EM CH44

Chapter 44: Refinement

Cradling his sketchbook in one palm, Zhao Ran dipped a squirrel-hair brush into oil paint to record Yu An’s score across the canvas. His randomized traveler identity was a plein air painter, and his art box contained just about everything.

Still completely oblivious, Yu An bent over in the water, groping intently through the riverbed silt. Digging out the gleaming object from the mud, he wiped the grime off on his clothes, revealing its true form.

The gurgling rush of water drew faintly nearer to his ears. The devouring speed of those man-eating tadpoles gathered into a writhing black mound was astonishing: the Beggar’s flesh and bones had already been gnawed clean, and the still-unsatisfied swarm was doubling back along its path—all while Yu An remained a full step away from the bank.

Suddenly, his waist tightened as an arm hooked around him from behind. Yu An was yanked abruptly out of the water; after a dizzying spin through midair, the tips of his toes finally barely touched solid ground.

“Don’t treat this place like a video game. Getting hurt here inflicts trauma on your brain—do you want to spend the rest of your life in a vegetative state?” Releasing his waist, Zhao Ran looked down to lecture him.

“You’re the one who thought I’d get hurt, Ran-ge.” Standing with one arm hanging at his side, Yu An still gripped the swaddled infant in his other hand.

By his calculations, the window during which the tadpoles were distracted by the Beggar might not have been enough for him to salvage the item, which was why he had deliberately carried the infant into the water with him. Had the man-eating tadpoles turned back early, tossing the baby out would have easily bought him plenty of time to reach the shore.

Glancing inadvertently at the score ledger in Zhao Ran’s hand, he furrowed his brow and asked: “You docked two points from me? On what grounds?”

Zhao Ran tapped him on the head with the wooden handle of his paintbrush: “Using a human life to achieve your own ends. What did I drill into you just last night?”

The boy wasn’t devoid of understanding emotions—he even knew how to exploit human nature to commit murder, which was far more dangerous than simple indifference toward life.

“I didn’t expect an NPC to have feelings.” Tilting his head in puzzlement, Yu An added, “I only found out after testing it that the Beggar would lose his footing and fall in over the baby.”

“I followed your orders to the letter—killed the highwayman beggar and spared the kid.” Holding up the wailing infant, Yu An pressed on, “Neither overly good nor overly evil, right? Do I really have to worry about the life and death of virtual NPCs inside a game?”

Left completely speechless, Zhao Ran weighed the logic over and over before finally crossing out the two deducted points.

At that moment, Yu An leaned quietly beside Zhao Ran’s ear and whispered smugly: “I treat living people the exact same way.”

Infuriated by his utterly unrepentant attitude, Zhao Ran promptly docked the two points right back again, spun on his heel, and walked off without waiting for him.

Hurrying after him, Yu An reached out to hold his hand.

Preoccupied with other thoughts, Zhao Ran was caught off guard when his fingers were touched. Because that part of his body was uniquely sensitive, his instinctive reflex to anything brushing against it was to shake it off.

Realizing the person beside him was no stranger, Zhao Ran looked back at him. Yu An stood chewing his fingernail in the shadow of a low wall beside the canal; the traveler’s cloak shrouded his face, leaving only the pale silver Aberrant Core in his left eye gleaming with a cold light amidst pitch darkness.

“Fine, fine.” Finally relenting, he stepped out of the shadow, cradled the infant in both hands, and trailed beside Zhao Ran, muttering reluctantly at the baby under his breath: “Pretty impressive that a pile of pixels like you knows how to cry, little NPC.”

In the game, the infant had been nothing more than a tiny sprite; zoomed in up close, it was obvious the developers hadn’t bothered drawing the little thing properly, piecing it together entirely out of blocky mosaics—yet somehow it still managed to bawl at the top of its lungs.

Shaking his head, Zhao Ran was perpetually helpless against him and lost all trace of temper, his sternly set expression softening involuntarily.

“Ran-ge.” Holding the infant out in front of himself out of boredom, Yu An spoke lazily, “You remind me of my middle school homeroom teacher.”

“A very pretty girl. It was her first time being a homeroom teacher, and she took responsibility way too seriously. Whenever the boys in our class snuck off to smoke and refused to quit despite repeated lectures, she’d get so frustrated she’d slump over the podium and cry.”

“Later on, the guys stopped smoking as much because they were afraid of making her cry—or at least hid it well enough that she wouldn’t catch them.”

“You remember things from middle school?”

“Just happened to recall a bit of it just now.”

“What kind of emotion does that sense of responsibility even come from? I don’t understand it.” Yu An’s gaze remained tranquil. “So long as I care about you, I’ll listen to whatever you say. But you don’t seriously think a person’s true nature can actually change, do you?”

“Last night when you were doing me, you didn’t initiate a single kiss, and you never once called my name.” Tossing the baby slightly into the air and catching it repeatedly without tiring of the game, Yu An continued, “So since I’m not listening to you today, I’ll dock two points from you too. How’s that?”

Looking off to the side, Zhao Ran bit his lip with a sharp fang and rubbed the tip of his nose: “Ahem… next time I will… next time.”

To mask his flustered emotions, Zhao Ran doodled across the page where he had deducted points, blacking out the scribbled-over tally, sketching tufts of messy fur around it, and adding two white dots for eyes to turn it into a scruffy little coal ball.

“What did you fish out of the water earlier?” Zhao Ran changed the subject as he drew.

Pulling out the gleaming object, Yu An rested it in his palm: “A Refinement Badge. A rare item in the game that massively enhances a character’s skills—the more badges you hold, the stronger you get.”

“Pin it on quick so you can take a few more hits.” The wooden brush handle spun effortlessly between Zhao Ran’s fingers.

Pinning the faintly glowing badge onto his chest, Yu An tested out a defensive stance and threw a punch toward Zhao Ran. Out of habit, Zhao Ran raised his forearm to block the strike, yet this time, explosive force slammed into his arm, knocking Zhao Ran back two full steps. Looking down in surprise, he inspected his dull, aching forearm bone.

“Packs quite a punch.”

Upon linking into the scenario, everyone’s physical attributes had been equalized to a baseline zero state; equipped with the Refinement Badge, Yu An stood a full cut above unbuffed characters in every aspect.

The neighborhood flanking the canal was wretched and filthy. The exterior walls of brick residences gaped with cracks, moss creeping outward from within. Dumpsters had gone unemptied for ages, plastic bags of food soaking and bloating in acidic rainwater as if a foul stench might erupt at any second.

Sensing a faint, malicious gaze resting against his spine, instinct prompted Yu An to look up toward the top of a low brick wall.

Not far from the two of them, someone stood behind the wall staring expressionlessly at them, only the top half of his head peeking above the masonry.

The instant his eyes locked with Yu An’s, the man spun around and bolted, trying to duck through a dilapidated wooden door. Yu An reacted with blistering speed. Moving in the exact second the middle-aged man turned to flee, he leaped up to catch the rim of the low wall with both hands, hoisted himself up with his arms, scrambled up the brickwork with his feet, and vaulted nimbly over.

In sheer panic, the man clamped his teeth onto the door latch to pry it open and slipped inside the dark cottage in a flash. Hot on his heels, Yu An looked back to seize Zhao Ran’s hand, pulling him inside through the doorway together.

With his strength amplified by the Refinement Badge, Yu An’s grip had surged abruptly, squeezing Zhao Ran’s hand hard enough to make him suck in a sharp breath.

“…”

The wooden door slammed shut behind them, sealing off every ray of dim twilight outside this enclosed, pitch-dark chamber. Inside, the dilapidated wooden floorboards lay thick with dust, the wooden staircase creaking ominously with snapped treads and termite-hollowed banisters, while a damp odor aged over centuries filled their nostrils.

Separated by a single door, it felt as though they had stepped into an entirely different world. Unlike the fabricated stages designed for the game, raw age lent this interior an endless darkness; standing within it sent a bone-deep chill creeping upward from underfoot.

Zhao Ran’s expression turned abruptly grave, every trace of his earlier smug, effortless confidence vanishing completely.

Abandoning his original plan to spectate from afar and let Yu An explore on his own, he stepped naturally to the front, extending one hand to gather Yu An behind him whenever the boy edged close to stepping out of safe range.

Crouched inside the wooden art box, the pixel-block infant NPC poked out only a pair of eyes, curiously surveying the surrounding environment.

Looking all around, Yu An’s eyes had not yet fully adjusted to the dark, barely making out the silhouettes of furniture inside the room. A dust-coated typewriter sat atop a low cabinet, its round keys emitting crisp clacks whenever depressed.

“A typewriter—an antique from a hundred or two hundred years ago.”

Groping along a long table toward the window, Yu An could rely only on touch to gauge his surroundings. Piled atop a wooden chair beside the table was a bundle of coarse burlap covering something soft and crumbled beneath, rustling faintly at the slightest jostle.

At last, his fingers brushed a lantern on the tabletop. Finding a box of matches nearby, he felt around in the dark to pick out an undampened matchstick, struck a flame, and lit the mutton-tallow wick inside the lantern.

The lantern’s dim glow illuminated a limited radius. The moment Yu An saw clearly what lay stacked beneath the pile of burlap, he yanked his hand back swiftly.

The burlap bundle was aged clothing, and beneath it lay a desiccated, mummified corpse. Clamped between the decaying skeleton’s teeth was a quill pen, with a parchment ledger pinned beneath its jaw.

Over the passage of years, decomposing human tissue had fused together with the parchment cover and tabletop. Carefully peeling the ledger off the table, Yu An found the skeleton’s lower jaw still stuck fast to it; losing patience, he gave a sharp yank: “Give it here.”

The skeleton collapsed onto the floor into a scattered heap of bones tangled amidst the tattered burlap.

Yu An’s shoulder tightened as Zhao Ran pulled him back away from the remains: “Don’t go tearing things apart randomly in here.”

In a flicker of eyes, the tallow lantern’s flame wavered. Locking his gaze onto the scattered, decaying skeleton on the floor, Yu An murmured: “Did that thing just move?”

Zhao Ran shoved him aside at once: “Idiot—above!”

Diving toward his right, Yu An looked up the exact instant someone dropped from atop the storage shelves—it was the bizarre man who had first peered at them with half a head over the low wall.

Mouth gaping wide with bloody fangs, the man smashed straight down onto the exact spot Yu An had been standing moments earlier. Had he dodged a fraction slower, his skull would already have been driven straight into his ribcage by this middle-aged man.

Once inside the zone of total darkness, the man cast aside his earlier panic-stricken cowardice, turning extraordinarily ferocious and agile. Leaping fiercely toward Yu An, he opened his jaws wide to snap at his carotid artery.

Yu An’s reflexes were equally sharp. Rolling sideways across the floor and springing seamlessly to his feet, he drove a flying kick into the man’s head. Spinning through midair, a second consecutive roundhouse kick backed by full rotational momentum slammed heavily against the man’s cranium.

Amplified by the Refinement Badge, this two-kick combo carried far greater force than Yu An could normally unleash; the man’s skull caved inward in a deep dent on the spot.

Yet he didn’t suffer even a second of stun from the crushing blow, charging straight toward Yu An once more. Forced to leap sideways to evade, Yu An watched the hulking man ignore all pain and impact, his cast-iron skull smashing straight through a brick wall, flying masonry shards grazing Yu An’s cheek and drawing a thin line of blood.

“So hard…” Panting, Yu An scanned the room for any sharp weapon within reach. Suddenly, he yanked the Refinement Badge off his chest and hurled it forcefully into Zhao Ran’s hand: “See if it can refine your painting ability!”

Needing no further explanation, Zhao Ran grasped his intent the instant their eyes met.

“Catch.” Tearing a sheet from his sketchbook, Zhao Ran tossed it into the air. Dropping low at the exact same moment, Yu An slid cleanly beneath the iron-headed man’s legs as a pale glimmer lit up his left eye, intricate patterns surfacing across the silver-tier Drawing Into Reality core.

Plunging his right hand deep into the floating canvas, Yu An yanked outward with all his might, dragging out a cross-shaped stiletto inlaid with a red core—the Armor-Piercing Awl.