Chapter 137: The Peach Blossoms Still Smile in the Spring Breeze

Perhaps due to the limitations of the game system, or perhaps because of his own personality, Yang Mingzhong did not explicitly state the answer to this question. However, Wen Nan was no fool.

As the conversation reached this point, he had long since deciphered the other man's implications: the current dungeon was likely riddled with bugs.

Wen Nan agreed with this assessment. For instance, the secret door that had suddenly vanished from the wall on the third floor of the Irene Group headquarters...

However, the matter was complex. He could hardly distinguish whether this was a quest clue or a genuine bug, and it was impossible to fathom it out just by sitting here chatting with Yang Mingzhong.

Therefore, Wen Nan returned to Yang Mingzhong’s question, first grasping at an obvious contradiction regarding the mastery patterns:

"You said that if a player disappears completely from this game world, their character's golden pattern disappears as well. But you didn't disappear; you were saved by your former guild leader, weren't you?"

Yang Mingzhong froze upon hearing this.

He had tried his best to gloss over that part, never expecting the other party to pinpoint the issue so accurately and strike at the heart of the matter. He had known this new guild leader was no ordinary person, but he hadn't expected to underestimate his sharpness to this degree.

It seemed that trying to bluff his way through was impossible.

Yang Mingzhong gave a faint, wry smile and replied, "Yes, because that golden mastery pattern I received from the former guild leader was fake."

"...Fake?"

Yang Mingzhong tried to correct himself: "Perhaps 'fake' isn't quite the right word. It was like a drug that hadn't been approved for the market—it should never have been given to a patient. I was desperate and sought any remedy, and I ended up being his lab rat."

Wen Nan pondered for a moment and made a bold guess: "Was your car accident also because of this?"

This time, the shock on Yang Mingzhong’s face deepened.

He suddenly felt a sense of regret—regret that he hadn't met Ye Jiu sooner. If they had met earlier, perhaps Ye Jiu could have helped him see through that man's schemes sooner. If that had happened, he wouldn't have been such a naive fool, signing that gentleman's agreement full of lies and deceit.

But life has no road back; how could there be an "if"? Having walked into this dead end, every step was a choice he had made himself.

Yang Mingzhong took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and recalled that past:

"It was only much later, after I understood the rules of this game world, that I realized just how rare a golden mastery pattern truly is. If it were that easy to create, that man would have used it himself. Why would he be kind enough to trade it to me?

"Any prop capable of conjuring a golden mastery pattern from thin air would likely be on par with the legendary Shards of the Divine Scepter. That man didn't have one, but he used certain methods to create a counterfeit pattern and gave it to me.

"The prop I had—the one I won in a lottery that could locate patterns—was real, but he never intended to help me from the very beginning.

"He just wanted to use me to see what the consequences of using that fake pattern would be. I almost died in this dungeon; that was the price. That man successfully learned his lesson from me, and he never touched the technology of forging fake patterns ever again."

Thinking of this, Yang Mingzhong gave a bitter laugh. He only realized all of this long after he had reached the rank of Elder. By then, his entanglement with the guild was already too deep—too deep to ever cleanly sever, unless... he gave up everything and deleted his account to start over.

***

[The glamorous and powerful bigwig, Jade-Faced Peach, of the Ghost Master Alliance, actually has such a tragic past?]

[I remember there was a legendary brotherhood between him and the guild leader—their stories of braving life and death are still widely circulated among the Six Great Guilds. Was it all just fake PR?]

[*Shorty*: Uh, I find it strange too.]

[*Shorty*: I knew Elder Jade-Faced had a story from his youth, but didn't the story say the guild leader saved a damsel in distress? Was it actually him tearing lovers apart?]

[*Shorty*: Now that I think about it, it fits the guild leader's character. After all, he really is a cold-blooded and vicious villain.]

[?]

[Chang Wei, are you done pretending?]

[So you really were in a major guild, and a bigwig working under the leader of the Ghost Master Alliance?]

[*Shorty*: Heh heh heh, who I am doesn't matter. Let's just keep watching Bigwig Ye's stream.]

***

Wen Nan gripped his coffee cup, his elbows resting on the table. After waiting a while and seeing no further response, he asked, "Is that all?"

"Yes," Yang Mingzhong nodded.

Wen Nan lowered his eyes, thought for a moment, and pressed, "That rose from before—did you deliberately want me to give it to Li Shuyi through my hands?"

Yang Mingzhong started, then gave a self-deprecating smile. "Yes."

After a pause, he explained, "In the past, we would always have dates in this coffee shop. She would always wait for me at this table by the window. Whenever I arrived, I would hand her a red rose, and seeing the red rose, she would always smile so happily."

As he spoke, a look of profound loneliness surfaced in his eyes.

Wen Nan told him the truth: "When I gave her that rose last time, she didn't even look at it—she just tossed it aside."

"Yes, I know," Yang Mingzhong smiled bitterly.

Wen Nan pondered for a moment and couldn't help but ask, "Why not go to her yourself? Why not clarify this to me earlier? If I had known you and she had a past like that, I wouldn't have..."

Yang Mingzhong shook his head, cutting Wen Nan off. "She is not the lover I am looking for. And I am no longer the husband that the Li Shuyi of three years ago loved so dearly.

"Wei Junjie’s wife should have disappeared from this world long ago. Remaining where she shouldn't exist only causes her pain. I saw the news about her and rushed back here—not to reminisce, and certainly not to reconcile. I just..."

He just wanted to help her put an end to this endless suffering. But once he arrived in this familiar yet strange map, he realized he couldn't bring himself to do it. It wasn't until recently that he discovered someone else had already done the deed for him.

Wen Nan remained silent for a moment, then took the portable storage ring from his backup equipment slot. "Did you make this ring?"

The characters engraved on the back of the ring, once the garbled text was removed, formed an abbreviation:

[F. M. W. S. Y.]
[L. Y. F.]
[F. J. J.]

Wen Nan guessed it must be a phrase: *Dedicated to my wife Shuyi, loving you forever, your husband Junjie.*

Yang Mingzhong nodded. "Before deleting my account, I used some final measures to have this ring transmitted here. Originally... I wanted to take some of her hair as a memento, but standing here, I realized it was all meaningless. I am no longer who I was, and she is no longer who she was."

Wen Nan nodded and put the ring back into his backup equipment slot. "I will keep the ring. In exchange, I think you might want to take this."

As he spoke, Wen Nan slid a brooch toward Yang Mingzhong. It was a silver, bullet-shaped brooch embedded with diamonds.

The moment he saw the brooch, Yang Mingzhong was struck to the core. With trembling hands, he clutched the brooch in his palm, his eyes instantly turning red. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, and scalding tears rolled down his cheeks.