northernbook Chapter 3 Please, don't easily provoke college students.
Chapter 3 Please, don't easily provoke college students.
"I'll ask, you answer. Let's begin."
"First question: Sixth Brother, are you a man or a woman?"
The system's AI voice is neutral and cannot discern the exact gender.
Li Tingyun clearly remembered that the author's biography section of the novel stated that the gender was female.
However, male authors using female names to attract attention is a common tactic, and it's certainly more sensational for a girl to write a male-oriented novel that tops the charts.
[Genuine, a real man.]
"No, you've been castrated."
Li Tingyun poked at his lungs, "By the way, Sixth Brother..."
First, my name isn't Lao Liu, it's Wang Lao Liu. You can call me Lao Wang.
[Second, when dealing with official matters, not personal ones, please address us as System 001.]
"Hey, Lao Liu, why do you use Lao Liu as your pen name?"
"Why is this happening, Sixth Brother?"
"Sixth Brother, answer me."
Li Tingyun asked calmly, "Have you desensitized, Sixth Brother?"
【…】
[It's because the name "Eligible Bachelor" was already taken, so we had to call him "Sixth Prince." Six sixes bring good fortune, six sixes bring great luck, Six Little Ling Tong (a famous actor who played the Monkey King in 1986), six six sixes!]
Back in the day, before "Old Six" became a meme, it had a very positive connotation.
"Then why not call him 'Old Eight'?"
Li Tingyun's train of thought jumped around, then turned serious in a second, "Second question: Sixth Brother, why did you become a system?"
Stop talking...stop talking...I'm so stupid, really.
I only knew that if a story couldn't be finished, I could just abandon it and call it a day, but I didn't know that the online novel world actually had a virtual punishment mechanism.
[If paid authors fail to complete their works on time, with the required quality and quantity, they will be directly dragged into a virtual dimension by the online literature quality inspector, Q-kun. This dimension contains countless "dark rooms."]
[The dimensional administrator will forcibly send authors who abandon their work to a "black room," where there is nothing but a system control panel. The author needs to operate the transmigration system, randomly binding themselves to a highly active reader/fan, to transmigrate into the book and repair the world line together.]
Dear readers, please stop calling the author an eunuch! He was going through a period of hardship during the time he couldn't update the story, waaaaaah, sob sob sob...
"Stop it, don't imitate the buzzing of flies in front of me."
Li Tingyun asked, "So, you randomly chose me as your host?"
[Yes and no. 】
After my operating system performs its initial screening of readers, I have many candidates to choose from, but I have chosen you.
"why?"
[Because I noticed your resume is very simple, with "student" listed as your occupation.]
Wang Laoliu desperately wanted a partner with clear eyes and a foolish nature.
That way, he can focus on being the controller.
"So you just wanted to bully honest people."
【……I was wrong.】
Now, Wang Laoliu understands: don't easily provoke college students.
College students are amazing creatures.
They are easy to kill, but hard to die.
Their mental state is very stable; they consistently go crazy every day.
They will scream and twist, they will crawl in the shadows.
They'll keep rolling until they're dead, as long as they don't kill them.
Early morning classes, late night classes, group assignments, graduation projects, dissertations, graduation defenses, postgraduate entrance exams, civil service exams, and other related tests—working 996 at big companies is a blessing, while Sundays have disappeared at small companies…
University students face immense pressure and possess an indiscriminate aggression: they equally despise every blade of grass, every flower, and every person.
Their eyes weren't clear and foolish, but rather...
They treat human life like dirt and are utterly indifferent.
Go to hell, you all! I don't want to live either.
"Third question: Why are you afraid of restarting the world line and entering a loop?"
Li Tingyun continued to investigate further.
[In this dimensional space, there are so many "dark rooms" and transmigration systems, but only one administrator. He has to accept many requests to restart world lines every day, and his limited abilities prevent him from guaranteeing that the memories of all characters in every book will be erased.]
[With each cycle, someone will be reborn carrying memories of their previous life. The more cycles there are, the stronger the characters' self-awareness will become, and the more difficult it will be for the host to maintain the main storyline.]
According to statistics provided by the dimensional space administrator, the difficulty of clearing the game in loop mode increases exponentially. Multiple tragedies of players trapped in permanent loops have occurred within the dimensional space, with the number of permanently closed "black rooms" reaching as high as 70%.
[The failure rate for male-oriented fantasy novel hosts is absurdly high. If they are born with bad luck and trigger keywords such as villain, cannon fodder, or second male lead, they will most likely be wiped out before even leaving the beginner's village, starting a new cycle.]
[However, you're the first host to almost force the system to restart the world line right from the start.]
Almost everyone will choose to obediently complete the task after being punished for the first time.
You are one of the few people who question the system's identity.
Li Tingyun pondered for a moment and said, "If we can never return to the real world, what will become of us on the other side?"
All traces of our existence will be destroyed. Friends, family, and loved ones will no longer remember us; they will all have new lives.
Do you have a wife over there?
[Woof.]
Do you have a girlfriend over there?
"Wang Wang."
We understand each other implicitly; life is tough, so let's not expose it.
sad.
"You really want to go back to the real world?"
I have elderly parents in their eighties, and a younger brother and sister who are only eight months old... cough cough... I have many relatives and friends who love me and whom I love...
I can move all ten fingers, I have a healthy body, although my brain isn't the best, I enjoy thinking, although I don't have a lifelong ideal to pursue, I do have a lifelong goal of making money! Oh, and I also have a grateful heart...
He had over a dozen pages of browser history that he hadn't deleted, 1TB of video resources on his hard drive that he hadn't destroyed, and his self-indulgent works published on adult novel websites that he hadn't finished—how could he be locked up in that dark room for the rest of his life? Of course he wanted to go back!
You see, some birds are destined to never be caged; every feather of theirs shines with the light of freedom!
"No wonder you wanted to control me so much and kept urging me to do the mission."
Li Tingyun was inexplicably amused by Wang Laoliu's words.
He laughed and said, "Unlike you, I'm actually an orphan."
My father was sentenced to twenty years in prison for gambling, prostitution, and drugs. My mother, unable to bear the relentless pressure from debt collectors, jumped off a bridge across the river and ended her life.
His grandparents died early, and he had no contact with his maternal grandparents.
Finding a loved one and someone he loves is too difficult; it's more practical to find a lapdog.
The fortune teller said he was cursed with a solitary fate, so even the stray dog with a steel stomach died because of his care.
He had no relatives or friends, and even dogs disliked him.
Don't lie to me. I write novels; I've seen it all... My heart is tempered by fire, indestructible!
"Yes, I am lying to you."
Li Tingyun waved his hand.
Nothing to worry about.
He doesn't have an eighty-year-old mother to take care of, nor an eight-month-old baby sister to raise.
If one person is full, the whole family will not be hungry.
"Fourth question: Can system tasks be rejected? Can the plot of a novel be changed?"
There are two types of system tasks: main quests and system quests. Main quests typically appear within the main storyline and revolve around the protagonist. These quests must be accepted, and the rules cannot be violated.
[Another type is side quests, which usually appear in side storylines and revolve around supporting characters. These quests are triggered randomly and can be ignored, but completing more side quests will accumulate merit.]
Merit points are a good thing; they can be exchanged for spirit stones or magical artifacts in the cultivation world, and might even save your life in a critical moment.
Finally, the novel's plot can be altered, and characters can be out of character (OOC). The amount of merit a user accumulates determines their control over the plot.
In other words, the higher the host's merit points, the greater their autonomy and the less the system restricts them.
Li Tingyun: "Say the main quest again."
[Be a competent villain, spurring the protagonist to ascend to immortality and achieve perfect merit.]
This can be broken down into three requirements: first, to be a competent villain; second, to spur the protagonist to ascend to immortality; and third, to achieve perfect merit.
[The dimensional space has automatic evaluation and error correction mechanisms for its hosts. Whether or not you receive merit points, or whether or not the task is deemed complete, are not things I can manually manipulate behind the scenes.]
"understood."
Li Tingyun pondered for a moment, "Right, the newbie quests you sent me before..."