Chapter 91: Do You Like Me?

Yushu Jun looked at Wen Nan with a strange expression.

Realizing that what he had blurted out without thinking was a little ambiguous, Wen Nan gave a forceful cough, trying to cover his embarrassment. Then he lifted his hand and looked down at the pattern of command glowing in his palm.

The golden design still flickered on and off, breathing with light as it waited for Wen Nan’s response.

Before Wen Nan, a system prompt appeared that only he could see:

"Confirm binding?"

"Confirm" "Decline"

Wen Nan raised his hand, the tip of his finger hovering over the confirm button, yet his gaze passed beyond the floating screen and fell upon Yushu Jun’s face.

Yushu Jun still wore little expression, watching Wen Nan with apparent calm.

But Wen Nan had kept this little servant by his side long enough to know him well. From the slight crease between his brows, from the barely perceptible tightening at the corners of his mouth, Wen Nan could tell at once that he was nervous.

Nervous enough that even his usually flawless control of expression was slipping.

For a moment, Wen Nan’s finger suspended in the air could not bring itself to press down without restraint.

Curling his finger back in, Wen Nan looked at Yushu Jun and asked, "Jun Wuming... is that your player account?"

At the words, Yushu Jun’s expression nearly gave way.

Waiting for Wen Nan to press confirm, Yushu Jun had been like a student standing beside the lectern, tense and uneasy, waiting for the teacher to announce the exam score and hand back the paper so the heavy stone in his heart could finally fall, so he could return to his seat.

But this "teacher" had casually taken back the paper he had already handed over, and then, with serene indifference, asked: Have you eaten breakfast?

Why ask such an obvious and irrelevant question at a time like this?!

Yushu Jun’s face darkened further. His chest rose and fell once as he drew a deep breath, barely suppressing his anger, and forced out a single word through gritted teeth: "Yes."

Wen Nan took in the look on Yushu Jun’s face, and the corners of his mouth rose despite himself.

He did not fail to understand the frustration Yushu Jun was feeling now, but that tightly restrained expression, set upon a face too beautiful to be rendered even by a game model, was simply too vivid. It made Wen Nan want to be a little wicked, to tease him a little.

"How many levels are you? You must already be in gold, right?" Wen Nan asked with leisurely composure.

Yushu Jun clenched his teeth harder. The fingers resting on the sword hilt at his side pressed so tightly that the knuckles turned white. "No comment."

"So you can refuse to answer?" Wen Nan grew even more curious. "Then if I haven’t pressed confirm, your player account isn’t under my control?"

As he spoke, Wen Nan leaned a little closer. "Then what you just called me, ‘Master’... it wasn’t because you were compelled by my earlier command, but because... you like it yourself?"

The question was far too pointed.

Yushu Jun choked on it. His whole body stiffened; his lips tightened, and he said nothing.

That title had been shouted out on impulse by Yushu Jun just now, and even he had not noticed how naturally it had already come to his tongue.

But he would absolutely never admit such a thing.

Turning his head, he met Wen Nan’s eyes and shot back, "Teasing a player like me—do you think that’s amusing? Every minute you waste on me is one minute less on your remaining mission time."

That was true enough.

Wen Nan did not have much time left.

The hour he had arranged to go to the cinema with Guan Ailin was almost here, and at this moment, the woman lying on the bed stirred slightly, looking as if she might wake at any moment.

This was indeed no time for idle chatter and laughter.

But Wen Nan had not asked these things merely to tease Yushu Jun, nor was he wasting time.

There were some questions he genuinely wanted to understand, for instance—

"If I don’t press confirm, then your player account is free and not under my control, which means you didn’t actually have to rush here to help me, did you?"

Wen Nan’s smile faded somewhat, and the sudden solemnity in his expression made Yushu Jun pause.

Receiving no reply, Wen Nan took it as tacit agreement and continued:

"Just now, when Li Shuyi went berserk, I immediately used the command pattern to summon Yushu Jun, but the system prompt I got was ‘outside the responsive range.’ Why was it outside the responsive range?

"The level 3 golden pattern is the highest-tier command pattern. It has full-domain, full-frequency signal transmission privileges. Why then was the character Yushu Jun unable to receive my summons?

"Because you had already switched back to your player account, right?

"The player account called Jun Wuming had gone online, so the character account named Yushu Jun, which I was commanding, was in a logged-out state.

"This is a very special state. For the vast majority of players or characters who only have one account, it is more or less equivalent to dying inside a dungeon. Even the highest-grade golden command pattern wouldn’t be able to detect it; that’s perfectly normal.

"But for a rare special case like yours, one with two accounts, it was really nothing more than switching to another account."

Wen Nan’s reasoning was perfectly clear.

Yushu Jun’s eyes narrowed slightly. "What exactly are you trying to say?"

Wen Nan no longer bothered to circle around it and said directly:

"What I’m saying is, if you hadn’t appeared just now and I had failed the mission here, so that in the end I couldn’t make it out of this map, that wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing for you, would it?

"If I’m gone, the account named Yushu Jun regains its freedom.

"But you still came in time, not only giving up the freedom of the character account Yushu Jun, but even bringing the player account Jun Wuming to my doorstep as well?

"Why? Why would you do that?"

The crease returned between Yushu Jun’s brows. He said nothing.

Wen Nan leaned in a little farther, almost against his ear, and asked softly:

"You... couldn’t be in love with me, could you?"

Yushu Jun’s heart tightened; his face turned even worse. His fingers, gripping the sword hilt, strained so hard that they made a cracking sound.

"Don’t flatter yourself."

Wen Nan straightened up again and stepped back from him. Hearing that, he shrugged and said carelessly, "Just a joke. Why get so tense?"

Even if someone handed him the love of a pretty boy, he wouldn’t want it.

As they spoke, Li Shuyi slowly woke, sat up, and looked at the pair standing by the doorway, pressed close together and whispering to each other in a very intimate manner. Bewildered, she asked, "Night Nine? Who is this woman? Why is she in my house? You two... what is your relationship?"

The target character had already awakened; it was no longer appropriate for them to continue speaking so casually in whispers.

Yushu Jun lifted a foot and headed outside. "I won’t disturb your good time."

"Hey, wait."

Wen Nan reached out and caught his wrist. "Yushu Jun, or should I call you Jun Wuming?"

"Whatever you like." Yushu Jun stared toward the doorway, wanting nothing more than to leave as quickly as possible.

Wen Nan asked his final question: "Do you want me to press confirm?"

Yushu Jun’s expression shifted slightly. He turned back to look at Wen Nan. "If I say no, will you agree?"

Wen Nan shrugged. "You can try."

Yushu Jun only felt that this was yet another not-very-funny joke from the other side. Turning back, he pulled his hand free from Wen Nan’s palm and walked straight toward the doorway, tossing back a cold, "Whatever you like."

Just as he reached the door, a system prompt sounded in his mind—

Jun Xin: "Detected player Night Nine has successfully completed account binding. Your account will now obey the rules of the golden command pattern."

The matter was settled.

Yushu Jun shut his eyes tightly. It was hard to say what he felt at that moment.

...

At the very instant the golden command pattern lit up, every fragment of the divine staff scattered across the entire game map flashed with golden light at once.

The top-tier player Jun Wuming, who possessed a fragment of the Archmage’s divine staff, had his account commanded by some unknown passerby.

Within moments, the matter shook the six major guilds.

If nothing unexpected happened, there would be two updates every day at noon and midnight.

If something unexpected happened, then it would mean I got stuck in review again and am revising the chapter.

Chapter End.