Chapter 031: “Data stripping” (03/10)
Xie Chenyang thrust his sword into the ground then sat down. There was no intention of talking to him.
Xiang Qu felt helpless. Once the boss left, this person changed. “The one you kissed just now is my boss.” Xiang Qu sat not far from him and used Wei Xiu as a segue. “Did you fall for his face?”
“Shallow!” Xie Chenyang curled up one leg and rested his arm on it. “What I love is his soul; it has nothing to do with his face.”
Xiang Qu could tell the difference when he looked at him. He had previously met Fu Ying’s character in the game; he was a man who had lost hope in the world, and was gloomy and cynical whereas Xie Chenyang’s eyes appeared to be very warm.
Xiang Qu wondered if it was perhaps because he was talking about someone he liked. “You know that this place is just a game, yes? What you’re seeing isn’t the real Mr. Wei. Wouldn’t you want to have a real relationship with him?”
After hearing his words, Xie Chenyang: “Of course I know.”
Xiang Qu: “Then wait for me here. I’ll seal this copy, so don’t move and just stay here, okay? I’ll find a way to get you out.”
Xie Chenyang wanted to agree, but also felt that agreeing would lose the Demon Lord’s face, so he hesitated.
Xiang Qu repeated, “If nothing happens, Mr. Wei won’t come back into the game. If you want to see him again, you can only do it in reality.”
Xie Chenyang closed his eyes. “I see. Then go.”
“If you feel something tugging at you in a while, don’t resist. It’s us helping you.”
“Understood.”
Xiang Qu went offline, and went straight to the company.
Xie Chenyang collapsed and looked at the clear sky. He had a bit of a headache. “Ah, do I really have to pretend to forget about the game when I get out?”
“You can skip it,” You Huang said, “As long as you can remember, you’re only temporarily being influenced by Fu Ying’s data. Your personality needs to shift back to ‘normal’, but the memories can be used as if they’re still there.”
“So troublesome, ah. Can’t I just be myself?”
“You could do that, but if the difference between your personality and Xie Yunyao’s is too great, it will inevitably create suspicion, but if you don’t mind, then of course it’s not a problem.”
Xie Chenyang didn’t care if outsiders suspected anything. But if the person who was suspicious was his lover, that would be pretty bad, ah. “Can’t he just ask and believe me directly instead?”
You Huang had no reply to this. He bluntly said, “He doesn’t know the real situation. He might have suspicions, but his suspicions aren’t malicious–they’re just concerns.”
Xie Chenyang suddenly chuckled, louder and louder.
“?” You Huang said helplessly. “What are you laughing at?”
“Do you feel like a mother?” Xie Chenyang hooked his lips. “Worrying about your son’s feelings and all that.”
Xie Chenyang ignored his retort and closed his eyes, gradually falling asleep in the sea breeze.
When Wei Xiu came back online, he was met with the sight of Xie Chenyang sleeping peacefully under a tree.
Wei Xiu: “…… ” It’s confirmed.
NPCs don’t need to sleep. At least not before gaining intelligence.
“Xie Yunyao.” No response.
Wei Xu lifted the hem of his robe and knelt down on one knee, reaching out to pat his face. “Xie Yunyao.”
It couldn’t be that the tech department’s attempts were giving him problems, could it?
Xie Chenyang opened his eyes and was in a trance for a moment when he saw Wei Xu, then reached out and scooped him into his arms, his voice slightly hoarse. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
It carried a feeling of languid weariness.
Wei Xiu propped one hand on Xie Chenyang’s chest. “Don’t fool around. I want to talk to you about business.”
You Huang was a little surprised. His host’s lover and the bodies he hosted were becoming less and less in tune with their personas, or maybe, it was only when they were around a familiar lover?
In the first life, Zhai Zhi was genuinely Zhai Zhi. So much so, that he didn’t realize at first that the host was being possessed by someone.
Xie Chenyang closed his eyes again and turned onto his side, his chin resting against his forehead. “Say it, I’m listening.”
Forget it.
“Our company’s technical department is trying, but your data and Fu Ying’s data in this ID are too tightly combined. There’s no way to safely remove you for the time being,” Wei Xiu said. “You’ll have to wait a bit.”
Xie Chenyang opened his eyes. [They already tried?]
You Huang: “Yes, while you were sleeping. With their current technology, it’s a bit hard to safely strip your data out.”
[Help them out.]
You Huang: “Alright.”
“Xie Yunyao ……”
“Change that name.”
“…… Xiao Yao?”
Xie Chenyang sat up holding him and smiled evilly. “Call ‘my love’.”
Wei Xiu: “……” He almost forgot that this guy was still immersed in the boss’s script.
Xie Chenyang stroked Wei Xu’s head. “Alright, you can call me whatever you want.”
The hug felt intimate.
Wei Xiu, however, didn’t feel repulsed, so he was a bit puzzled, “Have I met you somewhere …… before?”
“Hmm ……” Xie Chenyang pondered before seriously saying, ”Maybe we’ve seen each other in our last life. The one before that life, or even our first life. So as soon as I saw you in this world, I fell in love with you at first sight, and I couldn’t help myself. ”
Spoken as if it were true.
Xie Chenyang pulled his hand over his heart. “I’m serious, do you not sense it as well? Towards each other, there is no unfamiliarity ……”
He slightly inclined his head, looking straight into Wei Xu’s eyes, rationalizing.
Unsure if it was his heart that was burning or his hand that was burning, Wei Xu curled his hand.
Xie Chenyang pressed down on his hand and said in dissatisfaction, “Speaking to this.”
Wei Xiu inclined his head and faintly said, “Mhm.”
“I feel like we’re several lifetimes of karmic ties that allowed us to meet in this life ……”
“Enough.” Wei Xiu drew back his hand. ”I didn’t come to talk to you about this.”
Xie Chenyang: “If you don’t want to say it, then just do it.”
Wei Xiu: “?”
Xie Chenyang smiled and moved over, kissing the corner of his lips. “Ah-Xiu, you can feel it. I’m very serious.”
Wei Xiu closed his eyes.
[GM Xiao Xiang: Mr. Wei, have you met with Xie Yunyao? What is he doing? Just now the data fluctuated a lot. Only the duration was too short, so we couldn’t analyze it yet. If it lasted a bit longer, we might be able to disentangle his data from Fu Ying’s.]
Wei Xiu: […… Got it.]
Xie Chenyang had been sitting for a long time and was about to get up when Wei Xiu pulled him back. “Ah-Xiu?”
Wei Xiu kissed his lips.
Xie Chenyang joyously reciprocated.
Hiya, his lover was so passionate.
Wei Xiu closed his eyes as the rhythm of his heartbeat fluttered.
Have to admit, Xie Yunyao might be right.
They didn’t know each other before in reality; they just met for the first time in the game, and yet he didn’t feel unfamiliar at all.
Instead, euphoria.
Maybe there was no such thing as previous lifetimes’ love, but there was love at first sight.
Wei Xiu crawled up Xie Yunyao’s neck and tried to drag out the kiss.
Xie Chenyang pressed his waist, itching to do him on the spot.
[I want to ……]
You Huang coldly declared, ”No, you don’t want to. They’re trying to slice the data between you and Fu Ying, and I’m helping. Maybe in the next moment, the one kissing your lover will be Fu Ying.”
Xie Chenyang immediately became soft. He stepped back slightly, signaling that they should stop.
Wei Xiu clung to his neck and moved along with him.
[The second before my data leaves, kick him away.]
You Huang: “Tsk.”
[Promise they don’t have enough skill to do it now?]
You Huang: “Concentrate on kissing.”
About six minutes later.
You Huang: “Two seconds.”
Xie Chenyang suddenly pushed Wei Xiu away.
Wei Xu braced one hand on the ground, his cold face bearing a touch of disbelief. “You ……”
The next words didn’t go past his lips.
The eyes of the person in front of him had changed.
Fu Ying stood up with gloomy eyes. “Want to die, mortal?”
Wei Xiu expressionlessly went offline.
—- Qi Xiu Game Technology Co. —–
Wei Xiu walked into the technical department. “How’s it going?”
Xiang Qu revealed a relaxed smile. “Successfully pulled his data out of the game. How he originally entered the game by accident should now be how he returned to his body.”
Wei Xiu nodded dispassionately.
“Mr. Wei,” Xiang Qu called out to him, “his parents …… public opinion is very unfavorable towards our company, and that friend of his won’t let us visit him in the hospital.”
Wei Xiu: “Isn’t the PR department handling it?”
“The Xie family’s parents have passed away, and their only remaining family member hasn’t woken up yet. That friend of his hasn’t budged either, only saying that he’ll wait until Xie Yunyao wakes up.” Xiang Qu frowned. “I’m worried that his friend will fabricate some nonsense with him.”
Wei Xiu did not speak, his aura condensing around him.
Xiang Qu shrunk his neck. “If he still remembers you, then maybe ……”
Wei Xiu didn’t let him finish before he left straight away.
The colleague next to Xiang Qu patted his shoulder and gave a thumbs up. “Bold.”
Xiang Qu grinned weakly.
Perhaps, it was seeing the image of Mr. Wei being pressed against a tree and kissed that gave him the guts?
— Center Hospital. —-
The hospital room was filled with the smell of disinfectant.
Fortunately, it was a single room.
The nurse who opened the door froze when she saw Xie Yunyao and quickly backed away.
Soon, doctors were brought in. After some tests, they were surprised by the situation.
The doctor asked curiously, “Your friend said that after your car accident, your consciousness accidentally traveled to a holographic game, and that’s why you are in a vegetative state in reality–is that true?”
Xie Chenyang: [You handle this.]
The doctor frowned slightly when he didn’t respond. “Do you remember what your name is? Did you feel uncomfortable anywhere?”
You Huang came online.
He looked at the doctor with a bewildered and puzzled look. “My name is Xie Yunyao, ah. I’m just a little confused, Doctor… you’re not joking? I was admitted to the hospital because of a car accident, right? What kind of consciousness enters a game? It’s not like we are in a novel.”
Doctor: “According to what your friend has said, your soul traveled through our hospital’s instruments, and with a very small probability escaped into the network ……”
You Huang’s doubt turned into shock: “Are you serious? Is there a scientific basis?”
Doctor: “Of course not, we have never found a single case ……”
“Indeed, not a single case. I don’t remember anything from the car accident or entering the hospital.” You Huang held his head. “Did I fall into a coma and stay in the hospital for a long time? My body ……”
“48 days.” The doctor gestured to the gauze wrapped around his head. “The injuries remaining on your body are now minor. As you’ve been recovering from these during this month and a half, only your head was injured seriously, but it’s fortunate that after another half month, the gauze can be removed.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
“Actually, you shouldn’t have been unconscious for that long with your injuries, but despite all of our technological advances, we still don’t know everything about how the brain works. Are you feeling okay? Let’s do a checkup if we can.”
— Hospital parking lot. —-
Wei Xiu turned off the engine, but didn’t get out of the car immediately.
He touched a cigarette, and after remembering that this was a hospital, he let it go.
Has Xie Yunyao come back?
Has he woken up yet?
Last chapter of 2024! Hope everyone is having/has had decent winter holidays!
I want to thank my Editor and Proofreader for sticking with me so far, they make these chapters readable ❤. My advice for anyone wanting to get into translations or even writing is to have at least a second pair of eyes look at your work. Sometimes my chapters come back with over a hundred small corrections and it makes me more sure that without my team this would be a completely different experience. I focus on trying to keep the authors’ intention across languages and they make my English (my 1st language) read naturally. While I have the Grammarly extension, nothing beats another human brain.
Join a discord of a translation group and they usually have a channel where translators can ask for Editors or Proofreaders! Plus the Knoxt discord has channels just for translators where we can ask each other questions and trade tips!
[dropdown title=”Translator rambling about learning Chinese”] If you do seriously want to fan-translate something then I highly recommend starting to learn the language. I know learning a new language can be scary, but if you have a goal like being able to read webnovels, watch un-subtitled shows, listen to radio/audio dramas, or even reading physical copies of media in their original language then why not try? That’s my goal at least, I want to be able to read things on the jjwxc website and support the authors. The internet, Reddit, and quite a few free apps are out there full of learning material and people willing to help!
Personally I did a bit of research and only started learning after I had been ‘translating’ for a few months. I thought that just having read a bunch of other peoples works and using search engines and online dictionaries was fine… then I realized that I could do better. I admit that my start was well-meaning but rough, it took me forever to get one chapter done as I copied it paragraph at a time into ‘Deepl’, squinted confusedly at certain sentence choices it made and going and using ‘Yabla’ to look up individual words and piecing together something I thought they actually meant, then turning around and looking up things that still didn’t make sense into ‘Baidu’ and learning new slang….
That helped me when reading other peoples… ‘translations’ . I started to recognize odd phrasing or mis-gendered characters that I had seen as MTL mistakes, or places where I would have put a footnote because it was niche knowledge. On the flip side, I noticed when effort had been put into a chapter, when someone was doing it for the love of the story and not just ad-revenue.
I then was presented with a ‘Duolingo’ alternative called ‘Busuu’. I can not tell you enough how much that changed things. I had been using Duo for YEARS off and on, never getting to far into any language I tried to learn from it. Duo never actually taught me the ‘why’s’ of things, just verbatim recitation of nonsense sentences. I usually gave up after a few months every time and felt stupid for not being able to learn a new language. But then ‘Busuu’, its like an interactive textbook! The free version is a simple 5-10sec ad before each lesson and when a new topic is presented they teach you what the phrase or word means or how to use it!
I paired ‘Busuu’ with a free flashcard app called ‘Drops’ and ‘HSK 1’ which is another free app but with all of the words you need to pass the HSK level 1 exam (Chinese Language Proficiency Exam) in a dictionary/flashcard/minigames app. A few months ago I added the app called ‘HelloChinese’ to my nightly learning sessions and used its free version up until this black friday sale and felt it worth the premium purchase. (All apps are available in the Google PlayStore, unsure of Apple)
There is a handy website called heavenlypath with lots of tips and resources if you want to also get started, click on the name for link.
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Editor Krone
Proofreader: Choux_choux
