Chapter 30: When Wusu Woke, the Blanket over His Little Tummy Was Still Peacefully in Place Part 1

He lay in his covers, cozy and content.

He was awake, clearly, yet he didn’t move a muscle.

Look closely, and there was little Wusu, eyes closed in bliss.

By the look on his face, he was listening to music.

A graceful melody seemed to drift from the depths of the void, gentle yet urgent, its rapid-fire rhythm lacing the tune with a thread of dread.

It was like fingers plucking at the mind’s delusions and tangled thoughts, a performance that stung sharper the longer one listened, dragging the listener dizzier and dizzier into some illusory, ethereal depths.

The music was enough to rouse terror in anyone who heard it, yet Wusu listened with pure delight.

So pretty!

To Wusu’s ears, that bizarre music was the most exquisite of performances.

The music outside the window went on and on, and soon the tune seemed to swell into some mighty performance from thousands of miles away, the successive sounds like the playing of some immensely grand movement.

Within that sound, so bright, so immense, so boundless, something strange seemed to hiss and slither, half-hidden.

Wusu’s eyes flew open.

In the pitch-dark bedroom, beyond the drawn curtains, the fragmented glow of the bell-chime tree should have been falling, its light meant to illuminate this territory long and steady.

And now,

outside Wusu’s window, the light that should have been there

seemed blocked by some strange shadow.

Wusu pushed back the thick covers.

He liked heavy blankets, weighty ones; being tucked under them felt so comfy, so safe.

So it took him a bit of effort to push them off.

Wusu’s bare little feet met the floor.

In the Yellow Mushroom House, every stretch of floor had long been covered with thick, warm carpet, plush fibers peeking up between Wusu’s toes, tickling his ankles soft and gentle.

Lovely to step on.

Stepping across the soft, fluffy carpet, Wusu made his way to the window.

As if he hadn’t seen the eerie blackness outside,

he pushed the window open with ease.

Beyond the window, blackness rushed in.

Wusu’s small hand rose.

Splat!

That single motion seemed to bar whatever had been about to dart inside.

The supremely beautiful creation opened its mouth, struck dumb for an instant, then shed its black disguise.

Its forehead pressed meekly into Wusu’s palm. The creation’s gilded eyes half closed, and the tenderness spilling from beneath those lowered lashes seemed frozen and everlasting like ice-pure jade; its long, somber lashes quivered faintly.

As if all the radiance of the world had gathered on him alone.

So dazzling, and yet so rightfully his.

Wusu held it in.

Then his mouth drooped, and he said, all wronged and pouty, “Who wanted you here.”

He had even thrown the black snakey away.

The beautiful creation parted its lips slightly, and a few broken, cryptic syllables slipped out in that strange voice.

Wusu was a little bewildered, but he did understand what that strange intonation said.

Rendered in the common tongue of the continent,

it meant: My Lord.

He had lost far too much, and remembered far too little.

What was good and what was bad, he could tell apart by instinct.

Even this eerie, bizarrely beautiful creation might fill anyone else’s eyes with dread and suspicion.

But hearing it, Wusu only nodded, neither pleased nor cross.

As if he were just an ordinary mortal.

The beautiful creation stepped in through the window, into Wusu’s Yellow Mushroom House.

He smiled.

Yes.

Right now.

He was a “mortal.”

Finally.

He raised a finger to his lips.

That cryptic, beguiling smile spread wider and wider.

His arched brow seemed to speak to whoever was reading this book:

Shh…

That night, Mina had thought she was only resting in-game for a bit.

She hadn’t expected that when she got up, the groggy, woolly feeling would be worse than a full night’s sleep in reality.

For a moment she couldn’t collect herself at all, sprawled in the Red Mushroom House, limp as a dead dog.

“Mina, isn’t today your deadline?”

Alyosha’s cool voice rose from outside the door.

Mina shot bolt upright like a corpse startled at its own wake!

Crap!

Ugh, her editor was exactly the “if I go down, we go down together” type.

If she really couldn’t finish before the deadline this time, she might genuinely have to go on a livestream and sing on camera with her.

And with Mina’s tone-deaf voice, which turned every utterance into a lioness on the rampage,

if she truly humiliated herself on a face-cam stream all the way across the Atlantic, her few friends with actual lives would never let her hear the end of it!

Mina hurriedly checked her current quests.

She was the Weapons Forge’s pseudo-NPC, stationed there every day, and her daily quests mostly involved weapon repairs or forging quotas.

The rewards weren’t bad.

Every day, the system collected the work the territory currently needed done and handed it out to the players however it pleased.

Taking them or not was entirely optional, but hardly anyone skipped them; the quests had become part of their daily routine.

Heartwarming!

Enough to move heaven and earth!

In Continent of Divine Silence, a game stingier than the most infamous penny-pinching landlord in fiction, actually getting to enjoy daily quests like Star Web 3’s was simply… heartwarming!

All that warmth evaporated the moment Mina saw that today’s quest was to help repair Grand Knight Alana’s blade of light. Instant melancholy.

Why couldn’t it have broken sooner? Why not break from overuse? It just had to break on her deadline day!

Right now Mina couldn’t decide whether to log off or ignore the looming deadline and go see the blade of light.

She’d been lusting after it for ages!

And if she logged off now, the forge would need someone to cover for her for the day… Before these thoughts had even finished circling in Mina’s head, she stepped out of the Red Mushroom House and saw that everyone on the street looked strangely off.

Usually everyone was bursting with energy, but today they looked one and all like… wandering ghosts.

Floating rather than walking.

Alesu said in his muddled little voice, “Everyone seems to have slept badly last night.”

Even the orcs, normally bundles of energy, were yawning nonstop.

Mina thought about it. Fair enough.

She hadn’t slept well either.

The door of the Yellow Mushroom House next door opened.

Mina hurried over to look. Ever since she’d learned that Wusu could tell when players logged off, she always told him before logging out.

Wusu emerged slowly.

Little fists rubbing at his eyes.

Yawning, adorably drowsy.

Mina froze.

The little Wusu before her was no longer wearing that flawless white robe, but a pure black one.

Long, at that; the hem trailed along the ground.

A vine was sneaking its way along the steps, curling up the trailing hem for him.

In the white robe, Wusu’s beauty was like a flower of the deepest white, a lasting, gentle, unchanging purity; in the pure black, there was none of the softness of corruption, only a contrast that threw his pure, exquisite beauty into sharper relief, like a porcelain doll, and in every glance and gesture there seemed…

…there seemed to be that aloof, restrained sense of distance.

This kind of beauty bewitched. It drew you in.

But strangely, it had always been neutral, a powerful presence without the slightest bias.

And the person who then stepped out behind Wusu carried a beauty of violent impact and tremendous shock.

Sparing not half an inch of room, it swept away all attention in an instant; his gilded eyes were like sharp blades, and wherever they landed, they stung.

A beauty you couldn’t avoid.

Pricking.

And scalding to the touch.

Once that suffocating wave had passed over her, Mina discovered that amid this clash of soft and fierce beauty, Wusu’s presence only grew stronger.

Even with such a man-eating beast of beauty at his side, nothing could overshadow Wusu’s radiance.

It was like the strange dynamic between beast and tamer: the beast was naturally the eye-catching one, yet the quiet tamer behind it, grip on the reins, was unquestionably the one in control.

When Mina snapped out of her daze, inspiration came flooding in; she only had time to gesture to Wusu that she was logging off before she vanished on the spot.

Wusu’s yawn had barely finished when Mina was gone.

Wusu’s little fists slowly unclenched, then, feeling a bit wronged, clutched at his new robe.

Some of that happy feeling had faded too.

Wusu was quiet by nature. He slowly drew the territory map out of his semi-transparent frame, watched the dot of light marking the Weapons Forge disappear, and sluggishly shifted the territory’s second-ranked dwarf master over there.

Michael had been shouldering a hoe.

Today he was due at the vegetable fields.

Before he even reached them, someone called out, “Michael, hold up! Your name just came up in the Council Hall!”

The Council Hall had been built at Alana’s request.

In Alana Wolfe’s eyes, naturally, everything about the territory fell short.

A lord’s residence ought to be a grand estate, complete with castle, woodlands and fields, gardens, and the household staff and butler to run it all. The current state of things already did the poor young lord an injustice; at the very least, a Council Hall was a must!

With Alana’s final say, a small but refined Council Hall went up.

Apart from the Adventurers’ Guild and the two mushroom houses,

it was the finest, loveliest building on Second Street.

The street the Adventurers’ Guild stood on was called First Street.

Counting the two newly opened roads, they were naturally Second Street and Third Street!

The one talking to Michael was Joseph, a man who, like him, had been transformed back from the Fallen.

Once the Fallen woke, they were identical to ordinary people, with total amnesia about their time corrupted; if they strained to remember, only twisted, fearful fragments surfaced.

“Something came up with Mina at the Weapons Forge,” Joseph said with a smile. “They need you to cover for her today.”

Had Joseph not passed the Council Hall, noticed a faint light inside, and peeked in out of curiosity, he’d never have known that a huge board hung within.

It displayed whatever decisions the lord had made.

Today, the young lord’s decision was,

Michael would take over Mina’s work for a day.

It was work either way, the vegetable fields or the Weapons Forge.

Michael nodded and went.

And just like that, the territory got lively.

Michael, that weapon master, worked as if the gods themselves guided his hands, helping Grand Knight Alana’s blade of light rank up a grade.

Upgrading a weapon with a spirit of its own was no easy feat!

Amid the bustling territory, one spot was off.

Not a fixed spot, really,

but a moving one.

Wherever Wusu went, and the golden-eyed man behind him, that place fell silent.

No particular reason.

Beauty beyond humanity always stunned.

Though if anyone overheard his conversations with Wusu, they’d probably find it comical.