CH 41

Li Weilan recalled her previous troubles, realizing that a few days had already passed. He asked, “Your mood seems good today?”

His tone was smiling and gentle, like a spring breeze brushing across her face. Shen Cheng felt her face flush and nodded before realizing that he couldn’t see her. She whispered, “Yes, thanks to you, I resolved the conflict smoothly.”

Li Weilan hesitated for a moment. He was not worried about anything else but triggering “forbidden words.”

If he remembered correctly, the easiest way to trigger forbidden words was when she described the situation in her world or described him in her eyes.

As if he didn’t deserve to know.

But the desire to understand was so strong that it was almost ingrained in his bone marrow. After thinking for a moment, Li Weilan changed his wording. He realized that as long as he talked about his own side of things, she could almost listen to everything. The blockade seemed to be only targeted at him, but for her…the barriers seemed not so high.

“Let’s exchange a secret,” Li Weilan thought for a moment and smiled at her.

At the same time, a new task appeared in front of Shen Cheng:

【Li Weilan wants to exchange a secret with you: Do you agree? Y/N】

Exchange secrets?

I always feel like cub and I are like two primary school children, huddled in a corner whispering.

Shen Cheng chuckled to herself at the thought, but she really couldn’t think of any secrets she could exchange with him. His life was so full of ups and downs, but her own life was unremarkable. What secret could she exchange with him?

Her hesitation resulted in cub hanging his head in disappointment after waiting for a long time without a response. A hint of sadness flashed across his face.

“Did I make things difficult for you?” he asked in a low voice, then sighed understandingly. “I’m sorry, let’s just forget I said anything.”

“No, no!” Shen Cheng quickly pressed “yes” and then explained in a hurry, “It’s just that I feel like I don’t have any secrets to exchange.”

No secrets?

A trace of suspicion flickered in Li Weilan’s heart. He didn’t doubt her sincerity when she spoke, but how could anyone not have secrets in this world? Even the most upright person may have dark secrets that they cannot reveal.

Moreover, their current relationship had so many “blocked words” and “blank periods”. How could she feel that she had no secrets from him?

Could it be… she was unaware of the existence of blocked words?

Li Weilan keenly realized something and slightly hooked his lips. In Shen Cheng’s eyes, this expression was the cub being happy because she accepted the mission.

She smiled foolishly and propped her chin up with interest. “Then you tell me your secret!” Propping her chin up, she listened intently.

Li Weilan’s voice was soft and slow. “Dawn light…” He chose to reveal his most difficult secret, the one he originally thought he wanted to kill to keep anyone from knowing. “Dawn light comes from me.”

“!!” Shen Cheng’s expression, which had been full of interest, froze. Dawn light had appeared several times in the game, whether it was Xi Bei’s illness or the craziness of the ability users at the Tenglong base, all were for Dawn light’s sake.

She originally thought that the technology tree in her base would eventually unlock the ability to synthesize Dawn light or something like that, but after hearing Li Weilan’s words, it turned out that for him, Dawn light was simply a painful and dark past.

Translated on ho lo lo novels dot com.

However, Li Weilan’s voice remained calm, even though his words made Shen Cheng’s heart ache for him: “I stayed in the laboratory for six months. And after thousands of experiments, they found that the more pain I experienced, the purer the Dawn light condensed and the better the effect, so they dedicated themselves to making me suffer.” He paused and looked into the void. “Is your concern for me also due to the dawn light?”

His eyes seemed to be filled with a twinkle of despair and hope.

It was as if with just one word from her, he would fall into the abyss, but with just one word from her, he could climb out of the dark hell again.

Shen Cheng couldn’t imagine what kind of harm had been inflicted on him under his cartoonish appearance.

He didn’t show it, or he seemed to show that those injuries didn’t exist… but that didn’t mean they really didn’t exist. She didn’t want to ask too many questions about Dawn light, and she was even certain that Dawn light was probably a very important game sideline. Li Weilan, who possessed the “Dawn light,” could even die if he didn’t have enough power. He was her responsibility.

Translated on ho lo lo novels dot com.

So his question wasn’t really a question: Of course, mother isn’t just concerned about Dawn light, but about you!

A faint pain flickered in Shen Cheng’s heart tip. She didn’t directly answer the question, but said seriously to Li Weilan, “I just hope that the Dawn light potion will disappear from this world forever.”

[Main quest updated: Destroy all Dawn light and Dawn light Labs. Remaining labs: 0/3]

Just as Shen Cheng spoke, a new task popped up in the upper right corner, strangely, this task didn’t require her consent.

Li Weilan smiled, “Then please believe that no matter when or where, I will always follow your will.”

“…” Cub, don’t tease.

When Shen Cheng heard that sentence, she felt her heart pounding hard. She didn’t know why, but even though they were separated by a screen, she seemed to be able to hear the full range of emotions contained in that sentence.

“This game is so intelligent? What exactly…”

Shen Cheng scratched her head in confusion. She had been planning to cut away and take a look, but then she heard cub ask her, “My question for your secret is simple,” he said softly, with a light laugh. “How should I address you?”

A box appeared in front of Shen Cheng, asking her to input:

【How do you want the main character to address you? Due to the impact of friendliness, some play options have already been unlocked.

A. Name: _____ (Please enter)

B. Master

C. Little Princess

D. All of the above, and more, depending on the situation】

“…” What a shameless set of options!

Shen Cheng imagined how it would feel to hear the low, elegant voice of cub calling her “Master” or “Little Princess,” and she felt her face flush with heat. She patted her cheek with the back of her hand, thinking to herself, “Is this really a secret?”

For him, it was a matter of life and death, but for her, it was just a name.

Shen Cheng lowered her head and typed “Cheng” into the input for option A. The reason she didn’t use her full name was because she felt that if she played outside, it wouldn’t be good if someone heard or saw her full name.

However, for some reason, she accidentally hit something after inputting option A, and the cursor blinked and revealed that she had actually chosen option D?

What?

Shen Cheng briefly held her forehead, but she saw that the screen showed a sly expression from cub, and his gaze turned into a deep smile: “So it’s like this, Cheng.”

Shouldn’t she be glad that cub didn’t just come up with something weird like “Master” or “Little Princess”?

Shen Cheng’s face was burning, feeling like she had no face to face cub properly anymore. She wasn’t even aware of how shy her expression was and just made a small noise of agreement.

Li Weilan smiled and said, “Let’s plant an orange tree in our space. That way, when I miss you, I can look at it and feel like you’re with me.”

Shen Cheng blushed again from being flirted with and hastily pretended that she needed to go to the space and base page, and left.

As soon as she left, Li Weilan’s expression turned complex: Her thoughts seemed simple, but from her words, he had already learned a lot of information.

She knew about oranges, fruits, and even had masters, servants, and princesses in her world.

Her name sounded cute, but who gave it to her? Was the person who gave her a nickname no longer there in her world?

Could it be… that everything he had thought before was wrong, and she was just like him, a human being, just a different one?

What did she think he looked like in her eyes?

He just wanted to think, but he felt increasingly suffocated in his chest. If it really was a giant monster, at least it meant they lived in the same world. But if it was something else…just thinking about those possibilities made him feel like there was a hole in his chest. Compared to the differences in types of questions, the other differences were like an insurmountable gap.

Shen Cheng ran into the space and only calmed down there. “Cub said he wants to plant an orange tree,” she looked at the price and found that the orange tree was twice the price of the apple tree. The apple tree cost 100G, while the orange tree cost 200G. Fruit trees produce fruit every two days, with three fruits each time, but they cannot be replanted.

He said he wanted to plant an orange tree to remember her, and Shen Cheng obediently bought one. Seeing that she still had enough money, she bought an apple tree as well.

Thinking about the daily yields, Shen Cheng looked at the mature fruit on the branches and decided to pick one from the orange tree, choosing to materialize it.

Once she had taken care of the crops in the space, she would have time to carefully examine the game after the update was complete.

She only had one side quest left, “Safely Escort the Children to the Noah Base,” and the main quest to “Completely Destroy all Dawn light Laboratories.” But after the whole map was opened, Shen Cheng realized that there were a lot of bases on the map, and the three bases where the Dawn Laboratory was located…she clicked on them and found that compared to those three, Tenglong was really nothing.

For some reason, perhaps because the information had already leaked out, the three large bases: Xuanwu, Thunder, and Wind, were all marked as hostile on the map. It seemed…completing this main quest would not be easy.

The “technology tree” section of the Noah Base had already been unlocked. Shen Cheng opened it and was shocked by the wide variety of technologies inside. But when she tried to unlock a technology, the game gave her a new error message:

【Please build a “Science Lab” in the base and assign someone to be in charge first】

We still need a science lab?

Shen Cheng frowned slightly: obviously, what happened with Dawn light had left a very bad impression on her cub, and she herself didn’t have much of a good impression of the mad scientists in the science lab and their crazy experiments. Unlocking the technology tree…

Maybe she should ask Zaizai first if he can accept it?

Shen Cheng hesitated for a moment, but when she switched back to the “Base” tab, she found a friendly green NPC lying in the simple tent above the base: Fu Yanzhou.

The reason why she could see him at a glance was because the man’s health bar was very, very thin, and he was still coughing lightly at the moment, but there were several words written above his head: 【Science Lab Candidate Leader】

At a glance, he was an NPC with a story!