Chapter 2 The Infinite Boss Invites You to "Eat the Melon" 2. Suggestion to him...

No! This system is neither a virus app nor a scam app; it's a gossip-eating system!

The page I just closed popped up again.

Lu Yu paused, his fingers moving slightly. "Wait, I didn't say what I just said, did I? But how come this app..."

[It is solemnly declared that this system is a product of the world's rules. These rules are omnipresent and omnipotent; therefore, pure consciousness communication with the host is perfectly normal.]

New text appeared.

Lu Yu's pupils began to tremble.

Are scam apps these days really this sophisticated? Does the anti-fraud center know about this?

[The Anti-Fraud Center is unaware... no, please note, host, this system is not a fraudulent app, not a fraudulent app, not a fraudulent app! Please respect this system!]

The text on the page has been enlarged and made bolder.

Lu Yu frowned and pondered.

So, it turns out his long-awaited cheat code finally arrived? Is there an old man who can punch a Nascent Soul cultivator and kick a Deity Transformation cultivator? Is there a spiritual liquid that can nurture immortal herbs with a single drop? Yes…

[...]

The gossip-eating system finally fell silent. After a long pause, it said: "Please don't have unrealistic expectations, host. This system can only observe the gossip, and the accuracy and completeness of this observation are affected by the host's personal understanding, abilities, and other factors."

Lu Yu fell silent. After a moment, he looked at it and asked a realistic question that he didn't consider wishful thinking at all: "If I rely on you to make money, can I become rich overnight, quit my job, and earn money while sitting at home?"

【…Please don’t have any wishful thinking, host!】

The countless system novels churning in Lu Yu's mind suddenly stopped and scattered.

His passionate heart cooled down.

He glanced at the time: 11:59.

With a sharp look, Lu Yu decisively put away his phone, got up, and walked out.

Seeing this, the surrounding colleagues all looked up and followed without making a sound. Everyone knew that Lu Yu was the company's master of punctuality; following him guaranteed a perfect punctuality, and there was never any question of being late or leaving early.

At exactly twelve o'clock, to the sound of the lucky cat chiming the time, he and his army of food hunters stepped out of the company on time and rushed towards the public rest area like zombies.

The stingy boss has a rule that no one is allowed to eat at their workstations and will check the surveillance footage, so everyone's lunch delivery can only be delivered to the common rest area on this floor.

Lu Yu ordered his meal early in the morning while taking a paid bathroom break, and scheduled the delivery time in order to avoid accidentally getting engrossed in work—or rather, slacking off—before ordering or ordering too late, thus disrupting his meal plans.

This is the strategic planning and foresight of an experienced office worker.

Of course, such operations occasionally go awry, such as when the food arrives early instead of on time, leaving him feeling as cold as he is on a Monday morning. But overall, the food is delivered on time more often, which is why Lu Yu still orders frequently.

Lu Yu ran frantically toward his takeout delivery.

At this moment, whether this gossip-eating system is a genuine system that has fallen from the sky and shattered Lu Yu's scientific understanding of the past twenty-seven years, or it is a genuine fraudulent app that is just clever in its methods of creating a so-called "consciousness dialogue" based on the micro-expressions captured by the phone's camera, it is no longer Lu Yu's concern.

At this moment, Lu Yu only had one thing on his mind: to eat. As for everything else, he would think about it after he finished eating.

"What was Lu Yu doing on his phone just now? Can we zoom in to see his phone screen?"

"Inside the public restroom," Jiang Yan said.

Old Bai shook his head: "No, his phone seems to be a strange object too. Although it doesn't emit any pollution or show any abnormalities, we still can't access it..."

"Um, Captain," Liu Xian whispered, "it's already noon, shouldn't we go out for lunch?"

Old Bai glanced at him with a strange look: "You've been soaking here all morning, and you still have an appetite?"

Liu Xian tossed his head smugly: "What haven't we gamers seen? Back in the day, in my first S-rank dungeon, I even went to the cesspool to avoid the boss..."

"Alright!" Jiang Yan quickly stopped Liu Xian, as she still wanted to eat later. "Let's go somewhere else, find a secluded restaurant with private rooms, and eat first."

Liu Xian cheered and began to remove his soundproofing artifact, which resembled a protective barrier. Old Bai also turned his neck, stood up with trembling, numb legs, and put away his comic book.

Jiang Yan smiled, opened the stall door, and led her two teammates out of the crowded toilet.

"What are we going to eat later?" Liu Xian asked.

"I'm craving hot pot," Lao Bai said.

Jiang Yan remained silent.

Liu Xian and Lao Bai were surprised and stretched their heads forward to look at her, only to meet the gaze of an older woman holding cleaning tools.

The two: "..."

The older woman: "..."

Jiang Yan, standing inside the men's restroom: "..."

The next moment, the middle-aged woman's shrill voice shattered the silence above the men's restroom: "Catch the pervert! There's a female pervert!"

Jiang Yan's eyelids twitched, and she reached for the strange object to confuse the old woman. But before she could pull it out, a large group of people suddenly appeared outside to watch the commotion.

I almost forgot, it's lunch break now, one of the busiest times for people to walk downstairs in the office building.

Jiang Yan's face stiffened; she couldn't pull out the strange object.

One NPC is manageable, but a group of NPCs, especially a group of NPCs that are not in a fixed instance but are more mobile, means she can't do much more.

Perhaps this is the inevitable fate of all S-class players.

On the way to the police station, Jiang Yan couldn't help but sigh.

In the game "Smile," whether a player clears an S-rank dungeon is a watershed moment.

Players who clear an S-rank dungeon are called S-rank players and receive a pass, which the dungeon NPCs refer to as an "identity card." With this pass, players are no longer confined to the current dungeon area and can freely roam the world outside the dungeon.

Of course, such freedom of action is not without risk.

When an S-level player is out in action, if their behavior "seriously violates their identity," "excessively breaks common sense in the world," or "arouses strong suspicion from a large number of NPCs," they will be warned by Smile Game and points will be deducted. If a player receives more than three warnings, they will be directly removed from the game.

Therefore, almost all S-rank players are very cautious and will not easily reveal their difference from the surrounding NPCs.

But humans are not machines and are not perfect, so the police station and psychiatric ward of "Fool's Kingdom" can be considered the second home of many S-class players.

What S-level player hasn't been to jail? Practice makes perfect.

As Jiang Yan sat in the police station listening to the policewoman's advice, she comforted herself. She was also relieved that Lao Bai and Liu Xian hadn't been arrested; otherwise, they would likely have fallen behind in this game mission.

Yes, games.

Their presence here, and their spying on Lu Yu, are all because of the game.

This game is called the Smile Game.

Jiang Yan still remembers the scene when it arrived.

That was New Year's Eve in the Golden Water Star Dragon Kingdom.

At a time when families are reunited, an enormous canopy suddenly appears in the sky, covering most of the night sky, and can be clearly seen from anywhere on the planet.

As people around the world were filled with panic and curiosity at this unscientific scene, a blood-red smiling face appeared in the sky.

With a smile, it spoke a language that was not of human origin, yet could be understood by all humans.

It says that people can call it the Smile Game, a wonderful thing that brings smiles to everyone. As long as you join the game and follow its rules, you can get everything you want: power, status, money, health, longevity, superpowers, and so on—everything that humans can and cannot imagine.

The world was in uproar.

Afterwards, Smile claimed that it had invited three thousand players from Mercury to enter the game as the first batch of testers.

After a brief explanation, the smile disappeared.

Jiang Yan, who was having a family reunion dinner at home at the time, felt like she was dreaming.

Over the next three years, more and more people from Jinshuixing were drawn into the game and became players, and Jiang Yan was no exception.

Over the course of three years, she rose to become an S-level player, the envy of many, possessing impressive special abilities, trustworthy teammates and partners, and even becoming the vice president of the War God Guild, one of the top ten player guilds. By all accounts, she was someone who had profited immensely from the game.

Many people like this both hate the Smiling Game and are extremely reluctant to let it go, fearing the loss of everything they've gained. But Jiang Yan is different; she genuinely wants it to disappear, immediately.

"Okay, sign here and you can go," the policewoman's melodious voice finally rang out after more than an hour of waiting and education. "Be careful before going into the restroom in the future, so as not to cause such misunderstandings again. It has a very bad social impact."

Jiang Yan quickly put on an apologetic smile, nodded repeatedly, and signed the document.

The surveillance cameras near the public restroom were broken, so they didn't capture how long they stayed there. Jiang Yan claimed that she had accidentally wandered into the wrong place, and Liu Xian and Lao Bai testified to this. After the police investigation, they found no evidence of any deliberate illegal filming, so they called the people over, gave them a verbal warning, and then let them go.

After signing the papers, Jiang Yan left the police station and was about to take a taxi back to her office building when she turned her head and saw Lu Yu coming out from next door.

This unexpected encounter startled Jiang Yan, almost making her head explode.

What's going on?

Why is Lu Yu here during working hours? Did he sense something was wrong and follow me to test me?

Jiang Yan didn't dare to look at Lu Yu too much. She pretended to be playing with her phone, but instead looked down and pressed the screen, questioning Lao Bai and Liu Xian in the encrypted group chat created by the guild.

Liu Xian quickly replied: [Captain, don't be nervous! Lu Yu didn't suspect you; he went with you because he seems to have encountered some kind of telecom fraud and was worried about something, so he asked his boss for leave and went to the police station.]

Jiang Yan glanced at Lu Yu's actions out of the corner of her eye. Seeing that he was heading towards the subway station, she didn't intend to approach him directly to test him. Instead, she continued to ask in the group chat: "[He's already out of the police station, where is he going now?]"

Liu Xian replied: [It might be... the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at the First Municipal Hospital?]

Jiang Yan: [?]

Old Bai said: "He just went to the police station and told the police that he had a strange app on his phone. It has some kind of high-tech camera that captures and analyzes micro-expressions, and it can even talk in his head."

I didn't hear the specifics clearly, but places like police stations usually have blocking mechanisms. Basically, he said there was a forcibly appearing app on his phone that was trying to scam him. He showed it to the police, who searched his phone thoroughly but couldn't find it. Finally, they suggested he see a psychiatrist at the First Municipal Hospital.

Jiang Yan: [? ?]

Jiang Yan: [Where are you guys? I'll come join you, and we'll continue following him together.]

Lu Yu entered the subway station.

He was unaware that he was being spied on and followed. While scanning his face to enter the gate, he held his phone and communicated with the "spectator system" using his consciousness.

[The police can't even see me! Now you should believe that I'm something extraordinary, beyond your imagination, right?] After a trip to the police station, the gossip system was speechless and furious.

“We can’t draw that conclusion yet,” Lu Yu said as he walked to the platform. “Let’s see after I come out of the First Municipal Hospital.”

system:【……】

The system didn't want to argue with him anymore; it was tired.

Lu Yu arrived at the First Municipal Hospital by subway.

On weekdays, it's not hard to get an appointment at the psychiatry department. Lu Yu booked it on the way, with a consultation time from 4:00 to 4:30. He arrived at the hospital around 3:30 and followed the signs to the psychiatry department.

The psychiatric clinic has ten consultation rooms. On weekday afternoons, the corridors are crowded, but the further inside you go, the emptier they become.

Lu Yu continued walking in, and the number of patients around him gradually decreased until the place was empty.

He stopped at the second consultation room at the far end of the corridor and sat down on a chair outside the door.

Besides him, there were only two other patients waiting for their numbers to be called.

A long-faced man, dressed in a suit and tie, was typing rapidly on his phone. The light from the phone screen made his expression stiff and repressed.

The other was also a man, but younger, around twenty years old, with sharp bone structure and a serene, aloof air. He was sitting in a chair, looking down at the examination report.

He seemed to be afraid of the cold, as he was still wearing long sleeves and trousers in the already hot June city, and had a jacket draped over his shoulders, with only his hands and face showing.

Her hands were like new porcelain, pale with a hint of red from friction and blue from her veins; her face was like jade, veiled by her jet-black hair, hazy and indistinct.

Lu Yu's heart skipped a beat.

He had never seen anyone with such temperament and appearance; they were simply the epitome of his aesthetic sense from head to toe.

He couldn't help but glance at the young man a couple more times.

The other person seemed to notice his gaze, her black hair swayed slightly, she raised her eyes, paused when she saw Lu Yu, and then smiled: "You're here to see Dr. Zheng too?"

At the same moment, in a van near the hospital, Liu Xian suddenly shouted, "Pei, Pei—!"

"Pei Yanzhi!"

Old Bai's expression had changed: "It's only the first day of the exploration mission, and he dares to go directly to the Boss? He's insane! Captain, won't his reckless actions cause changes to the dungeon and the Boss? Should we stop him...?"

Jiang Yan frowned and did not respond immediately.

Pei Yanzhi may be crazy, but he's definitely not a reckless person; otherwise, no matter how capable he is, he wouldn't have survived this long. Moreover, given her recent encounter with Lu Yu near the police station, she had a strange intuition that perhaps, maybe, possibly… Pei Yanzhi didn't intentionally run into Lu Yu?

"Let's take another look."

Jiang Yan said.

A note from the author:

----------------------