Volume 9 – Chapter 15: Puzzle (Part1)

“Mom made dumplings, Xiao Bao!”

Xiao Bao heard his mother called out as he walked out of the bathroom and was wiping his wet hair with a towel. At that time, his father, who was at home, was sitting in the living room reading the newspaper.
“Mom, didn’t we just finish dinner not long ago? How can I eat so much?” Xiao Bao could not help but laughed.

Xiao Bao’s mother said, “Look at you, my dear. You haven’t been home from working overtime for several days. You have been eating food from the police station. How can those foods be nutritious? Eat some! Look at you. You are skinny like a monkey!”

“Alright, alright, I will eat.” Xiao Bao agreed with resignation. He squeezed his mother’s shoulders with both hands and coaxed her, “There is no one in the world who can make dumplings as excellent as my mother’s homemade dumplings!”

“Haizz!” Xiao Bao’s mother smiled and scolded him. “Your sweet talk. As your mother, I will be at peace when you use it to deal with girls!”

“Ah…Dad? Doesn’t it seem that we haven’t played one game of chess for a long time? Why don’t we play one game?” Xiao Bao laughed and sat down. He immediately took out the chessboard from the coffee table.
Xiao Bao’s mother said with her hands on her hips, “You little fella! I am discussing a serious matter with you! What happened to the president’s daughter whom I introduced to you the last time? There seems to be no news?”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha! Is there such a thing? Oh! Okay, I remember it, there is this thing…” Xiao Bao laughed as he dealt with this headache all the way.

It was not until ten o’clock that Xiao Bao fled back to his room. He let out a sigh of relief and laid down on the bed.

But, as a senior of night owl members [1], Xiao Bao found that his bed somehow had a strange feeling, like in a daze which no one could get over… After a while, Xiao Bao, who was inexplicably irritated in his heart, grabbed his hair hard and climbed in front of the computer.
On the net, while gnawing melon seeds, he boringly scrolled through the posts to see if there was any new news worth chasing… But, he still felt a little irritable.

Am I a little too quiet in the games lately?

Xiao Bao suddenly had an idea. Before that, Xiao Bao was reviewing posts in a comprehensive forum frequently visited by gamers.

Search: Blue Sky.

Xiao Bao subconsciously searched for the name. He was then shocked to find that unexpectedly, there were many posts about the ‘Blue Sky’… Also, Thousand Delicate Feathers seemed to often appear in posts relating to the “Blue Sky”… It was like both of them were generally being tied up together.
This Blue Sky was a true god, Xiao Bao discovered.

He first appeared in a game four years ago. He was one of the five tyrants [2] of the whole server. Not only was he the supreme boss who made purchases in the game, but he also belonged to the skillful group. He had defeated a group of lackeys who were continuously playing the game with the same equipment. As for Thousand Delicate Feathers, she was the Blue Sky’s marriage partner in this game – one of the other five tyrant.

For more than two years, this “Blue Sky” played different versions of the game using the same name. He always came up on top of the hierarchy, and his marriage partner had always been Thousand Delicate Feathers.

Later on, it was unknown as to what happened. In the last game, Blue Sky suddenly broke off his engagement with Thousand Delicate Feathers. He then deleted the character files and disappeared.

For some time till now, Thousand Delicate Feathers was still active in various versions of the games. As in Jade Fantasy, Thousand Delicate Feathers had been frantically looking for the “Blue Sky.”
“Crap… It turns out that it’s not just Jade Fantasy. This Thousand Delicate Feather is playing five different games at the same time?” Xiao Bao looked at the posts from different games and was a little bit surprised. “This woman must have ascended to heaven [1], right?”

This situation led to meddlesome and boring gossip parties to start to discuss the two legendary characters in the game industry, Thousand Delicate Feathers and Blue Sky.

Some said that these two persons were husband and wife in real life, and they divorced later.

Others said that Blue Sky was a nouveau riche and had abandoned Thousand Delicate Feathers.

It was also said that Thousand Delicate Feathers was an empty and lonely woman in her boudoir and the blue sky was just a gigolo. The woman had cheated on her husband with the gigolo, and the husband had exacted his revenge on the gigolo.

Some people say that “Blue Sky” was out of the game world, while Thousand Delicate Feathers was still immersed in the virtual world. She was not able to accept the departure of “Blue Sky.” So, she was always moving through various games, looking for the Blue Sky in her heart and unable to pull away.

Opinions seemed to differ between various rumors, but those who claimed to know the information could not come up with real evidence. The actual relationship between Blue Sky and Thousand Delicate Feathers was still wrapped up mysteriously.
In the forum, Xiao Bao also saw many game videos uploaded by numerous players. Among the game videos were the fight videos of Blue Sky in other games.

Xiao Bao watched them curiously. He found that this “Blue Sky” was a nightmare for the party of gamers who never made any in-app purchase… Blue Sky’s skill was really out of the world. In those games with the combo features, he especially liked to unleash attacks with high combos.

Seeing Blue Sky frantically unleashing combos which broke the record in one of the games, Xiao Bao could not help but remember the scene where Qian Xiu, who was at the ice valley entrance in Jade Fantasy, unleashing almost four thousand combo attacks, a move that was impossible for humans to do so.

It always felt like these two figures were gradually overlapping on each other in front of him.

Xiao Bao frowned, logged into Jade Fantasy subconsciously, opened the friend list, and found that Qian Xiu’s avatar was still lit, and sent a hello emoticon.

To Xiao Bao’s surprise, Qian Xiu had reconfigured his settings to refuse any incoming messages and not showing anyone his current location to anyone.
As for Thousand Delicate Feathers…she was not online.

Xiao Bao suddenly felt that the game seemed to be deserted. When he looked at Zhongguan City, which was initially less crowded because it was night, he suddenly felt lost, not knowing what to do.

“Ok…”

Xiao Bao sat in front of the computer, blankly for half an hour. He then sent an email to Qian Xiu and then went offline. He climbed onto the bed and fell asleep.

But, not long after, Xiao Bao annoyingly got up again. He opened the game again to go online and then sent an email to Thousand Delicate Feathers before going offline.
He lay back on the bed, hugged the pillow, and gradually fell asleep.

…

A hint of coolness caused Qian Xiu to shiver. When he opened his eyes, he even found that his eyelashes were a little moist, and the vast expanse of whiteness around him covered all his vision.

He sat up, stretched out his hand, and rubbed his forehead. He took a look at the time, only to realize that he had been sleeping in this place for a whole night.
His head was still very dizzy, even a little painful, probably because of a hangover. However, after being on this small bridge by the lakeside in the wild, Qian Xiu secretly let out a sigh.

How much did he drink?

Anyway, the wine amongst his materials and items in his backpack had been drastically reduced to less than half.

“When did it finish?”

Qian Xiu looked around. His head is too heavy. He only just remembered that he ran into someone who was fishing here yesterday. It seemed that after talking to him about some boring and strange topics, he fell asleep.

The system prompts that there was an unread email from Xiao Bao. The email content was straightforward, asking him where to meet.
[1] Night owl (修仙党 ). On Chinese internet slang depiction, the terms describe people staying up so late at night that they may die because of that. Hence, in the later paragraph, the player was described as almost ascending to heaven with the number of hours clocked in at night without sleeping to play games.

[2] Tyrant (壕 ) is a Chinese internet slang. The meaning is the same as the rich. Also refers to the non-brainers spending on internet games.