She certainly cared about Qing Shi, for how could she possibly not care?
However, the care she felt might not be the same kind of care Qing Shi understood.
Lu Fengmian smiled helplessly. “If you think so, then so be it.”
[What secret whispers are they sharing again?]
[Streamer, every now and then your live stream loses audio, I don’t believe it’s a system glitch.]
[You won’t let me listen, right? I’m going to insist on listening, I’m camping right here.]
“Is there something wrong with them?” Qing Shi asked in confusion upon seeing those bullet comments.
“Nothing wrong, they just have a rebellious streak.”
Having eaten and drunk her fill, Lu Fengmian regained her energy.
Many features in this game could only be played after reaching max level. Lu Fengmian thought about it carefully and felt that she could only continue leveling up.
When she mentioned that she was going to level up and do quests, Qing Shi looked at her with a resentful expression once more.
Lu Fengmian reached out and covered her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that, can’t you accompany me while I level up?”
“It’s not like I’m not letting you follow along.”
Qing Shi snorted coldly. “Mianmian letting me follow along to level up is clearly just wanting to use me as a tool.”
Lu Fengmian coughed lightly, as she indeed harbored such thoughts.
Having a max-level powerhouse by her side who could also assist in battle, why wouldn’t she take advantage of it?
Lu Fengmian took the initiative to hold her hand, a rare gesture. “Be good.”
Qing Shi’s discontent dissipated significantly at once, and she obediently followed Lu Fengmian’s lead.
After leaving the city, Lu Fengmian had Ah Jiu transform back into its mount form.
Following the quest navigation, they went to the quest location.
The latest quest she accepted was a rather tragic one involving a married female couple who originally ran a medical clinic together.
However, during one occasion when one of them went out to gather medicinal herbs, she was accidentally bitten by a zombie. When she woke up, she realized she had turned into a zombie herself.
Yet, the tiny bit of lingering consciousness she had left made her remember that she used to be a human.
Fearing that returning to see her wife in this state would terrify her, she never went back. Instead, every day in the middle of the night, she would secretly run back home, leaving some of the medicinal herbs she had collected in the courtyard.
Afterward, she would gaze at her wife’s figure through the window.
She would leave when dawn broke.
Little did she know, her wife had known from the very first time she returned. It was only because she understood what was in her heart that she never exposed the truth.
Every time she left, her wife would watch her depart.
Not only that, but her wife had also been researching ways to restore these zombies back to normal.
According to her observations, a portion of the zombies actually retained a piece of their human consciousness, just like her partner.
It was just that once hunger struck, they could not control themselves from harming people or even drinking human blood.
When Lu Fengmian first received this quest, she was very surprised because she had not designed such a quest.
Although her game setting included monsters, zombies, ghosts, and even species like elves, this particular quest did not exist. When Lu Fengmian first encountered the female physician named Nie Yingrong, she found that such an NPC existed within the quest system, and she indeed remembered having designed such a person.
However, after following the quest and progressing through a segment of the storyline, Lu Fengmian realized very clearly that this quest was not designed by her.
She asked the system to investigate, and the system also reported that no such quest existed.
Yet many people had already done this quest, and Lu Fengmian was not the first.
It was not until the second time she saw Nie Yingrong, the human wife in the quest, that Lu Fengmian finally understood. This quest might not be a mere game quest, as everything could potentially be real events that actually occurred.
[But host, we indeed have these people in the quest storyline, it’s just that the storyline is different.] The system was somewhat puzzled as to why things turned out like this.
Lu Fengmian, on the other hand, understood after thinking about it briefly.
Qing Shi was a person she had designed, and Qing Shi had awakened, whereas Nie Yingrong seemed to be someone she had designed in the past as well.
In other words, under the condition where the game world and reality overlapped, two identical individuals could not coexist. Thus, it was inevitable that real individuals replaced fake data to continue existing.
To verify her conjecture, Lu Fengmian specifically asked Qing Shi, “They are all living, existing beings, right?”
Qing Shi looked at her with some surprise. “Hmm? Mianmian didn’t know? I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t know, I only just realized it because I found discrepancies in the quest storyline, and these people all exist within my game system.” Lu Fengmian shook her head, answering her confusion truthfully.
“Ah, they are all alive.”
Qing Shi had simply been following Lu Fengmian around doing quests without overthinking things, as there was no danger anyway. Now that Lu Fengmian asked, she finally realized something was amiss.
“So it should be the Heavenly Dao issuing quests through your system, hoping you can help them,” Qing Shi gave Lu Fengmian her own guessed answer after pondering for a moment.
Following the quest guidance, Lu Fengmian continued deeper into the zombie forest. “Understood.”
There were numerous zombies in the surroundings, and had Qing Shi not been accompanying her, she might have felt terrified as well.
Even with Qing Shi by her side, she unconsciously tightened her grip on Qing Shi’s hand.
Qing Shi, on the other hand, was delighted that she was clinging to her like this.
[So many people gave up on the storyline here, everyone who quit said the realism was too intense and they couldn’t stand how terrifying it was.]
[I bet you’re talking about a certain fellow who set his height to two meters, but is actually as timid as a mouse.]
[Hahaha, I remember! The two-meter guy ran out crying and gave up on doing this quest.]
Lu Fengmian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry looking at those bullet comments.
“The Heavenly Dao is really lacking kindness, turning such a terrifying matter into a quest. How many players must have been scared to tears?” Lu Fengmian complained to Qing Shi using divine consciousness.
Qing Shi chuckled softly. “It is indeed a bit unkind. These zombies all possess some level of cultivation, so even if players don’t die, they won’t be able to kill them so easily, right?”
Lu Fengmian took a deep breath, mustered her courage (while holding Qing Shi’s hand), and continued venturing deeper into the forest.
After completing the deep exploration quest, Lu Fengmian accepted the next quest, and only then did she understand why players were able to complete the quest so smoothly.
Because the next quest provided an item that concealed one’s aura, meaning players could hide their aura and identity, making the zombies mistake them for their own kind.
Even so, it was still quite disgusting, as it was a gathering place for zombies containing a lot of gore and sickening sights.
Of course, Lu Fengmian discovered that the content censorship and moderation function in the game system was still usable.
After following the plot for a while, she found it truly nauseating, so she turned the feature on.
At least it wouldn’t make her feel sick to her stomach anymore.
This segment of the storyline actually involved assisting zombies in collecting and transcribing messages of longing written in various places.
While transcribing, Lu Fengmian felt fortunate that she had activated the censorship function, otherwise she really couldn’t have kept going, as excessive realism was truly not a good thing.
Although these visual scenes had not yet breached the censorship standards of the Star Alliance, nor would the game be reported because of it.
Interstellar people had an extremely high tolerance for blood and violence.
However, Lu Fengmian herself couldn’t quite accept it, and honestly, this kind of creepy atmosphere was very different from the scary visuals in various current interstellar games.
It wasn’t merely visual impact, but rather a sense of psychological horror, like cold air slowly seeping into the marrow of one’s bones.
The surroundings were eerie and gloomy, with zombies walking past in front of you from time to time.
Fangs and green faces, blood-red eyes, and occasionally under the moonlight, these creatures would even make bizarre movements.
Because the quest duration was long, if a player was unlucky, they would even witness people who mistakenly wandered into the forest being dragged away by zombies to have their blood drained, witnessing a living person gradually losing blood and slowly turning into a zombie.
No wonder many players couldn’t stand it and abandoned the quest halfway through.
Lu Fengmian had just asked the system, and the system said that in total, only six people had completed this quest.
This number was truly very small.
Among the six who completed it, three had enabled the censorship function just like Lu Fengmian, while the other three were truly formidable, braving the quest directly without any censorship enabled at all.
Those who abandoned the quest did so partly because they found it terrifying, and partly because their capacity for empathy was too strong, making them afraid to continue watching the subsequent plot.
Because during the quest, players could communicate with the zombies.
Players weren’t limited to interacting with the stories of the two main characters of this side quest, as there were other zombies who still retained a tiny shred of consciousness.
During the quest process, players had the opportunity to converse with these zombies who still held onto a remnant of awareness.
In other words, players would also learn about the stories of these people.
You would come to know that this portion of people suffered immensely because their willpower was too unyielding.
They wanted to die yet could not die, their own kind had no interest in killing them, and there was no way to commit suicide, leaving them unable to leave this forest.
Living day after day, going from having vivid memories at first to slowly forgetting their loved ones and friends, and finally forgetting that they used to be human.
That kind of feeling was far too hopeless.