After playing wildly for a while, Liǔ Cháoquè still didn't forget to retrieve her wig from the temporary luggage storage.
All in all, she had a pretty good time today, experiencing the joy of being an extrovert. The only slight flaw was that she still couldn't fix the issue with her phone's software, so the two of them ultimately decided to buy a new phone and insert the smart card into it.
However, the virus wasn't quite that omnipotent; after getting the new phone and inserting the card, not much changed.
She changed her payment password and posted on her Moments saying that her phone might have been infected with a virus, warning that anyone asking for money in her name should be treated as a hacker, and anyone who fell for a scam would be on their own.
As for the people she knew better, she sent messages to them one by one to explain the situation, though she ended up using a mass-message feature, which wasn't too troublesome, just a bit awkward.
Fearing that the game might be the catalyst for her time travel, she reluctantly studied the plot with an academic research attitude, extracted the more important plot points, and reported them to Wáng Qígē at all times, just in case she disappeared one day so that Wáng Qígē could call the police for her.
More than a month passed just like that, and even though the game reached Chapter 4, no abnormalities occurred. The gaming market changes rapidly every day, and after Wáng Qígē deleted that game, she found a new one. To prevent a repeat of the last otome game situation, she played it for two days before asking Liǔ Cháoquè to join in.
Wáng Qígē: "I've checked out this game. Big developer, reliable except for taking your money!"
"And you can customize faces however you want, plus it's in 3D, and the combat looks super cool. Do you want to play?"
Speaking of face customization, Liǔ Cháoquè looked at the dress-up game she was playing on the side, recalled the face she had once customized in a massive mobile game that bore a striking resemblance to a trainee she had just seen, and for some reason felt a bit of resistance.
She declined the offer.
Wáng Qígē didn't push her.
However, a few days later...
"Whoa, you can even adjust the camera angles here, the female lead is so cool ahhhhh!" Liǔ Cháoquè finally couldn't resist clicking on the download page, and became hopelessly addicted to the dashing combat scenes.
Skip the plot, draw cards... How come there are only these few draws, where are the six-star cards, why isn't a single one six-star? Oh~ Why is my luck only hitting characters I'm not particularly fond of? My Xǔ Mòyù, my elite handsome guy!
Wáng Qígē: "How's the game going?"
A WeChat pop-up message appeared, and Liǔ Cháoquè replied: "It's alright, just can't pull the character I want. [Attached Image]"
It was a screenshot of a ten-pull.
"You'll get them if you keep playing. By the way, you can save your diamonds; we can pull from another banner that has a pity exchange system," Wáng Qígē reminded her.
"Oh oh, got it." Liǔ Cháoquè tapped open the card exchange interface, only to glance at it and immediately back out. She looked at the daily missions and the pitifully few diamonds they rewarded—could this also be a game that required buying a monthly card to play properly?
She silently exited the top-up interface. She had already topped up in three games; she couldn't top up anymore!
Battles were infrequent, replaced mostly by story quests. So as not to be completely clueless when chatting with Wáng Qígē, Liǔ Cháoquè gave up on auto-skipping and patiently watched the story unfold.
However, this game wasn't too cliché; it wasn't as utterly unwatchable, melodramatic, and brainless as her dress-up game. As she watched, it actually became quite interesting.
Set on an Earth eroded by extraterrestrial substances that awakened supernatural abilities, the female lead possessed a Water-type Ability, though at the very start she could only act as a mobile water source.
Yet this plot wasn't some cliché empowering story where the female lead becomes a Savior or a parasitic vine clinging to strong men, desperately trying to pander to them.
It was a game with a high degree of choice. You could play various roles: a passerby, a member of the main cast, with randomized abilities and a fixed starting location.
Everyone came from the Sunshine Orphanage, and various professions were available to choose from before the zombie outbreak. The reason it was called an otome game was that the male lead could always be encountered by the female lead anywhere.
The male lead could be the female lead's assistant, a comrade she could entrust her back to.
He could also be a doctor, someone the female lead could turn to for help when her life was in mortal danger.
Of course, even without these preconditions, the male lead would never treat the female lead adversely or do anything to harm her interests.
The male leads weren't fixed, but the female lead could choose them. However, the male leads weren't selected haphazardly; after all, while unhinged villains might be very appealing in some people's eyes, this was still a game meant for the public market and couldn't be overly bloody and tyrannical, so there were actually only a little over a dozen available choices.
Of course, there was still a Savior in this world, but whether you wanted to get involved with that was entirely up to you.
Liǔ Cháoquè found it all very novel and chose to play as a passerby.
Before entering the game interface, there was also a pre-selection option. She pre-selected five male characters who caught her eye, among them Xǔ Mòyù, the leader of the new base. His ability was control, and he had a pair of azure eyes capable of seeing through human hearts, along with glasses seemingly welded to the bridge of his nose, a high nasal bridge, and thin lips. On this face, standard for a CEO, sat a single mole right between his eyebrows, complemented by a head of gorgeous wolf-tail long hair. The character introduction stated that before becoming the base leader, he used to work in music.
The clothes he wore year-round weren't the usual black and white, but a black coat, a black tie, and a wine-red inner layer. He would casually drape his black suit jacket over his shoulder, snap his fingers with his right hand, and watch enemies vanish like smoke into thin air.
For some reason, she felt an inexplicable urge and selected him.
Upon entering the game and looking at his card art, Liǔ Cháoquè understood why. Turns out she might indeed be one of those people who liked unhinged, beautiful youths—a man and an unhinged villain were only separated by two words, making him the most morally ambiguous male lead available in the game.
The ability he possessed was simply too alluring; few people could maintain their original intent without wanting to directly control others to rule the world. A single snap of his fingers could even cause the world to cease to exist.
Through stream-of-consciousness control, he could operate things in such a way as to delete the world like lines of code.
Yet he didn't do that; instead, he worked with painstaking diligence. His only wish was how to stitch this tattered world back together as good as new, striving like a bomb disposal expert to disarm bombs on the verge of exploding, even if it meant being reduced to dust in the end.
After learning his story, Liǔ Cháoquè grew even more fond of him, and there were even faint signs of her becoming a solo fan.
Her absolute favorite was his six-star card, "Night Rain." On a rainy night, leaning against crumbling ruins, dagger in hand, breathing slightly heavily, blood and rain mixed together, the mist of his breath dissolving into the rain, his blood-stained shirt, skin glowing white, a small scar on his face, and his long hair plastered against his ears by the dampness.
At that moment he was fragile, yet someone not to be underestimated.
What a pity—she couldn't pull him no matter what!
All she had lying in her acquired inventory was the brightly smiling Wáng Qígē, holding flowers and flashing a big six-star tag.
Inevitably, Liǔ Cháoquè still fell into the childhood-sweetheart trap and couldn't quite pull herself out. Wáng Qígē was the good neighbor "big brother" who had grown up with the female lead since childhood, only to be separated after the zombie outbreak. When they met again, Wáng Qígē was in a sorry state, the sole survivor left in his squad. He had barely escaped a zombie siege and had almost been shot dead as a zombie; it was only because the female lead recognized him that he got a chance at survival.
Compared to the powerful, unhinged, and universally loving Xǔ Mòyù, Wáng Qígē was simply too ordinary. He had no powerful supernatural abilities, having awakened only a Strength-type Ability, and looked like he could die at any moment. Aside from the advantage of being a childhood sweetheart and the skills honed since childhood, he had zero competitive edge.
Yet Liǔ Cháoquè liked his gentleness; he always quietly took care of the female lead, becoming her peace of mind.
He was also her second choice.
Anyway, if it were real life, she would choose Wáng Qígē immediately without a moment's hesitation, but in the game, male leads with those unhinged attributes were much more thrilling.
However, whether it was Xǔ Mòyù or Wáng Qígē, they belonged to the female lead, not her, so she didn't need to take it too seriously. Whether one rooted for Chef Xǔ or Chef Wáng, plenty of people fought tooth and nail over them, and she didn't need to join the hustle and bustle.
What she loved most was still the female lead—resilient and dashing, able to face anything with calm indifference. In her eyes, if she couldn't beat someone, it wasn't because the enemy was too strong, but because she herself wasn't strong enough. She dressed her in a sleek black vest, only wearing a light pink slip dress during times of rest.
Freely switching between Valkyrie and noble lady, she could satisfy both the joy of raising her own daughter and the thrill of going toe-to-toe with opponents.
Anyway, if the female lead were standing right in front of her, she would surely be overcome with excitement watching the little sapling she raised grow into a towering tree capable of sheltering local lives.
Ahem, she digressed.
Of course, she also chose the base's doctor, Li Mùshēng, who possessed a Wood-type Ability and looked extremely reassuring, as well as Lù Hégūang, a Fire-type Ability user who was the female lead's bickering frenemy.