Chapter 556: Goodbye, My Friend

12th June, 7 pm.

“Yet another bunch of mails…” After Feng Bujue logged into the log in lobby, the first thing he did was to check his mailbox. “Hmm…” Looked at the number at the bottom of the mailbox and started to laugh. “Thankfully… compared to be before, the amount of mail is so little that I have to be thankful!” For the current Brother Jue, when there were only several hundred mails in his mailbox after he had not logged in for several days, that was already something worth celebrating already. This also proved that… the popularity of the Tournament of the Best was slowly dying away, and the player base’s focus was moving away from him.

Of course, there was another reason that caused something like this to happen and that was… after the new update, the ‘player’s overall ability ranking’ had already removed the ‘hidden’ option and it was directly changed to the option of ‘not appearing on the ranking at all’. Therefore, the way in which new players would have heard about the Id Feng Bujue had drastically decreased. At this point, one had to bring up a complaint about the previous ranking. The original ‘hidden’ option was actually rather pointless… as long as the bigger studios exchanged their information, they could easily figure out who that hidden player was. And the result would often be… The public who did not know the truth would see that ‘hidden’ player high on the ranking and then they would figure out a way to find out who that was, and the most efficient method was to ask the internet and then they would know… oh, it was that who who who.

But now the situation was completely different, there was no more hidden player on the ranking. Either the player was on the ranking or they were not. Those not on the ranking… either want to keep a low profile, or they had regressed or they had deleted their account… As time passed, no one would purposely go find them out anymore, or at least the casual players would not…

Other than that, there was something worth bringing up—this new option offered by the ranking system meant that the tactic of ‘secret weapon’ was rendered possible. Theoretically speaking, those powerful studios could have started from this moment…. To cultivate some powerful players in the dark. They would forbid them from playing Killing Game with players outside of the studio and they could only team up with guild members for group scenario. This way… When Season 2 of Tournament of the Best arrived, this batch of people would be a surprise army. And to tell the truth… some of the gaming studios had started doing that already but since this batch of people would only show up later, so we shall not talk about them now…

In that case, we shall return to visit Brother Jue. To prepare for the deadline in the middle of June, he had closed his doors and shut himself up to hurry his manuscript. With coffees in the dark and going to bed promptly at night and resisting the urge of gaming, after 4 gruelling days of this schedule, he finally finished about 90 percent of his workload, the remaining one percent could be done within 4 to 5 hours that he could picked out from any of the coming 2 days. Therefore, today after Brother Jue had his dinner, washed his plates, he crawled into the gaming hub and finally logged into Thriller Paradise.

“Okay… done.” Feng Bujue only took less than 10 minutes to deal with all the choked up mails. He then turned open his social tab to see if his guild mates from Underworld Frontline were online or not. But he had found a surprise waiting for him…

“Eh? Who is this Singing Moon Whirling Shadow…” Brother Jue’s eyes were drawn to this detail instantly, there was a new member who just joined their guild. Even though currently this person was offline, the id was still shown inside the name list for the guild members.

“No way…” After a few seconds of contemplation, Feng Bujue’s expression changed minutely, looks like the answer had dawned on him, “I sing and the moon lingers, I dance and my shadow whirled under. In my sober moments we rejoiced together, Once I am drunk, it is a company no longer. Such fellowship shall endure despite our parted ways, Only heaven knows when we shall come together again…” he mumbled, “Hmm… She has quite a good memory…”

After he deduced the identity of the new member, Brother Jue instantly felt a chill run down his spine because he was instantly made known to the fact that… the person who had invited that Miss An into the guild would be none other than Li Ruoyu. Currently only two persons in the guild had the permission to recruit and kick members in and out of the guild. One was Feng Bujue himself and the other was Li Rouyu. To put it simply… one was the team leader and the other was commissar. Of the other two, Soulie would not want the power, one was because she thought it was too troublesome and two was because if she needed anything she could have asked for help directly from her cousin; and for Xiao Tan… even if he asked for the permission, Brother Jue would not have given him to him. If he insisted on knowing why, Brother Jue would give answer like ‘because like you to be treated like this’ to move things along.

“Those two girls…” Feng Bujue paced around in the elevator and mumbled to himself, “Sure have become fast friends… this kind of relationship bound by a hatred towards a common enemy… is not a good sign…” He slightly tortured himself for a while but he could not come up with a good solution, looks like he could not avoid having his own action being closely monitored by his boss from now on… thankfully he had not come online for the past few days and had shown himself to be a busy worker and had no time for recreation, so even if he run into her today, he could say confidently… I have already finished most of the draft.

“Aiz… how come it feels like I have regressed to become a primary school student… What I am proving here seems to suggest, ‘I have already finished my homework, now can I play’?…” At this moment, Feng Bujue could not help his mind from straying, “Eventually… I will enter the rebellious period and it will become ‘Stop limiting my life or I will die in front of your eyes!’…” Brother Jue shook his head to toss those ridiculous thoughts out of his mind. “Qie… so be it. A great writer knows when to hold and when to fold, when to stand and when to kneel…” He rambled as he entered the storage room. “… How did Han Xin survive? What about Gou Jian, and Sun Bin? Si Ma Qian… Hmm… well, that one has nothing to do with this…” he said when he stopped before the storage box. “For now… I guess I will just take it step by step…”

He took out all the existing puzzle cards that he had from the storage box. There were seven cards in total: Puzzle Card- Strawberry, Puzzle Card- Banana, Puzzle Card – Plunger, Puzzle Card – Ping Pong, Puzzle Card – Father, Puzzle Card – Spider, Puzzle Card – Countdown. Then he returned to the log in lobby before moving to the market server. Feng Bujue’s destination was none other than the Puzzle Card Trading Centre. The trading centre was situated at the corner of the market, it was edged into the side of a giant arch. The overall architecture looked like a broken sphere. Once he entered, he could see several rows of counters that faced both sides and the many players that moved between the counters. No matter how you look at it… this trading centre looked internally like an arcade. “What is this… are they playing slot machines…” Feng Bujue grumbled as he continued to move forward.

After the new version update, this was the first time he had come to this place. In the past 10 days, most of the players had already familiarized themselves with the usage of this place and people like Brother Jue… was in the minority.

“Ha! Brother Feng!” Suddenly a familiar voice called his name. Feng Bujue turned to the sound and saw the person walking towards him. “Oh, so it is Master Sword, long time no see.”

“The people from Blade Edge told me that I might run into you at Market server 101…” Flashes of Sword said as he approached Brother Jue, “I did not expect that to be today.”

“if you have anything to find me, you can just message or request a chat, wouldn’t that be easier…” Feng Bujue was not wrong, they were already friends already.

“Ha ha… it’s because it was nothing that important.” Flashes of Sword smiled. “Oh, by the way, let me make some introduction…” He said as he moved to the side. Brother Jue only then noticed behind Flashes of Sword that was a thin young man who still had the images of juvenility about him. He was wearing the common attire of a Jiang Hu member as well and the badge of “jiang Hu” was visible on his chest.

“This is the rising star we have just recruited from Celestia.” Flashes of Sword introduced, “Sky Song.”

“Nice to meet you.” Feng Bujue said out of politeness.

“Wow! Are you really Feng Bujue?” Sky Song widened his eyes and said while studying Brother Jue like he was some kind of monster, “You look more real than in those videos.”

“You idiot!” Master Sword whacked the young man on his head. “isn’t that a given? Also how can you say things like that before someone you just met? Where are you manners?”

“I am so sorry…” Sky Song held his head and raised his head with a pout and greeted Feng Bujue, “Nice to meet you, Brother Feng.”

Just as he finished, there was another ‘dong’ as Sky Song was rewarded with another whack. The offense this time was, “Are you that close to him to refer to him as Brother Feng? It’s Brother Jue to you!”

“Yes, Brother Jue!” Sky Song very obediently changed his term of greeting.

“Hmm… This rising star looks more like a new gang member standing by your side…” Feng Bujue chided without a change to his expression. “Speaking of which… Are you sure the guards won’t come after you… if you attack him so harshly?”

“it’ll be fine, it’s his big sister who tasked me to look after him.” Flashes of Sword explained, “Oh, I forgot to mention, he is Scaredy Cat’s younger brother.”

“Oh…” Feng Bujue’s expression took on a trace of pity as he turned to Sky Song and said, “Xiao Song, life must have been hard for you…”

“Well, you are not wrong there…” Sky Song said with melancholy.

“That’s enough, Xiao Song, you go over there and find something to do on your own, I need to discuss something with brother Feng for a while.” It was clear that Flashes of Song intended to chase Sky Song away.

“Oh.” Sky Song answered and then shrugged before turning to leave. After he walked away, Flashes of Song said, “Brother Feng, I am telling you in confidence that this kid is very talented, you will become a very formidable player in the future.”

“I know.” Feng Bujue replied calmly. “I have remembered about 16 seconds ago his fight with Xiao Tan during the Battle of the Bug, Xiao Tan had described that battle to me before.”

“Hmm, yes yes, Xiao Song has told me about it as well…” Flashes of Sword added, “He claimed that… he almost won that Kuang Tanzhi in the semi final of the Tournament at the time.” He shook his head. “I scolded him on the spot… there was no almost in a duel! That just meant that he has lost! What kind of pride can he draw from that?”

“I realize you like to ramble more and more lately.” Feng Bujue basically had ignored the man’s words and shot Flashes of Sword back with a condescending look, “After submerging daily in the joy of a girl’s grappling skill, it caused your internal hormones level to go unbalanced, is it…”

“He he… Stop bringing that up, you only saw that once, didn’t you?” Flashes of Sword laughed drily, “And that was because you were there, I was purposely letting her do that, I don’t want to make her feel bad…”

“The lewdness and anticipation in your eyes have belied your real thoughts.” Feng Bujue evenly stabbed with his words.

“Hey… how come you manage to continuously mock me like that! Has the system censorship failed?” Flashes of Sword grumbled with annoyance.

“I did not curse or anything.” Feng Bujue said, “The only sensitive term was lewdness but the fact that it was not censured… proves that the system approves of my opinion.”

In terms of mastery of words, Flashes of Sword was naturally no match for Brother Jue, so he soon turned his shame into anger. “Qie… fine, so what if you are right! I cannot be happier in this situation! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!” He parted his legs, planted his hands on both sides of his waist and laughed three times into the sky.

Feng Bujue was silent for two seconds. “Fine, suit yourself…” he sighed. “But there is one thing that I need to tell you.”

“What is it?” Flashes of Sword asked curiously.

“When you said ‘I scolded him on the spot’, your Not a Scaredy Cat has already entered this server.” When Feng Bujue said that, his eyes already moved behind the man. “When you said ‘What kind of pride can he draw from that?’ she was already walking towards you with Xiao Song in tow.” He paused for a moment, “Since then, she has been standing behind you listening in on our conversation… And I have to say her eyes at this moment do not convey much happiness.”

When Flashes of Sword heard all these, he swallowed with much difficulty. His face blanched and slowly moved his stiff neck around to look behind him. Several seconds later, it was a smiling face that entered his eyes. This was an expression that Not a Scaredy Cat rarely used. But the curled smile did nothing to hide the anger burning in his eyes. Sky Song was using a pitiable gaze to look at Flashes of Sword, “I wanted to warn you… but she did not let me.”

Flashes of Sword’s lips twitched as he turned around to look at Feng Bujue. “But… why… why…”

“Well, this chance does not come very often, so I thought I’d play a prank on you.” Feng Bujue opened his arms and laughed wickedly.

“Huang Pu Ming Kang!” Not a Scaredy Cat called sternly.

“It’s over now… She has called my full name…” Flashes of Sword looked like a man on his death row.

“Now this is interesting… Should I add something like, ‘if I call your name, would you dare to answer here?’” Feng Bujue chuckled maliciously on his friend’s tragedy.

“Follow me to the conference room, I have something that I need to discuss with you.” Not a Scaredy Cat did not waste much time, she dragged Flashes of Sword by the back of his collar and pulled him away.

“Ah~ High mountains~ Wandering river~ The road ahead is unknown~ O bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao!” Feng Bujue waved his hands and sang this song as he watched as Flashes of Sword was dragged away…

“What song is that?” Sky Song was still standing there, he looked at Brother Jue and asked.

“There was a movie by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia called Bridge, if you have time, you should go watch it…” Feng bujue turned away with a smile. “Oh, one more thing… A friendly advice for you… the first step to become a powerful person is to not let people whack you on your head so easily.” With that he slowly wandered away, leaving behind a shadow, hiding his name and successes…

Sky Song looked with Brother Jue with a face plain with admiration and respect. He said, “Even though I have no idea what just happened… but he looks so amazing…”

…

15 minutes later, Brother Jue returned to the log in lobby. He had studied the rules slightly at the Puzzle Card Trading Centre before he became an expert at it. It did not take long for him to swap away all 7 of his cards. Now the cards that he traded for were respectively, Puzzle Card- Goat x 2, Puzzle Card – Bull, Puzzle Card – Scorpion, Puzzle Card – Crab, Puzzle Card – Fish and Puzzle Card – Lion. It was clear that the set that Feng Bujue was going for was… the twelve zodiac signs. With this basic concept settled, the card trading became more purposely and targeted. Since the trade was conducted through the system counter, there was no need for haggling. He only needed to use the ‘search’ function to find those cards that fit the properties of the 12 zodiac. The condition was ‘exchange one card for one card, type unlimited’ and then he only needed to click confirm.

There were mainly two kinds of players who frequented the Puzzle Card Trading Centre. The first kind was the players who were too lazy to deal with this collection system and just tossed all of their collected cards at the trading centre. They would return in a few days and see if any of they had traded for could form any sets with the cards that they already had; the second kind was players who already had a target set in mind but they still had not found the specific cards that they wanted so they posted their unwanted cards at the trading centre, laid down some conditions, hoping to trade for the specific cards that they needed. And Feng Bujue… was the kind of people who only had 7 cards but wanted to find a set of 12 cards in trade…

But Brother Jue understood that with his current puzzle card collection, it would still take long to finish the twelve zodiac sign set… because based on the current market, if you wished to trade for a whole set of five cards, you need to at least prepare 7 cards; if you wanted to trade for a set of 10 cards, then you better prepare around 15 cards.

This was a very simple concept, who would not want to finish a set with more cards? But the latter in the later, undeniably the difficulty would get higher. When you already had two last cards remaining, but there was none at the trading centre, what could you do? The only thing you could was to offer your other unnecessary cards and wait for other people to come trade for you. But since you have conditioned for a specific card, then the other person might not want to trade his one card for just one of yours. Therefore, for those who wanted to trade a specific card, they would normally put up two of their unwanted cards, to trade 2 cards for one. In this, there was another thing to study… perhaps a trashy card for you might be a treasure for another person.

In conclusion, there were many things to learn about the Puzzle Card Trading Centres, if you had the patience to sit there all day and submerge yourself in the trading… theoretically speaking, you could trade for more and more cards in your collection. After you got a large enough collection, then you could profit from offline trade. Because there was a type of player called whales in this world. As long as you have money, you could have completed a set with 120 cards much less a twelve zodiac set. They could put up a request on a public forum and request to buy the card that they want with actual money, eventually they had have everything they needed.

“hmm… I am running out of space in my storage…” When Feng Bujue was storing his card, he studied his storage box that only had ten usable slots. “jazz shoes will be fed into the disintegrator eventually but the Superhero Id card for the Poker will always take a slot. My inventory slot is also full and I have no extra space, it does not feel right carrying a stack of puzzle cards with me in my pocket either…” At this point, Brother Jue made up his mind and summoned the control window for the storage room. And soon purchased another 5 slots through the fast purchase option.

Similar to the price of extra inventory slot, the extra storage slot cost 1000000 Game Coins every 5 slots. He had to spend this money eventually so why not now? What if he came back from the next scenario and the reward was another few Puzzle Cards, then he’d be placed in an awkward spot.

“Okay…” Feng Bujue looked at the Game Coins that disappeared from his menu. He turned back to the elevator. “Time to queue up some scenarios to farm money.”

Ever since the end of Tournament of the Best, the members of Underworld Frontline (except An Yueqin) had an obvious increase in their level. Ruoyu, Xiao Tan and Soulie were all at level 40, they were not that far off from Brother Jue who was level 43. Therefore, that morning, Bujue had already made a date with his buddies… to meet up in sleeping mode on the night of 13th at 1 am to queue up for games. But at this point, Brother Jue was not the only one online.

When Feng Bujue just logged in, he already realized Xiao Tan and Laughing Soul were also online but they were both already in game; while Ruoyu and Miss An were both offline. Therefore… he still had to queue up for a scenario alone.

Perhaps some of the readers might ask… Brother Jue should have quite a lot of friends and most of them were very powerful players so why wouldn’t Brother Jue play with them? The reason was very simple, it was because they were professional players… so most of them their online schedule was tightly packed, there was not one moment where they weren’t busy. Furthermore, the company that they belonged to had a set group of people and plan when attempting any scenario and Feng bujue did not plan to join any of them so he did not think it was wise to disturb them. Of course… if they came to ask him to join them for a quick game, it was a different story.

“Hmm… I have not attempted the Killing Game for a long time already…” Feng Bujue contemplated for a while before the touch screen, he said to himself, “it is now 7. 20 pm, if I go for a 1 versus 1 duel… the shortest it will take is 15 minutes and the longest will be at most 2 hours (this is in reference to actual real life time), it will not make me miss my date with the rest of the gang…” When he considered that, he already made his move and selected the 1 versus 1 Killing Game mode.

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