How do you make someone lose their cool fast?
Naturally, question the expertise they pride themselves on.
As soon as Zhang Yang finished speaking, she saw something flash and vanish.
Confusion flickered in her peach-blossom eyes.
Her gaze settled on the Mysterious Woman’s head, and she said sincerely, “If you don’t know, then you don’t know. It’s not anything to be ashamed of. Why are you getting so worked up?”
The Mysterious Woman, whose name had been green the whole time, turned red in an instant.
Though only for a moment, it signaled that the other party had harbored murderous intent.
Based on her observations of the samples, Zhang Yang had concluded that this phenomenon was called “losing one’s cool,” “getting worked up,” or “flying into a rage out of embarrassment.”
The Mysterious Woman nearly lost the smile at the corner of her mouth.
Her tone was slow and solemn.
“It’s true that I’m a strategist who gives people advice, but I only offer counsel to the lord I serve. You’re not one of them, young friend, so why should I answer a question like that? If you truly want to know, I could give you a pointer or two.”
If Zhang Yang dared to take her up on the offer, she’d make things difficult for her.
Against all expectations, Zhang Yang merely shook her head.
The Mysterious Woman asked, “Why don’t you want to know anymore?”
This young friend may be young, but she certainly is fickle.
“The answer definitely isn’t with you, or with anyone else.” Zhang Yang’s logic for reaching this conclusion was very simple.
“If you knew, your lord wouldn’t be merely the leader of a rebel army, having to massacre a city and squeeze the poor dry just to replenish his military supplies. And if anyone else knew, then this vast world wouldn’t have the seven great empires you mentioned, along with who knows how many small vassal states.”
The Mysterious Woman’s pupils trembled.
For a moment, she couldn’t tell whether Zhang Yang was genuinely stupid or just pretending.
A truly stupid person clearly couldn’t have said something like that.
“So, there’s only one truth!” Zhang Yang seemed to have had a sudden breakthrough, and everything became clear to her.
She rose to her feet and pointed at the map.
“The answer is actually right here with me!”
Rather than ask others for answers, she should look inward and analyze herself.
It was just that she hadn’t figured it out yet.
The Mysterious Woman: “…”
“Since you don’t look well, you can have the bed.” Without waiting for the Mysterious Woman to respond, Zhang Yang braced herself against the windowsill and climbed out.
With another nimble leap, she landed on the roof tiles.
Once she’d sat cross-legged, she pulled her notebook from her game inventory.
She had thirty-two notebooks like this.
Their contents were all bits and pieces, mostly rules of human behavior and things to watch out for, details she’d summed up by observing human specimens.
The rest was about game events.
Supporting her chin with one hand, Zhang Yang leafed through her notes by moonlight.
“There has to be a way in here…”
Along with her old notebooks, Zhang Yang also opened the System Log.
It kept a detailed record of everyone she’d met and everything she’d done and said since entering the Homestead Side Quest.
She focused on analyzing her interactions with Shen Zhi and the Mysterious Woman.
“…There don’t seem to be any clues…”
Just as she was about to close the System Log, her sharp eyes caught something.
She scrolled down the system panel that only she could see.
Congratulations!
You discovered a new character: Mysterious Woman**.
Status: Recruitable.
Add her to your friends list?
“Can NPCs add friends too?”
Zhang Yang thought it over, then added the Mysterious Woman to her friends list.
After adding her as a one-way friend, Zhang Yang casually opened the friends list she hadn’t checked in ages.
She froze for a moment, closed it, then opened it again.
“…Where did all my observation samples go?”
The tens of thousands of avatars in her friends list had all vanished without a trace.
Now only the Mysterious Woman she’d just added remained.
Her avatar was a pitch-black silhouette of a woman.
Her real name wasn’t displayed, and there was a “Recruit” tag beside her picture.
Zhang Yang couldn’t spare a thought for any of that.
All she could think about was finding her missing observation samples.
Before long, her heart gave a sudden jolt, and an ominous suspicion crept into her mind: Had the game’s developers discovered her?
Or had she run into an even more serious bug?
The disappearance of her observation samples left Zhang Yang feeling utterly unsafe.
The intense sense of crisis she’d felt when she first became conscious surged back, filling her with anxiety and anguish.
“…If I were human…”
If she were a human player, she could ask the game’s developers to restore the observation samples’ friend data.
But the problem was, she was a BUG!
Wouldn’t going to the game’s developers be like walking right into a trap?
Zhang Yang furrowed her brows and stared blankly at the bright moon hanging in the distance.
Her thoughts were a tangled mess, as if countless balls of yarn had been tossed into a blue box and shaken back and forth, their loose ends hopelessly knotted together.
“No, no, that’s not right…”
Zhang Yang suddenly stood up and paced back and forth across the roof tiles.
“I must be getting something wrong.”
In that instant, inspiration struck.
A few details came back to her, and the problem that had been troubling her suddenly became clear.
The observation samples could befriend Adventurer NPCs with special identities, who could help them out when they got into trouble.
“Maybe the observation samples’ friend data hasn’t been lost at all. Maybe the game’s developers have just temporarily hidden it? Are the players’ and NPCs’ friend lists separate?”
That was the explanation that made the most sense.
Once Zhang Yang had figured it out, she let out a long breath.
“…I scared myself for nothing.”
Her spirits, which had just been sinking, instantly shot back up.
She lowered her head and eagerly began examining her new friends list.
Name: Mysterious Woman (unknown, recommend asking)
Age: 32
Faction: Rebels (temporary)
Occupation: Strategist
Stars: Unknown (awaiting decryption)
Talent: Unknown (awaiting decryption)
Loyalty: 49 (rather low)
Morality: 49 (rather low)
Intellect: 89 (cannot be controlled by anyone with too little intellect)
Ambition: 98 (extremely ambitious, recruit with caution)
Title: None for now Find the original chapter at g.com.
Seeing this page pop up on the NPC friends list, she suddenly remembered that she seemed to have a similar stats page herself.
She immediately opened her own profile.
The information there had changed slightly since the beginning.
Name: Zhang Yang, courtesy name Boyuan
Age: Unknown (in disguise)
Faction: None (can be established)
Stars: None
Talent: Locked
Loyalty: 3 (can be upgraded)
Morality: 13 (can be upgraded)
Intellect: 23 (can be upgraded)
Ambition: 100 (maxed out)
Title: Wanderer
Current Status: An obscure passerby A
Zhang Yang couldn’t even spare a thought for feeling emo, much less worry about whether the game’s developers would discover her and erase her.
Right now, she was furious!
“Why is my Intellect only 23?”
An Intellect score of 23.
Wasn’t that basically being an idiot?
“Why is hers as high as 89?”
Zhang Yang was shocked.
Zhang Yang was furious.
Zhang Yang didn’t understand.
Unwilling to accept it, she searched through the System Log again.
She frantically scrolled up and up, until she finally found an old entry:
Congratulations!
You’ve discovered a new character: Mysterious Rainy Night Passerby A**.
Status: Recruitable.
Add them to your friends list?
Zhang Yang added Mysterious Rainy Night Passerby A to her friends list.
Name: Shen Zhi, courtesy name Shude
Age: 18
Faction: None
Class: Martial General
Stars: Unknown (awaiting decryption)
Talent: Unknown (awaiting decryption)
Loyalty: 88 (relatively high; can be trusted after being subdued)
Morality: 87 (relatively high; can be trusted after being subdued)
Intellect: 69 (relatively low; consider his advice carefully)
Ambition: 64 (relatively low; can be trusted after being subdued)
Title: None
Zhang Yang: “…”
If she’d only seen this sooner, she wouldn’t have believed all that analysis Shen Zhi had spouted.
She muttered, “His intellect isn’t that high either…”