Chapter 2

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

“I heard Uncle Nie had passed away.”

Lin Quan had a sip of tea. He was aware of Nie Fan’s family matters, and he certainly would know such a major incident in the professional scene.

“Yes.” Nie Fan nodded, already knowing what Lin Quan would say next.

“It saddened me to hear it,” Lin Quan said. He stayed silent for a moment, before adding with a solemn expression, “But there is something I must tell you first.”

“Please do, Mister Lin.”

“You must be aware that Xinyan’s father—who is my second uncle had managed to put together some success in Yinhai over the years, and is considered a person of prestige in the city. As for Xinyan, it wouldn’t be a problem for her to enroll in a university with her results and secure a bright future, although she is a little young. I know what I’m saying would hurt your self-esteem, but I must say it.”

Lin Quan’s subtext meaning was certainly obvious, but Nie Fan spoke out, stopping him just as he was about to continue.

“I get your meaning, Mister Lin. I’m no more than a poor village boy who came to Yinhai trying to make a living. Uncle Lin only offered to help me for my father’s sake and I could not be more grateful, which is why you could be at ease, Mister Lin—I wouldn’t have presumptuous thoughts about Miss Lin given my lowly identity.”

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Moreover, he was only close to Lin Xinyan when they were children. As time and distance set them apart, he did not feel anything special about her when he saw her again after so long, save for finding her a little breathtaking. Be that as it may, it did hurt his esteem to be warned in such fashion, not to mention that he was rather eager to get ahead despite his poor background, and would rather not be belittled like this.

“I don’t mean to hurt you, so please don’t take it too seriously.” Lin Quan could tell that Nie Fan had an unyielding air to him—the youth spoke with a demeanor that was neither prideful nor sycophantic despite his humble roots, which earned him a few points of admiration from Lin Quan. “I believe you could make it with your ability, but it’s just that Xinyan wouldn’t make a good match for you.”

“You flatter me, Mister Lin. Even so, I would admit that I have no outstanding talent, and I am not out to seek fame and glory. That being said, I would not starve as long as I have limbs.” Nie Fan could tell that Lin Quan’s words were compassion for the weak, and he did not need that.

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“You are just like your father.” Lin Quan smiled calmly. Nie Fan’s father had been a famously difficult person too. His nature where he would rather be broken than bent commanded respect, but the man himself would beg to differ. “Uncle Lin once told your father that he would let Xinyan marry you, but it was just a joke.”

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“Mister Lin, you must be joking. It’s just two old men having a laugh—with my father’s passing, I would not take it seriously.” Nie Fan replied.

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“Still, I believe Uncle Lin would remember that and he might still hope that you could be with Xinyan, although I hope you’d understand that the elders wouldn’t agree even if Uncle Lin does. He would not be making the decisions.”

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Nie Fan frowned then, suspicious why Lin Quan would talk so much about something completely unrelated to him. “That would never happen, and there’s no need to keep talking about it. Can I leave if there’s nothing else, Mister Lin?”

“Maybe I’m overthinking it. Let’s set aside private affairs and talk business then—here’s a VR headgear, it’s company standard equipment. Now run along to human resource to sign your contract. That is all.”

Lin Quan walked to a corner of the office, took out a blue headset and handed it to Nie Fan and waved him off.

For some reason, it was a grade B headset that internal employees would use.

“Thank you. Then, I shall be going.” Nie Fan accepted the headgear and left the office.

Watching his back as he left, Lin Quan sighed emotionally, doubting Uncle Lin if he had the right person.

***

Lin Xinyan approached Nie Fan the moment he left the office. “What did my cousin tell you?” She asked interestedly.

“He gave me this headgear, told me to head to HR and sign my contract.” Nie Fan said, brandishing the headgear in his hand.

“He’s being nice to you—that’s a B-grade headgear for internal employees.” Lin Xinyan smiled as she looked at the headgear.

Nie Fan felt a little troubled at her words then, since it was puzzling that Lin Quan would treat him so well given how he despised him and wanted him to stay away from Xinyan. “Maybe it’s because of you.”

“Of course. Who do you think I am? Remember to treat me to dinner when you get your pay.” Lin Xinyan lifted her chin proudly, her two dimples showing as she smiled. “Come, I’ll take you to HR.”

Two hours later, Nie Fan’s various work arrangements were decided. He gained a general understanding about Blade of Tyranny after Tempest Wings gave him some information—he would be allowed stay online for a maximum of ten hours per day and he could arrange his own schedule, not to mention that being online keeps him in deep sleep and he would be using his brain waves to play the game. Furthermore, he would have thirty-six hours of contingency time each month, permitting him to handle various emergencies. As for the actual game content, everyone did not know much except for the map information that the official portals published.

Even if he did not consider himself gifted in VR games, Nie Fan had decided that he would do his best so that others would not look down on him whatever happens.

Later, Lin Xinyan brought him to her home and arranged a room for him.

It was a three-floor mansion, and Nie Fan’s room was on the second floor opposite Xinyan’s. The house itself was considered luxurious, and a place which Nie Fan would never imagine he was staying before this.

After putting away his luggage, he was left speechless as he looked at the two-meter wide bed.

Could one person use such a huge bed? Moreover, he was not used to the soft mattress—he was basically sleeping on a twenty-centimeter wide bench in the past, and was not allowed dropped off it. His father called it training, but where could he find a bench now?

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He would just have to adapt.

“The kitchen is downstairs. Go out and buy ingredients if you would rather cook, I’m calling delivery. Also, I would be at school in the morning, and at the gym other times for dancing, yoga, and taekwondo. Don’t find me if there’s nothing important, but call me on the phone if there is.”

Lin Xinyan explained simply, basically saying that she did not have much free time.

“Okay. I think I’ll cook—where’s the food market?”

“Turn right after you leave the neighborhood, and you’ll reach it in two hundred meters.”

“Alright. You go do your thing.” Nie Fan nodded—it seemed that rich kids had it hard too.

On another note, he would save more money if he cooked on his own. He certainly would not order delivery so that the money he had on hand would last until next month.

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As such, Lin Xinyan left to go about her business while Nie Fan headed to the food market to get some ingredients. It also turned out that the kitchen had not been used for quite some time and he had to use an hour to clean it all up, before simply cooking a bowl of noodles for dinner.

He then returned to his room and took his shirt off for his daily mandatory training. His muscles were sturdy, each strand ever distinct over his inverted-triangle figure. The outline of his firm pectoral muscles and eight neatly arranged abdominal muscles were pronounced, and yet he did not give others such a fearsome impression. With his clothes on, others could hardly imagine such a slim form would be hiding such an astonishing force…

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There certainly would be no telling what Lin Xinyan would think if she saw him shirtless.

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Nie Fan hence started off his training with basic things like push-ups and deep squats, along with several tai chi moves. Fortunately, his room was wide enough and he did not feel squeezed when moving around.

Still, he thought that it was a shame that there wasn’t a sandbag.

At a young age, Nie Fan had trained in free wrestling with Coach Tang. With his father teaching him some homegrown techniques in between, what he learned was quite jumbled although the outcome was obvious: his body was strong, and he could handle five to six adults at a time in a fight.

After training for three hours, he went to take a bath—it was very convenient washing up in the mansion since each room here had its own bathroom. After that, he took a glance at the time and realized that it was already 10 pm when he heard movement outside and the sound of the opposite door opening. It must be Lin Xinyan returning, but Nie Fan pretended that he was asleep instead of going out to greet her, sparing the awkwardness of running into each other at night.

Leaning on the bedside and looking out of the window, he thought that the distant street lights were like little stars that flickered against the endless night sky. He felt melancholy then when he wondered how his mother was or whether his father knew what happened here on the other side, and took out the notebook his father left him, gently touching its cover.

He turned to the front half of the notebook, which had over a hundred pages written with weird data that he could not understand.

Nie Fan could not help being puzzled. Could it be some mathematic or physics formula? Although he had dropped out since early middle school, Nie Fan could understand enough by looking closer that the data had nothing to do with mathematics, although some parts look like it had to do with gaming. Remembering that his father was a professional gamer in life, he wouldn’t be surprised that some game data was jotted down here… perhaps those were notes that his father made when playing.

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Those things would not help be helpful to Nie Fan, but as he turned to the other half, he found that it was his father’s diary—records he had kept before he died! He felt his eyes become watery as various memories during his childhood surged like a tidal wave. His father had been a quiet person, but he knew many things and taught Nie Fan much, and though they did not speak much he felt closeness and happiness when he was with him. He had started teaching Nie Fan a few things about VR games when he was ten, but he abruptly moved to Ningdong, left in a dejected mood and no longer playing, until a few years later where he met his demise in an accident. Nie Fan had always found that he could not let go of his father’s passing.

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He did not know what happened back then that forced his father to move from Yinhai to his old home in Ningdong, and his mother would keep quiet if he asked. Be that as it may, Nie Fan did not press her so that she would not be caught up in her sadness, although now he wondered if he could find some clues in his father’s diary.

The first dozen pages were his father’s struggles as an unranked minor gamer climbing up to the leaderboards of the professional scene, working alongside his partner ‘Bloodfeather’ and founding Demon God Studios. At the time, they were ranked third and sixth, with Demon God studios also reaching the top five in the country, indisputably standing on the pinnacle at the time.

Bloodfeather? Demon God Studios?

Why didn’t he hear about that from his mother? Why did his father eventually leave Demon God Studios? That being said, he had heard of the studio itself as it developed rapidly over the last few years, assimilating five to six studios. They now stood alongside Dark Dragon Studios as the two giants of the VR gaming scene, while Bloodfeather was universally acknowledged as the top gamer on the professional leaderboards.

Nie Fan connected the dots then, realizing that his father perhaps had faced some desperate predicament.

As he continued reading on, his father had described something where gamers from across the globe were invited by the Tian Xia Group to participate in the development and closed testing of a game called Blade of Tyranny, which had been sensation news at the time. Game development and coding were his father’s strengths—he had coded much data, and following careful research as well as minor adjustments by the development team from Tian Xia, his work was used.

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Hold on.

Blade of Tyranny! It’s that VR game which would soon be entering its public testing phase!

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With the others who had been involved in the development and beta testing had become older or retired, Nie Fan did not expect that that game his father had a hand in making would soon be released to public servers.

He could not stop himself from feeling a strong pride. It turned out that he such an amazing father!

Still, which aspect was his father in charge of developing at the time? Moreover, his family would not have become so miserably poor given his father’s ability—even if he would fail, he could certainly try again with ease. So why would his father appear so disheartened after leaving Demon God Studios? That was certainly a difficult mystery.

As Nie Fan continued turning the pages, he found that the story ended halfway through because around fifty to sixty pages had been torn off. He wouldn’t know what happened later even if really wanted to, and there was no telling if his mother knew where those torn pages were. But when he remembered that unhappy look on his father’s face when he died, Nie Fan knew that he had many unfulfilled dreams.

Nonetheless, the game called Blade of Tyranny was something his father left behind, and Nie Fan suddenly felt infinitely driven—he absolutely could not disappoint his father’s soul in heaven.

He hence started to look through the diary carefully, but he could not be sure whether the data at the front half he can’t quite understand had anything to do with Blade of Tyranny. His mathematics was bad, and when coupled with the fact that he dropped out of school since early middle school, his brain felt like it would blow up as he stared at the sequence of numbers, much less allow him to arrange them.

On the last page, Nie Fan caught what was a group of numbers: 28, 22, 218, 1, 92, 12…

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The numbers were written messily, and it was obvious that his father was not calm when he wrote those numbers.

Those numbers. What do they mean?

Was it a telegraph code? Didn’t feel like it.

Could it be that they mean something special?

There must be a reason his father left this behind. Given that the notebook was the most important heirloom from his father, those numbers just might be the code to something very important.

Be that as it may, Nie Fan could not arrive at any answer despite racking his brains.

Well, whatever. He would put it aside for the moment—he just might find the answers in the future.

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While he was left in distress, a loud clanging could be heard from the direction of Lin Xinyan’s room, with something seemingly crashing down. The mansion was soundproof enough that normal objects falling would not echo so loud, and uncertain that Lin Xinyan is alright, Nie Fan had stood up before he could think and dashed towards her room.

He knocked on her room’s door heavily and shouted, “Lin Xinyan! Are you alright?”

It was after a while that a meek call for help amidst groans of pain could be heard from within.

Something had happened! Ignoring all else, Nie Fan took a few steps back and launched his body forward, crashing through the door with a door and ran inside.

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