QT: LAC Chapter 57: Fourth World (16)

Chapter 57: Fourth World (16)
Translated by Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Sulo

Finally, after a whole night of staying up to check, the company still failed to find out the cause that affected the stability of the game. Fortunately, the same problem did not appear again.

It was impossible to suspend the game for maintenance for too long, so after checking all the aspects that could be checked but finding no abnormalities, the game company decided to restart the game. They specially arranged people to monitor the game 24/7, and pay attention to the gaming data all the time.

As a new employee, Xie Yan naturally was assigned the time-consuming work that had little technical requirement. At the same time, Zhao ZeHong had great expectations from him. He wanted Xie Yan to summarize his opinions on the improvement of the game as soon as possible, then write up a feasibility report and submit it to the higher-ups for review and discussion.

So Xie Yan had been very busy these days. He had to squeeze time for gaming and his sweetheart, Bai Duan as well. It was a bit cruel for the lovers who had just started their relationship to be separated for such a long time.

…Of course, even if Xie Yan was busy, he never forgot to ‘get revenge’ for his lover, which led to the rumor of a Dark Age. Countless players posted complaints about viruses in their optical computer, stolen passwords, abnormal banned access, and even inexplicable mistakes in their work. These troubles were mostly harmless but overwhelming and painful.

Later, because there were so many unlucky players in this period of time, they even named it ‘The Black February’, which became a joke in [Ten Thousand Realms].

Although Xie Yan had been busy, Bai Duan had no complaints on that, and even expressed that he was glad, as it meant Xie Yan was adapting to the new company well. Xie Yan’s talents were well-valued and affirmed by his colleagues. Bai Duan could feel Xie Yan walking step by step out of the circle of self closure and beginning to attempt integrating into the world. He was also slowly regaining self-confidence.

Although there was less time to play together, the relationship between Bai Duan and Xie Yan had never been affected. In his spare time, Xie Yan would report his daily life to Bai Duan in detail. From time to time, Xie Yan would show his love for Bai Duan with sweet words that he naturally sprouted out. However, Bai Duan had no such ability to say loving words so naturally as Xie Yan, so he tried his best to find usable phrases from his ‘love phrases books’, then he would try to express his mind as clearly as possible.

Every time Xie Yan received Bai Duan’s ‘love letter’, Xie Yan would be in a very good mood. He could also see that there were many excerpts from those common ‘love phrases books’ out there, which was moving and funny at the same time. He knew that his lover was not good at sweet-talking, and the fact that he was trying warmed his heart.

As the saying goes, ‘If people have good things happening around them, they’d have a good spirit.’ Even though there was a lot of work to be done every day, Xie Yan was still beaming with energy and was glowing. His colleagues, however, were tired, pale, blue, and gloomy all around, they were also yawning a lot. As such an ‘odd entity’, Xie Yan didn’t escape his colleagues’ eyes. Only Xie Yan was here right now, but they always had the inexplicable feeling that they were being bragged to, about Xie Yan’s ‘lover’.

Because the company had been paying attention to the movements in the game, Xie Yan’s colleagues naturally knew about Xie Yan’s business in the game. After all, those ‘revelation posts’ not only revealed Xie Yan’s name and identity, but also his appearance.

As tech nerds, most of Xie Yan’s colleagues did not pay much attention to their own appearances and didn’t care about others appearances. They focused more on one’s techniques and skills. And although Xie Yan was indeed ugly, his skills were convincing and he soon won the respect and friendship of most of his colleagues.

Xie Yan, as their new colleague, was able to find a new lover, so everyone naturally had an attitude of blessing them. Not to mention, when they looked at his happy expression, they couldn’t help but be affected and felt more upbeat as well. Whether the emotions were happiness or sadness, it could still easily infect others around him.

Watching Xie Yan fall in love, his colleagues were both envious and curious, they had expressed their desires to see his lover. Even if they were not in the same city, it would be great to at least see his picture!

Xie Yan hesitated for a long time. After getting Bai Duan’s approval, Xie Yan finally showed them a photo, as if he was showing his newborn, he was full of pride when he showed them.

After seeing Bai Duan’s photo, his colleagues went silent for a long time. They couldn’t help but beat Xie Yan with their fists. They couldn’t hide their envy and jealousy. Because of the brainwashing from the game’s forum, they all expected to see a boy as fat as Xie Yan, but they never expected the boy in the picture to be so shockingly good looking.

Although he didn’t have the charm of the fox race anymore, the person in the photo had the same facial features as that in the game. It even seemed a little more refreshing and bright, as bright as the rising sun, but with a touch of shyness. The person was so beautiful that they couldn’t move their eyes away.

Such a beauty, but he was deeply in love with Xie Yan, he never even gave up on him once, Xie Yan of all people… What kind of crazy luck is this?!

Hearing the thoughts of his colleagues, Xie Yan looked solemn as he nodded his head, “I also think I’m very lucky. If my twenty years of suffering was so that I could be with him, then, I think I still made a really great bargain.”

Just like how he was someone who had to counterattack worlds, he had to struggle in countless worlds aimlessly. Perhaps the reason was all to meet Bai Duan, to meet him, to get to know him, to be with him, and to enjoy life with him.

After that, Xie Yan often showed off his dear lover, he would naturally brag about his lover in front of his colleagues from time to time. Then, because Xie Yan got all his colleagues angry, his colleagues pressured him to treat everyone to a meal, in order to compensate their injured hearts with delicious food.

On the other side, Bai Duan had nothing to do in the game. He was not interested in explaining that he was ‘actually beautiful’ to other players. Instead, he was happy to be thought of as a fat and ugly couple with Xie Yan, he even had a sense of pride and achievement from being able to scam the whole world.

When Xie Yan went online, they were inseparable, and once Xie Yan was busy with his work, Bai Duan was so free that mushrooms could grow on his head. So, with his spare time, he turned his focus onto Cheng Hong, who had been detained for fifteen days and was just released from prison. Bai Duan intended to fulfill his promise and kept finding him to ‘have fun’.

Bai Duan, who was not lacking money, bought a bunch of tracking charms and began playing hide and seek with Cheng Hong. If Cheng Hong wanted to escape, Bai Duan would smash him with a bunch of control skills. If Cheng Hong couldn’t take facing him up front, he would continue to smash him with control skills. If Cheng Hong called other players to surround him, he would smash all of them with control skills, then he would turn tail and run.

Such shameless behavior made Cheng Hong angry and hateful, but there was no way for him to stop Bai Duan. Bai Duan was not only skilled in running, he was also extremely accurate in dishing out control skills. Worse yet, Bai Duan’s resistance to other players’ control skills was also very strong. Even if they hit him with a lot of control skills as well, only a bunch of annoying ‘missed’ would emerge.

To this end, many players called foul play and urged the game company to check Bai Duan’s stats. Unfortunately, no matter how they checked, Bai Duan’s stats were not abnormal. After all, his high resistance was not given by the avatar stats, but his own strong mental power. That was basically an invisible and intangible plug-in that could not be detected by the company.

Since the game company said that Bai Duan’s stats were within the normal range, the other players who were helping Cheng Hong decided to fold, making Bai Duan more unscrupulous in his assault on Cheng Hong.

Cheng Hong was a narrow-minded person, so his popularity in the game was not very good to begin with. Even his so-called ‘friends’ were mostly self-serving people.

After chasing and blocking Bai Duan for a period of time without any effect, Cheng Hong’s friends were too lazy to waste their time. They all made excuses to leave, leaving Cheng Hong alone to face Bai Duan, who was getting more and more used to chasing and assaulting, as people say ‘practice makes perfect’ after all.

Finally, with the endless pursuit from Bai Duan, Cheng Hong finally couldn’t bear it. He chose to leave the game, just like how he once almost forced Xie Yan out of the game with public opinion. As Cheng Hong disappeared in the game, another person, Luo Xi also became more and more distant from the game. This was not forced by anyone, rather he just had no more interest in the game.

As early as after breaking up with Xie Yan, Luo Xi’s enthusiasm for [Ten Thousand Realms] had plummeted. After all, he went from having everything extravagant and easy to thrifty and difficult. He was too used to the days when Xie Yan took care of him and held him in his palm, he could no longer adapt to the new life of having to solve everything by himself. Having to fight the same thing over and over again for almost half-a-day just to obtain a certain weapon.

What’s more, he didn’t want to see Bai Duan and Xie Yan showing off their lovey-dovey life. Even though they almost never appeared in front of him, there were always people around Luo Xi who would mention them either with curiosity or with ridicule, as if they were always taunting him.

In order to get it out of his sight and mind, Luo Xi finally decided to leave the game and said farewell to his sweet, painful, sour and regretful love. Without Cheng Hong and Luo Xi, Bai Duan got bored again, but he soon found another form of entertainment as he began to play in the mixed arena.

For a long period of time, the whole arena was filled with sorrow and gloom. Once upon a time, Bai Duan’s specialty of ‘poking you but not killing you, just annoying you’ was Cheng Hong’s nightmare. Now, more and more people had the same feeling as him.

At first, some people were not convinced that Bai Duan was that good, they wanted to compete with him and give this unusual guy a profound lesson. However, later on, whenever they saw Bai Duan, they would directly choose to abstain and lose. They would rather lose a round and fight several more rounds to win the points back, rather than waste ten minutes of their precious life with Bai Duan.

After all, no matter if they won or lost, their hearts and spirits would suffer. No one had the energy to continue playing after fighting with Bai Duan. All of them felt dizzy, nauseous, and uncomfortable. They just wanted to leave the game and lie in bed for a good night’s sleep.

As a result, Bai Duan soon got a nickname from all the people who were angry and felt helpless, which was ‘Bug’. One meaning was to show that his control skills was like a bug in the game, while the other meant that he was as annoying as an immortal cockroach. He was a pest in the arena.

Due to Bai Duan, more and more people had seen the advantages of ‘agility’ and ‘control skills’, and many excellent players of similar roles had emerged, becoming the indispensable ruler of the arenas. However, no one could use the ‘agility and control skill route’ as well as Bai Duan.

In a certain PK match in [Ten Thousand Realms], Xie Yan and Bai Duan worked together, they killed gods and Buddhas alike. There was no doubt that they were the winners of the match. They pushed this combination to the top in the game, many strived to imitate them.

Gradually, the players in the game got used to the ‘Ugliness’ of Bai Duan and Xie Yan, and lost interest in the ‘old news’ about their looks in real life. Instead, they started to pursue their strength and learn from their fighting methods.

After falling from the godly altar, Xie Yan rose up once again and became the ‘God’ in the minds of many players. This time, beside him was Bai Duan who stood side by side with him.

Soon, more than a year later, the game ushered in its tenth anniversary.

In order to celebrate the anniversary, the company announced that the game would introduce a number of updates. They announced that they had overcome the biggest technical difficulty, and would gradually open up the possibility of belonging to two races and allowing humans to have a second occupation. They would be launching six new races, making the framework of [Ten Thousand Realms] bigger and richer. The news immediately attracted a lot of players’ uproar and excitement.

At the same time, on the tenth anniversary, [Ten Thousand Realms] would hold a meeting to encourage players to move out from the virtual world to the real world, in hopes of further closing players’ relationships. The game company would invite all the players who had made great contributions to the game and give them an exclusive commemorative gift that represented the company’s gratitude.

Xie Yan and Bai Duan topped the invitation list published on the official website.