After the water friends for the match had gathered, w.a.n.g Ling registered his game ID, and his character"s name was as simple and blunt as ever: HHXX (short for "Good Good Study").
Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal had already prepared this account in advance. w.a.n.g Ling had initially planned to buy one himself. In fact, it wasn"t too expensive: the standard retail price online was ninety-eight HNY... However, compared with w.a.n.g Ling"s expenditure on games in general, this ninety-eight HNY was already a huge expense for him.
Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal was quite considerate. When he had played this game before, he had thought that playing alone wasn"t interesting, so he had bought one hundred accounts at one go with the intention of sending them to people and pulling them into the pit to play together. In fact, he had an account that had been specially prepared for w.a.n.g Ling.
He had felt that there would come a day when he would be able to play a game with w.a.n.g Ling...
Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal felt that this was a lifetime achievement as well as a blessing.
In ancient times, people became friends over drinks; when meeting close friends in particular, they were certain to drink a few jugs of wine. But this wasn"t the style for current cultivators; the most convenient way to make friends now was on social networking platforms. When the "eating chicken" game became popular, there had been some ridicule online about how modern cultivators made friends: once, it was over a thousand cups of wine; now, it was finding a place to lay low together...
In the villa"s bas.e.m.e.nt, Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal had an office with five or six computers. These were for work, and weren"t as good as computers for gaming, but they could already be said to be the fighter planes of work computers – running a game like "eating chicken" on it completely wasn"t a problem.
Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal sat next to w.a.n.g Ling, his face wreathed in smiles. "Brother Ling, do you know the keyboard controls?"
"Mm." w.a.n.g Ling nodded. He had just spent two seconds looking at them.
The door to the office was open, and Little Silver sat on the broccoli sofa outside the office, unmoving and clearly nervous. From this angle he could just see w.a.n.g Ling"s back.
"Want to ask Master about forming the contract?"
Little Silver was at a loss, and also a little afraid that acting too impudently would backfire.
When people felt conflicted, it was inevitable that they would become nervous, and when they were nervous, everyone had different ways of getting rid of their nerves. For Little Silver, the most common way was to eat...
Earlier, Little Silver had been studying different ways to make crispy noodle snacks. In the end, when he looked at w.a.n.g Ling, he somehow felt nervous, and as soon as he felt nervous, he unconsciously opened the crispy noodle snack packet he was holding and took a bite without even sprinkling the seasoning over it.
Crunch!
It was just a very light crunch sound, but it still drew w.a.n.g Ling"s attention.
Little Silver abruptly noticed that Master, who had initially been concentrating on the computer screen, suddenly turned his head!
He didn"t know if it was an illusion, but Little Silver somehow felt that Master"s eyes looked like they were s.h.i.+ning...
Little Silver instantly started to sweat copiously...
...
Elsewhere, the door to Father w.a.n.g"s study in the w.a.n.g family"s small villa was tightly shut. Mother w.a.n.g had come by earlier, and when she twisted the doork.n.o.b and realized that the door was locked, she walked away quietly. Father w.a.n.g"s door generally wasn"t locked. There was only one situation that Mother w.a.n.g could think of for it being locked, and that was that Father w.a.n.g was behind in his ma.n.u.script and was now typing frantically.
Therefore, Mother w.a.n.g didn"t bother him. Furthermore, Lie Mengmeng was also inside. Two people was better than one; the previous times when Father w.a.n.g had rushed his work, he would lock himself inside, and Mother w.a.n.g had been afraid that he would type himself to death. Nowadays, there were too many news reports about writers who stayed up all night typing before dying suddenly...
But even when that was the case, there were still some readers who liked to make trouble as they tried everything to make an author fall behind in their chapters so that they could make them wear women"s clothes as compensation! Mother w.a.n.g thought she was still pretty young at heart... but she really didn"t understand the crossdressing trend among young people nowadays.
After all, Father w.a.n.g was already quite old. How could a stoutly built man look good in women"s clothes?
But then again... Mother w.a.n.g suddenly thought that if it was w.a.n.g Ling who crossdressed, that wouldn"t be bad!
When w.a.n.g Ling had been very young, Mother w.a.n.g had in fact bought a set of girl"s clothes for him and dressed him up like a little girl... almost every parent had done this.
Mother w.a.n.g remembered that she had taken a picture of him at that time...
"Where did I put the picture of Ling Ling dressed in girl"s clothes as a child?"
At the door of the study, Mother w.a.n.g cupped her chin in her hand as she pondered. Then she headed for the bedroom on the third floor.
Suddenly thinking about this matter, Mother w.a.n.g immediately decided to find the picture...
...
In the study, Lie Mengmeng breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Mother w.a.n.g"s footsteps leave.
"Has she gone?"
Father w.a.n.g asked after taking off his headphones and turning his head.
"Yes... but bro... you"re still behind in your chapters. Should you really be doing this?"
"It"s fine, I"ve been in really good shape recently; I"ll finish the backlog in a while. This is a rare water friends match, playing now is more important."
"If you want to play, do it honestly... but you"re hiding it from sis..."
Lie Mengmeng looked guiltily at the door, somehow feeling that this was very immoral behavior.
"Men always have their little secrets. Although this Lord Island isn"t a female live streamer, I did give him some of my earnings in any case, in order to become his number one fan. If your sister finds out, she"ll definitely scold me for a long while."
There were many instances when Father w.a.n.g chose not to say anything to avoid causing some unnecessary misunderstandings. As for the money he had gifted to Lord Island, it was from his private stash; he handed over most of his author"s earnings to Mother w.a.n.g every month. Buying gifts was a trivial matter, but if his private stash came to light, the consequences would be truly unimaginable.
"But..."
When Lie Mengmeng thought about it, he still felt that this wasn"t right.
"No "buts." Brother Lie, you don"t understand..." Father w.a.n.g sighed. "You don"t have a girlfriend and you haven"t settled down, so it"s natural that you find it hard to understand. If you want your bro and sis to live their days peacefully, just act like you never saw this. Your sis and I have never really fought... at worst, she said she was leaving home, and then she disappeared."
Lie Mengmeng: "You didn"t go look for her?"
Father w.a.n.g: "What for... every time she says she"s leaving home, she hides under the sofa in the bas.e.m.e.nt... she said she was afraid I wouldn"t be able to find her."
Lie Mengmeng: "..."
Father w.a.n.g: "Then when I found her, we made up instantly, and she still kept asking me if I was hungry and whether she had to cook me a bowl of noodles..."
Lie Mengmeng: "..."
Father w.a.n.g hung his headphones around his neck and gazed at Lie Mengmeng, his words slightly imploring. "Apart from typing, I usually only watch live streams and play games for fun... can"t you keep quiet about this?"
Lie Mengmeng sighed. "Fine, I"ll keep quiet – but you have to type twenty thousand more words today."
Father w.a.n.g: "Four thousand."
Lie Mengmeng: "Twenty thousand!"
Father w.a.n.g gritted his teeth. "Eight thousand!!"
Lie Mengmeng: "Twenty thousand!! If you don"t agree, I"ll tell everyone you"re a fan of "Three Days And Two Sleeps"!"
"Fine, twenty thousand... you"re heartless!" Father w.a.n.g"s lips twitched as he looked at Lie Mengmeng.In Chinese, HHXX is the acronym of the pinyin for 好好学习 "hao hao xue xi."