The Uncanny Valley Traveling Guide - Ch 4

Melancholy Song (4)

Wen Zheliu burst into a hearty laughter. He was supported by Chin and limped towards the portal opened in the center of the battlefield: “You really want to fulfill that promise?”

“Why not? Do you think I can’t afford it?” Chin asked him back. “This big bro just brought the wrong terminal, it’s not that I really have no money.”

Wen Zheliu couldn’t stop laughing. The two of them crossed the tide of the universe where thousands of stars were spinning again, and returned to the hall through the portal.

“No,” he said, holding back a laugh, “What I mean is……”

As soon as he got his footing on the ground, he saw that people in the hall were looking at him and Chin with strange eyes. Wen Zheliu was baffled, and swallowed the second half of his words involuntarily.

Wen Zhe Liu: “?”

What’s going on here?

Not far away, a bunch of people gathered together, and their eyes were frequently sent to the portal. It was the people from Lei Xiao’s team. Late Night Breeze and Crazy Blade Sweeping The Street were also there. Chin said lazily: “They’re already here to pick a fight.”

Seeing the two jump from the portal, Lei Ming immediately pushed the crowd away and walked towards them, behind him was a group of players. He wasn’t only tall and sturdy, but his face was also naturally awe-inspiring. Along the way, he looked like

Moses dividing the red sea, no men and god dared come near.

Wen Zheliu said in a low voice, “He won’t really come to beat us right?”

Seeing him approaching, Chin also restrained his cynical expression. He quietly turned to the side, blocking Wen Zheliu behind him: “Excuse me, what can I do for you?”

Lei Ming took off his anti-glare sunglasses and gave these two people a deep look. The frenzied demeanor of anger and rage in the game were all gone, which made them a little surprised: “One is level ten, one is level fifteen… amazing. I was careless.”

Behind him, Late Night Breeze’s face was extremely ugly, and his beautiful eyes kept shooting cold knives at the two of them. Chin smiled: “Well, is there anything else? If not, we will go first.”

“Wait a minute, I have a question.” Fight To The Bitter End finally emerged from the group and pointed at Wen Zheliu behind Chin, “I suspect this kid used a cheating software.”

Fight To The Bitter End selected race was obviously the Orc descendant. His bronze complexion was spread with light-colored stripes, and his body was extraordinarily robust. Being pointed at like this, Wen Zheliu calmly raised his eyes to look at him: “What evidence do you have?”

The man sneered and pulled out his own data from his personal terminal. The other columns were blurred, and only the [Physical Strength] line was clear.

78, a terrifying number.

In Nova City, there was also an upper limit for the player’s data value. According to the average algorithm of the level, the maximum can only reach 120. If you want to improve, you can only rely on the unimpeded A-level or above A-level items circulating in every game world. Since Fight To The Bitter End’s physical strength has reached 78, it was a reasonable fact that he could eliminate many players in the early stage with his fist alone.

“So what?” Wen Zheliu raised his brows, imitating Chin’s appearance, “You couldn’t kill me with one punch, so you thought I used cheating software?”

“Pull out your stamina data,” Fight To The Bitter End said in a rude voice, “Relying on data to speak, everything else is false.”

Wen Zheliu took a deep breath, and before he could speak, Chin chuckled: “Friend, if you ask my brother to pull out the data, does he have to show it to you? How about a trip to the slaughterhouse, believe it or not, I can still kill all of you.”

“Hey, forget it, forget it!” The smell of gunpowder was brewing. Wen Zheliu was afraid that he(Chin) would have another dispute with this team with backstage supporters. At that time, even if he was a rich second generation, things won’t end well, “If they want to see, I’ll show them.”

He also blurred his own information, showing only the [Stamina] line, which was also surprisingly strong.

73, only five points lower than Fight To The Bitter End.

“It’s not much lower than your strength points, right,” Wen Zheliu said. “With the data deviation, isn’t it normal that you can’t kill me with one hit?”

This number made Chin’s eyes widen, and Fight To The Bitter End said in disbelief: “You are a novice at level 15, yet you have such high stamina! What race did you choose? Sandbag?!”

These words seemed to sting Wen Zheliu, his face sank, and he said sternly: “It’s none of your business, anyway, I didn’t use any cheating program. If you don’t believe it, then ask the inspector to come over.”

Lei Ming saw Fight To The Bitter End’s embarrassed expression, so he came out and said: “Okay, let’s clear up the misunderstanding. In fact, we came to you, mainly to ask, do you guys want to join our team? As long as you nod…”

“No.” Chin answered bluntly, and he spread his hands, “Rag-tag soldiers like us are not worthy of big shot’s attention… Is there anything else? If not, we’ll leave first, we still have something to do.”

His attitude was really arrogant and unyielding. Lei Ming didn’t get angry when he saw that there was no hope of winning him over, he just turned to the side in a graceful manner: “Please.”

Chin grabbed Wen Zheliu’s shoulder and walked towards the door. Along the way, he received amazed eyes from countless players. Chin spread his hands: “See, the scenery is infinite, and people who are born to attract attention are like this.”

“F*ck you.” Wen Zheliu couldn’t help but sneered at him.

The two walked to the station and boarded the suspension train leading to Nova Shopping Mall. At this time, the sun was setting in the west, and the clouds in Nova City were extremely beautifully rendered, just like crimson peach blossoms burning all over the sky, scattered to the ends of the horizon by the misty golden light. The splendid sunset reflected on the clear glass window, and also on Chin’s side profile. The fine golden dust fluttered gently on his eyelashes. His light-colored pupils, which originally looked like colored-glaze, were illuminated just like the setting sun with a golden color.

Wen Zheliu’s heart jolted, and he asked, “Why…why do you wear a mask?”

Chin turned his head to look at him, the rosy evening clouds also illuminated Wen Zheliu’s fair and handsome face, adding three-point of unblemished childishness out of nowhere. He smiled and said in a low voice, “Of course I don’t want others to recognize me.”

“Huh?” Wen Zheliu became interested, “What do you do? Celebrity? Singer? Or some other public figure? You’re not a politician, are you?”

While his thoughts were running wild, Chin smiled with the corner of his eyes bent. He reached out and touched his head, “What are you guessing?”

“…And, why are you being so nice to me?” Wen Zheliu lowered his head again, his eyes staring intently at his worn out lace-up boots, “This is the first time we’ve met.”

Chin said softly, “Because you are a strange kid.”

“What’s so strange?” Wen Zheliu raised his head.

“No one else thought of buying me water, why would you?” Chin followed him to sit down, “You have such good skills, but you still went through so much trouble to get a gold task. Plus, you are a level 15 player who is so resistant to beating, where did you train?”

“Aren’t you only level 10?” Wen Zheliu asked rhetorically.

“I’m new to the game, you’re new to the game too?” Chin asked again, “I said you’re a strange kid, and you’re still not convinced.”

Then they arrived at the station.

Chin pulled him out of the train. Wen Zheliu couldn’t respond to his question, so he grunted angrily: “If you can find something worth as much as my bet in the mall, then I lose!”

The neon-colored light screen rotated, Chin dragged him into the dressing room of the mall, and beckoned to him: “Okay, what is your bet, take it out and let me see.”

Wen Zheliu looked at him for a long time before unlocking his personal terminal, and took out a 10×15 capacity backpack. After repeatedly rummaging the bottom most, he took out a small box with an iris lock and a fingerprint password bar tied to it. After being opened layer by layer, there was still an item barrier at the bottom. Seeing this, Chin couldn’t help frowning and laughed with interest.

“So mysterious?”

Wen Zheliu glanced at him, feeling a little uneasy.

“I got it by lucky draw. Actually… I was just trying to scare you, but I didn’t really want you to pay me something similar in value…”

“Just open it,” Chin clicked his tongue, “You think I’m lacking something like this?”

The corner of Wen Zheliu’s mouth twitched, and he raised his hand to lift the barrier. The thousand rays of golden light that shot out almost blinded Chin’s eyes, “Oh, then take a look at it.”

“Damn it!” Chin hurriedly took out a pair of sunglasses and put them on, “I was almost blinded by you…”

He took a closer look, and the relaxed expression on his face gradually solidified, becoming grave and serious.

The betting chip Wen Zheliu took out to show him was only a small glass shard in a smooth circular shape, but this knuckle-sized shard had extremely terrifying properties.

[Item name: Skeleton of Time City (1/20)]

[Level: SSS (Incomplete)]

[Activation Type: None]

[Cooldown Time: None]

[Attack Power: None]

[Effect: None]

[Equipment Level: Unknown]

[Item introduction: The royal city left in the depths of time, when the scepter, crown and beautiful bride all lose their fragrance and color in the cycle of the four seasons, who is still cheering loudly beyond the frontier, calling for the kingdom of the immortal, the sun that never descend, the immortal king and his subjects?

Collect all 20 pieces to synthesize 3S-level Item: Eternal Time City

Current progress: 1/20]

The final synthesis of this 3S-level item has only one effect, that is, without any restrictions, it immediately returns the activator to the origin of the time period they want to reach. The cooldown time is between the time when the item is used and the backtrack time. From then, everything goes on as usual.

——A causal item that can change the law of casualty1A principle in philosophy: every change in nature is produced by some cause. of the past.

Seeing his solemn expression, Wen Zheliu thought he was frightened, so he decided to close the lid embarrassedly, “In fact, I don’t mean anything else, just……”

Chin raised his hand and gave him a not-so-gentle pat on the side of his head.

“Ouch, what’s wrong?”

“Little fool,” Chin scoffed, “A shard of 3S-level item… Do you know what the concept of 3S-level items is, and you dare to show it to a stranger who you only met once? Do you know me that well? ”

Wen Zheliu was a little overwhelmed. He covered the back of his head and looked into Chin’s half-smiling eyes, “W-we…”

Chin seemed to see through his thoughts. He gradually restrained his smile, the radiant peach blossom eyes just now suddenly became cold, instead showing an emotionless brutish cruelty.

“Why do you have to be so naive?” He said softly, “You and I are just strangers who have known each other for less than a day. A few words of brotherhood actually make you show off this kind of thing to me. You don’t have many friends or are you lacking affection?”

Wen Zheliu’s face was burning and he felt a burst of embarrassment. Chin’s capriciousness was like a slap in the face, it didn’t hurt, but the humiliation was greater than substantial harm.

“A-aren’t we…” He stammered, taking a moment to regain his thoughts, “…No, it’s because you’re very good, and you showed…”

Wen Zheliu racked his brains, but he couldn’t describe Chin’s special temperament.

He curled up his long legs and sat on the ground, looking left and right, but he didn’t have the shabby look of ordinary penniless people. It was more like he was observing and looking at something. Even when he was playing against Thunder Lord’s team in Survival World, he didn’t seem to care about his own life or the life and death of others——Wen Zheliu knew that this was the game world, but it has long been integrated with the real world, and even vaguely surpassing the real world. There are many people who chose to commit suicide in the real world becuase they lost everything here, perhaps there’s one the moment he blinked his eyes, but Chin didn’t pay attention to these at all, he was just playing games.

He had never seen someone like Chin, his arrogance seemed to be innate, as if he was born to overwhelm others, no matter who they were.

“—In short, you’re not a bad person.” In the end, Wen Zheliu came to a firm conclusion, “I trust my intuition, that’s why I showed it to you.”

Chin fixedly looked at him.

At present, the only 4S-level item in the world that formed everything here was the “core” of Nova City. Although S-level items under it are numerous, they are by no means readily available like Chinese cabbage. For the currently known S-level items, the collection conditions are already extremely harsh. [Aether Utopia], which is also a 3S-level item, has been split into 3,000 pieces, hidden in hundreds of thousands of large and small game worlds; the 2S-level item [Sleipnir] requires players to win the rotation speed of a planet; the S-level item [Morningstar’s Book of Fate] is held by the system AI Deep Valley old man. Every time you defeat him in the Destiny Chessboard, you can get a clue about the Book of Fate…

Taking Wen Zheliu’s current fragment as an example, even if he collected all twenty pieces, it cannot be completed, because only the managers of N star company above the regional executive level have the authority to confirm the release of super S-level items, which is enough to determine the degree of its rarity.

The icy light in Chin’s eyes gradually dissolved, the tip of his brow was slightly raised, and the rippling light returned to his eyes again.

“Idiot.” He sighed, “I really can’t afford your bet…”

“I never ask you to pay!” Wen Zheliu’s tone aggravated, “I said I was joking.”

Chin said: “…Listen to me. In the entire mall, or even the entire Nova City, I’m afraid there is nothing that can be compared to the value of your fragment, but I have been taught since I was a child to be a man of his words. Therefore… take this.”

He yanked down the black leather rope around his neck, grabbed Wen Zheliu’s palm, put a thin square silver medal along with the rope into his hand, and clenched it tightly.

“Take this, this is the most valuable bargaining chip I have at the moment, follow the contact information above to find me.”

“Is this your dog tag?” Wen Zheliu curiously looked closer, but Chin’s dog tag seemed to be encrypted, he could only see a blurred, distorted light and shadow, “Why did you give me your……”

A loud and sharp noise faintly reached his ears, Wen Zheliu’s complexion suddenly changed, and he hurriedly said: “Wait, I have something to do, I have to go offline first…”

With a Zhi sound, Chin’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, he stretched out his arm to pull him, along with the colorful lights and shadows around him… but it all twisted and deformed in front of his eyes, turning into dazzling fluttering snowflakes.

With a sharp needle-like pain in his brain, When Zheliu screamed. He was forcibly dragged out of the game room, and fell heavily onto the dusty old carpet.

The world swirled in front of him, full of tiny pieces of stars. He clutched his temples and knelt on the ground, gasping for breath. A boy’s sharp and high-pitched voice came from behind him.

“Shameless thief! You’re sneaking around in my game room again. I’m going to tell my dad to break your legs first, and then drive you motherless bastard out of my house!”

Chin has a special identity. (◡‿◡)