Lin Xiao
"I couldn't believe he came up with this stupid idea." Lin Xiao complained to Clara.
Lin Xiao leaned against the corner of the roof, grumbling to Clara beside him. The two of them were still sitting on the highest eave of the building, drinking digital wine and eating digital peanuts.
"Looks like you didn't get along with your new boss today, did you?"
"Get along?" Lin Xiao said. "This guy walked in and kicked out the whole team, and made himself team lead. I'm the only survivor of that brutal purge."
"But tell me about his new idea."
"Swallow your drink first, don't choke," Lin Xiao said. "Our marketing master Choi Seongwoo had a genius idea for the ages. He wants to put up billboards inside our cultivation world."
"What!?" The wine Clara had just swallowed came right back out. "He's out of his mind."
"Oh, come on," Lin Xiao said, mocking. "Picture it. You're wandering through the cultivation world, through an ancient Chinese-style palace hall, and a giant cola advertisement pops up right in front of you. Look left, there's a takeout number for fried chicken. Look right, ads for a New York dentist. WOW. True master idea."
"Jesus."
"That's not even all of it. He also wants to load an immersive ad before you even enter the game," Lin Xiao said. "Want to enter the cultivation world? Sure, just sit through sixty seconds of an unskippable, unmutable ad first."
"That idea... is beyond stupid." Clara waved her hand, coughing repeatedly. "Are you going to try to talk him out of it?"
"Talk him out of it?" Lin Xiao said. "He's completely wrapped up in his own genius idea. And you know what happened to the last person who crossed him."
"True..."
"I just feel bad for all those top uni graduates you guys just hired."
"How are you getting along with them?" Clara asked.
"Not an interesting topic," Lin Xiao waved it off. "Come on, let's go hunt dragons in the snow mountains."
"Actually..." Clara suddenly pulled out a scroll and pointed at the glowing sect member list below. "Your genius boss just logged on."
Lin Xiao looked down and, sure enough, saw the name thebestone2030 lit up.
This guy's got a lot of energy. Doesn't he ever need to rest? Lin Xiao thought to himself.
"Alright, babysitting time," Lin Xiao said, standing up and dusting himself off. "Let me go see how the crown prince plans to get eaten by bears today."
At the edge of the bamboo forest.
The moment Seongwoo was about to sit down and practice his breathing like the day before, trying to guide the faint spiritual energy inside his body, a streak of white sword light landed gracefully in front of him.
Lin Xiao stood with his hands behind his back, tilting his head as he sized up this chaebol heir who acted so untouchable in real life.
"Junior, you're here early today."
"Thank you master, I want to practice more."
Hearing Seongwoo call him Master made Lin Xiao a little uncomfortable.
But if Lin Xiao hadn't opened up his Dantian for him, he'd have had to spend dozens of hours grinding through maps and killing monsters just to unlock spiritual energy like every other beginner. Being called Master was the least of it.
"Good, practice makes master, remember that."
Lin Xiao cleared his throat, all composed and dignified on the surface, but mischief was already brewing underneath.
Thinking back to how Seongwoo had acted during the day, that whole "I'm so important, my burden is so heavy, my idea is so good" attitude, and thinking about that cold, distant face that barely gave him the time of day, Lin Xiao decided it was time for a little payback.
"Breathing and meditation alone won't get you anywhere," Lin Xiao said. "A cultivator must awaken their potential through real combat training. Come, watch closely."
With that, Lin Xiao flicked his fingers lightly behind his back.
A few meters away in the grass, a low-level wild boar suddenly appeared out of nowhere, baring its teeth and charging straight at Seongwoo.
"Just like I taught you, draw the talisman, roll to the side!" Lin Xiao shouted, floating in midair on his sword near the bamboo leaves.
Startled, Seongwoo scrambled to trace the shape in the air the way he'd memorized.
Because he was too nervous, the talisman cracked apart halfway through, and the boar sent him flying, tumbling across the ground in a mess, his clothes torn.
Lin Xiao calmly sipped the rest of his wine while casually casting a healing spell on Seongwoo.
"Don't get discouraged. Pain is part of learning."
Seongwoo climbed back up, drew his wooden sword, and resumed his desperate swinging.
Seeing the boar gathering momentum for a killing charge, Lin Xiao quickly snapped his fingers and turned it into a wisp of gray smoke.
"I'm sorry." Seongwoo leaned against a bamboo stalk, gasping for breath, his heaving chest covered in dirt. "But this is really exciting."
"Not bad. You've got resilience."
Lin Xiao praised him out loud, but inside he was thinking:
What kind of freak is this, a masochist? Getting beaten up by a boar and he still looks kind of happy about it. Don't tell me I'm actually satisfying some sick kink of his.
Still, no harm done. He likes getting beaten up in the game; I like beating people up in the game, isn't that a win-win?
He's already won plenty in real life. Can't a corporate slave get to win at least once in the game?
With that thought, Lin Xiao's mischief only deepened. He started messing with him more shamelessly.
He gave a light wave of his fingers in the air.
Above the previously clear bamboo forest, a small, dense cloud, no bigger than a wash basin, suddenly condensed out of nowhere.
This cloud had no interest in raining anywhere else. It parked itself directly above Seongwoo's head.
A downpour crashed down all at once, rain hammering straight onto his head.
Caught off guard by the sudden rain, Seongwoo scrambled to one side to escape it. But when he ran left, the cloud followed left. When he stepped right, the cloud zipped right after him too.
"What happened?"
Seeing him still standing there asking dumbly, Lin Xiao couldn't help laughing out loud.
"Try to outrun the rain," Lin Xiao said. "This is tonight's second trial from your master."
"OK!" Seongwoo said, fired up. "Watch me!"
It wasn't long before this young chaebol, who back home wouldn't let a speck of dust touch his shoes, was soaked head to toe with mud.
Lin Xiao snapped his fingers again, and the little cloud instantly crackled with a ring of pale blue lightning.
"Watch your feet. Dodge the lightning."
Crack!
A tiny bolt of lightning struck precisely next to Seongwoo's foot, making him jump.
The ground was already soaked through from the earlier downpour, conducting the shock beautifully.
Seongwoo hopped and jerked around, yelping.
"Ah, ah! Ah, shit, ah!"
Lin Xiao turned his head away, casting a silence spell on himself, laughing so hard his stomach cramped.
"How am I doing." Seongwoo hopped left and right, seemingly used to it by now, water flying off him in every direction.
"Not bad, not bad. You pass." Lin Xiao lifted the silence spell and stopped the rain.
Then he tossed Seongwoo a mid-tier water talisman. "This isn't the spell a beginner like you should normally have access to. Use it in danger, and it can summon a massive storm. Nearly guaranteed to finish off fire and earth type demons."
"Thank you, master." He said, "I've learnt a lot today."
Lin Xiao kept up his stern, wise master tone on the surface. "It's nothing."
But he wasn't done yet. Feeling playful, he waved the cloud away with a flick of his fingers, then wove a summoning spell in the center of the bamboo forest.
A deep rumble shook the ground.
A war elephant, massive as a small hill, materialized out of nowhere in the middle of the clearing, its thick legs sending rocks flying with every step.
"Now try some lightness technique." Lin Xiao shouted, standing on his sword. "Relax your body, climb up using its straps and legs, reach the top, and you clear the trial!"
Seongwoo was stunned by the sheer size of the creature in front of him, but the fierce determination in his eyes was fully lit now too.
He gritted his teeth, strapped the wooden sword to his waist, took a deep breath, and leapt——
He got kicked more than ten meters away by the elephant in an instant.
Lin Xiao was about to keep cheering him on, but the battered figure on the ground suddenly froze, and his eyes went hollow and lifeless all at once, as if he'd turned to clay.
"Hey, what's wrong, Junior?" Lin Xiao called out.
No response.
This was the typical sign of a user being forcibly disconnected from the game.
The enraged elephant was charging toward Seongwoo, and Lin Xiao quickly snapped his fingers to recall it.
A thirty-second logout protection countdown ticked away silently in the air. When it ran out, the frozen body transformed into a gray pigeon, flapped its wings a few times, and flew off into the deep sky.
The bamboo forest fell instantly quiet again.
Lin Xiao landed on the ground, his smile slowly fading.
Uh oh. Did I actually piss him off?
Clara appeared out of nowhere, streaking down in a line of red light. "You'd better be careful at work tomorrow. He might just take it out on you."
"That's rude, you peeping Tom."
And come on, he's not that petty.
Although, that actually makes sense...
Oh shit...
Guess it's my turn to be in trouble now.
ns216.73.216.248da2
and then Add to home screen.