeping over Chen Qiming and the group of programmers behind him, all with sunken eyes and relying entirely on black coffee and Red Bull to keep going. "Machines can run 24/7, but people can't. If the string is stretched too tight, it will break sooner or later."

He patted Chen Qiming on the shoulder, then turned to Sun Zaiquan and instructed, "Notify the finance department to give each member of the core technology team a 100,000 yuan bonus for this phase of the project. Also, book that top-of-the-line hot spring resort hotel in the southern suburbs, and give everyone a three-day paid vacation."

"Mandatory paid leave?" This term is completely foreign to these programmers who are already used to working 996 or even 007 non-stop. Not to mention the real money of 100,000 yuan per person!

After a brief silence, someone suddenly burst into a distorted cheer, and then the entire top-floor server room erupted in cheers.

Some people were so excited that they squeezed their empty Red Bull cans so hard they made a cracking sound, while others even exaggeratedly hugged their colleagues' shoulders and jumped around.

"Mr. Li is awesome!"

"Long live the boss!"

"Alright, stop howling here." Li Xiao looked at the group of technical backbones who were as excited as children, and a faint smile appeared on his lips.

In his previous life, he was one of the exploited beasts of burden. Now that he has been reborn, he naturally wants to treat his employees better. Besides, he doesn't lack money, so why not use a small portion of his profits to win people's hearts?

Many people know this, but they are used to getting things for free and making empty promises, yet they are unwilling to use even this simplest and most efficient method.