Chapter 1 When a Cat Comes Knocking

It was two in the afternoon when the intercom rang, waking Feng Bujue, who felt groggy and irritable.

Although he'd taken the cat to the pet clinic for a bath that morning, he'd been busy for over half an hour after getting home before he could finally rest. He hadn't even taken off his clothes before collapsing into bed, and it had only been six hours since then.

Dazedly, he walked to the door, picked up the intercom receiver, and asked, "Who is it?"

"It's me," Wang Tanzhi replied. "Bao-daren is here too."

"Is the door open?" Feng Bujue pressed the door release button and asked with a yawn.

"Yeah, yeah, it's open. We'll talk when we get up there."

A minute or so after the call ended, the two of them arrived by elevator. They walked down the hallway and rang Feng Bujue's doorbell. The latter peered out through the peephole and opened the door. Without greeting them, he turned and headed for the sofa.

Wang Tanzhi and the "Bao-daren" didn't stand on ceremony. They casually closed the door, put the pizza and a case of beer on the coffee table, and went into Feng Bujue's kitchen to get plates and chopsticks.

"Eh? Jue-ge, when did you get a cat?" Wang Tanzhi quickly spotted the little calico napping in the corner of the sofa.

"Didn't you see the sandbox in the corner? I'm raising it," Feng Bujue said sleepily as he twisted open a bottle of beer. He swished it around in his mouth like mouthwash, then swallowed...

"When did you start raising cats again?" Wang Tanzhi asked as he crept towards the little calico.

"This morning," Feng Bujue burped and said. "Don't think it's really sleeping. Cats are very alert animals. They seem to sleep for more than ten hours a day, but if there's any slight movement around them, their ears will twitch slightly. This indicates..."

Just as Xiao Tan was about to grab the little calico, the latter suddenly opened its eyes, darted forward, turned a corner, and slipped behind the sofa. Xiao Tan, on the other hand, lost his balance due to leaning forward and stumbled.

"Why did you suddenly think of raising a cat again?" Bao-daren returned from the kitchen with plates and napkins, waved his hand, and urged Xiao Tan to sit down on the sofa. He sat down as well.

His name was Bao Qing, but he was only a few months older than the other two, a year older at most. The three of them had been classmates from kindergarten to middle school, and Bao Qing had been called Bao-daren since elementary school. The problem was... he wasn't dark-skinned at all, no one in his family had ever been an official, and he had never been a class leader when he was in school.

Who would have thought that Bao-daren would actually become a "daren" when he grew up? He was twenty-five years old this year, a civil servant working in a public institution, and his daughter was already two and a half years old. Compared to these two bachelors, he was much more stable. Bao-daren's characteristic was that he always had a "melancholy" look on his face since he was a child, and it was even worse after he got married. He had a permanent sour expression.

"It's fate between me and that cat," Feng Bujue replied. "Go with the flow."

Both of them used the word "again" when asking their questions, because they both knew that Feng Bujue had raised a cat when he was a child. Back then, an old woman next door had a mother cat that gave birth to four kittens. She gave one to Feng Bujue, and he raised it for thirteen years. The kitten became an old cat, and finally died of old age. The child grew into an adult and buried the old cat with his own hands.

"Did you name it?" Wang Tanzhi asked excitedly.

"Arthas," Feng Bujue replied very calmly, as if the name wasn't blurted out but had been thought about long ago.

"Pfft..." Bao-daren immediately spat out a mouthful of beer. "Even if you don't want Xiao Tan to get involved in naming it, you should make up a more ordinary name, like Kule, Mike, or something..."

Feng Bujue snapped his fingers. "Arthas."

The little calico actually turned its head and meowed.

"See, it fits perfectly," Feng Bujue said, pointing at Arthas's cat face.

"I'm going to post it online," Xiao Tan said, taking out his phone.

"Wait," Feng Bujue put down his beer, went to the window, and opened the curtains. Then, he picked up Arthas, who hadn't had time to escape.

Feng Bujue's hands went under the cat's armpits, lifting the cat up so its face was turned away from him. He straightened his arms, raised the cat high in the sunlight, imitating the scene on Pride Rock from the opening of The Lion King, and said a line that had nothing to do with it.

"My son... the day you were born, the very forests of Lordaeron whispered the name... Arthas..." Feng Bujue said in a serious, deep voice.

Wang Tanzhi, holding his phone, aimed it at the bewildered-looking cat and took a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree video.

"What the hell are you guys doing! How old are you this year! Is this a daily routine for men with middle-school syndrome?!"

After being scolded by Bao-daren, the two sat back on the sofa. Arthas slipped onto a cushion and continued to nap.

"How come Bao-daren has time this week?" Feng Bujue asked.

"My wife took our daughter back to her parents' house," Bao-daren replied comfortably, taking a sip of beer.

"Permanent or temporary?" Feng Bujue asked again.

"Nonsense! How could it be permanent! My mother-in-law just wanted to see her granddaughter," Bao-daren almost choked.

"You look so relieved..." Feng Bujue said.

Wang Tanzhi interrupted them. He picked up the remote control and asked, "What's the theme for this week?"

"Bad movie marathon," Feng Bujue replied.

"Huh?" Wang Tanzhi turned his head.

Feng Bujue said, "That's right, that's it. We discussed it last time. There are so many notoriously bad movies that have stood the test of time and become the bottom line in the film industry, and we haven't seen any of them."

"Okay... let me see..." Wang Tanzhi used the remote control to browse the available streaming programs on TV.

Whenever the three of them had time to get together, they would come up with a theme and watch movies for more than ten hours straight. As for the films they watched, most of them were works from the late twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. After that, as computer shooting technology became more and more mature, and with the popularity of fifth-generation computers, it was basically impossible to find too many bad films. In the future, no matter how bad a movie was, at least the picture and sound effects could embellish it.

"How about *Ghost Rider*?" Wang Tanzhi asked.

"Do you know *Daredevil*?" Feng Bujue said.

"Yeah... I've seen it," Wang Tanzhi replied.

"Same director," Feng Bujue said.

"Okay..." Wang Tanzhi searched again, "Look at this, *The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2*. Wow, there are actually seven movies in this series." (There were two more in 2055.)

"Haven't seen a single one," Bao-daren shrugged.

"I remember this movie swept seven out of the ten awards at the Golden Raspberry Awards that year. Twenty years later, it was rated as one of the three most dominant bad movies of the early twenty-first century," Feng Bujue said.

"I'm curious what the other two are... don't tell me it's the other installments in this series," Bao-daren said.

"No, it's *Battlefield Earth* and *Jack and Jill*. The latter swept all the Golden Raspberry Awards in 2012," Feng Bujue said. "I've only heard of them, but never seen them. Why don't we watch these three today?"

"Whatever." "Agreed," Xiao Tan and Bao-daren replied.

Two hours later...

"Are you guys okay?" Bao-daren asked, looking at the end credits rising on the big screen.

Wang Tanzhi looked at the floor with a gloomy expression. "I feel like I've lost something important..."

Feng Bujue stared blankly at the sunlight outside the window. "These were the most humiliating two hours of my life. My brain has been raped..."

"There's still a science fiction movie and a comedy movie next... let's watch the comedy first," Bao-daren's sour face was extremely serious.

Ninety minutes later...

"Al Pacino ruined his reputation in his later years," Wang Tanzhi said.

"The acting is beyond criticism, but the plot is really..." Feng Bujue said, "Bao-daren, what do you think?"

No one answered.

"Bao-daren? Bao..." Feng Bujue turned his head and found that Bao-daren had fallen asleep with his eyes open, snoring softly.

"That despicable civil servant..."

Around six or seven o'clock, the three of them went to a roadside stall and ate some unclean barbecue. Jue-ge and Xiao Tan told Bao-daren about their recent experiences in Thriller Paradise, but Bao-daren said he wasn't interested. A man with a family has a hard life and doesn't have much personal space or leisure time. The three of them chatted for a few hours and broke up around nine o'clock. Feng Bujue and Wang Tanzhi agreed to go online and grind a few scripts at midnight, and then they went their separate ways.

The friendship between these three was hard-won and very sincere. When they were young, they were all snotty, silly little kids, and that kind of friendship is the purest. Even when they look back at these friends in their fifties or sixties, this feeling in their hearts will never change.

…………

He hadn't slept enough during the day, and considering that he had to log into the game, Feng Bujue lay down in the game pod at midnight. After the scan was completed, he selected sleep mode to log in and set the connection time.

[Access type is sleep mode, adjusting... adjustment completed, please set the loading time for the game or return to the previous option.]

[Setting completed, the connection program will start at 1:00 AM on April 6, 2055. Good night.]

After listening to the voice prompt, Feng Bujue closed his eyes. The game pod was very comfortable, and with a little bit of drunkenness, he quickly fell asleep.

When he regained consciousness, he was standing in that familiar elevator. The screen on the wall showed the current real-world time, April 6, 1:00 AM, but the digital clock didn't show seconds. And it felt like several minutes had passed, but the time hadn't jumped to 1:01, so this was clearly Thriller Paradise in sleep mode.

Wang Tanzhi's team invitation popped up on the screen. After joining the team, Feng Bujue noticed that Long Aomin was also in the team. Xiao Tan had seen that the other party was idle and had invited him in.

"Jue-ge, something big has happened!" Wang Tanzhi said as soon as he spoke.

"Has someone already reached level 20?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Eh? You already know?"

"Just guessing from your tone."

"Hehe... Brother Feng is indeed a brilliant strategist," Long Aomin said. "Around twelve thirty real-world time, the server's first level 20 player was born."

Feng Bujue glanced at the team frame. In just one day, Long Aomin had already reached level thirteen, and Xiao Tan had also reached level eleven. He must have logged in about ten minutes early and grinded a single-player script to level up.

"Will there be an announcement in the game for the first player to reach max level?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Yeah, all the players in the login space will hear the system prompt, and this news will appear on the touchscreen. Besides, the forums are already exploding," Long Aomin said.

"Let me see..." Feng Bujue opened the forum and found the official pinned post, the title of which read: [Congratulations to "Brave and Fearless" belonging to the "Order" studio for becoming the first player to reach the level cap during the closed beta phase]