Dialogue Across Different Channels

Chen Sheng couldn’t help but act this way. Ever since he put on those gold-rimmed glasses and began logging into this healing game, hadn’t the damned thing tormented him enough? Tasks that never gave completion rewards forced him to beat up the “neutral police chief NPC” with his own hands; monsters never awarded experience points; and high-profile companions disappeared without warning. So when the boss, Ling Tianquan, with his aristocratic background, appeared before him and uttered such suggestive words, Chen Sheng could no longer remain calm.

Yet Chen Sheng’s words did not anger Ling Tianquan. In fact, at this moment, Ling Tianquan was quite interested in Chen Sheng—or more precisely, in “Chen Absolute God.” He had learned this name because, in a place obsessed with wealth and indifferent to kinship, someone dared to stand up for justice. Even knowing that Feng Yu Hai belonged to Ling Tianquan, Chen Absolute God had still dared to put Feng Yu Hai in the hospital.

Ling Tianquan had come to Upper Sanjiang City intending for She Jiao to secretly “hunt” and heal. The bounty on Chen Absolute God was suggested by his confidant, serving as a plausible reason to stay in Upper Sanjiang City without arousing suspicion.

“I’m interested in you—there’s no way you can refuse,” Ling Tianquan declared, reciting a line worthy of a domineering CEO.

Chen Sheng immediately took two steps back. Though he “knew” he was just inside a game, as a man of normal inclinations, he felt goosebumps rising and the urge to kill this guy grew stronger.

“Oh? Judging by your look, you seem to want to kill me?” Ling Tianquan naturally noticed the shift in Chen Sheng’s expression, especially that undisguised murderous intent.

“Be confident—drop the ‘seem’,” Chen Sheng retorted.

“Why do you want to kill me?” Ling Tianquan asked, genuinely surprised.

Chen Sheng was equally baffled. “You put a bounty on me, and you ask why I want to kill you?”

Was this boss bugged? Or did the game’s lazy designers cobble together such half-hearted lines?

“Just because I put a bounty on you, you want to kill me?” Ling Tianquan’s eyes widened in astonishment.

“What else?”

Chen Sheng was on the verge of rolling his eyes.

Ling Tianquan fell silent; such an answer was something he had never encountered in his life. Until now, everyone he met either begged for mercy or, after he imprisoned and punished them, still thanked him.

So, for a moment, Ling Tianquan truly couldn’t understand Chen Sheng’s words. In his worldview, retaliation against him only happened among his own elite class; everyone else was just sheep bred by their families.

Ling Tianquan looked at Chen Sheng with a strange gaze and asked, “Do you know who I am?”

Chen Sheng: “……”

For some reason, Chen Sheng suddenly felt that this “boss” was incredibly arrogant!

Wait!

Chen Sheng blinked. He now understood why this “boss” spoke so oddly—not because the designers were careless, but to create a vivid boss character!

With Ling Tianquan’s attached “big shot” background, Chen Sheng pondered and could almost sense a real-world powerful figure conversing with him.

“Impressive,” Chen Sheng muttered, then made his move.

To him, Ling Tianquan was a boss and must be formidable. Facing such a dungeon boss, the only option was to strike first!

He attacked with the intent to seriously injure the boss, unleashing his strongest move—the summoning of “starter equipment.”

Life and death bound together, fate hanging by a thread!

This “starter equipment” had always instantly emptied an “NPC’s” health bar, its destructive power immense, but Chen Sheng couldn’t guarantee it would have the same effect on a “boss-level” character.

After all, in any game, bosses are tough and resilient, loaded with resistances. The damage that could one-shot regular monsters might barely dent a boss’s health bar.

Then Chen Sheng discovered that Ling Tianquan was a rather fragile boss…

Outside the villa, the nocturnal air seemed to turn to amber, freezing Ling Tianquan within.

The “big shot” who had just been grinning and questioning Chen Sheng’s knowledge of his identity was now suspended mid-air, utterly lifeless.

Shocked, Chen Sheng wondered if he’d misunderstood—perhaps Ling Tianquan wasn’t a boss after all…

What kind of boss gets one-shotted?

But then, that seemed reasonable enough…

Chen Sheng glanced at the flock of “elite monsters” now scattering like birds and beasts. Their stats were off the charts; if not for his own “cheat-like” abilities, any one of them would count as boss-level for other players.

So, Ling Tianquan’s fragility and instant defeat merely adjusted the overall difficulty of the dungeon.

“These elite monsters are strong, but if you one-shot Ling Tianquan, they scatter. This must be the shortcut the game offers players to clear the level,” Chen Sheng mused, scanning his surroundings.

“So where’s the clearance reward?”

“Are they going to screw me over again?”

Chen Sheng was anxious. Aside from his “starter equipment,” he’d played the game for so long and received nothing else, which was absurd!

“Are you looking for something? There’s a female ghost inside—why not ask her?” the little ghost girl suggested.

Chen Sheng thought it was a sensible idea and hurried inside.

Yet the villa held no trace of the girl.

“She escaped so quickly?” Chen Sheng was puzzled. Just moments before, in that basin of water, the girl seemed quite close to Ling Tianquan.

How could she abandon her ally so decisively?

“What’s the relationship between the girl and Ling Tianquan?” Chen Sheng asked the little ghost girl.

“She was a fierce ghost tamed by Ling Tianquan.”

“So Ling Tianquan was a ghost tamer? The moment he died, the ghost fled. It seems these ghost tamers aren’t all that impressive!” Chen Sheng muttered.

“Not impressive at all!” the little ghost girl nodded. Ghost tamers think they control ghosts, but it’s just self-delusion. The methods of taming ghosts are prone to problems, and any ghost from the realm of the dead knows that so-called ghost tamers are merely vessels for spirits.

Every ghost tamer, in the end, will be devoured by the ghosts they try to control.

Otherwise, how could the exorcism power of a First Realm martial artist affect ghost tamers at all?