The Campus Beauty's Footbath 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 leaving home this semester?

Last night, while wandering along a wooded campus path with nothing better to do, he had run into Young Master Lin just as he was about to confess his feelings to the campus beauty.

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

But Shen Bing never could have imagined that such a ridiculous mess would land on him. Somehow, he had become her supposed boyfriend and a very conspicuous shield.

Remembering Young Master Lin's livid face when 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 owned shares in the company he had applied to, a manufacturer of LCD substrates.

What a pain. Shen Bing decided he had better keep his distance from beautiful women. They really were a recipe for trouble.

Yet a voice deep inside him argued: Beauty and beautiful scenery were not to be missed...

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

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 a beauty's that easy to win over? Idiots."

With that, Shen Bing returned to his grand quest for the boss, strolling forward and completely forgetting about the idiots ahead.

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

Now all he could see was the white divine beast with a single horn on its head, standing among the opposing forces.

"Bai Ze! Finally found you." Shen Bing grinned.

Splash!

Water came pouring down from above, soaking Shen Bing to the skin in an instant. Even the phone in his hands was drenched.

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

And somehow... it seemed he had wandered right into the middle of the idiots confessing to the campus beauty. The guys around him had been soaked too.

Shen Bing immediately figured it out. The beauty upstairs must have grown sick of their pestering and dumped a basin of water on them to cool them off.

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

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

"Buddy, you should feel lucky. That might be the campus beauty's footbath water!"

"Maybe even yesterday's..."

Lucky, my ass...

Shen Bing nearly fainted. How would they like having a basin of water dumped on them while they were walking along?

"Hey, I already called out a warning. You blundered in on your own, so don't blame me." A voice came from above, and a stunning face appeared over a fifth-floor balcony.

But the light was too dim at night to make out her features clearly.

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

Well, right then, Shen Bing thought the girl was asking for a smack.

So what if she was a fairy? It wasn't as though she belonged to him.

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

He knew that, campus beauty or not, the girl upstairs was nothing like the gentle beauties of legend. She was downright fierce. Dumping water on people proved that much, and rumor had it this was not her first time.

He doubted confronting her would get him anywhere.

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

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

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

He pressed the power button. The Screen did not respond.

"Damn!" Shen Bing's heart sank. Even replacing it with a cheap smartphone costing a few hundred yuan would hurt. That was more than half a month's living expenses.

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

Shen Bing inspected it carefully and spotted what looked like moisture around the charging port.

"Bodhisattva, please don't let it be broken! I finally saved a few hundred yuan for a better Pet." Shen Bing kept praying as he held down the power button to see whether 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 relaxed a little.

Then the Screen abruptly changed. A message appeared: "System malfunction detected. Intelligent repair in progress..."

Shen Bing stared at it. "Since when was this domestic phone 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 normal home screen appear, Shen Bing breathed easy at last.

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

The Gate to the Immortal Realm? What the hell?

"Damn, did I get a virus? Don't tell me the campus beauty's footbath water really was poisonous."

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

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

"Huh? It loaded fast..."

"Where did the server selection go?... Which server am I even on?"

"Where is this? It doesn't look anything like A Chinese Odyssey. That was cartoonish, but this looks almost real. Why aren't there any players? Or NPCs?"

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

He also noticed something else: he could zoom the game view in and out as much as he liked. Zoomed in, 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, though, 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 sky.

Clouds and mist swirled around it, giving it the look of an immortal's abode.

"Who had so much time on their hands that they made a game like this? The graphics look as real as footage shot on a top-end DSLR, and you can change the camera angle over a huge range. This has to be a 3D mobile game. All those other so-called 3D games are garbage next to it."

"But how do you play?" Shen Bing started experimenting as though he had found a new toy. He would have to show a game this impressive to his buddies. First, though, he needed to figure it out. How else could he show off?

"No map function... Damn, with camera controls like these, who needs a map? Where's the character menu? The inventory?"

He could not find any of them.

Frustrated, Shen Bing tapped wildly at the Screen. A small window suddenly slid out from the lower left, showing four icons.

One looked like a bag, another a scroll, and the third a pavilion. The last resembled an eye, with something like lines of code flickering in its iris. It looked distinctly high-tech.

Wasn't this supposed to be an immortal realm? What was with the tech? Shen Bing paid it no mind for now.

"Damn! Another game with a cash shop. Would it kill these operators not to squeeze money out of players? Bunch of crooks." Shen Bing glared at the pavilion icon and kept grumbling.

"Why isn't there a character menu? Let's see if there's a starter pack."

Shen Bing opened the Inventory and found a gift box inside, just as he had hoped. He tapped it at once.

"Open the starter pack?"

"Open!... Damn, that's stingy. Only two items?"

A Novice Teleportation Talisman and a small Immortal Jade pack.

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

He opened the small Immortal Jade pack.

"Congratulations! You received 10 Immortal Jade!" A pop-up appeared on the Screen.

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

As a gaming veteran, Shen Bing knew what Immortal Jade was for without even thinking: cash-shop currency. A Chinese Odyssey had the same thing.

He might as well check the quests. They could be his only clue.

If he still could not figure out how to play, he was ready to resort to his ultimate move: uninstalling the game.

The scroll icon had to be the quest list. He opened it and found a dense wall of text...

"Shouldn't there just be a beginner quest at first? What's with all this?"

Of all the games Shen Bing had played, this mobile game was the most aggravating yet.

"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 his reward."

"Matchmaker God's Troubles: As the mortal population has exploded, the Matchmaker God's workload overseeing relationships has become overwhelming. Exhaustion often causes him to make mistakes, resulting in many same-sex couples in the mortal realm! Help the Matchmaker God solve this problem to receive his reward."

"Great Sage Sun's Fury: Since returning to Mount Huaguo after the pilgrimage for the scriptures, Great Sage Sun has had nothing to do all day. Unable to change his restless nature or amuse himself by wreaking havoc in the Heaven Realm again, he has grown increasingly irritable. Help Great Sage Sun relieve his boredom to receive his reward."