Chapter 57 “Look, a Mouse Is Eating Your Rice”

Zheng Xiaoguang remembered a joke about a new bride.

On the wedding night, when the bridegroom excitedly removed the bride’s red head covers, the bride was bashfully looking down at the ground. Suddenly, she chuckled and covered her mouth with a hand. She pointed to the ground with the hand while saying, “Look, look, a mouse is eating your rice.”

The next morning, when the groom was still sleeping, the bride saw the mouse eating the rice again. She threw her shoe at the mouse and shouted in anger, “Damn mouse! How dare you steal my rice!” The groom woke up with a start and then smiled. He was pleased to know that his bride began to consider herself a part of his family now.

Being a guest was totally different from being a host.

When Zheng Xiaoguang had first come to the League of Strong Families, she had considered herself as a guest. To avoid putting her big brother Blooming Pear Tree in an awkward situation, she seldom accepted favors from the gang members. Even when they offered to give her something that she needed to complete a mission, she would insist on paying for the thing. Everyone thought that she was nice, but actually, it was just because she had not yet regarded them as her friends.

In fact, some members of the League of Strong Families still considered her an outsider now, and even she herself still firmly believed that she would return to the Matchless sooner or later. As such, although she got married to the gang boss of the League of Strong Families, she seldom regarded herself as a member of the gang.

Beyond her expectations, this trip to A city somehow made her totally accept her husband in the game.

She thought, “As I’m ‘married’ to this handsome gang boss, I should work harder for our fellow gang members.”

Since coming back from A city, Zheng Xiaoguang had taken an active role in the gang. As the “Shiny Sky Beauty Contest” was hyped up, many new players were attracted to this game and this server Watery South. It was a good opportunity for the League of Strong Families to recruit new members. Give this, Zheng Xiaoguang encouraged the high-level players in the gang to help the low-level new member to gain levels as a way to attract new members.

After all, for any gang in Watery South, it could only develop and grow by constantly recruiting new members.

At present, nearly all the gang members of the League of Strong Families had reached the highest level allowed by the system and did not have to be busy gaining levels for themselves every day. As such, most of them, especially Beating War Drums in Spring Breeze and One-inch Monk, responded positively to Flowing Light’s call and actively helped the low-level new members.

Zheng Xiaoguang had a talk with Bluegreen-Clad. She said, “I remembered that some great man has said that it’s immoral to encourage people to work hard only by making empty promises to them.

“Although the high-level gang members are willing to help us now, we can’t let them work for free all the time. As time goes by, they’ll probably lose interests in doing this again. We should take out some good things from the warehouse of the gang and give these things to them as material rewards.”

Bluegreen-Clad agreed with her idea and asked her to do anything she wanted.

As a result, Zheng Xiaoguang handed out assignments to all hagh-level gang members including Bluegreen-Clad. Nowadays, every time Bluegreen-Clad got online, he had to help some low-level members to gain experience points. Occasionally, he would go to the Phoenix Terrace together with his wife to enjoy the scenery.

Bluegreen-Clad was in charge of instructing the gang members to get through all kinds of missions, and Zheng Xiaoguang was responsible for picking out and inviting new members to join their gang.

Everything went smoothly for them most of the time, but there were times when Zheng Xiaoguang just could not help but flare up.

Something that happened today really irritated her.

She and Bluegreen-Clad teamed up with a few new members who were at level 45 or above and played a level-50 instance together. In this instance, they had to rescue a young lady of a wealthy family, who fell into a nightmare and could not wake up. To get through this instance, they had to enter the young lady’s dream and slay all the monsters there. It was not a very difficult task.

There were five waves of small monsters, namely fireflies, dragonflies, bees, moths and butterflies. Each wave had about 30 small monsters. Players could accumulate a lot of experience points by slaying the five waves of monsters. After slaying them, the low-level players would reach lever 48. After the five waves of small monsters, they had to fight the Boss of this instance, a giant human-faced butterfly.

Given the level and equipment of Bluegreen-Clad, it would be just a piece of cake for him to slay all the small monsters and the Boss.

They would only meet a challenge when the Boss popped out and transformed one of their team members into the young lady of the wealthy family, Once a player’s character got transformed by the Boss, the character would become immune to all damage but could not use any skill before transforming back.

This skill was similar to the fox-transforming skill of a magician. It would not bring too much trouble to a team who had enough offensive force. Unfortunately, this team happened to lack offensive force.

Among all the team members, only Bluegreen-Clad was able to deliver a strong offensive blow. The low-level players did not have strong offensive force or defensive force. Once the Boss transformed Bluegreen-Clad into the young lady, no one would be able to pull the Boss. When that happened, the Boss would begin to attack the other team members randomly. Under such circumstances, the whole team might get annihilated.

To avoid getting slain for too many times, which would cause the team to lose experience points, a high-level player would usually cross the bridge alone to fight the Boss and ask the low-level players to stay at the other side of the bridge.

That was what Bluegreen-Clad did today. He asked the low-level team members to stay behind and went across the bridge to pull the Boss by himself.

The low-level players had nothing to do, so they clicked their sitting emotes① to make their characters sit on the floor. After that, they began to chat with one another on the Nearby channel, and these Nearby messages were invisible for Bluegreen-Clad now, as he was too far away from them.

Low-level female player 1: A god-like player is indeed fierce. He slew all the small monsters within a few seconds. My experience points surged before I realized what was going on. Now, I have enough points to upgrade to level 48. What about you?

Low-level female player 2: I’m going to upgrade to level 49 after the death of this Boss. Alas, I really want to marry such a god-like player. It feels great to gain levels easily with the help of such a guy.

Low-level female player 3: Does this god-like player have a wife?

Low-level female player 1: I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?

Low-level female player 3: Alright, I’ll go to ask him. I warn you first. As it’s I that ask him first, if he really doesn’t have a wife, none of you can compete with me.

Low-level female player 1: Look at you. Don’t get carried away. A god-like player in a game may be a sloppy old man in the real life.

Low-level female player 3: I don’t care. If you’re worried about that, don’t compete with me.

Low-level female player 1: No. I like this god-like player as well. We should play fair.

Low-level female player 2: What are you bickering about? Maybe the god-like player likes me. After I get married to him, I’ll invite you to gain levels together with us. Hee-hee~

When the girls were busy chatting with one another, they suddenly saw a large number of experience rewards floating over their heads.

[Team] Low-level female player 1: Have you just slain the Boss, god-like Bluegreen-Clad?

[Team] Bluegreen-Clad: Yes. Come closer to me. I’ll distribute the equipment.

The girls went across the bridge to find Bluegreen-Clad. After that, they saw lots of Team messages which informed them of the equipment distribution. Bluegreen-Clad gave all the equipment that he unlocked here to the low-level girls.

[Team] Low-level female player 3: You’re awesome, Bluegreen-Clad. You take my breath away! I admire you so much. Will you marry me?

Note:

①Emotes: A player uses an emote to communicate an action or an expression. By using different emote commands, a player can make his or her character sit down, lie down, sleep, greet someone else or hug someone else.