Auntie Wang was a bold one. The first to eat a sunflower seed earlier was her, and now, the first to hesitantly extend her chopsticks toward the spinach before her was also her. Auntie Wang picked up a chopstickful of spinach and carefully put it into her mouth, and was immediately conquered by the flavor.
It really was delicious.
Auntie Wang’s expression let the remaining players know: this food was safe to eat.
They sighed in relief. It seemed only the sunflower seeds from earlier had been the problem, an anomaly—the rest was normal.
Heaven knew that at one point, they’d almost thought the NPCs in this instance had abnormal taste buds. From the looks of it, the palate of this instance was normal after all.
The players weren’t actually too worried about being poisoned, because the Main God Space sold Antidote Pills, and players always kept one or two on hand. If they were truly poisoned, they’d just take an Antidote Pill. But the players were quite cautious; after all, those Antidote Pills were expensive.
Now that the taste was no longer an issue either, the players happily prepared to eat. Things like food were incredibly expensive in the Main God Space. The Main God Space only provided the most basic sustenance, a nutrient fluid from some unknown dimension. The stuff was a soft, mushy, semi-liquid food that had absolutely no taste in the mouth.
It could fill you up and supply the necessary nutrients for the body.
But eating that stuff long-term, even your mouth would grow so bored it could taste nothing.
Fresh meat and vegetables each sold for sky-high prices. Having the points to buy those things to satisfy culinary cravings was better spent on strengthening oneself; the nutrient fluid wasn’t exactly inedible. Once inside an instance, everyone concentrated on clearing it; who had the mind to indulge a desire for gourmet food?
Some people had thought about persistently farming their own food, but the Main God Space didn’t even have a handful of soil—you had to buy it from it too. And you could only buy relatively rare soil, which was a waste to use for growing ordinary vegetables. Even if a major player really did spare no expense to buy it, they’d find the soil wasn’t suitable for growing vegetables at all.
In the eyes of outsiders, they were elite players capable of challenging the final instance, but in reality, they were poor wretches who couldn’t even afford a single gourmet meal.
Thinking of this, the players wanted to shed a handful of bitter tears. Snapping back from their myriad reflections, they suddenly discovered that the dishes before them had already been half-devoured as if swept by a whirlwind.
—Did this family have such huge appetites?
There was no time to explain. The players could only extend their chopsticks and join the fray.
The moment the delicious food entered their mouths, the players finally lamented that they felt human again. This was what humans should eat! Thinking of those nutrient fluids back in the Main God Space—what kind of garbage was that? Was that stuff fit for human consumption?
They savored the food in their mouths, but when they tried to reach out with their chopsticks again, they found the dishes were already running low. The players looked at each other and decided to hold back no longer. When it came to eating, they were serious too!
The meal was finished very quickly. Not even a drop of sauce remained. The players mixed the remaining sauce with rice and cleaned everything up thoroughly, even patting their stomachs with lingering satisfaction, making Huang Wei momentarily wonder if she hadn’t cooked enough. Her gaze swept over the mother-daughter duo, Cheng Luyun and Huang Chengcheng, and the players, and she decided it had nothing to do with her—it was these ghosts and players who were just too gluttonous.
The two bottles of drinks were also completely emptied. Looking at the messy table, Huang Wei began to prepare to clean up. Auntie Wang wanted to help her, but Huang Wei refused. She said, “You’re all guests, and you even saved my life. How could I let guests do chores? Auntie Wang, you go rest, let me do it.”
Huang Wei’s actions made Auntie Wang a little embarrassed, but as a guest in someone’s home, she could only follow the host’s arrangements. At that moment, Auntie Wang felt herself shift from a player back to an ordinary person—just an ordinary person visiting someone else’s house.
She returned to the table and found her teammates eating fruit. She took an apple from the fruit platter, opened her mouth, and gently bit into it. The apple was crisp. As it entered her mouth, that unique sweetness of an apple followed. She truly had not eaten fresh, delicious fruit in a very, very long time. In other instances, she had seen fruit sold by the roadside too. She remembered an ancient city full of exotic charm; she had bought an apple with a small piece of gold, but when it entered her mouth, the apple was dry, astringent, and tasted awful.
Ancient fruit wasn’t like modern fruit, which had undergone countless rounds of selection and cultivation. They were just wild apples from trees, and not tasty at all.
Yet back then, she had truly felt it was a rare delicacy in the world.
Only now did Auntie Wang realize with a start: this was the taste of an apple she was familiar with.
Auntie Wang looked up at the captain. “Shouldn’t we pay the guide for our room and board?” Auntie Wang just wanted to give some gold and silver, so that when they left this instance, the guide could live a better life. She knew the instance would reset, but still hoped the guide might feel happy because of the wealth.
The captain nodded. It really wasn’t right to eat and drink for free.
Huang Wei was in the courtyard washing the bowls and chopsticks, while Cheng Luyun took the players to allocate rooms. Downstairs, besides the main hall, there was another guest room. The weather was getting hot now, so sleeping on a pallet on the floor wouldn’t be cold. She feigned an apologetic look in the main hall and said, “Sorry about this, the upstairs is for our family of three, so only women can go up. I’m afraid we’ll have to trouble the men to stay downstairs.”
Auntie Wang quickly said, “Not at all! Having a place to stay is already excellent.”
Their team had four men and two women. The two women were Auntie Wang and a young girl who was the captain’s girlfriend. Normally, a young couple should stay together, but under these circumstances, it was impossible to give them a separate room.
The players had no objections to this arrangement. Four men sleeping on the floor wasn’t something unacceptable. Besides, to eat their fill and have a place to sleep—they had never experienced such a ‘home away from home’ feeling in an instance before.
There was no bathing place on the first floor, only a well outside. The four men thought it over and planned to just wash up beside the well. But Cheng Luyun just stood in the main hall and told them with narrowed, smiling eyes not to do that.
There were many women in the house. If they truly wanted to bathe, they could go to the small river outside and wade in the water along with the other village men.
The men thought about it; it really wasn’t appropriate, so they let it go.
Upstairs, Cheng Luyun also wouldn’t let the two women use the family bathroom, saying there was a bathroom in the guest bedroom instead. Since the hostess refused, they couldn’t say much. They gave their thanks and went to prepare to bathe.
Besides not allowing them to use the main bathroom, the supplies inside were ready for them: clean toiletries, and even the bedsheets on the guest bed looked brand new.
After bathing, Auntie Wang and the captain’s girlfriend entered the guest bedroom. They lay on the bed, heads resting on soft pillows. Looking to the side, they could see the starry sky outside the window, the chirping of insects in their ears. They hadn’t felt this sensation in a long time. Logically, they should arrange a night watch—Auntie Wang taking the first half, the captain’s girlfriend the second. But the environment was so serene, and they already knew the guide had a suppressive effect on monsters. With these two factors combined, Auntie Wang finally pulled the captain’s girlfriend aside and said, forget it, no night watch.
Even if they got shanked tonight and had to pay points to revive, Auntie Wang would accept it. A beautiful night like this—revival points couldn’t buy it.
Auntie Wang gradually fell asleep. Seeing this, the captain’s girlfriend also slowly closed her eyes.
They were asleep, unaware that in the master bedroom, the family of three were looking at each other. Huang Wei decided to keep up the momentum. Cheng Luyun had eaten her food and her dishes; in the end, she had to give her three parts preferential treatment.
She had just previously deeply shaken Cheng Luyun’s heart, so now she should press her advantage. Thus, Huang Wei was now showing her cards.
She felt that Cheng Luyun must have some understanding of players. In past instances, there were also Big Bosses who discovered that players weren’t “otherworldly visitors,” but strange humans with “player” attributes. If the Big Bosses of previous instances could discover this, then Cheng Luyun, the super Big Boss of the final instance, how could she not?
Huang Wei had discovered a certain truth, so now she was sitting on the bed, face-to-face with Cheng Luyun.
Huang Wei’s sitting posture was more casual—legs crossed, hands resting near her legs. To give herself more courage, she was even holding Huang Chengcheng in her arms, letting the child sit within her crossed legs. Cheng Luyun sat opposite the “father-daughter duo,” her legs together and tilted to one side, looking gentle, polite, and very demure.
With the warm Huang Chengcheng in her arms, the courage within Huang Wei also welled up. She looked at Cheng Luyun before her and swallowed a mouthful of saliva before speaking. “Do you know about players?”
A flicker of confusion in the corner of Cheng Luyun’s eye was caught by Huang Wei, but Cheng Luyun definitely wasn’t puzzled about what a player was—she was puzzled about how Huang Wei knew of their existence.
That Huang Wei could discover Cheng Luyun and Huang Chengcheng were ghosts, that the entire village wasn’t quite normal—these were things Cheng Luyun knew very well. But that she could discover the players? Cheng Luyun’s gaze turned somewhat dangerous. Her eyes swept over Huang Wei, as if weighing what exactly Huang Wei was.
Huang Wei didn’t hesitate. She immediately launched into an explanation for Cheng Luyun. “You definitely don’t know, but behind them there’s something called the Main God. The Main God assigns them missions and lets them earn points. Points allow players to buy anything in the world—including their own abilities, incredible tools, gold and jewels… But for them, what’s even more attractive is the possibility of returning to the real world.”
Cheng Luyun tilted her head, as if not understanding what Huang Wei was getting at by saying all this.
But she never expected that Huang Wei’s next words would be: “If we could also earn points, then maybe, if we save up enough, we could go to the real world too! I want to take you and Chengcheng, and leave this constantly repeating world!” As she spoke, she even leaned her body forward. Because of this movement, Huang Chengcheng rolled out of her arms to one side. Her sudden lunge forward made Cheng Luyun subconsciously lean back a bit.
—Talk if you want, why get so close?
This thought surfaced in Cheng Luyun’s mind. Then Huang Wei’s words registered: she said she wanted to take her to the real world? Why would she want to go to the real world? This place… this place was her business.
Cheng Luyun couldn’t quite control herself, a sarcastic smile surfacing on her face. “Why would I want to leave this world?”
