[Okay, wife.]
[As you command, wife.]
[Wife, please believe me, I will be responsible for our violin.]
[Wife, who are these two men? Why are you calling other men husband? Your husband is right here TVT]
[I’m new here, just a passerby. Is this little cat wife worth getting in?]
[Very tight, very moist. I personally recommend it, even if it means losing everything! I once subscribed seven times in one night…]
[Don’t sexually harass my little cat! Screaming.jpg Room manager, room manager, room manager! Hurry up and kick the person above out!]
[Welcome to the live stream.]
[Friendly reminder: To create a harmonious and pleasant viewing environment, please follow barrage etiquette, and speak in a civilized manner. It is strictly prohibited to post pornography and other inappropriate information.]
[Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. We wish you a pleasant viewing! If you have any questions, feel free to contact the administrator. Administrator K will provide you with a super-value ban package lasting three thousand six hundred and fifty years :)]
It wasn’t until the man who had been using sign language with him earlier moved that He Qinghong realized these two were husband and wife.
Judging by their appearances alone, most people would probably say they were a good match.
The man was handsome, the type with sharp brows and bright eyes. He carefully lifted the box, and when he straightened up, his tall and sturdy build was apparent, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. The rolled-up sleeves of his shirt revealed strong, well-developed forearm muscles.
But he had a very obvious flaw: he was mute.
And his wife…
“Nice to meet you, I’m Xin Hexue.”
A white, delicate hand reached out towards He Qinghong.
The nail shape was rounded, trimmed neatly and clean, a sight that would satisfy any meticulous, obsessive-compulsive assassin.
Faint blue veins were visible on the back of the hand, and the wrist bone had a beautiful structure.
He Qinghong’s gaze swept over Xin Hexue’s other hand, which was resting near the collarbone on his chest, the space formed by his arm and elbow seemingly perfect for cradling a bag of goldfish.
The plastic bag was bulging, filled with oxygen by the fish seller downstairs.
The breed was the most common goldfish, and several flashes of gold drifted in the transparent water.
There was no ring on that hand either.
He Qinghong did not choose to shake Xin Hexue’s hand, merely nodding slightly in acknowledgment. His expression was aloof, and with an equally detached state of mind, he saw no need to explain his mysophobia to this neighbor.
“He Qinghong.”
He gave his pseudonym, which was already the limit of his social etiquette. In fact, he had no need for social interaction of this kind.
Xin Hexue calmly withdrew his hand. When the man moved the things inside and came out again from under the number 511 plaque, he took two steps past He Qinghong. His light footsteps were almost inaudible, leaving behind only a faint, cold trace of fragrance.
He Qinghong paused for 0.001 seconds, just in time to control his instinct to strike out at the stranger who had crossed into his personal alert range.
Xin Hexue stood beside the man and introduced him to He Qinghong: “This is… my husband, Zhou Liao.”
The mute man, Zhou Liao, made a few hand gestures. The kind, approachable smile on his face suggested their meaning.
He Qinghong declined the invitation from the young couple who had just moved in. “No, I have matters to attend to.”
He even politely suppressed the disgust between his brows caused by the dust emanating from unit 511 during cleaning.
He Qinghong accurately selected one key from a keychain, inserted it into the lock, and turned it left three times.
“He Qinghong.”
Xin Hexue called out to stop him. He Qinghong raised his gaze. His patience for dealing with people was almost exhausted, and the tone of his voice unconsciously lowered. “…Yes?”
Xin Hexue pointed inside the apartment and curved his lips into a smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t practice the violin at night.”
He Qinghong had indeed frowned for a moment upon seeing the violin case, but it wasn’t due to potential noise.
“Mm.”
The door with peeling green paint creaked shut in front of the young couple.
Logging into this game was very simple, it didn’t even require Xin Hexue to go out for work. The program crew delivered a full immersion gaming pod, pre-bound with a specific account, directly to his home. He just needed to lie down in the gaming pod at 20:00 standard world time that day, and the God’s perspective recording and live broadcast would automatically start centered on him.
His live stream was flooded by a wave of fans that night, and the barrage of comments made Xin Hexue realize for the first time that so many people in the Big world enjoyed the works he acted in.
But he himself had not even opened any social media accounts, and these fans complained that they only learned about his latest announcement from his agent’s account.
Because of this aloof style, without his own knowledge, Xin Hexue was given a nickname by the public. When people mentioned “the mysterious cat,” it was as tacit as mentioning “you know who.” Incidentally, his fan base was also tacitly recognized as “Cat Caretakers.”
These were all matters outside the game. In fact, Xin Hexue had already blocked the barrage the moment he loaded into the game. The live stream was managed by the program crew’s staff and his reliable, supervising agent K.
The moment Xin Hexue loaded into the game, he received his identity card.
[You grew up abroad. Last year, after winning the gold award at the Joachim International Violin Competition, a mysterious letter arrived in your hands.]
[The letter stated that your biological father, whom you have never met, left you a massive inheritance and an extremely valuable estate in Country H. Although you are financially secure and not driven by fame or fortune, curiosity about the identity of this “father” never mentioned by your mother led you to purchase a plane ticket to Country H while keeping it a secret from your mother.]
[From the moment you landed in S City, you realized that you had been drawn into a whirlpool…]
[The sudden car accident on the way to the hotel; the vehicle that crashed and exploded was just one second away from hitting your taxi.]
[The hotel elevator you were in suddenly malfunctioned and plunged downwards. Moments before it would have crashed, the elevator’s safety system emergency brakes activated, allowing you to narrowly survive.]
[The room’s ventilation system was injected with a colorless, odorless poisonous gas. Just before you completely lost consciousness, a cleaning staff member who happened to enter opened the window for ventilation, diluting the gas.]
[After dinner, you went for a stroll in the square near the hotel. The moment you bent down to pet a cat, a bullet grazed past you, shattering the glass window of a shop behind you.]
[When you returned to the hotel, you found your room engulfed in a big fire. After firefighters arrived, you had no choice but to change hotels overnight…]
In fact, from the moment Xin Hexue got off the plane, the prompts on his identity card came true one by one. Even when he cautiously avoided them sometimes, the crises would manifest in another form.
Such as the bomb on the airport baggage conveyor belt, or the poisoned food at a restaurant.
On the third day, after he “luckily” avoided a street sniper attack for the tenth time, the content of the identity card suddenly expanded.
[Welcome to my game kingdom, little princess.]
Xin Hexue expressionlessly skimmed past the first line.
[Player attribute assessment results as follows:]
[Physical Condition: F—]
[Don’t ask why there are three minuses. It’s because there are only grades A-F, no G.]
[Mental State: A]
[Looks good, quite healthy.]
[Intelligence: A+]
[An average, smart person, nothing special. Even the computational power of the strongest human brain can’t compare to us. Oops, sorry, it seems the game system has been exposed as an arrogant AI precursor and social Darwinist.]
[Luck Value: F]
[Congratulations on winning the prize, you clever unlucky soul. The prize is a banana peel.]
[Agility: F-]
[Endurance: F-]
[Promise to hide during a battle royale instead of running, okay?]
[Appearance: S+]
[If you truly find yourself at a dead end, try using charm on the enemy? Perhaps you’ll achieve unexpected results.]
[Character identity debuff: Paranoia.
your mental state will steadily decline as the game progresses.]
[Will manifest as a strong paranoia for example; may misinterpret people’s actions or words, becoming suspicious of them; excessive vigilance, frequently checking doors and windows, fear of contact with others; significant emotional fluctuations, potentially extreme anxiety, fear, anger, or depression; uncontrollable generation of delusional content, severely distorting reality and being unable to distinguish between the real world and the delusional world in serious cases.]
[Symptoms will manifest on the player and gradually worsen.]
[In summary.]
[Look, what a beautiful jinx. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to encounter?]
Xin Hexue frowned.
[Try to be patient, okay? Patience is one of the essential qualities of a princess.]
[Alright, it looks like you’re about to get angry. Let’s get to the main point then…]
[Welcome to the special compound-type dungeon! Surprise!]
[Congratulations on passing the trial level of the special compound-type dungeon. The current number of people in this dungeon is: 10]
The identity card was like an old-fashioned typewriter, its content appeared in a jumbled manner. The previous lines of text had to make way for the new ones, with their characters fading away like fading ink.
Xin Hexue glanced over the number 10 and did not ask if some guests had already been eliminated during the trial level.
It wasn’t important.
[This round of the game officially begins.]
[The rules are as follows: The special compound-type dungeon will take the form of an exam paper. The one who survives to the end with the highest score wins.]
[Please listen to the first question: Who is the man who appears at the scene every time? (5 points)]
Xin Hexue had noticed a certain face very early on.
The security guard changing shift at the baggage conveyor belt, the taxi driver, the cleaner who opened the hotel window for ventilation, the firefighter jumping off the ambulance…
The night he checked into the second hotel, he caught this person on the spot.
The other person looked flustered, and his ears turned bright red as he made hand gestures at him, meaning, “Sir, I’m not a bad person, please let me go.”
But it was obvious that this man, blushing at him, definitely couldn’t be the murderer; otherwise, given the other party’s skills, even a cat with nine lives wouldn’t be able to escape.
Xin Hexue then learned from his ID card that this man was named Zhou Liao.
Being able to switch between so many identities so effortlessly, whether this name was real or fake wasn’t important. What was important was that Xin Hexue had obtained his five points.
[The most dangerous place is also the safest place. Facing the successive, relentless assassinations, you know you need a shelter, and this shelter needs to be as close as possible to the main location of your father’s inheritance…Beidao City.]
[Please listen to the second question: Where is the most dangerous place in Beidao City? (5 points)]
At that time, Xin Hexue had glanced at the ID card he was holding. The man named Zhou Liao in front of him was from Beidao.
That night, the group trying to assassinate him probably used the wrong chemical, as neither Xin Hexue nor Zhou Liao detected any poison in the alcohol.
The facts made it clear that there was indeed no poison in the wine, because what those people mistakenly used was an aphrodisiac.
That night, Xin Hexue struggled on the hospital bed like a stranded fish, until like a mermaid, his fishtail turned into long slender legs and he felt his legs being stretched apart.
That drunken, light-headed feeling could even be compared to drowning. Every pore on every inch of his skin was invaded by the pervasive, omnipresent, hot and humid tropical moisture.
At such a time, he actually managed to remember to ask the question from the exam paper.
But it seemed this person Zhou Liao was completely controlled by the drug, and his pitifully few brain nerve cells were afflicted.
Waking up the next day, Xin Hexue saw the man kneeling on the floor before the bed, and a Tokarev TT-33 pistol was placed in his hand.
Xin Hexue slowly curved the corners of his lips.
Clearly, whether as a taxi driver or a hotel cleaner, it was impossible for someone to possess such a weapon.
Zhou Liao answered: the most dangerous place in Beidao City was the Nanwan Walled City. The characters written in black pen on the paper were drawn stroke by stroke, neat but ugly, like a primary school student’s handwriting.
He did not pull the trigger on Zhou Liao. Instead, he lifted the man’s angular jaw and pressed a hot, moist kiss onto Zhou Liao’s lips. “Accompany me to buy some clothes, okay?”
If not for this accident, Xin Hexue had originally planned to seduce Zhou Liao anyway. This accident just added unnecessary fuel to his plan.
Beauty alone is a dead end, especially for a beautiful unlucky person.
Fortunately, he was also an ordinary smart person.
Xin Hexue abandoned this character’s original English name, faked his death at the second hotel a week ago to shake off those shadow-like pursuers, and gave the news enough time to ferment.
Now he was just Zhou Liao’s newlywed “wife,” coming from an unknown rural area, and they had moved together into the Nanwan Walled City of Beidao.
……
Night slowly fell, the light green checkered gauze curtains soaking in the blue hour outside the window, their color gradually deepening.
Typhoon “Rodney” would pass by Beidao at 9 PM tonight before rolling towards the northwestern mainland region.
Given the severe weather, Xin Hexue locked the doors and windows tightly.
Whenever large areas of body exposure occurred, the live stream would block the screen, or focus the lens on a vase or a chair within the scene, leaving only sound. If the scene’s sound was automatically detected and judged by the system as unsuitable for minors, even the sound would be erased.
The night was a quiet time when he did not want to be disturbed, so Xin Hexue prepared to cut off the video feed first.
He undid the front buttons of the qipao, bent down, and gently loosened the slit at the side of his left leg.
The classical ceramic-based table lamp in the room shone quietly, and the silk lampshade made the light even more hazy.
The changshan slid down from his shoulders, revealing the young man’s thin, fair chest. The light blue veins were like filigree growing and spreading across his skin.
As he lowered his head and bent over, the skin on his bare back tightened, protruding a long string of vertebrae like a chain of pearls.
Outside the window, night had completely fallen, and raindrops pattered against the glass.
A single dark bloodshot eye pressed against the gap in the curtains of room 511, its eyeball rotating.
“Click.”
The short, sharp sound of the door opening rang out.
A sudden shiver ran down Xin Hexue’s spine, spiraling downwards.
It seemed the paranoia was beginning to show its initial signs. His nerves had become fragile lately, and he was more sensitive to external stimuli.
He turned his head, pressed his lips together, and said to Zhou Liao who had entered, “…Husband, you scared me.”
The peeping eyeball disappeared.
The live stream, which was forced to zoom in hundreds of times and focused abruptly on the eye, was now going crazy.
[Ahhhhhhhhh the audience is scared to death before the streamer! Who will compensate the audience’s hearts?]
[So scary! Wife, I want to hide in your arms to sleep tonight!]
