Chapter 1 Washed the Cat for a Full Hour

It took Feng Bujue a full hour to wash the cat. By the time he was done, his arms were covered in countless scratches, and he was drenched in smelly sweat. But at least he'd gotten it done. He'd originally wanted to do some more housework, but after that ordeal, he gave up. Bathing a cat... it was a bit too strenuous as an after-dinner exercise.

He sat on the sofa, wanting to catch his breath. Since he was already sitting, he casually turned on the TV. Since he'd turned on the TV, and he didn't want to watch commercials for merchandise that cost 998, he conveniently switched to the streaming on-demand channel. Since he'd already switched over, he might as well watch something, so he clicked on the horror movie list...

Horror movies are the most likely to get sequels. After watching the first one, no matter how bad the movie is, the audience will go back and watch the sequel out of curiosity. The mentality is roughly: Maybe the sequel is good? Otherwise, why would there be a third one?

After watching the second one, if it's still bad, the audience will think, what's up with the third one? How is there a fourth one? What happened in the end? How could such a terrible story continue? Is there some kind of divine twist later on?

Anyway... Feng Bujue watched three ninety-minute horror movies in a row, and the final conclusion was: "Four more hours of my life have vanished on bad movies."

He glanced at the clock. It was about 10:30 PM. Logging into the game now in sleep mode seemed a little too early. In non-sleep mode... he was afraid that he would encounter a slightly long script, and by the time he finished, it would be 2:00 AM. Awkward.

Thinking of this... Feng Bujue's gaze shifted to the TV screen again. "Or maybe I'll watch the fourth one..."

Five seconds later, he slapped himself and dismissed that terrible thought. Then, he lay down in the game pod and logged into Thriller Paradise in non-sleep mode.

The login space was the same as always. After Feng Bujue appeared in the elevator, the first thing he did was check the social options on the touchscreen. Long Ge was offline at the moment, as was Kuang Zong Jian Ying. Xiao Tan wasn't online, but Si Yu and Bei Ling's names were lit up. Seeing them in the friend list meant they were also logged into the non-sleep mode server, but unfortunately, they were already [In Game].

Feng Bujue checked his system mailbox. There was one private message and one system mail.

He opened the private message first. The sender was Meng Jingchan, and the content of the email was just one sentence: "If Brother Feng is willing, feel free to add me as a friend and come to the conference room to chat when you have time."

"What's this?" Feng Bujue muttered to himself, "Not willing." He deleted the email directly. "You just want to get information about the Derivatives from me. At most, you want to poach me to join Order." Feng Bujue guessed pretty accurately. He couldn't be bothered to reject the other party face-to-face. Anyway, Meng Jingchan wouldn't receive a friend invitation or email response, so he'd understand.

Next, Feng Bujue opened the system mail. The content of this one was good news.

The email title was: [Compensation Letter to Player 'Feng Bujue']

Clicking on the email, it turned out to be a lengthy message, almost requiring him to turn the page.

The beginning was a polite greeting, obviously a formulaic opening, something like "Dear player, we apologize for the inconvenience caused by the abnormal script." It went on for a good two or three hundred words before mentioning some more practical content, which was that... the previous script had to be forcibly ended by the player, so there would be corresponding compensation.

[Due to the special nature of the experience and game currency reward mechanism, we regret to inform you that you will still not be able to obtain the corresponding benefits from this script. Therefore, we will compensate you with twice the completion reward, and you can randomly draw two learnable skill cards.]

Although the email ended with "If you have any questions, please contact customer service," Feng Bujue also understood that further pursuing the matter probably wouldn't do him any good. Besides, this compensation was already quite good. If he was too greedy, he might not even get this.

The previous script was only unable to be completed because the fLAg got stuck, not because the players had already met the completion conditions but couldn't get the reward. There was an essential difference between the two. Because of the former situation, it was still unknown whether the players could complete the script. Even if everything went normally, they might not be able to finish it.

Besides, the current compensation was rewarding skills, which were rare items in the early stages of the game. Presumably, the Order side would also gladly accept it. They didn't have any particularly large losses, just the game time of one script. Unlike Feng Bujue, who had lost so much of his wealth, he felt like he had gone back to the pre-liberation era overnight.

After reading the email, Feng Bujue didn't rush to the storage room. He first went to the mall and sold the magazines in his pocket. A magazine of 700 game currency bullets, resold to the store for only 65 game currency points. He didn't know how this was calculated...

He also purchased three bottles of (Medium) Survival Value Supplements, and then went to the storage room. Two glass pillars had already appeared inside. He walked forward and took out the two skill cards separately, checking them in his hand.

The first skill card was:

[Name: Evil King Inferno Kill Black Dragon Wave]

[Skill Card Attribute: Active Skill, Disappears After One Use]

[Skill Category: Spiritual Arts]

[Effect: Release a Black Dragon to Devour You and Your Enemies]

[Consumption: Survival Value 100%]

[Learning Condition: Spiritual Arts Specialization E]

[Note: Eat or be eaten... this problem has been solved.]

"Solved my ass! Isn't that just being eaten!" Feng Bujue shouted. His Spiritual Arts Specialization had indeed leveled up after the previous script. This skill was definitely a do-or-die ultimate move. As a one-time consumable skill, its activation cost was actually all of his Survival Value. That is, after releasing it, whether the enemy died or not, the player was definitely dead.

And the second skill card was an extremely valuable passive skill card, but the effect was a bit bizarre.

[Name: The Alchemist of Ice's Obsession]

[Skill Card Attribute: Passive Skill, Permanently Mastered]

[Skill Category: Machinery]

[Effect: Increases the success rate of all active skill activations by 10%]

[Learning Condition: Machinery Specialization D]

[Note: Mr. W.W. always warns us that even if you are making "ice," out of respect for chemistry, not even a fly is allowed to exist in the laboratory.]

"Isn't that Heisenberg! Alchemist of Ice? What is this skill hinting at!" Feng Bujue complained about the nonsensical note while decisively learning the skill...