Holding the spray can, Du Yunhao headed downstairs without any guard up.
Yet before he’d even reached the second-floor corner, a barely audible sound of footsteps came from behind him.
Du Yunhao turned back in confusion, meeting Yu Huaiting’s smiling face.
“Yu the God? Why did you come down?”
Yu Huaiting smiled like a spring breeze.
A few minutes later.
Yu Huaiting returned to the fourth-floor corridor, thoroughly pleased with himself, and ran up to Fu Songcheng to curry favor.
Right after, Du Yunhao came up too.
He looked somewhat bitter and aggrieved.
Leaning against the wall, Lu Xiao took in Du Yunhao’s stifled “dare not speak, dare not be angry” look, then glanced at Yu Huaiting’s expression, and really couldn’t hold it in—pfft—she burst out laughing.
She quickly covered her mouth and pretended to cough twice to cover it up.
Du Yunhao, poor guy.
“There are still nearly four hours until the instance ends. Though the female ghost is gone, just in case, everyone go back to your floors and check for any other problems the female ghost might have complained about.”
Seeing Du Yunhao had dealt with the corpses, Zhu Xiang urged everyone to double-check their rooms.
Everyone nodded.
In less than half an hour, the whole building’s public areas were brand new—harmonious enough to be nominated for a National Civilized Neighborhood award.
After confirming everything was fine, the five regrouped in Fu Songcheng’s room on the third floor to tough out the remaining three-plus hours.
Du Yunhao plopped down on the leftmost sofa. The moment he sat, he pulled Zhu Xiang over, and the two put their heads together, whispering in each other’s ears.
“I’m telling you, those two are awful—robbers and bandits, the lot of them.”
Du Yunhao lowered his voice, gritting his teeth as he complained.
Zhu Xiang leaned her ear even closer, gossiping right to their faces about Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting.
Lu Xiao had originally been sitting in the middle, but listening to the two muttering on her left, she decisively stood up, patted the dust off her pants, and moved over beside Du Yunhao and Zhu Xiang.
Thus, the room formed two distinct camps.
Du Yunhao, Zhu Xiang, and Lu Xiao huddled together whispering, occasionally letting out resonant murmurs of agreement.
With no life-threatening danger, the waiting time became especially long and boring.
For the other players, this was just a stretch of safe time to get through—but for Fu Songcheng, he didn’t want this time to be too boring.
Having just been through the climax of the jump and the puzzle-solving, the audience’s emotions had been pushed to their peak. Now, suddenly entering a full four hours of “garbage time,” it wasn’t engaging enough for the viewers.
He couldn’t just sit here doing nothing.
Fu Songcheng cleared his throat, adjusted to a relatively mild sitting posture, and let his gaze land on Lu Xiao.
“Lu Xiao.”
Lu Xiao, who’d been spacing out, was startled at being called out so suddenly. She jerked her head up to meet Fu Songcheng’s gaze. “Huh? Wh-what is it, Brother Fu?”
Like a daydreaming student called on by the teacher.
Lu Xiao quickly ran through it in her mind. This was already the third time they’d been matched into the same instance. And this was the first time Fu Songcheng had ever struck up a conversation with her.
But the one who reacted even more strongly than Lu Xiao was Yu Huaiting, sitting beside Fu Songcheng.
Almost the instant Fu Songcheng uttered the two characters “Lu Xiao,” Yu Huaiting whipped his head around, his gaze sweeping back and forth between Fu Songcheng and Lu Xiao like a searchlight.
Yu Huaiting’s brows instantly knotted into a dead knot, his lips pressing together, the air around him turning sour.
“Gege…”
Watching Yu Huaiting’s state—as if facing a mortal enemy, wishing he could bore a hole through Lu Xiao with his stare—Fu Songcheng couldn’t help a soft laugh.
The coolness in his eyes melted, like spring water breaking ice, revealing a touch of easygoing casualness.
He reached out and pressed down on Yu Huaiting’s head, unceremoniously pushing away the face leaning toward him, then backhanded a few cans of drinks from the system shop out of his system backpack—peach soda—lining them up on the coffee table.
Fu Songcheng’s slender fingers hooked the pull tabs, and with a click, dense bubbles surged out with the peach fragrance.
He pushed the frosty soda toward Lu Xiao and looked up at her. “Don’t be nervous. I just think that since we survived a close call, sitting here dumbly waiting for the system countdown is too silly. Chat?”
Lu Xiao dazedly took the soda, the cold touch snapping her back from her panic of “being called on by the homeroom teacher.”
She glanced at Yu Huaiting beside her, still furiously firing “hidden weapons” with his eyes, then at Fu Songcheng sitting upright on the sofa like a clear breeze and bright moon, and didn’t dare open her mouth lightly.
“Ch-chat about what?”
Fu Songcheng leaned back into the sofa, finding a comfortable position, and popped open a can for Yu Huaiting too—otherwise this person’s jealousy could sour everyone in the room to death.
Hearing this, Du Yunhao, sitting opposite, immediately perked up.
Du Yunhao pointed at Yu Huaiting, his face full of grief and indignation. “I, Du Yunhao, got robbed by human players for the first time! Do you two even lack my little fly-leg mosquito-meat scraps?”
Zhu Xiang doubled over laughing beside him, also grabbing a can of soda. “Really—it was just a D-rank item.”
Fu Songcheng felt guilty. On this topic he really had no right to speak—he’d been the mastermind.
“Now that we’re on this topic, I’m not sleepy either! They robbed me in the last instance, and robbed me again this instance!”
Lu Xiao described the two’s crime process concisely.
“You offered to trade items for your life in the last instance—be grateful you weren’t just hacked dead.” Yu Huaiting, draped over Fu Songcheng, shot back at Lu Xiao.
Lu Xiao: “…”
Hearing Lu Xiao’s experience, Zhu Xiang and Du Yunhao couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief, and decided from then on never to reveal their wealth in front of these two.
Fu Songcheng watched their bickering with interest and delivered a well-timed follow-up strike: “In your Offering of Peace instance, you set a trap to harm us too, didn’t you.”
“Exactly, exactly!”
Yu Huaiting nodded vigorously. “Sparing your life was pure kindness on our part!”
Lu Xiao was left speechless by the two of them. She drank her soda to cover her embarrassment, pretending nothing had happened.
Fu Songcheng didn’t leave Lu Xiao awkward for long. “This is the third time we’ve been matched into the same instance, isn’t it?”
Du Yunhao and Zhu Xiang pricked up their ears for the gossip.
“Yeah. The first time I saw you was in the library instance. Later, when I ran into you in the rest area, I was unconvinced—I always wanted to surpass you. Now I can count as a high-level player too.”
Fu Songcheng hadn’t expected there to be this layer to it. Without his knowledge, a girl had been quietly working hard, using him as her benchmark.
“What are you trying to do?”
Yu Huaiting found this more and more off, only to hear Lu Xiao continue.
“I don’t know why, but I’m always a notch below you. And now you’ve even got the number-one teammate. But I won’t lose either—just you wait, Fu Songcheng!”
“Mm. Keep at it.”
Fu Songcheng wasn’t angry; the smile at the corner of his eyes only deepened.
Girl—please work a little harder still.
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