Chapter 9: Pretending Not to Know Him
The road back to Dragonbone Town from the herb field included a secluded stretch of forest path.
Hardly anyone passed through here at this hour.
It was the perfect place to make a move.
The players had first spotted Dong Li when he stopped to read the notice outside the Trial Grounds. But when he headed toward the herb field afterward, they temporarily held back since people often passed through that area.
Orange-tier weapon materials had an extremely low drop rate.
A single piece could sell for at least fifty thousand star credits.
With the strength of their group, they could grind dungeons for three straight months and still not see one drop.
Before they made their move, one of the others had asked, “You’re sure he’s a newbie? You didn’t even manage to add him as a friend.”
Without being game friends, they couldn’t see Dong Li’s level.
And why would a newbie have an orange-tier weapon material?
He probably wasn’t even high enough level to enter the dungeons where those materials dropped.
“Of course I’m sure. You think I can’t recognize a newbie?” the player replied. “I followed him around for a while that day. He wandered all over the place and went into every shop he saw. What else would he be?”
As for the valuable orange-tier material, maybe the “friend” Dong Li had mentioned gave it to him.
Or maybe he was simply rich.
The game was wildly popular. They’d encountered every kind of player imaginable.
Either way, if they let this chance slip away, they might never get another one.
None of the four were worried about revenge either.
Two of them hadn’t even bothered wearing masks.
As long as they carefully kept their kill count below the threshold for becoming red-named, they would be fine. Later, they could head to Asura City and wash off some of their kill value.
“You’re not even Level 20 yet, are you?”
When Dong Li continued ignoring them, one of the players scoffed.
“If you don’t want to hand it over, fine. Beg me nicely, and I’ll make your deaths quick.”
They had prepared everything in advance and only revealed themselves after Dong Li stepped into the binding trap.
The trap wasn’t their only precaution.
A talisman had also activated, blocking communications and blurring the area from outside view.
Once Dong Li died, there would be a two-second delay before he was sent away. During that window, they would immediately revive him with a skill—
then kill him again.
Even if someone nearby noticed something strange, they wouldn’t be able to enter.
Dong Li, however, didn’t even look at them.
He showed no fear or panic whatsoever.
Instead, he lowered his head as though busy with something.
He loosened the collar of his coat just a little and whispered,
“Can you beat them?”
Heidan didn’t quite hear him.
It thought Dong Li was telling it not to go out and eat anyone.
After eating those pills earlier, it had recovered quite a bit.
It could tell that Dong Li’s pills were delicious and full of energy.
Rongrong, the fox spirit, was clearly strong.
But Dong Li himself seemed…
kind of weak.
And then there was Yuanbao, who was always sleepy and useless-looking.
If Heidan didn’t help, what if Dong Li got bullied?
Thanks to Dong Li, it hadn’t died this time.
It had already decided it wanted to stay by Dong Li’s side instead of going back to its old territory.
Seeing Heidan tilt its head in confusion, Dong Li tried again.
“Um… can you eat them?”
Eat?
Heidan’s eyes instantly lit up.
Eat!
Yuanbao glanced at it and made no attempt to stop it, settling comfortably back down.
The players had already run out of patience.
“Quit wasting time,” one of them urged. “Just get it over with.”
The leader raised his long saber.
Electric currents crackled along its razor-sharp edge.
But just before he attacked, all four players sensed something was wrong.
A fluctuation similar to mental energy.
Demonic energy from an unknown source…
[Attention]
All four interfaces chimed at once.
[Demonic energy detected at coordinates (80, 161). Concentration: Level 5.]
They froze.
This was—
Once a player earned the recognition of a regional runestone, they would receive an advance warning whenever a high-level demonic-beast boss appeared nearby.
But around the herb field…
Wait.
Those coordinates were—
The instant the alert appeared, an enormous black shadow rapidly expanded.
The binding trap shattered under its growing body.
“ROAR!”
A hideous giant beast opened its crimson eyes and brought one massive paw down toward its targets.
“TAOTIE! IT’S THE TAOTIE!”
“Why the hell is it here?!”
“Drop the barrier! Hurry—”
Meanwhile, Dong Li slipped away as fast as he could, terrified that he and Yuanbao might get caught in the attack.
He barely made it behind a tree before cautiously poking his head out again.
The fight was already over.
“Whoa…”
Dong Li stared in amazement.
“You’re so strong!”
In reality, these four players were far weaker than the groups that normally hunted the Taotie.
Heidan hadn’t even needed to use its Domain.
With the targets taken care of, the enormous beast rapidly shrank.
A moment later, Heidan was sitting on the ground again, licking its mouth.
Not enough.
A few more would’ve been nice.
—
At one of the game’s respawn points, all four players were dead, waiting for their cooldowns to end.
“What the hell? Why did the Taotie show up there?”
“Another bug? Just our damn luck…”
“Fuck! I lost a level!”
“Let’s hurry back as soon as we respawn. That newbie definitely died too.”
The beast had appeared so suddenly that they had been too busy defending themselves to notice where Dong Li had gone.
But there was no need to wonder.
He had obviously died too.
The game had more than ten respawn points, so it wasn’t strange that Dong Li hadn’t appeared at the same one.
The moment their cooldown ended, the four players left the respawn point and rushed back to where they’d died.
Dong Li was gone.
So was the Taotie.
Even their traces had disappeared completely.
The items the four had dropped were still lying on the ground.
Fortunately, they were all common junk. Even if someone had passed by, no one would have bothered picking them up.
They had no idea what Dong Li might have dropped.
After searching the area, they found no orange-tier weapon material.
“Lucky bastard,” one player spat through gritted teeth. “Where’d the Taotie go? How the hell did it show up at exactly that moment?”
The more they thought about it, the stranger the coincidence seemed.
But demonic-beast bosses in every region were usually solitary.
The moment they saw a person, they attacked indiscriminately.
A player or NPC capable of controlling and commanding a demonic-beast boss?
They had never heard of anything like that.
And if someone were abusing a bug to do something this outrageous, the game would detect it within half a day and permanently ban the account.
The four lingered for a while before leaving in frustration, planning to report the bug.
—
Meanwhile, Dong Li was already hurrying back toward town.
He had taken advantage of the empty surroundings to scoop up Heidan and quietly slip away.
Heidan was a demonic beast.
Players aside, if other NPCs discovered it, there would probably be trouble.
Dong Li still remembered the notice outside the Trial Grounds.
All those rewards being offered to players were obviously meant to encourage them to deal with demonic beasts.
But Dong Li thought Heidan was actually pretty obedient.
When he told it to eat people, it ate them.
Maybe if it stayed with him, it could become a good demonic beast.
Still…
Why had those players wanted to kill him?
Dong Li thought carefully.
They seemed to have mentioned something about…
an orange weapon?
He reached into his pocket and pulled out an orange stone.
Was this what they meant?
Rongrong had picked it up in the snow that day.
Dong Li didn’t even know what it was.
Whatever.
He stuffed the stone back into his pocket.
If those people dared show up again, he’d just let Heidan eat them again!
Although…
It looked like Heidan needed pills to recover too.
Dong Li touched his little medicine furnace and suddenly felt that raising two pets at once might be a little stressful.
As he walked, his steps abruptly slowed.
He looked toward Dragonbone Town ahead.
Something seemed to be happening on Rongrong’s end…
Dong Li sensed the disturbance and immediately worried about Shu Bai.
But when he focused more carefully on Rongrong’s emotions, all he felt was—blank confusion.
Bewilderment.
Restlessness.
And even a kind of barely suppressed shock and excitement.
That didn’t feel like danger…
Had Rongrong disobeyed him again and run off to cause trouble?
Dong Li could attempt to swap places with his spirit form.
But if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to take the two little beasts with him.
Besides, he still wasn’t very good at using that ability.
After thinking it over, Dong Li simply quickened his pace.
Inside his coat, Heidan leisurely licked one paw and shot Yuanbao a sideways glance.
Its expression practically screamed:
See how strong I am? Took care of that problem without even trying.
Yuanbao couldn’t be bothered.
It yawned and went back to sleep.
—
Meanwhile, inside the medicine shop in Dragonbone Town—
Lufiel ignored Shu Bai’s attempts to stop him and forced his way into the back room.
The mattress and bedding from earlier had already been put away.
The familiar little golden fox stood on a chair.
But Dong Li was nowhere to be seen.
[You have entered an NPC’s private area. Leave immediately!]
[You have entered an NPC’s private area. Leave immediately!]
…
Shu Bai anxiously followed behind him.
“Sir, you can’t go back there…”
Lufiel ignored him.
He crossed to the small side door and forced it open.
The courtyard beyond was empty too.
Dong Li wasn’t there.
Lufiel frowned faintly.
Before the system countdown ended, he backed out of the room.
The little fox stared blankly at him.
When Lufiel remained by the doorway and softly called, “Rongrong?”
Its tail stiffened slightly.
Lufiel asked, “Where is he?”
Dong Li’s spirit form was right here.
That meant Dong Li himself should be somewhere nearby.
And this morning, when Lufiel had come by, there had been two sets of bedding that hadn’t yet been put away…
If he had arrived just a little earlier, maybe he would have seen Dong Li.
The little fox continued staring at him, its tail held tensely.
As a spirit form, Rongrong was the part of Dong Li’s consciousness that existed outside his physical body.
In a sense, it was another Dong Li.
Of course it recognized Lufiel.
It simply didn’t know what to do.
Instinctively, it kept its guard up and refused to approach.
After all…
Dong Li and Lufiel had already broken up.
When Rongrong made no move to guide him toward Dong Li, Lufiel entered the room again and approached it.
The little fox panicked.
It hurriedly pawed open the window, preparing to escape.
“Rongrong!”
Lufiel stopped.
He had no choice but to retreat again.
He didn’t want to scare Rongrong away.
If the fox fled farther into the courtyard, the system restrictions would make it even harder for him to approach.
Even so, Rongrong slipped through the window.
But it didn’t run far.
Instead, it hid just beneath the window and secretly peeked back inside.
Lufiel remained where he was.
He lowered his eyes and slowly exhaled.
Dressed entirely in black with his metal mask back on, he nearly filled the doorway by himself.
The already small room seemed even more cramped, an inexplicable pressure settling over the space.
Unable to convince him to leave, Shu Bai eventually gave up and returned to serving customers.
A few unfamiliar players noticed Lufiel standing there.
They had no idea what he was doing, but he looked thoroughly unapproachable, so they bought what they needed and hurried away.
Liufeng rushed over after hearing the news.
“You found him?! Keep his spirit form there. I’ll search outside!”
Lufiel replied, “Okay.”
“Finally!” Liufeng sounded even happier than he did. “So he really was in Dragonbone Town. Good thing he didn’t go too far. But what’s he doing here?”
Normally, an NPC would voluntarily leave their designated area for only two reasons.
Either they had developed a bug that caused confusion and abnormal behavior…or the system had altered their settings.
But Lufiel had told him before that Dong Li was an extremely unusual NPC.
Exactly how unusual, Liufeng didn’t know.
Back when Dong Li still lived in the Fuling Region, Lufiel had refused to let other players interact with him.
Not even his own friends.
Like he’d hidden a beauty away in a golden house or something…
And then the moment Lufiel looked away, the beauty ran off by himself.
Lufiel said nothing over the live voice connection.
Liufeng silently jumped onto a nearby rooftop and searched the crowds below.
He still remembered what Dong Li looked like.
Not long after the closed beta had first launched, someone had tried to compile information on every NPC in the game and post it to the forums, complete with pictures.
Dong Li had been among them.
His appearance was by far the most striking, and he had quickly attracted attention.
Later, Lufiel had asked Liufeng to hack into the forums, lock the post, and delete every archived copy.
Dong Li was only a low-level NPC with no connection to the main storyline, so everyone soon forgot about him.
A gentle current of air spread outward from Liufeng’s position.
His gaze swept from the nearby streets farther into the distance.
Suddenly, his voice dropped.
“Found him.”
Lufiel immediately turned and left the medicine shop.
“Coordinates.”
Liufeng sent them over.
The location was on a street in Dragonbone Town, barely two hundred meters from the medicine shop.
Lufiel stopped in the middle of the street and looked ahead.
Dong Li slowly came into view.
His golden hair stood out instantly.
Now that he was inside town, he had unconsciously slowed down again, occasionally stopping to look at the roadside stalls.
But because he had no money, he couldn’t buy anything.
He could only look.
The midday sun was warm and pleasant.
Dong Li had taken off his hood because he wanted to soak up some sunlight.
As he walked, he wondered whether he should buy a new hat someday.
Something like the fluffy one he’d seen in the clothing store…
Then, in the middle of the crowd, he suddenly caught sight of a familiar figure.
Dong Li’s mind went completely blank.
Even his breathing stopped.
The man was dressed in black and wearing a mask, just like plenty of other players trying to conceal their identities.
But Dong Li still knew exactly who it was.
…
How could the world possibly be this small?
They had run into each other again.
No.
That made no sense.
The game map was enormous.
So why did Lufiel keep appearing wherever Dong Li happened to be?
And this time…he was so close.
Dong Li began to panic.
Especially when he realized Lufiel seemed to be walking straight toward him.
As the distance between them shrank, Lufiel even took off his mask.
What do I do? What do I do…?
Dong Li had no idea where to put himself.
His heart pounded wildly.
They had been broken up for so long.
He was nowhere near ready to sit down and casually chat with his ex-boyfriend again.
What was he even supposed to say?
How have you been?
Are you busy lately?
In the middle of his panic, Dong Li suddenly remembered the forum thread he’d read.
What should you do if you keep running into your ex?
The first reply had said:
Pretend he doesn’t exist.
With a nervous flutter in his chest and an instinctive urge to run away from the situation, Dong Li calmly turned his gaze aside as though he had seen nothing.
Lufiel’s steps stopped.
He watched Dong Li walk right past him and continue toward the medicine shop.
Liufeng witnessed the entire scene from the rooftop.
He froze.
“He… doesn’t recognize you? So he didn’t wake up?”
Awake was Lufiel’s term for it.
In his eyes, Dong Li had once fallen asleep and become an ordinary NPC.
To Liufeng, it was data loss.
In other words—amnesia.
If that were the case…then Dong Li was still the same as before.
He had simply moved from the Fuling Region to Dragonbone Town.
The reason remained unclear.
It could still be a bug.
Or it could be a normal system adjustment.
Below, Lufiel said nothing.
He remained where he was, watching Dong Li’s retreating figure until he disappeared into the medicine shop.
Everything seemed to have returned to the beginning.
No different from the days when Lufiel used to stand in the Fuling Region and watch Dong Li gather herbs before heading back down the mountain.
Dong Li wouldn’t remember him.
Wouldn’t respond to him.
Liufeng scratched his head and finally managed an attempt at reassurance.
“Well… at least now we know he’s safe.”
There were too many people nearby.
Lufiel put his mask back on.
He still said nothing.
Liufeng sighed to himself and sent Liuye a message.
[What do I do? I think my bro just got dumped again.]
Liuye was online.
The message was quickly marked as read.
No reply came.
—
At the same time, inside the back room of the medicine shop—
The door was tightly shut.
Shu Bai was talking to an unfamiliar player in the front room.
Dong Li crouched against the wall.
Rongrong rushed over to him at once, and Dong Li scooped the little fox into his arms.
He lowered his head and buried his face deep in its thick fur.
Then took a long breath.
He was still horribly nervous.
He tried his best to reassure himself.
Lufiel had definitely seen him too…
But they’d been broken up for so long and hadn’t seen each other in ages.
It was perfectly normal to forget what your ex-boyfriend looked like!
And it was perfectly normal not to want to talk to your ex!
Besides, Dong Li now knew this world was a game.
He had also guessed that Lufiel was a player.
If they started talking, Dong Li would inevitably want to ask him questions.
Including—why had Lufiel disappeared without a word back then?
Dong Li slowly lifted his head.
The thick shadow of his lashes fell across his eyes.
Memories from the past surfaced again.
And he felt a little sad.
During the period before they broke up, Lufiel had indeed become noticeably colder.
He visited the Fuling Region less often.
And sometimes, even when he was with Dong Li, his attention seemed elsewhere.
Later, Lufiel had taken the initiative to apologize.
He said he was sorry for neglecting Dong Li lately.
“It’s okay.”
Dong Li had burrowed into Lufiel’s arms, rubbing against him as he asked in a muffled voice,
“Are you still going to be busy these next few days?”
“No,” Lufiel replied.
Dong Li lifted his head, eyes bright with anticipation.
“Then will you take me somewhere outside to play?”
“Outside?”
Lufiel thought for a moment.
“Okay.”
He agreed so quickly that Dong Li was delighted.
Before they parted, they arranged a time to meet.
The next morning, Dong Li brought Rongrong to the rear mountains for their date.
But Lufiel never appeared.
Dong Li waited for a very long time.
He waited until the sun went down.
Sitting beneath a tree, confused and lost, he eventually leaned against the trunk and fell asleep.
When he woke up—the sun had risen again.
Lufiel still wasn’t there.
Dong Li kept waiting.
Only when darkness fell for the second time, and he was both hungry and exhausted, did he finally pick up Rongrong and slowly make his way down the mountain.
The entire rear mountain was silent.
When Dong Li reached the residential district, he gradually began seeing the other fox spirits returning with the herbs they had gathered.
By the time he made it back to the alchemy hut, Supervisor Ba saw that Dong Li had been missing for two days—yet surprisingly, he didn’t get angry.
He only urged Dong Li to hurry up and light the furnace.
Dong Li lowered his head.
“Okay,” he murmured. “I know.”
Author’s Note:
Baby, don’t be sad. He misses you so much he’s practically losing his mind.
