Chapter 6: Sparring
Tang Cuo had morning rage, a very severe morning rage. To what extent? To the point that his HP, which had just recovered to 8%, dropped back down to 7%.
He was repeatedly jumping back and forth on the edge of death.
But the more it was like this, the more patient he could remain. Even his voice was softer than usual, balanced delicately between a nervous breakdown and violently beating someone up.
“Speak. What exactly do you want?” he asked.
I don’t want anything!
Wen Xiaoming roared in his heart, but he didn’t dare say it. He couldn’t help but cast a pleading look at Jin Cheng. Jin Cheng shook his head at him, gloating. Seeing Wen Xiaoming’s entire face fall, Jin Cheng leisurely enjoyed the sight for a moment before speaking.
He crossed his arms and leaned back against the chair, his posture relaxed: “Let’s talk about the matter between us first.”
Tang Cuo frowned.
Jin Cheng asked: “ID K27216, is that you?”
Hearing this, Wen Xiaoming found it inexplicably familiar. After racking his brains for a good while, realization suddenly dawned on him—wasn’t this the newcomer who appeared on the blacklist?!
He looked at Tang Cuo in slight surprise, but Tang Cuo was staring intently at Jin Cheng.
Tang Cuo: “Is there a problem?”
Jin Cheng: “Of course there is. Right at this moment, I should have been sleeping in a luxurious villa in Zone A. But because you irritated Mr. Crow, I—who was supposed to successfully complete my mission—bore the brunt of his anger, and so I ended up here.”
Tang Cuo: “…”
Jin Cheng: “This room originally belonged to me. If you look under the bed, you can even find a bottle of red wine I hid here last time.”
Wen Xiaoming’s mouth formed an ‘O’ shape, while Tang Cuo finally understood why the clown from earlier kept staring at him. So there was this reason behind it.
But so what?
Tang Cuo said without a shred of guilt: “Oh.”
Jin Cheng wanted to raise an eyebrow, but with the face mask on, he could only remain stiff, so he had to use his voice to express his dissatisfaction: “What does ‘oh’ mean? Are you not planning to take responsibility?”
Tang Cuo: “Do you have evidence?”
Jin Cheng: “The red wine.”
Tang Cuo: “Even if it really is there, who can prove that bottle of red wine is yours?”
Jin Cheng found this amusing. Crossing his legs and shifting into a more comfortable position, with his elbow resting on the armrest and his right hand propping up his chin, he looked at Tang Cuo with great interest and said: “So you plan to act shamelessly and deny it?”
“No.” Tang Cuo glanced at the shattered window and smiled faintly: “If you prefer this room, I can let you have it.”
Jin Cheng followed his train of thought: “We swap rooms, and then when someone comes looking for trouble with you, they’ll find me instead, right?”
Tang Cuo asked in return: “Didn’t you say you wanted to help me?”
Wen Xiaoming was completely stunned. What was this? The ultimate showdown between the top of the blacklist and the dead last? What exactly was going on with the newcomers in Zone F? To think that the weakest garbage dump of this era could produce such a talent?
Right at this moment, Jin Cheng changed the subject: “I’ve helped you this much, are you really not going to make a friend?”
Tang Cuo: “I’ll pass.”
“Why?!” Wen Xiaoming was even more agitated than Jin Cheng. A single sentence drew the side-glances of both men. His momentum instantly weakened, but he still stubbornly finished his sentence: “I think you two are quite suited for each other. Make friends, and let’s not argue anymore, okay?”
Jin Cheng tapped his knuckles against the armrest: “Are we arguing?”
Are you not arguing???
Tang Cuo didn’t really care, but he didn’t want to make friends. He only wanted to sleep right now. But God insisted on going against him. Just as the matter here was about to conclude, a commotion suddenly broke out outside the window again.
Wen Xiaoming couldn’t sit still. He immediately ran over to look and said excitedly: “Boss, a fight broke out downstairs!”
“What are they fighting about?” Jin Cheng remained with his legs crossed, showing no intention of moving.
“Let me see.” Wen Xiaoming watched for a while longer and finally got a rough idea of the situation downstairs, saying: “It seems there’s infighting in Zone F.”
“Infighting?” Jin Cheng couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, and the face mask on his face immediately protested. He raised his hand to smooth it out—fuck, it’s almost dry.
Wen Xiaoming continued his real-time broadcast: “They’re fighting with great enthusiasm. There are at least five or six groups fighting. That guy looking like a Triad member, I think I’ve heard of him. He’s been gaining strong momentum in Zone F recently. Looks like he’s from the combat faction. Yo, one punch sends a whole group down, looks quite like Qigong. However, the gunner opposite him looks very unfamiliar. Why does this gun have no accuracy at all, is he playing around… Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on with that bunch of newbies? Can using knives beat those guys?”
He turned to look at Jin Cheng: “Boss, should we intervene?”
Jin Cheng finally walked to the window. Lowering his eyes to look at the scene below, his expression was colder than the night in Yong Ye City, yet tinged with aloof indifference. Wen Xiaoming knew his boss’s temperament well and continued: “This batch of newcomers is very strange. One by one they look as weak as soft-shelled shrimp, yet they actually know how to resist. I reckon tonight’s incident is eighty percent likely to be an issue caused when those bastards were exploiting the newcomers.”
Wen Xiaoming’s words hit the nail right on the head.
After the blond guy’s five-man group was beaten away by Tang Cuo, they kept quiet to protect themselves. But Zone F was a chaotic place where one party exited and another entered the stage. Who knew how many people were watching secretly? They weren’t afraid of no one robbing; they were afraid there wouldn’t be enough to rob.
It was common for everyone to coincidentally gather together and start a massive brawl. But tonight’s newcomers were not right. Usually, newcomers would hide to the side in fear, waiting to be exploited. Whoever won would claim them. But today, as they fought, they realized something was amiss.
“Fuck, who the hell chopped me!?”
“Where did the newcomers get weapons?!”
“What’s wrong with your head, holding a kitchen knife!”
Watching the noisy clamor below, Jin Cheng glanced at Tang Cuo again and curled the corners of his lips. Those newcomers were mostly imitating him. Although only two or three dared to resist, and they were quickly beaten to the ground looking miserable, at least they had blood and courage.
Jin Cheng impatiently tugged at his nearly dried-out mask and asked Wen Xiaoming: “Did you bring the stuff? Make them all shut up for me; they’re so noisy I can’t sleep.”
“Sure thing.” Wen Xiaoming immediately went to open his bundle. He had brought a large bundle of things from Zone A. Besides Jin Cheng’s change of clothes and daily necessities, there were also many strange little gadgets.
He picked up two things that looked like Poké Balls, shouted twice, and threw them downstairs.
“Watch the ball!”
The crowd was startled by his shout, and many people looked up.
“Bang—Boom—” The two balls hit the ground and instantly exploded into smoke that rapidly filled the entire long black stone street. Everyone instinctively covered their mouths and noses, but this smoke permeated everywhere. In a few seconds, coughing sounds linked together into a continuous wave.
“Cough, cough cough…”
“What is this?!”
“Cough, fuck…”
Wen Xiaoming snapped his fingers quite proudly and showed off to Jin Cheng: “Choking Egg Number Two. The coverage area increased to a hundred meters. Colorless and odorless. Permeates through the pores. Fast-acting and strong effect. Pity it’s another failed product. But I’ll soon be able to develop Number Three, and by then it can definitely be equipped into the inventory slot.”
Jin Cheng declined to comment. Anyway, a thing like this that had no use other than making people cough—he would rather die than use it.
Listen to this earth-shattering coughing sound; it was even noisier than before.
Jin Cheng turned his head to look at Tang Cuo. He was still sitting in the chair, staring at the meat cleaver with a gloomy expression. He really looked unwell, not just psychologically bad, but also pathologically unwell.
“You…” Just as he was speaking, Jin Cheng suddenly felt an itch in his throat. He immediately realized something, abruptly turned his head, his sharp gaze sweeping past Wen Xiaoming and finally locking downstairs: “Is your coverage area horizontal or omnidirectional?”
“Ah?” Wen Xiaoming didn’t react at once. When he finally realized, a violent fit of coughing suddenly erupted from him: “Cough, cough cough cough, holy shit I’m fucking… cough cough, cough cough…”
What is meant by dropping a rock on one’s own foot? This was it.
Jin Cheng was still enduring it. Enduring the urge to cough, and incidentally enduring the urge to throw Wen Xiaoming out the window. Catching sight of the broken window out of the corner of his eye, he felt a sense of irony—wasn’t this window broken successively by him and Wen Xiaoming?
Inside the room, Tang Cuo was also enduring.
Fuck it, he couldn’t endure it.
“Cough, cough cough…” One of his hands gripped the edge of the table, while the other had already touched the hilt of the knife. Frowning tightly, he opened his character panel; his HP had once again dropped below 5% from 7%.
The reason it dropped so fast was that Tang Cuo also suffered from hypoglycemia. He had died on the streets in the middle of the night, immediately followed by the Lucky Wheel event and violently beating the fraud syndicate. Finally managing to lie down on the bed to rest for a while, he hadn’t even reached an hour before someone smashed his window and woke him up.
This world had a grudge against him.
“A gentleman uses his mouth, not his fists.” Jin Cheng stepped to the table with a stride and reached out to press down on the back of the knife. He looked at Tang Cuo with what he thought was the most sincere and gentle gaze, but in Tang Cuo’s eyes, he looked like a peeling ghost wearing a half-dried face mask.
Headache. Looking at such a face, Tang Cuo truly had a headache and a nervous breakdown and couldn’t catch his breath. Enduring his cough, he forcefully pulled out the meat cleaver and replied: “I use my fists, not my mouth.”
Quick as lightning, Tang Cuo swung the knife at Jin Cheng’s shoulder.
Jin Cheng still had a helpless smile on his face, but his footwork was not the least bit sloppy. He dodged aside cleanly and swiftly, not even shifting the face mask on his face. But right at this moment, Tang Cuo suddenly raised his left hand. A thick “brick” appeared out of thin air and smashed over with a heavy blow, catching Jin Cheng off guard.
A hint of surprise flashed past Jin Cheng’s eyes, but he didn’t panic at all. He dodged the brick with an eerily fast speed, leaning back while supporting himself with one hand on the edge of the table. With a side flip, he arrived behind Tang Cuo in the blink of an eye.
Tang Cuo was also fast. He turned and delivered a side kick, the wind from his leg sharp and fierce.
This was called venting anger, and it was also called probing.
A baffling veteran player who claimed to be from Zone A. His background was unclear, his personality was unclear, his motives were unclear. From head to toe, even every strand of his hair was suspicious.
“Smack.” Jin Cheng raised his hand to block his side kick. With a twist of his wrist, he locked onto his ankle. Tang Cuo’s expression drastically changed, because the moment he kicked, he noticed something abnormal—Jin Cheng’s arm was as hard as metal, completely unshakeable.
With his ankle locked by him, he couldn’t even pull back now.
“How about it? Still want to test it?” Jin Cheng easily guessed his intention.
Tang Cuo smiled. Although his face was pale and covered in cold sweat, his eyes were very bright. Pushing his right leg down forcefully, his entire body crashed into Jin Cheng.
Another unexpected move.
Their balance was broken, and Jin Cheng was forced to let go. Both of them fell backward together. They fell fast, but they got up just as fast. Not even waiting to touch the ground, they propped themselves up with their palms and stood back up.
It looked like they were evenly matched.
But one was panting heavily, while the other was entirely at ease. Tang Cuo knew he had already lost. Just now when they were about to hit the ground, he clearly saw Jin Cheng’s movement pause for a second. It didn’t look like he was forced to fall, but rather that he went with the flow.
His physical fitness, reaction speed, and combat awareness were probably all above his own.
And this was without him using any abilities, martial arts, or other cheats. He was an old player, and an elite of Zone A; his true strength was likely unfathomable.
Yong Ye City truly was a place full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers.
Tang Cuo was a bit excited; sparring with an expert was very refreshing. But his complexion grew increasingly pale, and he could no longer hold back the intensifying coughs, feeling as if he would cough up blood the next second. Opening his character panel to check, his HP was down to the last 2%, hanging by a thread between life and death.
Jin Cheng frowned: “You don’t look like you’re in a good situation.”
“Yeah.” After the probing just now, Tang Cuo was basically certain he bore no ill will. His attitude was much more casual than before—so casual that even on the verge of death, he asked nonchalantly: “Is there a hospital nearby?”
Jin Cheng laughed in exasperation.
“Wen Xiaoming.”
“Here!”
Wen Xiaoming was coughing his lungs out but still hurriedly ran over to await orders. God knows how long it had been since the Boss called him by his full name; it was terrifying.
“Medicine.” Listen, even his speech was getting abbreviated.
Wen Xiaoming quickly dug out medicine from his bundle, but Tang Cuo had already knelt on the ground, holding onto the edge of the bed and coughing violently. Jin Cheng’s gaze grew cold, sweeping over Wen Xiaoming: “Who told you to take out those experimental products? Use a healing potion.”
“Okay, okay, okay!” Wen Xiaoming had momentarily gotten confused. Since they were saving a life, using a genuine healing potion produced by Yong Ye City was safer. But he couldn’t help muttering in his heart; he had never seen the Boss this nervous before. Could it be that after being penalized so many times, he had finally decided to be a proper person?
With a swipe of his finger in the air, a long tube of pale blue potion appeared out of thin air in Wen Xiaoming’s hand. He opened the stopper and was just about to feed it to Tang Cuo, but unexpectedly, it was intercepted halfway by Jin Cheng.
Wen Xiaoming froze, blinking his eyes, completely confused.
Jin Cheng ignored him and brought the potion to Tang Cuo’s mouth himself. Although he was smiling, his tone was firm and cold: “Open your mouth.”
Tang Cuo raised his head and glared at him out of the corner of his eye.
Jin Cheng: “Why are you looking at me? Does my face say ‘medicine’?”
Tang Cuo: “Your face says ‘courting death’.”
Jin Cheng: “Are you courting death, or am I?”
Tang Cuo: “Both.”
Wen Xiaoming’s brow twitched. He quickly tried to break up the fight: “Two big brothers, calm down, calm down. We’re all friends, let’s not argue.”
Jin Cheng shoved the potion into Tang Cuo’s hand and turned his head to ask: “Are we arguing?”
Wen Xiaoming clamped his mouth shut—weak, pitiful, and helpless. He was just an innocent bystander trying to break up a fight. He knew nothing, and he saw nothing.
Over there, Tang Cuo drank the potion. His HP dropped to a precarious 1% before finally stopping. The coughing also gradually subsided, and his body’s functions steadily recovered.
The healing potions produced by Yong Ye City had quite excellent effects.
“Thanks.” He stood back up, his expression calm.
“Thank Wen Xiaoming.” Jin Cheng walked to the window without looking back, observed the situation downstairs, and said: “So noisy.”
Suddenly being cued and suddenly seeing him lose his temper, Wen Xiaoming was utterly baffled. But spending a long time with him had made Wen Xiaoming well-versed in the way of survival. He immediately responded: “The lethality of the Choking Egg is stronger than I thought. No matter how formidable those people downstairs are, they’re only from Zone F. They probably can’t fight anymore now. I’ll go down and deal with it immediately.”
With that, Wen Xiaoming oiled his soles and immediately slipped away.
If he didn’t slip away now, when would he?
But just as he ran out of the hallway, Jin Cheng stopped him again: “Wait. Help me prepare a mask tomorrow.”
Wen Xiaoming braked hard and turned around: “Boss, what do you need a mask for?”
Jin Cheng stood in the hallway, the door to the room behind him already closed. He peeled off his face mask and casually tossed it into the trash can. The dim light made his figure look somewhat blurry.
“Just prepare it for me first. I’ll tell you later.”
“Also, don’t leak the news of me being here for now. I plan to stay here for a while.”
