Chapter 33

At two in the afternoon, the intercom at the door buzzed. Feng Bujue was woken up, feeling groggy and irritable.

Although he had already bathed the cat at the pet clinic in the morning, it took him more than half an hour to settle down after returning home. He hadn’t even taken off his clothes before falling asleep, and it had only been a little over six hours.

Dazed, he walked to the door, picked up the intercom, and said, "Who is it?"

"It's me," Wang Tanzi replied, "Bao Daren is here too."

"Is the door open?" Feng Bujue pressed the button to unlock the door, yawned, and asked.

"Open, open, we'll talk when we get up."

A minute or so after the call ended, the two of them came up in the elevator. They walked down the corridor, pressed Feng Bujue’s doorbell, and after a quick peek through the peephole, he opened the door. He didn’t greet the two of them, just turned and walked to the sofa.

Wang Tanzi and Bao Daren didn’t act formally either. They closed the door, put the pizza and a case of beer on the coffee table, and went to the kitchen to get plates and chopsticks.

"Hey? Juege, why is there a cat?" Wang Tanzi quickly noticed the little cat napping on the corner of the sofa.

"Didn’t you see the sandbox in the corner? I’m keeping it," Feng Bujue, still half-asleep, unscrewed a bottle of beer, swished it around his mouth like mouthwash, and swallowed it.

"When did you start keeping a cat again?" Wang Tanzi asked, inching closer to the little cat.

"This morning," Feng Bujue burped, "Don’t think it’s really sleeping. Cats are very alert. They may seem to sleep for hours, but if there’s any slight movement around, their ears will twitch, indicating..."

Just as Wang Tanzi was about to grab the little cat, it suddenly opened its eyes, darted forward, and slipped behind the sofa. Wang Tanzi, leaning forward, lost his balance and stumbled.

"Why did you start keeping a cat again?" Bao Daren, holding plates and napkins, returned from the kitchen, waved his hand, and guided Wang Tanzi to sit on the sofa, then sat down himself.

His name is "Bao Qing," only a few months older than the other two, but he is a year older in age. The three of them have been classmates from kindergarten to middle school. Bao Qing has been called Bao Daren since elementary school. The problem is... he isn’t black at all, his family has never had an official, and he has never been a class officer in school.

Who would have thought that Bao Daren would really become a "grown-up" after all. He is twenty-five years old, a civil servant working in a government agency, and his daughter is already two and a half years old. Compared to these two bachelors, he is much more mature. Bao Daren’s characteristic is that he has always had a "melancholic" face, and after getting married, it’s even more so, with a perpetual bitter expression.

"This is my destiny with the cat," Feng Bujue replied, "Just go with the flow."

The two of them used the word "again" when asking the question because they all knew that Feng Bujue had kept a cat when he was a child. At that time, an old lady in the neighborhood had a female cat that gave birth to four kittens, and she gave one to Feng Bujue. He kept it for thirteen years, from a kitten to an old cat, until it passed away. The child also grew up and buried the old cat with his own hands.

"Have you named it?" Wang Tanzi asked excitedly.

"Arthas," Feng Bujue replied very calmly, as if the name had been thought out long ago.

"Ha..." Bao Daren spat out a mouthful of beer, "Even if you don’t want Xiao Tan to help name it, you could at least come up with something more normal, like Cool or Mike..."

Feng Bujue snapped his fingers, "Arthas."

The little cat actually turned its head and meowed.

"See, no sense of incongruity," Feng Bujue pointed to the cat’s face.

"I’m going to post a picture," Xiao Tan took out his phone.

"Wait." Feng Bujue put down his beer, went to the window, and pulled the curtains. Then he picked up Arthas, who couldn’t escape in time.

Feng Bujue’s hands went under the cat’s armpits, lifting it so that its face was away from him. He extended his arms, held the cat high in the sunlight, mimicking the opening scene of The Lion King, and said a line unrelated to it.

"My son... on the day you were born, your name echoed in every corner of Lordaeron... Arthas..." Feng Bujue recited in a deep, serious voice.

Wang Tanzi held his phone, taking 360-degree photos of the bewildered cat.

"What are you doing! How old are you! Is this the daily life of a middle school boy?!"

After being scolded by Bao Daren, the two of them sat back on the sofa, and Arthas went to a cushion to continue napping.

"Why do you have time this week, Bao Daren?" Feng Bujue asked.

"My wife took my daughter to her parents’ house," Bao Daren replied, taking a sip of beer.

"Permanently or temporarily?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Are you kidding! How can it be permanent! My mother-in-law just wants to see her granddaughter," Bao Daren almost choked.

"Looking at you, you seem relieved..." Feng Bujue said.

Wang Tanzi interrupted them, picking up the remote control, "What’s the theme for this week?"

"Bad movie marathon," Feng Bujue replied.

"Huh?" Wang Tanzi turned around.

"That’s right, the one we discussed. There are so many notorious bad movies that have stood the test of time, becoming the bottom line in the film industry, and we haven’t seen any of them."

"Okay... let me check..." Wang Tanzi used the remote to browse the available streaming programs on the TV.

The three of them, when they have time to get together, would choose a theme and watch movies for over ten hours. The movies they watch are mostly from the late 20th to the early 21st century. After that, with the advancement of computer filming technology and the widespread use of the fifth generation of computers, it’s hard to find really bad movies. In the future, even the worst movies would at least have decent visuals and sound effects.

"How about 'Ghost Rider'?" Wang Tanzi asked.

"Do you know 'Daredevil'?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Um... I’ve seen it," Wang Tanzi replied.

"Same director," Feng Bujue said.

"Okay..." Wang Tanzi searched again, "How about this, 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2'? Wow, this series has seven parts." (In 2055, two more parts were added)

"Never seen any of them," Bao Daren shrugged.

"I remember this movie won seven out of ten Razzie Awards that year. Twenty years later, it was rated as one of the three most dominant bad movies of the early 21st century," Feng Bujue said.

"I’m curious about the other two... don’t tell me they’re the other parts of this series," Bao Daren said.

"No, they are 'Battlefield Earth' and 'Jack and Jill.' The latter won all the Razzie Awards in 2012," Feng Bujue said, "I’ve only heard of them, never seen them. How about we watch these three today?"

"Whatever." "Agreed," Xiao Tan and Bao Daren replied.

Two hours later...

"Are you guys okay?" Bao Daren looked at the rising end credits on the big screen.

Wang Tanzi looked at the floor with a gloomy face, "I feel like I’ve lost something important..."

Feng Bujue stared blankly at the sunlight outside, "These are the most humiliating two hours of my life. My brain has been violated..."

"Next is a sci-fi movie and a comedy... let’s watch the comedy first," Bao Daren’s bitter face was unusually serious.

Ninety minutes later...

"Al Pacino’s reputation is ruined," Wang Tanzi said.

"The performance is hard to criticize, but the plot is really..." Feng Bujue said, "What do you think, Bao Daren?"

No one answered.

"Bao Daren? Bao..." Feng Bujue turned his head and found Bao Daren sleeping with his eyes open, snoring softly.

"This despicable civil servant..."

Around six or seven in the evening, the three of them went to a street stall for some unclean barbecue. Juege and Xiao Tan told Bao Daren about the recent events in the horror park, but Bao Daren showed no interest, as a married man, he had less personal space and entertainment time. They chatted for a few hours and dispersed around nine, with Feng Bujue and Wang Tanzi agreeing to play the game again at midnight, then they went their separate ways.

Their friendship was hard-won and sincere. When they were children, they were all snot-nosed, silly little kids, and such friendships were the purest. Even when they were fifty or sixty years old, looking back at these friends, the feeling in their hearts would not change.

...

That day, not having slept enough and considering he needed to log into the game, Feng Bujue lay down in the game pod around midnight. After the scan, he chose the sleep mode to log in and set the connection time.

[Connection type is sleep mode, adjusting... adjustment complete. Please set the time to load the game, or return to the previous option.]

[Setting complete. The connection program will start at 1:00 AM on April 6, 2055. Good night.]

After hearing the voice, Feng Bujue closed his eyes. The game pod was very comfortable, and with a bit of drowsiness, he quickly fell asleep.

When he regained consciousness, he was already standing in the familiar elevator. The screen on the wall showed the current real-world time: April 6, 1:00 AM. However, the electronic clock did not show seconds, and it seemed that several minutes had passed without the time jumping to 1:01. Clearly, this was the horror park in sleep mode.

Soon, Wang Tanzi’s team invitation popped up on the screen. After joining the team, Feng Bujue found that Long Ao Min was also in the team, as Xiao Tan had already grouped him when he saw him in idle status.

"Juege, something big has happened!" Wang Tanzi said.

"Has someone already reached level 20?" Feng Bujue answered.

"Eh? You already know?"

"Just a guess based on your tone."

"Ha ha... Brother Feng is indeed a genius," Long Ao Min said, "At around 12:30 in real time, the first level 20 player was born on the server."

Feng Bujue glanced at the team frame. In one day, Long Ao Min had already reached level 13, and Xiao Tan was at level 11. He must have logged in about ten minutes earlier and leveled up by playing a single-player script.

"Will there be an announcement for the first max-level player in the game?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Yes, all players in the login space will hear the system announcement, and the news will appear on the touch screen. The forum is already buzzing," Long Ao Min said.

"Let me see..." Feng Bujue opened the forum and found the official pinned post, which read: [Congratulations to "Fearless Hero" of the "Order" studio, the first player to reach the level cap during the beta test.]

...