Zuo Lin'an was still a bit worried about this.
【Zuo Lin'an: Maybe there are players with exceptional intelligence or other special talents. When they arrive in a strange and dangerous new environment, they definitely won't start killing right away.】
【Bai Yuan: Right!】
【Bai Yuan: I almost forgot your dungeon is already Two-Star. If you open it in the early stages, the players assigned will all have special talents or even specific skills in other areas.】
【Bai Yuan: In that case, it's up to you.】
【Bai Yuan: But in my opinion, the earlier you encounter them, the better. No matter how special these players are, they only have talents and no specter items in the early stages. To some extent, they're still easy to deal with.】
【Bai Yuan: If you wait until the late stage, when these players are fully developed and armed with special talents and multiple specter items, your life will be much harder.】
【Zuo Lin'an: I know. Once the finishing touches are done, I'll try opening it once. I have the gold hairpin with me, so I won't fail easily.】
【Song Yangxia: By the way, that specter item is really perfect for a Human-Specter Symbiont like you. Honestly, I want one too! I could bind with my brother...】
【Song Yangxia: Unfortunately, such specter items are hard to come by.】
Zuo Lin'an opened the group member list and saw Xu Youyou's avatar.
He wondered if the guy was lurking.
At this moment, Zuo Lin'an suddenly felt an itch to send a message.
“Might as well send it...”
With that, he typed a line and sent it.
【Zuo Lin'an: Let me tell you, I just chatted with Youyou about the paranormal world, and his reaction was a bit strange.】
The moment the message went out, two replies popped up in rapid succession.
【Bai Yuan: Is he afraid of ghosts?】
【Song Yangxia: Don't tell me he's afraid of ghosts!】
Seeing these two replies that essentially meant the same thing, Zuo Lin'an couldn't help but chuckle.
【Xu Youyou: What nonsense are you guys talking?! I'm a specter myself, how could I possibly be afraid of ghosts?!】
【Song Yangxia: That's not necessarily true.】
【Bai Yuan: Hard to say.】
【Xu Youyou: You guys #$%@$%...】
Watching the messages flood the chat, Zuo Lin'an smiled and didn't join in, leaving the chat group to the three of them.
After some time, when he picked up his phone again, he saw a "99+" notification.
How terrifying.
Just how long had they been arguing?
In Zuo Lin'an's view, being afraid of ghosts actually had nothing to do with whether Xu Youyou was a specter or not.
Just like how some people were afraid of bugs or snakes.
Even though a bug could easily be squashed with one step, people were still afraid.
It was perfectly normal.
However, two days later, Zuo Lin'an learned from Bai Yuan that Xu Youyou hadn't applied to open his dungeon.
Upon hearing the news, his first reaction wasn't to laugh at Xu Youyou, but rather to find it unbelievable.
If he was really so afraid of ghosts that he didn't even dare to open his dungeon...
Then it really wasn't something to joke about anymore.
Zuo Lin'an thought for a moment, then picked up his phone and dialed a number.
“Hello?”
A woman's voice came from the other end. It was Xu Youyou's aunt, Zheng Mei.
“Aunt Mei, it's me.”
“Oh, Xiao An? You don't call me very often. Is something wrong?”
Zuo Lin'an briefly explained Xu Youyou's situation.
“I just wanted to ask, when he was young...”
He wanted to say "when he was a child," but considering Xu Youyou's unique circumstances, he corrected himself.
“Did he go through something bad in the past that left him with a severe psychological trauma?”
Zheng Mei fell silent after Zuo Lin'an finished speaking. Just as he was beginning to wonder, a soft chuckle came from the other end.
“Aunt Mei?”
When Zheng Mei spoke, she was clearly holding back her laughter.
“Ah? You mean that?”
“No, no, it's not some severe psychological trauma. It's just...”
She organized her thoughts.
“You know about how Xiao You was kidnapped years ago and thrown into an abandoned dungeon, right?”
“Yes, Youyou mentioned it to me.”
Although he had mentioned it, he hadn't gone into much detail.
Zheng Mei gave a brief explanation.
“When I broke into that abandoned dungeon back then, I let my sister lead the way. So, the first person Xiao You saw was my sister.”
“At that time, my sister was in her specter form and hadn't hidden her deathly state.”
Zuo Lin'an was somewhat surprised.
The sister Zheng Mei spoke of was the specter she had fused with.
Who was also Xu Youyou's biological mother, Xu Youran.
And Zuo Lin'an had actually seen Xu Youran's deathly state before.
To his current self, it was nothing, but back when he had seen a specter for the first time, that appearance had still startled him.
“As a result, Xiao You remembered that appearance.”
“At that time, he didn't have the concept of 'ghosts' yet, nor did he know what specters were. He only learned about them after I brought him out and we lived a normal life for a while.”
“Once he understood what ghosts were, he retroactively started crying and feeling scared.”
“It wasn't until I told him that she wasn't a ghost, but a specter, and that ghosts didn't exist in our world, that he returned to normal.”
“He was perfectly fine over the next few years. He had a high acceptance of specters and even became a dungeon boss, so I thought this was all in the past.”
“I just didn't expect that now that he's faced with real ghosts, he would actually...”
Zheng Mei rubbed her temples.
“Lin'an, what do you think we should do?”
“If he can't overcome his fear of ghosts, he might miss out on this new world entirely.”
Zuo Lin'an also felt helpless.
“If he could become a Two-Star boss right now, he could come to my dungeon, and I could go to his to help him out.”
After all, a Two-Star dungeon could have up to two specters with two rules each, though it would require some adjustments to the dungeon's plot and main quest.
“But he's clearly still short by more than ten Contribution points.”
Zheng Mei was equally helpless.
She was only a Specter Master. Although she was aware of matters regarding specter dungeons, she didn't have any good solutions for Xu Youyou's current situation.
“Then I'll... try to talk to him.”
Zuo Lin'an thought about it. “Alright, I'll do some work on his end too. As long as we can get him to kill a ghost with his own hands, he probably won't be afraid of them anymore.”
Hanging up, Zuo Lin'an stood up and walked toward Xu Youyou's dungeon. When he reached the edge of the white mist, he stood there and called him.
The call wasn't answered, but a path opened through the white mist.
Zuo Lin'an put away his phone and walked inside. Soon, he saw the kid sitting in the living room, his eyes darting away guiltily.
He sighed inwardly.
So... how exactly do you comfort a kid who looks twenty but has the mental age of a six-year-old?
After thinking it over carefully, Zuo Lin'an realized that nothing he said would really sound right.
In that case... he would frame it differently.
“I'll go urge the construction team to wrap up the finishing touches quickly. We'll try to get my dungeon ready to open before next Monday.”
Xu Youyou looked up at him but didn't say anything.
“When the time comes, you can open your dungeon too, and bring Xuan Jiu along.”
“Since it's a new world anyway, having Xuan Jiu tag along won't violate any rules.”
“With someone keeping you company, you shouldn't be that scared, right?”
Rate on N.U.
