Chapter 346

Chapter 346: Chapter 343: "I’m Not Worthy of Him AnymoreSu Ming’an stepped forward and checked Aelas’s pulse.

...As expected, it was no use.

Su Ming’an had thought that as long as he could control Aelas, there would be no more obstacles from Soul Hunt.

But now it seemed that even in death, Aelas would not listen to him. Moreover, he did not know whether there was any secret method of passing messages within Soul Hunt; Aelas’s death might have already been communicated.

He turned his head.

The hall was very quiet at this moment, Sherrod lay unconscious on the ground, and Aelas’s body lay fallen.

Next to them, an old lady with white hair calmly watched this scene.

She was neither afraid nor showed any regret, looking at Su Ming’an with a peaceful gaze.

"Su Rin... are you really Su Rin?" she asked. "Have you come down from Yun Shang City?"

"Yes," Su Ming’an replied.

The old lady stepped forward, hope filling her eyes:

"Then, how is my old man doing in Yun Shang City...?"

"He’s doing very well," Su Ming’an said.

He did not have Su Rin’s memories, nor did he know what the situation in Yun Shang City was, but the prospects did not seem optimistic.

...Because at one point in his deaths, he truly reached Yun Shang City.

At that time, the system prompt said that he was under the interference of "Yun Shang City Poison Gas."

Yun Shang City, hailed as a city of treasures, a utopia where deities dwell...how could there be poison gas?

He was not clear where this "poison gas" originated from, but one could imagine that Yun Shang City was definitely not always a peaceful and blissful utopia.

Su Ming’an turned his head, suddenly hearing footsteps approaching from the entrance.

The two people beside him instantly became alert, with Sevya quickly shielding him.

At this moment, he noticed the extremely bright fire outside the door, which seemed almost ready to break through the sky, had stopped. Dressed in papal robes and holding a divine rod, a person who seemed somewhat familiar to him appeared at the doorway.

"Lord Su Rin." The Pope, who had appeared suddenly, stood at the entrance of the hall.

The Pope’s gaze slowly swept over the unconscious Sherrod, paused on Aelas’s body for a moment, and then, as if he hadn’t seen this scene, took off his crown and bowing slowly to Su Ming’an.

He seemed not to care about the death of the leader of Soul Hunt, his gaze fixed only on Su Ming’an.

Then, the very familiar words he had heard before were asked.

It was a question asked upon death.

"...Welcome back, Lord Su Rin. In this journey, have you found a way to stabilize the barrier?"

Snow fell gently.

Perhaps someone had started playing with the weather system again, or maybe it was to match the atmosphere of Christmas Eve tomorrow, but now thin snow, like water, began to fall on the streets.

Displays for live broadcasts hung outside the shops on both sides of the street, Christmas trees decorated with colorful lights were visible everywhere, and people walked under umbrellas, laughing and chatting amidst the light snow.

Beside them, on the live broadcast screens, was the night scene of Pulaya. Adventurer Players were fighting on a small screen.

Blood splattered occasionally on the screen, creating a stark contrast with the tranquil snow scene outside.

Perhaps due to the holiday influence, Liangzi’s pet shop was not busy today.

After wiping the counter clean with a cloth, she flipped the "closed" sign outside the door and decided to take a break.

She brought out colorful lights and hung a big loop around the shop entrance. As she was busy, a man’s voice came from inside the shop, sounding somewhat reproachful:

"—Liangzi, what’s there to celebrate about such a foreign holiday."

Dressed in a Sun Yat-sen suit, the man slightly hunched like an old-timer, squinted at the colorful Christmas tree at the door.

"Ah, dad, you just don’t understand, this is called catering to the festive atmosphere." Liangzi spoke while hanging the decorations: "When others celebrate, and you don’t, you seem out of place. Plus, there are some foreigners living around here now, they like to celebrate, so we celebrate for them. It’s all for doing business, no harm done."

"You lacking money? I see the prices here aren’t high."

"How can that be the same, as a business person, you have to be a bit ambitious, if you can earn, you earn." After hanging the final red light, Liangzi turned to the man with a grin on her face.

The man, irked, puffed up his cheeks and glared.

Although he looked like a middle-aged man, his behavior had a tinge of last century to it.

"Silly girl, I didn’t raise you to be a businessperson."

"Oh come on, if you have nothing else, just go inside and rest, I still have to go to a party. We’re celebrating the holiday today too, Wen Xuan and the others are waiting for me." Liangzi opened the interface, organized some snacks and drinks into her backpack, and was ready to dash off.

"Hey, wait, turn the livestream to that Lv family kid," the man called out to her.

"Why?" Liangzi looked back at the display, which was showing the scene of Aelas falling: "What’s there to see? Isn’t the Number One Player’s live broadcast good enough? Everyone watches that, it has high viewership."

The man gave her a probing look.

He rubbed his cane, as if contemplating his words.

"Dad, if it’s nothing, I’ll get going." Liangzi seemed eager to leave.

"...Hold on." The man raised his walking stick, tapping it on her shoulder: "Liangzi, to be honest, do you really have no interest in that Lv Family boy?"

Liangzi’s movements suddenly stiffened.

She turned her body slowly, turned her head slowly, disarmed the walking stick from her shoulder.

She gave her dad a look, her mouth forming an "o" shape.

"It wouldn’t be right," she said.

"Why wouldn’t it be right?" the man scoffed: "Though his family is gone, and he might not match up to ours, after all, he’s a decent young man. Though he’s a man of few words, times have changed. If he does well for himself, that’s enough! Our family, including the martial arts circles, probably want to win him over... After all, you two are childhood friends, and I see you don’t dislike him. Didn’t you take care of his dog before? If you want to take a chance, you have to seize the opportunity."

"No, no, no, no..." Liangzi waved her hands repeatedly: "It’s not right, not right, all kinds of not right."

"What’s not right about it?"

"Dad, don’t you understand."

Standing amidst the fluttering snow, Liangzi blinked, shaking off the frost from her eyelashes.

"...The world has indeed changed," she said. "Now it’s my turn to be unworthy of him."

The man fell silent for a moment.

"Dad, you can see it too, can’t you?" Liangzi said. "Although the main family has always felt that the danger of Adventurer Players is much greater than that of Casual Players—and that their margin for error is too low—the importance of Adventurer Players who have never failed is indeed far higher than us."

"It’s because of my personality, not wanting to fight and kill, just wanting to open a pet shop, that I’m spending time here... But actually, anyone with a bit of skill is getting the urge to enter the fray now.

"On the world forums, there are also discussions about Adventurer Players becoming increasingly important.

"Even though the Sixth World’s White Sand Paradise seems particularly discouraging, a sense of crisis has always been there... Dad, you remember, don’t you? The suicide warning executed by the Number One Player on the arena stage when the Second World ended. And then, the recent incident—the suicide attack in the spectator seats for Casual Players at the auction—many people really died there.

"...There’s a real possibility of dying here.

"When I was cleaning the shop, I saw a comment on the forum: ’In the animal kingdom, to avoid being eliminated, animals enhance themselves through hunting and being hunted, even the prey enhance their vigilance, training their ability to escape. And what about humans, the highest form of life in nature? We just see a bunch of people who are content with comfort.’ But after these targeted death incidents against casual viewers happened once, they happened a second time, and naturally, there will be a third, a fourth... Even more."

"Dad, the game of the world is constantly innovating, and the changes in system versions prove this. But no matter how the versions innovate, the actual increase in power is the weapons one truly holds... Adventurer Players now really hold stronger weapons than us, stronger by more than a factor of one."

"Their status is becoming more and more important...

"I’ve already... become unworthy of him."

The glass door closed in front of her.

Dazzling colorful lights twinkled in her eyes, and the snow fell gently onto the storefront.

As the door closed, she heard an aged voice from inside:

"Understood, Liangzi."

The man said, "...I’ll discuss your thoughts with the main family, this do-nothing strategy needs to change. Those old folks who pride themselves on their status should also go and get tempered."

Liangzi smiled.

She knew she wasn’t cut out to be a Player, just watching the scene through the screen made her legs tremble with fear, and getting into the game herself made breathing hard, let alone stepping into the field.

She knew if she were to go into the fray, she would only go to die, her death without any value. It would be better to run a shop and earn some logistic Points, so she wouldn’t be left with nothing when the game ended.

...She indeed couldn’t become an Adventurer Player.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t encourage others to become Adventurer Players.

Isn’t that, in essence, a success?

Humming a tune, she tuned the outside screen to Lv Shu’s live streaming room, glancing at the tall young man with the knife on the screen.

He was walking through the night of Pulaya, his knife extraordinarily sharp, the little mantis on his shoulder like a life-reaping machine, able to decapitate someone in just a few seconds.

He still looked calm, indifferent, and silent, standing in the screen like a log, just like the closed-off way she had seen him before.

But different from that time was the insane flurry of transparent bullet comments, like snowflakes passing by.

They were calling out, cheering him on, confessing their love to him, as if a crowd of fervent followers, the boldness of the words and sentences left her somewhat breathless.

She still remembered, the first time she saw him was at Mount Hua in Anxi, back then he wasn’t this tall, just an underdeveloped short boy, and his figure was so thin he looked like a green monkey. She even thought for a while that this guy was a naughty child who didn’t eat properly and had bad nutrition.

...Only later did she find out that he had long been without parents, and no one would ever cook for him again.

At that time, when Dad saw him, he just kept sighing, as if lamenting his failure to meet expectations or feeling pity for his past. The martial arts community also treated him like trash, directly expelling him.

Back then, she thought that this guy, who had no parents or elders, would be doomed to never recover. After all, in her view, without a family background, it meant losing everything, not to mention that he didn’t seem very smart himself, not like someone who could turn his fate around against all odds.

But now.

... Even her father could only look up at him on the display, even their own family had to bow their heads to win him over.

World Game... it really was changing everyone’s life.

Was this the "chosen luck" that Boss Rabbit mentioned at the opening ceremony?

Liangzi took another look at the young man on the screen.

For the first time, she felt that this World Game was not just a disaster for people.

As for her... she didn’t want to get involved with this completely different version of him anymore.

She was just a merchant, a pet shop owner. All she could do was raise dogs, raise cats, and then take money to do things for him when he needed it, casually feeding his mantis on the way.

She had long since lost interest in it.

On the screen, his blade was still sharp, moving like death in the night.

"Goodbye."

She said, looking into his eyes on the screen.

In the halls of Pulaya, dressed in splendid robes, the Pope watched the scene before him in silence.

"Right, saw this off, plane it, try to make it as flat as possible; I’ll see if I can carry it..." Su Ming’an’s voice rang out.

In the quiet hall, gathered were the three leading figures of Pulaya and the World-saving Hero, Su Rin.

What should have been a tension-filled standoff between them, Sevya and Archilev... were now being directed by Su Ming’an to whittle wood.

Sevya crouched down, running fine electricity over the edge of the bench, slowly scraping off the flat side. Beside him, Archilev’s beautiful Divine Rod was also used as a saw, meticulously flattening the sawed-off wood plank.

The wood plank was planed into a large wooden plank, like a door, with a length of about 1.8 meters.

Sevya, with a dark expression, stood the door plank in front of Su Ming’an, not understanding why Su Ming’an would order them to whittle wood at such a time.

Su Ming’an sized up the plank and turned to Archilev, "Right, do you have any rope on your side..."

"Lord Su Rin."

The authoritative voice of the Pope broke the somewhat strange atmosphere. He held the crown in his hands, still maintaining the kneeling posture of a salute, looking directly at Su Ming’an, "... For this journey, have you found a way to maintain the Barrier?"

"Hold on a second," Su Ming’an didn’t pay him any attention.

The 1.8 meter plank was erected in front of him, and Archilev handed over some rope. With the help of the rope, he successfully wrapped the plank and four wooden legs together, and then heard the system prompt: