Chapter 30 Cooperative Player: Little Tim, Take It!

Wen Yue sighed and rubbed her temples, her face apologetic: "I'm sorry, I was a bit too harsh. Aside from being seriously injured and unconscious, I haven't had a break for several days, especially after being surrounded by vampires... But I want to say, we are not your enemies." The player made their stance clear, subtly using a retreat as a tactic.

Many people with insomnia experience fatigue, and injuries can exacerbate this fatigue. At such times, their willpower is weak, making them more likely to lower their psychological defenses and make amends for their actions.

"That's all for today. D... Robin, see the guests out." Wen Yue revealed her pale palm, the skin around the veins from the IV drip showing mottled bluish-purple needle marks. She subtly played the victim to prove the truth of her words, then instructed Dick to see the guests out.

Wen Yue is currently feigning illness, but not entirely. Just a few hours ago, she was still suffering from a persistent high fever, and the aftereffects of her body aches and weakness hadn't completely subsided. For now, she should just sit still; otherwise, it would be too embarrassing to collapse to her knees.

"Oh, that's a pity. I thought we could work together this time." Harley puffed out her cheeks and followed Dick out.

Jason grabbed a cushion and tucked it behind Wen Yue, then placed his hand on the back of the sofa behind her.

Harley silently reached the doorway, then abruptly stopped, turned, winked, and flashed a sly smile. "I think 'D' doesn't refer to Damian, it refers to Dick!" The other person's hesitant address for Robin wasn't Damian, but Dick. The members of the Bat-Family always knew that Harley knew their true identities behind their masks, so they wouldn't deliberately pause to change their address.

The actor-beast player was stunned for a moment, his eyes widening: "What?"

Harley's eyes darted around, revealing an astonishing sharpness and professional insight. She tilted her head and raised her voice, "Red Robin wouldn't dare order Damian around like that, and Red Hood seems a bit too familiar with you." It wasn't like she was treating a peer, but rather an elder.

The player's eyes flickered, and he lowered his head as if to cover up his embarrassment, saying in a muffled voice, "We're all family, isn't it normal to help a sick person? Besides, you don't understand, this is how good brothers treat each other..."

Harley smiled knowingly at Harley's attempt to cover up her lie. "You don't seem like the person I know. Are you really Red Robin? Is he really Robin?"

"You actually found out..." The player had a "you actually saw through me" expression on his face, closed his eyes, and shrugged with a "what the hell" attitude: "Okay, I did lie. Robin is indeed Dick, he's the youngest in our family. I didn't lie about the guy behind him, you know him, Jason. I'm their second brother Tim, and our eldest brother is Damian."

The players believe they are the reverse-order bat family.

“That’s more like it.” Harley sat back down on the sofa, this time with a slightly more relaxed posture.

In this high-level match, the player's acting skills remained consistently excellent.

A gentle smile played on Wen Yue's lips. Playing the victim was indeed a good way to build rapport. Using an obvious, easily noticeable trap as a smokescreen to conceal a deeper one. In most cases, people tend to focus their attention on this obvious trap, believing they have seen through its tricks, and thus lower their guard.

In any case, Red Robin is always more relaxing than Batman, isn't he?

Harley pulled out her earphones from her pocket, turned up the volume openly, and put them to her lips.

Upon seeing this, the player couldn't help but click a 6: Using the headset as a bugging device, no wonder she's Harley Quinn.

"Hi, Red Robin, this is Harley Quinn. You heard the conversation just now, let's get straight to the point!" Harley tossed the headset to Wen Yue.

On the other end of the headset, Tim, suddenly betrayed, felt bitter. His good mental fortitude allowed him to calmly take over the conversation and adapt to the situation: "Sorry, Harley is also a member of the Bat-Family (so it's reasonable for her to have the Bat-Ears)... Hello, me from another world."

Wen Yue put on her headset and calmly looked ahead: "There's a wall-mounted TV in front of me, let's have a video call."

As one of the most powerful hackers in the DC Universe, this was naturally a piece of cake for Tim. The television screen lit up, showing Red Robin sitting at the desk, with short, slightly disheveled black hair. He removed his Domino mask, revealing a striking blue eye that was identical to Bruce's, but even more noticeable than his deep-set eyes were the abrupt dark circles under his eyes.

Detective Duck has probably stayed up several more nights in a row.

"Where are you in your investigation? Tell me." Wen Yue regretted that the game panel was gone now, otherwise she could have taken a screenshot, adding another piece of Red Robin material. Actually, it's not that players can't take pictures with electronic devices, but the problem is that they might save the photos and then expose them. In front of the real Bat Family, what privacy is there to speak of?

Tim sensed something was off. What was with this feeling of a parent checking homework?

"The clues you left us were unexpectedly lost; a vampire suddenly appeared and destroyed all the evidence. A highly suspicious coincidence, yet my subsequent investigation found nothing amiss. All the evidence proves it was just a regular attack on a superhero." Tim cautiously answered the other party's question with objective facts.

He leaned back in his computer chair and continued, "The enemy knows a lot about us... Perhaps you have some clues."

Wen Yue paused in her action of tapping her thigh, somewhat surprised: That's it? The entire passage consisted of known information, without any extra key elements. At most, it was a summary of the clues left by the player, which was meaningless and worthless.

Therefore, Harley's attitude towards the players can actually reflect part of Tim's attitude.

This duck detective is so dishonest.

His biggest weakness is his indecisiveness towards his family.

Since Tim won't say, then the players have to say it.

"You saw the Sun Lamp and the Joker I left for you, right? I think you should have noticed some clues too. No one knows better than you that the so-called Joker doesn't refer to the Joker, but to the Extra Card, which is inside your group." Wen Yue pointed out this fact that Tim had already anticipated.

"Batman must have been tested within the Bat-family, and everyone passed. Are you relieved? You're hoping to find clues to prove you wrong, but you know you've missed a lot. You've spent too much time and energy with your Bat-family—but how long has it been since you saw Starfire? She hasn't messaged you in ages, has she?"

Wen Yue's eyes revealed regret and sadness; the player had been AFK for too long, and many things hadn't been stopped in time.

"Did you know? A few drops of Starfire's blood are enough to allow a vampire to hold a cross, touch holy water, and walk in the sunlight..." That's how Nightwing was able to pass the Bat Family's test and never reveal his vampire identity.

"So wake up, stop deceiving yourself, stop running away, stop maintaining this false peace and then desperately waiting for the day it collapses. You know everything I've said is true. Now, we should face the answers to the questions. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here, you wouldn't have come looking for us."

"How did you know? Xinghuo, she..." Tim couldn't believe it, as if in a dream.

“Yes, she’s dead. Just like Zan from The Amazing Twins, just like the Flash.” Wen Yue directly pointed out the truth that Tim couldn’t accept.

"And you, you waited, you tested the waters, you were in disbelief every day, you could have stopped the loss in time, but you did nothing, you dared not do anything."

"Tim, in many situations, making the best choice requires ruthlessness to achieve relative objectivity. The more you care about something, the more you will lose it. You'll find that because you care about that illusory family member, you will lose all your family members, you will have nothing. So, stop hesitating, stop being so indecisive, we don't have time!" Tim needed this wake-up call right now.

“I know, I know what I have to do…” Tim seemed to wake up from a dream, his expression complicated: “So it’s Nightwing, it’s Dick… right?”

The sudden artillery attack that day, the searchlight engraved with the bat symbol, and the Joker card with a blood-stained cross—two key clues vanished completely. The vampire, the culprit, ended the matter by self-immolation. When Barbara was ambushed, the vampire who was about to reveal even more crucial information was dealt with by Nightwing, who appeared just in time. Everything pointed to that unbelievable answer: the Vampire King was within the Bat Family, their closest and most trusted confidant.

“You’re always so smart.” Wen Yue gazed at Tim behind the computer screen, her voice soft yet firm: “I believe we will win.”

Like a boulder thrown into a calm lake, ripples spread through Tim's heart, and his eyes widened in shock.

...

After Harley left, Tim temporarily logged off to prepare for what was to come.

Jason, who had been silent the whole time, sat down on the sofa next to Wen Yue and couldn't help but click his tongue and say, "Today is another day that has changed my opinion of you. I didn't expect you to be so serious and so intimidating."

Dick nodded in agreement. The glimpse of the player's abilities shocked the two of them.

No longer needing to maintain a tense public image, Wen Yue relaxed on the sofa, revealing a reserved smile: "Keep it low-key, I just happened to have read a few psychology books. That was a long time ago."

“This ‘several books’ is quite mysterious.” Jason asked with interest, “Why do you study psychology?”

Wen Yue paused, placed her hand on her abdomen, and pondered for a moment before asking in a questioning tone, "Because of confusion?"

"To the world?"

“Psychology is the study of people,” Wen Yue explained, adding casually, “It was just that one time I suddenly realized I was losing my sense of self, so I started to study it.”

"Oh, you call yourself a player every day, so you see everyone else as NPCs?" Jason seemed to see right through him.

"No." Wen Yue denied it directly, "The point is not whether other people are NPCs or not, but whether I am an NPC or not."

Wen Yue became interested in expressing herself, “One day I suddenly realized that I was just playing the identity and role that society had given me. I was bound by the fixed framework of the role, without any change or creation, like an identity template, an NPC. So I flipped through a few books that specifically study people, just reading them casually, and that was about it for a while.”

"Why did you give up?" Dick asked curiously, leaning forward and resting his hands on his knees.

“The result wasn’t ideal.” Wen Yue lowered her eyes, crossed her hands behind her head, lay on the sofa with her legs crossed, and said, “Actually, psychology is still somewhat useful. It helps people see the root cause beneath the surface, but the root cause is often an external fact that cannot be changed. It requires smoothing out the rough edges to make it work. But people play games, not the other way around.

Understand yourself, not your environment.

External world and inner world, illusion and reality, soul and self.

Wen Yue realized that psychology couldn't save her, so she switched to studying philosophy. However, she found that all philosophy led to confusion, so she turned to literature. Her literary work was so effective that it directly defeated the players.

This damn life, let's play it and see who can outplay whom. In other words, in the game Earth Online, don't take it too seriously, don't be too anxious, just let it go.

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The author's note: The hardest part of collaboration is taking the first step; after that, everything else falls into place!

Understand yourself, not your environment.

External world and inner world, illusion and reality, soul and self.

These two sentences are not about idealism, but about materialism. What we perceive as reality is the subconscious, while illusion is the outward manifestation. The external world is our outward appearance, but the subconscious is our true self.

So please don't misunderstand, I am a staunch materialist!