“Is it present both inside and outside instances?”
“Yes!”
“Is it expensive?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have a concrete physical form?”
“No.”
Stringing these clues together, the crowd fell into a brief silence, everyone frantically searching their minds for a word that fit.
“Not concrete,” “involves people,” “very expensive,” “present both inside and outside instances”…
Chen Miao stood in the middle of the crowd, her mind racing too. Just then, the rich girl in the front row suddenly had a flash of inspiration and shouted out: “Advertising?”
Yu Huaiting snapped his fingers, his smile brilliant. “Correct!”
Fu Songcheng didn’t even raise his eyelids. His finger flicked lightly.
With a whoosh, a [Agility +1 Wind Stone] radiating a faint cyan glow landed precisely in the rich girl’s hand.
Source Star people had never treated this kind of friendship instance as a life-or-death trial to begin with—their vigilance was far below that of Blue Star players who licked blood off knife edges.
The gloom of the earlier robbery was thoroughly dispelled in this moment by the gem that fell from the sky.
“Wow! He really gives it!”
“Fu the God is so handsome! Yu Huaiting is so cute!”
“I want to play too, I want to play too! What’s the next word!”
Watching those players who’d been avoiding them moments ago now crowd forward with eyes shining, the atmosphere in the hall was practically that of a large-scale idol fan meeting.
A little small kindness—to these Source Star players who’d come for fun and thrills—was more effective than anything.
Chen Miao now couldn’t hold back at all.
Seeing the crowd around her surging forward, she hurriedly led Lin Xiao through the gaps in the crowd to the very front.
“Second word.”
Fu Songcheng’s voice remained steady, but if you looked closely, you could detect a hint of theatrical amusement hidden in his eyes.
“Can it be eaten?” Someone immediately asked, as if snatching the chance.
Yu Huaiting nodded. “Yes.”
“Is it a fruit?”
“Yes.”
Just those two simple questions narrowed the range enormously.
Chen Miao had just squeezed to the front and hadn’t even caught her breath when she heard it was a fruit—a whole bunch of nouns immediately popped into her head.
“Sour or sweet?”
Yu Huaiting blinked. “Yes or no only.”
The audience below could no longer wait and began scattered blind guesses.
“Cherry tomato!”
“No, cherry!”
“Is it lemon? Lemons have sweet varieties too, right?”
Chen Miao stood at the very front, looking at Yu Huaiting’s exquisitely flawless face so close at hand—the frustration of being robbed had long since flown beyond the clouds.
“Both,” “a sweet-and-sour fruit”…
“…Pineapple?”
“Yes, yes.”
Before Chen Miao could even react, a semi-transparent system interface popped up before her.
[System Notification: Player Fu Songcheng has initiated a trade request to you.]
[Trade Item: Mental Resistance Boost Blue Gem (E-rank).]
[Accept?]
Chen Miao hurriedly clicked [Accept].
The next second, a gem radiating a gentle blue glow lay quietly in her palm.
She looked up and happened to meet Fu Songcheng’s deep, calm eyes. Fu Songcheng only gave her a faint glance before shifting his gaze away—but that brief one-second eye contact was enough to send Chen Miao’s heart racing.
Beside Chen Miao, Lin Xiao—who’d been somewhat distracted—now looked at Chen Miao with envy.
“So amazing!”
The game continued, the atmosphere growing hotter and hotter.
The words that followed grew more and more outrageous, and the questions followed suit, getting stranger and stranger.
When Fu Songcheng gave the third word, Yu Huaiting’s clues were: “Something people have,” “but most people don’t want it,” “sometimes it hurts a lot,” “it changes color.”
“A scar?”
“No.”
“That thing?”
“No! What were you thinking!”
Yu Huaiting’s eyes went wide.
The whole room fell silent for a second, then burst into a roar of laughter.
“Then what is it?” Everyone was stumped.
“Pimples.”
Yu Huaiting announced the answer with a look of exasperation at their ineptitude.
“Hahahaha—”
The hall was filled with merry air.
As more and more people joined in, the entire hall was nearly packed solid.
To keep the game from growing dull, Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting switched up the format a few more times.
“Range-narrowing number guess”—Fu Songcheng wrote down a number from 1 to 1,000, and the players took turns guessing; with each guess, the range would narrow.
“Pass the parcel”—Yu Huaiting stood behind the bar with his back to the crowd, tapping a glass. When the sound stopped, whoever held the glass got a chance to ask the two of them a question, or directly take a gem.
Only at this moment did the friendship instance truly live up to its name.
Except it wasn’t player-to-player friendship—it was the whole crowd of players one-sidedly team-building around these two “tyrants.”
Yet amid all this laughter and joy, in a few corners at the outer edge of the hall, the atmosphere was notably gloomy.
They were a few Blue Star high-level players.
Any one of them, taken out alone, would be the center of attention in any other instance.
The system had even deliberately matched these highly popular Blue Star players into the same instance to boost the friendship instance’s engagement.
But now, nearly two-thirds of the Source Star players in the hall were densely crowded around Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting.
Even if these Blue Star high-level players didn’t know about Source Star’s existence, being ignored still made them unable to suppress their irritation.
Some of them had even just been robbed by Yu Huaiting—yet now, the others who’d also been robbed by Yu Huaiting were happily, merrily participating in the low-stakes little games.
“Fuck, what a showman.”
A Blue Star male player stared through gritted teeth at Yu Huaiting, surrounded by the crowd. “Just now when he was robbing points he was like a bandit, and now he pulls out a few broken stones and plays the good guy—and they actually believe it?”
No matter how they envied or cursed, no one dared go up and crash the party.
Together, they’d probably get ground into the floor by Yu Huaiting and Fu Songcheng—overwhelming strength was the confidence that let those two play so at ease.
At the center of the hall.
Yu Huaiting had completely let loose.
He wasn’t old to begin with, and in an atmosphere without survival pressure, the youthful spirit in his bones was thoroughly released.
He’d double over laughing when someone guessed an utterly absurd answer, and deliberately put on a stern face to scare people when someone tried to cheat.
At this moment, he was just like an ordinary youth playing to his heart’s content with friends at an amusement park.
[They actually got to play a friendship instance! This is the correct way to open a friendship instance!]
[A large-scale instance team-building scene—already solemnly screenshotted!]
[Wuwuwu, I want to go to the scene and play pass-the-parcel too!]
As time passed, the “Shattered Star Blind Boxes” Fu Songcheng had bought gradually ran out.
When the last green-glowing gem was guessed and taken by a girl, Fu Songcheng clapped his hands and casually tossed the empty brocade pouch into his inventory.
“Alright, stock’s cleared. Game over.”
He glanced at the clock on the wall—less than half an hour remained until the instance ended.
“If you had fun, you can pick a few hosts yourselves and keep organizing games.”
Fu Songcheng’s tone was mild, yet carried an irresistible sense of distance. “We’ll take our leave first.”
The crowd let out a reluctant sigh.
“That’s it? I haven’t even gotten a gem yet!”
“Play a bit longer! Can I pay points to buy a gem!”
Yu Huaiting waved his hand and, like a shadow, trotted along behind Fu Songcheng. Under everyone’s gaze, the two walked back up to the second floor.
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