The breakfast was delicious. Brian Clark had just eaten a shrimp dumpling when he saw Helen Grant tidying up the kitchenware. He couldn’t help but ask, “Aren’t you going to eat with me?”

“I already ate while you were showering,” Helen Grant replied with his back to Brian Clark.

Suddenly, the delicious breakfast tasted like wax in his mouth. Brian Clark forced himself to swallow each bite with difficulty, deciding that he wouldn’t speak to Helen Grant for the entire day!

After finishing breakfast without any enjoyment, Brian Clark put on the clothes Helen Grant had prepared for him yesterday, and couldn’t help but wander back into the kitchen.

Helen Grant was washing the dishes, and the only sound in the room was the splashing of water.

“Um…” Brian Clark paced anxiously beside Helen Grant. “Do you have anything to do today?”

The water stopped. Helen Grant stared down at the bowl, his tone emotionless: “Housework, then job hunting.”

“Oh…” Brian Clark squeezed his face in front of Helen Grant, tapping his own cheek with a finger. “Well, I’m off to work. Good luck with your job search!”

Helen Grant turned his head away, ignoring Brian Clark’s hint, and said calmly, “Be careful on the road.”

The subtext was: “You can go now, don’t get in the way of my chores.”

Brian Clark stared at Helen Grant for a moment, sniffed, then turned and left the house. He rushed to the garage, locked himself in the car, took out his phone, and called his little brother Eric Webb: “Helen Grant is ignoring me. He didn’t help me with my hair, didn’t eat breakfast with me, and didn’t even give me a goodbye kiss before I left. Is he thinking about divorce? No way, I finally found someone I really like—I absolutely won’t get divorced!”

On the other end, Eric Webb’s groggy voice came through: “Hey, do you even know what time it is?”

“It’s 8:20, forty minutes before work. Is there a problem?” Brian Clark said righteously.

“So you do know it’s 8:20 and not 8:50!” Eric Webb yelled on the phone. “My first alarm doesn’t go off until 8:40. Do you know how precious every minute of sleep is to me at this hour? I’m going back to bed right now. No matter how big your problem is, please wait until after 9:00 to talk.”

With that, he hung up. When Brian Clark called again, the phone was already off.

Fuming, he banged on the steering wheel and shouted at his phone, “Is it wrong to call at 8:20? A bunch of night owls who stay up late and sleep in—sooner or later you’ll all go bald from it!”

After venting at his phone for a while, Brian Clark finally slumped powerlessly over the steering wheel, thinking about how things had been between him and Helen Grant these past few days.

A week ago, he came home from work to find that Helen Grant had come home early and made dinner, and told him lifelessly, “I got fired.”

Apparently, Helen Grant had offended the company’s management and was fired on the spot. The company did pay a penalty fee, but Helen Grant said it all went to the company leaders as medical expenses, and he even had to pay extra. Brian Clark thought this was the company maliciously deducting money—why should Helen Grant’s salary go to the leaders’ medical bills? He was so angry he wanted to take his buddies to make a scene at Helen Grant’s company, but Helen Grant stopped him.

The house they lived in was bought on a mortgage by Helen Grant, with monthly payments over 8,000. Their savings had just been used a month ago to buy a car for Brian Clark, and the money left was only enough to cover two or three more months of mortgage.

Brian Clark was a temp worker at the neighborhood office, with a monthly salary of 2,500. Over a year, that was just enough to cover the maintenance costs of his new, gas-guzzling SUV, and he couldn’t help at all with living expenses or rent.

At the time, Helen Grant promised he would find a job soon and wouldn’t let Brian Clark worry.

But a week had passed, and Helen Grant had hit several walls, becoming more and more silent and cold. They hadn’t hugged, kissed, or done anything else for a whole week. Today was even worse—there hadn’t been any physical contact at all, and when asked, the answer was just “not in the mood.”

Brian Clark was about to go crazy—he couldn’t go on like this. He had to think of a solution!

After brooding in the car for five minutes, at 8:30, Brian Clark floored the gas and sped out of the garage. He was going to the office to discuss with his buddies how to cheer Helen Grant up!

As Brian Clark’s car drove away, Helen Grant stood quietly by the window upstairs, watching him go.

Only when the car was out of sight did Helen Grant slowly turn his gaze to the sink. All the bowls in the sink were shattered.

Helen Grant reached in, picked up the shards, and tossed them into the trash can. With a casual toss, the trash can cracked.

Seeing this, Helen Grant sat down powerlessly at the dining table, bracing his arms on the tabletop. With a “crack,” the table and the chair he was sitting on splintered into pieces—fine nanmu furniture reduced to a pile of wood chips.

Helen Grant stood up, clenched his hands, took a deep breath, then another, finally managing to control his strength and not shatter the tiles under his feet.

With a helpless sigh, Helen Grant rubbed his forehead. These days, whenever Brian Clark wasn’t home, he had already replaced the furniture, tableware, and kitchenware three times, and had even rushed to get the floor tiles repaired.

There was something he’d always kept from Brian Clark: he was once a transmigrator, traveling through countless worlds, playing all kinds of life-and-death survival games. He had brushed past death countless times, finally gaining the greatest power and becoming the ultimate clearer.

The ultimate clearer could make a wish—no matter how difficult, even becoming the overlord of the universe.