Yang Haoran really felt like slapping himself. He swallowed his food and pretended to be calm, saying, “Mom, you misheard. I was talking about Auntie Shen.”
“Heh… seems like you’re just too full and have nothing better to do.”
Liu Ruoxi let out a cold laugh. Regardless of whether she had misheard or not, just looking at her son’s expression told her that this “Auntie He” he mentioned certainly existed.
Yang Haoran quickly thought on his feet: “As expected, I can’t hide anything from my beautiful and gracious mother. Your insight is unparalleled, your perception is sharp, you notice the smallest details, you see right through everythingβ”
Liu Ruoxi was immune to her son’s flattery. Though slightly surprised by his vocabulary, she glared at him sharply with her phoenix eyes: “Stop speaking in riddles. Explain!”
“Auntie He is Wei Ming’s mom. Wei Ming is my classmate, he sits behind me. We’re really close,” Yang Haoran explained without missing a beat. “A while ago, I visited Wei Ming’s house, and his mom prepared a huge table of delicious dishes to treat me. Wei Ming told me that his grandmother was a head chef at a hotel, and his mom inherited all her skills.”
“Is that all?”
Liu Ruoxi found it somewhat hard to believe.
“That’s really all,” Yang Haoran replied,εθ acting surprised as he questioned her: “Mom, what are you thinking? Auntie He is my classmate’s mother. What kind of person do you take me for? You’re thinking way too dirty.”
“Oh? And isn’t Auntie Shen also Shiwen’s mother? Shiwen, who’s grown up playing with you since childhood,” Liu Ruoxi countered with a logical example, making Yang Haoran both guilty and indignant as he protested: “Mom, how can you think like that? Auntie Shen was the one who actively seduced me. Do you think Wei Ming’s mom, Auntie He, would also actively seduce me? Even if such a good thing happened and I agreed, Wei Ming certainly wouldn’t agree.”
This reasoning made sense. Liu Ruoxi dismissed her doubts and instead asked, “How are your studies at school going now? Have you caught up with your class’s progress?”
She knew Haoran was in an advanced class. If it weren’t for his grandmother Lin Wanqing’s connections, he wouldn’t even qualify for a regular class, let alone an advanced one, given his poor junior high grades.
She asked this precisely because she was surprised by Yang Haoran’s earlier display of vocabularyβhe had rattled off over a dozen idioms without pause.
“Your son, I’m just struggling with English. Getting over a hundred points in other subjects is more than enough,” Yang Haoran said this part in English. Though somewhat broken, it was fairly fluent.
Other subjects were manageable, but English was something he had learned by watching English movies at multiple speeds. His photographic memory allowed him to quickly pick up everyday phrases from the films. Daily communication in English was no problem for him, but anything more advanced was beyond his reach.
This had also used up all three bottles of the miraculous potion his mother had given him.
Watching her son proudly show off his broken English, Liu Ruoxi didn’t interrupt him, feeling immensely relieved. For the first time, she felt that the Fallen Angel game wasn’t entirely without meritβat least it had supercharged her son’s academic performance like a cheat code, adding infinite possibilities to his future.
“Mom, if five million yuan per bottle is a bit expensive, can we help your son buy a few more bottles? Our family can afford it,” Yang Haoran said, again in English, though the translation is provided here.
Liu Ruoxi said impatiently, “Alright, alright, no need to show off your broken English. Think you’re something special.”
“Mom will contact them and ask, get you a few more bottles.”
As she said this, a trace of worry clouded Liu Ruoxi’s brow. Her remaining points were in the single digits. Points were hard to come by, which was why she had previously preferred to buy items available for cash rather than exchange points for them.
Seeing his mother’s troubled expression, Yang Haoran knew this potion must be truly difficult to obtainβafter all, its effects were incredibly overpowering. He said unconcernedly, “Mom, if it’s really impossible to get, forget it. I’ve already finished studying this semester’s coursework anyway. It’s mostly enough. I’ll just study on my own in the second year of high school.”
Liu Ruoxi shot Yang Haoran a sidelong glance full of disdain. Relying on you? I might as well believe a pig can climb a tree.
His mother’s scornful look made Yang Haoran feel awkward. Well, he knew himself best. He still slacked off in class sometimes. With that level of effort, it would be questionable whether he could even get into a mediocre university for the college entrance exams.
“No matter how difficult, Mom will get you a few more bottles. You just focus on studying hard,” Liu Ruoxi comforted her son, secretly making a resolution.
The tasks in the Fallen Angel game seemed random, but there was actually a pattern to them. She and Shen Qing had previously communicated and summarized several points about task triggers and content.
For example: The difficulty of tasks escalates layer by layer. The further you progress, the more they break through the boundaries of normal human ethics and morality.
For example: The more a player psychologically resists something, the more likely it is to trigger a related task, guiding the player step by step into corruption.
For example: The service targets for triggered tasks are all so-called Controllers. The Controllers should be the true masters of the Fallen Angel game, and also their true masters.
But one thing the two women couldn’t figure out: Yang Haoran was the Controller for the Fallen Angel, but he clearly knew nothing about the game. So how did he become a Controller?
Should they really believe the spiel given by the intelligent life form Barbatos at the beginning? In that case, Shen Qing’s bound Controller should be her son Zhou Shiwen.
But from what the two women understood, there should only be one Controller, while the number of players might increase.
Alternatively, what is the true nature of the Fallen Angel game itself?
They speculated whether the Fallen Angel game had a main system operating behind it, and that this was intricately linked to Haoranβit was just that they hadn’t discovered how yet.