Chapter Fifteen: Father

  (Today is the fourth update, happy birthday to brother Heng Qing. Also, I wish all students who are about to take exams good luck and achieve excellent results.)

  I patted my chest loudly, almost spitting blood, "No problem, great hero, please speak!"

  Long Wu finally stood up, pointing to the direction of the east village head, "It's been a long time ago, I went out hunting and accidentally dropped my wine gourd in the Bruker's stronghold. If you're brave enough, help me get it back!"

  "Ding Dong!" System Prompt: "Do you accept the quest [The Lost Wine Gourd]?"

  I immediately clicked confirm. The task content also popped out ——

  【Lost Wine Gourd】Long Wu accidentally lost his wine gourd during an outing, and it's said that it might have been taken by a monster in the Burg camp. Please go to the Burg camp to help him retrieve his wine gourd.

  Task difficulty: D6

  The difficulty has increased a lot, and the reward for this task is definitely quite generous. A D9 task can give me a bronze-level greave, so maybe a D6 task will give me an even higher-grade treasure?

  Thinking of this, I immediately bid farewell to this fallen NPC and stood up.

  The place described by Long Wu is not close to Villari village, the smart navigation on the map circled a distance of 5 kilometers for me, and I need to run for almost twenty minutes. Anyway, I'm a bit sleepy now, so I'll take in the scenery along the way and maybe even refresh myself.

  Although it's already 6 o'clock in the morning, there are still many players who haven't logged off. Along the way, there are still many players leveling up. You can even hear them talking, "Damn, I've been practicing all night and only reached level 7, this guy is more annoying than monsters!"

  "Alright, stop complaining, at 7 o'clock later, let's tell the network administrator and get a package online!"

  "Well, it can't be helped! By the way, what are we having for breakfast later?"

  "Let the network administrator cook two bowls of instant noodles for a while!"

  I also feel my stomach rumbling. Okay, let's run to the outside of that big stronghold first, and then go offline to eat breakfast. There are many breakfast stalls in the alley opposite Henghua Building, which are both affordable and delicious. Much better than the "Healthy Breakfast" at the bottom of this building.

  When a person is hungry, they can actually summon some energy and feel as if the wind is beneath their feet, making this long journey seem shorter.

  At last, after passing through a dense forest, a stretch of yellow earth appeared before me. The yellow earth stretched out along the highway, and in the distance, several black hills rose and fell into view.

  The map clearly shows that area is the main stronghold of the Brugg people.

  In less than three minutes, I had already reached the end of the loess land. At this time, about 50 meters away from my line of sight, two sentry posts could be vaguely seen on both sides.

  Never mind for now. There's no one and nothing weird here anyway, I'll log off and go eat first.

  Took off the VR glasses, rubbed my eyes and found that there were only a few people in front of me. Looking back, the players behind were also scattered.

  It's hard not to sigh, these classmates are not professional enough! In the past three years, I haven't played games and can persist for more than six hours...

  However, to my left and right, the beautiful woman No. 16 was still fighting hard. And on my right, the beautiful woman No. 18, what's her name again, ah yes, Luo Lan, she looked at me with a tired expression, seemingly about to fall asleep.

  As soon as I took off my glasses, she stretched her waist and said, "Brother, are you going home?"

  "No, I'm going to have breakfast."

  As soon as she heard the two words "breakfast", the tall and slender beauty's face blossomed into a flower, "Brother, can we go together? I haven't really eaten Tianjin snacks before!"

  "Come on, I'll treat you."

  "Uh-huh!" She nodded heavily.

  She immediately picked up her large milky white bag and went downstairs with me.

  I took her across the street, through two alleys, to a specialty baozi shop outside the market. The baozi here is three-fresh-water filling, and it has a small reputation in this area of Hexi District.

  I ordered a catty of buns and also had two bowls of millet porridge, "These should be enough for the two of us to eat."

  As soon as the fragrant and steaming buns were placed on the table, her eyes clearly turned blue. She picked up her chopsticks, added one to her mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed.

  My eyes are wide with wonder, this eating method is too domineering! The little beauty's mouth isn't big, but the bun isn't small either, and it went down in one bite!

  She mumbled to herself, and in just a few minutes she had eaten seven or eight buns. Only then did she pat her belly contentedly, "I'm finally not hungry anymore, now I can really enjoy the flavor of these buns."

  "My chopsticks have been suspended in mid-air for a while now... Uh, Lorin, can I eat yet?"

  She also realized her own loss of composure and smiled awkwardly, "Brother, you eat. I'm just too hungry."

  "It's okay, let's have some more, stop when we're full."

  The words came out of my mouth very calmly, but I didn't expect a chemical reaction to occur. A layer of mist suddenly appeared in Luolan's eyes.

  "What's the big deal? It's just a few buns."

  Two big teardrops "dripped" into the rice bowl, creating two ripples. I casually pulled out a tissue from my pocket and handed it to her, "Is it because you had a fight with your family and ran out?"

  Luolan took over the tissue, and her tears had already formed a line, falling continuously into the millet porridge.

  I thought this was good, this porridge has a salty and bland taste.

  However, she cried with restraint, without making a sound, just tears streaming down her face. "It's been a long time since someone has treated me so well."

  "Don't be silly, it's just a meal, no big deal. Are you from Beijing? Alright then..."

  I pulled out my wallet and took out five 100-yuan bills from my pocket. "This 500 yuan should be enough for your fare, go to the long-distance bus station or train station later and hurry up to buy a ticket, your family must be worried to death."

  This sentence thoroughly expressed her grievances, and she burst into tears, "I have no family! They're all dead! They never consider my feelings, they never have!"

  There weren't many people eating breakfast around me, but one by one they still cast surprised glances, thinking to themselves if this kid had received some kind of stimulation.

  This sentence was like a knife stabbing into my heart.

  I am an orphan, I don't know who my parents are, all I know is that I was raised by a man with the surname Luo. This man surnamed Luo treated me very badly, from what I can remember he would often scold and beat me. He also smokes, drinks, gambles and has mistresses, you could say he's got all the vices. From him, I didn't feel any warmth at all.

  On the contrary, the feeling of family is what I felt from my neighbor's house in the big compound where I lived. Mr. Ouyang was a cultured man, his wife was also very elegant, and they had a sister four years older than me who treated me very well. At that time, my adoptive father often went out to drink, gamble, and fool around with women, sometimes not coming back until midnight, but I never went hungry, thanks to Mrs. Ouyang who cooked for me. The sister who was four years older than me also took special care of me, if there was a fish in the meal, she would definitely put it in my bowl.

  My foster father was a drunkard and had excessive lust, he got a sudden illness and died when I was seven years old. From then on, I became a real orphan.

  Ouyang Bo then adopted me that year.

  I remembered that I was already very sensible at that time, and I proposed to change my surname to Ouyang many times, but he never agreed. He told me that even if the adoptive father is not good to you, he has raised you after all and has saved your life, you can't be ungrateful and give up the surname he gave you. As long as I treat you well, you know it in your heart, we don't have to stick to this formality between us grandfather and grandson.

  Since then, Mr. and Mrs. Ouyang took on the responsibility of supporting two children's education, which was a great burden for the originally not wealthy Ouyang family. Because of this, Mrs. Ouyang quarreled with him several times.

  Ouyang's sister stood on her father's side all along.

  When I was eight years old, the relationship between two people completely broke down. Aunt Yang took my sister away and married a foreigner, which was said to be very strange, and then there was no news from her. Unfortunately, I didn't even have the chance to say goodbye to Sister Yang.

  So all along I have been feeling guilty towards Ouyang Bo, if it wasn't for me, their family probably wouldn't have fallen apart.

  However, Ou Yang Bo Bo has always raised me up, and has always treated me as his own, never hitting or scolding me.

  So we two have been dependent on each other for as long as 13 years.

  Unfortunately, good people don't live long. When I was 19 years old, just after entering "Faith", Mr. Ouyang's physical examination revealed that he had lung cancer and it was already in the late stage. After I found out online that this disease is incurable, I went crazy in "Faith" to earn equipment and money, selling everything to pay for his treatment. But even so, we were unable to save his life.

  But what still hurts me to this day is that he didn't die of lung cancer, but rather took his own life. In his words, in order not to let me fill the bottomless pit with my hard-earned money, he had to die.

  He died of an overdose of sleeping pills in the hospital. Although he left without much pain, it tore my heart apart and I shouted "Dad, Dad, wake up!" Pushing away all the nurses and doctors, I desperately shook his body, but couldn't have any effect on his cold stiff corpse.

  Mr. Ou Yang was a very kind and righteous person. Before he passed away, in the will he had made, he had already allocated to me the two-bedroom, one-living room apartment that the government had assigned during the relocation of our old house, and incredibly, he also left me 100,000 yuan in savings with my name on it. He even left me a letter saying that no matter what, I was not allowed to sell the house, but keep it for when I get married, and as for the money, save it for the wedding banquet.

  After finishing his funeral, I cried alone in the room for two days and one night. Then, dragging my tired body, I finished the last battle of "Faith". Afterwards, I bought a good grave site for Ouyang Bo at Xiyuan Cemetery in Tianjin and had the following words engraved on the tombstone: The tomb of my biological father, Ouyang Lun.

  It's been over three years since then, but every time I recall it now, I feel both warmth and piercing pain. To be honest, I'm not a good son, really not; I couldn't even save my own father...

  Thinking of this, her eyes were a little hot and her nose was a bit sour.