Mutated Pheromones

[(Local) Traitor~Escapes: You are still young and haven’t learned that once the damage is done, it can never be fixed.] 

[(Local) Seize Love with Blade: If you really throw those items away, your uncle might never talk to you again. He won’t buy you delicious food, think of the food! The yummy food!!]

[(Local) Keyboard Warrior: Listen to your elders and don’t act impulsively.]

The once fierce and imposing die-hard fans changed into doting elder brothers in a split second. The ‘I say, you do’ went on as they wracked their brain into calming the kid down. Too bad the kid didn’t buy into it.

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: I’m not being rash. I’m being serious!] 

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: Who said I don’t understand those irreplaceable damages? Of course I do!]

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: Because he forced me to finish my homework, I missed half an episode of the Immortal Cat Police! Immortal Cat Police is my favorite show! He hurt me first!]

[(Local) Traitor~Escapes: That’s an easy fix. Which platform was it shown on? I’ll get you a membership and you can watch it wherever and whenever you want.]

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: I don’t wanna!]

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: I wanted to watch when it aired and I should have watched it then! I valued it more than a thousand episodes or even ten thousand episodes you could get me!]

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: Like you said, this kind of damage could never be mended!]

Everyone: “…”

Vault of Heavens Essence, who gave you the courage to provoke a fifth grader! 

Traitor~Escapes swallowed a mouthful of blood. His only choice was to change tack.

[(Local) Traitor~Escapes: Why don’t you leave it to us? You go call your little uncle back and we’ll take turns killing his character.]

Fruity was at a loss for words in quick succession, until the moment she heard that her scheme could finally return to the right track.

But unfortunately, they were up against a ‘middle schooler’. 

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: (sneer) Do you think I’m that stupid? I hear these kinds of lies all the time. You want my uncle back, so I can’t toss all of his items!]

The ‘die-hard fans’ really want to smack some sense into this kid.

Dealing with this brat was too difficult!

Traceless Water, who did not see their conversations, asked, “Are you done? Is Vault of Heavens Essence back?” 

Traitor~Escapes said sullenly, “No, none of my persuasions worked.”

As the mastermind of this scheme, Traceless Water had the brain cells to start doubting. “Are you sure that’s his nephew? And not the person himself pretending…”

Before he could finish his question, he heard Traitor~Escapes shouting through the mic, “Fuck! I see items on the ground! He’s dropping them!!”

In this moment of frenzy, Traceless Water tossed his doubt away completely. “Pick them up quickly! We’ll figure a way to return them back!” 

In this game, the discarded items will not disappear immediately. It’ll stay on the ground for a minute. Traitor~Escapes rushed forward and hurriedly picked them up.

Yue Ran stopped and watched his action, which he found strange. 

Seeing those players walking up to him and followed by self-detonation in themselves as Sunken Moon’s fans. He knew things won’t end well for him. 

Qlatbea j rlzat rqlgla yfjra, lo tf obeuta cbk, tf kbeiv reoofg ugfja ibrr, cba ab wfcalbc tlr uelivwjafr jcv oeaegf rlrafg-lc-ijk ufaalcu mjeuta lc atf wlvvif. Vb ab jnblv olutalcu, tf mbcalcefv tlr islcu jma jcv qbrlalbcfv tlwrfio yfobgf atf ugbeq bo ojcr. 

Dea lcrafjv bo fcmbegjulcu tlw ab vgbq lafwr, atfs aglfv ab qfgrejvf tlw bea bo la?

And after he tossed a few garbage items as a test, they actually picked them up?

In contrast, the party that consisted of his guildmates was behaving more normally. 

Right now, he and his guildmates were in a hostile relationship because of his ‘husband’. He knew they wouldn’t stop him from tossing items. But because their ‘witnessing everything coldly as a bystander’ contrasted with them stepping out to protect him without hesitation, it made things more abnormal.  

He studied the two groups with numerous question marks on top of his head.

The fake fans didn’t know the others were sceptical of them. They watched him in a panic and were ready to pick more items up. 

Yue Ran couldn’t figure out their objectives and kept at a distance first in case they sneak attacked him.

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: Are you guys picking items up to return them to my uncle?] 

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: You guys are indeed together. I’m so glad I didn’t believe you!]

[(Local) Vault of Heavens Essence<: I’ll not let you succeed! I’ll drop everything today!]

After sending that message, he locked on a gap and dashed out of the circle in a sprint.

Traitor~Escapes was at his wits’ end. “Fuck, he is getting away. I bet he’s going to find a corner to toss everything away!” 

Traceless Water was also at his wits’ end. “Then go after him!”

Traitor~Escapes didn’t need the reminder as he immediately went on a chase with his group. In a blink of an eye, only four people were left at the mining spot. 

Bashful Rain was bewildered. “Eh…What do we do now?”

Fruity finally snapped out of it and regained some of her judgement. “We go after them. If the guild leader’s wife was suddenly killed, we can’t do anything because of our feelings, otherwise, the others would suspect us.” 

With that, those four gave chase as well.

The direction Yue Ran was going only led to one way, which was at the top of the mountain.

He opened the map and took a glance to quickly search the nearest warp gate as he continued running. 

At the same time, Sunken Moon and Dying Star were standing on the mountain cliff. 

Since they successfully completed the twenty-five dungeon run on the old server, it was time to do the same for the new server. But they hadn’t decided on the time of gathering, so they went to the mountaintop as it was a peaceful and isolated place.

The two logged on to YY and created a private room.

To see that the ID below Sunken Moon had the word ‘white’ with a monk chibi image. The person was Pure White Sun.

But the account was only level one, because Pure White Sun switched computers a few days ago and forgot both his YY login information and the registered email. Being too lazy to search the email and reset his account information, he used WeChat or the game’s private chat to message Sunken Moon. It wasn’t until yesterday that he finally created a new YY account for the dungeon run with the other pros last evening. 

When Sunken Moon heard loud keyboard clickings from the other party, he asked, “What are you doing over there?”

Pure White Sun replied, “Answering fans’ questions.”

Sunken Moon chuckled, “Keep it up.”

“Man, I don’t even treat my fans this well,” After Pure White Sun finished replying, he closed the game’s private chat window. “It’s been almost two weeks. Are you sure your plan is going to work?” 

Sunken Moon sighed, “Two weeks is too short.”

Pure White Sun complained, “I can’t bear it any longer.”

Sunken Moon pointed out, “You brought it up first. You said you would do anything to get him back.”

Pure White Sun vomited a mouthful of blood.  

Sunken Moon smiled brightly and stopped aggravating his friend, who brought up a good point as he carefully thought it over. 

“Let’s go over this again,” He said. “We know he was a third-year in junior middle school. If that’s true, the reason he deleted his account must be because his parents discovered him playing. Correct?”

Pure White Sun agreed, “Yes.”

“We narrowed down to four reasons he hadn’t come back in the past three years: he quit the game completely, focused on high school life, lived in the school dorm, or was simply too busy to play.” Sunken Moon listed out. “He once said that he would visit his grandma’s house at the start of every summer vacation for a period of time. Summer vacation starts early for the last year of senior high school. Being July now, he must be home. Even college students are on summer break, right?” 

Pure White Sun agreed again, “Yes.”

Sunken Moon went on, “Usually a returning player would either start on the old server or the newest server. I’ve been monitoring the old server, and I have seen no one registering an account named Dying Star. Now we are camping on the new server for any suspicious activity from a few days before the update was live. I understand him. With his temper, he would come knocking on your door the first instance he learned of someone pretending to be him.”

Pure White Sun agreed for the third time, “Yes.”

“The day we executed our plan, the forum went wild, and I even dragged you around on my live stream. If he really cares for the game, we should have caught his attention.” Sunken Moon wondered. “So what went wrong?” 

“Maybe…” Pure White Sun lamented. “He really quit the game?”

Sunken Moon mumbled, “Maybe.”

Pure White Sun added more possible reasons, “Maybe he hated the game after making an unforgivable mistake during his time addicted to the game, or failed his college entrance examination and needed to spend an additional year to prepare. Or he was attracted by my charisma and decided not to pursue the imposter?”

Sunken Moon gave the chibi monk avatar a look. 

Pure White Sun returned with the same look.

A few seconds later, Pure White Sun vomited another mouthful of blood. “So I went along with your plan for nothing?!”

Sunken Moon cried laughing. “We can end our plan. Go delete the fake account and I will draft a post on Weibo to explain everything.”

Pure White Moon rethought this, “Maybe he’s still at his grandma’s house. Why don’t we buy Weibo’s hot search on ‘Return of Dying Star’?” 

“It would be too obvious, people would think you only want to gain more fame.” Sunken Moon rejected. “If you ruin Dying Star’s reputation, once the real deal returns, won’t he make your life a living hell?”

Pure White Sun also realized this and hummed a “yes” before he questioned, “Don’t you have other plans? A plan B maybe?”

Sunken Moon smirked. “I’m glad you asked, because indeed I do. In the announcement I drafted for Weibo, I’ll include you as my partner-in-crime, the one controlling Dying Star. Oh! Didn’t you swear you would rather shit yourself while doing a handstand than touching a support character? If my post blows up, won’t “Sun God go shit himself on stream handstand style” be trending for days? You sure have some crazy fans, I’m always amazed at their strength.”

Pure White Sun: “…” 

Sunken Moon chirped, “I’m about to post it.”

Pure White Sun bellowed, “You get back here!”

Sunken Moon chuckled deeply. “What else am I supposed to do?”

Pure White Sun mumbled, “We will keep trying for a few more days.” 

Sunken Moon squinted his eyes. “I never asked, but why did you suddenly bring up Little Star?”

Pure White Sun misled, “Isn’t this for the double battle? Between the five of us, you and he were the closest, so I just casually brought him up.”

Sunken Moon said, “Tell me the truth.”

Pure White Sun was silent for a few seconds and sneered, “It was all that dumbass Star of Jupiter’s fault!” 

Sunken Moon didn’t expect that.

Star of Jupiter was a player on the TSSM’s server but started the game a bit later than them. But he was still considered in the same league as them because he also signed a contract with the live stream platform. They would sometimes team up with him in the arena from time to time, and the only reason his popularity was so high was because of winning second place in the fourth tournament. 

Sunken Moon asked, “What about him?”

Pure White Sun vented. “Remember the restaurant we ate at before the last tournament? When I went to the restroom, I overheard him talking about Little Star on the phone. From his tone, I can feel how much he looked down on Little Star. He even went as far as saying he should be the Star God in the Tempestuous Sun, Star and Moon. Only we know how strong Little Star was, and I couldn’t start a fight with him there, or we would get kicked out of the restaurant! Then afterwards with the news of the double battle, the idea formed in my head and I had to come to you.” 

Sunken Moon suddenly realized, “No wonder you haven’t teamed up with him in the arena these past few days.”

“Yeah,” Pure White Sun sighed, “His personality sucks, so I just ignored him. Just wait and see, he kept mentioning the new server during his stream in the past two days, he must be thinking about challenging Dying Star in a 1v1. He must want to use this opportunity to use me as a stepping stone. If he really dares to come to challenge me, I will find a way to beat him up black and blue!”

“You are thinking way too much,” Sunken Moon advised. “Plus playing support is your weak point, you can’t beat him.”

Pure White Sun knew this. “That’s why I need to find a way…Oh, isn’t that your apprentice?” 

Sunken Moon changed his game camera to see a familiar figure running up the cliff.

[(Local) Sunken Moon: Oh, what a coincidence (smile).]

Yue Ran also spotted them.

But he pretended to see nothing, as he passed them without giving them a single glance and walked off of the cliff. 

Sunken Moon: “…”

Pure White Sun: “…”

Before the two could react, they saw seven to eight more players hastily walk past them as they also jumped down the cliff, like a professional chef dropping dumplings into the boiling water.

After a few seconds, four more players chased and jumped after them.  

Sunken Moon: “…”

Pure White Sun: “…”

Pure White Sun asked in voice chat, “What the fuck is going on! When did this place become a sacred ground for players to commit suicide?”

Sunken Moon returned to reality and was also curious. “There must be something up. Come! Let’s find out.” 

Thus, the two joined the cliff jumping army and leapt off the edge.

Translator has something to add:

Teo: Here’s the first bonus chapter. The next bonus chapter is actually going to be chapter twenty-four. The original plan was to chop that chapter into two parts because it is a six thousand words chapter as the first VIP chapter, but now I’ll post it whole. 

Another bonus to my readers. Here’s my super rusty drawing in full glory.