Mutated Pheromones

In the next few matches, Sunken Moon did not utter a single word. 

He was in a stunned kind of trance. 

Yue Ran, who was out of the loop, was more and more on edge as their act continued. He feared that this was the reason Sunken Moon wasn’t saying anything. After their ninth fight, he had to send a message to ask…

[(Party) Vault of Heavens Essence<: What do you think about my hubby’s leadership? Isn’t my performance much better (puffs up with pride)?]

Sunken Moon stared at the swordsman on his scene as if he wasn’t looking at his monitor at all. 

The longer the silence, the faster Yue Ran’s heart beat.

He clenched his mouse and quickly thought of a countermeasure. Before he came up with a new strategy, Jiang Xiao’s voice echoed in his earphone, “Sunken Moon.”

Sunken Moon answered on instinct, “Huh?”

Jiang Xiao said, “My darling is asking you a question.”

After getting hit by ‘darling’ again, Sunken Moon suddenly contemplated what question he had to answer.

He scrolled through the message and replied, “Yes, much better.”

[(Party) Vault of Heavens Essence<: Isn’t my hubby’s shot calling way better than yours?]

Sunken Moon responded as if he was dreaming, “Yes, I can never learn his way.” 

The more Yue Ran tried to find reassurance, the more he found that there was something wrong with the healer’s tone, but he wasn’t completely sure. Seeing that the tenth match was about to start, he temporarily dropped the subject.

On the other hand, after using some effort to reply to the questions, Sunken Moon finally returned to reality. Before the opposite team made their moves, he sent a friend request to Smashing Vault of Heaven. Once he saw a system notification that the other had accepted his friend request, he immediately sent a private message.

[(Private) Sunken Moon: Is it really you?]

[(Private) >Smashing Vault of Heaven: Yes.] 

Sunken Moon thought about Tempest’s indifferent temperament and appearance, and compared it to the character with a matching couple name and recalled a voice that said ‘darling’ from his headphones. He felt like this whole thing was an illusion.

But people have to learn to accept reality.

[(Private) Sunken Moon: Why didn’t you admit it last time?]

[(Private) >Smashing Vault of Heaven: I didn’t want you hovering around me.] 

So why did you admit it this time?

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[(Private) Sunken Moon: Is he really your wife?] 

[(Private) >Smashing Vault of Heaven: What do you think?]

Sunken Moon thought of Tempest’s usual temperament, and the eye-opening style now. He guessed that true love could really change a person.

So he typed a [Yes], but Tempest stopped replying to him. Once they finished the last match, Tempest shared with him a link to the forum post and asked him to clear things up.

So after Sunken Moon said goodbye to the ‘lovely couple’, he went on a Pure White Sun hunt after exhaustedly reading the forum.  

Pure White Sun just came out of a dungeon after his party was annihilated.

Although they had conquered the new instance dungeon for twenty-five members in the old server, the dungeon itself was still on another level. A party could be annihilated with the slightest mistake, so they could only continue preserving. Noticing Sunken Moon coming toward them, they opened the party for him, which gave them another layer of security.

Once Sunken Moon joined the party, Pure White Moon moved his character toward his friend with a thousand gratitudes. 

[(Private) Sunken Moon: Do you remember Smashing Vault of Heaven?] 

[(Private) Dying Star: Yes, your future disciple’s husband, so your son-in-law.]

[(Private) Sunken Moon: I don’t dare to have such a son-in-law.]

[(Private) Dying Star: What do you mean?]

[(Private) Sunken Moon: It is Tempest.] 

[(Private) Dying Star: ???]

[(Private) Sunken Moon: He is Tempest.]

[(Private) Dying Star: (shock)]

[(Private) Dying Star: Are you kidding me? How do you know?] 

Sunken Moon organized, drafted, then described the matter in detail.

Even though Pure White Sun wasn’t present at the scene, if he painted the picture in his mind, everything felt like a fantasy. He abruptly sent a message.

[(Horn) Dying Star: !!!]

Jiang Xiao took a calm glance and assumed that Sunken Moon had filled in Dying Star. 

Being unfamiliar with Dying Star, and even if he was, he wasn’t one who would take the initiative to respond using a horn in a chat that everyone online could see, he chose out of sight, out of mind.

But Yue Ran couldn’t ignore it.

He unconsciously picked at the keys on his keyboard. Opening his friend list window idly, he spotted that his cousin, who he could trust, was online and immediately sent a message.

[(Private) Vault of Heavens Essence<: They might have figured my identity!] 

[(Private) Attired Guqin: They? What made you think that?]

[(Private) Vault of Heavens Essence<: I just played twenty arena matches with Sunken Moon, but he didn’t say a single word in the second half of the games. After we finished, he mentioned nothing about getting me to be his apprentice or sending any more friend requests for future gaming. He must have seen through me and even told the imposter. See that horn message from Dying Star?]

[(Private) Attired Guqin: What if it was a coincidence? What if they weren’t completely sure and just bluffed to trick you?]

Yue Ran paused and pondered over the new point of view, which was very logical. 

[(Private) Attired Guqin: Pay no attention to them if they don’t take the first step to contact you. We need to watch what action they plan to take.]

[(Private) Vault of Heavens Essence<: Okay.]

[(Private) Attired Guqin: I will return in two days. I won’t be as active during these two days, so you better be good and don’t act recklessly.]

[(Private) Vault of Heavens Essence<: I know.] 

[(Private) Attired Guqin: Earlier, didn’t someone bully you? I saw the screenshot on the forum. Was your future sister-in-law also there?]

Yue Ran had to think about it.

He still didn’t understand the two groups’ purposes, but he knew he ‘stole’ Jiang Xiao from his future sister-in-law and her friends. It was reasonable to assume they didn’t have good intentions. Also, one of them was someone his cousin liked, so he couldn’t speak ill of her before getting to the bottom of things. He skipped mentioning the female group and informed his cousin only of the fan group.

As noon approached, one after another players went afk to eat lunch back in the real world. 

Jiang Xiao took the time to go online because he was worried that Sunken Moon would steal the little summoner. Now that he had made a point with the healer, he was no longer troubled by worries. Since he was online, he worked with his guildmates to figure out a time tonight to run more new dungeons and the preparation needed, before he went offline.

As Yue Ran was ready to log off for lunch, he saw his ‘hubby’ was getting off as well. He subconsciously typed (wave) in the guild chat.

But before he could click enter, he suddenly remembered what his cousin said. Yue Ran must not let his guard down and must stay in character. He cleared his earlier message and instead switched to a different chat.

[(Horn) Vault of Heavens Essence<: Hubby, hubby~ I am getting off for lunch and a nap and I wanted to let you know. Air kiss~mwah (kiss)!] 

Seeing his little professional was working hard again, Jiang Xiao calmly gave a reply.

[(Horn) >Smashing Vault of Heaven: Okay, have a good nap (kiss).]

This happened the same time as Sunken Moon was going over the twenty-five member dungeon to the party. “When the boss selects a random target, everyone would need to…play according to what I taught everyone last time. C’mon, let’s enter the dungeon.”

The guild members followed him into the dungeon. One busybody couldn’t help chatting in private before the difficult part of the dungeon started. 

—Was that an illusion? Did Moon God just pause?

—Would you be content when your beloved and someone else publicly displayed affection? Didn’t you hear the hint of weakness in his tone?

—Ah?

—Here, let me show you the post. 

After everyone read through the forum post in silence, they listened to Moon God’s voice from their audio and felt distressed.

Moon God acted so strong, commanding them through this dungeon while he was hurting inside. They must not let their Moon God down. They must protect their ‘best Moon God in the world’!

With a newfound determination, they completed the instance dungeon together.

Once Sunken Moon finished his quests, he left to pick up something to eat, then livestream for two hours. He did what he was told and resolved the misunderstanding caused by the thread, telling everyone he and Vault of Heavens Essence were just friends. Then he logged off to take a short nap, intending to ease his bruised heart—caused by the shock of Tempest’s disillusioning new personality. 

The afternoon passed quickly.

At eight o’clock in the evening, members of White Koi gathered and entered the big twenty-five member instance dungeon.

This dungeon was very difficult, but under Jiang Xiao’s command, they completed the dungeon after a few annihilations.

Before their dungeon run, there were only two parties on the leaderboard by two different guilds. Now the third spot was theirs. Besides this achievement, they also have the second spot for the instance dungeon for twenty members. Now several of the large guilds paid attention to their small guild. 

After each guild leader did each of their brief inquiries, they learned that Smashing Vault of Heaven was the key to their success, and they also learned that his wife was his weakness, so they began to send people to get brownie points from the wifey. 

When Yue Ran went mining again, he found that there were many players gathered around him, giving him various reasons to join their party. Safe to say he was on full alert as he made an escape to a different mining spot, only to see new people crowded around him. He immediately sent a message to his cousin on WeChat.

[Yue Ran: They are making a move. They sent a lot of people to approach me deliberately!]

Translator has something to add: 

The author didn’t really go into detail on the ‘leaderboard’ other than beating the dungeon means getting their party on the board. So my assumption is the leaderboard is for whoever beat the dungeon first, not fastest.