Chapter 105 - Showdown
Translator: TeamTWO
Editor: Levs
5th April, the traditional Chinese festival: Qingming Festival.
After breakfast, Ouyang Shuo brought Bing'er to the cemetery to help tidy up their relatives' graves. Unexpectedly, little aunt Lin Jing had specially rushed back from Modou to Jiaozhou to help clean the grandparents' graves. The night before little aunt left for State of Jiao, the two of them had a deep conversation in her hotel room.
"Little Shuo, are you still unwilling to tell me your in game ID?" Lin Jing asked angrily.
Ouyang Shuo had a face full of awkwardness and embarrassment. His aunt obviously wanted him to tell her everything. After the auction, Ouyang Shuo realized that he had become more confident especially when the setting up of the Shanhai Alliance had made his power in the game very stable.
Looking at the relative in front of him, his expression became very complicated. He sighed and in the end decided to trust her, saying solemnly, "Little aunt, I can tell you my ID but you must promise not to tell anyone, including your partner Xie Siyun."
"I can't even tell Siyun?"
"Yes!"
"Why so mysterious?" Little aunt felt a bit annoyed.
Ouyang Shuo had no choice but to be careful and repeated, "Little aunt, I need an answer from you."
Lin Jing was stunned as she felt the resolve in his words. "Okay, I promise I won't tell anyone your ID, including Siyun. Now can you tell me? Little Shuo, if you can't give me a proper explanation I'm going to teach you a lesson."
Ouyang Shuo nodded, he understood her personality. It was similar to his late Mother, inheriting their grandmother's genes and will never go back on their words.
"Have you heard of Qiyue Wuyi?" Ouyang Shuo asked.
"Obviously, who doesn't know him, China server's number 1 lord. Why, are you working under him?" Little aunt asked curiously.
Ouyang Shuo coughed and said calmly, "I am Qiyue Wuyi."
"What?" Little aunt jolted to her feet, saying in disbelief, "What did you say, you are Qiyue Wuyi? It isn't April Fools, don't lie to me."
Ouyang Shuo had already predicted her reaction and continued calmly, "Do you think I have any reason to lie to you?"
Lin Jing looked at her nephew in disbelief like she had seen a monster, "No wonder you didn't want to tell me your ID. Oh my god, you are a freak!"
Ouyang Shuo’s face became like stone, annoyed by this aunt, "Little aunt, I'm blood-related to you, do you really have to describe me like that?"
"But isn't it true? The world is guessing which mysterious family Qiyue Wuyi is from, who would have thought that he would be a normal kid." Little aunt was still very emotional.
Ouyang Shuo laughed.
Lin Jing judged Ouyang Shuo once again. "Not bad, seems like auntie has underestimated you. For you to get such results is not easy."
Ouyang Shuo didn't want to dwell too long on the topic and asked, "Little aunt, the reason you asked me to play it, was it because you knew some insider news?"
"That's right, Siyun and I joined the beta and based on her deduction, this game wasn't simple and it wasn't just a game; hence we stopped playing all other games and placed our efforts on this game."
Ouyang Shuo nodded, as he was amazed by Siyun's deduction. With no information, she could make a correct deduction with just her intuition. No wonder she was the leader of the second-biggest mercenary group in china.
"For this game, I obtained a little news by luck. I won't dare to say anything else but at least your decision is correct. I also need to remind you that you all should not sell your in-game gold in the exchange platform." Ouyang Shuo reminded.
Lin Jing couldn't understand and asked curiously, "Why? Isn't our goal to sell game credits into cash? Little Shuo, do you know some insider news which helped you get such good results?"
Ouyang Shuo shook his head and said, "What I can say I already told you. My suggestion is up to you to accept or not. As for other news, little aunt should stop asking. To be safe, whether in-game or in real life, we should meet less. We should just wait for the right time!"
When she looked at Ouyang Shuo, it was like she was looking at a stranger. She couldn't imagine that the pure little kid would become so mature and even say such words. She could see a bit of Xie Siyun[a] in his figure.
"The time you speak of, when is it?" Lin Jing couldn't help but ask.
Ouyang Shuo shook his head and said, "This I can't say but it's going to be soon."
Lin Jing gave up on asking and helplessly said, "Since you are so firm, you must have your difficulties, I won't force you. Knowing that you are doing so well, little aunt is happy for you. As for your suggestion, we will think hard about it when I go back."
"Thank you for your understanding." Ouyang Shuo said.
"Okay, I can't stay too long in State of Jiao, I'll be flying back to Shanghai tomorrow morning. You should rest early!" Little aunt said.
"Okay, then little aunt, you should sleep early. Good night!" Ouyang Shuo got up and said goodbye.
"Good night!"
After leaving the hotel, Ouyang Shuo didn't take a cab home but instead chose to walk back. Anyways, the distance from the hotel back home wasn't far. Walking on the busy streets and seeing the bright and colourful lights, Ouyang Shuo was deep in thought. After showing all his cards to little aunt, he felt a lot more relaxed like a lock had been opened within him. A person to keep such a secret to himself was really just too tiring.
During this period of time, the game was bustling with news, and real life was also the same.
The news that Song Wen, who was following Ouyang Shuo's method to buy territories had spread to their ally Yuan Financial group. Yuanping followed this method to successfully buy a grade 3 village. What followed next was that the news spread from 1 to 10, 10 to 100, spreading quickly amongst the middle class.
All of the sudden, there was a race to buy up territories. Everyday there were lucky people who became billionaires overnight, making legendary tales one after another. Out of all these people, there were naturally people who went online to brag on the forums.
Just like this, news of large scale acquisitions had pushed Earth Online to the top of the news. The public were very curious, what magic did this game have to make financial groups invest so heavily in it?
A group of civilians just watched the news while a large group of them decided to join it. Those that didn't get the insider news were all rattled and tried their best to find out the truth behind the game.
In a human society like China, the whole society was like a huge net. Families would be closely linked to other families and groups will be close-knit with other groups. When someone tried hard to find out, the secret will slowly spread, spreading to small powers and increasing the acquisition craze.
Such a large scale movement finally attracted attention and those who thought that something was wrong immediately asked the government for an explanation.
Since it got to this point, the alliance government could only quicken the work for the mass migration. As for the explanation, naturally none was given. They openly announced that buying territories was the corporation's own doing and the alliance wouldn't bother.
Ouyang Shuo didn't expect that he had unknowingly caused such a reaction, not knowing whether this was a bane or a boon.
After he went back home, it was already 9 PM and Bing'er still wasn't asleep. She was emotional the entire day and unable to get excited, only when she saw little aunt did she felt slightly happier. Ouyang Shuo knew that she was thinking about her parents.
After coaxing her to sleep, it was already 10 PM. After a simple wash up, Ouyang Shuo rushed to get online. Similarly, it was the Qingming festival in the game. Early in the morning, the Military Affairs Department had represented their lord and went to clean the graves of the soldiers in the cemetery.
At 3 PM in the afternoon, Qiushui Town’s mayor Zhao Dexian sent someone to report that when the medicine farmers were out grabbing herbs, one had found a wild tea plantation. Based on his description, the leaves had white marks, probably the famous white tea from Guangxi.
Ouyang Shuo was amazed. This white tea, when placed in modern society, was still very famous. This time, the basic building of the grade 3 town: tea plantation had been solved.
This kind of tea tree would naturally grow on top of high mountains and between clouds. He didn't think about moving them and ordered Zhao Dexian to personally bring some professional tea farmers to inspect. If it was really white tea, then they would directly build the tea plantation there.