Trials of the Heart and Will

Two wanted notices were posted outside the government office and beneath the city gate tower, bearing portraits of the players [Lao Mi] and [Jing Mi] for their capture.

The portraits were crude, but they captured their distinguishing features with remarkable accuracy.

Their names were on the wanted notices.

This was revenge from [Jade Cat], the player who had deleted their character in prison. They were all players—why should they get to screw Jade Cat over without Jade Cat screwing them over in return?

The authorities had reacted with extraordinary speed to the prison break.

Better to kill the wrong person than let the guilty escape.

After all, the authorities' reputation was at stake.

In the hazy darkness, [Lao Mi] and [Jing Mi] mingled with the crowd and stared at the wanted notices on the wall. They finally understood why people had started hunting them the moment they logged in.

"We've gone red?" [Jing Mi] asked, stunned.

"Looks like it." [Lao Mi] looked helpless.

"We didn't even do anything, and now we're red? That's completely unreasonable!" [Jing Mi] felt terribly wronged. "What kind of judgment system does this game use? I'm filing a complaint."

"Realism! Its judgment system is realism. Framing people and setting them up can happen in the real world too." [Lao Mi] fell silent for a moment, then added, "Besides, it's not like we did absolutely nothing. I did take on a little brother."

"..." [Jing Mi] gritted his teeth. "Without him, we wouldn't have ended up like this! With those two wanted notices out there, we definitely can't find work. What do we do now?"

"The simplest option is to delete our characters and start over with new faces," [Lao Mi] said. "The servers only just opened, anyway. We wouldn't lose much."

"What kind of bullshit solution is that?" [Jing Mi] glared at [Lao Mi], then fell silent as he studied the wanted notices. After a moment, he turned back to [Lao Mi]. "Lao Mi, there's no love without a reason, and no hate without a reason. I don't think an NPC would screw us over for no reason. There has to be more to this. If we delete our characters and start over, we'll definitely lose the story quest..."

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Lao Mi said. "A hellish start isn't necessarily a bad thing. Didn't that NPC say it? Heaven Will Entrust Great Responsibilities; it must first torment their heart and will. Isn't this the stage where our hearts and wills are being tested? That little brother of mine definitely isn't ordinary. I believe the harder the start, the greater the rewards later."

"Yeah." [Jing Mi] nodded. "What do we do next?"

"How many copper coins do you have left?" [Lao Mi] asked.

"160," [Jing Mi] said.

"I've got about the same," [Lao Mi] said. "We don't need to sleep. Even if we hit our exhaustion limit, a short rest will restore us. If we only spend money on food, we should be able to last three days. During those three days, we'll do everything we can to find my dear little brother. He's bound to have a follow-up quest."

"The wanted notices are all over the streets. We'll be hunted as soon as we show our faces. We can't move around during the day either!" [Jing Mi] said.

[Lao Mi] scooped up a handful of dirt and smeared it haphazardly across his face, then rolled around on the ground. His clothes had already been torn while the townspeople were chasing him. Apart from the starter underwear, which could never be destroyed, the game offered no repairs for outer clothing, so torn meant torn.

Dressed in filthy rags, [Lao Mi]'s appearance plummeted. He looked like a completely different person from the refined, gentle newcomer he had been before—now he looked more like a beggar.

Once he was done, [Lao Mi] said smugly, "I checked. There are beggars in the city. Looking like this definitely won't raise suspicions. If our bodies didn't gradually recover, I'd even consider disfiguring myself. Pretending to be a beggar has another advantage, too. We might even save on food..."

"..." The corners of [Jing Mi]'s eyes twitched violently. "Are we really doing this? I think we could log off for a couple of days and post on the forums, offering a reward for other players to help us find him..."

"That's not how you should look at it." [Lao Mi] looked at [Jing Mi] and said earnestly, "Before Heaven entrusts a great responsibility to someone, it must first torment their heart and will. What if someone snatches the quest after we post it on the forums? What if it isn't an exclusive quest? Jing Mi, this is our opportunity. If we miss it, we might never get another. If you're unwilling to endure this hardship, I'll do it myself. Stay offline for two days and wait for my news."

[Jing Mi] glanced at him. "It's just a game, anyway. I'm going all in. You can't snare a wolf without risking your child. That NPC said we were both dragons and phoenixes among men. Don't think you can ditch me and go solo!"

The property deed was transferred to Lin Bai's name. At last, he had a place of his own to shelter him in Jiamao City.

During the day, renovations at the shop proceeded in full swing.

But the moment dusk fell, neither the craftsmen nor the young helpers doing odd jobs wanted to stay. One after another, they hurried away.

It wasn't because Jiamao City had any labor laws. It was because this shop was a haunted property.

That was right.

The shop Lin Bai had bought because his purse was lean had ghosts in it.

After noticing something was wrong with the shop, Lin Bai took a stroll down the street and easily uncovered its history.

Three years earlier.

A tall Poplar on Greenfish Street in Jiamao City had caught fire after being struck by lightning in the middle of the night, burning everything within five hundred meters to charcoal along with it.

The thick smoke was choking, but most people had escaped.

The shop Lin Bai had bought had been a cotton cloth shop at the time. Not one of the family of three inside had escaped; all had died in the disaster.

The strange thing was that, although everything around it had burned to ruins and the entire family had suffocated in the smoke, the shop itself had suffered little damage.

At the time, it had become a local marvel.

Then the marvel gave way to terror.

People passing along Greenfish Street at midnight often heard strange sounds coming from the shop, like cries of anguish or calls for help. Everyone was on edge.

Because of this, the Neighborhood Head in charge of Greenfish Street had invited a Taoist to perform a ritual to drive out the evil.

But after performing the ritual, the Taoist merely told the Neighborhood Head that his abilities were limited. He had failed to destroy the ghosts completely and had only confined them within the building.

After ten years, once their baleful resentment was exhausted and they no longer clung to the mortal world, they would dissipate completely.

In the meantime, as long as no one entered the shop at night, everyone could coexist in peace...

After that, no strange sounds were heard at night again.

Although the Taoist had guaranteed that the ghosts would not leave the building, once word spread that it was haunted, the surrounding area still fell into desolation.

It wasn't the ten thousand safe outcomes people feared, but the single exception.

No one wanted a family of ghosts for neighbors...

Later, through some unknown means, the brokerage had acquired the deed to the cotton cloth shop. It ended up stuck in their hands for more than two years, a hot potato they couldn't get rid of—until they met Lin Bai...

"Ghosts? Does my luck stat do absolutely nothing?"

At dusk.

Lin Bai stood outside his own shop, chewing on a baked flatbread and sinking into thought.

He had considered why this area had been abandoned. Perhaps it was because of local thugs and bullies, or perhaps there were problems with the ground or the quality of the buildings...

The one possibility he had never considered was that there were ghosts inside the shop.

He had fallen into a mental blind spot.

On Earth, things like ghosts existed only in films and television dramas. Later, they had vanished even from those.

When had anything like that ever existed in reality?

Motherfucker!

As an ambitious young man raised on materialism since childhood, Lin Bai had no idea whether his puny body could withstand ghosts and survive!

He really had no confidence at all!

"Did I waste all that money?" Lin Bai frowned deeply, searching for a solution.

He had sunk more than half his assets into this rotten place. The brokerage had finally managed to toss this hot potato to him, so a refund was definitely out of the question.

But abandoning the home he had worked so hard to acquire because of some ghost he had never even seen felt like quite a loss!

Still, he had followed the craftsmen in and out all day, proving that the ghosts really did not emerge during daylight. By that reckoning, he still had half the property rights. Judging by local prices, it wasn't actually a loss...

But it was clearly a house he had bought, yet he couldn't go inside to sleep at night. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't swallow that!

During the shop's renovation, Lin Bai had made the craftsmen experience the beauty of imperfection, completing the flawed creation system's initial quest and obtaining its incomplete reward, the "Nine Suns Scripture."

Fortunately, the system had the same functionality as the game. Technique manuals were plug-and-play; he only needed to raise his proficiency, with no bottlenecks or entry requirements.

He had tried practicing the "Nine Suns Scripture," but cultivating this damned incomplete version on his own was practically a turtle's crawl.

Lin Bai estimated that reaching full mastery would take at least seventy or eighty years!

In seventy or eighty years, even an untouched maiden would have cobwebs!

It was nowhere near as satisfying as completing quests.

As for his current quests.

The restaurant's sign had yet to be hung, so the god of cooking system's quest was still in progress;

His newly acknowledged elder brother had run off somewhere, so he couldn't proceed with the follow-up requiring him to supervise that brother in learning a specialty;

And after he completed the emotion system's quest to collect Negative Emotions, it issued this follow-up quest: [Excessively stimulating negative emotions will lead to a life of hardship. Enemies spur your progress; friends help you develop. Please collect one positive emotion elicited by you; reward: Charisma +1.]

The Negative Emotions quest had been canceled for the time being, and the reward had changed from Spirit to Charisma.

Lin Bai found that rather regrettable.

To collect Negative Emotions, he had offended almost everyone around him. He couldn't find a suitable way to force a turnaround, so he could only set the quest aside for now.

The flawed creation system likewise issued a follow-up quest: [Ambassador of imperfection: have more than fifty people gain a deep appreciation of the mys... of incompleteness. Reward: 4.9 years of internal energy.]

Mysteries or mystic truths? Lin Bai couldn't even be bothered to guess anymore.

His attention was on the quest itself. By making fifty people experience imperfection, he could easily gain nearly five years of internal energy.

This quest was clearly worth prioritizing.

But Lin Bai had no idea whether internal energy could fight ghosts.

Under the moonlight, the dark doorway looked hazy and indistinct. The occasional breeze drifting out felt cold and sinister. Lin Bai kept feeling as though someone was peering outside, though he didn't know whether it was his imagination...

Lin Bai moved two steps to the side, away from the main doorway, and sat on a nearby stone block, propping up his chin as he considered a solution.

"The only house that didn't burn down in the fire, ghosts trapped inside..." After muttering a couple of phrases, inspiration suddenly flashed through Lin Bai's mind. "This counts as a fucking dungeon, right? If it's a dungeon, the ghosts inside must have health bars. And if they have health bars, that makes things easy!"