【Jian Lai】 felt like he was being toyed with.
The company's second-in-command was definitely pulling his leg!
He wanted to maintain a polite smile, but the corners of his mouth twitched. He couldn't force a laugh at all; instead, he could only tremble with suppressed rage while pretending nothing was wrong.
Ghost was laughing hysterically on the inside, but on the surface, he looked at 【Jian Lai】 with absolute solemnity. There was no trace of mockery in his eyes; he even took a step forward and lowered his voice further.
“Before practicing this technique, you must ensure that you are an evil person. You must have no moral bottom line and no character to speak of. You must be morally deficient in both public and private life.”
“Every bad deed you have ever done will become nourishment for this technique. The more of a good person you are, the further this technique will be from your reach.”
【Jian Lai】 was utterly speechless. His mouth opened and closed as his brain worked at high speed, trying to find a loophole in Ghost’s words to argue back.
But Ghost’s translucent face was filled with such sincerity that 【Jian Lai】 almost began to wonder if his own moral standards were indeed too high.
A cold wind gusted in from the hallway window, rustling the leaves of a nearly dead pothos plant in the corner.
A strange silence fell over the scene, broken only by the wind whistling back and forth through the stairwell.
Of course, the silence was only on the surface. In his heart, 【Jian Lai】 had already cursed Ghost’s ancestors back eighteen generations. He desperately wanted to storm into the boss’s office and ask if the second-in-command had some kind of mental illness!
However, he didn't show a hint of complaint on his face because he still wanted to learn that technique.
Whether Ghost was telling the truth or not, at least there was a lead on a cultivation technique. This was much better than wandering around like a headless chicken as he had been doing before.
Ghost remained expressionless. In truth, he didn't really want to spout this nonsense, but these were the instructions Yue Shi had given him.
Yue Shi harbored ill intentions, yet he understood the nature of players perfectly. If he were to give them a poisonous technique for free, the players wouldn't value it; they might even gather to meticulously discuss its side effects.
But if he set an extremely high threshold for this technique, players who went through immense hardship to obtain it would certainly be unwilling to share it. Moreover, there was a high probability they would start practicing it immediately without questioning if there was anything wrong with the technique itself.
It was like certain consumers who bought expensive luxury products. If the product didn't work well, they would rather believe they didn't know how to use it than think the product they bought was flawed.
Ghost had lived a long time; he certainly had the skill to bluff people. He cleared his throat and spoke in an earnest, well-meaning tone:
“Little Jian, ever since you joined the company, I’ve been observing you. You are hardworking and never slack off. You complete every task assigned to you on time, and you're the first to volunteer for the company’s dirty and exhausting work. You are respectful to the boss and friendly to your colleagues. Your character is truly too noble—so noble that I cannot bear to let you practice this technique. It would ruin you; it would turn you into someone you wouldn't even recognize.”
【Jian Lai】 couldn't listen to any more.
Noble? In all his years of living, this was the first time anyone had used that word to describe him.
He cheated, skipped classes, badmouthed his colleagues behind their backs, and had even scammed delivery drivers out of red envelopes. How was he noble?
The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. He was practically going insane; Ghost was clearly making things difficult for him on purpose!
“You should just focus on working peacefully at the company and stop thinking about things that aren't meant for you.” Ghost patted 【Jian Lai】 on the shoulder, his hand sending a chill through the player's collar as it passed through.
【Jian Lai】 took a deep breath and looked at Ghost with a resentful gaze, as if looking at a scumbag who had just abandoned him.
He came here to play a game, not to be someone’s unpaid laborer!
He spent every day here organizing files, running errands, catching cheaters, and changing the water in the cooler—not for that measly base salary, but to dig something useful out of the company.
Now the second-in-command was telling him, ‘You have a chance to learn a technique, but you're too kind, so you can't.’ If that wasn't toying with him, what was?
“Big brother,” 【Jian Lai】 said through gritted teeth. “You just said that practicing this technique requires a low character, but I think your character is quite good. Could it be that you just don't want to teach me and are lying?”
Ghost looked at him and revealed a sinister smile. 【Jian Lai】 felt the temperature in the entire hallway drop several degrees.
“What if I’m actually a murderous evil spirit behind the scenes?” Ghost’s voice was very soft, every word carrying a chill that seeped into 【Jian Lai】’s skin.
But 【Jian Lai】 wasn't afraid at all. He was a player; no matter how terrifying an NPC was, they were still just an NPC.
He took a step forward and stared straight at Ghost. “Second-in-command, if my character is sufficiently depraved, will you teach me the technique?”
“Of course.” Ghost’s smile widened, his cold eyes reflecting 【Jian Lai】’s face, which was flushed with anger.
“Never fail to do an evil deed just because it is small, and never do a good deed just because it is small. Go and do one hundred bad deeds first to test the waters. When I feel you are depraved enough, you can receive my true teachings.”
At this point, Ghost adopted that earnest tone again. “Little Jian, doing one bad deed isn't hard. What’s hard is doing bad deeds constantly without being beaten to death.”
【Jian Lai】 remained silent for a long time.
This was too shocking; he needed some time to process it.
A technique that required doing evil to practice—it sounded like some kind of shady demonic technique or evil technique.
The light from outside cast the shadows of trees onto the wall. When the wind blew, the shadows swayed wildly.
【Jian Lai】 calculated in his mind. One hundred bad deeds sounded like a lot, but what if he broke one bad deed down into a hundred steps?
For example, if he stole a wallet, could scouting the target, making the move, transferring the goods, and then fencing them count as four deeds?
Or if he set fire to the company, could buying the gasoline, transporting it, pouring it, and then lighting it count as four as well?
The more he thought about it, the more he felt there was a way to make this work. Anyway, Ghost wouldn't be watching exactly how many bad deeds he did.
Ghost watched as 【Jian Lai】’s face brightened up, not bothering to interrupt his fantasies.
It didn't matter what he was thinking. What mattered was that he had accepted the premise that ‘doing evil allows one to learn techniques.’
To players, this was just a game.
Players didn't care how many people they killed or how much evil they committed in a game.
But when doing evil became a habit, would they really be unaffected when they left the game and returned to their so-called real world?
“Think it over carefully yourself.” Ghost left it at that and turned to walk back into his office.
【Jian Lai】’s voice was incredibly firm: “Don't worry. Just wait—I won't let you down.”
Rate on N.U.
