"Yo, the smoke squad people came." Goose Over looked at the screen and said. "I had thought that they would hold out until the end, and rather die than submit."
Solid smiled in disdain. "They don't look like people who aren't afraid of death. Even though we can still save the players who died in the game, this matter hasn't been announced yet, so them coming over was a certainty."
"Then let's see how they're going to talk their way in." Goose Over sent a message to the team on gatekeeping duty today, letting them bring the people over.
Dark Flame brought the smoke squad team members into the hall, looking around, he didn't see Jing Yang. Then he said to Goose Over, "I want to see Nuoyang, I hope that I can apologize to him in person, and seek his forgiveness."
Goose Over and Solid exchanged glances. They felt that letting Jing Yang come over personally to vent a bit was not a bad idea. Goose Over sent a message to Jing Yang saying that the smoke squad people had arrived, and wanted to apologize to him face to face.
Jing Yang very quickly responded to him, saying that he didn't have time to see them right now. He told Goose Over that letting them take care of it was fine, but they should definitely leave them until the very end and not let them die off in the game, especially Dark Flame and Easy Nobility.
After Goose Over read his message, he said to Dark Flame, "Nuoyang doesn't have time right now to see you, he is busy saving the players in the entire game, and your so-called apology is not at all important to him."
Dark Flame turned and looked at the rest of the team, and then continued, "We came very sincerely to apologize, then if Nuoyang doesn't have time to see us, please help us convey the message."
Dark Flame pulled out a page. "These are all the things that Nuoyang helped us buy before, and now we are returning all of them to him. As long as he is willing to forgive us, we agree to any conditions that he gives, and handing over all of our items is also fine."
Goose Over looked down the list of items on the page. "There are really quite a lot of things here, and also quite expensive. You all are really greedy enough, so many things, at such a high price, you let him pay by himself."
"Please help us say sorry to Nuoyang, and for the previous matters, we are genuinely regretful, please let us join the A team." Dark Flame and the other team members all lowered their heads and showed an appearance of being truly penitent.
"I will first take all of these items for Nuoyang and then transfer them to him later." Goose Over said. "You are all very lucky for coming at this time to join us. Right now everyone is busy, we don't have the time or energy to properly educate you. Nuoyang said that we can let you join. However, since you have come here, if you dare to disobey even the least bit, the consequences will be very miserable. Please be psychologically prepared."
"As long as you let us join, we are willing to do anything you want us to do, we will definitely follow your requirements, and will definitely not dare to resist or cause trouble." Dark Flame declared.
"That would be for the best." Goose Over sent a message to the Long River team captain Water Ghost, and asked him to come over.
After Water Ghost arrived, Goose Over said to him, "These people will be given to your team to manage, tell them the rules here and take care of everyone. Also, the house on the furthest west edge will be for them, tell them to hand in the entire rental fee. For future tasks, they will be following you."
"Okay, I understand." Water Ghost replied.
Water Ghost brought away the smoke squad people and arranged a place for them to live, then told them the rules.
"Can I ask you a question?" Dark Flame said.
Water Ghost: "Speak."
"Why are all of your weapons especially powerful after you all entered A team? Is it because the technicians helped you all raise them?" They had never been able to figure out this question, and the only reason they could come up with was this.
"Not a technician, it was Ding Nuoyang who helped us raise the energy of our weapons while he was refining them." Water Ghost felt that since they had already joined A team, there was nothing to hide from them about this question.
"Nuoyang?" Dark Flame stared in disbelief. "Him…how is that possible?"
The other smoke squad team members were equally incredulous. They looked at each other, everyone in shock.
"You will have a chance to understand these matters, you don't have to cling to those things of yours, the original A team members will not take advantage of you. Ding Nuoyang may take some things out of your storage space, but it's all to find erroneous code in the program, and when he finishes making the weapon he will put it back. Plus, the weapons that come out of his hands are countless times better than those made by the best alchemist NPC."
Those terribly fierce weapons were actually made by Ding Nuoyang, this answer caused the smoke squad members to suffer a huge impact. It could be said that originally this was an advantage that could have belonged to them, but had been fiercely pushed away by themselves.
When Water Ghost walked out of the house, the Whirlwind team captain Sharp Arrow quickly walked over to his side and asked, "What are they doing here? What is going on?"
"Goose Over told me to bring them over and arrange them to live here." Water Ghost said doubtfully. "What's the matter? Right now everyone is joining A team, it's not strange that they would come and join. Who actually wants to die?"
"Don't you know? They are the smoke squad!" Sharp Arrow widened his eyes.
"Of course I know they are the smoke squad, there aren't many teams composed entirely of professional players. They're one of them, and had been pretty famous before."
"Seeing your appearance, you must not have known the matter of Ding Nuoyang being driven out of their team ba?" Sharp Arrow said.
"What?!" Water Ghost looked at him in shock, and then carefully recalled. "I seem to have a bit of an impression of this matter. I don't know who I heard talk about this, at that time I didn't really pay attention and felt that it wasn't something important, and forgot. Once you mentioned it, it seems like there really was such a matter."
"Our two teams joined A team relatively early on, we are all very clear about what kind of person Ding Nuoyang is. He is very kind to everyone, and has never taken advantage of anyone, and also has real skill. They actually were able to offend someone like this, it can be seen that they are really quite something."
"Even though the smoke squad is pretty famous, their reputation has always not been very good. By virtue of their team being entirely professional players, they have done quite a bit of bullying, and their means have always been very dirty."
"So ah, they have offended Ding Nuoyang, and the old A team members definitely don't look upon them favorably, and it was entirely out of morality that they let them join. If we can avenge Ding Nuoyang privately, this could also be considered as thanking him for his salvation, and as long as we aren't too obvious about it, the veteran A team members will certainly not speak up for them."
"En." Water Ghost nodded. "You have a point, they know that they themselves were wrong, and will definitely not dare to complain."
Sharp Arrow and Water Ghost reached a consensus, and soon also informed the other team captains, so the smoke squad would not have a good time in the future.
In order to find even more error codes, they needed to retrieve a variety of treasures from monsters. The technicians couldn't make changes to the original game settings, or else it would just make the situation even messier. Then to get the treasures, they could only fight themselves.
Every team would receive a combat mission every day. Everyone was working toward the same goal, so their cooperation was very smooth and effective.
There was only one team that was isolated by all of the other teams. When they fought, the other teams would just coldly watch from the side, and seeing them being injured by the monsters, they wouldn't come to their rescue, but just stand at the side and laugh. What they were going through right now was almost exactly the same as Ding Nuoyang's experience when he had just joined their team.
The smoke squad members could feel the hostility from all of the other players, but they didn't dare to show any dissatisfaction, and even more so did not dare to resist. They could only endure it to be able to leave the game.
Of course the smoke squad members felt angry in their hearts, but they didn't dare to speak out about it, so they just transferred the anger in their hearts to Easy Nobility. They felt that if it weren't because Easy Nobility had always targeted Ding Nuoyang since the beginning, they wouldn't be facing their current situation. If not because Easy Nobility had first suggested to have Ding Nuoyang leave the team, then the team that would now be respected and thanked, and be begged to join, would be them.
Easy Nobility had never thought that he would be treated like this in this team. The majority of the people in this team had been pulled in by him, but now the people stepping most strongly on him were those people. He was just like a street rat, suffering everyone's disdain, and even those he had thought were his own people, all rejected him now.
~
The system repair finally entered the final phase, with the technicians also adding the players already dead in the game into A team. Then, Jing Yang and Dragon Seven would control the system in the game world and let all of the players exit from the game.
All of them gathered in one area, teams standing in groups in a specific order. Every player had to stand in their own team with their own team members. This condition was mentioned by Jing Yang, and no one had asked for the reason and just followed the instructions, even confirming that all of their team members had arrived, and then reporting their status. Doing this had no effect at all on exiting the game, but Jing Yang had his own purpose.
Jing Yang and Dragon Seven operated simultaneously on two pages, and after a while, all of the buildings and the environment around them disappeared into a pure white space. Then all of the players' game appearances disappeared, and everyone turned into what they looked like in reality. Not only their looks and stature, but even the clothes they were wearing, were exactly the same as in reality at that moment.
Everyone looked around in curiosity, seeing what the teammates that they had never met in reality looked like.
Easy Nobility found that the mask on his face had disappeared. He nervously touched his face, he didn't feel those bumpy scars, but the feel was also not like his previously smooth and delicate skin. He looked up and found that everyone next to him had turned into real people, and froze from fear.
"You…" Zhao Chao looked at Yu Jian with some uncertainty. "You are Easy Nobility?"
"No! No, I'm not!" Yu Jian was full of panic, hurriedly shaking his head in denial.
Zhao Chao looked around. This team had been formed for a few years already, and he had also held team parties quite a few times already, he had seen everyone else, and could properly match their accounts. There was only this one person who he had never seen in reality, and only Easy Nobility had never appeared in reality. But, he also said that he wasn't, and Zhao Chao also felt that Easy Nobility would not be so ugly, then who was Easy Nobility? Zhao Chao looked around in puzzlement, but no one around matched the true appearance of Easy Nobility in his imagination.
A page appeared above everyone's head that showed their game name. On the page above Yu Jian's head, it clearly wrote: player Easy Nobility, are you sure you want to exit the game.
"You really are Easy Nobility?!" Zhao Chao stared at Yu Jian in shock.
"No…, I, I…" Yu Jian didn't know what excuse he could find to deny it, the game name had already appeared, even if he kept denying it it was still useless.
"Didn't you say that your appearance in the game was automatically set up by the system?" A player looked at Yu Jian, his face full of revulsion. "It turns out you actually look like this in reality, and you actually even said that you don't look very different from in reality. How on earth were you not embarrassed saying something like that?"
"That's right, this is literally the complete opposite, okay? There is not even a trace of similarity."
"You are literally a fraud, completely deceiving our feelings, okay? And we even held you up so high."
The smoke squad members continued to vent their anger, each one attacking him verbally one after another. They felt that the Yu Jian in reality and in the game was really too different, making them feel seriously deceived. If they had known earlier that he would turn into this, who would be so good to him, and even support him everywhere ah.
"Alas, us being tricked isn't much. The most pitiful one is Dark Flame, the tall, rich, and handsome boyfriend in reality actually turned into this kind of thing."
Zhao Chao remembered that he had actually slept with this kind of person so many times, and his stomach couldn't help but turn. Remembering the scene of him delicately snuggling in his arms, thinking of his appearance when pathetically calling himself husband, when the face from that time turned into this face in front of him, it really made him disgusted.
"Why did you want to trick me? Why did you lie to me?!" Zhao Chao grabbed his arm and angrily questioned him. He actually lost Nuoyang because of this kind of person.
"I didn't, I didn't!" Yu Jian shook his head and still wanted to continue denying it, and looked at Zhao Chao in tears, trying to win his sympathy.
Perhaps Yu Jian had forgotten that when he cried with his face in the game, he would be a teary beauty, and it was very easy to gain people's sympathy. But when crying with this face, it would only make others even more disgusted.
Zhao Chao viciously pushed him away, Yu Jian fell to the ground and didn't dare to look up. He didn't dare to face those sarcastic and disgusted eyes.
The button to confirm to exit also appeared on the page, many players were very excited and couldn't wait to press to exit the game. They could finally leave here, and live back to reality!
Jing Yang looked at Qi Feng's face that was not much different from the game and said, "I'm going back."
"I will find you." Qi Feng carefully looked over his face and engraved it in his mind, not missing a single detail.
"…Okay, I will wait for you." Jing Yang said.
"When I find you, you are not allowed to hide from me again." Qi Feng required.
Jing Yang avoided his gaze a bit, and immediately lowered his head and no longer looked at him.
"Nuoyang! Nuoyang!" Zhao Chao ran toward Jing Yang eagerly.
Jing Yang turned to glance at Zhao Chao and then looked up at Qi Feng. "I'm leaving, goodbye."
Zhao Chao had not reached Jing Yang when Jing Yang had already left the game, disappearing from this white world.
Translator Notes:
[1] rather die than submit – 宁死不屈, idiom, pretty literal definition
[2] cooperation – 齐心合力, idiom, means to work as one, united in a concerted effort
[3] effective – 事半功倍, idiom, means literally means half the work, twice the effort, or the right approach saves effort and leads to better results
[4] teary beauty – 梨花带雨, idiom, literally like raindrops on a pear blossom, figuratively a tear-stained face of a beauty
Random Notes:
A bit over an hour: 4:15 pm – 5:30 pm, for 4.4k characters to 2.8k words. Luckily I managed to translate this in time.