Chapter 242| Chapter 243| Chapter 244
Chapter 242: An Unexpected Encounter
“What is the point of falling in love?!” Lu Yunxi grumbled, utterly dismissive of the idea. In her eyes, romance was nothing but a distraction that would hinder her from growing stronger. “I would much rather just accept a disciple.”
“The Flower King explicitly recommends that you pursue romance instead of taking on an apprentice,” Long Aotian replied, his voice laced with helplessness.
“But… why?” Lu Yunxi asked, genuinely baffled. For a master of her caliber, taking in a disciple should be an incredibly straightforward task. Finding someone to fall in love with, on the other hand… where was she even supposed to begin?
“The Flower King noted that a relationship can be ended at any moment with a simple breakup. A disciple, however, cannot simply be cast out once they reach the Grandmaster tier, can they? Any martial apprentice you bound yourself to would heavily impact your future cultivation and breakthrough thresholds. If you accept a disciple carelessly, the cosmic backlash might bottleneck your progression permanently.”
In truth, the Flower King’s exact words had been far more pragmatic: “We are so close to the end, and the structural anomalies plaguing the Cultivation Realm will be resolved shortly. If the new disciple’s alignment fractures, it will be an immediate game over for her progression. Romance, by contrast, carries negligible risk. Failing to form a lifelong Daoist partnership will not disrupt her core baseline.”
Lu Yunxi fell silent, absorbing the mechanical constraints.
Long Aotian meticulously relayed the rest of the warning. “Even if a culinary apprentice were to betray your lineage, it wouldn’t disrupt your baseline stats. But grinding more cooking apprentices at this stage is entirely useless; it yields zero experience points. As for training combat apprentices, it is tactically wiser to wait until the Cultivation Realm is fully restored. Right now, a vast majority of local entities still suffer from fragmented souls; the moment the system repairs their vessels, their core personalities will shift entirely.”
“If you blindly accept an apprentice now, they might go on to trigger a world-ending event once the server fully updates. The heavenly laws would hold you accountable as their progenitor, completely severing your path to immortality!”
“That is exactly what Grandpa Flower King detailed,” Long Aotian concluded, his tone shifting into an obedient cadence.
Lu Yunxi sighed. “I understand. Express my gratitude to Kao.”
“Then we shall return to our slumber. We truly will not awaken again until the final update. Grandpa Flower King noted that the next time we synchronize, the Cultivation Realm will likely be fully repaired,” Long Aotian murmured, his voice brimming with anticipation. “Keep pressing forward, Master!”
She offered a quiet word of encouragement across the link right as the telepathic connection dissolved into the void.
Rubbing her temples to soothe her mounting anxiety, she was pulled from her deep thoughts by Shen San’s booming voice echoing from the adjacent room.
“Master, dinner is plated!”
Lu Yunxi took a deep, centering breath, actively pushing her mechanical worries to the back of her mind as she stepped out to enjoy the meal.
As night fell, a cool, gentle breeze swept across the water, carrying the distant sounds of music and laughter.
A massive, multi-tiered pleasure boat drifted lazily near the harbor. On the main stage, a troupe of local dancers and musicians performed fluid routines, while the patrons on the lower deck drank, laughed, and thoroughly immersed themselves in the raucous nightlife.
Up on the second floor, Shen San stood completely detached in a private box, staring down at the crowd through the carved wooden lattice.
By interstellar time, it was already half past nine in the evening—meaning he had been waiting in this room for an entire hour! He crossed his arms over his massive chest, his irritation flaring into cold anger.
What a massive joke, he thought. If the quest-givers intended to deploy a high-priority assignment, they should have meticulously verified the tracking schedule. They had explicitly stated the informant would materialize at half past eight. Yet here he was, standing around like a total idiot. Did they think a player’s stamina bar didn’t drain?!
The more he brooded over the delay, the icier his gaze became.
“Young master, allow me to pour you a fresh cup of spiritual wine,” a soft, melodic voice purred behind him.
Before he could react, a slender, supple body pressed flush against his back, enveloping him in a heavy, concentrated cloud of floral perfume.
Moving with the absolute rigidity of a solid block of timber, Shen San violently sidestepped the advance, aggressively covering his nose with a scowl. “What on earth is that stench caked across your robes?! It’s entirely suffocating! Back away!”
The smile on the entertainer’s face froze mid-toast. She internally cursed the giant, What an absolute brute! He doesn’t possess a single cell of romantic refinement!
Forcing a compliant smile back onto her lips, she softened her eyes, adopting a breathless, dramatically wounded cadence. “Young master, how can you wound my feelings so ruthlessly? The regular lords who frequent this vessel absolutely adore this exotic floral essence!” She shot him a lingering, heavily affectionate glance.
Shen San, completely immune to the suggestive look, leveled a freezing stare at her. “Get out of my sight. I have zero silver to throw away on your company. My monthly allowance barely covers my own equipment repairs!”
Unable to withstand the blatant rejection and financial stinginess, the girl’s professional mask shattered. She glared at him, internally seething, What a pathetic miser! Snatching her wine pitcher, she marched toward the exit with heavy, furious steps.
Shen San followed her all the way to the threshold, acting as though he expected her to refuse to leave if he broke line of sight.
Thoroughly infuriated by his monitoring, the girl violently yanked the door open. A sudden gust of wind caught her heavy silk skirts, causing her to lose her footing on the polished wooden deck. As she stumbled backward, looking right on the verge of a nasty fall, Shen San rapidly executed two swift backward paces, leaving a massive, clear gap as if terrified her falling body might accidentally graze his armor.
Her face flushed a brilliant crimson with pure rage. Letting out a sharp, venomous snort, she whirled around and stormed down the corridor.
Shen San let out a long breath of relief. Just as he reached out to pull the sliding door shut, a silhouette crossing the opposite balcony caught his eye, and his entire expression went rigid.
Master?!
How on earth did she manifest in a place like this?!
He instinctively prepared to leap across the corridor, but before he could cross the threshold, the door diagonally opposite his box slammed shut with a sharp thud.
Shen San stood frozen in the hallway.
In that frantic microsecond, had his optical tracking interface simply glitched and mistaken a random NPC for her character model? An entity as profoundly elegant, noble, and detached as his master would never dream of stepping foot inside a chaotic, hedonistic pleasure vessel.
He slowly pulled his door shut, a heavy, unmapped weight settling into his chest. But right before the latch clicked into place, he halted his arm, his eyes flashing with sudden resolve.
No! I have to verify her coordinates with my own eyes!
The sheer anxiety made him want to burst through her door immediately, but he forcefully restrained his attributes, terrified of triggering her displeasure. What if she assumed he was actively tracking her movements and invading her privacy?!
Swallowing his immense frustration, he paced across his private parlor, desperately brainstorming a tactical workaround. After a prolonged period of calculation, a clever strategy finally materialized in his mind.
Knock, knock, knock—
A rhythmic series of raps echoed against the wooden door frame of the opposite box.
Lu Yunxi’s heart gave a sudden leap. Moving with lightning speed, she swept the dense stack of blueprint papers she had been critically analyzing off the table, transferring them back into her spatial inventory.
Reaching out with practiced calm, she retrieved her porcelain teacup, taking a slow, casual sip as she offered a serene smile to the man sitting across from her. “How bizarre. I am paying a premium rate for a private consultation, yet external entities are permitted to disrupt our session?”
The young artist painting across from her felt his professional smile falter slightly. This high-paying client was projecting a perfectly pleasant, warm expression, but her phrasing carried a razor-sharp, sarcastic edge.
“Set your mind at ease, honored guest. I suspect a passing servant has simply misread the layout. I shall handle the intrusion immediately.” He carefully deposited his fine brush onto the stone rest to avoid splattering ink across the canvas, stood up, and pulled the door open.
The moment his back was turned to Lu Yunxi, his features contorted into a dark, murderous scowl.
This particular client was incredibly generous with her silver and possessed top-tier character aesthetics; some low-level street hustler had undoubtedly caught sight of her wealth and was attempting to hijack his client! Did the surrounding vendors truly believe they could steal Zhuye’s private customers without consequences?!
He slid the door back with lethal intent, but instead of encountering a rival host, he found himself staring down at a plain-looking, unassuming young maidservant.
It didn’t look like a commercial raid.
His expression smoothed out slightly, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “State your business.”
The young girl kept her head lowered, stammering nervously, “Sir… a wealthy patron on the lower deck has commissioned a delivery of rare flowers for the lady resting inside your quarters…”
Hearing the explanation, Zhuye’s face turned absolutely volcanic. Letting out a vicious, whispered “Begone!” through his teeth, he violently slammed the door shut without a shred of hesitation.
His chest heaved with suppressed fury, and it took him several long moments to master his breathing before turning back to his client with a flawless, radiant smile.
“I apologize for the structural disturbance, Miss Lu. It was merely a junior maid who had lost her bearings along the corridor,” he explained, his tone laced with a seamless blend of charm and casual helplessness.
Had Lu Yunxi’s grandmaster sensory attributes not cleanly intercepted their hushed conversation through the wood, she genuinely would have accepted his excuse at face value.
But…
She raised her head, her gaze tracking toward the locked door.
A moment ago, while she had been entirely focused on her tea and intended to ignore the corridor drama, a remarkably potent, intense gaze had cut straight through the lattice, locking onto her position. Yet the exact second she raised her head to counter-track the source, the presence had vanished completely.
How anomalous, she thought.
Shaking her head to clear the distraction, she dismissed the issue from her thoughts.
Meanwhile, inside Shen San’s private box, the sliding door remained wide open.
He sat rigidly in his chair, his expression incredibly dark as the plain-looking young maidservant stood before his desk.
“This is your silver compensation,” he grumbled, drawing a heavy breath to suppress his immense frustration as he shoved a handful of premium coins across the wood.
The girl offered a deep, compliant bow, smoothly sliding the silver into her silk sleeve without displaying a single trace of fear. “Young master, if your household requires any further reconnaissance or message delivery across the sectors, you need only summon me.”
He waved a large hand, impatiently dismissing her from the room. Left entirely alone, he paced across the box, taking a long time to steady his racing thoughts.
Who on earth was that man Master was consulting with? Did she genuinely travel to a pleasure vessel just to indulge in the local entertainment? And why that specific host?! His aesthetic values are utterly mediocre!
A cascade of panicked, bewildered questions flashed through his mind, but he lacked the courage to confront her directly.
How was he supposed to frame the dialogue? “Ah, greetings, Master! What a bizarre coincidence to run into you inside a high-tier den of vice! I merely stepped aboard to enjoy a few casual drinks myself…” Heavens above! The sheer mortification of that script would kill him! Just simulating the interaction made him feel as though his toes could drill a three-bedroom apartment straight through the floorboards.
Shen San turned the issue over in his mind, his thoughts involuntarily shifting toward the behavioral norms of the real world.
The Fu family lineage was entirely anomalous within high society; their core family members harbored genuine, deep affection for one another, entirely removed from the cold, calculated political marriages typical of their peers. However, the vast majority of aristocratic households surrounding his estate maintained a completely hollow facade, operating under a silent agreement where both spouses aggressively pursued external pleasures.
Even a straight-edged guild leader like Luo Mingyi would occasionally frequent high-end real-world entertainment lounges to unwind. If a real-world titan required an emotional outlet, then what was the harm if his master wanted to experience a bit of casual luxury inside the server?!
In the grand scheme of life, every conscious entity required a brief window to act a little rebellious; it was mechanically impossible for an advanced intelligence to remain perfectly compliant for their entire existence.
Having successfully rationalized her behavior through the lens of interstellar social structures, he threw himself onto the daybed and promptly went to sleep.
Chapter 243: Matchmaker
However, even though Shen San logicized it that way and truly had no intention of ruining his master’s night, he still felt an undeniable prickle of discomfort. Damn it all! Running into your own martial master while out at a high-end den of vice was just deeply, fundamentally awkward.
Perhaps the pleasure boat had been rocking too violently, but by the time he cleared the deck, his face was entirely pale.
Drawing a sharp, heavy breath, he bundled his thick cloak around himself and strode out of the venue without a shred of hesitation. Forget it. The informant was a no-show, the mission was a bust, and he was better off heading back early.
Thinking of the local inn where he had already prepaid for most of the month’s lodging, he activated his lightness skills and practically flew back to his quarters.
To his absolute surprise, the exact second he stepped through the main threshold, a distinct rustling noise drifted out from the adjacent room.
The corners of his lips curled into a cold, dangerous sneer.
Fantastic. His master was currently occupied at the pleasure boat, so some bold street rat had actually chosen tonight to slip inside and pilfer her trunks?
With a dark laugh, Shen San raised his massive boot and violently kicked the door to the next room open.
The wood slammed inward with a deafening clang. The frame managed to withstand the force without flying off its hinges, but the structural panels completely shattered into splintered kindling.
His expression turning stone-cold, he strode directly past the threshold and rounded the heavy decorative screen. Did this pathetic thief truly believe a basic partition could mask their presence from his tracking attributes?!
He aggressively yanked the screen aside—only to lock eyes with the entity hiding on the other side.
“You bold, impudent thief! How dare you break into—” The words died instantly in his throat. Staring down into a pair of wide, furiously burning eyes, he felt as though a massive block of ice had wedged itself into his windpipe, rendering him completely mute.
“Hahaha… Master? Why… why on earth are you back here?” he stammered, letting out a horrific, dry laugh. His eyes tracked down, watching his master quickly submerge herself deeper into the steaming bathtub, her slender neck entirely masked by a thick layer of floating flower petals.
He swallowed hard, instantly averting his gaze as his face burned with mortification.
“Get out!” Lu Yunxi commanded, her voice dropping to a freezing, absolute snap.
Shen San flinched, not daring to linger for another microsecond. Keeping his head low, he frantically hauled the decorative screen back into place to block the line of sight and bolted from the room.
Bursting out into the corridor, he stared down at the half-pulverized door and felt a massive, throbbing headache coming on.
Fortunately, he happened to have a spare architectural screen stored inside his inventory panel. Hoisting the partition to mask the open doorway, he pulled out his crafting tools and began frantically repairing the broken frame. After a prolonged period of frantic sawing and hammering, the door was finally functional again. Unfortunately, his patchwork materials didn’t quite match the original design, leaving one side noticeably lighter and the other dark.
But he couldn’t be bothered by cosmetic flaws right now. Carefully pulling the door shut, he scurried back into his own room.
The moment he bolted his latch, his face fell.
What in the absolute hell was happening on this server?! He could swear on his life that the elegant woman he had tracked aboard the pleasure boat was undeniably his master! He had verified her features with his own optical interface!
But if Master had been deeply engaged in a private consultation with that host, Zhuye, why had she abruptly materialized back at the inn? Worse yet, she had somehow bypassed his maximum lightness velocity to beat him back to the compound! Could it be that the host had done something anomalous to infuriate her, causing her to cancel the session early?
He found himself trapped between a bizarre wave of protective anger and intense anxiety, his thoughts tangling into a chaotic knot.
Having successfully driven her bumbling apprentice from the room, Lu Yunxi leaned her head back against the rim of the tub. As the radiating warmth of the water seeped into her muscles, a heavy, deep-seated fatigue gradually weighed down her eyelids.
Outside, the frantic thuds and scrapes of carpentry tools echoed through the wall. Peeking through a narrow gap in the paneling, she watched Shen San desperately sweating over her broken frame.
The giant had been in such a mindless panic that he had literally smashed through a reinforced door. She let out a helpless, weary sigh at his impulsiveness, but before long, her thoughts drifted back to the core dilemma of tonight’s expedition.
Long Aotian had explicitly stated that pursuing a romantic relationship was an infinitely safer mechanic for her current build than taking on a combat apprentice. Because her baseline programming left her deeply ignorant regarding the higher-tier laws of the Cultivation Realm, she had ultimately decided to defer to the wisdom of the primordial entities.
Yet execution was proving to be a massive bottleneck; she simply couldn’t locate a single suitable candidate across the sector! Driven to try a shortcut, she had boarded the pleasure vessel to locate a high-end companion who had never previously accepted a client. Her intention had been to draft a formal, high-paying contract, retain his exclusive company for a brief period, and artificially trigger the server’s ‘dating’ parameter… In theory, the strategy was perfectly sound.
But when it came time to execute the paperwork, her instincts had recoiled, and she aborted the contract.
Lu Yunxi couldn’t quite analyze the exact source of her internal dissatisfaction; she simply realized she detested the artificiality of the arrangement. Perhaps a host like Zhuye simply wasn’t her cup of tea?
She let out a sharp, deeply irritated sigh.
As for Shen San’s chaotic intrusion a moment ago, she categorized it as a minor AI anomaly and pushed it from her mind entirely. Little did she know, on the other side of the wall, her disciple was currently tossing and turning on his mattress like a pancake on a griddle, thoroughly losing his mind over the incident.
Over the subsequent days, an incredibly bizarre pattern emerged. Every single time Shen San stepped out into the city thoroughfares, he would track his master standing in secluded corners conversing with absolute strangers. No matter how dense his tracking skills were, it was mechanically impossible to ignore that something had gone fundamentally sideways with her routine.
“Master, are you embarking on another excursion?” he asked one afternoon, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned casually against the inn’s outer wall. The moment she cleared the threshold, he plastered a bright, cheerful grin across his face.
“I am,” Lu Yunxi replied, offering a perfunctory nod. “Do you care to accompany me?” It was a purely casual invite; her internal code assumed he would immediately decline. After all, Shen San had been aggressively running around the sector these past few days, leaving early and returning past midnight.
To her absolute astonishment, the giant nodded eagerly. “Sure thing!” He stepped off the wall to fall into stride beside her.
Lu Yunxi went completely rigid with surprise.
“Master, are we currently maintaining a coordinate lock on another entity?” his smooth, quiet voice drifted over. He stood half a pace behind her, his eyes studying her profile with an incredibly strange, evaluating glint.
“Ah! No, not at all,” she stammered, forcibly pulling her consciousness back to the present as she quickened her pace.
The two began wandering aimlessly through the bustling commercial districts. In reality, Lu Yunxi was utilizing her maximum grandmaster perception to frantically scan the faces in the crowd, while Shen San was exclusively focusing his tracking attributes on monitoring her facial micro-expressions.
“Master, what specific target or asset are you hunting for? If you provide the criteria, I can easily track it down for you,” he finally offered, letting out a helpless sigh as he noticed fine beads of sweat building across her forehead. She was clearly exhausting her stamina bar.
“I am hunting for a matchmaker,” she blurted out automatically.
“A matchmaker? What on earth is that?” He blinked, his database lacking the historical context of the traditional profession. Still, he quickly adapted. “Master, locate a tea house and restore your vitality metrics! I shall scour the sector to locate one for you!”
Lu Yunxi flinched in sudden panic, her hand darting out to violently clamp onto his forearm. The last thing she needed was her giant apprentice stomping through the high-tier markets loudly bellowing demands for a marriage broker!
“Do not!” she hissed. While her own programming felt zero shame regarding the mechanic, she was terrified the sheer embarrassment of the public display would tank her disciple’s mental parameters later!
“I have already verified the visual markers with a local informant,” she explained rapidly, her words tripping over one another. “A legitimate marriage broker carries a distinct, crimson cosmetic dot painted directly between their brows. If your interface registers an entity matching that description, simply log the coordinates and report them to me.”
Shen San nodded solemnly, locking the visual criteria into his quest log before splitting up to scan the opposing side of the thoroughfare.
The human traffic lining the capital’s streets was dense as a rushing river. The two scoured the blocks for hours before a valid ping finally registered on his interface.
“Master, a local vendor confirmed an entity matching those exact cosmetic markers just ascended to the private lounges on the second floor of the tavern ahead. Shall we cross-reference?”
Lu Yunxi nodded eagerly, marching into the designated tavern and securing access to the private chamber.
The moment Shen San laid eyes on the target, his eyebrows shot up. Despite the traditional profession title containing the character for ‘mother,’ the entity was unmistakably a man. He wore an incredibly thick layer of white face powder that left his complexion looking sickly pale, and his physical model was remarkably lean and gaunt.
The marriage broker—who operated under the professional alias Hongniang—fixed Shen San with a highly amused, mocking look, causing the giant’s irritation to flare instantly.
Lu Yunxi paid absolutely zero attention to her apprentice’s souring mood. Opening the door, she firmly shoved Shen San out into the corridor to guard the perimeter, before sealing the latch to hold a hushed, high-privacy consultation. No one outside the room could intercept a single line of data.
Left standing in the hallway, Shen San paced back and forth against the wooden floorboards, his curiosity clawing at his chest like a feral cat.
After a grueling half hour of absolute silence, the latch finally clicked. His master and the matchmaker stepped out into the corridor, both wearing bright, thoroughly satisfied smiles as they exchanged formal parting courtesies.
Shen San stared at the display, a highly anomalous, deeply unsettling sensation pooling in his gut.
The moment the pale broker glided down the stairs, he lunged forward. “Master, you two were locked in a privacy bubble for ages! Exactly what parameters did you negotiate inside that room?”
Having secured a viable lead, Lu Yunxi was in a spectacular mood. “You wouldn’t comprehend the mechanics…” She paused, realizing it was fundamentally inappropriate to discuss her private system trials with her own disciple. Adopting the solemn, heavy cadence of a clan elder, she lectured, “You are still far too young! Your database lacks the capacity to process these matters, but the system will automatically update your understanding once your character model matures!”
Leaving him with that dismissive, helpless look, she turned on her heel and glided down the corridor.
Shen San stood rooted to the spot in absolute, slack-jawed stupefaction. It took his processing units a solid ten seconds to reboot. “Wait! Master! If you refuse to explain the baseline criteria, then obviously my database is never going to update!”
Ultimately, Shen San successfully unraveled the mechanical purpose of a marriage broker.
The realization left his core programming thoroughly shattered.
A matchmaker’s sole function was to arrange blind dates! Hongniang was actively introducing potential romantic bachelors to his master!
It was absolutely, mind-bogglingly bizarre.
Shen San found himself trapped in a vortex of profound confusion. What on earth had triggered this sudden behavioral shift in his master’s AI? Back when they resided on her aunt’s estate, the older woman had desperately attempted to set her up with local bachelors every single day, yet her master’s code had displayed a violent, unyielding resistance to the mechanic! Why had she suddenly become so fanatically enthusiastic about the process now?
Currently, she was executing a grueling schedule of three blind dates per day. Because protocol dictated she had to engage in extensive verbal profiling with each suitor’s representatives, every single session drained one to two hours of her time. One could confidently state that over the past week, her master had done absolutely nothing on this server aside from systematically evaluating random bachelors!
The sheer absurdity of the meta-plot left him completely speechless. Worse yet, the bachelors Hongniang was routing to her table were absolute, bottom-tier trash.
Take the three candidates she had interviewed today as a prime example. The first suitor was so sickeningly pale and frail that his baseline stamina bar looked ready to collapse; he was an entirely unreliable build. The second was a burly, brutish brawler with heavily tanned skin and an incredibly aggressive, thuggish expression—Shen San had honestly worried the beast’s facial features would trigger a fear debuff for his master! But the third candidate was the absolute pinnacle of audacity. The moment he sat down, he looked his master dead in the eye and declared that if she wished to marry into his household, her inventory had to surrender a dowry of exactly one thousand taels of solid silver; otherwise, his clan would refuse her entry!
It was a comedy of the highest order!
His master was breathtakingly beautiful, independently wealthy, possessed maximum-tier lifestyle attributes, and commanded absolute grandmaster mastery over both civil and military trees. Across the entire server architecture, you could not locate a more flawless, elite entity! How did these low-level bachelors possess the absolute audacity to spew such garbage in her presence? Did these pathetic toads genuinely look into a mirror and register the reflection of a divine white swan?!
Recalling the pathetic lineup of suitors they had encountered over the past week, he could do nothing but shake his head in dark, bitter amusement.
Chapter 244: What Kind of Person
Lu Yunxi rubbed her temples, a weary sigh escaping her lips. She had been so consumed with searching for a suitable candidate lately that she hadn’t paid any attention to her apprentice’s condition. It wasn’t until she looked up and saw him standing there, shaking his heavy head, that she finally noticed. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”
“I’m fine,” Shen San replied, waving his hands quickly. “I was just reflecting on everything that’s happened over the last few days…”
He paused, testing the waters. Seeing that her serene expression remained unchanged, he pressed on. “Master, what kind of person are you actually looking for? Tell me your preferences, and I’ll personally help you track them down.”
Her hand froze against her brow. She hesitated for a long moment, completely caught off guard. “What kind of…” The real issue was that she herself had absolutely no idea what kind of boyfriend she wanted!
She had interviewed dozens of suitors over the past week, and the matchmaker, Hongniang, had already exhausted his immediate roster. Yet, she hadn’t felt a single spark of chemistry. She couldn’t afford to let this drag on indefinitely. The Cultivation Realm was still fractured, and the entire server was waiting for her to trigger the ascension sequence!
“Just… whatever!” she grumbled, a massive headache brewing as her energy completely evaporated. “Anyone will do. I don’t care anymore.”
Taking her words to heart, Shen San eagerly took over the matchmaking duties for his master. However, the task proved to be exponentially more difficult than he had anticipated.
A few days later, through a convoluted chain of mutual connections, he managed to secure an interview with a seemingly decent candidate.
The man’s name was Lu Renjia. He possessed a perfectly average, acceptable appearance—neither too heavy nor too lean, neither remarkably tall nor short. He radiated the aura of a thoroughly mundane, honest citizen who wouldn’t dream of deceiving a lady. He abstained from smoking or drinking, harbored no visible vices, and maintained an exceptionally stable real-world career… Wait, his physical background was entirely irrelevant. At the end of the day, his master was an NPC. As long as the man could provide an immersive, emotionally satisfying courtship inside the virtual reality world, it would fulfill the system parameters perfectly.
With his logic settled, he officially scheduled a blind date between Lu Renjia and his master.
“Master, set your mind at ease. The bachelor I selected for you possesses an incredibly mild, compliant temperament; he will absolutely never treat you with disrespect,” Shen San babbled continuously as they prepared. “Furthermore, his character database lists traditional lifestyle hobbies like classical literature, chess, calligraphy, and painting, so you will have plenty of shared topics. But even though he checks out on paper, do not commit to him immediately. You must meticulously evaluate his behavioral patterns over time…”
Lu Yunxi sat before a polished bronze mirror, delicately shaping her brows with a cosmetic pencil. Listening to her giant apprentice’s endless, repetitive lecturing, she couldn’t restrain a heavy, exasperated sigh.
“Master? What’s the matter? Are you unhappy with the arrangement?” Catching the sigh, Shen San instantly slammed his rouge tin onto the table, his eyes darting around the room in a panic. “If you harbor any aversion to meeting the man, I can route a system message to cancel the meeting immediately! Do not force yourself; your household has my absolute backing. If this specific archetype doesn’t appeal to your tastes, we can simply scour the database for another type. There is truly no need to feel pressured…”
“…Haaah.” She slowly set her eyebrow pencil onto the vanity, turning her head to fix her giant apprentice with a deadpan stare. “Shen San, you have been aggressively lecturing me since the exact second I cleared my pod this morning. At this stage, I am thoroughly convinced that you are infinitely more nervous about this date than I am.”
His relentless nagging was light-years more suffocating than anything her parents had subjected her to during her early childhood. It had been mildly amusing at dawn, but now that the sun was past its meridian, the sheer volume of his words was making the veins in her temples throb violently.
Shen San: “…”
Ultimately, Lu Yunxi’s brief consultation with Lu Renjia concluded in less than half an hour.
The two participants exchanged polite smiles, offered formal parting courtesies, and smoothly went their separate ways.
Shen San had been pacing the floor of a tea house directly across the street, his patience wearing thin. The moment his optical interface registered his master stepping out of the venue, he bolted across the thoroughfare to intercept her.
“Master! What was your clinical evaluation? Do you wish to unlock a secondary dialogue tree to learn more about Lu Renjia?”
Lu Yunxi hesitated, turning the interaction over in her mind before delivering a firm shake of her head. “Let’s drop it.”
Rationally speaking, the man’s dialogue lines had been perfectly gentlemanly, smooth, and compliant, presenting zero overt red flags. Yet, throughout the entire half-hour block, her instinctual subroutines had been screaming with an intense, creepy premonition.
That baseline sense of dread had persisted until the exact millisecond they separated.
The moment the man cleared the sector, the very air in the street had felt significantly crisper… She felt thoroughly perplexed by her own algorithmic response. Had her relentless isolation during the lifestyle grind broken her social parameters, inducing a localized case of social anxiety?
Hearing her rejection, Shen San didn’t think much of it. Courtship inside a simulation was entirely dependent on a hidden chemistry variable; both player and asset had to achieve synchronization. It was mechanically impossible for the process to be simple.
“Understood, Master. I shall immediately procure an entirely different archetype for your next trial.” He mused over the options, wondering what specific character traits she preferred. It was best to test a wide variety of builds.
However, while his theoretical strategy was sound, once he actually dove into the recruitment pools, he quickly discovered that acting as a cross-faction matchmaker was an absolute nightmare.
The standard marriage brokers hardcoded into the virtual world were NPCs, meaning their social circles and candidates consisted exclusively of other local NPCs. By contrast, the vast majority of individuals Shen San could personally vet were players. If a human player intended to maintain a legitimate romantic connection with an advanced NPC asset, they had to remain logged into the server for extended durations, dedicating a massive amount of real-world time to accompanying her across the zones.
That single structural constraint automatically filtered out ninety-nine percent of the high-tier player base. Trying to overlay additional criteria regarding personality metrics on top of that made the selection pool practically non-existent.
Shen San scoured his communications network for several days, but his searches yielded absolutely nothing.
He let out a heavy, thoroughly exhausted sigh.
Reflecting on the dismal data, it appeared that Lu Renjia truly had been their absolute best statistical option.
Later that afternoon, Shen San concluded an agonizingly dry lunch meeting with another prospective candidate. After evaluating the player’s metrics for an hour, he concluded the man was entirely unsuited for his master. Once the suitor logged off, Shen San slumped back into his chair, mindlessly shifting his chopsticks through a bowl of cold, unappetizing rice.
The guy I interviewed today possessed excellent facial aesthetics, but his core programming was entirely dominant and choked with an obnoxious desire for control. Master would absolutely loathe a build like that…
What a colossal waste of a premium character model. The man had been flawless in every category except his baseline personality data.
Shaking his head in frustration, he reached out to spear a cold side dish, when a burst of raucous, booming laughter shattered the thin walls of the adjacent private booth.
“Aha! You truly are an absolute degenerate! I can’t believe you’re actually willing to lower your standards to date a line of code!”
Shen San’s chopsticks froze mid-air. His eyes narrowing, he silently angled his head toward the partition, sharpening his auditory tracking senses.
Dating? Was a local player genuinely maintaining a romantic relationship with an NPC asset? How did they manage the interface constraints?
“Haha! Don’t insult me, I’m not dating the thing! It was merely a standard screening meeting,” Lu Renjia’s voice scoffed from the opposite room. “And honestly, that woman’s aesthetic values are entirely mediocre! If it weren’t for the chance to establish a direct corporate link with the core lineage of the Fu family, who on earth would waste their premium server hours going on a blind date with a generic NPC?! I’m not a complete moron!”
The moment the words cleared the partition, Shen San’s gaze turned lethally cold.
Though the voice coming through the wall was perfectly identical to the suitor he had vetted, the tone was entirely unrecognizable. When addressing Shen San, Lu Renjia had projected the persona of a gentle, soft-spoken academic. But right now, he sounded exactly like a shallow, arrogant playboy indulging in cheap nightlife entertainment. The sheer condescension dripping from his sentences was thoroughly disgusting.
“The Fu family? What mechanical link does an NPC have to a real-world aristocratic clan?” a secondary voice inquired.
“The Third Young Master of the Fu family is personally managing the blind date manifests for his martial master!” Lu Renjia sneered, letting out a sharp breath. “It’s completely mind-boggling. The guy has developed some bizarre emotional attachment to a piece of game data, wasting his family’s liquid capital to play matchmaker! Fortunately, my behavioral mask was completely flawless, otherwise his interface would have filtered me out during the initial sweep!”
“What?! Are you serious?!” his companion barked in disbelief. “Young Master Lu, your lineage ranks among the elite tiers of the Capital Star! While your personal assets might not match the astronomical wealth of the Fu family’s third heir, any noble daughter in high society would happily circle the planet just to secure a marriage proposal from your house! To think you were forced to bow and scrape just to please a disposable game asset…”
“Ugh, do not remind me,” Lu Renjia sighed, his tone heavy with artificial martyrdom. “I had no choice but to sacrifice my handsome face for the family portfolio. At the end of the day, she’s just a digital asset hardcoded into a server map. Coaxing a program is child’s play!”
He tossed back a cup of wine, his voice dropping into a sleazy, authoritative drawl. “With a digital woman of that tier, you only need to drag her to a bedchamber once, and her AI will automatically become perfectly compliant and obedient to your whims.”
The foul sentence was instantly met with a chorus of crude, enthusiastic cheers from the other players around the table.
Shen San stood frozen in the corner of his booth, his jaw clenched so tightly the bone audibly popped. Through the narrow slats of the decorative screen, his cold, unblinking glare locked onto the silhouette of the speaker.
The vile, degrading garbage pouring from their mouths was physically revolting.
Channelling his maximum physical attributes into his limbs, his fists clenched into white-knuckled blocks, and he brought his massive boot slamming forward.
Crash!
The heavy wooden partition screen exploded into a shower of flying splinters.
“Ah! Help! Murder!”
“Young Master Fu! Release his throat! If you maintain that chokehold, his character model will experience total systemic collapse!”
“Young Master Lu was merely indulging in casual locker-room banter! Do not take a common joke so seriously, My Lord!”
Spit!
Lu Renjia violently spat a mouthful of blood and wine onto the floorboards, his features twisting into a venomous, panicked sneer as he struggled against the giant’s grip. “What?! Have I struck a nerve?! Are you seriously throwing a tantrum over a literal line of text?!”
“Shut your pathetic mouth! Show some basic, civilized respect to women, you uneducated swine!” Shen San roared, his mind entirely consumed by a blinding, protective fury on behalf of his master. Yet, even in the middle of a violent rampage, a hardcoded instinct warned him to protect her privacy at all costs, preventing him from explicitly naming her. Left with no outlet, his rage devolved into a chaotic, incoherent torrent of furious insults. “Why are you displaying such absolute, primitive ignorance?! Were you manufactured in a factory?! Did your household skip your basic socialization protocols?!”
He was practically vibrating with pure, unadulterated rage. He loathed his own negligence; he had failed to execute proper background sweeps, blindly routing an absolute piece of human garbage directly to his master’s table!
Within seconds, the entire second floor of the tavern devolved into absolute, chaotic pandemonium. Shrieks of terror, shattered porcelain, the heavy thuds of flesh-striking bone, and frantic demands for intervention mingled into a deafening roar. The surrounding diners immediately abandoned their meals, swarming the perimeter of the broken booth to curiously spectate the high-level brawl.
Seated at a secluded corner table on the exact same floor, Lu Yunxi slowly laid her chopsticks down onto the lacquer tray, her eye twitching in profound, silent speechlessness.
As the absolute strongest entity currently piloting a vessel on this server, her passive grandmaster auditory tracking had seamlessly intercepted every single syllable of Lu Renjia’s vile commentary from the very beginning. But before her own programming could even process the insult to generate an appropriate response, a violent explosion had rocked the adjacent suite, and her giant apprentice had already launched a lethal, close-quarters assault.
Utilizing the chaotic distraction while the crowd’s attention was locked onto the brawl, she smoothly reached into her inventory, pulling a heavy, hooded traveling cloak over her features to mask her identity.
Glancing back one final time to watch Shen San systematically pummel the arrogant suitor within an inch of a forced respawn, she shook her head in dark amusement. Activating her lightness skills, she transformed into a phantom, gliding through the open window and vanishing silently into the capital’s skyline.
