The Campus Beauty's Foot-Washing Water Was Poisonous

The early autumn breeze carried a hint of chill.

The University of Electronic Science and Technology campus was quiet at noon.

Shen Bing held his phone in both hands, steering his game character all over the place in search of a boss spawn.

"Don't tell me those bastards got to it first." Shen Bing was seriously annoyed.

Nothing was going his way. Had he forgotten to check the almanac before heading out at the start of the semester?

The night before, he had been wandering along a wooded path on campus when he happened upon Young Master Lin preparing to confess his feelings to the campus beauty.

That alone would have been no big deal. Young Master Lin would have loved for the whole world to know he was confessing to her.

But Shen Bing never could have imagined that such a ridiculous twist would happen to him. Out of nowhere, the campus beauty had claimed they were dating, turning him into a conspicuous shield.

When he remembered Young Master Lin's ashen face as the campus beauty took his arm, Shen Bing knew he was in trouble.

Sure enough, his job interview that morning had gone badly. Apparently, Young Master Lin's family held a stake in the company he had applied to, a manufacturer of LCD substrates.

What a disaster. Shen Bing figured he had better stay away from beautiful women from now on. They really were trouble.

Yet deep down, another voice told him: Beautiful women and beautiful scenery were not to be passed up...

Suddenly, an argument reached his ears. Shen Bing glanced over. Several people stood below the women's dormitory, with candles arranged into a huge heart in front of them. There seemed to be a few words inside it.

Shen Bing had no interest in reading them. He could guess what they said without looking.

He looked away, curled his lip, and muttered, "You think beautiful women are that easy to win over? Morons."

With that, Shen Bing threw himself back into his grand hunt for the boss. He strolled forward, having completely forgotten about the idiots ahead of him.

"Ah... Found it!" The scene on Shen Bing's Screen changed, pulling his character into battle.

At that moment, he had eyes only for the white, one-horned divine beast on the opposing side.

"Bai Ze! I finally found you." Shen Bing was delighted with himself.

Splash...

Shen Bing felt a downpour fall from the Heaven Realm, instantly soaking him to the skin. Even the phone in his hands did not escape.

"What a downpour... Huh?" Shen Bing was about to curse the Heaven Realm when he looked around. Only the ground within a few meters of him was wet. Everywhere else was bone-dry.

And it seemed... somehow... that he had walked right into the middle of those idiots confessing to the campus beauty. The guys around him had been drenched too.

Shen Bing immediately figured out what had happened. The beauty upstairs had probably grown fed up and dumped a basin of water on them to cool them off.

They had brought it on themselves, but who was Shen Bing supposed to complain to?

The other guys stared at him, just as dumbfounded. What a mess.

"Buddy, you should count yourself lucky. That might've been the campus beauty's foot-washing water!"

"Could even be from last night..."

Lucky, my ass...

Shen Bing nearly lost it. Let them try walking along minding their own business and getting a basin of water dumped on their heads.

"Hey, you down there. I called out a warning. You're the one who blundered in, so don't blame me." A voice came from upstairs, and a stunning face appeared over a fifth-floor balcony.

The lights were dim at night, though, so he could not make out the details.

Judging by the sliver of bare shoulder visible above the balcony, the girl was probably wearing a camisole...

At that moment, Shen Bing felt the girl was asking for a smack.

So what if she looked like a fairy? It was not as though she was his.

"Just my luck!" Shen Bing had no desire to argue with her. His phone's Screen was still lit; at worst, he would go back, shower, and change.

He knew that although the girl upstairs was the campus beauty, she was nothing like the gentle beauties people talked about. On the contrary, she was fierce. Dumping water on people herself made that clear, and rumor had it this was not her first time.

He figured that even if he went up to argue, it would get him nowhere.

Back at his dorm, Shen Bing showered and changed before turning his attention to the phone he had tossed onto the desk.

"Buddy, if you quit on me, I'm throwing you straight in the trash," Shen Bing muttered as he picked it up.

It was a shame about the boss, though. Someone else had probably killed it by now.

When he pressed the power button, the Screen did not respond at all.

"Damn it!" Shen Bing's heart sank. Even a cheap smartphone would cost several hundred yuan to replace, more than half a month's living expenses.

"I was only kidding. Don't actually quit on me!"

Shen Bing examined it closely. There did seem to be some moisture around the charging port.

“Please, let it still work! I finally saved up a few hundred yuan for a better Pet.” Shen Bing kept praying as he held down the power button to see if it would turn on.

"One second... two seconds..."

At ten seconds, the five-inch Screen finally responded. A spinning circle appeared: the startup screen.

"Thank goodness!" Shen Bing breathed a little easier.

Suddenly, the Screen changed, showing a message: "System malfunction detected. Performing intelligent repair..."

Shen Bing stared blankly. "Since when did this domestic phone get so advanced? It can repair itself?"

He did not dwell on it. Let it repair itself, as long as it worked afterward.

After more than twenty minutes, the repair progress finally reached 100%. Seeing the perfectly normal screen after startup, Shen Bing finally relaxed.

Shen Bing swiped across the Screen and soon found the icon for A Chinese Odyssey. Then he noticed that its name had changed.

The Gate to the Immortal Realm? What was that supposed to be?

"Damn it, did I get a virus? Don't tell me the campus beauty's foot-washing water was poisonous!"

Shen Bing felt as though ten thousand horses had trampled through his head, then turned around and done it again.

Never one to shy away from a risk, he tapped the icon.

"Huh? It loaded fast..."

"Where's the server selection?... Which server am I on?"

"What is this place? It doesn't even look like A Chinese Odyssey. That game's cartoonish, but this looks almost real. Where are all the players? And the NPCs?"

Shen Bing steered his character around for ages without ever leaving the map.

He also noticed something odd: he could zoom the game view in or out as much as he liked. Up close, he could clearly see the pores on a face. Zoomed out, his character looked like a speck of dust on the five-inch Screen, perhaps no more than a single pixel.

Once he zoomed out, Shen Bing finally got a sense of where his character was.

It was an island, but not one in the sea. It floated in the air.

Clouds and mist curled around it, giving the place an otherworldly feel.

"Who had so much time on their hands that they made a game like this? The graphics look as real as photos from a top-end DSLR, and you can adjust the viewpoint over a huge range. This has to be a 3D mobile game. All those so-called 3D games before it are trash by comparison."

"But how do you play it?" Shen Bing began investigating his curious new toy. He absolutely had to show a game this impressive to his buddies—but first he needed to master it. How else could he show off in front of them?

"No map... Hell, with a camera like this, who needs a map? Where's the character screen? The Inventory?"

He could not see either of them.

Shen Bing tapped wildly at the Screen in frustration. Suddenly, a small window slid out from the lower left, displaying four icons.

One looked like a bag, one like a scroll, and one like a pavilion. The last resembled an eye, with something like lines of code flickering in its pupil. It looked strikingly high-tech.

Was this not supposed to be an immortal realm? What was all that technology doing here? Shen Bing did not pay it much attention just then.

"Damn it, another game with a cash shop. Would it kill these companies not to squeeze money out of players? Greedy crooks, every one of them." Shen Bing eyed the pavilion icon and kept grumbling.

"And why is there no character screen? Let's see if there's a beginner's gift pack."

Shen Bing opened the Inventory and found a gift-box-shaped item inside. He tapped it at once.

"Open the beginner's gift pack?"

"Open it!... Damn, how stingy can you get? Only two items?"

A beginner's teleportation talisman and a small Immortal Jade pack.

"Two items would be bad enough, but there isn't even a beginner's weapon. No monsters, no NPCs—how am I supposed to play?" Shen Bing was at his wit's end.

Shen Bing opened the small Immortal Jade pack.

"Congratulations! You have received 10 Immortal Jade!" A window popped up on the Screen.

Shen Bing looked around and found "Immortal Jade" at the bottom of the Inventory, with the number 10 beside it.

As an experienced gamer, Shen Bing knew almost without thinking what Immortal Jade was for: cash-shop currency. A Chinese Odyssey had the same thing.

He would check the quests. Perhaps that was the only way forward.

If he still could not figure out how to play, he was ready to use his last resort: uninstall the game.

The scroll icon was the quest log. When he opened it, he found a dense wall of text...

"Shouldn't I just get a beginner's quest first? What is all this?"

Of all the games Shen Bing had played in his life, this mobile game was the most frustrating.

"The Depressed Plague God: Misfortune follows the Plague God wherever he goes, so most immortals avoid him. Help the Plague God make an immortal friend to receive a reward from him."

"The Matchmaker God's Troubles: With the human population booming, the Matchmaker God alone must oversee every destined romance. The workload has become overwhelming. Exhaustion often causes him to make mistakes, creating many more Dragon and lesbian romances in the mortal world! Help the Matchmaker God solve this problem to receive a reward from him."

"Great Sage Sun's Temper: Since returning to Mount Huaguo after the journey for the scriptures, Great Sage Sun has had nothing to do all day. A monkey's restless nature is hard to change, but he cannot amuse himself by causing havoc in the Heaven Realm again. His temper has grown worse by the day. Help Great Sage Sun relieve his boredom to receive a reward from him."