Chapter 17 Collect
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Moist…
Sensation.
X was momentarily stunned, sensing something unusual in his embrace.
The person he was holding, his body seemed to be… flowing like water.
With the summer night breeze blowing gently, X lowered his head to look—
Crackle!!
Suddenly. Chu Feng, held in his arms, shattered into blue data fragments, dissipating with the wind.
Drip—
Lin Lan, lying on the floor, was startled, hearing Chu Feng’s gaming headset broadcasting:
【Strong desire to leave detected from the player just now, forced exit measures have been successfully initiated】
Chu Feng opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. Beside the bed was a photo wall with pictures of him and Xie Shiyu.
“Cousin!!” Lin Lan exclaimed excitedly. “You finally decided to come back! I pressed the [forced exit] button earlier, and it said your immersion depth was too deep to wake up, I was so scared!”
“Lin Lan.”
Chu Feng exhaled and patted his shoulder. “You’re talented. Come to my company in September, I’ll pay you a monthly salary of thirty thousand.”
“??! Cous… cousin, actually I didn’t do much, it was really X who saved you, I just… pressed the [forced exit] button and made a WeChat call, really… it’s nothing.”
“You pressed the exit button well, worth thirty thousand.”
Chu Feng got out of bed. If Lin Lan hadn’t pressed the exit button, he would have experienced social death in the game just now.
Lin Lan kindly poured a cup of hot water for his future boss Chu Feng. “Cousin, what happened in your dream? Why didn’t you wake up for so long?”
“The kindergarten was on fire.”
“…My goodness! And what about Older Brother Xie… is he okay?”
Chu Feng: “He’s fine, we saved everyone.”
Ding dong—
The mobile phone charging on the bedside table made a notification sound:
【Little Xie Illustrated Handbook】reminds you:
[Red Hat Little Xie]
[Squeaky Shoes Xie]
[Popsicle Xie]
[Water Gun Xie]
Have been successfully rescued by you, icons are lit up!
Chu Feng opened the Little Xie Illustrated Handbook on his phone. The four dark silhouettes on the magic book page had turned into four lively Little Shiyus.
“Wow! So cute!” Lin Lan also leaned in to look at the Little Xie Illustrated Handbook. “Hey, isn’t this one in the picture!”
Lin Lan pointed at the Little Xie holding a water gun in the guide, then pointed to the first photo on the picture wall:
Kindergarten sports day, 5-year-old Little Chu Feng and Little Shiyu both holding water guns, hand in hand looking at the camera, Little Shiyu with a cold expression, Little Chu Feng expressionless.
Click.
It became their first group photo.
“That’s not right.” Lin Lan suddenly realized. “Cousin, didn’t you meet Older Brother Xie when you were 7? How come there’s a photo from kindergarten?”
“Kindergarten doesn’t count as meeting.” Chu Feng looked up at the photo wall beside the bed. “He was in the next class, and I didn’t know his name. He suddenly splashed me with water at sports day.”
“Huh?”
At that time, 5-year-old Little Chu Feng was very angry and immediately splashed back with the water gun! Drenched Little Shiyu from head to toe!
The two 5-year-old kids stood on the playground, drenched in water, tense. They quickly attracted the attention of the teacher.
“And then?”
“And then the teacher made us make up.” Chu Feng said. “My mom even took a picture to remember.”
“Huh? So why did Older Brother Xie splash you with a water gun back then? You didn’t even know each other.”
“I don’t know.”
“Um? Cousin, didn’t you ask later?”
“No.”
Chu Feng thought for a moment. Really, it had been over twenty years, and he seemed to have never asked Xie Shiyu why he splashed him with a water gun back then.
—After all, it was something that happened when they were 5 years old. Chu Feng wouldn’t hold a grudge over a childish water gun fight with Xie Shiyu.
Lin Lan chuckled. “I didn’t expect Older Brother Xie to tease people when he was little.”
Chu Feng furrowed his brows lightly, feeling something was off. Xie Shiyu wasn’t the type of mischievous kid who deliberately teased others to attract attention. He was a bit introverted and isolated by his classmates in kindergarten, with no friends to play with. Xie Shiyu always sat alone with his water gun in the sandbox and never bothered anyone.
—It was indeed strange for him to suddenly splash someone from a neighboring class with a water gun.
Chu Feng looked at the photo, from twenty-four years ago. Even if he felt strange now, Xie Shiyu couldn’t answer his question anymore.
“I didn’t expect that your first encounter with Older Brother Xie wasn’t very pleasant.” Lin Lan looked at the 5-year-old Little Chu Feng in the photo, with his chubby face, writing all over it: I’m not happy!
“It wasn’t that bad.” Chu Feng said. “Later, we teamed up for a ball game and won first place.”
There was a back-to-back two-person ball game activity at the kindergarten sports day. Two kids formed a team, holding the small ball between their backs, and ran to the finish line together. This competition had the most abundant rewards: free coupons for 50 popsicles from the school store!
Little Chu Feng wanted it badly. He ran the fastest and had the best balance and coordination. Other kids in the class came to him to form a team. Little Chu Feng was afraid they would slow him down but didn’t want to say it, so he hid on the side and didn’t participate, watching the prize with longing eyes.
Then he saw Little Shiyu also looking at the popsicle coupons with longing eyes.
The two of them looked at each other, and without planning, they decided to participate in the competition together.
—Without any practice, they won first place on their first try, and they split the prize. Little Chu Feng was very happy and forgave Little Shiyu for splashing him with a water gun earlier. After school, they would walk home together.
Chu Feng clicked on the water gun Little Xie in the guide, wanting to ask the 5-year-old Little Xie why he splashed him back then.
The virtual Little Xie in the game couldn’t answer his question and only popped up a floating window:
Mood: 90
State: Happy
Likelihood of being targeted: Reduced from 10% to 1%
Chu Feng sighed and let go of the unsolvable question. He clicked on each of the kindergarten Little Xs one by one, confirming that the likelihood of being targeted for each of them had decreased to 1%.
“The likelihood has decreased a lot!” Lin Lan exclaimed. “So they won’t encounter danger as often in the future, right?”
Chu Feng nodded. Danger would first go for the Little Xies with a likelihood of 10%.
“So if… Cousin, if you can light up all of them, Older Brother Xie won’t encounter danger in Dream City anymore! Then you can play without worry!”
“En.”
Lin Lan, full of motivation, said, “How many have you lit up now, Cousin?”
Chu Feng flipped through the pages of the Illustrated Handbook and showed Lin Lan. After the last bus explosion, he lit up a few senior-year Little Xies and the bus driver Little Xie, and this time, the fire lit up the kindergarten Little Xies.
【Ding——The Little Xie Illustrated Handbook has detected that you have lit up all the Little Xs in the “Kindergarten” area, congratulations on unlocking the special column classification privilege!】
The Illustrated Handbook lit up with a bookmark-style classification label on the left side, the [Kindergarten] label shining with a golden light.
The remaining five unlit labels were grayish silver: [Elementary School], [Middle School], [High School], [University], [Adult].
Chu Feng clicked into each one to check. The [Elementary School], [Middle School], and [University] labels all showed dark silhouettes, none of them lit up. [High School] had a few Little Xs lit up, and only the [Adult] section had one, the bus driver Little X.
Lit up progress: 7%
“Oh… only collected a few so far,” Lin Lan sighed. “It’s like collecting the shards of the Shikon Jewel.”
Chu Feng: “……”
Lin Lan: “It’s okay! The Shikon Jewel was eventually collected too. Cousin, you can do it too!”
Chu Feng: …….
“These two accidents were relatively small, so there are fewer lit up.” Chu Feng looked at the unlit black Little X silhouettes and said, “If there’s a large-scale event, it should boost the progress a bit.”
Lin Lan thought to himself, “Holy cr*p! Explosions and fires are still considered minor incidents! What would a large-scale event look like? If successful, it could indeed light up a bunch of Xies, but if it fails, wouldn’t it be a disaster? The greater the profit, the higher the risk!”
But the way his cousin said it was so calm and casual, as if saying 1+1=2, absolutely no chance of failure. Lin Lan chose to keep quiet.
Click.
Chu Feng, who had a collector’s obsession, took a screenshot of the currently lit up Little Xs, opened his phone’s photo album, and created a new album called “Guide Progress,” dragging the screenshot into it.
Lin Lan’s sharp eyes noticed something unusual in the album list:
“Hey! Cousin, you still saved a photo of Great God X!”
Chu Feng paused.
—During the last bus explosion, he and Lin Lan were on the player forum looking for solutions to the freeze bomb, and they happened to witness the fans’ heated argument over X’s photos.
X’s eyes looked a bit like Xie Shiyu’s.
Chu Feng: “Just saved it casually.”
Lin Lan glanced at it. This photo was clearly lying in the “My Favorites” album, which was built into the phone and specifically designed to store photos that users had favorited.
—His cousin was being stubborn.
Lin Lan thought to himself but didn’t dare to say it out loud. He changed the subject, “Cousin, are you hungry? Let’s have some sour and spicy fish! The takeout is still on the table.”
***
After dinner, Chu Feng laid alone in his bedroom, picking up the game headset…
Dr. Xie should still be waiting for him to return.
Chu Feng picked up the headset, then put it down.
Dr. Xie had been too much today, and Chu Feng was a little annoyed with him.
—If it were all Xie Shiyus, Chu Feng wouldn’t mind however he played. But today, there was clearly someone else present!
Right in front of X…
Chu Feng sulked under the covers for a while.
Turning over, he saw the photo wall.
—Suddenly, the feeling was like a burst balloon, deflating with a whoosh.
He actually found himself genuinely angry at a game character.
Chu Feng felt it was ridiculous, staying in Dream City for too long, he was starting to lose touch with reality.
—The real Xie Shiyu was long gone.
Dr. Xie was not a living person; he was a character sliced out by the game system, with no independent consciousness. He was just like an intelligent NPC, disguising himself as a lively character. All his actions and words were pre-set, with internal programming rules.
Chu Feng felt he should change his mindset. He thought about Dr. Xie’s characteristics.
Dr. Xie was alone in the West City, where most of the Little Xies were minors. Chu Feng usually went to the West City during the day, just to visit the kindergarten and elementary school Little Xies before leaving. He mostly spent his nights in the East City, playing with various adult Little Xies, rarely meeting Dr. Xie.
Occasionally, when they did meet, he would be made to suffer greatly.
Dr. Xie would also provocatively challenge other adult Little Xs, intentionally leaving marks on him, so that when Chu Feng returned to the East City, the adult Little Xs would be furious.
Last time, the CEO Little Xie from the East City invited him to watch a movie at 1:00 PM. Chu Feng was almost at the cinema when the system suddenly prompted that the water gun Little Xie from the West City was playing in the water and caught a cold, with a fever!
Chu Feng immediately rushed to the West City, took the little Xie to the hospital, and stood up the CEO Little X.
Hospital visits inevitably involved fees.
After paying for a few hours, Chu Feng felt dizzy and was being taken care of by Dr. Xie. When he opened his eyes again, it was already dusk.
The movie had ended long ago.
CEO Little X’s mood value: 4 points
In the evening, Chu Feng had to rush back to the CEO Little Xie’s villa in the East City to appease him.
The CEO Little X was very angry: “Where were you all afternoon?”
Chu Feng didn’t dare to tell the whole truth, just said that the kindergarten Little X was sick, so he went to check on him.
The CEO Little Xie’s expression softened slightly.
When they moved their battlefield to the king-size bed, and started undressing…
The CEO Little Xie suddenly stared at Chu Feng, his eyes terrifying.
A line of text was written on the inside of Chu Feng’s thigh:
Time of visit: 13:05
—Movie start time: 13:00
The smooth and confident strokes of those words seemed to be mocking the CEO.
That night, the CEO Little X almost drove his Lamborghini to the West City to demolish the hospital! Chu Feng managed to stop him.
Could it be…
Chu Feng laid in bed and thought:
Did Dr. Xie provoke X as if he were another Little Xie?
—Why?
Chu Feng opened his phone album – My Favorites and stared at the partial photo of X’s eyes.
Indeed… they looked a lot like Xie Shiyu’s.
But X’s face was always covered in bandages, and his true appearance couldn’t be seen.
Chu Feng suddenly felt curious and wanted to see X’s appearance with his own eyes. Since this person’s eyes looked so much like Xie Shiyu’s, would the other features also resemble him?
He opened WeChat, intending to chat with X…
Ding—
A notification from the Little Xie Illustrated Handbook suddenly popped up at the top of his phone.
Chu Feng’s heart tightened, and he immediately closed WeChat to check on X’s condition:
[Red Hat Little Xie]
[Squeaky Shoes Little Xie]
[Water Gun Little Xie]
Mood: -2
Reason: Got bitten by mosquitoes
[Popsicle Little Xie]
Mood: -3
Reason: Mosquito bites haven’t healed yet
Chu Feng felt so sorry. Why wouldn’t these mosquitoes just die? They kept biting his 5-year-old Little Xies!
Ding—
Suddenly, his phone popped up with a new notification from the Little Xie Illustrated Handbook:
[Dr. Xie]
Mood: -4
Reason: Got bitten by mosquitoes unexpectedly.
Chu Feng: …
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