Black… Black Inn Superstar…!
Wu Guanyue: ★-★!
Wu Guanyue’s eyes instantly lit up like a pair of shining stars!
It’s here! An even more interesting main quest!
As the saying goes, when people are doing bad things, they never feel that it’s any trouble… And of course, running a shady inn in the middle of a bustling city would be much more fun than operating one by the book!
…Although it was hard to say whether she had ever operated it by the book in the first place.
Still, this kind of main quest was clearly more refined and far removed from lowbrow concerns. Excellent. The player approved!
Delighted, Wu Guanyue began checking out the new skills she had unlocked after upgrading her inn.
Since the next main quest was about building a shady inn, the new skills and modes should have something to do with shady inns, right—
[Unlocked: Shop Mode!]
[Shop Mode: The in-game shop is now open! Use Shop Coins to make purchases. Come on, give your inn some new goodies!]
Sure enough, a shop icon had appeared in the upper-right corner of the game interface. When she clicked on it, a dazzling assortment of products immediately appeared… instant noodles, snacks, beanbag chairs, lighting fixtures… Why were all these modern products?!
They clashed so badly with the cultivation-world aesthetic!
…And they didn’t seem to have much to do with shady inns, either!
Unwilling to give up, Wu Guanyue typed a few dangerous items suitable for a shady inn into the shop’s search bar… The results were all s|e|x t|o|y|s!
Wu Guanyue: “…………”
Wu Guanyue: “………………”
With her face flushed red, Wu Guanyue stiffly checked her next skill.
Every time the inn leveled up, the owner’s level would rise as well. Each of the two level-ups came with a new skill, which meant she still had one personal skill to claim.
[Obtained: +1 Life!]
[+1 Life: Your strength is inseparably linked to the fate of your inn… You now have a higher margin for error.]
!!
It was +1 Life! She had actually gotten +1 Life!
She now had two lives!
Wu Guanyue’s eyes trembled so hard they turned into two puddles of scrambled eggs… Ah, what had this game done to her?
Strictly speaking, this skill had nothing to do with the main quest, Black Inn Superstar, but Wu Guanyue was still incredibly happy and full of confidence!
Then, it was time to look at the final reward—the reward for completing the main quest.
[Quest · Main: The Lotus Tournament (Completed!)]
[Quest Rating: ★★★★☆]
[Quest Details: Your inn has successfully become a star establishment in Meishan City! At the same time, you have forged friendships with many important figures. They may help you in the future—or obstruct you… But at this very moment, you have grown familiar with life in Meishan City and with the days of running an inn. You’re filled with confidence about the future, aren’t you?]
[Quest Rewards: [Perhaps… Take a Look at Your Legs? (Lv. 3)] ×1, [Mysterious Gift Box] ×1]
There were two quest rewards. The first was the phrase that had once made her heart race.
At this moment, her heart was racing again.
She returned to her starting room and logged out of the game.
The gentle sunlight of the valley vanished, replaced by the cold white light of a hospital room.
The caregiver auntie was still playing on her phone, and the room still held only the two of them. When she saw Wu Guanyue slowly remove her helmet, the auntie casually asked, “Oh, Little Yue, done playing?”
Wu Guanyue nodded.
Once again, she lifted the blanket covering her.
She was wearing loose, comfortable pants, with part of her lower leg exposed… To be honest, it didn’t look like a lower leg at all. It looked like a length of bone wrapped in a wrinkled sack.
Her legs should have been completely numb by now, but she could actually feel something—a faint sensation of skin rubbing against fabric. It stung sharply.
She stared at her leg in a daze.
After a while, she pulled the blanket back over it.
It was already late. She would go talk to the doctor tomorrow—that was what Wu Guanyue decided.
At present, she was rational and calm. There was indeed a joy in her heart, like rain after a long drought, but she didn’t immediately call her family to tell them the good news.
Her family didn’t care much about her.
Wu Guanyue had suddenly lost the ability to move when she was five. Her parents had constantly argued because of her back then. Later, however, they had another daughter, who was perfectly healthy, and the gloom she had brought them gradually faded away.
As a child, Wu Guanyue had not only been paralyzed, but had also frequently suffered high-fever seizures. Fortunately, her parents were wealthy, so she had always stayed in a special-care hospital room. Little by little, there was no longer any place for her at home… And so, even now, she lived in a private hospital that combined medical care with eldercare.
Her family had never failed to provide her with money, so she could spend her days playing games without a care. But it seemed that her relatives neither expected much from her nor cared much about her…
Still, compared with the overwhelming majority of people with disabilities, she was already extremely fortunate.
Hey, what more could she ask for?
Wu Guanyue amused herself with the punchline from a comedy sketch, then put her helmet back on and returned to the game—
To be honest, she was growing fonder and fonder of this world of cultivation.
Here, she was the Little Shopkeeper Wu who could run and leap, the owner of her very own inn, with countless stories left to uncover and adventures waiting to be had!
…And there was also Wenren… Ah, Brother Ying.
At the thought of Wenren Ying, a smile crept onto Wu Guanyue’s face. Hugging her pillow, she gazed ahead with bright, shining eyes.
Brother Ying was wonderful… He was so handsome, and he was gentle, too.
Since Wu Guanyue had been a shut-in at home—ah, no, a shut-in at the hospital—ever since she was five, she had never been in love before. This was the first time she had ever experienced such a fluttery, rosy feeling.
The moment she thought of Wenren Ying, she couldn’t help wanting to return to the game and see him right away.
And besides…
Besides, this game obviously wasn’t an ordinary game.
How could an ordinary game give a paralyzed person the ability to regain sensation? The game’s promotional materials had indeed mentioned its brain-computer interface technology… But who was Wu Guanyue? When it came to potential new clinical applications, she was more concerned than anyone!
With the current level of technology, this was nowhere near possible!
So… Could the world inside the game be a real world? Could the people in the game be real people?
Her heart began to pound uncontrollably… and she eagerly put on the game helmet once more.
A flash of white light passed before her eyes, and she returned to her little room. It was not yet dark in the game world. The sun was sinking in the west, gilding the falling sky in molten gold.
Now! There was only one reward left to open—the mysterious gift box awarded for completing the main quest!
Considering that none of the rewards she’d received so far had anything whatsoever to do with building up the Black Inn, this gift pack had to contain something useful, right? Maybe a mortar or something. Then, whenever some cool Immortal Venerable or Demon Venerable came knocking, she could blast them away with a single shot before sneering, “My lord, times have changed.”
Haha, now that would be putting on a real show~
With a smile on her face, Wu Guanyue opened her [Mysterious Gift Pack].
[You have obtained: 1 Shoujo Manga Gift Pack!]
[Shoujo Manga Gift Pack: Thump-thump! Thump-thump! That is the sound of a beating heart—develop a six-heart affinity with at least one friend to unlock the romance feature. Go find the person who makes your heart flutter and give it a try!]
…It was actually a romance gift pack!
There were three special skill cards inside: [Love at the Corner], [Prank Kiss], and [The Last Room].
[Love at the Corner] could be used as long as the player ran down the street at full speed with a piece of bread in her mouth. Once she turned a corner, she would definitely crash into the person she wanted to meet.
After using [Prank Kiss], the player could designate two people and force them to kiss mouth-to-mouth in an utterly ridiculous manner.
As for [The Last Room]… well, if the player entered an inn with the designated target, the inn would definitely have only one room left, and the two of them would certainly end up flustered and sharing it.
Wu Guanyue: “……”
Wow! What an old-fashioned cliché!
She couldn’t help imagining herself and Wenren Ying in that situation. Brother Ying would suddenly trip over his own feet and fall flat on the road, at which point she would perform a sliding tackle straight beneath him…
Wu Guanyue: “………………”
For some reason, that felt a little strange…
Little Shopkeeper Wu shook her head, tossing the bizarre image out of her mind, and began looking into her main quest.
Hmm… Black Inn Superstar…
After activating this main quest, two more metrics had appeared in her inn’s details: [Number of Star-Rated Guests Received] and [Intimidation Points].
Star-rated guests were easy enough to understand. Wenren Ying, Chu Yingfeng, Bai Yunsheng, Daoist Master Songfeng, Baili Yuling… even She Wenjie counted as a star-rated guest. In other words, star-rated guests were either powerful or highly influential.
As for Intimidation Points, they were the guests’ excess feelings toward the inn… No, that wasn’t right. They were the fear, suspicion, or alarm inspired by the mysterious inn. In short, as long as their emotions experienced a large, unpleasant fluctuation, it could all be counted as Intimidation Points.
If she wanted to keep raising the inn’s level, she would have to collect fear points from the star-rated guests.
This made Wu Guanyue let out a long sigh, feeling rather regretful.
If this quest had been updated a day earlier, Bai Yunsheng alone could have contributed quite a number of Intimidation Points…
Ah, whatever. There was no point dwelling on that now. She had a game shop anyway. Wasn’t it time to trade in her old musket for a cannon and renovate the inn?
And add some new products!
Instant noodles! Fried chicken and French fries! Hot pot, barbecue, and ice cream!
Didn’t those ancient-people-meet-modern-products transmigration novels often feature scenes where the protagonist brought out modern goods and left the ancients stunned…? Ahahaha, she wanted to experience that simple yet supreme thrill too!
Renovate! Stock up! Renovate! Fall in love!
Wu Guanyue plunged headfirst into the ocean of the game shop and began studying it day and night, forgetting both food and sleep.
