Chapter 19 Nineteenth of June, S City, the Real World

A week ago, Feng Bujue and Li Ruoyu visited the Otherworld together and successfully returned to the Login Space before dawn.

No one knew where they had gone or what they had done...

The four teammates who were with them in the script that night only saw the two of them inexplicably disappear from the rooftop of the Shrieking Ghost Power Company.

After that, the script ended bizarrely.

Since V1-War God had vanished from the script world, the system immediately determined that the players had completed the task and met the conditions for clearing the level.

For Wang Tanzhi, Gu Xiaoling, Juan Meng Huan, and Tan Lang, this should have been good news... because they had cleared this Nightmare Difficulty team script after only one battle.

But… the four who cleared the level didn't show much joy.

Juan Meng Huan was okay, just a little confused. Tan Lang was more troublesome; as a member of Blade, he had seen so many messy things in this script that he had to write a detailed report. As for Xiaotan and Xiaoling, they were very worried...

Fortunately, one thing was certain... in the Login Space, the current status of [Feng Bujue] and [Si Yu Ruo Li] could be seen as "In Game" through the friend list. Because of this, Xiaotan and Xiaoling didn't call or rush to their homes to check on them.

The next day, Brother Jue and Ruoyu, who had returned, also said that they had only triggered a hidden quest and entered a new map, and nothing unusual had happened.

Hearing them say this, Xiaotan and Xiaoling didn't ask any further questions...

And so... the matter was dropped.

A week passed in the blink of an eye.

During this time, Feng Bujue and Li Ruoyu were almost always together. Their online time had obviously increased, and their levels and strength had also improved significantly. Obviously... they had reached some kind of agreement, transaction, or conspiracy with Lute...

But on the surface, the two of them still pretended as if nothing had happened, claiming that they hadn't deliberately been leveling up.

And these behaviors... in the eyes of onlookers, had a different flavor to them...

Considering their strange dialogue on the rooftop that night, the other three members of Hell Front naturally thought of "that aspect."

Of course, as Feng Bujue and Li Ruoyu's friends, relatives, and colleagues in the real world... Xiaotan, Xiaoling, and An Yueqin also wisely chose to pretend to be deaf and mute. Their mentality was simple—if those two weirdos wanted to have a secret date in a horror game, then let them date...

…………

The nineteenth, one o'clock in the afternoon, in front of a coffee shop.

"Hmm... playing the lateness game, huh..." Feng Bujue looked down at the time on his phone and muttered, "Clearly works at a gallery owned by her family, basically can go or not go as she pleases, and can rest whenever she wants; and has a car at home... more than one..." He said, but he didn't feel impatient or angry at all. "...Even with all that, she's still late, so it's undoubtedly deliberate..."

"Eh? Feng Bujue?" Suddenly, a woman's voice sounded from behind Brother Jue.

The voice was familiar, but the speaker was not the person Brother Jue was waiting for.

Hearing this voice, Feng Bujue's expression changed slightly, because after a brief search in his Mind Sanctuary, he remembered... the owner of this voice was his ex-girlfriend from high school.

"Uh... it's you..." Brother Jue slowly turned around and said a polite greeting, "Long time no see."

The girl in front of him was wearing a very simple dress. Her appearance was beautiful and lovely, looking like a student of seventeen or eighteen, but her actual age was the same as Brother Jue, already twenty-four.

"Yeah... long time no see..." the girl replied, "About... five years, right?"

"About that." Feng Bujue replied, intentionally appearing absent-minded.

"You seem... taller again?" the girl said.

"A little." Feng Bujue didn't want to say more, and he responded in a cold, brief manner as much as possible.

"Hehe... you're much more handsome now than you were in high school." The other party added.

"Is that so..." Feng Bujue replied casually, squinting his eyes.

In fact, Brother Jue had only casually combed his hair today, casually put on a long-sleeved t-shirt, casually picked out a pair of jeans, casually put on a pair of sneakers, and came out very casually... to be praised for his appearance in such a casual state, it could be seen how eager he was to end this conversation...

"Oh! I saw you on TV before..." But the girl's desire to chat seemed to have not diminished at all, "It's that show called *I'm a Writer, Roast Me at Will*, you were amazing!"

"It was alright..." Brother Jue responded lukewarmly, but thought to himself, "Hey hey... I was obviously eliminated, okay? Saying I was amazing even like this... this situation doesn't seem right... Could it be that after a chance encounter, she had a delusion like 'this is fate', and now that she's single, her brain twitched and she wants to resume contact with me as a backup or something..."

(Note: Brother Jue knew that the other party was currently single through observation and reasoning. For him, this level of deduction was almost instinctive. When he was standing on the street with nothing to do, he would look at the passersby and do some irresponsible analysis to pass the time...)

"By the way... you haven't come to any of the class reunions in the past few years. It's so rare to meet you so coincidentally today, can you give me your phone number? Many old classmates want to contact you but can't." As expected, the other party said a line that Brother Jue was very unwilling to hear.

"Hmm... many old (suffer) class(ing)mates (victims) want to contact me, huh..." Feng Bujue muttered.

What kind of person was Brother Jue? As soon as he heard it, he knew that the other party was just making an excuse to get his phone number.

"Hmph... girl, you have to have some sense of proportion when you're bullshitting." Feng Bujue snorted coldly in his heart, "With what I did in school back then... those who 'want' to contact me, or rather... 'dare' to contact me, are only those guys from the 'Feng Bujue Annihilation Plan Committee' and the 'Avengers Alliance' (this group of people are truly full of bitterness and hatred)... Besides, everyone is in their mid-twenties now, those chuunibyou organizations have long disappeared, right..."

"What's wrong? Is there any inconvenience?" The girl looked puzzled when she saw that Feng Bujue hadn't taken out his phone yet.

"Crap... can't think of an excuse." Brother Jue thought. Cold sweat was breaking out on his forehead... He really didn't want to have anything to do with his ex-girlfriend again, nor did he want to contact those old classmates who weren't his friends.

Feng Bujue didn't use social networking sites and rarely made his personal information public, all in order to keep his social circle from expanding. But in this situation, the other party was just communicating with him normally... If he didn't even give her a phone number, it would seem too strange and too lacking in manners...

"Phew—I say, you're really something..."

Just as Brother Jue was at a loss and ready to give in, another voice sounded.

Feng Bujue turned around and saw Li Ruoyu.

She was still dressed the same, black t-shirt, jeans, medium-length hair casually draped over her shoulders.

But… Ruoyu was actually smoking.

"Uh..." Brother Jue was stunned by the scene, standing frozen in place, unable to speak.

"I just went to buy a pack of cigarettes, and another one pops up, huh?" Ruoyu's tone was like that of a complete hooligan. She crossed her left arm in front of her chest, held a cigarette in her right hand, and glared at Feng Bujue with an unhappy expression. "Tell me... how long have you been hiding this one?"

"Uh..." Brother Jue still couldn't answer.

"You won't say? You don't have to say, anyway, there's no truth in your mouth." Ruoyu quickly added, then tilted her head and glanced at Brother Jue's ex-girlfriend, "Girl... let me give you a piece of advice, being tricked into sex is one thing, but you have to manage your money carefully, don't be sold off without even knowing it. And... if this bastard takes you to get an abortion, you have to insist on going to a proper hospital. Last time he took someone to a black clinic..."

Before she could finish her words, the girl had already turned around and left, running away as if she were avoiding a plague. And before she left, she also glanced at Brother Jue with a disgusted look, seeming to regret initiating the conversation.

After the other party walked far away and disappeared around a corner, Ruoyu put down the cigarette butt, "Cough cough... ah cough..." She covered her mouth and coughed a few times, taking several seconds to catch her breath. "Hoo... smoking is so choking..."

"Hey..." Brother Jue was stunned, and he stared at Ruoyu with wide eyes and asked, "What's going on?"

"Oh, it's like this..." Ruoyu said, already putting out the cigarette butt and throwing the entire pack of cigarettes and the lighter into the trash can. Then, she raised her hand and pointed to the side behind Brother Jue, "I was walking over from that corner just now, and I happened to see you chatting with her. Seeing that you looked troubled, I quickly turned back and bought cigarettes and a lighter from the *yanzhi dian* (a common Shanghai dialect term, often referring to small shops located on street corners or sides, with counters directly facing the street) at the corner, and then came over to help you out."

"Whoa..." Brother Jue wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, "Your acting is very good, you even fooled me."

"Same to you..." Ruoyu turned around.

"I really troubled you this time..." Brother Jue added, "I owe you one."

"It's nothing." Ruoyu said, "If I hadn't been late, we would have already been sitting in the shop, and that wouldn't have happened."

In fact, she was also quite depressed, because it was troublesome to find a place to park outside, so she came by taxi, and then she encountered a traffic jam on the way, which was why she was more than ten minutes late.

"Anyway... let's go in first..." Feng Bujue changed the subject at the right time.

"Okay." Ruoyu responded, and the two of them walked into the coffee shop behind them together.