DSMC Chapter 174.1

After Yan Jiyun left the instance, the system sent him an overwhelming number of notifications, far more than he wanted to read. He delayed viewing most of them.

Qi Feng looked him over and found that he wasn’t injured. 

He had come out much earlier than the others. Before long, everyone who had entered the instance together began emerging one after another.

Lan Mo, Shi Yan, Gu Wenzhu, Qiu Xi, and He Yuanle all came out, but Yan Jiyun was nowhere to be seen. 

Gu Wenzhu and Qiu Xi were just as concerned about the same thing Qi Feng was. 

They hadn’t seen him. 

But both Gu Wenzhu and Qiu Xi were already used to Yan Jiyun’s mysterious ways.

Before Qi Feng parted ways with them, he asked, “Does Yan Jiyun always disappear this quickly?”

Gu Wenzhu shook his head. “Not really. Maybe he had something to take care of and didn’t have time to say goodbye before leaving.” As he spoke, both of them received a message from Yan Jiyun. “I just got a message from him. He told us not to wait for him.”

When they had left the [Hide and Seek] instance, they had still managed to see Yan Jiyun.

Qi Feng had no more questions. He wanted to add Yan Jiyun as a friend, but since the other man had something to take care of and had already left, he decided to forget about it for now.

Of course, what he really wanted to know was why Caramel smelled like ointment.

The night before they left the instance, Yan Jiyun and Caramel had both disappeared without a trace. There was a very good chance that Caramel had been with Yan Jiyun at the time.

But he’d slipped away so quickly that Qi Feng couldn’t help wondering if Yan Jiyun was deliberately avoiding him, afraid that Qi Feng would find out he’d taken Caramel away earlier and come looking for him now that he’d figured it out.

‘Tch. I’ll ask him next time I see him.’

Yan Jiyun was practically sweating bullets as he curled up in Qi Feng’s arms, not daring to move.

Everyone was exhausted after several days of nonstop activity. They all wished they could sleep for three days and three nights straight, so they went their separate ways.

For the next two days after leaving the instance, Yan Jiyun wasn’t in very good spirits. He spent most of his time sleeping and recovering.

Qi Feng noticed something was wrong with him. After leaving the instance, he’d exchanged some medicine for him from the system, but seeing that his Caramel was still sleeping all the time, he felt that the system’s medicine might not be very effective. So he simply took Yan Jiyun back to the real world.

He brought him to a veterinary hospital for a checkup, but nothing was wrong. The doctor only said that he was probably overly exhausted and needed some rest.

With the doctor’s reassurance, Qi Feng felt comfortable letting Caramel live the life of a lazy cat every day: eating, sleeping, sleeping, then eating again.

By the third day, Yan Jiyun had finally recovered all the energy and vitality he’d expended in the instance.

Perhaps it was because they were different species, and his physique differed from Qi Feng and the others’. When they changed sizes, it didn’t have much of an impact on their bodies. But Yan Jiyun was different. The changes that a human could endure might not necessarily be something he could handle. Once he finally got the chance to rest, all the exhaustion he’d been suppressing came crashing down on him.

Yan Jiyun felt that he might still be growing. He had a feeling he’d actually lost weight.

That morning, after waking up, he quietly stepped onto the digital scale to check his weight.

Well, damn. This scale must be broken.

The digital scale was connected to Qi Feng’s phone app. As soon as Yan Jiyun stepped off it, a notification popped up on Qi Feng’s phone.

[Your current weight differs significantly from your previous record. Does this weight record belong to you?]

Qi Feng tapped “Yes.” He guessed that Caramel had probably stepped on the scale by accident.

When he saw Caramel coming downstairs, he asked, “Did you gain weight? You’re up to 7.25 kg.”

Yan Jiyun paused halfway down the stairs.

Was he even allowed to say something like that?

He absolutely had not gained weight. His muscle mass had simply increased, while his body-fat percentage had decreased. Got it?

Yan Jiyun jumped onto the windowsill and stretched lazily. There were still seventeen days before his next instance, so he wasn’t in any hurry to go back in.

Qi Feng was even less anxious than he was. His life was fairly regular. The man and cat both didn’t get up until after nine in the morning. After breakfast, Qi Feng began browsing the news while Yan Jiyun sprawled on the sofa, basking in the sunlight.

After a while, Qi Feng turned on the television at home, which had been gathering dust for ages.

Yan Jiyun’s ears quietly perked up.

The news was reporting on several strange deaths that had recently occurred overseas. They were very similar to the several deaths that had occurred domestically in recent days. Most of the victims had suddenly died in their homes. Although no obvious clues could be found, anyone in the know understood that these deaths were connected to Destiny.

The game’s coverage extended to humans across the entire planet, but Yan Jiyun had never seen players with different hair or skin colors in the game.

Could the system be practicing racial segregation? Or perhaps, like games in the real world, the game servers were divided according to region?

He rested his paws under his chin and tilted his head, pondering what the operating principle behind the game [Destiny] could be.

One thing was obvious: this game definitely wasn’t something humans on Earth could have created.

Then where did it come from? Outer space? Was it a “game” developed by aliens?

It couldn’t have simply appeared out of nowhere. And it probably wasn’t some kind of game between gods and humans, either. He didn’t believe that some ethereal thing like gods even existed.

After going through several instances, he’d also managed to summarize some of the game’s rules. Just like ordinary games, [Destiny] could have bugs, and the system would also perform updates.

The [Mermaid] instance had appeared to have no major problems. On the surface, it seemed like a complete Main Mission, but in reality, there had already been a bug.

And that bug had appeared in the hidden Boss behind “Teacher Qu.”

If he’d simply discovered an instance Boss and taken advantage of it, that would have been perfectly reasonable. At most, he could say that Yan Jiyun had changed the Boss’s behavior.

But this instance was clearly different.

The system had followed the player’s discoveries and then released the Boss’s Main Mission. The compensation of additional rest time after leaving the instance was especially strong evidence that there was indeed a bug in the system.

Now that it had been proven that the system could have bugs, where exactly had the bug appeared, and when had it started?

He desperately wished he could turn back into human form and discuss this problem with Qi Feng.

There had actually been another new discovery in the [Mermaid] instance.

Teacher Qu had said that even if he was a cat in his consciousness world, he could still speak. Yan Jiyun had also verified that this was indeed possible.

So, when he entered the next instance, could he speak human language while remaining in cat form?

It seemed worth trying.

After finishing browsing the news on his tablet, Qi Feng glanced out of the corner of his eye at Yan Jiyun, who was lying there without moving.

He had taken care of Caramel at home for two days, and the cat’s energy and spirits had clearly improved. When Qi Feng had left the instance, he’d seen the system notification stating that his Intimacy with Caramel had risen to 20.

If they continued entering instances together, their Intimacy would continue to increase.

The system notification had been too brief and hadn’t explained exactly when their Intimacy had increased. He guessed that perhaps the Intimacy had accumulated while the two of them were completing missions together.

In other words, the more instances he and Caramel entered and the more missions they completed together, the better their teamwork became, and the higher their Master-Pet Intimacy would rise.

Although he didn’t want to be controlled by the game’s system, and he didn’t particularly want to enter instances either, having a cat around seemed to make him much less resistant to them.

i Feng realized that after leaving this instance, he hadn’t fallen into an emotional slump at all.

His mood was actually pretty good.

He said to Yan Jiyun, who was sprawled there too lazily to move, “Caramel, we’re going into the game this afternoon. Promise me you won’t run off, and you can’t leave with your new owner.”

Yan Jiyun didn’t understand why he’d paused specifically on the words “new owner.”

Could he have figured something out about this “new owner”?

He couldn’t possibly suspect that the new owner was Yan Jiyun, could he?

In a certain sense, he wasn’t exactly wrong.

Yan Jiyun began to worry.

If Qi Feng went to ask his human self whether Caramel was with him, how was he supposed to answer? He could only deal with things as they came.

He and Qi Feng were bound together, and the existence of their Master-Pet Intimacy was troublesome enough. He had to start reconsidering a lot of things.

His previous thoughts and decisions all had to be overturned. This time, he’d transformed back into a cat simply because he hadn’t thought things through.

If he’d appeared in human form and Qi Feng had tried to add him as a friend, should he have accepted? And after they became friends, how would Qi Feng’s friend list display this secondary account of his?

On the evening of the third day after returning from the previous instance, Qi Feng brought Yan Jiyun back into the game. After entering his personal space, they were once again taken to their temporary residence.

After Qi Feng guessed that Yan Jiyun was Caramel’s new owner, he was no longer afraid that someone might come and take the cat away.

Instead, he seemed to be sitting there waiting for that person to show up, as if he wanted to have a proper discussion with him about raising cats.

Yan Jiyun could only hope his guess was wrong.

Hopefully, Qi Feng wasn’t actually as smart as he thought.