This being a terminal, nearly every check-in counter had travelers lining up to check in to their flights. It was near impossible to pick out those who were brought into this world like they’d been from the crowds scattered around the airport; not unless they were acting as conspicuous as they’d been when they first got here.
The group checking in at counter 9 looked completely normal, and nothing was amiss about the way they were dressed either. They looked, by all accounts, like all the rest of the travelers.
“Are you sure they’re not NPC?” It wasn’t that Xu Wang doubted Wu Sheng. Except reading people relied on EQ and not IQ, and EQ was not exactly Wu Sheng’s strong suit.
“Of course,” Wu Sheng replied without hesitation. “Look carefully, they’re noticeably different from everyone else.”
Furrowing his brows, Xu Wang opened his eyes wide. Kuang Jinxin and Qian Ai followed suit, leaning over and craning their necks in observation.
They studied them for a long time—long enough that the other party finished getting their boarding passes and were well on their way to security.
“I don’t see any differences…” Qian Ai blurted out at last.
Kuang Jinxin: “I can’t tell.”
Xu Wang glanced at Wu Sheng, hoping he would take in everyone else’s opinion.
At last, Wu Sheng, with an air of ‘why do I always have to explain everything’ explained, “Eyes, look at their eyes. Only the four of them have dark circles under their eyes.”
Xu Wang: “…”
Kuang Jinxin: “Brother Wu…”
Qian Ai: “It’s Brother Sheng!”
Wu Sheng: “It’s not a big deal, I just paid a little more attention.”
Xu Wang: “If you two keep putting him on the pedestal like that, he’ll turn into Chang’e himself and go off to the moon, for heaven’s sake!”
Despite what he said, he couldn’t help but acknowledge that Wu Sheng was right. He looked down at the glass table and naturally, all four of them had dark panda eyes. Even though they’d gotten twelve hours of shut-eye, there were still dark circles under their eyes. Waking up in the morning and sleeping at night is normal human behaviour; no matter how much sleep you get in the day, it doesn’t make up for lack of sleep at night.
This designation put a filter on their perspectives so that everyone with dark eye circles stood out and all the other cannon fodder faded into the background so that the only ones remaining were themselves and their “colleagues.”
In the next ten minutes, they discovered two other teams like the first one they’d noticed. They all carried themselves inconspicuously; it was difficult to notice them unless you looked closely.
“This makes us look so stupid,” Qian Ai remarked in hindsight. “Not a single one of them are like a bull in a china shop. They’re all creeping around like ghosts.”
“They must be experienced teams,” Xu Wang said. It was impossible for any team newly arrived from task 1/23 to act so paranoid. No matter how you looked at it, these teams were probably in the same boat as Tall, Handsome, Skinny, and Fresh and already been through this stage before. They probably fell back from some stage down the line and ended up here after completing the first stage.
Having already submitted their task, there was no reason for them to interact with any of these teams checking in; at most, they simply observed from a distance in case they ran into these guys at some point later on.
But—
Suddenly, Xu Wang wondered how many people had been studying them in this fashion the night before.
Or perhaps not just the night before.
Kuang Jinxin had mentioned earlier that he felt they were being observed. It was true; if they could observe others, that meant others who’d also already submitted the task were also looking at them.
All the peeping was creepy, but it still mattered whether there was malice hidden within those stares.
“We’re all victims here anyways,” Kuang Jinxin muttered, “but I don’t know why I don’t feel camaraderie when I see them, but rather fear.”
“It’s all because of those four assholes last night.” Qian Ai sounded pissed. “Now when I look at any other team, they look evil.”
Xu Wang was in agreement. “If all tasks from now on only allow one team to pass and any team who fails gets sent back to square one, then that means any two teams has the chance of meeting each other in battle. There’s no opportunity to make any friends like this.”
“But we could at least battle fairly.” The whole situation made Kuang Jinxin uncomfortable.
“If the first team wasn’t closed off and all the teams could see each other, that would be a possibility. Because then every team would have the same amount of information and it’s more beneficial to strategise.” Xu Wang patted Kuang Jinxin on the head and explained patiently, “But the situation right now is that the first stage is closed off intentionally so that players expect the game to be like so. If they enter the second stage with such expectations and there’s an experienced team in the second stage, the latter would definitely attack the newbies. Because at that point, they’re already not standing on equal ground; the experienced team has the advantage by default, they would never play fair.”
“And then the team that loses and gets sent back will then do the same thing to another new team.” Qian Ai heaved a sigh, “This is basically a toxic cycle of hatred.”
Xu Wang quietly watched people buzz to and fro through the fence. “Owl designed the stages like this on purpose.”
That statement made the hair rise along Qian Ai’s back. “Can we not discuss it as if it’s a person? It’s like you’re saying this creepy place has a consciousness and is alive.”
“It doesn’t need to be alive, all it needs is logic.” Wu Sheng rested his fingers lightly on the table. “If evil is the logic that runs this world, then all the designs of the stages, the surroundings, and the conditions for passing the stages would use the same logic. Consequently, everyone who gets sucked into this world would be pushed to act according to this logic.”
Qian Ai blinked, then turned to Xu Wang, who patted him consolingly. “He’s saying, this world is filled with maliciousness.”
Qian Ai shot an apologetic glance at Wu Sheng before saying to Xu Wang: “I prefer your explanation.”
The four of them sat in the coffee shop for nearly an hour, but they were getting fidgety. They could’ve taken advantage of this post-task submission period to catch up on sleep, but they’d slept too much during the day and their batteries were fully charged at the moment.
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.
In the end, they decided to wander around the airport for lack of anything else to do, upon which they discovered a good thing and a bad thing.
The good thing was, everything sold in the stores here were all real. It was different from the coffee they’d ordered back in the cafe. The convenience stores, bakeries, makeup stores, and various brand name stores were all concrete objects, and they even reflected real-world prices.
The bad thing was that everything here costed money, and every store indicated in clear signs that they accepted only cash. And anyway, even if they could pay with their phones, it was useless—there was no cell reception or wifi here.
After digging through their pockets, only Qian Ai came up with a wallet. He took out 100 yuan, spent 10 yuan on a keychain, then spent 40 yuan on a large bag of biscuits. The store clerk gave him 50 yuan in change in the form of shining new RMB bills that looked no different than their real world counterparts.
Making the purchase hadn’t been a result of personal fancy, but rather, Wu Sheng’s idea: If it was possible to pay real cash in Owl to buy real things, could these things be used or brought back to the real world?
The items sold were just regular things from real life: souvenirs, bags, clothes, snacks, cakes; even the brands were exactly the same as in real life. Even if they could be brought into the real world, there wasn’t much point in doing so. For example, if one bought an LV bag and then told someone they got it in Owl at retail price, no one would understand.
But there was something else that Wu Sheng wanted to test out.
“Figuring out how everything in this world works is the key to defeating it.”—Wu Sheng had plenty of reasoning for his actions so that the rest of them simply listened.
As soon as they walked out of the store, they opened the bag of biscuits and split them up. For the next couple minutes, the four of them simply stood at the entrance to the store, crunching on a bunch of biscuits, each of them completely invested in the eating as if they were children again, when snacks were everything.
They didn’t stop eating until there was only one biscuit left, at which point Qian Ai stuffed it back into his pocket to join the keychain he’d bought and the change he’d received to form one happy “Owl family.”
The matter of whether these items could be brought back to the real world was still up in the air, but at least in Owl, the biscuits truly provided them with a sensation of fullness and caloric energy.
“If all these things can be eaten,” Kuang Jinxin suddenly posited, “then maybe the planes can actually be taken? Maybe we can go directly to Shandong from here!”
“Are you stupid?” Qian Ai knocked him on the head. “Even if we could, we’d have to spend the same amount on the tickets. All our things are at the hotel, how do you propose we do that empty-handed?”
“That’s true.” Kuang Jinxin scratched his head bashfully, swearing to himself that he would think carefully before he spoke next time.
Suddenly, Wu Sheng piped up. “It’s not stupid.”
Kuang Jinxin and Qian Ai stared at him questioningly.
“It’s not stupid at all,” Wu Sheng repeated in clarification.
Six eyeballs met each other’s gazes, among which four eyeballs turned to Xu Wang.
Xu Wang shrugged. “Figuring out every aspect of this world is the key to defeating it,” he mimicked Wu Sheng, intentionally turning up his voice and infusing it with an irksome pretentiousness. “We might not fly, but we can still investigate.”
Comprehension dawned on Kuang Jinxin and Qian Ai.
Wu Sheng stood beside them silently, having not opened his mouth at all, but they still felt like he’d dubbed himself over Xu Wang. Xu Wang knew him so well that the way he mimicked him was astoundingly accurate, as if they’d swapped bodies.
As they were about to go to the check-in counters to conduct their investigations, someone suddenly came barreling out of a nearby restaurant. The person weaved around the throng of customers entering the restaurant and flew eastward in a blur.
When he was just ten metres out, a waitress suddenly charged out of the same restaurant shouting, “Thief!”
The four of them froze, exchanging glances as they grappled with whether to insert themselves into the situation or remain as bystanders.
[Owl: Darling, it’s no good to take something you haven’t earned.]
The voice they recognised—it was the same voice that sent notifications down their ear canals, but now a steely, sharp tone replaced its usual playfulness. It spoke in a bantering, ominous manner, the sound piercing their ears painfully and sending chills down their backs.
Not too far in the distance, the running man let out a scream and fell to the floor, his entire body spasming in what looked to be an extremely painful fashion. His howls sent tremors through the ground.
They watched the scene, their scalps prickling, but the people around them seemed to not notice a thing, milling around as usual, bustling here and there, as if there wasn’t a thief jerking around on the ground in absolute pain.
The waitress reached the man finally. As the only person in the area who seemed to even see him, she bent down at the waist and reached a hand out. What happened next astonished them.
Just as the waitress was about to touch the thief’s shoulder, he suddenly vanished, leaving only a neat pile of 100 yuan bills behind on the ground.
The waitress’s hand didn’t stop, she went to pick up the cash in one fluid motion as if that was what she meant to do all along.
They watched as she headed back into the restaurant with the cash. Maybe as she bent to pick up the money, she was like the others and completely ignored the thief for the money because… she knew he would vanish.
“The thief… was a real person, right?” Kuang Jinxin mumbled, confusion swirling around his mind.
“Should be,” Wu Sheng said, “otherwise Owl wouldn’t have spoken.”
“Owl has never spoken publicly like that.” Qian Ai brought up the real question at hand. Ever since they entered this world, all of Owl’s notifications had been distributed to each of them individually.
“Killing two birds with one stone, maybe,” said Xu Wang. “In order to put a stop to anyone else who was thinking of doing the same, it decided to give everyone a warning.”
“Will he die?” Kuang Jinxin asked suddenly.
“No.” Xu Wang had listened to Owl carefully. “It said that we couldn’t take anything; if stealing stuff resulted in death, it could’ve just directly said so, that would’ve been more effective.”
Kuang Jinxin let out a relieved sigh, although his heart was still in knots.
Even if that person didn’t die just now, they were definitely in a lot of pain.
Although this small intermission was quite traumatic, they still had nothing to do, and so they proceeded with their original intentions. After a while, they approached one of the check-in counters.
They wanted to ask about flights to Shandong, except every answer they got was the same, as if rehearsed: Sorry, we don’t seel flight tickets here.
It didn’t matter whether there were any available flights because not a single counter was selling tickets in the entire terminal. They tried going to one of the self-serve kiosks to swipe their wrists or ID cards—Qian Ai had brought his, or more accurately, everything he owned was in his wallet—but every time they tried to approach a kiosk, they were warded off by airline personnel who said they couldn’t go near, although they provided no reasoning for it.
The same thing happened at the security checkpoint; it was impossible to sneak in.
Every single mode of transportation seemed to have shut down in the place seemingly overnight so that the entire airport was just one giant rest area. They could wander around all they wanted, but getting a flight was a no-go.
By 4 AM, they completely gave up and made their way back to the coffee shop.
With nothing else to do, Xu Wang watched his teammates for a while before hesitantly bringing up something that had been on his mind. “As team captain, I feel like we need to arrange a shared treasury…”
By that, he meant that everyone should put in a designated amount of money so that they could use it to pay their food and travel expenses, in order to prevent constantly splitting the bill or owing each other for their adventuring expenses. His and Kuang Jinxin’s flight ticket to Xiabei this time had been paid for by Wu Sheng. He’d wanted to pay Wu Sheng back, but was afraid that the latter would take it as unwanted formality, so all he could do was think about paying him back next time. The whole ordeal was just tiresome.
It wasn’t about being stingy; in truth, if their positions were switched, Xu Wang wouldn’t have cared either about making Wu Sheng pay him back, but while this could work once or twice, they couldn’t keep doing this for their subsequent travels.
They say that money dissolves relationships, but in the years Xu Wang had spent crawling up the societal ladder, he’d come to the conclusion that discussing money beforehand doesn’t dissolve relationships at all, and is in fact necessary to prolong friendships. Paying people back, waiting to be paid back… that was what killed relationships.
Despite that though, money was a sensitive topic and Xu Wang was already prepared to face the opposition of his teammates.
And there was opposition.
Qian Ai raised his hand first.
“Go ahead,” Xu Wang said democratically.
“Why are you team captain?”
“…”
Their point of focus was completely different from what he’d expected, but he maintained his composure, tilting his head innocently. “I thought we already reached an agreement regarding this.”
Qian Ai wasn’t upset; he just looked completely confused, and Xu Wang’s answer didn’t help at all. He looked at Kuang Jinxin cluelessly. The latter also shook his head in puzzlement. Qian Ai turned back to Xu Wang. “So er, there are four people, and two of have no idea what you’re talking about. You sure we came to an agreement?”
“Okay, okay.” Xu Wang, taking advantage of the situation, waved a hand and said, “Then let’s pick right now, because this is a team battle so we need a captain. Otherwise we’ll just be stumbling around and it might affect our pass rate.” He finished speaking and raised a hand. “I’m running for captain.”
He transitioned so smoothly into recommending himself that Qian Ai couldn’t help but be impressed. In contrast, he was completely annihilated, from being captain to the ability to speak, so he didn’t even bother running. But when it came to captain, he had another choice in mind…
Wu Sheng caught Qian Ai’s eye and said, “I pick Xu Wang.”
Xu Wang, who’d been expecting this ordeal to become a thrilling competition, looked at Wu Sheng, surprised at this sudden act of benevolence from him.
Qian Ai was also shocked and slightly perturbed. He thought he heard wrong. “Class rep, you didn’t used to be like this. Aren’t you obsessed with fighting for every position that might bring yourself glory?”
“That was when I was young and immature.” Wu Sheng sighed and waved a hand, dismissing the idea. He tilted his head 45 degrees upwards, looking as if he’d received the enlightenment of time. “Now I’m older and more agreeable, more rational…”
“Hang on,” Qian Ai coughed. “Can you get to the point?”
Wu Sheng retracted his gaze with great reluctance. With a shrug, he said, “I acknowledge that my intelligence is superior to Xu Wang’s, but since ancient times, the one with the brainpower has always been behind the scenes, acting as generals rather than leaders.”
“In Water Margin, Wu Yong is the smartest but the leader is Song Jiang. In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhu Geliang is the smartest, Zhou Yu isn’t bad either. But one served Liu Bei, the other served Sun Ce.”
“And so,” Wu Sheng raised his head and swept his eyes across his teammates, finally resting on Xu Wang, “captains and heroes aren’t determined by intelligence, but rather, they need to be people who understand people; how to use them, and how to manipulate them. When it comes to that, I’m far inferior.”
Xu Wang had half a mind to clap a hand over Wu Sheng’s mouth and the rarely-seen modesty that graced his face. “Couldn’t you have just kept it at, ‘I support you as team captain’?”
The method was questionable, but at least the outcome was alright.
Xu Wang was successfully promoted as team captain and immediately followed up on his previous idea. “This is what I think, it’s inevitable that we’ve got a long road ahead of us. We’ll have to keep battling together in the future, meaning we’ll be eating, living, and traveling together. We can just set up shared funds and use it to pay for all our joint expenses. Firstly, it’s more convenient, and secondly, keeping the accounts clear is beneficial to us continuing on as a team.”
Qian Ai raised his hand first again, except this time he said, “Agreed.”
Money isn’t easy to discuss, but Xu Wang went about it in a straightforward manner and put everything out in the open.
“Agreed!” Kuang Jinxin raised his hand next.
Wu Sheng nodded. “No objections.”
“Then let’s all put 5,000 yuan in first, plane tickets cost way too much.” Xu Wang thought for a second, then added, “Xiao Kuang hasn’t graduated yet so just put in as much as you can. If you don’t have enough then never mind, I’ll pay for you.” Then, because he was afraid Kuang Jinxin would feel burdened, he clarified, “It’s a loan, you have to pay me back.”
“It’s fine,” Kuang Jinxin said hurriedly. “I have 5,000!”
Xu Wang looked at him suspiciously. “Please don’t bankrupt your family.”
“Brother Xu—“ Kuang Jinxin sounded disgruntled at being treated like a kid, but his next statement really didn’t help him any: “If I don’t have enough, I can ask my family for more!”
“If your family asks what you’re using the money for, what will you say?” Xu Wang asked in half amusement and half as a reprimand.
“Travel,” Kuang Jinxin said matter-of-factly. “Just a few days ago they were asking me why I ended my internship early, and I said I felt like seeing the world so I went traveling.”
“And they just agreed?”
“Yup, my grandma was super happy for me too and reminded me to experience as much as I can while I’m still young. She told me to let her know if I needed more money.”
“…..” Xu Wang didn’t even know what to say to that and for a second couldn’t decide whether Kuang Jinxin’s elders were indulging him or whether they thought him too inexperienced and wanted him to get more hands-on experience. “Okay then.” He wasn’t going to keep persisting if the kid had money. They were all teammates after all, and age didn’t matter. Everyone deserved respect; special treatment wasn’t good for team spirit anyhow. But as team captain, he tapped the kid on the shoulder and said, “Just don’t push yourself. If you have any troubles, let us know. We’re comrades now and our lives already suck, we’re not afraid of a little more trouble.”
Kuang Jinxin laughed out loud and his eyes got a little teary; he nodded vehemently, trying to dispel the flush in his face, and beamed. “En!”
__
At 5 AM, they bounced back into the real world.
The remaining biscuit and the keychain in Qian Ai’s pocket disappeared, but the money was still there.
When they got back they weren’t hungry however, because the sense of fullness they’d gotten from the biscuits they’d eaten was still there, just like the injury that Xu Wang brought back from the snowfield.
Thus, General Wu added two more items to his “Owl Logic” list:
1. Fake items = fake expenses, real items = real expenses. Usable in Owl, vanishes in real life. Caloric energy transfers, cash change transfers.
2. Paying for items √; not paying for items ×
Rather than catch up on sleep again, they went directly to the airport. The new coordinates were specifically located in Dongying, Shandong. It was necessary to get a transfer at Xianyang Airport because there were no direct flights from Yulin to Dongying.
Not that that mattered, because the scheduled flight was at 1:05 PM, giving them an hour and a half to transfer flights in Xianyang. Their scheduled arrival in Dongying was 5:30 PM. With a travel time of only four and a half hours, it wasn’t too much of a hassle. Once they got to Dongying, they’d have six hours to rest; it was, generally speaking, a relaxing itinerary.
They boarded their flight filled with optimism.
And then, after the plane landed safely in Xianyang, the sky darkened and rain came pouring down, accompanied by swirling winds and thunder.
They sat at the gate, watching rainwater streaming down the glass windows in waterfalls as they unconsciously remembered the trauma they’d suffered last time.
“Good thing we got off the plane,” Qian Ai said, voicing everyone’s thoughts. “If we were on the flight right now, I think I’d be hyperventilating.”
They had absolutely no desire to relive the events of the red-eye flight.
Besides triggering their traumatic memories, the rainstorm also severely disrupted the airport. All airlines were grounded. When would they fly again? That depended on the rain.
There was nothing to do but wait.
And so they waited, from 2 PM to 3 PM, from 3 PM to 5 PM, from 5 PM to late night. The thunderstorm showed no signs of letting up. Outside the windows, it was pitch black and still, as if the rain was actually black ink.
“Christ,” Qian Ai counted the time ticking away on his watch, “we’re not going to get sucked in over here, are we?”
“If the vortex appears later, will it scared the living daylights out of them?” Kuang Jinxin pointed to the stranded passengers sitting around them.
“Maybe at first, but then they’ll forget,” said Xu Wang.
“The important thing is the distance,” Wu Sheng said. “This place is 1,000 km away from Dongying. Unless we can get on a plane inside, or use some other mode of transportation, there’s no way we can even reach the coordinates before 5 AM, let alone passing the stage and submitting the task.”
Qian Ai knew he was being cheap, but he couldn’t help himself, he had to point out another pragmatic problem: “Guys, think. If we go in, and then this flight leaves, and we can’t get anywhere inside, that means when we come back out, we’ll have to repurchase all the tickets…”
“No we won’t,” Wu Sheng said dismissively. “Our tickets can be canceled or changed before or after the departure time.”
Qian Ai lifted his head to the ceiling in despair. Xu Wang sympathised with him. He shoved a cup of recently-poured hot water into Wu Sheng’s hands and explained, “That’s other people’s tickets, not ours.”
Wu Sheng accepted the water with a brow raised in inquiry.
Ever since Xu Wang established the treasury, he’d taken on the role of treasurer. He was the one who’d ordered the tickets, so he knew what he was talking about— “We didn’t buy tickets that could be exchanged or returned, they’re called ‘happy flying’ tickets.”
Wu Sheng downed the cup of hot water in one breath. “Nice name,” he remarked candidly.
In the end, the heavens didn’t receive Qian Ai’s prayers. At midnight, the thunderstorm was still going. Amidst the cacophony of the storm came the call of the Owl.
Purple light began to gather at the ceiling of the boarding area; besides them, no one else noticed. But two minutes later, everyone seated around them stared in horror when they flew up into the air as if carried on the winds of a fish tornado and got sucked into the vortex.
After a dizzying spell of gravity loss, they landed. Not on ground, but on the deck of a vintage-looking ship. Besides them, there was no one else on the ship.
And beyond the ship was nothing but a large, vast ocean, blue and shimmering beneath a blazing sun.
Thank you for the chapter!
Sounds like owl is just as fair about money as xu wang. No free food. But if you got change that’s yours. You paid for non refundable transportation that you missed because of it, it’ll provide you with the transportation. Only question now is if they will come back out where the ship ends up or if it will be like the flight they took and task 2 and come out where they went in.
»Sorry, we don’t seel flight tickets here.« .. don’t sell..
Those times when the weather is totally against you :’D
Thx for the ch ٩(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )و
Oh! How interesting..
Thanks for the chapter! <3