Na'er: I Didn't Sleep at All

After dinner, the living room had a relaxed atmosphere.

Leng Yaozhu, Leng Qingning, and Le Lingzhao, the three elders, sat on one side of the sofa, chatting about grown-up things.

Na'er was curled up in the soft sofa, clutching a big bag of snacks, her little mouth constantly moving as she ate with relish.

An Lan, meanwhile, had stretched out on a sofa of his own and pulled out his Soul Guidance Phone.

His fingertip tapped the screen, and the familiar startup sound rang out softly—

"TiMi~"

How pleasant it was to play a round after dinner. He sighed contentedly to himself, ready to kick off his relaxation time for the day.

Na'er had been tilting her head back and devouring beef jerky. At the sound, her ears twitched, and her attention was instantly drawn to the unfamiliar noise. Still holding a snack between her teeth, she leaned over to peer curiously at An Lan's phone screen with her clear eyes.

"What's that?" she asked indistinctly, chewing as she spoke.

Seeing her interest, An Lan took his spare phone out of his Storage Soul Tool and held it out to her. "It's a game. Want to play?"

Na'er glanced quickly back at the unopened snacks on the sofa, weighed her options for a moment, then nodded solemnly. "I do!"

Na'er took the Soul Guidance Phone, seemingly born with an understanding of how it worked. At a glance, she picked the icon bearing the portrait of a stunning golden-haired girl.

"TiMi~"

The pleasant notification sound rang out again.

Na'er's eyes lit up. "Who's the person on this square?"

"Qian Renxue," An Lan replied offhandedly.

"Who's Qian Renxue?"

"She's a character in the game." That was the only way An Lan could explain it.

"Oh." Na'er seemed to understand, more or less, and didn't press the matter.

When it was time to create an account and set a game nickname, her fingers flew across the screen. A name appeared: Naive Cute Tear.

Worried she might drag him down, An Lan had no intention of playing with her yet. "Get used to how the game works on your own first. Once you're good at it, I'll play with you."

With that, he contacted Yuanen Yehui. The two teamed up and headed off to play in Douluo Canyon.

The next morning.

An Lan woke from his sleep and stretched at length. He sat quietly for a while, until the last of his grogginess faded, then got out of bed.

After washing up and getting ready, he opened his bedroom door and stepped out.

As expected, every door was open except Na'er's. Leng Yaozhu, Leng Qingning, and Le Lingzhao had already left together.

During their chat the day before, Leng Yaozhu had learned that An Lan had never been to a Spirit Ascension Platform, so she had made special arrangements for him and Na'er to take on the Primary Spirit Ascension Platform today.

At this hour, she had probably already brought his two teachers to some meeting place to wait for him and Na'er.

An Lan sat at the dining table and enjoyed a still-warm breakfast. At the same time, he took out his Soul Guidance Phone and messaged Na'er.

To his surprise, Na'er replied almost instantly. She seemed to have gotten pretty good at the game, too.

[Immortal King: You awake yet?]

[Na'er: I'm awake.]

[Immortal King: Good. I was worried you'd get hooked on the game and stay up all night.]

[Na'er: I didn't stay up all night. I didn't sleep at all.]

[Na'er: (●ˇ∀ˇ●)]

[Immortal King: ...]

[Immortal King: Get up. We're going to challenge the Spirit Ascension Platform in a bit.]

After typing the last character, An Lan put away his Soul Guidance Phone.

The day before, he'd seen Na'er pouring money into the game like crazy, and something had seemed off.

It wasn't a small sum, either. Just the amount he'd watched her spend would have been enough to buy a thousand kilograms of chicken necks.

For a foodie to spend money on a game instead of buying something to eat was wildly out of character.

Now it seemed his guess had been right.

And she hadn't even planned to stay up late. She'd gone straight into an all-night gaming binge.

"Games really do ruin people," An Lan remarked casually.

The next moment, he promptly contacted his manager and instructed him to release a few more limited-edition skins this month.

An Lan considered himself a kind man. He set each skin's price absurdly high and only fleeced Soul Masters, never ordinary people.

He said that because, even now, with Soul Guidance Technology highly advanced, Soul Masters still made up only a small fraction of humanity. The vast majority were ordinary people living ordinary lives.

Ordinary people struggled to make ends meet, scraping by however they could. Soul Masters were different. Even those with low cultivation could generally achieve financial freedom.

Take the famous braised-beef-in-a-pot incident, for example. Guang Long, that little thug, was only a two-ring Soul Master, yet he dared to throw his weight around the city, extorting protection money and bullying ordinary citizens at will.

At this point, some clever people might wonder: Guang Long's cultivation was so low, yet he hadn't been beaten to death. Wasn't that because he was relying on the influence of his older brother, Guang Biao, the captain of Eastsea City's mecha brigade?

That sounded plausible, but it wasn't quite the whole story.

Just because Guang Biao had later been dealt with easily by Wu Zhangkong didn't mean he was nobody.

The mecha brigade was a proper regiment-level unit, with more than a hundred mechs under its command. As its captain, Guang Biao was the highest-ranking local military officer—the top man in the military.

On the surface, Guang Long dared to act without restraint because he had powerful backing.

But look closer: Guang Long was, at the very least, the equivalent of a local lord in a county town, yet he still went around collecting protection money—a shabby, low-profit racket.

That reflected the starkest reality of the difference in status between ordinary people and Soul Masters in this world. Soul Masters were born superior, and in many people's eyes, bullying ordinary people was only natural.

So An Lan felt entirely at ease about fleecing the masses.

Before long, Na'er's door quietly opened from the inside.

Her silver hair was a little messy, and one stubborn cowlick stuck up from her head. Her face showed no trace of exhaustion from staying up all night; on the contrary, she looked positively radiant, bursting with energy.

She hurried over to sit opposite An Lan, picked up her breakfast, and started devouring it.

Of course, for a big eater like Na'er, that little breakfast wasn't enough to fill the gaps between her teeth. It was purely for the sake of appearances.

In less than two and a half minutes, they had finished breakfast and headed out together.

Outside, Bai Haoze and her younger sister Bai Zhicen had already been waiting for quite some time.

When they saw the two of them, Bai Haoze stepped forward and said, "An Lan, Na'er, His Excellency Heavenly Phoenix asked us to wait here and take you both to meet up with her."

"Of course. Sorry for the trouble, you two," An Lan replied politely with a slight nod.

Yesterday, they'd been far away, and he hadn't gotten a good look at them. Now that he was closer, he noticed that although the twins looked exactly alike and were impossible for most people to tell apart, their eyes were different colors.

One had clear, deep-blue eyes; the other, pale-green eyes. Each had her own charm.

When Bai Zhicen saw An Lan's gaze moving back and forth between her and her sister, she instantly understood what he was thinking. Smiling, she leaned down and pointed to her own green eyes. "Little An Lan, remember: I'm Bai Zhicen, the one with green eyes. Bai Haoze is my older sister."

Bai Haoze covered her mouth with a smile. "I'm Bai Haoze, the one with blue eyes. Bai Zhicen is my younger sister."

Then she sighed wistfully. "We even held you when you were little. And now look at you—you've grown so much."

At that, An Lan instinctively scratched his head, looking bewildered as he wondered to himself, Why does it feel like everyone held me when I was little?