Chapter 138: The Game Company
“Sigh, to be honest, I feel like something was off. I’ve always felt that Xiaolan died before that. Back then, she even contacted me saying she was coming over, so why would she suddenly come to my place? Later, we lost contact, and the timing of the flood didn’t match up with when she went missing either.”
This matter remained a knot in Chen Shuya’s heart to this day, and once brought up, she couldn’t help but talk more.
“It’s a pity that heavy rain washed away every single trace completely. Plus, some people’s bodies couldn’t even be salvaged from the water—Xiaolan might have been among them.”
“By the way, who are you? Why would Xiaolan leave an orchid in your care?”
“I…” Bai Cha hesitated briefly before making up a lie. “I work in a niche profession. Do you know about ‘Time Mailmen’?”
“Uh… never heard of it, but I can roughly guess.”
“Yeah. Anyway, she deposited an ink orchid with me, leaving your number alongside hers. She said if I couldn’t reach her, I should contact you. I even have your WeChat and QQ IDs here.”
Bai Cha recited her two account IDs, and Chen Shuya immediately nodded repeatedly on the other end.
“Yes, those are mine!”
“Then there’s no problem. Send me your address, and I’ll ship the flower over to you. She also left a message for you. She said that whether or not that incident happened back then, she never regretted going down the mountain to become a teacher. She knows you subsidized her with money every month and hopes you won’t live with guilt, because what happened back then had nothing to do with any of you.”
Chen Shuya broke into heavy, weeping sobs on the other end of the line.
“I… she…”
She couldn’t utter another word.
Bai Cha put her phone on speaker, set it on the table, and got up to dig out an old flowerpot.
There was still some soil left over from planting the morning glories, which she dumped into the pot.
Chen Shuya cried for a long time over the phone before finally apologizing in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry… I couldn’t control myself…”
“It’s alright. Just send your address to this number.”
“Okay! Thank you!”
Hanging up the call, Bai Cha let out a sigh.
She still had to ship the package.
The main reason she didn’t go in person was simply that it was too far.
She definitely had to head back to B City tomorrow first for her defense, and barring any accidents, she would probably look for an internship or job there as well.
X City and B City were on opposite ends of the country.
Whether by plane or high-speed rail, the prices were astronomically expensive.
Let alone B City, even D City where she currently was located was very far. Moreover, D City had no airport, requiring a high-speed train transfer to the neighboring city just to catch a flight.
She genuinely had no money.
Her aunt’s family wasn’t well-off either, just a normal, ordinary household.
They had enough to keep everyone fed and send the kids to school, but that was the extent of it.
Things like taking a plane at the drop of a hat to travel somewhere far were out of the question.
Even when they went on vacation, they only stayed within the province or adjacent provinces.
Because that way they could drive, which saved a lot of money.
So she had always studied extremely hard—partly because academic success brought scholarships.
Take when she was admitted to B University at sixteen: though she wasn’t the provincial top scorer, she was at least the top scorer of her city. The municipal government awarded her 50,000 yuan, and the school gave her another 10,000 yuan.
The university’s scholarships were fairly generous; as long as she maintained her top rank, it was enough to cover her living expenses each year.
However, she also needed a lot of money for medical bills.
A single trip to the hospital for checkups wiped out several thousand yuan.
She currently only had a bit over 30,000 yuan in hand, and entering the game repeatedly in the future was bound to impact her reality.
She didn’t even know what lay ahead on her path. All she could say was that shipping out the orchid was already doing as much as she humanly could.
It was just as well to head out and buy some medicine, as there was none left at home.
By the time she finished running this whole circuit of errands, it was already noon.
Bai Cha wanted to sleep, so she checked the high-speed rail tickets.
There was a train departing in exactly an hour. Since getting from here to B City took an hour and a half, plus getting off the train at B City and taking the subway then transferring to a bus to reach the campus added up to nearly another hour.
Right now, it was 11:20 AM.
If she missed this train, the next one wouldn’t leave until 3:30 PM.
By the time she reached campus, it would be past six in the evening. Adding a quick dinner to that, it would be past seven, leaving her with no time at all.
Because she had to attend her thesis defense at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, she needed to prepare a bit more to ensure she passed on her first try and avoid any follow-up hassle.
And given her poor health, she had to go to sleep by nine at night.
Ever since entering the game, her already poor sleep quality had deteriorated even further, making all-nighters completely out of the question.
Not to mention she was currently sick; if she wanted to recover quickly, she had to rest early.
An urge of irritability welled up in Bai Cha’s chest, and she tossed her phone onto the bed.
So many things to do.
So exhausting.
Running a fever on top of it all—what a pain.
Bai Cha pressed her forearm over her eyes.
After a long pause, she rose to her feet with quiet composure, bought the ticket, packed her things, and walked out the door.
Just as she stepped out, she doubled back.
There was still a pot of morning glories on the balcony she hadn’t taken.
The flower hadn’t sprouted yet—who knew if it even could—but she brought it along anyway.
On the high-speed train, Bai Cha had originally wanted to catch some sleep during the hour-and-a-half ride.
Instead, an old man sitting in the seat ahead of her kept scrolling through short videos.
On loudspeaker, at maximum volume.
Bai Cha felt numb.
It felt like nothing was going smoothly anywhere today.
She simply picked up her phone and resumed submitting resumes. Since things were like this anyway, she might as well make herself busier.
The responses a few companies had given her earlier hadn’t been replied to in time, so she resubmitted them now and looked around for other companies.
Out of habit, she would look up company information. Upon casually tapping into a game company recruiting front-end developers, her hand paused slightly.
There was a certain Game Technology Co., Ltd.
Legal Representative: Shen Qingchen.
Tapping on it, Shen Qingchen’s profile page opened up.
In the photo was an exceptionally striking woman—the kind with aggressive, sharp beauty that captured attention at first glance.
Shen Qingchen, the actual controller and largest shareholder of this game company.
Bai Cha felt instant alertness wash over her.
There were no photos of Shen Qingchen inside the game, nor had she ever seen her livestreams.
After a moment’s thought, Bai Cha submitted her resume.
Then she casually searched up Shen Qingchen’s name in her browser.
She found that there had indeed been related media reports, though they hadn’t generated much of a splash.
The only topic with high discussion engagement was due to a photo of Shen Qingchen that was posted, though it wasn’t very clear.
Those articles were all filled with meaningless fluff, talking without saying anything of substance—essentially asserting that Shen Qingchen was quite impressive, or else raising doubts about her.
The discussion section beneath the article with the photo was full of nasty comments.
Things like “she obviously relies on men,” or “a rich man’s public toy and puppet,” and so forth.
Because she was the legal representative.
However, this article did mention Shen Qingchen’s age. Calculating based on the article’s publication date, Shen Qingchen should be around 33 now.
So how long had she been in the game?
Before reaching S-rank, regular players basically entered the game only once a month.
Advancing to S1 required 31,500 points. Even assuming an S-rank evaluation for every single clear, that still required at least 20 games.
At one game per month, that meant two whole years.
Yet searching through the game forum revealed that in Shen Qingchen’s clear records, her densely packed instance logs numbered at least in the hundreds.
She had never been a player who cleared instances with top scores. Her evaluation ratings were mostly B-ranks, with very few A-ranks, very few C-ranks, and not a single rating below C or above A.
Yet she was the Number One player.
