Chapter 253: Planning to Resign
Bai Cha checked her temperature.
It was indeed merely 37.5°C.
She sat by the edge of the bed and spaced out for a brief while.
She couldn’t rule out whether she was being affected by the game, but her condition inside the game right now was indeed far worse than in reality.
Thus, remaining in reality proved slightly better.
This could be set aside temporarily for further observation later.
She remained quite hung up on Han Yingying’s words.
By all rights, regarding her parents’ situation, she had mentioned it to no one.
Aside from having that dream inside the instance.
“If your parents are still around…” The premise of these words implied that Han Yingying was aware her parents might be dead, missing, or possessed other underlying information.
She had never told Han Yingying a single thing—it couldn’t possibly be that Han Yingying could still sense the outside world while resting in her backpack.
Even after encountering Han Yingying, she hadn’t spoken of these matters either; at most, she had merely pondered them in her mind, and the other party couldn’t possibly pry into that as well.
Therefore, this was clearly illogical.
Ever since Yu Zhenzhen’s incident, she felt that intense, creeping sensation once more—that someone was pulling strings behind her back.
Bai Cha sat by the bedside until daylight broke bright and clear, and her alarm clock sounded off.
Raising her hand to silence the alarm, she washed her face and set off for work.
Shen Qingchen hadn’t shown up for work.
Bai Cha thereupon dispatched a message to her around noon.
Bai Peach Oolong Tea: Sister Shen, I plan to resign.
She had to admit and accept that her current state rendered her incapable of living a normal person’s life.
Merely exploring inside the game was far from enough.
She wanted to investigate that courier address from back then, wanting to get a clear picture regarding Yu Zhenzhen’s situation.
Shen Qingchen hadn’t replied all along, likely still inside an instance.
Wen Xing, on the other hand, sent her a private message urging her to check the forum.
Information concerning Bai Cha was flooding the forum, with numerous players actively debating her skills.
Some were even attempting to track her down.
Wen Xing placed a phone call to Bai Cha with a grave tone.
“Your information is exposed rather severely right now, but there’s no way around it either—it was bound to happen sooner or later. Virtually every player who breaches A-tier gets dug up top to bottom.”
The downside of live streaming was having zero privacy.
This was predestined right from the start; no matter how thoroughly one hid or how mysterious one remained, people would dig all the same.
Because it was impossible to never use skills forever—unless someone’s skill was inherently tailored toward disguise.
“Your skill holds a connection to reality, which will make people flock to you all the more aggressively. You’d best disguise yourself before entering the game during this upcoming period. I notice you’ve been entering instances very frequently; slow down a bit.”
Wen Xing held zero awareness that Bai Cha was forced into entering the game.
Bai Cha offered her thanks.
“I’ll be careful! Thank you, Sister Wen!”
Wen Xing typed out a few lines of text, only to delete them in the end.
“Just be careful yourself.”
Xiao Xiao spoke similar words to Bai Cha on her end as well.
“In-game is one thing, but your identity in reality must absolutely never be exposed. Your address, personal info, and the like—you must exercise extreme caution.”
Posting images was prohibited inside the forum.
Taking screenshots during live streams was disallowed as well.
Yet if someone genuinely took the trouble to memorize her appearance and sought to track her down in reality, it wasn’t impossible either.
Bai Cha’s view on all this was: no view for the time being.
She felt thoroughly exhausted.
From entering the game until now, a mere month and a half had actually elapsed.
Events were far too dense and numerous, particularly the instances.
She admitted that she thoroughly enjoyed the exploratory nature of game instances, yet she had to admit all the same that it was indeed far too exhausting.
Particularly now after struggling through, she decided to temporarily abandon her job to ease up on real-world matters first.
This was a compromise—an inevitable, helpless compromise.
Unless she discovered a way to slow down her rate of entering the game, she genuinely couldn’t handle juggling both ends.
Her physical health alone refused to permit it.
As for the sensation she created inside the game… in truth, the points in her possession were more than enough to conceal her identity every single time she entered an instance, yet she had refrained from doing so all along.
This tied somewhat into her desire to uncover who on earth was scheming against her as well.
Because the other party would inevitably observe from the shadows, wouldn’t they?
Exposing herself before the public was precisely because she originally occupied a disadvantageous position; with the enemy lurking in the dark to begin with, she might as well stand openly on the front stage instead.
People were already attempting to track her down now—in fact, there had likely been people previously as well, such as that group of Butterfly Chasers.
Once the crowd grew large, wouldn’t the mastermind behind the scenes fish in troubled waters eventually?
Unless their objective held a far deeper layer still.
Come evening, Bai Cha popped a fever reducer and went to sleep.
She fell into two dreams.
The first dream picked up from her dreaming of her mother telling her a story inside the instance.
It remained that story of the Kingdom of Ice and Snow.
Upon finishing the tale, she hadn’t fallen asleep, looking at her mother with curiosity instead.
“Mom, who was that hermit?”
Everyone in the story resembled traced monsters—the indigenous Western Witch brought in by the monster, while Yelang was brought forth by the hermit.
Only that hermit from the East—why had he arrived here? Was it purely to bring the four seasons and day and night to the people?
Her mother’s face remained impossible to discern clearly.
Raising her hand, she covered her eyes gently.
“Sleep, baby. You will know in the future.”
Her fingers felt icy cold, granting a trace of comfort to Bai Cha, whose head throbbed from the fever.
Immediately following that, she woke up.
Her fever had broken.
Closing her eyes, she intended to resume sleeping, wishing to dream of further clues regarding her mother.
Regrettably, however, the second dream pertained to her new instance.
Inside the dream, she worked as an apprentice in a shop crammed with various dilapidated, damaged items.
Learning how to restore these objects.
Because certain items represented memories many were unwilling to discard.
While performing repairs, she abruptly noticed a room.
Her self in the dream stood up, pushing open that room.
Inside, much like the outside, rested dilapidated items as well.
Yet they were specially partitioned off.
Thick cobwebs had even descended across numerous spots.
Abruptly, a sharp wave of pain shot through her body.
Someone stabbed her to death from behind with a single blade.
Collapsing onto the floor, Bai Cha struggled, attempting to catch a clear look at that person’s appearance.
Yet the other party proved far faster; her eyes were gouged out directly.
The excruciating pain jolted Bai Cha awake.
Touching her eyes, tears secreted rapidly outward, the muscular tremors brought on by that pain lingering still.
The realism of instance dreams was truly somewhat excessive.
Bai Cha collapsed weakly back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling with open eyes.
Her body throbbed with pain.
In this brief span of time, her fever seemed to be spiking all over again.
She didn’t bother getting up for medicine either; taking medicine earlier had been merely to secure a decent night’s sleep.
After all, she still had to head to work tomorrow; applying for resignation required advance notice, meaning she couldn’t leave in the short term.
Yet now she was past the point of sleep.
Nor did she hold the mood to sleep.
Opening her phone, Bai Cha checked the Secretive APP.
The new instance had already surfaced.
“Rotten Bones and Resurrected Flesh”, Countdown: 3 days, 20 hours, 14 minutes.
Bai Cha narrowed her eyes slightly.
Was the person who killed her in the dream an NPC, or a player?
By rights, dreams generally pertained solely to the instance itself—could other players be involved as well?
One couldn’t blame her for thinking along these lines; after all, she was under intense scrutiny right now.
