Chapter 252 - Lasting Sentence and Dying Breath’s Final Location
Gu Fei’s solution to the problem was to look for that person. Once he located that person, he might be able to find the owner; this was the most viable solution he could think of.
Gu Fei was of course not looking for Nightmare of Death. Given his relationship with him, Gu Fei was certain that the latter would only provide him with the exact opposite of what he needed if he were to approach him for anything. If he told him he was looking for the looted equipment’s owner, Nightmare of Death would surely tell him that someone had died during the Ice Age with his whole family….
Gu Fei was looking for Xi Xiaotian.
Xi Xiaotian had previously told him about joining Nightmare of Death’s organization to scam the scammers, and Gu Fei had never once contacted her for this. Looking back, Gu Fei had managed to become friends with many people in this game from all walks of life. Gu Fei recalled Sword Demon’s complicated expression upon meeting those sleazebags of Forever in Flowers.
Gu Fei did not have many friends since he had spent most of his younger days practicing kung fu. He had never gone through the usual schooling process, so he had had little interaction with people outside his small social circle. It was only when he had gotten older that he started meeting people in the martial arts circle. The kung fu world was small to begin with, though; if even the martial arts family of Gu had few practitioners in them, how many more would there be in others? This inherently small circle made it difficult for him to meet new people, much less people around his age. Meeting people his age that he could interact and chat with in a friendly manner was a difficult task altogether. Even if he did meet someone his age, they would most likely only find themselves sparring first and parting ways after.
It was as if Gu Fei had chosen kung fu to be his lifelong partner, spending his twenty-five years of life with it. Even in the school he was teaching, Gu Fei’s relationship with his fellow teachers was only as colleagues. No one out there seemed to share a common language with him.
In Parallel World, he and everyone else were connected to one another by the game.
Besides, many leaders of large guilds were vying for Gu Fei’s friendship to get his help in their fight for dominance in the game. Even now, they were striving hard to curry favor with him and have him join their respective guilds.
There were even those whose pursuit of women had them putting Gu Fei on a pedestal; of course, this bit was referring to the Forever in Flowers’ players who saw Gu Fei as their love mentor.
There were also those who stood at the apex of their respective fields; the mercenaries of Young Master’s Elite had dragged Gu Fei along with them to regard the rest of the players with contempt.
There were the Amethyst Rebirth ladies as well; this bevy of ladies enjoyed gossips so much that even Gu Fei was once the center of their chatters.
All of these connections were formed through serendipitous encounters.
Besides these people, there were those like Coward’s Savior who were more than willing to talk about kung fu with Gu Fei, albeit their conversation was often one-sided with Gu Fei doing all the talking as Coward’s Savior had meager knowledge of kung fu. In fact, the two’s relationship was less of a discussion among equals but more of a teacher and student.
Finally, there was Xi Xiaotian. Just like him, she had a hobby that was frowned upon in reality and could only suffer the pain of it. Still, her hobby was swindling and his was kung fu—wait a minute! How are these two things related again? Gu Fei got distracted.
After setting a time and place to meet Xi Xiaotian, Gu Fei opened his friends’ list and saw that his students were starting to come online. Once the last student’s IGN lit up, Ah Fa represented all his classmates to greet Gu Fei. Soon, the rest of them started vomiting all sorts of requests, such as carrying them for a quest or to grind levels, giving them money, equipment, or scrolls, and so on.
Gu Fei had seen through their intentions. These students were probably often oppressed by their teachers that they were now getting back at them by extorting as much as they could from him, who was also a teacher. He had made these students march in neat rows while calling out a cadence yesterday, yet they had hardly been deterred by that....
“Are you guys done with your homework?” Gu Fei asked them, instead.
“Teacher, it’s the weekend!” the students reasoned. He did not know if they had privately discussed this beforehand to take advantage of the fact that the following two days were a weekend to viciously pester him into helping them.
Gu Fei was not exactly bothered by this, as he himself did not put much importance to those things in-game. They were his students, after all; letting them benefit from good things was no big deal. He had already given them equipment before, and he was rather broke right now… Should he bring them to grind levels? There were over twenty of them; there was hardly a grinding map in Yunduan City that could accommodate them all. As for questing… He had never carried someone for a quest before. The main issue about that stuff was traveling; he was naturally willing to represent them in a PvP, but he was clueless on how to help them with the traveling aspect. He supposed that taking the lead would be necessary if they had a poor sense of direction like Royal God Call. However, those who wanted him to carry them for a quest probably had similar intention as those skirt-chasers of Forever in Flowers: to travel with girls around this VR world.
The students were pretty smart. Knowing that it would be impossible for Gu Fei to help twenty plus of them to grind levels together, they evenly split themselves into two groups to have him take turns in carrying them. They cared not for the experience points that they would sacrifice if Gu Fei carried them, as their goal was to simply ‘extort’ as much as they could from their teacher.
This could not be called exploitation if their target did not lose something at all, so their teacher could not hope to punish them for it by making them run laps around the school field!
Gu Fei did not mind this in the least, but he happened to have something on right now. Thus, he told the students to meet him a bit later as he made his way over to the fountain at Yunduan City’s central square. Gu Fei immediately spotted Xi Xiaotian when he got to the place.
This particular lady was always wearing strange outfit. Gu Fei knew now that she was an Archer, yet she was currently in mage robe with an archer cloak hidden beneath. Otherwise, how could it be explained why Xi Xiaotian’s cowl fit her snugly? Only a thief cloak would fit a player like a hoodie.
Gu Fei waved at her as he walked over.
“How rare of you to initiate contact with me. What’s up?” Xi Xiaotian asked upfront.
“How did that thing last time go?” Several days had passed since Xi Xiaotian got slain, but she had not contacted Gu Fei even once. The whole situation had been a misunderstanding, and Gu Fei had deliberately refrained from helping her, making him feel somewhat regretful afterward.
“Never mind that! That kind of thing happens a lot. I even got attacked by someone before coming here!” Xi Xiaotian said as she fished out a loaf of bread from her dimensional pocket. Slowly munching on it, Xi Xiaotian steadily replenished the HP she had lost from being stabbed.
Gu Fei did not plan to get involved with the disputes Xi Xiaotian had gotten herself into due to her career choice, so he just went straight to the point, “Are you still mixed in with that crowd of equipment-looters?”
“Oh, them? Their business has fallen on hard times after, so I’m barely contacting them now. Still, I exchange words with them from time to time; I heard you messed Xiaocan up quite bad yesterday!” Xi Xiaotian said.
“Nightmare of Death? He deserved it,” Gu Fei said indifferently.
“Uh-huh. So why are you looking for me? Info to continue your hunt?” Xi Xiaotian asked coldly, saying, “I’m not gonna reveal anything; he’s only trying to make a living, so what’s the point of going that far?”
“Make a living?” Gu Fei could not understand what she meant.
“This is their job. They are part of a gaming workshop, and they get paid by their superior for the equipment they loot,” Xi Xiaotian explained simply.
“Oh. That’s not an easy line of work,” Gu Fei said.
“Especially after they met you,” Xi Xiaotian chuckled.
“He’s rather unlucky; perhaps, it's better for him to find another line of work!” Gu Fei said apathetically.
“Seems you’re looking for me for another matter…” Xi Xiaotian was quick on the uptake as she immediately realized that Gu Fei did not plan to continue serving justice on the organization.
“Yeah. Actually, Nightmare of Death dropped equipment when he got killed yesterday. The thing is I have no idea where he looted such precious equipment,” Gu Fei began.
“So you’re looking for the owner to return the equipment?”
Gu Fei nodded his head in confirmation.
“You’re really too righteous. Looking at you sitting on your high horse makes me feel so very small,” Xi Xiaotian sounded sarcastic, yet her face remained expressionless, making it difficult to guess her real thoughts.
“The item. What is it?” Xi Xiaotian asked.
Gu Fei nonchalantly took one of the two top-grade daggers out and handed it over to her.
Xi Xiaotian glanced at it before asking, “Aren’t you afraid that I’ll run off with this dagger?”
“Nope…” Gu Fei was holding a sword in his hand.
“Killing me won’t do you any good; I’ve still got the dagger on me,” Xi Xiaotian taunted.
“Run off, then!” Gu Fei merely smiled.
Xi Xiaotian did not move and instead returned the dagger to him, “I’ve never seen this equipment before.”
“Oh?” While Gu Fei sounded skeptical, he knew that she had no reason to hide this matter from him.
“I believe only Xiaocan can tell you where he got the equipment,” Xi Xiaotian said.
“What do you mean by that?” Gu Fei asked.
“I can confidently say that I know most, if not all, of the equipment that they’ve managed to loot. And yet, I’ve never seen this green-tier equipment before. It must have intentionally been hidden by someone. According to you, Nightmare of Death has dropped it. In that case, it’s very likely that he has kept this for himself,” Xi Xiaotian explained.
“Does that mean only he knows who dropped it?”
“Mhm. It is also possible that he has not looted it from anyone. They are an organization of professional scammers. They only target players after ascertaining that they have valuable equipment in them. In such a situation, it’s just not possible for any of them to stash away equipment without the knowledge of others,” Xi Xiaotian continued to say.
“Perhaps, it’s something they have no prior knowledge of, and it accidentally dropped when the person got killed?” Gu Fei proposed.
“The only reason someone won’t use this sort of top-grade gear is when he or she plans to sell it. Since that person wasn’t planning to use it, why would he or she leave such precious equipment in the dimensional pocket instead of putting it in the warehouse for safekeeping?” Xi Xiaotian reasoned.
“That makes sense. What do you make of it, then?”
“Maybe, he got it from fighting a Boss or a chance drop from a quest, which Xiaocan decided to greedily keep for himself. I don’t think there’s a need for me to explain his reasoning for doing such a thing!”
“Yeah, I get it.” Gu Fei nodded his head.
“That’s why I think only Xiaocan can tell you who the original owner is. Do what you will with this information!” Xi Xiaotian finished.
“Guess that means I’m the owner of it now. He he…” Gu Fei declared while looking at the dagger in his hand.
“Aren’t you lucky? Okay, I’m leaving now. See you tomorrow,” Xi Xiaotian said.
“Tomorrow?” Gu Fei asked, nonplussed.
“Tomorrow is the finals for the mercenary PvP tournament, right?”
“Oh? Are you in The Black Hand mercenary group?” Gu Fei was surprised.
“Hmph. You better be careful. I’m very despicable,” Xi Xiaotian raised her hand and made a killing gesture toward Gu Fei before turning to leave.
“Despicable, huh…” Gu Fei repeated to himself.