Chapter 59

Translated by boilpoil Edited by boilpoil

“All three scripts are from Green Sprout,” Ning Xi says after looking it up.

“Green Sprout?”

“Yes, it’s a female-oriented novel website.”

“I see,” Liu Yu’an remembers the name and then says, “I’ll take these three with me for now, you can print out more if you still need them. Oh, and also email their electronic copies to Ren-ge, thanks.”

“Got it.”

Liu Yu’an then picks up the scripts and says, “I have something going on so I’ll be going. Call me if anything else comes up.”

Ren Jianzhang leaves with him, and asks, “would you like a work number?”

Liu Yu’an looks at him, puzzled.

Ren Jianzhang tells him, “a phone number only for work that you would leave on 24/7, so that we can contact you if an emergency comes up again.”

Liu Yu’an knows what he’s talking about, but his mind is a bit preoccupied right now, so he just says, “do it then; I’ll come get it when I’m free.”

“Alright,” then Ren Jianzhang asks, “do you still want to do any commercials or variety shows?”

“Not for now, I’ll tell you when I want to do some more.”

At the third floor, Ren Jianzhang leaves the elevator to get back to his office. He tells Liu Yu’an once again to remember to leave his phone on while they’re getting his work number set up before going.

After he has left, Liu Yu’an starts flipping through the scripts again. Given these virtual worlds are all formed from novels, there are often outlandish plot holes. For example, once he has been to a dynastic era world which has barely begun industrial mass production of steel with the development of the cementation process when the protagonist is somehow making cars and planes already.

This world is also problematic in its own ways too. Like he said before, no matter how rich a person like Shao Yanxi got there should have been no way he would be able to, or even would be allowed to have enough sway over the global economy to be able to collapse it.

He can understand how these problems arise, though, since authors are also people, and currently there are many more young boys and girls writing their fantasy make-believe stories than experienced authors. It can’t be helped their understanding of the world is highly partial or lacking, or they’ve suspended their disbelief to create an overpowered author surrogate character…

That said, outside of the main world, he has never seen a virtual world possessing the original scripts from which virtual worlds arise. It’s unheard of in the Virtual World Management Centre too. He thought ‘Evernight’ might have been an insignificant bug or strange oddity, especially given that this virtual world has already collapsed once.

Now, though, there’s two, three, four… Perhaps even more of the original novels that create virtual worlds. Liu Yu’an can’t help but be concerned.

It doesn’t seem like it would affect world stability itself, and it might be a footnote when he goes through debriefing after everything is done, but what he’s worried about is that he has no idea whether the original novel that gave rise to this world could also have ended up in this world’s circulation. If Shao Yanxi sees and even reads it… Oh boy, he’ll get busted, hard.

He’s finally had him in stable condition. If he knew he was here on a mission, he’d probably go mad. That would be undesirable, to say the least.

And even without considering everything else, he personally also doesn’t want to see Shao Yanxi saddened or frustrated.

There’s also Jiang He and Yue Zhun too. They mustn’t see it either. Especially Jiang He, who supposedly should have beaten Shao Yanxi to take his place instead, who is currently still very much part of the lower rungs of the upper class, even lower than his family in prominence.

As can be evidenced from how he has gone after Shao Yanxi’s relatives already, Jiang He is not one to be content with what he has——Or rather, novel protagonists, in general, are definitely ambitious.

If he didn’t have reassurance he could take Shao Yanxi’s place then that’s still fine, but if he knew…

As for whether they would believe it or not, Liu Yu’an thinks it’s out of the question. This world is formed from the script itself. Not every side character and extra, perhaps, but it certainly would have lots of unimaginable descriptions of the protagonists themselves. Just a casual read and they’d realise it’s practically a factual description of them. No possible fan fiction could depict themselves with 100% accuracy.

After sitting down in his car in the parking lot, Liu Yu’an doesn’t immediately start his car. Instead, he has a cigarette first, before deciding to finally contact the Virtual World Management Centre’s hotline.

——During their job, while they may contact the Management Centre at any time, because it is very costly to maintain the independent connection and ensuring the virtual world remains stable and unaffected in the meantime, the behaviour is highly discouraged.

Employees would have to write reports and go through lots of troublesome admin after the job is done, and it is entirely possible their entire paycheck for that particular job would vanish to recuperate the connection cost, barring highly exceptional and unusual circumstances. Put simply, unless the world is on the brink of collapse, employees are expected to get themselves out of whatever binds they’ve got themselves into and fix whatever critical failures the world is facing.

It will be Liu Yu’an’s second time ever using the service… Unless there’s nobody to answer him.

“Shit!” Liu Yu’an can’t help but cuss.

The damned emergency department didn’t even leave one person on duty while everyone is vacationing?

They really need a serious review and restructure.

In fact, these years, with the advancement of technology, most manual labour has been freed from the work market. People, if they have to work at all, normally have three shifts a week, for three hours each shift.

Thus, the people who seek to escape their boring reality all look towards virtual worlds – the fully immersive virtual reality technology thing often depicted in sci-fi novels has proven to be disastrous and a lost cause already.

Lots of people sign up for their Centre’s ‘virtual life experience’ tours in worlds that run just fine. Those that are poorer and can’t afford it can also experience it by becoming an employee and basically get the same deal, just having additional objectives they have to accomplish and having to pass a certification test.

With the service exploding in popularity, the expanding management has become bloated, arrogant and largely ineffectual.

Unable to reach outside help, Liu Yu’an cannot know for certain whether this world has its own novel glitched within, so he can only do it himself.

He first heads for Green Sprout and looks up a novel named ‘I Exploded in Popularity After Meeting a Bossy CEO’——The book he transmigrated into.

There’s no result.

He searches for character names ‘Jiang He’ and ‘Yue Zhun.’

There’s some fan fiction featuring Yue Zhun, but none of the actual novel Liu Yu’an is worrying himself.

Liu Yu’an doesn’t sigh with relief early though, as this is an all-or-nothing type of emergency. He decides to call Zhao Xian, the only person he knows from the upper circles in the business. He picks up quickly enough, asking, “An-ge? Looking for me?”

Liu Yu’an asks directly, “are you busy tonight?”

“Not exactly, what’s up?”

“Let’s meet. I have a favour to ask.”

“Is it urgent?”

“… Not exactly.”

“How about tomorrow night? I do have a little something tonight…”

Liu Yu’an remembers that Shao Yanxi happens to be attending some other charity fundraiser tomorrow, and agrees, “then 8 pm at Junyue?”

“Sure,” Zhao Xian then adds, “mind if I bring Zhuang Feiyu with me?”

“Sure.”

Liu Yu’an then organises his thoughts for a little in the car before getting takeout from Biyuntian to take to the Heng’an building. It’s already past 11, too late to head home and make lunch now.

The next night, while Shao Yanxi is away at the fundraiser, Liu Yu’an meets Zhao Xian and Zhuang Feiyu at Jun Yue.

They were there earlier than he was. He can see Zhaung Feiyu leaning on Zhao Xian’s shoulder, seemingly pretty elated saying something in his ears.

Liu Yu’an enters as Zhuang Feiyu stops talking to Zhao Xian and yells out, “An-ge, long time no see!”

“ Short time no see,” Liu Yu’an says with a chuckle as he takes a seat next to them, “we saw each other last week.”

“Last week?” Zhuang Feiyu scratches his head, saying, “it feels like a long time.”

“Yeah, and you can’t even count 30 seconds accurately with your feeling,” Zhao Xian disses him.

“Do you know Green Sprout?” Liu Yu’an gets straight to the point and asks Zhao Xian.

“Yeah, I do,” in fact, their company has some shares in it too.

Liu Yu’an gives Zhao Xian a detailed plot summary he wrote of this virtual world, saying, “the character names are random, but I want you to look into whether there’s any novels like this in Green Sprout.”

Then he promises a bunch of perks for Zhao Xian’s favour. Liu Yu’an has always been really generous with these, which is why Zhao Xian isn’t really angry even when Liu Yu’an would never contact their group of friends and only call them when he needs help.

Zhuang Feiyu also immediately offers, “An-ge, I can help too! That novel site Wax Gourd’s CEO is my friend’s brother-in-law’s older brother.”

Zhao Xian and Liu Yu’an “…”

You two sure are distant.

“I can ask them to look for you too.”

Liu Yu’an hesitates a bit. Wax Gourd is a more general novel website with more male writers and readers in general. Even the female authors are more often BG writers.

And obviously, this virtual world is based on a BL novel.

Liu Yu’an still agrees in the end though, just in case.

Then Zhuang Feiyu immediately voices his wish, “An-ge, can I borrow that yacht of yours for a party? Pretty please?”

Zhao Xian and Liu Yu’an “…”

Sure are direct, aren’t we?

Zhao Xian is covering his face. He really wants to say he doesn’t know him if he could.

Liu Yu’an chuckles and says, “sure.”

Then he adds, “also help me take a look at the other novel sites too in that case, but I don’t want you making a big deal out of this.”

He then tells Zhuang Feiyu, “ask Zhao Xian what to do if you’re ever unsure.”

Two days later, Ren Jianzhang has already read through the three scripts Liu Yu’an picked and the other scripts Ning Xi sent him, and marked and annotated ones he would recommend before sending them over to Liu Yu’an for him to decide.

Liu Yu’an put the three worlds aside as he starts leafing through the rest… Only to realise a bit later that the script he felt seemed good that he’s reading through right now, is actually also a virtual world in itself.

This is the fourth one, or rather, the fifth original novel giving birth to virtual worlds that he’s seen in this world now.

He didn’t realise it at first because he didn’t read the details of the world or experience it fully, because he only entered that virtual world to accompany his cousin, who picked that world himself.

Because his aunt and uncle was unsure about letting his young cousin have the virtual experience tour himself, they asked Liu Yu’an who is an employee in the Centre to watch over him.

Since he didn’t have anything else to do, he dived into the world alongside him.

His cousin wanted to be the transfer student from a respectable background who transferred into the rural backwater school due to his household registry requirement for gaokao .

So Liu Yu’an became his homeroom teacher to be able to take care of him. He was a 28 years old high school teacher with an undergraduate degree only, which was already enough to be a high school teacher for a rural backwater school.

The character became a teacher at 22, still young and starry-eyed, wanting to make a name for himself. Being a new teacher though, of course he was assigned the very worst class.

Several years on, by 28, the teacher didn’t produce any extraordinary student, while his passion had been drained and then trampled over, and he became one of those paranoid, unfriendly teachers he used to despise.

The school would start at 7:30, right? Other classes ask students to be there by 7 to settle down and get ready. He? He wanted them here at 6.

The students had to be there by 6, and so he had to be there even earlier.

He would already be in the classroom by half-past five, and sit on his podium with the attendance records.

When the students are there, he would sit there silently and watch them studying.

He would even make random visits during class and during recess to see who might be studying or playing.

Many students of the worst class already hate studying, and with the mad authoritarian policies, they couldn’t take it anymore. In the end, they pulled a bag over him and beat him so badly he had to be hospitalised for days.

Even hospitalised was no deterrent to his ‘passion’ for teaching (as he didn’t know the students were the ones who did it), he even left the hospital early, disregarding medical advice, to be back in action as early as possible.

Back at the school, the principal informed him that his class had a transfer student (i.e. the protagonist, or the character his young cousin chose).

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