Chapter 17 The Mission's Truth

The Cloud End City was drizzling again. Gu Fei and Xiao Yu hurried towards the Rebirth Purple Crystal guild office, Xiao Yu clutching her quest treasure chest tightly.

Of course, Yu Tian Shen Ming wasn't happy to hand over the treasure chest so easily. But the problem was that Xiao Yu was less than 10 centimeters away from him. He was an archer who needed to keep his distance to have an advantage, while Xiao Yu was a warrior whose explosive power was more terrifying the closer she got.

The only way to create distance was to go left, right, or backwards. At the time, Yu Tian Shen Ming's left was Gu Fei, his right was Fei Lian, and behind him was the bottomless Cloud Suburb Lake. More importantly, the treasure chest was no longer in his hands...

In the end, everyone went their separate ways, and the treasure chest remained in the hands of whoever had it originally. Everyone tacitly forgot about the whole thing.

Inside the Rebirth Purple Crystal office, the oppressive atmosphere made Gu Fei feel suffocated. He went to the window alone and pushed open the two sashes.

The women all wore unpleasant expressions, none of them improved by the fact that Xiao Yu had brought back the treasure chest. The blow they had suffered was too great. Of the seven groups that went out, apart from Gu Fei and Xiao Yu's combination, all the others were wiped out. Xiao Yu had only managed to call out "July and Luo Luo," taking them as representative figures.

The first guild mission suffered such a major blow, it was truly heartbreaking. Gu Fei could vaguely understand what they were thinking. All along, online games had been dominated by male players, and female players were mostly just decorative. These girls gathered together, perhaps wanting to prove something, but unfortunately, they had a bad start.

After accumulating for so long, someone was bound to explode! Gu Fei calculated, thinking of someone like...

"Too despicable!" The first to explode, just as Gu Fei expected, was the fighter named Lie Lie. She kicked a bench away, slammed the table, and started cursing: "If you have the guts, fight fair and square! What's with the backstabbing!"

She babbled and cursed for almost ten minutes, and Gu Fei managed to gather that she had been instantly killed by a rogue's ambush, not even seeing what the other person looked like. She was now strongly condemning the other party for not being honorable.

Gu Fei, who had just engaged in an act of ambushing himself, could only scoff at this.

He also preferred face-to-face confrontation, but he didn't despise ambushes as comprehensively as Lie Lie did. He even thought that ambushing was a higher level of skill, requiring one to study the opponent's psychology, grasp the timing of the attack, and deliver a fatal blow. Compared to defeating an opponent head-on, the technique of launching a fatal ambush was only more demanding.

Lie Lie's outburst stirred the emotions of the other women, and a lively discussion unfolded. Gu Fei struggled to extract useful information from it. The most frequent word he heard was "instant kill."

Of the 12 girls who went out, 11 were instantly killed, and the other was incidentally killed. The reason was that the enemy warrior's Whirlwind Slash wasn't aimed at her, but she rushed up wanting to support her sisters, and ended up being caught in it.

The next most frequent words after instant kill were: backstab, whirlwind slash, snipe.

Although the girls' levels weren't high, it wasn't easy to instantly kill a player. Combining what he and Xiao Yu had encountered with Yu Tian Shen Ming, three names came to Gu Fei's mind corresponding to these three frequent words: Jian Gui, Zhan Wu Shang, and Yu Tian Shen Ming.

Yu Tian Shen Ming could instantly kill ordinary characters as easily as breathing. Jian Gui and Zhan Wu Shang, he believed, would only be stronger.

Originally, with Jian Gui's earth-shattering and ghost-weeping appearance, he would have been easy to describe. But because the rogue launched backstabs after stealthing, the girls who died at his hands had no idea what he looked like.

Gu Fei's head was starting to hurt. If this was true, he was really caught in the middle.

Emotionally, Gu Fei leaned more towards the mercenary group. After all, he felt that there was no way he could integrate into this all-girl guild. If it weren't for some minimum number requirement, Gu Fei would have left long ago. But, setting aside emotions and looking at it rationally, it wasn't a matter of right or wrong. It was entirely the system's quest design that had thrown the two sides into opposition.

It seemed that the system had issued two quests simultaneously. One was to require the guild to retrieve the treasure chest; and the other was to protect the treasure chest. And Gu Fei was lucky enough to have joined the two teams on opposing sides of this quest.

But right now, it was just speculation. He needed to find out if it really was them before saying anything. Thinking this, Gu Fei suddenly stood up: "I need to take care of something, I'll be back later."

"Chatter chatter chatter..." The women continued to discuss, not paying any attention to Gu Fei, and not even hearing him speak.

Gu Fei smiled self-deprecatingly, turned around, and walked towards the door.

"Where are you going?" someone suddenly asked.

Gu Fei turned his head and saw that it was Xiao Yu who had called out to him, and his heart warmed. She really was a good friend, even though she was a bit silly. She was the only one who remembered him. He smiled faintly and said, "I thought of something, I'll be back later." After saying that, he opened the door and left the guild.

Only then did the women notice Gu Fei's departure. They remembered that Gu Fei and Xiao Yu had successfully brought back a chest, and they hurriedly surrounded Xiao Yu, asking her all sorts of questions...

After leaving the guild, Gu Fei opened his friend list and saw that all five members of the mercenary group were online. Gu Fei remembered that since the day he met Jian Gui, he had never seen him offline. A master was a master!

Naturally, Gu Fei was more familiar with Jian Gui than the others, so he naturally turned to him to understand the situation.

"Where are you?" Gu Fei sent a message.

"Little Lei's Bar," Jian Gui replied.

Little Lei's Bar wasn't far from here, just a couple of streets away. Gu Fei hurried towards it.

He greeted Little Lei at the door and went straight to the private room that the group usually used. He opened the curtain and was immediately stunned. Not only was Jian Gui there, but Han Jia Gongzi and You Ge were also there.

"Qian Li is here!" You Ge greeted Gu Fei.

"Rare guest, rare guest! Have a seat!" Han Jia Gongzi still started by teasing him.

Gu Fei smiled and didn't say anything. Jian Gui moved over to make room for him, indicating for him to sit.

"Where are Wu Shang and Yu Tian?" Gu Fei asked.

"Who knows, probably leveling up!" Jian Gui said.

"You bunch of leveling fanatics completely don't understand how to enjoy life. You must understand, we come to play games to elevate our lives, to have our empty and lonely spirits perfectly repaired. That is the enjoyment of beauty," Han Jia Gongzi said.

"Is he drunk?" Gu Fei asked Jian Gui.

Jian Gui lowered his head, rubbed his temples, and said, "No, he's just like that."

Gu Fei looked at Jian Gui with sympathy and continued to ask the three of them, "Do you guys have any quests today?"

Han Jia Gongzi smiled lightly while holding his wine glass: "Ordinary quests aren't worth our time."

"What kind of ordinary quests?" Gu Fei quickly asked.

"Go look at the mercenary guild yourself!" Han Jia Gongzi said.

"Didn't you accept any quests?"

"Didn't I say they were all quests not worth our time?" Han Jia Gongzi said impatiently.

Gu Fei was somewhat stunned. So, it wasn't the mercenary group that attacked Rebirth Purple Crystal! Gu Fei breathed a sigh of relief. The best thing was that he didn't have to be stuck in the middle. As for who exactly did the attacking, Gu Fei didn't care. Online games were just about fighting and killing all day long. Besides, the system had forced these two groups together, they didn't have any real hatred or resentment. In the end, Rebirth Purple Crystal was just less skilled, failed their mission, and the other party succeeded.

If these girls still planned to take revenge, that was a story for later, and he didn't need to consider it for the time being. Besides, it was still a question of whether they would even include him!

Relaxed, Gu Fei lifted the curtain and called out, "Little Lei, bring me a drink!"

Gu Fei's happy expression confused the other three. Han Jia Gongzi said unhappily, "Looking at you, it's like you're happy that you didn't get a quest?"

"No, it's not because of that," Gu Fei quickly said.

"Then what is it?" Han Jia Gongzi said, "You've been acting strange ever since you came in."

"How am I being strange?" Gu Fei asked.

"You look like you're only here when you have something important to say," Han Jia Gongzi said.

"Not at all!" Gu Fei quickly said, "I just came to hang out with everyone!" Gu Fei didn't want to reveal the truth, because that meant he would have to say that he had joined "Rebirth Purple Crystal." Gu Fei wasn't Fireball, hanging out with a group of girls wasn't something he considered a good thing, but something he was very embarrassed to talk about.

"Hang out? We're not even that familiar," Han Jia Gongzi said.

"Damn, you're being too direct!" Gu Fei said, feeling dejected. Indeed, they had only known each other for less than three days, and this was only their third meeting. But saying those words so bluntly was a bit immature.

Over there, Jian Gui shook his head again and said, "No, he's just like that."

"Jian Gui, speak up!" Han Jia Gongzi slammed the table.

Jian Gui shook his head again: "Hey, I'm just like that."

Gu Fei finally realized that something was also wrong with Jian Gui, and said blankly, "What's going on here?"

You Ge smiled bitterly: "Can't you tell? They're both drunk."

"Damn!" Gu Fei said dejectedly, "If they're both drunk, why are you wasting your time with them?"

"They won't let me leave! Look at them, one on the left, one on the right," You Ge said with a wry smile.

Gu Fei stood up: "Jian Gui, Little Lei wants you to go get some wine!"

"Oh, coming!" Jian Gui got up and staggered out.

"Let's go!" Gu Fei jerked his head towards You Ge.

"That's all it took?" You Ge sighed.

"Perfect, I have something I want to ask you," Gu Fei walked out of the private room with You Ge and found a seat to sit down in the bar.