Ch60 - 8 Hour Game Battle

They found a restaurant in Squirrel Town to rest. Nan Zhou ordered a brown sugar fresh milk mochi with 10% sugar. This made Li Yinhang suspect that what was flowing through his blood vessels was syrup, not blood.

The small, humanoid squirrel waiter in the restaurant seemed to really like Nan Zhou. She gave Nan Zhou a chocolate muffin with the Squirrel  Town logo and also wrote her address on the napkin. She threw a creepy wink at him with her cartoonish round eyes with three long eyelashes. 

If it was changed to someone else, they would probably be shocked by this Uncanny Valley effect. Meanwhile, Nan Zhou had a good attitude toward her and nodded politely to her. The squirrel waiter was in a good mood and left with the empty tray.

Nanji Star curiously shook his head and tail, his eyes shining. He wanted to follow but he was caught by Nan Zhou and placed in his pocket.

At this point, other players in the restaurant were also notified of the update. A pair of teammates at the neighboring table were talking happily with bright eyes.

“We will receive 500 points when it is updated?!” 

“Please do more updates. Catch bugs and save others from taking advantage. It is better for us.”

They clearly had no idea that the one who ‘created this bug’ was sitting at the next table. There was more than one person with such an idea. At least half of the new world channel was discussing this update. Of course, there were also voices of discontent.

“Just 500 points? It is like giving something to a beggar.

“Fuck, they pull us here and play with our lives, giving up a bit of sweetness and hoping we’ll be happy with this. It is cheap.”

“We won’t play this game! We quit!”

“Exit! Quit!”

The masterminds behind the game naturally didn’t care about them. The players who had been holding back for a long time found an outlet here. No matter whether it was useful or not, they filled the screen with passionate insults. Instead, some useful information came out.

Some brainy players used this suddenly opened up information channel to post information about items they owned in order to trade. However, this was quickly covered by the repetitive text filled with angry emotions. 

These situations were live broadcasted on the scene by Li Yinhang. Neither Nan Zhou nor Jiang Fang chose to update. After listening for a while, the three of them reached a consensus. There was no useful information at present.

Li Yinhang took a sip of the red bean rice cake soup with squirrel patterns and sighed heavily. Nan Zhou felt that Li Yinhang should be happier about this unexpected income. He wondered, “Aren’t you happy to earn 500 points?”

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

“It is called earning money.” Li Yinhang’s money-saving radar operated steadily without being confused by the atmosphere of celebration in the chat channel. “Everyone has it, which is equal to everyone not having anything.”

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In the previous instance, they clearly found a way through the instance. They just had to find the correct classroom that didn’t exist and replace the order in which they went through the classroom again and they would be able to survive the 120 hours. If it hadn’t been for the rustling monster acting before them and saving Sun Guojing, Nan Zhou never would’ve thought of violently opening the door. 

Capturing the monster was an accident for the game system but it wasn’t an accident for them, the players. As a result, Nan Zhou had just grabbed a dungeon creature and the game’s patch followed in the blink of an eye. This showed that the bug found by Nan Zhou was unexpected by the operators and it was also very important.

For this reason, they even jumped from behind the scenes to the front of the stage. Once updated, the new warehouse system added incompatibility with instance creatures. This meant the garbled instance boss in the warehouse would be directly erased. The officials of the game Forces of Temptation had almost written the words ‘I am your father’ on their faces.

Not only did they intend to take away the instance boss but they also gave all players the small extra benefit of 500 points, leaving Cube Boat with nothing extra.

Li Yinhang didn’t expect any specific purpose from catching this boss apart from it occupying a storage slot but she upheld the concept of ‘what others are reluctant to give you must be something good’. This meant she felt a real sense of loss. 

As Li Yinhang was feeling upset, Nan Zhou was also staring at his control panel. The store interface was gray. The leaderboard was the one he saw before entering the previous instance and the ranking wasn’t refreshed. The points page didn’t even calculate the score of the previous instance.

Any page that required interaction was frozen. The only thing he could manipulate was the warehouse interface and the new update interface that seemed to be smiling coldly and mockingly. The game still retained the operating interface of the warehouse because the warehouse and the player’s oxygen system were bound. Only the warehouse system was turned off, players who were slow to choose to update would suffocate directly.

Of course, the mastermind behind the game wasn’t worried about players not updating. After all, the store system wouldn’t turn on without updating. The unavailability of the store meant that players couldn’t buy the oxygen necessary for survival. They couldn’t spend time at the rest stations and couldn’t enjoy the new conveniences and features of the system update.

To put it bluntly: 

Don’t breathe.

…Or update me.

Keep the old system and throw yourself into the next game without stopping.

…Or update me. 

Don’t be angry. I gave you 500 points as a consolation prize.

Li Yinhang accurately summarized it. “Each game has the same virtue.”

For now, the game had full confidence in this new update but Li Yinhang wasn’t too keen on pleasing them.

“In any case, we had a day of rest in the last instance.” Li Yinhang suggested, “I’ll buy the level selection ticket this time. We will go into the instance directly to do the task.” 

Nan Zhou lightly responded. “…Hmm.”

He scooped out the milky white mochi from the syrup and took two small dishes, evenly distributing one scoop to Jiang Fang and Li Yinhang. Jiang Fang’s scoop was a bit bigger. He compared it and secretly used a spoon to bring the edge of Jiang Fang’s mashed mochi to the middle so that the two balls looked almost the same size. It seemed like he wasn’t determined to win against the game from mocking them at all.

Li Yinhang was a bit anxious. She pressed her hand on the edge of the table and sped up her speech, “Teacher Nan, quickly decide.”

Nan Zhou was taken aback. 

“…This is delicious.” Nan Zhou told her, “But I won’t give you more.”

Li Yinhang, “……” She reacted as she realized that Nan Zhou was protecting his food. She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. “What I’m saying is that we should hurry and enter an instance!”

Nan Zhou wondered, “And then?”

Li Yinhang, “…Eh? Then… Just do the instance mission. Teacher Nan, you bought oxygen before we left Paper Gold and there are 12 hours of oxygen left. Brother Fang has 8 hours left. If you’re certain not to update then we should go as soon as possible.” 

Nan Zhou stared deeply at Li Yinhang. She even knew the remaining amount of oxygen better than them. He realized that it was the right choice when he chose Li Yinhang as a teammate. Still, Nan Zhou wasn’t in a hurry. He collected all the mochi in the sugar water, picked up the beautiful glass cup and drank the sugar water inside. “This isn’t the way.”

Li Yinhang wondered, “Then we should go into the instance and slowly think about the method. We shouldn’t waste oxygen here. There is time…”

She said this but Li Yinhang had no confidence in her heart. To put it clearly, she just couldn’t swallow the anger right now. If she had to make a comparison, it was finally getting what looked like a superb prize from the prize book. No one in their right mind would let a simple update button take advantage of them for nothing.

However, the system was so restrictive and disgusting. It didn’t let them enter the warehouse or rest at the transit stations. As a player, they could only update the patch, no matter how unwilling. 

Nan Zhou’s thinking was very different from hers. He asked, “Is it really good for us to drag out the time?”

Li Yinhang, “……” It made sense.

If they didn’t update, once they came back from the next task, the system might be able to force an update of all players’ warehouses without consent.

“It takes time to make a patch,” Nan Zhou said. “It took them over 40 hours to make this one, right?” 

Nan Zhou murmured to himself, “This is the limit of their R&D capability.”

Li Yinhang, “……”

If she didn’t hear incorrectly, Teacher Nan was using his 8 points of taunting to deny the system’s ability. Nan Zhou wasn’t aware of this and once again confirmed with Li Yinhang, “We can be in Squirrel Town for another eight hours, right?”

Li Yinhang frowned. She had an instinct that this bigshot wanted to do something big. She was full of anxiety and looked to Jiang Fang for help. Jiang Fang received the signal she released and nodded at her comfortingly. Then he immediately smiled and raised his teacup of black tea to Nan Zhou. “No matter what you choose, I will follow.” 

Li Yinhang, “……” She shouldn’t have bothered looking at Jiang Fang.

“In addition to this, I am concerned about another matter.” Jiang Fang gently put the teacup back on the saucer. There was the cloud sound of ceramic colliding. “Previously, the game planners of Forces of Temptation were hiding behind the scenes. Now due to Teacher Nan’s accident, they had to show up. So who exactly is it behind the scenes that is manipulating us and pulling us into the game? What is the purpose for letting us fight it out to achieve our wish? In addition—”

Jiang Fang paused. “If an instance is really just an instance and the instance is a piece of data, why do they care so much about a piece of replicable data? Isn’t it okay to make another one? Why urgently issue an emergency patch to update the warehouse and restrict players?”

He placed his cheek on his hand and showed a beautiful smile to Nan Zhou. “If I don’t understand this, I don’t want to hand over Mr Door so easily.” 

Rainbow: I will be having minor surgery at the start of August to fix a small airway problem I’m having, which was the cause of my sleeping problems a few months ago. It does mean I have a really busy workload before I take time off from work. Then there’s the recovery from the surgery and workload when my leave is finished. So starting from Monday next week, chapters will be released once a week until the end of August.