51. First Collaboration

Li Nuo clicked a few times. "It really is ten thousand..."

He walked over to the window and watched Dr. Xu leave through the main gate of the residential complex, his shining bald head particularly striking.

Li Nuo had a feeling that Dr. Xu might actually leave Cairo Hospital.

All along, the reputation and money this dedicated doctor earned in his workplace were pitifully small compared to his overwhelming sense of responsibility.

Regardless of how yesterday's strange-talk scenario had ended, now that Dr. Xu had made his choice, Li Nuo could do nothing more than offer him his blessing.

He put the money into a drawer and locked it securely.

Then, he set up a simple tripwire trap around the drawer handle, with the other end connected to a knife.

The moment a thief opened the drawer, the tensioned thread would rebound at the limit, springing out the blade hidden behind the radiator pipe.

Usually, it wouldn't kill anyone; he had tested it.

In addition, the industrial nail gun he had asked a "friend" to buy under a fake business name had also arrived today.

Along with his homemade chili spray, he no longer needed to worry about home invasions in the real world.

Finally, he returned to his computer desk, temporarily placing the collected Witcher information into a folder. Taking advantage of the inspiration surge brought by the strange-talk scenario he had just experienced the previous night, he took out pen and paper and began drawing manga.

It was currently noon, and the weather outside was bright and breezy.

Truth be told, for a young man like him to work at home right in the middle of the day was inevitably a waste of life.

But here was the question.

Did Li Nuo have any other social life during the day besides work?

No.

No social life, no friends, no clients—he was a proud member of the "three-nothings."

In Aunt Wang's words, if this young fellow knew how to make use of his apartment and rented out one of the rooms, he might even have a child or two before he died.

After recovering, Li Nuo hadn't failed to consider renting out one of the rooms in the two-bedroom apartment, but it was just a fleeting thought; his work required him to frequently enter a state of complete detachment, and having an extra person at home would disrupt the flow of his inspiration.

What is considered an eccentric? This was the definition.

Having fully recovered from a severe illness, he clearly had the opportunity to live a better life yet chose not to, all for the sake of an intangible "inspiration."

Aside from that, there was another reason: he loathed forming new interpersonal relationships, hating it from the very bottom of his heart.

Looking on the bright side, as long as he didn't starve, life was quite cozy.

Moreover, his reputation among the elderly community was exceptionally good.

He could chat with a group of retired old men and women for an entire day, and five months ago, he even became the deputy president of the residential complex's senior chess activity center...

At the time, a neighborhood committee aunt had even taken him to a toddler nursery class to serve as a substitute teacher. In that aunt's words, he was a pen-wielding artist, and having him tell the children how he overcame illness to become a manga artist would be entirely beneficial and harmless to the kids.

This reasoning successfully fooled the neighborhood director and some of the parents.

Until after school, when parents heard their children say, "Zhu Bajie pulled the Carrot of Damocles from behind Jia Baoyu before gathering the courage to go find Chang'e to exchange it for his Li Kui," the nursery's complaint hotline was almost blown off the hook that very evening.

Li Nuo later even incorporated these events into his manga.

In short, Li Nuo's plan for today was to finish the next few days' worth of work while the inspiration was still flowing; time flies when a person is focused on a single task.

The entire afternoon slipped away in the blink of an eye. During dinner, he summarized the data on *The Witcher* and engraved it into his memory.

Then he sat on the sofa, closed his eyes, and entered the "Endless Corridor."

Inside the space, he noticed Chabai resting her eyes on a rocking chair. As he walked over, Chabai opened her eyes and said somewhat disappointedly, "Sleeping still doesn't seem to be a necessity for me. I can only enter two hours of light sleep, and then I'm still as energetic as ever."

Li Nuo thought to himself, *I'm so envious of you... If I could turn off the sleep function, I'd turn myself into a robot in a heartbeat...*

Chabai got up from the rocking chair. Because she lacked her left hand, her movements were still slightly uncoordinated, causing her to cast a hesitant glance at her severed limb.

"When you controlled me to slash the target with the knife yesterday, my coordination was obviously a bit awkward." She stood up and leisurely stretched her arms. "Whatever, though. You get used to it."

Just putting up a tough front.

After nearly a month of getting along, Li Nuo understood this artificial human thoroughly enough.

This woman was the quintessential type whose mouth said no while her psychological activities were as dramatic as scaling mountains.

At least Chabai's eyes now held a hue of what could be called "ease," making Li Nuo feel that turning her into a "player" had been the right decision.

As mentioned earlier, Li Nuo hated making new interpersonal relationships, but interacting with Chabai didn't cause him any internal resistance at all. Perhaps it was because they were both players, or perhaps because she was simple enough.

"By the way..." Chabai walked toward the reward pool and said casually, "There's a new message in the mailbox. I didn't look at it; I was waiting for you."

Li Nuo acknowledged her and watched as Chabai fished a kitchen knife out of the [Probability System]'s reward pool.

Before the strange-talk scenario began last night, Chabai had also found a handy weapon and deposited it into the [Probability System]. It was worth mentioning that she lacked the attribute of a spendthrift, so she had only invested 200 gold coins.

[Screaming Kitchen Knife]

[Quality: Common]

[Durability: 100/100]

[Description: Compared to an ordinary kitchen knife, it is still an ordinary kitchen knife. When using it to cut vegetables or chop meat, it will emit corresponding and fitting wails according to the state of the chopped object. As the wails become more intense, the blade will accumulate a bloody critical strike. Once the blade turns red, the power of the next slash will have no trouble cleaving through steel.]

As a weapon of Common quality, it met expectations, and the accompanying bloody critical strike was average at best.

For a Level 20 player, a kitchen knife that required hacking through a crowd of people to trigger a critical hit was far less useful than just using a gun from the start.

However, Chabai was quite satisfied with this kitchen knife. Compared to ranged weapons, she preferred close-combat weapons, especially bladed ones—for no other reason than that the interactivity was better.

Li Nuo ignored her, walked over to the tombstone, and clicked on the mail. It was a message from Marger:

[I've discovered a signal from *The Witcher* world. Do you have any rotten ideas on how to get into *The Witcher*? I want to play as a sorceress.]

"Big brother... The first half was normal, why did the second half start getting weird..." Li Nuo's brow twitched. For twenty years growing up, Marger was the only person who could turn him into a straight-man sidekick.

Speaking seriously, given the vast worldview of *The Witcher*, the problems faced there might be even more troublesome than those in *Nier*.

Therefore, he happened to need a friend to trigger the related content of *The Witcher*. Originally, Li Nuo's plan was to trick Marger or Chen Shou into visiting the Cairo Hospital crime scene in City K.

Now that it wasn't necessary, it was even better.

He then detailed the fact that he possessed a Conjunction of the Spheres invitation letter and sent it over via mail.

Marger immediately requested a face-to-face meeting to discuss it.

Players could invite each other into their respective spaces, but such an action was far too dangerous, which was why Li Nuo had always regarded it as a useless, chicken-rib option before formally establishing a team.

He had no idea what was going on inside Marger's head, but he was certain of one thing: among all the players he had met so far, Marger was "docile" beyond compare. He was a guy who looked neurotic on the surface, but was extremely rational at his core, and he would absolutely never engage in gratuitously threatening behavior toward any target.

"Are we going?" Chabai squatted behind him, holding the kitchen knife, and asked.

Li Nuo thought for a moment and said, "Let's upgrade our gear before we go over."

(Apologies, revised it several times, posted late.)