The Trial Game of Life

[Character]

No. K27216: Tang Cuo

Character Points: 30

Strength: 16

Intelligence: 4

Charm: 0

Rating: A 

HP: 98

[Survival is not easy, please never stop trying.]

The first thing Tang Cuo did upon returning to Yong Ye City was adding the points. 22 points were added to his Strength, 6 points to Intelligence to balance out his attributes, then the remaining 2 points to Charm, just to see what the actual effect might be.

After that, the rewards he had earned would be the highlights.

[Holy Light Shield]

Classification: Skill

Quality: Rare

Description: Complementary skill of the [Sword of Judgment]. Use the Holy Light of Judgement to activate the shield for 15 seconds.

[Greenvines Badge]

Classification: Equipment

Quality: High

Description: A badge awarded to the core members of the Greenvines Alliance, engraved with the skill ‘Teleportation’. The Greenvines Alliance is a very humane organisation that tailors an exclusive badge for each member, but obviously, whether it’s the Luo Island headquarters or Theodore’s brother, the current Duke, they both believe that this life-saving skill ‘Teleportation’ is most suitable for him. ‘Teleportation’ allows the player to instantly move to any place within 100 meters from him, without any restriction. Cooldown time is 24 hours.

It was another skill with a cooldown time of 24 hours. The teleportation distance wasn’t too large, so it was no surprise that the Quality was only High. But ‘Teleportation’ was indeed a skill that could save lives, which would be great during emergencies.

[Farewell Letter]

Classification: Mission Item

Quality: Normal

Description: Bazz’s farewell letter to Theodore and Lancelot.

Before Tang Cuo exited the dungeon, he put the farewell letter in his pocket and unexpectedly brought it out. After the two rounds of this serial mission, he already gathered several mission items in his inventory, but he had no idea when he would use them.

After checking the rewards, Tang Cuo walked to the window and looked out.

The number of people at East Cross Street had increased. Many people were coming and going along the cobblestone street while many were talking by the roadside, their faces a lot less anxious and noticeably calmer.

The safe zone had slowly but finally played its role.

However, at one point, the population of East Cross Street would become saturated, and the people who originally lived here would leave. East Cross Street was just the beginning, a buffer zone for their eventual fate.

After a few glances, Tang Cuo stepped back and prepared to take a shower. This time, the dungeon was very short yet the missions were tightly squeezed together. He and Jin Cheng never had a good rest, let alone any time to wash themselves.

But as soon as he took off his coat, Jin Cheng came in through the window.

“Is there no door in my room?” Tang Cuo asked sincerely.

“Don’t you see that the window is closer?” Jin Cheng released his hands, leaned on the window sill and said: “And isn’t this Mr. Crow hating on you? It’s been so long and your window still hasn’t been repaired, so he can just easily walk through it any time he wants.”

Is that so? Aren’t you both birds of the same feather?

Tang Cuo resisted the urge to roll his eyes. As he was about to grab the hem of his shirt to take it off, he asked: “Don’t you like jumping windows? Now please jump back to your room. I’m going to take a shower.”

Jin Cheng raised his eyebrows: “We’re both men, why can’t I see you shower?”

“Then you go shower first.”

“I don’t want to shower now.”

Where is your obsession with cleanliness? It just suddenly disappears again, doesn’t it?

Tang Cuo really wanted to beat him up.

Jin Cheng finally came to a compromise: “Okay, I’ll stop teasing you now, you seem to want to beat me up. I have to go to the Ruby Bar and won’t be back for a while. You should rest first, don’t wait for me.”

Who wants to wait for you?

Tang Cuo remained expressionless as he watched Jin Cheng leave. Unexpectedly, after jumping back on the window sill, Jin Cheng turned around and asked with a smile: “Should I bring you a curtain?”

Tang Cuo: “I’d have to trouble you then.”

Jin Cheng: “You’re welcome.”

Tang Cuo: “…” 

Then his curtain-buying representative was finally gone.

Tang Cuo took a shower for ten minutes. While other people washed away their exhaustion with a shower, he took in even more exhaustion with a shower. Done with washing himself, he didn’t blow his hair and just directly slumped to his bed, and soon fell asleep.

When he woke up again, it was already five hours later.

Jin Cheng was in his room again.

Tang Cuo sat up hugging the quilt, his hair messy, his eyes unable to open wide and just squinting at Jin Cheng. Turning around to see him like this, Jin Cheng had to ask: “Did you go berserk before going to bed?”

Tang Cuo thought Jin Cheng was noisy, so he simply buried his face back into the quilt.

Jin Cheng felt that the messy hair on the back of his head was like a ball of cotton candy.

After a while, Tang Cuo was finally fully awake. He lifted the quilt and casually got out of bed, then casually smoothed his hair with water, then glanced at the curtain that had been put on and thanked Jin Cheng silently in his heart, but he refused to speak.

Jin Cheng kept waiting for him to speak, but he got impatient eventually and asked: “What are you annoyed about again?”

Tang Cuo still said nothing.

Jin Cheng raised his eyebrows, but at this moment, he spotted Tang Cuo’s slightly pale face. A flash of light flickered in his mind: “Your low blood sugar is back again?”

Tang Cuo nodded, staring at Jin Cheng with his remarkably bright eyes. Then he took out his box of chocolate beans, shook it in front of Jin Cheng and put it on the small coffee table ―  It was empty.

“Fine fine fine, I’ll buy you some food, is it okay?”

“Okay.”

Jin Cheng had no other choice but to get up and head out, buying some soy milk and steamed buns from the nearest stall. When he came back, he wasn’t surprised to see Tang Cuo collapse in the chair, cosplaying as a barely breathing corpse.

“Get up.” Jin Cheng really couldn’t do anything to him. This was his disciple, the one that he had to take care of. But seeing Tang Cuo eating what he bought with his cheeks bulging up, Jin Cheng still felt a pretty amazing sense of accomplishment.

He was so happy that he even helped Tang Cuo put the straw into his soy milk.

“This time we received quite a lot of rewards and points. We can level up to Zone E with a few more dungeons.” Jin Cheng said.

“How many points do I need to level up from Zone F to Zone E?” Tang Cuo asked.

“The total number of points added and not added to your attributes have to reach 100.” Jin Cheng said, and suddenly remembered: “You don’t seem to know the specific requirements to level up to each zone?”

Tang Cuo shrugged. He was still a newcomer in Zone F, so there was no point knowing those things.

“Levelling up is actually a long process for ordinary players. Although Yong Ye City is a chaotic place with no sun, it has pubs, department stores and even movie theaters. Some people are used to living here, so they gradually become numb and don’t want to leave. They’re like the low-income households in Yong Ye City. They just take the initiative to enter the mission wall once a month to avoid triggering forced missions, then turn in points as required. If they’re lucky, they can live like this forever.”

Tang Cuo remembered the first person he met in Yong Ye City, Zhang Xing.

Jin Cheng continued: “For those that try their best to climb up, they look down on these idiotic people, but those who are content with the status quo find those who work hard to be ridiculous and don’t understand why they have to work so hard. Yong Ye City always emphasises on survival, but few people understand the true meaning of ‘survival’.”

Tang Cuo asked: “Do you?”

Jin Cheng shrugged. He wasn’t a philosopher, but there was one thing he was curious about, so he stretched his legs and leaned back on the chair: “You’ve been here for more than half a month and gone through a few dungeons. Why haven’t you asked me why I don’t give my points to you so you could just add more to your attributes?”

Tang Cuo asked back: “If it was beneficial to give me the points, why wouldn’t you take the initiative to do so yourself?”

Jin Cheng: “Your logic is really flawless.”

Jin Cheng didn’t know whether to thank Tang Cuo for his trust or to be angry with this little bastard for his bluntness. He thought for a moment and explained: “Points can be traded, but points that didn’t come from dungeons couldn’t be added. They could only be used in Yong Ye City. It can also be used to level up, but the higher you move up, the harder the dungeons become, so it’s never a good thing to just blindly level up.”

As his instructor, Jin Cheng still hoped that Tang Cuo would fight hard but steadily.

“What about you?” Tang Cuo asked.

“Me?” Jin Cheng blinked, all innocently. “For those who are punished back to Zone F, their previous points may be used, but not for levelling up. If I want to move up zones, I have to earn them again. This is the punishment.”

Tang Cuo sucked on the soy milk, continuing to stare at Jin Cheng with his remarkably bright eyes.

Jin Cheng looked back at him and neither of them spoke in this small room. It was completely silent. Being stared at like this, Jin Cheng suddenly remembered about their time back in the camp. Tang Cuo, who was often beaten to a pulp, would always stare straight at you with those unyielding eyes, like a little tiger.

I suddenly feel the urge to rub this little tiger’s fur.

“Tell me, what is it that you want?”

“I’m out of potion.” 

“Where are your points?”

“They’ve all been added.”

Apart from giving him points, Jin Cheng had no other choice. He swiped 100 points to Tang Cuo on the spot, then looked at the pathetic dozens of points left in his account. He suddenly felt like he was back to the beginning of everything.

But as to why he was so broke, there was a good reason for it.

“I got the latest release list from the Ruby Bar. Miao Miao is too miserable, he did nothing but still hasn’t been released yet. Judging from what the people who got out of prison said, the warden got all excited and stimulated and wanted to play games with them every day.”

“Leng Miao must be the first to seek revenge on you when he gets out.”

“That’s because you don’t understand Miao Miao, he won’t act rashly so quickly. On the contrary, the people of Heaven’s Will won’t give up. Even if Chong Yanzhang doesn’t want to do so, his underlings will feel itchy.”

Tang Cuo still clearly remembered the strategist of Heaven’s Will, Jiang He, and the man who blatantly disagreed with Jiang He, but he didn’t know that man’s name. As he was thinking about those men, Jin Cheng brought up their names.

“But Jiang He is about to break away from Heaven’s Will. The one who attacked you last time was Chen Liu, a veteran in Heaven’s Will. He was originally Chong Yanzhang’s most trusted right-hand man, but then Jiang He came. The more Chong Yanzhang relied on him, the more bad-tempered Chen Liu became. Eventually, the two’s conflicts will be irreconcilable and Chong Yanzhang must choose one of them.”

Tang Cuo thought for a moment and said: “He’ll choose Chen Liu.”

“That’s right.” Jin Cheng smiled: “If he picks Jiang He, he’ll get a smart strategist, but lose most of Heaven’s Will. Heaven’s Will has too many veteran players, so even if Chong Yanzhang knows that Chen Liu is arrogant, once he gives up Chen Liu, there’s bound to be a backlash. Chong Yanzhang may look tough, but he still has no guts to bear the loss of his gang breaking apart.”

Hearing this, Tang Cuo asked: “You went to the Ruby Bar just to ask about this?”

Jin Cheng shook his head, and a stern expression suddenly cast over his face: “Do you remember the little girl Chi Yan was looking for? Someone confirms that she’s still in prison, in the same cell with Jiang He and Leng Miao. But something is strange. She’s just a teenage girl who died of cancer, yet she hasn’t been released until now. Although the warden is twisted, he isn’t a man with no standards at all.” 

Tang Cuo frowned: “You think there’s a problem with her?”

Jin Cheng: “It’s not ‘I think’, I’m certain about it. You saved her during the Wheel of Fortune, right?”

Tang Cuo didn’t deny it.

Jin Cheng continued: “In Yong Ye City, kindness is cheap. I hope you’ll be more cautious when you see her next time. Remember what I told you ― old people and children are the most frightening people here.”

Tang Cuo stayed silent. He actually didn’t remember the little girl’s face anymore, only her bald head. Perhaps he had made a mistake in his judgment of her at the very beginning.

Looking back carefully, the little girl’s gown seemed to be stained with a few drops of blood.

But no matter what might happen later, it was something that hadn’t happened yet, and Tang Cuo wasn’t used to worrying about this sort of thing. Throwing the empty soy milk cup into the trash can, he walked to the window and opened the curtain.

“Hm.” The cobblestone street downstairs was still the same as before.

Jin Cheng walked over, stood by his side and looked down with him: “Speaking of which, I also asked about one other thing.”

Tang Cuo tilted his head: “What was it?”

Jin Cheng relaxed his expression, folded his arms and leaned against the window sill: “About [Kingdom Hidden The Moonlight]. It costs me hundreds of points to get the intelligence about that serial dungeon, and I finally found that someone had gone through it before.”

“Who?”

“Lin Yandong.”

Tang Cuo searched in his memory for a few seconds and asked: “The boss of that psycho Miao Qi?”

Jin Cheng nodded: “Old people and children are the most frightening. ‘Old people’ refers to Lin Yandong. But he’s different from an average old man. I say he’s old just because he has entered Yongye since very long ago. It’s rare to see people older than him in Zone A.”

“When did he die?”

“1949.”

Seventy years had passed between 1949 and 2019, and there are still people who’ve lived in Yong Ye City since that time? Tang Cuo was a little surprised, and also a little curious what kind of person this man from a previous era might be.

Jin Cheng continued: “The way Lin Yandong triggered the mission seems to be different from yours. His mission wasn’t serial, but a single mission. Also, the intelligence says he brought something out from the dungeon. Maybe we can visit him for once. This serial dungeon is too big, and it’ll definitely be harder to clear later.”

Tang Cuo had no objection and simply listened to Jin Cheng.

In fact, he was still a bit stuck in the story of the dungeon, because the people in the dungeon were too real, as if they were no different from the players downstairs.

“Do you think the deaths of Lancelot and Theodore have something to do with Bazz?” He asked suddenly.

“Who knows.” Jin Cheng shrugged. He caught a glimpse of the unyielding hair on the back of Tang Cuo’s head, which had been pressed down with water but had now risen again. Unable to help it, he stretched out one hand and touched it.

In the end, he even commented: “Next time you should dry your hair before going to sleep.”

Tang Cuo’s face turned dark: “I don’t have a hair dryer.”

Jin Cheng: “Can’t I buy it for you?”

Tang Cuo: “Then you can put your hand down.”

Jin Cheng: “Oh.”

Today, Jin Cheng’s mood suddenly became a little complicated.

The translator has something to say: A quick summary of this chapter:

• Jin Cheng became someone’s sugar daddy
• Jin Cheng bought someone a curtain
• Jin Cheng delivered food for someone and even felt proud about it
• Jin Cheng couldn’t help playing with someone’s hair
• In short, this is a chapter about Jin Cheng spiralling down a path of no return…