Chapter 378: Uncle Worthless

Chapter 378: Uncle Worthless

If it was any other person, they would have clicked the option that would clear all the emails sent by strangers. Feng Bujue, however, was different. He had that strange habit. He was not crazy enough to read all the harassment emails. He would only look at the title and the first sentence of each email. After reading about two hundred of them, Brother Jue concluded that all the emails he received could be sorted into four categories.

The first was the interrogating kind. This was the kind that Brother Jue had received the most. The senders were those who had not heard of the ID Feng Bujue before. When they saw the list of VIP players, they started to come up with conspiracy theories and sent him many messages to demand clarification. Questions ranged from the following:

“Who are you?”

“Bro, which guild are you from?”

“Are you the second-ranked player on the combat stat ranking?”

“How did you get selected?”

“Are you a sub-account for XX?”

The second was the envious kind. He had received far less of this kind, but they too had that sharp tone to them. Most of them were dripping with sarcasm like “Bro, you are the relative of the game’s boss, aren’t you?” or “Mr. Whale, how much does it cost to purchase this spot?” In fact, someone said, “Karma is always watching.” Most were slanderous and contained many snide comments.

The third was the seductive kind. He had received most of this kind, only after the interrogating kind. The content was similar to the mails sent to him days ago by Regulation, but the content was more strange and varied. For example, one sent him a gift of used chewing gum in the mail, and the title was “Let’s be friends.” Another sent a box of chewing gum with the title “The more the merrier.”

The fourth was the unclassified kind. They came from players who thought “Feng Bujue” was a fake ID. They thought it was a name Thriller Paradise made to lock off a spot. Therefore, their mails were filled with unknown characters, and they just sent them to find out whether the mail would go through or not.

Other than that, there were emails with content like “Haha!” or “Wtf” or “Professional cheater association” or “Hotel? Trivago.” These could be counted as the fourth kind.

Feng Bujue had one solution to these crazy amounts of emails—delete.

He didn’t dare to answer any of them and had no plan to do so. With the aid of batch deletion, Brother Jue deleted the emails page by page within one minute. He also blacklisted everyone who sent him emails of the interrogating kind to prevent him from meeting them in the game in the future.

From twelve midnight to 12:30 am, Brother Jue did nothing else but deal with his mailbox. That was half an hour in real life, but in gaming time, that was five hours. Five hours in the game, Brother Jue sat on the bench and flipped through the pages of emails with interest. He continued to delete them page by page. It felt like he was scrolling the forum inside his own mailbox.

He still had no idea that on the real gaming forum, “The Mysterious Player, Feng Bujue” had become one of the most heated topics.

This was a highly discussed topic, but the players were not really focused entirely on Brother Feng. After all, there were other VIP Players, and there were also threads about the player base’s experience in the preliminary round. Many were also discussing the battle system.

The speculation about the ID Feng Bujue took up about twenty percent of the overall topic in the thread discussions.

There were countless players who went forward wanting to ‘expose’ Brother Jue. Some of them were players who were in the same scenario as Brother Jue before. One such player was Mr. Loneliest, with whom Brother Jue queued at the very start of his journey at Thriller Paradise. Other such players were Doomsday Assault and Final Assault from Zombie Blade. Along the way, Feng Bujue had met quite a number of players on his journey, and with his personality, many people had a lasting impression of him.

But those whom Brother Jue added as friends, including the other celebrity players and gaming studios, kept silent about the issue.

Therefore, a strange situation was formed. Due to the high amount of rumors and speculations, many players ignored what was real. Brother Jue’s identity became more and more mysterious and more and more twisted. Some said he was a cannibal, and others claimed he had eight arms. Others believed he was a ghost that had possessed the server of the game. One even praised the imagination and creativity of the public. Before Feng Bujue showed himself officially in the game, he had become some sort of an urban legend.

“Hey, Brother Jue, how’s it going over there?” After Xiao Tan was defeated, he returned to the log-in lobby and tried to communicate with Feng Bujue.

“I’m still deleting the emails,” Feng Bujue said weakly. Even while he was saying that, his fingers were still working.

Xiao Tan laughed and said, “Looks like your job is not yet done.” The previous night, Xiao Tan had contacted Feng Bujue. At that time, the list of VIP players had just been released on the official website, and Brother Jue’s mailbox was just starting to fill with emails.

“This is pretty much as I expected,” Feng Bujue said. “This time, I have really gotten famous. In the past three days until the last week, I have mentally prepared myself to face the possibility of receiving more than thousands of emails every day.” He paused. “But after a while, when this dies down, it should be much better. But I am afraid it is impossible to return to my previous state of being unknown. I learned from Flashes of Swords that a celebrity player like him receives more than ten emails from strangers every time he logged on to the game, and that had become a normal thing. I believe that too will happen to me.”

“So many people would love to trade places with you right now,” Xiao Tan said in a mocking tone.

Feng Bujue scoffed and said, “Well, there is a benefit to being selected as a seed player. There is no need to waste time in the preliminary round. It is much easier this way.” Feng Bujue continued, “By the way, how did your first preliminary match go?”

“Sigh... I lost.” Xiao Tan sighed.

Uncle Worthless looked like a person who could not care less about his appearance. He had short, unkempt hair, a beard that desperately needed trimming, and a pair of sunglasses. His outfit was a set of brown-colored pajamas, and he wore slippers.

Zombie Blade Victor, on the other hand, wore his guild uniform. It had dark green and black stripes. The guild logo was sewn on the left chest of the shirt. It was an exquisitely forged skeletal curved cutlass. On top of it were the words “Zombie Blade” written in black. The members of this guild were not that special. There was nothing outstanding about them. They had the same short haircut and wore the same guild uniform. Their name had the same style too. They would either be called xx Assault or XX Victor.

Above the maple tree jungle, the bright moon shone coolly. Between the trees and the night, the killing had already started.

By now, the two had fought multiple times already, and one of them was obviously at a disadvantage.

“You must be joking me.” Zombie Blade Victor retreated as he picked up a polearm that had fallen on the ground. That was the weapon that was taken away from his grasp more than several seconds ago.

“I should be the one saying that.” While Uncle Worthless spoke, a cigarette was still dangling on his lips. “You are the number one fighter from Zombie Blade, and you are a man in the Top twenty combat stat ranking. However, why are you so weak in battle?”

“You...” Zombie Blade Victor’s face did not show off much emotion, but internally, his heart was both angered and shocked. He thought to himself, Initially, I just planned on queueing into a Killing Game as practice. Who knew I would run into this monster? How is this man just number five? That’s impossible. I have fought Lying Drunk before, and this Uncle Worthless is so much stronger than Lying Drunk.

“I have heard some rumors about your guild.” Uncle Worthless puffed out a smoke ring and said, “You guys are all ‘medicated,’ aren’t you?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Zombie Blade Victor said as he wiped away the fresh blood that gathered around the corner of his lips. While his opponent was in the mood to chat, he took the time to adjust his own breathing and to find an available opening.

Uncle Worthless, for his part, did not mind giving his opponent a break. He stood casually and continued to smoke as he commented, “Blade Zombie’s guild combat stat ranking is stabilized at number 5, and in the Top twenty player level ranking, you guys dominated most of the ranks. But as the top player from Zombie Blade, your actual combat ability is hugely surprising to me.” He scoffed once before taking another huge puff of the smoke. “It must be some kind of medicine that can suppress the Terror Points, right? It might not be difficult to keep it at zero, but the player should be able to keep it as low as possible. That way, for every scenario that your guild members have successfully completed, they will get a rating review of ‘Praiseworthy Courage’ and above, and from there, they can get more additional EXP from the extra reward.”

“Humph...be careful of what you say. We are living in a society that demands evidence and not baseless accusations.”

“Evidence? Is that really important?” Uncle Worthless said as he laughed. He then said in a lower tone, “I am just a freelancer earning my living off playing a game. Who will listen to me? Even if I see with my own two eyes your people taking the medicine before they get into the gaming hub, what can I do? None of what you guys did are technically illegal by law.” He shrugged. “A small character like myself has nothing going for me other than being slightly better than average at this game. On the other hand, for a big company like yours, if your horde of lawyers sends me some letters, you will easily force me into the corner to beg you for mercy. I know my limits. I know I am no match for big companies like you, and I do not have time to deal with people like you either.” His words were dripping with snarkiness. “The only way I can even survive fighting the likes of you is in the game itself...crushing you guys into meat patties and packing you up neatly in boxes to be shipped off.”

“Don’t push it!” Zombie Blade Victor shouted. He had gotten frustrated with such things. “I will make you see your mistake!” he roared loudly as the polearm shot out three rays of purplish lights that chased after his opponent. Uncle Worthless lifted his arm, and with a slight push of his palm, the energy that elicited was strong enough to form a wall of air to stop the purple lights in their trajectory.

“Looks like you have nothing new to show,” Uncle Worthless said. “It is time to get this over with.” With his decision made, Uncle Worthless prepared his skill. He took half a step forward and punched out a powerful and vicious palm strike. It dispersed the purple lights and rushed angrily at the spot where Zombie Blade Victor was standing.

“Humph... As expected, you fell for the trick.” The fact that no expression showed on Zombie Blade Victor’s face worked in his favor, because his opponent would not have been able to accurately tell what he was planning. At that moment, he used “Cloud Steps,” danced into the sky, and disappeared among the clouds.

Oh? The man is trying to escape? Uncle Worthless thought to himself. No. It is more likely that...

Phew!

The sound of the wind howling was quicker than the player’s thought. The polearm dropped from the top of Uncle Worthless’s left shoulder. The momentum of the weapon was strong enough to tear Uncle Worthless’ left arm right off his body.

The state of the battle was changed in that one move. The situation was looking worse for Uncle Worthless. Zombie Blade Victor used a simple movement skill that was highly effective to corner his opponent.

Or at least that was what he thought.

“Ouch... that does hurt,” Uncle Worthless said weakly as he turned to look at his left arm that dropped to the ground. He was still holding a cigarette in his left hand. “Such a waste of good cigarette.”

“Compared to the cigarette, you should be more worried about yourself!” Zombie Blade Victor turned his body around in the sky, the polearm whipped in an arc, and this time, Zombie Blade Victor was aiming for Uncle Worthless’ neck.

In a split second, Uncle Worthless made an action that confused his opponent. He did not evade or block, he just stood where he was, but his right hand swiftly moved to pick up his sunglasses and toss it away.

With a splat...the head rolled down to the floor.

However, Uncle Worthless’ ‘body’ that was missing his head and arm did not fall. Instead, behind the sunglasses, another complete and uninjured Uncle Worthless grew out of thin air.

“So how was the show? Was it interesting?” Uncle Worthless said as he reached his hand into his pajama pocket to light up another cigarette. He lit it up calmly for himself. “What kind of posture would you like as you are stuffed inside the paper box?”

Looking at his opponent who had recovered at full health, Zombie Blade Victor felt overwhelmed by deep despair. From the start of the battle until the trickery that he had used earlier, he had employed everything he had at his command. Every single time, his attacks would be neutralized by his enemy, who would use some strange and unknown tactic. Until then, Uncle Worthless still had not suffered any injuries.

The next second, Zombie Blade King forcibly disconnected from the gaming server.

Hearing the system announcement that rang in his ears, Uncle Worthless puffed out multiple smoke rings. He scoffed and said, “Forced disconnect...It might look like a way for a player to retain his last bit of pride, but in reality, that is something only a weakling would consider doing.”