One mouthful of instant noodles swept away all of Chu Yao's hunger and exhaustion — and not only that, she felt her body filling with power as wave after wave of warmth spread through her four limbs and hundred bones.
"Just what kind of miraculous food did the internet cafe owner give me to eat!"
Chu Yao nearly wept for joy, overflowing with gratitude toward Liu Haoming. She couldn't even be bothered to keep up her ladylike image; she slurped down the noodles in great big mouthfuls, her whole mouth aglow with a brilliant, otherworldly rosy light.
Liu Haoming watched the girl wolf it down and sighed. What a pitiful little girl — if a single cup of noodles made her eat like that, she must have been half-starved.
Yet judging by the way she was dressed, she didn't seem to come from a poor family at all. If anything, she looked a little over-nourished.
Before long, Chu Yao had finished off the entire cup of Master Kong and even drunk the broth clean, not a single drop left.
Noodle cup in one hand and fork in the other, Chu Yao was about to thank the internet cafe owner again — but when she looked up in a daze, she found herself back in that strange game space. The 2.2-meter bald muscleman stood before her like an iron tower.
How am I back here again?
【Detected: player obtained divine-tier equipment via cheating. Friendly reminder: cheating is shameful. We hope players will game rationally and not disrupt game balance.】
A row of light-panels surfaced before her eyes, leaving Chu Yao more bewildered than ever. I didn't cheat!
She remembered how the boys in her class always talked about cheating with deep, bitter loathing — as if the only reason they were bad at games was that they didn't know how to cheat.
I just ate a cup of noodles the cafe owner gave me, so how did the game decide that counts as cheating?
Chu Yao wasn't confused for long. Very soon, the facts proved she really had cheated.
The noodle cup in her left hand suddenly blazed with resplendent golden light and in an instant became an alms bowl. The fork in her right hand likewise burst into radiance and turned into a Buddhist pestle.
Chu Yao stared dumbstruck at the alms bowl, and the equipment's attribute description promptly appeared in her view:
【Equipment name: Purple-Gold Alms Bowl
Equipment tier: Divine Artifact
Mana Bonus: ???
Spirit Bonus: ???
Strength Bonus: ???
Note: The Purple-Gold Alms Bowl is crafted from the royal bone left behind by Buddha Shakyamuni. It has the power to suppress demonic energy and evil spirits.】
Chu Yao swallowed hard and turned her eyes to the Buddhist pestle in her right hand.
【Equipment name: Demon-Subduing Pestle
Equipment tier: Divine Artifact
Mana Bonus: ???
Spirit Bonus: ???
Strength Bonus: ???
Note: The Demon-Subduing Pestle is crafted from the royal bone left behind by Buddha Shakyamuni. It is the bane of all demonic energy and evil spirits.】
【Face sculpting complete. Main quest issued: kill 100 Anomalies / uncover the cause of the Anomalies descending on Demon Capital. Quest completion reward: the lifetime Mana of Master Jianshi.】
【Friendly reminder: In light of the player's shameful cheating, which has severely disrupted game balance, we suggest the player strike directly at the Anomalies' source and crush all darkness and chaos.】
Light-panels popped up one after another, and before Chu Yao could react, her vision cut to black once more.
***
Behind the counter, Liu Haoming queued up for another match.
He glanced up at Chu Yao and saw her set the finished noodle cup beside the computer and go on playing her game with rapt concentration.
On her screen, the face-sculpting interface had given way to a cutscene of a modern skyscraper, every brick and every stone of it rendered with such extraordinary realism that it might have been filmed on location.
Liu Haoming could tell at a glance that she had to be playing a foreign game, because only foreign games had such lifelike visuals. Domestic games had rather crude graphics — to this day they were still stuck in the era of "one-hit 999."
Watching the girl throw herself so completely into the game, Liu Haoming grew more and more convinced that she had been exaggerating to him earlier. One moment going home would be the death of her, and the next she was utterly immersed in a game world...
He even suspected the little girl was playing a big chess game — scheming and calculating, exploiting his sympathy to trick him into letting her use the internet for free. If that were true, she was playing a very big game indeed.
"Enemy forces reach the battlefield in thirty seconds!"
The system prompt sounded. Liu Haoming pulled himself together, put everything else out of his mind for now, and turned his full attention to the computer screen.
He was just a plain, unremarkable internet cafe owner, not anyone to the girl. This was all he could do to help her — and the main reason was... you can't get distracted while gaming.
***
Chu Yao opened her eyes to find herself inside a cramped elevator. According to the display, it was going down.
"So I've officially entered the game..."
Chu Yao marveled at how real VR gaming was. Everything she saw was incomparably lifelike, exactly as if she were really riding an elevator.
Then she noticed something even more amazing — her body was no longer her own, but the bald muscleman she had just sculpted with her own hands, the Purple-Gold Alms Bowl in the left hand and the Demon-Subduing Pestle in the right. At 2.2 meters tall, she looked just like a big black bear, and the already-narrow elevator felt more cramped than ever.
"Ding."
The elevator suddenly stopped at the eighteenth floor, and a pretty, delicate-featured girl in white stepped in. She glanced at the buttons hidden behind the burly bald man and said courteously, "Sorry to trouble you, could you press the seventh floor for me?"
"Oh, oh, sure." Chu Yao hurriedly nodded and reached out to press the seventh-floor button.
Just then, a bone-deep chill drifted over from beside her, and the girl in white spoke in an eerie, hollow voice:
"You can see me?"
Chu Yao's tiger-body gave a violent shudder. Something utterly terrifying had occurred to her; her face went "whoosh" — white — and she turned her head with great difficulty.
The girl in white stared fixedly at her, repeating over and over, "You can see me, right? You must be able to see me! Why can you see me?"
As she spoke, the girl's delicate features gradually twisted into something ferocious, her flesh churning, and one after another, plump white maggots came wriggling out of her eye sockets.
Chu Yao was about to lose her mind!
Never in a thousand years had she imagined she could run into an Anomaly even in a VR game!
You think I want to see you? Get away from me!
"Since you can see me, then I'll kill you!"
The white-clothed Anomaly shrieked, raking at Chu Yao with five fingers hooked like claws.
Wild with terror, Chu Yao squeezed her eyes shut, snatched up the Demon-Subduing Pestle, and swung it blindly. All she felt was a burst of white light shining against her eyelids.
***
The instant the Demon-Subduing Pestle radiated white light, the white-clothed Anomaly was even more terrified than Chu Yao!
She stared in utter disbelief at the holy, resplendent Buddha-light before her, bright enough, it seemed, to turn a sinful, filthy hell into a pure Buddha-land. She could not believe that she, a mere ordinary Anomaly, was actually qualified to die beneath so terrifying an attack!
How am I even worthy? What virtue or merit do I have to deserve this?!
【Killed one Low-Tier Anomaly. Gained 2 Anomaly Coins, 200 EXP.】
【Player leveled up to Lv. 2. Gained 1 skill point.】
Two rows of light-panels popped up directly across her irises. Chu Yao opened her eyes in a daze, only to see the elevator standing utterly empty. Where was there any shadow of an Anomaly now?