Chapter 30: Player Forum

A silver urn?

Wei Yanchi thought for a moment, opened his phone, and sent a message to Yue Xiamo.

"Do you have any news about the scenario?"

"No."

Yue Xiamo's reply came very quickly. Wearing glasses, she was sitting in front of her computer desk wearing very ordinary pajamas, her hair a mess, looking just like an ordinary, average girl.

She glanced at the urn she was using as a flower pot, and calmly replied.

"If you don't have any news, how could I? I was just shopping and took care of your business along the way. Oh, right, do you know 39's player account? He hasn't registered on the player forum."

"I don't know."

Every player chosen by the instance, after making it out alive, would have an app forcibly bound to their phone. The ID handle they use is what they called themselves inside the instance.

In this app, you can post threads, post videos, comment and discuss, and you can also conduct online trading and form teams.

The number of people in a team cannot exceed eight. Players in a team can clear the same scenario during the same time period.

This app can only be seen by players.

The app isn't usually very active, and there aren't many big shots active online. Scrolling up and down, you can mostly only see trading information, mostly offering high prices to camp for items. Good items are hard to buy even with thousands of gold. Life-saving items are even more priceless, with lots of demand but low supply. People who have items are reluctant to let them go.

Occasionally, a few newbies who cleared a scenario through sheer luck would appear on the app, crying and begging for someone to carry them, pleading to form a team.

Logically speaking, every player can be tracked down on the app. From the time Yue Xiamo came out of the scenario and camped on the app until now, a total of five new players had appeared, but none of their IDs were 39.

Out of the five new players, four used their real names. One was a bit smarter and used an alias—Gibberish.

Then what about 39?

Why is he the only one who hasn't appeared among the players?

Thinking about 39's performance in the scenario, as well as his unusually rare appearance, Yue Xia couldn't help but form a terrifying hypothesis. Is there a possibility that 39 isn't a player at all? Or even that 39 isn't human at all! He might be an NPC planted among the players by the scenario system. After gaining their trust, he catches them all in one fell swoop!

She very seriously told Wei Yanchi this thought.

But Wei Yanchi didn't believe it at all.

"You're overthinking it, right? I was just with 39 yesterday, and I added his WeChat."

It's just that there was nothing in his WeChat. It was very minimalist. Even the profile picture was the default one, and the name was a string of code.

Yue Xiamo said, "You can't be too careful. Have you ever seen anyone with silver hair in the real world?"

Wei Yanchi calmly replied, "I actually have. The Nordic Germanic peoples have genes for silver hair. In that region, people with silver hair and green eyes, while not many, do truly exist. Mr. 39 probably has Germanic genes and belongs to a mixed race."

"...Forget it, appearance isn't the most important thing. The important thing is that he doesn't have an account on the player forum. How do you explain that?" Yue Xiamo grabbed a handful of her hair.

"Don't you think this is a very scary thing?"

"Do you know about the laboratory?"

Wei Yanchi threw out this sentence out of nowhere.

"What?"

"A mysterious organization that specializes in researching strange things. Mr. 39 might be one of their people."

Yue Xiamo narrowed her eyes suspiciously, "How do you know about this thing?"

Wei Yanchi chuckled.

"I naturally have my ways. Do you know that two fatal shootings happened in Xiancheng yesterday?"

"Fatal shootings?"

Yue Xiamo was even more bewildered.

"Guns? Why are you bringing this up? Two? Wait, you said you ran into 39 yesterday... it couldn't be that he was right in the middle of killing someone, right? With a gun? For such a big case, not even a bit of news has come out. Are you saying the laboratory suppressed this news?"

"Congratulations, ma'am, you guessed right."

Afterwards, Yue Xiamo sent another bunch of messages, mostly unreliable guesses and nonsense. Wei Yanchi took one look and directly left Yue Xiamo's chat page. Then he looked at 39's profile picture again. Still no reply. The irritation in his heart rose a notch. He sighed and put away his phone.

Maybe 39 was busy.

He guessed this right. Xie De was truly busy right now.

He had taken the villain out to eat, returned home, mentally prepared himself, and then opened the refrigerator in one go. Facts proved that his preparation was still lacking.

As soon as he opened it, he saw a human head staring at him with eyes wide open in death, almost scaring him to death on the spot.

Gibberish hurriedly said, "Steady, Host. While you guys were eating, I went to check the police department's system. I found out that someone has already reported this thief missing. We have to dispose of the body quickly!"

Xie De gnashed his teeth, and said helplessly to the villain waiting obediently to the side, "Why did you dismember him and put him in the refrigerator?"

Wei Yunmo blinked his round eyes, and said innocently and as a matter of course.

"Because I already killed him. You forbade me from going out, and I didn't know when you would be back, so I could only keep him in the refrigerator to preserve him. Human corpses are very foul-smelling things, and I didn't want to smell it, it's very stinky. What if you came back very late? Wouldn't he have rotted then?"

Xie De was left speechless and choking on his words for a moment.

Why did this sentence sound completely logical?

He opened his mouth, but in the end could only say sullenly.

"You made my house too dirty."

"I'm very sorry." Wei Yunmo politely lowered his head. "I had only seen them do this before, this was my first time doing it myself, so I didn't control my strength well. I'll pay attention next time."

There won't be a next time, little kid!!

Xie De kept a cold face, telling him to go get hydrogen peroxide and clean up the living room himself. Watching Wei Yunmo walk out, Xie De looked with a headache at the pile of body parts stuffing the refrigerator.

He complained to Gibberish in his mind.

"My refrigerator! Can this even be used anymore?! This is where I put my food, Gibberish. I don't have money to buy another one."

Gibberish paused, then said disdainfully, "This refrigerator of yours was only a little over 2000. You could buy one just by buying one less pack of cigarettes. The highest expense in this household is your cigarette budget."

"Uh... isn't it because you can only tolerate that sweet and cloying cigarette smell." Xie De stopped the topic.

"Let's not talk about this first. How do we dispose of these body parts? Put them in bags and throw them out?"

"(￣ェ￣;), wouldn't it be fine if you just quit smoking," Gibberish said. "For now, this is the only way to dispose of the body."

"I remember there's a bunch of garbage bags here." Xie De thought, opening the kitchen door. The little house centipede clinging to the wall quickly bounced in. It was obvious it really didn't want to stay with the villain.

The little centipede looked at the pile of minced meat, then looked at Xie De's actions, and suddenly understood.

He just saw it jump onto the refrigerator, waving the two antennae on its head. Xie De's movements paused, his eyes instantly widening.

He saw countless, dense swarms of insects crawling in through the window, floor cracks, and door gaps, enough to give anyone goosebumps all over.

The most numerous was a type of ant.

They climbed onto the refrigerator and devoured it greedily. In less than a few minutes, all the flesh, blood, and bones had vanished completely clean.

Then, under the command of the little house centipede, they went back where they came from, slipping out through the windows, door gaps, and floor cracks, vanishing without a trace, hiding their merits and fame.

Xie De stared blankly at the little centipede.

"Gibberish, we seem to have picked up a treasure. This isn't a little piece of trash, this is a little ancestor!"

Gibberish calculated, "That's great. If we list it on the player forum, this isn't just worth 5 million, this must be worth 50 million!"

Xie De quickly caught a term.

"What player forum? Where do I find it?"

Gibberish felt a bit guilty, "Oh my, it's just the trading website between players I mentioned to you. I logged in with your account. Don't worry, they don't say anything in there, it's very boring."

Xie De bent down to pick up the little centipede crawling over, his tone filled with suspicion.

"If that's the case, then how come I can hear your guilt?"

"No way!" Gibberish sneered.

"It's not like I'm going to harm you. The two of us are bound together! We share the same glory and the same disgrace!"

Xie De remained expressionless, "Oh." Then he nimbly unlocked his phone and opened the hidden files.

Gibberish struggled, "You can't do this to me, stop it!"

Xie De's hand speed got faster and faster. When he saw clearly what was inside, he hissed, feeling like he had grown a stye in his eye.

"Gibberish, I can't believe you're this kind of system."

The player interface was very minimalist, and indeed as monotonous as Gibberish had said. There was a customer service icon in the top right corner. Clicking into it, it turned out to be Gibberish harassing the scenario system!

The greasiness of the cheesy pickup lines and the explosiveness of the content completely shocked Xie De to the core.

"I went to buy oil today. Guess what kind of oil? I love you."

"I just took some medicine (yao). Guess what medicine? You are very important (zhong yao)."

"Be careful when you walk, don't bump into my heart again."

"Lately I've been a bit addicted (shang yin). Addicted to what? Deeply attracted (xi yin) to you."

......

Xie De felt the phone in his hand heating up.

Gibberish whimpered, "=^( ´Д`)ﾉ Let me go~ I don't want to live anymore."