Chapter 136: The Distant Past

At this point, Yang Mingzhong chuckled self-deprecatingly. "You must think I was a fool back then, right? How could any player fall in love with and marry a character from a dungeon? It’s simply ridiculous."

Those female characters were ghosts, after all. Players entering the map would avoid them at all costs unless it was for completion progress or main quests. Just being near them was enough to make most players break into a cold sweat; what player would ever fall for a ghost in a horror game?

But Wei Junjie—or Yang Mingzhong, as he is now—was born with a resilient spirit. Even as a novice player who had only just cleared his trial map, he could already perfectly suppress his fear in the presence of ghosts up to ten stars, ensuring they wouldn't transform into their monstrous forms.

In the eyes of the then-lonely, older virgin Wei Junjie, Li Shuyi in her normal state was nothing short of perfect. He became an anomaly in the game: he had fallen in love at first sight with a female ghost. Although Li Shuyi was merely a target for his quest, Wei Junjie secretly made up his mind that he would marry her. Of course, such feelings seemed laughable to most players. That was why Yang Mingzhong had not intended to tell the man across from him about these personal reflections.

However, upon hearing this, Wen Nan did not show a hint of mockery. Instead, he asked a different question: "You married her, but once the main quest ended and you cleared the dungeon, didn't you have to leave? She wasn't an 'obtainable' character, and her star rating wasn't high enough—you couldn't have taken her with you, could you?"

Yang Mingzhong froze. Before he had deleted his account and started over, he had told this story to many players he considered brothers. They would always mock or tease him, and the conversation would end there. Never before had anyone, upon hearing his story for the first time, immediately put themselves in his shoes and recognized the difficulties he had faced at the time. This meant that the person across from him not only accepted his actions but also fully embraced his absurd idea of wanting to stay with a ghost forever.

A strange emotion surged in his heart. Yang Mingzhong picked up his coffee cup and took a sip to steady himself before continuing. "In other dungeons, it might have been impossible. But in this one, there was a special item that could help me."

Wen Nan instantly understood what he meant. "You triggered the Soul Thread?"

Yang Mingzhong nodded. "To stay in this dungeon, I was willing to become her puppet."

Seeing a flicker of something unusual in Wen Nan’s eyes, Yang Mingzhong added, "My wife loved me. Even though she used the Soul Thread to bind my five limbs, she never tried to control me. My body remained my own; I simply used that method to stay by her side for a long time."

Wen Nan nodded. "And then? Why did you lose her? Was it because of that car accident?"

"Yes, and yet not entirely. In the end, this was all my own fault. If I had continued to play the role of a good husband and lived peacefully with her, the subsequent tragedy would never have occurred. But at that time... I was tired."

"This map was too small. Completing tasks for a few days might not have felt like a problem, but staying here for a long time, doing the same chores every day, and watching players come and go made this place feel like a tiny fish tank. I felt like a goldfish on display—increasingly bored and suffocated. I developed the urge to escape. My wife sensed it and told me that if I wanted to leave, she was willing to sever the Soul Thread and let me go."

"But I couldn't bear to leave her. I rejected her offer and stayed, continuing our repetitive, monotonous, yet happy married life. Then one day, a man covered in 'taming' tattoos appeared. He told me he could solve my predicament. He said he could grant my wife a taming tattoo so that she would become my exclusive character, allowing me to take her out of this map forever. He had only one small request: I needed to join his guild."

"To me, this was a godsend. Without any hesitation, I signed a gentleman's agreement with him. He kept his promise, branded a tattoo on the back of my wife's neck, and I successfully tamed her. On our wedding anniversary, filled with hopes for the future, I drove home to pick her up and leave. But on the way, I had that car accident. I didn't die; I was rescued by that man and became a member of his guild."

"At first, I tried to return to the dungeon to find her, but my level was too low and my equipment too poor—it was impossible. Later, I heard from other players that she had moved on, forgotten me completely, and started a new life. I thought our story had ended there, and that I should move on too. I tamed many characters after that, but I never felt anything again. Until recently... I received a message from my wife in my system character chat box. She said she missed me—every day, every minute, every second... At that moment, I knew that no matter what, I had to come back."

Yang Mingzhong stopped there. The story sounded sad and seemed to have no issues. But as Wen Nan carefully analyzed it, he couldn't help but frown. There were actually many inconsistencies.

"You said that man gave your wife a taming tattoo. Why is it that Li Shuyi doesn't have one now?"

"It was a gold-tier tattoo," Yang Mingzhong replied.

Wen Nan looked at him in silence. He had already fully cleared Li Shuyi's quest. If she truly had a tattoo, even the highest-grade gold one, he should have received a notification from the system that she was an 'obtainable' character.

Yang Mingzhong paused for a moment, realizing that Wen Nan was not as familiar with the nature of taming tattoos as the members of the Tamer Alliance, and perhaps didn't understand what he meant. He had to explain further: "Only one in a thousand quest characters possesses a taming tattoo. And among those, only one in a thousand is a gold-tier tattoo. These extremely rare gold tattoos have a characteristic: if the player disappears from the game world entirely, the tattoo vanishes with them, and the tamed character either disappears or is completely 'factory reset'."

So, Li Shuyi had been factory reset?

"Then why does she still remember you?"

Yang Mingzhong shook his head. "I don't know."

In truth, it wasn't just the fact that Li Shuyi retained her memories. Even if she did remember him, as a low-star character, she had no permissions to send messages to a player like Yang Mingzhong who had already left the dungeon. How could that message have been sent? Furthermore, Yang Mingzhong remembered clearly that the main quest he had received back then was completely different from the current one.

But he couldn't speak of these things. It involved spoilers for the dungeon, and the moment he tried to say it, the game system would automatically mute him. However, he was certain of one thing: there was definitely something wrong with this map.