…Huh?
Did the “Venerated Skeleton” just strike up a conversation?
Has this conversation happened before?
Longjing Tea was a little surprised. He looked around and discovered that other people were as surprised as he was.
That means this hasn’t happened before.
Strange, how did this conversation trigger?
Longjing Tea pondered in his heart. However, a kind and convincing smile appeared on his face immediately. “We have a little problem, and we want to ask you for help…”
“Oh! Please go ahead.” The young man said confidently, “I am free today!”
“…Oh!” The white-haired young man was a little nervous when he heard this.
He hastily wiped his hand on his pants, shook hands with Longjing Tea, and gave a slight bow. “Hello, Officer Longjing Tea! I’m Midas… Um, a student.”
…Midas? So that’s your real name, Mr. Bone?
Longjing Tea frowned.
This name is too familiar to him…
—Hand of Midas!
The name comes from a king in Greek mythology who asked for a golden touch and turned his daughter into gold. This is also the origin of the word “golden touch”, though I couldn’t recall the other details.
Damn, I wish I have a search engine now…
Longjing Tea vaguely realized that there seemed to be some secret hidden in the real name of the Venerated Skeleton.
So, is this what he looked like before becoming a deity?
No, no, definitely not.
Before Mr. Bone becomes a deity, he is a giant. Giants not only have an average height of more than three meters but also have only one eye.
However, Midas is clearly just an ordinary human being.
He even looks a bit skinny and frail.
Is he really the Venerated Skeleton?
Such self-doubting thoughts popped up in Longjing Tea’s mind again.
Longjing Tea said so to test the NPC.
He was trying to gauge whether these “NPCs” knew that people go mad and attack each other during nightfall.
However, the young man showed no response at all.
He just had a “fuck, I seem to have forgotten to do my homework” expression on his face, “Speaking of this, I was originally here to find my tutor!”
“Oh, will that take up your time?” Longjing Tea asked with a seemingly concerned look.
The young man shook his head with a pained expression, “Never mind, it’s already too late… But let’s still head towards the city. This really isn’t the place for a conversation.”
“Alright, but… what are you doing here? Did you come back from outside the city?”
Longjing Tea continued to probe for more information.
Unexpectedly, this time, he struck a jackpot.
“What’s outside the city?”
The young man turned around suspiciously, “What is [outside the city]…?”
Longjing Tea’s pupils shrank slightly.
An inexplicable and unexplained sense of fear made him swallow his saliva.
The players didn’t have motorcycles now, so they wasted a lot of time walking back. By the time they finally settled in a coffee shop, the sky had already begun to take on a faint red hue — it was sunset.
On the journey, Longjing Tea also dug out information that gave him a headache.
The white-haired and thin young man suspected to be “the Venerated Skeleton who lost his memory” seemed to have no concept of “what lay outside the city” at all.
According to the things mentioned in his narration, all the people in this city had never left the city—in other words, they had no concept of “things outside this city” at all.
This was a fragment of the world with “only one city”.
When asked about history, Midas was utterly clueless. He had never studied it… and he didn’t really care about what the future held either.
While this world followed a coherent world logic, it was like a fragment cut out of a world… It was even the opposite of a typical nightmare. In regular nightmares, each being was completely real, and there was even a chance one might have realized it was just a dream.
But here, everyone was used to this city.
In this real world, everyone was not real enough.
When Longjing Tea asked, “What are you going to do?” the young man answered without hesitation — he wanted to show his thesis to his tutor.
But as for the specific paper, he wasn’t willing to show it to the players.
As for what would happen after showing the thesis to the tutor, Longjing Tea didn’t know.
When Longjing Tea asked him what he planned to do in the future, he also looked blank.
—Utopia.
It didn’t take long for the players to realize what this place was.
There was no distinction between “outside” and “inside”, nor between “war” and “destruction”. Even the concepts of “past” and “future” were blurry. Details about the past were vague, and there was no hope for the future.
These were truly people who were “unbelievably happy” and “live in the moment”.
Another thought surfaced in Longjing Tea’s mind.
Are they real people?
This is too much like a program.
Soon, as the players waited in silence, night fell.
After the sunset, it suddenly became eerily quiet… But for a moment, Longjing Tea couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had changed.
“Shall we go and check on the others first?” Longjing Tea asked several other people.
Delicious Wind Goose nodded. He said in a deep voice, “Let’s go find that centaur first. If she hasn’t gone crazy, we should be able to find more clues…”
“What about Midas?”
“Why don’t you let Dove look after him? Dove has a sharp nose.” Delicious Wind Goose smiled and touched Dove, whose real name was Chocolate, “If necessary, she can also locate us through olfactory senses…”
He didn’t even get to finish his sentence.
Dove suddenly opened her mouth wide—her mouth expanded six times its size, biting off and swallowing the unsuspecting Delicious Goose’s left hand and the upper half of his body.
“Dove?!” Longjing Tea was shocked.
When exactly?
And didn’t Dove say everything is fine?
There was no reply to Longing Tea’s question.
In the blink of an eye, he was the only player left.
Dove didn’t even speak.
“Hoo hoo hoo hoo…“
A menacing growl echoed deep in her throat.
Her pupils flashed with a beast-like gleam.
Suddenly, a shimmer spread throughout the coffee shop — it was as if trees drawn with crayons were rising from the walls around, and the lights dimmed.
Dove jumped high and landed between the branches drawn by a crayon.
The cold moonlight shone on her.
Those colorful fur had never looked more monster-like than this.
Suddenly, the cold air scattered from the floor and then gathered.
The invisible cold air condensed into a lotus flower, which gathered quickly, like the petals of a lotus flower closing.
The girl with long pink-purple hair and a delicate face like a doll calmly opened the door of the coffee shop.
The next moment—the “monster Dove” turned into an ice sculpture and slowly disappeared as if being wiped away by some invisible force.
Along with its disappearance, illusory walls like witch barriers came about.
The surrounding environment had returned to the coffee shop again.
“Celecia…” Elle blurted in surprise.
Hearing this, Celecia was slightly taken aback.
Then, she showed a somewhat ambiguous smile and narrowed her eyes, “Call me Captain, Little Elle…”
“—You should know where we are, right?” Her voice was low and a little dangerous.
However, she was at least open to communication.
Elle said anxiously, “This is…”
The door of the coffee shop opened again before Elle finished her sentence.
“Celecia.” The middle-aged man frowned, “Do you still have a room for me?”
“Oh, yes, teacher!” Celecia turned her head respectfully and smiled from the bottom of her heart at the middle-aged man.
It was a sincere, attached, and even fanatical smile.
The figure of the person coming in made Longjing Tea’s pupils shrink slightly.
On his right thumb, he wore an ice ring that radiated an eerie coldness, and he held a heavy cane in his hand. His face remained expressionless, his eyes cold, and his demeanor as rigid as a puppet.
His figure and appearance seem somewhat similar to the “Winter Insurgent” Vladmir but much younger than that old man.
He had turned into a middle-aged man in his 40’s or 50’s.
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