~~Ke Lao is coming~~

Looking at Chai Gang’s friend request, Su Mo wanted to just reject it. But just as he thought to do it, he instead clicked to accept it.

Just as he had accepted it, Chai Gang tried to video call him and Since Su Mo still had a lot of questions he wanted to ask him, he naturally accepted the call.

The video call opened, and a loud noice came from near his ear. —— This child, was actually running around on a playground.

“Ahahahaha! Su Mo, you actually accepted my call!”

There was a note of surprise in his voice, obviously it was completely unexpected that Su Mo had accepted his friend request.

When Chai Gang left the scerio the night before and checked his reward, it was better than he could ever have imagined, and with all of those surprises he couldn’t help but immediately add Su Mo as a friend.

The result was that Su Mo was added in the late night, and hearing nothing from Su Mo’s side, Chai Gang couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

“Okay okay, that’s no problem!”

“Find a quiter place, I have some things I want to ask you.” Su Mo responded with a frown.

Sprinting around the park, he tried to find a place that was at least a little bit quieter than the rest, after which he continued the chat, panting, “What questions do you have for me? I promise I will tell you everything I know.”

“….Does the Evolving Scenario and the Reality Scenario have any sort of relation?” Ever since leaving the ‘Old residence in the wilderness’ scenario, this question had been circling around in his mind.

Especially after finding those two non tradeable items, the ‘sister’s disdain’ and ‘He Wan’s letters’ in the storage icon. This made Su Mo feel that the scenario, the ‘Old residence in the wilderness’, wasn’t as simple as he had originally thought.

“Eh… that, that…. probably doesn’t have any relation to each other?” Chai Gang replied uncertain, scratching at his head.

One must remember that Chai Gang had also only successfully completed three scenarios so far, and he had the appearance of someone who didn’t pay much attention to the world around him, and also didn’t seem like much of a deep thinker.

Since Chai Gang also didn’t know anything, it was no longer necessary to continue the conversation with him. Thinking this, Su Mo was just about to hang up the call, Chai Gang enquired with a mysterious tone, “Dude, thanks to you, I managed to really make a fortune this time!”

“Huh?”

“Bronze! I achieved a bronze ranking!”

In both of the previous two tasks, Chai Gang received an Iron ranking, obviously, this was quite a normal scenario for preparatory players, Chai Gang knew that very well. But this time he achieved a bronze ranking, so how could he not be excited?

Dreamland’s Paradise was very interested in rating the player’s scenarios; The higher the rating, the more generous the rewards are, even to the point that the app will attach a higher value to you. Especially when you are a preparatory player, and even being able to aquire the affore-mentioned bronze ranking, would then already put you ahead of many official players in ranking from the start.

Compared to Su Mo, who is the first person to have ever received a gold ranking for their scenario mission, an absolutely daunting ranking. Even if you were to compare it to all the players throughout the world, you would see that even within there, this would be a rare phenomenon.

As far as Su Mo is concerned, apart from his well deserved rewards, Dreamland’s Paradise actually still needed to present him with the Soul-killing sword, and although he didn’t know the capabilities of the sword, his intuition was telling him that it had to be something impressive.

The Soul-killing sword was not only tailored to suit the player, but it was also the only weapon type in Dreamland’s Paradise that could grow. Only thing is, if you were to look at Jiu You now, you would say that it didn’t look very impressive, but that’s only because his full potential hadn’t been unearthed yet. Once it has grown in the future, it will definitely become a frightening and deadly weapon.

But Su Mo had only just entered the game and was wet behind the ears, so he wasn’t aware of the bargain that he had just gotten. Of course, even if he had known, that didn’t necessarily mean that he would be excited about it —— Becoming a ‘top priority character’ to the system also wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

Chai Gang gave a large, rueful sigh. Finally rembering his aim for calling, he anxiously continued. “If I even received a bronze ranking, Su Ge, you must have gotten an even higher ranking ey? Quickly tell me, did you get a silver rank?”

In Chai Gang’s experience, getting a silver ranking is already an unattainable existence. Therefore, when Su Mo just casually said the three words, ‘Gold ranking’, all you could hear was the sound of the phone dropping, as the screen went black….

Su Mo didn’t really care about what had happened on Chai Gang’s end, so looking at the black screen, he promptly hung up the phone.

Having hung up the phone, he was instantly bombed by a load of texts from Chai Gang. Su Mo didn’t pay him any attention as he instantly blacklisted his number, once more bringing peace and quiet to the world.

At that moment, the App sent out a message: A female student from the ZheJiang Specialised University, fell into the lake and died during the early hours of the morning.

However, this University student wasn’t just some stranger, it was Lu Lanlan!

“So after dying in the game, the system will make sure that you also die in some way in the real world?”

All kinds of details that couldn’t even illustrate the power of the Dreamland’s Paradise. It would be a lie if Su Mo said he didn’t feel his heart fluctuate. But this little bit wasn’t enough to cause any change in his expression….

Su Mo hadn’t realised that the time had already reached midnight until his stomach started to growl. Everyone knows you can’t function on an empty stomach, so Su Mo quickly left his apartment and went to the dining hall in district 10.

District 10 was the ‘critical’ area of the ‘hospital’ so there weren’t that many patients who were in there. When Su Mo arrived at the dining hall there were only about about ten people already in there. Although there weren’t that many people, they all looked like bad people —— This definitely wasn’t your average mental hospital. Strictly speaking, this place was even more dangerous than a ‘maximum security’ prison.

There were almost no ordinary people imprisoned here for mental illness, and there were even some soldiers here as well.

But when Su Mo appeared in the dining hall, just as usual, the place instantly quitened down.

Nobody spoke, nobody even dared to breathe loudly, all except…

“Oh Heavenly Majesty^[1]this being a prayer to Buddha, the patron says their prayers every night and by the mercy of our Lord their sins will be forgiven.”

“Boohoo…. thank you Ke Lao, thank you Ke Lao”

With those strange words, the silence within the dining hall was abruptly broken.

Su Mo’s infamy had spread far and wide, but within this group amount of people who could still talk merrily without taking him too seriously, there was only….

From a corner of the room, sat a middle aged woman holding a string of Buddhist prayer beads as she gave a grateful bow, afterwards she suddenly bolted past Su Mo, crying piteously.

The person who had given her the prayer beads was also quite weird. That person was clearly the one who had uttered the phrase ‘Oh Heavenly Majesty’, yet he was however dressed in the robes of a Christian clergyman. But what was even stranger still was that he had a string of sandalwood Buddhist beads held within his hand. —— This man was over forty, and at first glance one would assume he was a gentle and kind elder. Ke Lao.

Ke Lao. Nobody knew what his real name was, so everybody decided to call him by the name Ke Lao. But in private he also had a nickname, Wei Daoshi, ie. ‘Apologist’.

A large group of crazy people lived in this ‘hospital’. It was like your so-called ‘where there are people, there are rivers and lakes’.^[2]As in, where there are people, there will be crazy people as well And in this ‘hospital’ the patients were also divided up into groups. Of these groups, the most notorious were the ‘four tycoons’ or ‘the Big Four’. Su Mo and Ke Lao being two of them.

The distinguishing characteristic between these four tycoons was that they all had their own nicknames. Ke Lao is ‘Wei Daoshi’, and although it’s not the best name, amongst the four people it was considered quite a mild form of address. At least compared to what they called Su Mo, who was ‘Qie Gezhe’ ie. ‘The Cutter’, they were much kinder.

The abrupt silence in the hall obviously attracted Ke Lao’s attention. When his gaze met with Su Mo’s, he made the sign of the cross on his chest, then nodded his head towards Su Mo with a benevolent look on his face. Of course, this benevolent look was hidding the subtle guarded look.

Su Mo nodded his head back in response, then no longer paid heed to Ke Lao as he fetched some food and quietly ate by himself. —— The four of them had spent enough time clashing that they had already formed their own hidden rules, that Su Mo naturally wouldn’t break.

However, after ten minutes, a few shadows appeared in front of him.

Su Mo dropped his chopsticks and coldly gazed up at the people that had come over.

“Oh Heavenly Father, the sight of this rotten mortal. Your glabella^[3]the space between your eyebrows is emitting darkness, an omen of disaster that you are in danger of being killed…. Brother Su, do you need this decrepit man’s help to solve your problems?”

He said it with a smile, but the guard behind his eyes didn’t diminish in the slightest. —— It was obvious that even Wei Daoshi^[4]the Apologist felt cautious when coming into contact with Su Mo.

One never goes to the temple for no reason^[5]A saying meaning that you wouldn’t go to someone unless you wanted something. The four of them were as different as the river and the sea and barely communicated. Amongst the four of them he was the sleaziest, slickest old liar and a great swindler, so Su Mo couldn’t believe that this old codger had had the guts to actually break their rules.

His gaze moved down. When he saw the sandalwood rosary in Qing Kelao’s hand his pupils shrank.

“Sit.”

Ke Lao was no longer courteous and with a dry laugh, sat down in front of Su Mo.

The impact of these two guys sitting together caused a large shock to instantly go around the room. Obviously the whispers of the people around them didn’t affect the two people. After taking a seat Ke Lao began to play with the beads in his hand, smiling that his eyes squinted. “Brother Su, what do you think of my Buddhist beads?”

Soul-killing sword!

Just like Su Mo’s Jiu Mo, this is Ke Lao’s soul-killing weapon!

What did this soul-killing weapon mean? It meant that Ke Lao had not only entered ‘Dreamland’s Paradise’, but that he, like Su Mo, had achieved a Gold Ranking!

“If you have something to say, just say it.”

Because of the existence of the ticking timebomb that is Chu Han, on paper, Su Mo was the most dangerous person, however, who was the stronger one between the two was up for debate.

But the four people all shared a common ground —— they wouldn’t easily trust any other person.

Su Mo was like that and Ke Lao was the same. Except that this person had always taken pleasure from cheating other people, and seemed to be loose in the head. This type of deceitful person, how could he be ‘honest’ when seeing Su Mo?

If between the four people, you let Su Mo choose which he would least like to interact with, it would definitely be Ke Lao. So Su Mo was shocked to see him take out a string of rosaries, but after the shock his first feeling was: Luring others into a trap.

Obviously, not wanting to come across him didn’t mean that Su Mo feared him. If Ke Lao dared to put all the attention on himself, Su Mo wouldn’t mind making him into a dead Taoist Priest.

“Hehe, this boy, you mustn’t look at me with such an expression. This old mans doesn’t have a lot of guts, and dares not to offend the perverted Chu.”

Although he was saying such words, his face held not a single glimpse of fear, instead his voice dropped even lower as he continued, “This boy can recognise ‘Holy light’. I presume you also completed a scenario, getting a Gold ranking?”

Dreamland’s Paradise was far beyond a persons comprehension, it was so bizarre that even by mentioning it you would be thought to be having a sort of psychotic break. —— Although it would have originally been taken as such. However, while within everyone’s gaze, Ke Lao actually dared to take out the rosary beads, and reveal this information to Su Mo, he guessed that he must have some sort of backer.

Although they hadn’t even exchanged a few sentences, yet Su Mo could guess that this guy had already approached these other two people and that it was a high probability that they had also already entered Dreamland’s Paradise.

Being faced with this sly Ke Lao, Su Mo didn’t want to say too much, so he kept silent. Seeing this Ke Lao didn’t mind and just continued on, “Brother,^[6]He says Older Brother, 老哥, and it’s a form of address the reason why I dared to l approach you is because I obviously have something important to say…. I’m afraid that you might not have realised, but Ghost face disappeared this morning!”

Ghost face, one of the Big Four.

“Ghost face disappeared?”

Su Mo didn’t really believe him, after all the first scenario was really not that difficult, and out of the four of them, not one of them was a weakling.

“No, he won!” Ke Lao continued, “But he used ‘money’ and bought his way to become a free man!”

The ‘money’ that Ke Lao was talking about was obviously referring to the Dreamland’s currency, which was known to be a multi-faceted currency.

“It would have been good either way if he had left, after all his head was….”

Stopping halfway through his sentence, Su Mo’s lip twitched, he actually didn’t want to say anything further.

Ke Lao smiley widely, then asked again, “It’s really interesting in there, you also thing so right? So, do you want to form an alliance?”

Su Mo gave Ke Lao a strange look, his eyes seemed to say, ‘Are you kidding me?’

It stood to reason, that with Ke Lao’s intelligence, he wouldn’t be able to figure out that between the four of them there existed no trust. Since it was like this, why did he suddenly propose an alliance?

There was probably a hidden reason but Su Mo couldn’t seem to figure it out, and he also wasn’t keen to bring something troublesome upon himself. Therefore as such, without the least bit of hesitation he turned him down, “Sorry, but I’m used to being by myself.”

Having said that, Su Mo got up and left the canteen without looking back.

Watching the back of Su Mo as he went off, Ke Lao took out his prayer beadings, playing with them and smiling as he spoke to himself, “Brother oh brother, you’ll soon discover that Dreamland’s Paradise is not a game you can play alone… tut tut, people like this, will they even be able to integrate into ‘society’?

Right, people like that will never be able to integrate into what they call the ‘normal person’s’ world.

Those that are cold-blooded, unemotional and selfish; They will never be able to trust anyone other than themselves; They see other people’s lives as but a trifling matter, their own life becoming like a game. Most importantly, they are all sick, and time and again they find themselves reverting back into their sick selves….

~~~~

Author has something to say:

Ke Lao has entered the stage!

~~~ * ~~~

TL: Yoh guys… time’s been hectic. I started my Honours year which is a postgrad in University and have to do my mini thesis. I live with my Dad and his wife now which sucks, especially as a 23 year old adult who still is called a child. (╯°□°）╯
But…. on a higher note, Bridgerton Season 3 just came out and I loved it!!! Finally a season I can relate to as the ‘non main character’, bookloving, awkward person. Penelope we feel you!!!

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the chapter and lots of love!