Don’t Be a Kept Man

rt head on her shoulders.
There were no worthless thoughts about only living on love, so even though she liked Wen Chuo, she would never choose to be hung up on him for marriage.

What is Wen Chuo like as a person?

This was a useless question as who around here didn’t know that he was a troublemaker, with no house, no car, and no job.
Only an idiot would marry him.
Liu Meng Meng never expected Bai Yang to answer and continued to talk to herself, 

“I just came from a blind date a few days ago.
That man was okay.
Quite honest and realistic.
His work’s pretty presentable too.
So without any surprises, it’s most likely going to be him…… but my heart doesn’t feel quite right.”

Perhaps, it wasn’t exactly not feeling quite right, but a reluctance to accept her fate kind of feeling.

Just as she continued, she suddenly saw the glass door being pushed open and in walked Wen Chuo.
She immediately zipped her mouth, and this time, she wasn’t staring at him like she normally was.
Instead, her back turned towards him as she ran behind the counter to continue her work.

In Wen Chuo’s hands was a bottle of warm milk and two marinated eggs.
He pulled the tablecloth from Bai Yang’s hands and passed breakfast over to him, 

“Eat up quick.
It’ll be cold soon.”

Perhaps it was rare to see him act so caring, but Liu Meng Meng looked up at him and asked with curiosity, 

“Did you come here just to give Bai Yang his breakfast?”

Wen Chuo smiled as he leaned on the table and pushed up his glasses.
Wearing an all-black casual outfit, there were no longer any similarities to the troublemaker focused only on fooling around.
Even his words were charismatic as he joked, 

“Hey beautiful lady, I had wanted to come eat here, but I have no money.
Sensitive to money, a cheapskate, you know? How about you pay for me?”

The hard to explain and hard to swallow feeling of unwillingness became even stronger inside Liu Meng Meng’s heart.
She rested her body on the short table behind the counter and said out of distaste, 

“If you aren’t going to eat here, then get out.
Don’t bother my business! Go go go!”

“Fine, I’ll head out.”

Wen Chuo hadn’t originally planned to stay for long.
After staying up for so many all-nighters, he was almost done with his editing.
Seeing Bai Yang obediently eating his breakfast, he pinched his chin and his finger quietly and subtly pressed on his blooming red lips.
It went in a bit further, touching that wet and soft tongue tip……

Bai Yang paused from drinking his milk and lifted his eyes to quietly watch him.

Wen Chuo smiled, and then he headed out the door.

Wen Chuo had a chat group, and there weren’t a lot of people in there.
Only about twenty or so members, and they were all customers who needed his help to carry them to pass the levels.
There were a few notable streaming platforms and Wen Chuo looked for a while, before choosing a platform that had a slightly higher rating, DK.
After he examined what the style of the videos were like on DK, he created his own account and uploaded his beginner level tutorial and @’d the group members for them to see.

The group name was very simple and was exactly what it says on the tin.
It was called newbie group and the group members were all enthusiastically social creatures, and they called themselves Big Newbie, second newbie, and so on.
When Wen Chuo sent out his message, all of them started popping up in the chat.

Fifth Newbie: Boss, you’re on DK too? And you are even teaching? How professional of you.
But speaking of which, I’ve been stuck on the 2nd level of Heaven’s Risk.
Please carry me wu wu wu

Third Newbie: …… isn’t the 2nd level of Heaven’s Risk the end of the beginner level…..I feel like you haven’t advanced even one bit…..
Although on that note, I’m going to go watch the tutorial.
I still want to try passing one stage of the beginning level by myself.

Fourth Newbie: I’ve passed that stage, but my experience level is still not enough to enter the forest stage.
Can I ask if you are still accepting requests? Please carry me, I’ll wait for your call the entire day.
If you do, remember to /call/ me.

Wen Chuo sent them a location, saying he’ll group up at 2pm.
Those who wanted to come can sign and pay up.

 

Whenever he carried newbies on levels, he’d usually use his smaller accounts, and their IDs were very business-like, just a “Helper” + QQ number1 which allowed most people to automatically know he’s a carry.
If there was a need, they’d come find him.
But the one in the tutorial was a main account and in the game, their account name would appear above the character’s head.

KKK. 

A very simple name consisting of only three english letters.
When Wen Chuo had created his account, it kept saying the name he was trying had already been taken.
And in the end, he had lost his patience and randomly typed in three ‘K’s which unbelievably worked.

 

Those who keep flipping through the overall top chart of the players in all twelve areas were not a stranger to this ID.
No one doesn’t know who this KKK is.
As like bamboo after rain2, he suddenly rose up onto the charts and his level beating progress was a landslide over Wan Ye.
In his information panel, it was only wins, an all green panel.
But perhaps it was because he hadn’t fought a lot of monsters, his experience wasn’t as high as the other players above him which put him closer to the bottom of the overall chart.

Wen Chuo had been too busy editing his video and he had no time to grind for experience.
So in the ranks, where he was supposed to be 98, he fell all the way down to 132.
Still, there were a lot of people trying to find information on him.

Those newbies who had been @’d to watch the teaching video came back all stunned.

 

Big Newbie: I’m kneeling for these techniques.
But I really wanted to ask…..
Boss, do you have another account? Is the K-Da3 that always charted you?!!!

Sixth Newbie: I’m suffocating — when my roommate was playing with me, he had been worshipping K-Da, as there was no one who was so new that was so good.
I can’t believe…..
I can’t believe……!!!

There were a few videos that Wen Chuo didn’t have time to edit yet, but he basically had tutorials for all the stages.
Normally the newbies were a bit overwhelming in the group chat, so he had muted the group.
He also wouldn’t purposefully go and read the messages, so he only kept editing his videos, planning to wait until the night to grind experience for his main account and get back up higher on the chart.

Occasionally pop ups of random news would appear on the computer screen, and as Wen Chuo was just trimming down the unneeded parts of his video, there was an entertainment news popup just by the bottom right of the screen.
A headline that seemed to be related to the Wen Corporation’s CEO Wen Tian Hao and fashion icon Fang Xin Tong’s marriage.

Wen Chuo’s hand that was in the process of editing paused and he wanted to hit close on the popup.
But his hands trembled, and a website was instead immediately opened up.
The first thing he was greeted with was a picture of a couple, a man and a woman, at their wedding with a background of a line of luxury cars, showing off how big and expensive the wedding had been.
Those asked to comment for the article were all blowing up how they were a match made in heaven, so lovey-dovey, so in love with each other.

Wen Chuo didn’t even want to read it, but it was as if he was hypnotized and he kept reading and reading, stopping at the comment section.

>> Is the Wen family about to go bankrupt.
They want Fang Xin Tong, this kind of headline queen? Probably about twenty or more green hats to wear for him, wow.
Wealthy second generations are absolutely not what normal humans could be.

>> Hey above me, business marriage do you understand? When the Wen family had invested in the Tian Hua Building project, they lost over 3 billion yuan, which almost forced the CEO to resign.
Isn’t it perfect how Fang Xin Tong’s father was just balding over not being able to marry off his daughter.
How great, perfect for using each other.

>> Hehehe Wen Tian Hao, this kind of small body, didn’t he get admitted to the hospital a few days ago because of a heart condition he was born with? Doesn’t look like he will live very long.
Be careful of being smothered to death by Fang Xin Tong and her adulterer.
Honey~ Time for your medicine ~

>> Wen Jin Cheng is a seed planter huh.
Turned too old so not moving on anymore.
I remember he had a wife before, but she was kicked out.
What a vicious woman Fan Qiu Yun is.
Homewrecker moving right into marriage with a wealthy family, what a role model you want to be!

Wen Chuo’s heart felt stuffed, and he closed the news article.
He buried his face into his palm and took a deep breath.
But the compressed negative air inside his heart was not decreasing and instead, increasing, almost to the point of suffocating.

His hope and expectation towards the future that had been established after so much difficulty had for some reason suddenly crumbled so easily, as if no matter how hard he worked, he would never be able to catch up to those people.

Wen Chuo felt excruciating pain ragging on his heart.
It was an unspeakable discomfort, and he forcefully held onto a state of calmness to finish editing his video.
Yet he found that the entire internet was filled from top to bottom with the same related news, even occupying a few top search tags.
They all crowded his mind, as like a tsunami that was about to wash him up from all directions.

 

 

Notes:

*1 QQ: kind of like imessage, whatsapp, fb messenger and the number is unique per account

 

*2  an idiom that basically means a lot things quickly speeding up and appearing (where a lot of bamboo shoots appear after rain/speedy growth)

*3 -Da: like in Volume 2 means someone more respectable/have more authority than you in the ancient eras, but specifically on the internet, to games, it means someone who is too good/amazing for what they are doing, so here they are referencing as if he’s a god-tier gamer.
Usually they’d take a portion of their in-game name/account name that uploads the video or is streaming and add the -Da to reference.
I didn’t find an exact equivalent for this in English, as mostly I heard it was just their account name or nickname that is so good, etc, so here just to reference that they do this, I’m using the pinyin

TL Tidbit:

In one of the chats by the noob/newbie group, I’m using the / … / to indicate them using english.
I’m not quite well versed in MMO terms, so most of the terms I kind of wrangled into use after asking, uh with some discretion, some of my friends that are more into games like these haha.
As far as I can tell and what I’m going to use is that each level is kind of like an area and consists of stages (so when they say they haven’t passed the stage, they can’t proceed onwards in the level, or I guess “further into” the area).
A bit more detail will be described later, so hopefully that will help! Please let me know if there’s anything confusing (as I got confused myself later as I translate later chapters haha, but hopefully this still sets up the backdrop quite well – the gaming isn’t particularly prominent as in other novels that are set in VR or FPS games/competitive settings, but it’s still an important bit in Wen Chuo’s life, so … : |)

Also a little note about the green hats from the netizens: as like in Volume 1, green hats symbolize to mean Fang Xin Tong had cheated more than twenty times as to wear a green hat comes with a negative connotation as you got/will be cheated on by your partner.
You can see [chapter 13 footnote] for more information!