“I’m saying, Big Shot... you’re not actually into lolis, are you?”

As Tianzheng got up and picked the right angle to cross the floating bridge ahead, Bai Xia wasn’t so scared that she couldn’t even open her eyes. She just didn’t have much confidence she could make it across. It wasn’t really terror. At most, she was worried she’d get distracted, lose her balance, and fall into the abyss.

So while Tianzheng was making his way across, she still had the spare brainpower to think about other things.

And the result was that the man’s foot slipped. He almost stepped into empty air and dragged her down into the chasm with him.

After barely steadying himself, even Tianzheng felt a trace of cold sweat form on his forehead.

Seeing him react so strongly, Bai Xia actually laughed. She teased, “Wow, that big of an emotional reaction? Don’t tell me I actually nailed it?”

“Why do you like calling me Big Shot so much?”

With a sigh, Tianzheng picked his angle, gave a slight burst forward, and jumped onto the next stone. It looked like he was changing the subject... and he absolutely was changing the subject.

Of course, he really was curious too. Bai Xia had been calling him Big Shot this whole time, but Tianzheng considered himself nothing more than a very ordinary player.

Bai Xia didn’t care that he was obviously dodging the topic. She tilted her head. “Then what should I call you, Big Shot? Onii-chan?”

“Mm, sure, call me Onii-chan... Alright, I’m joking. Move the knife away from my neck.”

Bai Xia gave a light huff before obediently moving her weapon away. But she firmly protested this shameless inch-taking behavior, so she said with a hint of malice, “Big Shot, you really are a perverted lolicon. You actually want me to call you Onii-chan!”

“...Wasn’t that your suggestion? And how is being a lolicon perverted? No, wait, when did I become a lolicon?”

“Your whole body is covered in the words ‘total—’ pfft, ‘lolicon’!”

Don’t think I didn’t catch that, Tianzheng thought, caught between laughter and exasperation. Still, he didn’t take it seriously. Instead, he changed tack. “Do you really want me to be a lolicon that badly?”

“No. I’d much rather you were gay—wah! You actually pinched my butt!”

Before she could finish, she felt a hard pinch on her backside. Bai Xia’s expression changed instantly. Then she heard the man say in an extremely calm tone, “I was only proving that my sexual orientation is perfectly normal. That’s all.”

“...As expected of Big Shot. Even when you’re acting like a hooligan, you make it sound classy.”

Bai Xia’s face was full of contempt. Tianzheng, however, wasn’t affected in the slightest. While bantering with her, he quickly crossed the dangerous-looking floating steps one by one, and landed on the other side with ease.

The moment his front foot touched down, Bai Xia jumped down right after him.

The instant her feet hit solid ground, the heart she’d been holding tight finally eased. In truth, part of the reason she’d been messing around with Tianzheng earlier was curiosity. More than that, though, she’d been trying to distract herself.

Of course, once she recovered, Bai Xia’s attention was quickly drawn to the ruins ahead.

What was inside?

No idea for now. But considering the system had warned them about unknown danger, they still had to stay alert at all times. This ruin had obviously existed for a very long time. No one could say what might suddenly pop out from inside. Even if a Godzilla suddenly jumped out and stomped them flat, it wouldn’t be that strange.

With the resolve to die if necessary, Bai Xia and Tianzheng approached the ruined complex.

But they were destined to be disappointed.

The system had warned them there might be danger here, yet as they moved forward, they didn’t see a single thing that could be called a threat.

Everywhere they looked, collapsed buildings filled their vision. Countless shattered swords and blades lay scattered among them, along with broken, rotting steel bolts and shell fragments buried deep in the earth...

This ruin seemed to have gone through a great war. It was scarred beyond recognition. And yet, bizarrely enough, there wasn’t a single corpse to be found. Not human, not any other race.

[Decayed Greatsword]: Unusable. Irreparable. A greatsword whose power has completely vanished and been consumed by time. Its only value is as proof of a glorious past.

Tianzheng picked up a ruined weapon from the ground. There even seemed to be traces of blood on it. But this once-divine weapon had now become nothing more than scrap metal.

Everything else around them was the same. Blade, sword, bow, crossbow, staff—it didn’t matter. They had all completely lost their power and held no value at all.

Bai Xia looked at it for a moment, then casually tossed it aside. Slightly dissatisfied, she said, “Don’t tell me this place is nothing but junk metal? No, wait, junk metal can at least be sold for money. This stuff is straight-up trash!”

“Let’s keep looking. Don’t let your guard down.”

Tianzheng swept his gaze over the scrap around them, then led Bai Xia deeper inside with caution.

But throughout the entire ruin, there were no monsters running wild like they’d imagined, and no traps hidden everywhere either. The place was so quiet it felt dead. It was as if, in this whole city, only he and Bai Xia were still alive.

They searched deeper for quite a while, and the result was still the same.

There was nothing here.

Inside the buildings, outside the buildings—other than the structures themselves and all kinds of random weapons and armor that could no longer be used, there was nothing else to be found.

“...What happened to the dungeon we were promised? Even if no divine weapons were left behind, there should at least be something valuable, right?”

Standing in the underground ruin, in a silence so eerie it felt wrong, Bai Xia’s initial excitement was now fading fast.

If everything in this so-called underground ruin had already been eroded into useless trash by time, then what was the point of risking so much to explore it? For fun? For sightseeing?

Still, the game’s official description of the ruins had only said they hid countless treasures from thousands of years ago. It hadn’t actually said you were guaranteed to find good stuff inside.

So maybe finding nothing here was normal...

Yeah right. This was obviously a scam.

Bai Xia hurled the corroded shield she’d picked up far away and felt a little pained. Though, of course, she didn’t have balls anymore.

That said, she hadn’t completely given up. There was no good loot in this destroyed half of the ruins, but wasn’t the other half still mostly intact? If there was nothing here, maybe the other side would have something.

That’s right. She had to stay optimistic.

So Bai Xia forced herself to perk up. Then she stopped wandering around the rubble and headed straight for the preserved half, following the route she’d seen earlier from above.

Tianzheng didn’t object. Compared to Bai Xia’s disappointment in the ruins, his mood was much steadier. Unlike the girl, who clearly had collector tendencies and was also a little money-grubber, he played games more to relax and have fun.

What he liked wasn’t just the rewards themselves.

More important were the adventures, the process, and the experiences along the way.

That was also why, in Tianzheng’s eyes, Otherworld was an incredibly charming game. It was practically filled with a kind of magic that pulled people in and made them sink deep into it.

And with the entire market currently monopolized by Otherworld alone, this game would definitely attract more and more players over time, then grow even more popular.

So... should he start planning something early?

He wasn’t a pure businessman, but somehow it felt like a waste for a game this interesting to be used only as a way to kill time.

While Bai Xia puffed up in frustration and took the lead, preparing to cross the ruins and explore the other side, Tianzheng was also lost in thoughts of his own.

—

—

The underground ruins were huge.

More accurately, they were absurdly huge.

So even though Bai Xia and Tianzheng walked in a straight line, several hours later they still hadn’t reached the other area.

In the end, seeing that it was already getting late, they had no choice but to log off for now and continue tomorrow.

At times like this, they really had to admit how inconvenient it was to have neither mounts nor teleport scrolls. But there was no helping it. They were still in the newbie village. No matter how far the road was, they could only rely on their own two legs.

After logging off, Bai Xia took off her helmet and was about to head to the bathroom when she realized it was raining outside.

And not lightly, either. The rain was heavy, with bursts of lightning and thunder that sounded pretty frightening.

Luckily, she hadn’t left any clothes or blankets out to dry, and the doors and windows were shut tight. So the storm outside had nothing to do with her. Still, with the rain came a deeper chill. Late autumn suddenly felt a little colder.

She had just finished washing up and was about to check the fridge for something to fill her stomach when the Tianxun she’d set aside suddenly rang.

“Hm?”

Blinking, she picked it up and put it on, only to realize someone was actually calling her.

A call?

Bai Xia froze for a moment. Her Tianxun was basically blank. She didn’t even have a single contact in it. In the past half month, the only messages she’d gotten were from delivery drivers.

And she definitely hadn’t ordered takeout in the middle of the night.

So it obviously couldn’t be a delivery call.

Wrong number?

“Huh... Unknown?”

When she opened the Tianxun, Bai Xia felt even stranger. The caller info on the other end was entirely listed as Unknown. Not just the name—even the Tianxun number wasn’t displayed. There were only two huge words: Unknown.

What was going on? Was her Tianxun broken?

After hesitating a little, Bai Xia still chose to answer. “Hello, who are you looking for?”

“...”

“Hello? Are you there?”

“...”

“Could you please say something...”

“...”

Silence.

Long, drawn-out silence.

Even Bai Xia, who was usually pretty expressionless in real life, couldn’t help frowning deeply now. “If you’re not going to talk, I’m hanging up.”

Still no response.

Bai Xia expressionlessly closed the call screen, looked at the strange contact with no number displayed, and tilted her head.

“So it really is broken?”

To be honest, even though she’d mostly figured out how to use the Tianxun over the past half month, she still didn’t really understand the thing all that well. It was fine when it worked, but the moment something went wrong, it became a real headache.

Still, after checking it a little, Bai Xia found that aside from that weird number just now, there didn’t seem to be anything else wrong with her Tianxun. Of course, since she had no other contacts, she couldn’t test whether the problem was specifically with calls.

“Whatever.”

Shaking her head, Bai Xia gave up trying to figure it out and tossed the weird incident to the back of her mind. Then, in her slippers, she headed for the fridge.

Compared to that random phone call, filling her stomach was obviously more important.