After finishing his noodles and heading home, that strange flutter in his heart finally faded. Only then did Ren Suo calmly realize what had just happened.
If Ren Suo had guessed correctly, it was probably because of the Key Search System. Whenever he was outside, anyone who gave him that fluttering sensation should have been someone capable of producing a key.
Ren Suo still did not know exactly what kind of people could produce keys, but judging from Mo Zhaolong and Li Dan, he knew that anyone who could produce one was at least stronger than an ordinary college student like him, who was hopelessly uncoordinated. That meant the path of "armed seizure" was basically impossible.
Unless he could obtain better rewards in the game.
So Ren Suo did not dwell on it and continued working through If You're Strong, Climb 10,000 Meters. After reaching the 2,048-meter save point, he discovered that his speed had increased considerably. Before, his altitude could rise by at most two meters per minute of movement. Now, it could rise by two meters in half a minute.
Provided the Seeker of the Way kept moving.
At this stage, the platforms on-screen were not as densely packed as they had been during the first two thousand meters. Ren Suo had already died once—he had not used enough force, so the Seeker of the Way failed to jump onto the intended platform. There was no platform below either, and the Seeker of the Way fell straight to the bottom of the screen and died, forcing him to restart from the save point.
Another time, Ren Suo controlled the Seeker of the Way to jump, but this time he used too much force and overshot. Just as the Seeker of the Way was about to fly past the landing point because of that slight excess, the stick-figure Seeker of the Way suddenly turned around on her own and grabbed the edge of the platform.
Only then did Ren Suo remember that the female Seeker of the Way had a trait: "Female: able to react quickly in moments of crisis." But after watching stick figures for dozens of hours, he had long forgotten that the character he controlled was female...
When the Seeker of the Way climbed to around 3,000 meters, Ren Suo discovered a hidden detail: depending on the direction the Seeker of the Way moved, certain white markers on the altitude bar would turn gray.
When the Seeker of the Way jumped left, the 5,896-meter save marker turned gray. When she jumped right, the 6,853-meter save marker turned gray.
In other words, there were two branching paths here. The save points on the left were completely different from those on the right, and once he chose one path, he could not activate the save points on the other unless he returned to the 2,048-meter save point.
Ren Suo picked a path at random. When he reached 4,000 meters, his speed increased again. At full speed, he could gain five meters of altitude per minute.
However, the route also grew more difficult, and Ren Suo encountered his first "trap."
It was a gray platform whose color was lighter than the others. When the Seeker of the Way jumped onto it, the platform suddenly cracked apart. Ren Suo instinctively pressed jump again, and only then did the Seeker of the Way leap up, barely managing to touch the edge of another platform and survive by a hair.
Ren Suo sucked in a breath. If he had fallen, then those ten hours of gameplay would have been for nothing...
Ten hours!?
Ren Suo looked up and realized it was already nearly midnight. He hurriedly took out his phone to order delivery and kept playing—after all, he had only woken up that afternoon, and he was still wide awake.
When he reached 4,500 meters, Ren Suo saw other people.
Other stick figures.
Unlike the Seeker of the Way, who leaped directly between platforms, these stick figures traveled along another path that was not displayed on the screen, slowly walking upward.
The Seeker of the Way crossed paths with them, but when she did, those stick figures stopped.
"This is a fully equipped team. They are discussing you."
The game displayed this strange message.
Ren Suo waited for a while and saw that they did not move, so he chose to keep jumping upward.
Although the rest of the route had more traps in the form of gray platforms, they were not particularly difficult to deal with. Instead, when he reached 4,800 meters, he saw another group of stick figures approaching from behind. Unlike the previous team, this group moved extremely fast, whizzing past the Seeker of the Way in an instant.
Ren Suo saw that the stick figures seemed to be riding some kind of vehicle, perhaps a car...
"Meow meow meow?" Ren Suo was dumbfounded. "You can do that?"
Just as Ren Suo wondered whether he had missed some location and failed to obtain that kind of transportation, the stick-figure group drove back.
"Need help?" A dialogue box appeared above a stick figure.
Then came the dialogue choices Ren Suo loved to see:
① "No need."
② "No, thanks."
That was it.
"What kind of choices are these!?" Ren Suo furiously complained. "They both mean no!"
However, Ren Suo discovered that selecting a dialogue option did not immediately execute it. He still had to press confirm, and before that, he could choose another option.
So the Seeker of the Way said, "No need. No, thanks."
The stick-figure convoy remained parked there, but after Ren Suo controlled the Seeker of the Way to move upward, they left as well.
Finally, at four in the morning, Ren Suo controlled the Seeker of the Way to reach the 5,896-meter save point!
Whenever he reached a save point, Ren Suo felt as though he had completed some major goal in a stage of his life, and his entire body relaxed.
Interestingly, the 5,896-meter save point differed from the one at 2,048 meters. The large platform holding the save point—the save-point platforms spanned the entire screen, so it was impossible to fall off them—was filled with other stick figures.
This save point had its own special name: Base Camp.
The stick figures seemed shocked to see the Seeker of the Way and gathered around her. Dialogue bubbles kept popping up, but they appeared and vanished so quickly that Ren Suo could not see what they said.
Ren Suo put down the controller and went to sleep. He did not wake until eleven the next morning, once again feeling hungry enough to eat himself. He hurried downstairs for a bowl of noodles to settle his stomach. When the auntie downstairs saw him, she immediately said, "Two large bowls of Braised Beef Brisket Noodles with Fried Sauce, right?"
Ren Suo was also a little puzzled by how much he had been eating lately. He was somewhat of a homebody, but not a fat shut-in, and his appetite had never been large. Recently, it had practically doubled.
Returning home, he continued his challenge of If You're Strong, Climb 10,000 Meters. Ren Suo found that the stick figures on the 5,896-meter save-point platform were no longer gathered around the Seeker of the Way.
After playing for two days, Ren Suo realized that the game seemed to possess a unique sort of magic. Although the Seeker of the Way could only jump, how hard she jumped and where she jumped both required careful consideration.
For example, before reaching the 5,896-meter save-point platform, Ren Suo had encountered a breakable gray platform blocking the only route ahead. To ascend more safely, he would have needed to take a slight detour into the unknown area on the right. But Ren Suo chose to challenge the gray platform directly. The moment the Seeker of the Way landed on it, before it broke apart, he immediately charged another jump, achieving the equivalent of a double jump!
Her stamina bar had nearly run out, but that kind of challenge was truly thrilling!
Now that he had completed more than half the journey, and nearly every jump could raise his altitude by one meter, Ren Suo was brimming with excitement.
"Alright, I'm going to beat this game today!"
Before you continue