translator: Oyen editor: Ciel
Losing to an expert in the online game and also having his friend request rejected; other captains might not have been able to back down, but Xiao Han did not mind this. Instead, he calmly ordered, “Everyone pay close attention to this Ink Mark. If there’s news, report it to me.”
The newcomers suddenly realized——The captain was eyeing this Ink Mark!
Pei Yu was the most considerate among the newcomers. Smiling, he asked, “Captain, could this man be a great god who knows you?”
“He strikes me as familiar, I must have met him before.” Here, Xiao Han paused. “I can’t identify which swordsman he plays in the league; everyone should keep their eyes on him, maybe we can find out.”
“Ink Mark depended on the ‘Sword Rain Fragrance’ secret book skill to reach first place in the power rankings,” Pei Yu pointed out. “How about we get the secret books tomorrow, and then try fighting him again?”
“Good.” Turning to face him, Xiao Han asked, “When will the wild BOSS spawn tomorrow?”
“9:00am in the morning, in Jianshen Valley.”
“How difficult is this BOSS?”
“It’s harder than a dungeon BOSS, but easier than a world BOSS. With some teamwork, it can definitely be killed.”
Xiao Han nodded. “Tonight, everyone will work harder, reach level 30 before sleeping. Tomorrow, gather at 8:30am and prepare yourselves; we will go to Jianshen Valley to fight this wild BOSS.”
“Understood!” Immediately, the newcomers ran to finish their upgrading tasks.
***
As the other team withdrew from the dungeon, it was considered as automatically giving up the treasure. The reward from the Leisurely Villa two-way dungeon was successfully won by Qin Mo, and with the double rewards, all five players rose by one level again, reaching level 26.
Little Medicine Fairy was very happy, and praised, “Ink Mark is really powerful! Just now the man said that he wanted us to give up the treasure, and as a result, he was directly killed by Ink Mark!”
Hiding a Dagger Behind a Smile echoed, “That’s it, he’s no match for Ink Mark at all!”
On the other hand, Mirage and Elegant Leaves were much calmer, chatting with each other privately——
“Thousand Miles Ice is not a low-level player; I felt that for Ink Mark to win in the end, the secret book skill played a very important role,” said Elegant Leaves.
“Well, that person plays fast and fiercely; if it was me, he would start off with a set of assaults.” Mirage was a little ashamed. “Ink Mark is equal to him, both are experts, much more powerful than us……”
“Today we offended Thousand Miles Ice, will he purposely cause trouble for us later?” Elegant Leaves was quite worried. After all, the self-esteem of experts was stronger than that of ordinary people; if he lost in front of so many people, he might bear a grudge, and if he intentionally came to cause trouble, the rest of them were not his opponents at all.
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.
“Probably not?” Mirage guessed. “After losing, he resolutely took his team to withdraw; he seems to be a relatively straightforward person, not so petty as to come looking for us to get revenge.”
“P tbqf rb,” Sifujca Ofjnfr rlutfv. “Ccskjs, ifa’r ub equgjvf ab ifnfi 30 abcluta.”
Ktf akb fcvfv atflg qglnjaf mtja jcv mbcalcefv ab ajxf bc vloolmeia ajrxr klat atflg afjwwjafr. Ds jybea 12:00jw, atfs tjv remmfrroeiis glrfc ab ifnfi 30.
Zbra qijsfgr lc atf ujwf kfgf ralii ja ifnfi 20, ktlmt rtbkfv pera tbk ojgg jtfjv atfs kfgf ktfc mbwqjgfv ab atf batfgr.
Mirage sighed. “So this is level 30!”
Last time, it took him 20 hours to reach level 30, even though he was upgrading all night. Today, it only took 12 hours to reach level 30; with the addition of Ink Mark, their speed of upgrading had indeed become very fast.
Looking at the time, Qin Mo stated, “I’ll be going to sleep first. Good night, everyone.”
Mirage immediately replied,”Good night everyone! See you at 9 in the morning!”
***
After turning off the computer, Qin Mo rubbed his sore eyes and went to the bathroom. Playing VR games for a long time was also a great strain on the eyes; the fatigue brought by realistic scenes was doubled, so the combination of work and rest was very necessary.
Lying down in the large tub, Qin Mo closed his eyes to relax, and took a bath.
After taking a bath, Qin Mo went to his bedroom and lay down. He had planned to have a good sleep, but he kept tossing and turning around, unable to fall asleep.
His mind was filled with the scene of the assassin who had just fought him in the Leisurely Villa Treasure Mine secret dungeon.
The playstyle of Thousand Miles Ice gave him a strange sense of familiarity—— He could not help thinking of a person.
That man became a professional player when he was young, playing with great spirit and sharpness. Moreover, he was flexible when on the field; he might suddenly launch an attack to kill his opponents, or he might continue to be invisible to find opportunities to play a beautiful maneuver. His tactics were adjusted according to different opponents, always playing in a mysterious unpredictable manner, achieving a high winning percentage in single-player matches, which was why he won the Best Newcomer Award of the year.
Qin Mo had also won the Best Newcomer Award, one year earlier than him.
He made his debut later than Qin Mo, but he made rapid progress and soon caught up with Qin Mo. Although Qin Mo did not say it, this person’s level was highly recognized in his heart.
They had been so close when they were younger. Xiao Han had even publicly stated in an interview: “Qin Mo is my best friend.”
The two teens were similar in age and highly gifted. Furthermore, their masters were the captains of strong and powerful teams. They were trained as the successors, and as a result, both had the nickname of ‘Little Prince’. In addition, Xiao Han always openly said that “Qin Mo is my best friend”, causing fans to name them ‘Twin Stars’, representing ‘the two most promising young stars in the professional league’.
Reporters often paired them together for discussion, and fans were expecting them to be the successors of their respective teams after their masters retired. Would they become the two top gods of the new generation, and play countless matches on the field?
Unfortunately, Qin Mo left too early and the match that everyone waited for did not happen.
Thinking back to their moment of parting, Qin Mo’s heart was a little upset. In the end, he simply buried his face in the pillow, forcing himself to fall asleep as soon as possible.
It was not until 3:00am that Qin Mo finally fell asleep. However, the scene of that year once again appeared again in his dream.
There was a scene of him joining the Wind Colour team when he was fifteen years old, and was taken as an apprentice by captain Ling Xuefeng; scenes where he finally won the Best Newcomer Award at the award ceremony after many setbacks; scenes where he met Xiao Han for the first time, a teenager with blond hair and black eyes, and Qin Mo was amazed by his appearance. There were also scenes of him following his master in the World Competition, fiercely battling with the world’s elites……
At the end of the dream, was the scene of the press conference that year.
With a heavy heart, he had bowed to the reporters as a teenager to apologise, choking out a quiet “To my friends who have liked and supported me this far, I am sorry to have disappointed you.”
The reporters’ bone-chilling questions were like a sharp knife, unceremoniously piercing the heart. The cameraman also took many photographs, constantly photographing his downcast appearance, causing Qin Mo to feel like an gorilla trapped in a zoo to be stared at. The chill in his heart made his whole body shiver, as if he was trapped in an ice cellar; his legs were numb, while his mind was blank.
He couldn’t remember how he left the press conference, but he clearly remembered that XIao Han had suddenly stopped him.
Backstage, the blond teenager had quickly caught up to him and declared strongly, “I’ll wait for you to come back!” We’ll meet again one day, and then you can beat me with your own hands!”
This sentence struck Qin Mo’s heart strongly, like a blow from a heavy hammer, waking him up from his dream in an instant.
At dawn, Qin Mo dressed in black pajamas, and walked over to the window.
The drizzle outside the window made the city look particularly hazy, very much like the rainy night when he left the team. The rain blurred his vision; he looked up, but could not see the two beautiful characters of ‘Wind Colour’.
At the beginning, when he left the Wind Colour team, he hadn’t even reached 18 years old. No one could understand his sadness and helplessness at that time.
Over the past few years, those fragmented dreams had tormented him repeatedly. He knew he couldn’t let go, and so he gave himself a new chance to start over.
Qin Mo liked the game of Peerless Jianghu. It was also a rare opportunity for him to experience a new start.
Taking a deep breath, QIn Mo washed his face with cold water in the bathroom to sober himself up thoroughly.
He went to the kitchen to turn on the microwave in order to heat a cup of milk, only to find that the microwave did not respond. Qin Mo attempted to turn on the light, but nothing happened; it seemed that there was a power outage at home. He called the helpline to ask, sure enough, the response was: “The community needs to rectify its circuits, the power will be cut off from 8 A.M to 4 P.M everyday for eight hours, starting today, for three consecutive days.”
A notice was posted in the elevator before, but Qin Mo hadn’t paid any attention. Great, just great, there was no water and electricity at home. In the end, he had no choice but to take his wallet downstairs for breakfast.
***
It was drizzling early in the morning, and today was the weekend, which meant that there were few pedestrians on the street. Fortunately, several breakfast shops were already open. Opening up a large black umbrella, Qin Mo walked to the soybean milk shop across the street to order a bowl of soybean milk and a meat bun.
While eating, he suddenly remembered that Xiao Han came to visit him during a vacation back then. He had also ordered meat buns when he took Xiao Han out for breakfast.
Xiao Han had never eaten this kind of food before. Taking the meat bun, he asked doubtfully, “It’s clear that there is meat in the bun, why not call it bun with meat instead of meat bun?”
Qin Mo explained, “Meat bun, it means meat in steamed bun.”
“Oh.” Xiao Han nodded and pointed to the scallion cake beside him, “Is this called scallion steamed bun?”
“……” Qin Mo nearly spit the soy milk out.
Another time, when Qin Mo brought him out to drink coffee, he accidentally mentioned ‘sprinkling salt on the wound’. Xiao Han asked him what this meant, so Qin Mo patiently explained to him, “To sprinkle salt on the wound is a metaphor, describing that you’ve mentioned a sad topic, which makes people sadder. It’s like if someone else has a wound, which is very painful, and you sprinkle a handful of salt on the wound, making it hurt even more.”
“Oh.” Xiao Han seemed to understand, “But why salt? Can’t you say sugar? It also hurts to put sugar on a wound.”
“……” Qin Mo almost spit out his coffee again. It took a long time to think of a reasonable explanation. “Sugar has a sweet meaning in Chinese, can’t be associated with pain; this has to do with the context.”
“Oh, context.” Xiao Han thought about it for a few moments before saying, “It’s sweet to have coffee with you.”
“……” Someone at the next table looked over curiously, and Qin Mo really wished he could hit him dead.
Xiao Han liked to compare one thing against another when he studied Chinese, but he always had some strange misconceptions. As he grew up abroad, he was curious about everything in China after returning home, and his poor Chinese proficiency often made people laugh and cry simultaneously. Every time Qin Mo took him out, he felt very humiliated, because Xiao Han always asked many strange questions, and his knowledge of grammar was too bad to be evaluated.
In fact, while Qin Mo may have scorned Xiao Han’s poor Chinese, he was always willing to bring the mixed-raced child out, because spending time with him was always fun.
—— It was a little bit of warmth among the strict training and cruel competition of his youth.
At that time, none of them were adults, and their ideas were very simple; they only knew how to train carefully and play well under the guidance of their master. They were about the same age and often got together, usually playing the game with side accounts, and traveling together during the holiday. Although they were in different teams, their relationship with each other was better than with their teammates on the same team.
Xiao Han had publicly stated many times that Qin Mo was his best friend. Although Qin Mo did not say this, his heart had already regarded the other as the most precious friend.
Thinking of those interesting things with Xiao Han when he was young, Qin Mo’s cold expression had become a lot softer.
***
After Qin Mo finished eating the meat bun, he took a paper towel and carefully wiped his fingers, before walking onto the street with his umbrella.
At 07:30am in the morning, many shops were closed, and the streets looked a little lonely.
There was no electricity or water in the community. He had nothing to do if he went home. Looking up, he saw a big sign on the second floor at the end of the street. There was a row of cute Q-version small fish painted on the sign, with four big blue characters in the middle: ‘Little Fish Internet Cafe’.
Thinking about it for a few moments, Qin Mo began walking toward the Internet cafe.
I’ve noticed this before in the previous book but the author should polish up on english idioms. Rubbing salt into wounds is an english idiom as well as a chinese one. In fact, a lot of chinese idioms prob got identical ones in english. Rather than making Xiao Han sound like he doesn’t know chinese well, it makes him sound like a kid that’s not very bright.
Btw, thanks for translating this! I’ve been looking for a good translated version ever since I finished the first book in the series.
Hmm, i dunno, or maybe he did that to get Qin Mo attention?
You’re welcome, hope you like my translation then 😆
Lmao
Qin Mo: [Your sister!]Xiao Han was puzzled. [I don’t have a sister?]Qin Mo: […]
Thank you for the chapter!
Xiao Han likes to make Qin Mo angry hahaha It‘s obviously on purpose! 😂😂😂
I have a feeling that the little fish Internet cafe has something to do with Li Cangyu
Little Fish = Xiao Yu
is it xiao yu/yu xiangyang from TSG? Longyin Team’s little healer??? if i remember correctly, the current timeline of TKR is around 6 years after the finale of TSG, so if the internet cafe is really owned by xiao yu, he must be around 23-24 years old now and maybe retired from Wulin??
Whats the name of the novel?
the title is The Strongest God, the first book in this trilogy. Liu Chuan and Wu Zewen are the MC and ML in that novel