Chapter 7: Frustrating the Heart and Will

Two wanted posters were posted at the entrance of the government office and under the city gate tower, with portraits and descriptions issued for the arrest of the two players, 【Lao Mi】 and 【Gengmi】.

The portraits were crude, yet they accurately outlined their features and were quite vivid.

Their names were on the wanted posters.

This was revenge from the deleted-account player 【Yu Mao】 in prison; since they were all players, why should they be allowed to scam him, but he not be allowed to scam them?

Regarding the prison break, the government's reaction was exceptionally swift.

Better to kill the wrong person than to let one go.

After all, this concerned the face of the government.

Under the hazy night, hidden in the crowd, 【Lao Mi】 and 【Gengmi】 looked at the wanted posters on the wall and finally understood why they were being hunted as soon as they logged in.

"We've gone red-named?" 【Gengmi】 said in astonishment.

"It seems so." 【Lao Mi】 looked helpless.

"We didn't do anything, yet we're red-named; this is too unreasonable!" 【Gengmi】 felt deeply aggrieved, "What is the game's judgment mechanism? I want to file a complaint."

"Realism! The judgment mechanism is realism; framing and entrapment, these things can all happen in the real world." 【Lao Mi】 was silent for a moment, then added, "Besides, it's not like we didn't do anything; I even took in a little brother."

"..." 【Gengmi】 gritted her teeth and said, "We wouldn't have ended up in this state without him! With these two wanted posters, we definitely won't be able to find work. What do we do now?"

"The simplest way: delete the account and start over with a new face." 【Lao Mi】 said, "Anyway, the server just opened, and we haven't lost anything."

"That's a hell of a solution." 【Gengmi】 glared at 【Lao Mi】, looked at the wanted poster, and fell silent. A moment later, she turned back to 【Lao Mi】, "Laoluo, there is no love without reason, and no hate without reason. I don't think an NPC would scam us for no reason; there must be a follow-up. If we delete the account and start over, the plot mission will definitely be lost..."

"Same as what I'm thinking." 【Lao Mi】 said, "A hellish start isn't necessarily a bad thing. Didn't that NPC say? When Heaven is about to place a great burden on a person, it must first frustrate their heart and will. Isn't this the stage for tempering our heart and will? My little brother definitely isn't an ordinary person. I believe that the harder the start, the greater the harvest will be later."

"Mm." 【Gengmi】 nodded, "What do we do next?"

"How many copper coins do you have on you?" 【Lao Mi】 asked.

"160." 【Gengmi】 said.

"I have about the same here." 【Lao Mi】 said, "We don't need to sleep; when we reach the limit of exhaustion, we can recover after resting for a while. If we only eat, holding out for three days shouldn't be a problem. Within three days, we will do our best to find my good little brother; he must have the follow-up mission."

"The wanted posters are plastered all over the streets. We'll be hunted as soon as we show our faces, and we can't move around during the day either!" 【Gengmi】 asked.

【Lao Mi】 grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground, smeared it randomly on his face, and rolled on the ground. His clothes had already been torn when the townspeople chased them. Aside from the novice underwear that couldn't be destroyed, the game didn't provide repairs for outer garments, so torn meant torn.

In tattered clothes and looking filthy, 【Lao Mi】's image plummeted, looking like a completely different person from the gentle and elegant novice he was before; he looked just like a Beggar.

After finishing all this, 【Lao Mi】 said triumphantly: "I've observed that there are beggars in the city. Turning into this state will definitely not arouse suspicion. If it weren't for the fact that our Physique recovers slowly, I would have wanted to disfigure myself. There are even benefits to pretending to be a beggar; maybe I can even save money on food..."

"..." 【Gengmi】's eye twitched violently, "Are we really doing this? I think we could log off and hide for two days, post on the forum, and offer a reward for other players to help us find him..."

"That's not how you look at it." 【Lao Mi】 looked at 【Gengmi】 and said earnestly, "When Heaven is about to place a great burden on a person, it must first frustrate their heart and will. If we post the mission on the forum, what if someone else snatches it? What if it's not an exclusive mission? A-Geng, this is our opportunity; if we miss it, we might never have it again. If you aren't willing to suffer this hardship, I'll do it myself. You log off and stay for two days, then wait for my news."

【Gengmi】 glanced at him and said, "It's just a game anyway, I'll go all out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That NPC said we are both a Dragon and Phoenix Among Men; don't even think about shaking me off to do this alone!"

The land deed was transferred to Lin Bai's name, and he finally possessed a place of his own in Jiamu City.

During the day, the shop was being renovated in full swing.

As soon as the sky turned dark, the craftsmen and the young assistants doing odd jobs were unwilling to stay, and one by one, they slipped away in a hurry.

It wasn't because Jiamu City had any labor laws, but because this shop was simply a Haunted House.

That's right.

The shop that Lin Bai had taken because he was short on funds was haunted.

Sensing that there was a problem with the shop, Lin Bai wandered around the street and easily found out the inside story of the shop.

Three years ago.

A tall poplar tree on Qingyu Street in Jiamu City caught fire in the middle of the night due to a Thunder Strike, and the surrounding five hundred meters were all burned to charcoal.

The thick smoke was suffocating, and most people escaped.

The shop Lin Bai bought was a cotton mill at the time; a family of three inside didn't escape and all died in this disaster.

The eerie thing was that while the surroundings were all burned to ruins and the family was choked to death by thick smoke, the shop itself suffered no damage.

This became a strange tale at the time.

After the strange tale came the terror.

In the middle of the night, people passing by Qingyu Street would often hear strange sounds coming from the shop, as if they were crying or calling for help, causing panic among the people.

For this reason, the neighborhood head of Qingyu Street invited a Daoist priest to perform rituals to drive away the evil.

But after the Daoist priest finished the ritual, he only told the neighborhood head that his means were limited and he couldn't completely eliminate the ghosts; he had only used the ritual to trap the ghosts inside the room.

Ten years later, once their resentment was exhausted and they no longer clung to the secular world, they would dissipate completely.

During this period, as long as no one entered the shop at night, everyone could live in peace...

Since then, no strange sounds had indeed been heard at night.

Although the Daoist priest guaranteed that the ghosts would not leave the house, after the reputation of the Haunted House spread, the surrounding area became desolate.

Better safe than sorry.

No one was willing to be neighbors with a family of ghosts...

Later, it was unknown what means the real estate agency used to get their hands on the deed to the cotton mill, but it ended up stuck in their hands for more than two years, becoming a hot potato they couldn't get rid of, until they met Lin Bai...

"Ghosts? Does the Qi Luck Value have no effect at all?"

At dusk.

Lin Bai was gnawing on a sesame seed cake, standing at the entrance of his own shop, lost in thought.

He had considered the reasons why this area was deserted; perhaps it was because of local bullies, or perhaps because of geological or building quality issues...

He just never thought it was because there were ghosts in the shop.

He had fallen into a cognitive bias.

On Earth, things like ghosts only existed in film and television works, and later, they didn't even exist in film and television works anymore.

Since when has this kind of thing existed in reality!

Damn it!

As an ambitious young man nurtured by materialism since childhood, Lin Bai did not know if his small physique could survive against a ghost!

He really had no confidence!

"Was the money spent in vain?" Lin Bai frowned, pondering a solution.

More than half of his belongings had been invested in this wretched place, and since the agency had finally managed to dump this hot potato on him, there was definitely no chance of a refund.

But to give up the home he had worked so hard to set up just because of a ghost he had never seen before felt like a loss!

However, he had followed the craftsmen in and out during the day, which proved that the ghosts indeed would not come out during the day; calculating it this way, he still possessed half the property rights, and based on the price, it was actually not a loss...

But it was clearly a house he had bought himself, yet he couldn't go in to sleep at night; no matter how he thought about it, he felt unwilling!

During the shop renovation process, Lin Bai made the craftsmen feel the beauty of Flaw, completed the initial task of the Wanwu Youque System, and obtained the reward of the Flaw, the Nine Suns True Scripture.

Fortunately, the system possessed the same functions as a game; the manual was plug-and-play, requiring only the improvement of proficiency, with no bottlenecks or thresholds.

He tried practicing the Nine Suns True Scripture, but this damn incomplete copy was simply at a snail's pace to cultivate on his own.

Lin Bai estimated that it would take at least seventy or eighty years to reach the Great Completion realm!

Seventy or eighty years—even a young maiden would have cobwebs by then!

It was nowhere near as satisfying as doing tasks.

As for the current tasks.

The restaurant's signboard had not yet been hung, and the task of the Chef God System was still in progress;

The newly recognized big brother did not know where he had run off to, so the follow-up to supervise him in learning a specialty could not proceed either;

And after the Emotion System's task of collecting Negative Emotion was completed, it gave the following follow-up task: 【Excessive stimulation of Negative Emotion will lead to a difficult life; enemies stimulate your progress, and friends help your development. Please collect one instance of Positive Emotion mobilized by you; Reward: Temperament +1.】

The task for Negative Emotion was temporarily canceled, and the reward had also changed from Spirit to Temperament.

This made Lin Bai feel somewhat regretful.

In order to collect Negative Emotion, he had almost offended everyone around him; unable to find a suitable method to forcibly reverse this, he could only shelve the task for the time being.

The Wanwu Youque System also gave a follow-up task: 【Ambassador for the Promotion of Flaws, let more than fifty people deeply appreciate the mys... of Flaw; Reward: 4.9 years of Internal Energy】.

Mystery or profound meaning? Lin Bai was already too lazy to guess.

What he cared about was the task itself; letting fifty people experience Flaw could easily harvest nearly five years of Internal Energy.

This task could clearly be a key focus.

But Lin Bai had no idea if Internal Energy could fight ghosts.

Under the moonlight, the black doorway was hazy, and the wind occasionally blowing from the entrance was eerie; Lin Bai always felt someone was peeking out, not knowing if it was an illusion...

Lin Bai moved two steps to the side, avoided the main entrance, and sat on a stone pier nearby, resting his chin in his hands to think of a solution.

"The only house that didn't burn down in the big fire, the ghost trapped inside..." Muttering these two sentences, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck Lin Bai's mind, "This damn thing counts as a dungeon, right! If it's a dungeon, the ghost inside must have a health bar, and if there's a health bar, it's easy to handle!"

(End of this chapter)