Xu Shuo's eyes dimmed slightly, but his expression remained unchanged as he calmly asked, "What do you mean?"
"Don't be nervous." Hong Rao curved her lips into a smile that was captivating in a unique way, "Just listen to my speculation first—but why is there nothing here? It's a bit too clean, isn't it?"
As she spoke, she took a couple of steps forward, looking around as if searching for something to sit on, but all there was to see was a glaringly white, light-emitting, barren space.
Xu Shuo noticed a hint of disdain in her eyes.
"Isn't it like this for every newcomer's Script Space?" Xu Shuo said.
"It is indeed," Hong Rao walked up to him and waved her hand, summoning a semi-transparent system frame.
It was the shopping interface. She tapped on the page skip button, scrolling to over two hundred pages.
She then said, "Actually, newcomers' personal spaces are all self-decorated. You can think of it as playing... The Sims?"
While speaking, Hong Rao purchased a sofa from the shop, then, as if playing a decorating game, dragged the small icon outside. Once she released it, the icon automatically enlarged and turned into a real sofa.
Xu Shuo watched silently and said, "The shop has nine hundred and ninety-nine pages, I just couldn't be bothered to flip through them."
"Pfft." Hong Rao laughed and sat down on the sofa, "The shop really is troublesome without a categorization feature. But, is that all? You seem to invest very little effort in this game."
"You can't make money here anyway," Xu Shuo said, and naturally took a seat on the sofa someone else had purchased.
Skills and items from the game were utterly useless in reality.
"You can't make money, but you can save your life," Hong Rao said meaningfully as she looked at him.
Xu Shuo didn't respond, and Hong Rao shifted her gaze away, waving her hand to bring up another system screen that displayed Xu Shuo's personal panel from an observer's perspective.
Between players, one could only see the other's level, Performed Scripts, fan count, and other basic information that was not privacy-sensitive.
Hong Rao opened his Performed Scripts tab, but it only showed "Rainy Night Villa," with nothing else underneath the long empty list.
"Let me start from the beginning," Hong Rao crossed her right leg, leaning lazily on the sofa as she spoke leisurely, "After newcomers enter the Script Space, they're harvested by the space for a period of time. After finishing the tutorial script, the interval until the next game is only one day.
"And if you entered at the very last second of your relaxed time, considering the production time after the script ends, your third script should have gone live yesterday evening.
"Surprisingly, 'Dancer in the Dark' also crashed at that time. .net
"And yet, no new performed scripts appeared for you."
Hong Rao raised her eyes, looking at him with a half-smile.
"Are you done speaking?" Xu Shuo asked.
"Mhm," recalling her own words about not interrupting, the smile in Hong Rao's eyes deepened, and she responded with a sound.
Xu Shuo placed the untouched tea on the sofa, propped his chin with his hand, and looked at her, saying, "I have a question, why have you been paying attention to me since the very first moment I joined this Script Space?"
The premise of all these conjectures could only be that she had been watching him from the beginning to notice the bug that arose due to a timing issue.
After a player's performed scripts are posted to the list, there's no detailed onset time, preventing others from guessing how long a player has stayed in the Script Space or when exactly they joined.
It was even impossible to deduce just how long the Script Space had existed!
For Xu Shuo, without a specific onset time for his performed scripts and without others paying much attention to him — perhaps others might just think he was a newcomer who had entered the Script Space yesterday.
After this, as long as Xu Shuo acted quickly, successfully producing a script that wouldn't crash, the problem would naturally be solved!
After all, who would watch a plain and unremarkable new player every minute and second?
So, for what purpose was this woman here?
"That question..."
Hong Rao took another sip of tea, her gaze drifting to Xu Shuo's personal panel, then she suddenly said, "I suppose I'm your first fan. Haven't you ever checked me out?"
Xu Shuo glanced at her, "What's there to see?"
"Those words truly hurt..." she murmured, but her face quickly lit up with a bright smile once more, her eyes sparkling as she looked at him and said,
"Because I want to take you on as my student~"