Chapter 1 Washing the Cat

It took Feng Bujue a full hour to wash the cat, and by the end, his arms were covered in countless scratches, and he was sweating from the effort. But at least he'd managed to do it. He'd originally planned to do some more housework, but after such a struggle, he gave up. Giving the cat a bath… it seemed 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 didn't want to watch commercials for 998-yuan products, he conveniently switched to the streaming video channel. Since he'd already switched over, he might as well watch something, so he clicked on the horror movie list…

Horror movies were the most prone to sequels. After watching the first one, no matter how bad it was, the audience would still go see the sequel out of curiosity. The mentality was roughly: maybe the sequel will be good? Otherwise, why would there be a third one?

After watching the second one, if it was still bad, the audience would think, what about the third one? How is there a fourth one? What happened in the end? How could such a坑爹 (kēng diē, disappointing) story continue? Could there be some amazing twist later on?

In short… 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 terrible movies."

Looking up at the clock, it was about ten-thirty in the evening. Logging into the game now, directly in sleep mode, seemed a bit too early. Using non-sleep mode… he was afraid of encountering a slightly long script and finishing it at two in the morning, awkward.

Thinking of this… Feng Bujue's gaze shifted back to the TV screen. "Or should I watch the fourth one too…"

Five seconds later, he slapped himself, dispelling this terrible thought, and then lay down in the game pod, logging into Thriller Paradise in non-sleep mode.

The login space was still the same. After Feng Bujue appeared in the elevator, the first thing he did was check the social options on the touchscreen. Brother Long was offline at the moment, and Kuang Zong Jian Ying was also offline. Xiao Tan wasn't online, but Si Yu and Bei Ling's names were lit up. Seeing them on 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, which contained a private message and a system email.

He opened the private message first. The sender was Meng Jingchan, and the content was just one sentence: "If Brother Feng would do me the honor, please add me as a friend, and perhaps we could have a chat in the conference room when you have time."

"What's this?" Feng Bujue muttered to himself, "No honor." He deleted the email directly. "Just wants to get information about Derivatives from me, at most wants to poach me to join Order." Feng Bujue had guessed pretty close to the truth. He was too lazy to refuse him face-to-face. Anyway, Meng Jingchan wouldn't receive a friend request or email response, and he would understand.

Next, Feng Bujue opened the system email. 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 long tirade, almost requiring turning the page.

The beginning was a bit of polite talk, obviously a formulaic opening, something like "Dear player, we apologize for the inconvenience caused by the abnormal script" and so on. After about two or three hundred words, it finally mentioned some more practical content, which was… the previous script had to be forcibly ended by the player, so there would be relevant compensation.

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

Although the end of the email said, "If you have any questions, please contact customer service," Feng Bujue also understood that further pursuit would probably not benefit him, especially since 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 cleared due to the fLAg getting stuck, not because the players had already met the clear conditions but couldn't get the reward. There was a fundamental difference between the two. Because in the former case, whether the players could clear the script was still unknown, and even if everything went normally, they might not be able to finish it.

Furthermore, the current compensation was rewarding skills, which were rare items in the early stages of the game. Presumably Order would gladly accept it. They didn't have any particularly large losses, just the game time of one script. Unlike Feng Bujue, who lost so much of his savings and felt like he was back to square one overnight.

After reading the email, Feng Bujue didn't rush to the storage room. He first went to the mall to sell the magazines in his pocket. A magazine of 700 game coins, when resold to the store, was only worth 65 game coins. He didn't know how this was calculated…

He then purchased three (medium) capacity survival value supplements before going to the storage room. Two glass columns had already appeared inside. He walked forward and claimed the two skill cards, taking them in his hand to examine them.

The first skill was:

[Name: Evil King's Flame Kill Black Dragon Wave]

[Skill Card Attribute: Active Skill, disappears after one use]

[Skill Category: Spiritual Arts]

[Effect: Release the Black Dragon, devouring you and your enemies]

[Consumption: 100% Survival Value]

[Learning Condition: Spiritual Arts Specialization e]

[Remark: 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 a bit after the previous script. This skill in front of him was definitely a suicidal ultimate move. As a one-time consumable skill, its activation cost was actually all of the survival value. That is to say, after releasing it, regardless of whether the enemy died or not, the player was dead for sure.

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

[Name: The Tenacity of the Ice-Refining Warlock]

[Skill Card Attribute: Passive Skill, permanently mastered]

[Skill Category: Machinery]

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

[Learning Condition: Machinery Specialization d]

[Remark: 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! Ice-Refining Warlock? What is this skill implying!" Feng Bujue complained about the nonsensical remarks while decisively learning the skill…