After watching that replay, I sorted through my tangled emotions, took a deep breath, and logged on.
I had a stomach full of things I wanted to say, but once I was online, I found I didn’t know how to broach it with my wife.
Should I tell her I knew about the arena incident?
Or tell her I didn’t mind?
Forget it, I’d just stay silent—like with the squirting in that solo dungeon last time, what was done was done.
Just as I resolved to keep my mouth shut, I suddenly noticed that my wife seemed to have already fully adjusted her own mindset.
Not only was she not downcast, her gaze was even more determined than before, and she told me she was definitely going to win the final victory.
“Honey, I think I can really take first place this time.”
In her eyes, I saw the Su Yulin from before she married me—the one I’d slowly spoiled into lying flat—the one who would never admit defeat, who had to accomplish whatever she set her mind to.
She was back.
As expected of my wife!
“Yeah, you’ve got this!” I replied.
Over the next few days, I truly came to realize just how terrifying my wife was as a “consciousness player.”
She didn’t need to log off, didn’t need to sleep, didn’t need to eat.
When other players logged off to rest, she was grinding levels; when other players were at work or school, she was still training her movement techniques.
She was a bona fide “24-hour online player.” That training time—double or even triple what a normal player could manage—translated into terrifyingly visible progress.
During this period, the arena rotation came around to her twice more.
Because of that special matchmaking mechanic, her opponents were still all male.
But these two matches had absolutely no suspense.
Having learned her lesson from being humiliated by “Violent Bear” closing in for a hard lockdown, my wife gave her opponents zero chance to get close in either match.
She leveraged her nearly 24/7 grinding during that stretch to push her elegant footwork to the absolute limit.
Those two male players couldn’t even get near enough to touch her clothes, let alone pull the same stunt as last time—they were kited to death by her storm of sword qi and lightning talismans.
In my spare time, I also deliberately went to watch a few other female players’ matches against males, curious whether everyone else was getting the same lucky treatment. Find the original chapter at novelping dot com.
The results were horrifying.
Aside from one female player with the ID “Hong Ji,” who won a match by brute-forcing her way through her opponent with a domineering “Crimson Lotus Flame,” the other female players all ended up in miserable shape.
Under this brutal forced “male-versus-female” matchmaking, the gap in strength often devolved into public humiliation.
Defeated female players were pinned down by their opponents right on the arena stage and fucked to climax in front of tens of thousands of spectators, then tossed out of the ring like garbage.
Of course, in everyone else’s eyes, it was just a game—that female player wasn’t actually being fucked; it was just her controlled data receiving that treatment.
But my wife was different.
Though her body wasn’t in the game, every pain and every pleasure her in-game character experienced was directly reflected in her consciousness.
She was like a special kind of existence.
But precisely because the game allowed you to do whatever you wanted, that was why this R18 game had taken the world by storm the moment it launched.
When I thought about how my wife, if she lost on that stage, would suffer the same treatment as those defeated female players, two little figures started fighting inside me.
The little white figure said: She came into this game because of you.
You absolutely cannot let her suffer that kind of torment.
But a little black figure kept poking at me: Don’t you want to see her most authentic side?
Is she really that conservative?
I knew she was a conservative person—otherwise, she couldn’t have had a boyfriend before and still kept her first blood.
But her authentic side?
Had I ever seen it?
Did I want to see it?
Soon, as the tournament bracket advanced, my wife’s next match was the semifinal.
It was scheduled for the weekend, and I had that day free—I could accompany her online the whole time.
Then, on the eve of the match, my wife suddenly proposed a bold idea.
“Honey, I want to attempt the ‘Exorcist Master’ promotion quest.”
Normally, a regular player’s leveling speed could never reach the threshold that fast, but my wife was a “grind fiend” who farmed mobs 24/7 without pause—her experience points had actually accumulated enough.
“Why the rush?” I asked.
“Because after promoting to Exorcist Master, I can learn a new skill—[Demon-Sealing Array],” she explained.
“That skill can forcibly immobilize enemies, and it’s super helpful for my arena matches. If I run into a close-range opponent, I can lock them down and stop them from getting near me.”
She didn’t say it, but I could feel it—she still cared about what happened last time, and she was finding ways to shore up her weakness.
Given that her current control was already more fluid than when I was piloting her, and even elite mobs couldn’t touch her, I agreed: “Alright, but be careful.”
Over these past few days, I’d also noticed an interesting phenomenon: the time I spent logging in to personally control her for grinding was shrinking more and more.
Now, her footwork was smooth as flowing water, and she could handle leveling and mob-killing entirely on her own.
The only exception—she was a hopelessly directionally challenged person.
In Demon City’s labyrinthine map, she often couldn’t find where she wanted to go, and only then would she softly ask me for help, letting me take over her body to guide her to the destination.
That actually put my mind at ease quite a bit.
During this period, I also frequently checked the [Observer] app—no abnormal data, everything was stable.
It seemed she was gradually adapting to this world, and working hard to grow stronger to protect herself.
So, on the afternoon before the semifinal, my wife stepped alone into that solo elite dungeon called “Master’s Trial.”
I’d originally arranged my work schedule so I could accompany her that afternoon, but a sudden issue with a client forced me to deal with it, which meant my wife had to challenge it solo again.
Although she was already more than capable of fighting alone, I still looked up guides online beforehand, hoping to give her some advice before she went in.
But who knew—because her progress was too fast, there were no substantive guides on the internet yet.
The only thing I found during my search was that the male and female versions of the dungeon might have subtle differences.
I didn’t know why, but learning that gave me a vague sense of unease, though I couldn’t articulate the reason.
I could only pray that her strength would carry her through, and trust that she could complete the dungeon safely and successfully advance.