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XĂź Beijin is looking at Lin Qin. His little apple sure stresses the inconsequential minutiae a lot.
He doesn’t care why Xü Beijin knows so much about the Tower, or how he’s got in touch with the Maertons.
He cares about if XĂź Beijin is in pain or not.
The same way XĂź Beijin worried about Lin Qin faring alone in the dark and empty boundary of the Tower.
He can’t help but smile thinking of those.
Lin Qin, seeing that, tilts his head.
Xü Beijin’s shirt isn’t buttoned up properly yet, but this Lin Qin makes him unable to do anything else but lean in to kiss.
Lin Qin responds passionately, and, gripping the shirt tightly, he accidentally tears off a button.
After the kiss, XĂź Beijin looks at his shirt, sighs, and grabs a new one from his wardrobe and puts it on.
Lin Qin stands there awkwardly, with a shirt button in his hand.
Xü Beijin teases him, “oh little apple, you should really be careful with that monstrous strength of yours. Just in case…”
Lin Qin, his wits sharp as always, asks, “in case? In case of what?”
Xü Beijin “…”
After the brief silence, he impatiently answers, “I don’t want to say it! Just get out, I’m changing!”
Lin Qin doesn’t comply, and instead slides over to button up Xü Beijin’s shirt for him; meanwhile, the button he tore off has ended up in his own pocket smoothly.
Looking at him with a slightly menacing expression, XĂź Beijin ends up letting Lin Qin help finish dressing up after all.
Lin Qin looks at Xü Beijin, properly dressed up this time, satisfied, and takes his hand, saying, “let’s go…”
Now, they’ve arrived at the buffer zone between the Tower and the grey fog.
It’s nighttime for the Tower, so it begs the question of what is lighting up this empty space outside the Tower.
At the same time, the grey fog has encroached to about fifty metres away from the Tower; over a hundred metres away is entirely covered in fog.
Lin Qin asks, “so where is that data port?”
Xü Beijin replies, “it’s random as well; where’s the door handle?”
When Xü Beijin returned from the highest floor, Lin Qin put the door handle back at the bookstore, and he told Lin Qin to grab it when he’s finished changing.
Lin Qin hands the handle over.
“Logging in and logging out are two sides of the same coin here,” explains Xü Beijin, “so to find the port for logging out, I’d have to use the port for logging in on the control panel to fake a player, before it will display where the port for logging out is.”
Lin Qin now understands why XĂź Beijin had to come back down to find the last data port.
Because they don’t have enough Missiontakers to try and force the graphical glitch to head to the top floor of the Tower anymore;
XĂź Beijin must come down rather than Lin Qin go up again, since XĂź Beijin is also the only person who can now freely traverse the Tower.
Then, Lin Qin can’t help but wonder, “do you still need to go back to the top floor later?”
Xü Beijin doesn’t answer.
Lin Qin narrows his eyes and asks, “you do?”
Xü Beijin tells him, “not really, I’m not sure. It depends…”
Lin Qin is unhappy with that answer, but he doesn’t throw a tantrum. Instead, he touches Xü Beijin’s left arm with his hand gently.
“I won’t hurt myself again,” Xü Beijin says, “I’ve promised you.”
Lin Qin goes “ho,” saying, “you just promised me you’ll take me wherever you go, but now you might have to go to the top floor again.”
Xü Beijin “…”
Having nothing he can say, he rubs his nose and says, “it’s still up in the air right now. I’ll try not to.”
“What does it depend on?”
Xü Beijin says, “it depends… on how the Ultimate Nightmare is going. If everything goes smoothly, I won’t have to wake NE up ever again. If not… I’ll have to go to the top floor to wake NE up from his sleeping state.”
So, Lin Qin thinks, it depends on the people in the Ultimate Nightmare…
He doesn’t think of them as being very reliable.
Lin Qin, trying to hold his temper back, says, “so let’s look for that data port.”
XĂź Beijin nods, and taps on that control panel resting on his shoulder, which enlarges and puts itself in front of him.
Lin Qin watches him tap buttons, and put the door handle somewhere on the panel, then something like a map pops up, and a golden dot keeps zipping everywhere.
While the port for logging in changes where it is every minute, the one for logging out changes location every three seconds or so.
It moves around so quickly that even Lin Qin has to ask, “we really have to find this thing?”
Xü Beijin says, “don’t worry, this data port is restricted to appear at the buffer zone between the grey fog and the Tower, so we just need to wait until the fog pushes it to us.”
They’re basically waiting for the prey to come to them.
Lin Qin then nods.
He wanted to say that they didn’t need to come outside so early in this case, as Xü Beijin’s ankle is still wounded. Why did they need to wait here themselves?
Though he also knows it’s better to come earlier than later. What if the thing suddenly popped into their hands, right?
Lin Qin, while thinking about all that, also helps XĂź Beijin stand with an arm, so that he can lean.
XĂź Beijin gives him a sigh. Lin Qin really is being overprotective of him right now.
He was tired, but he did also sleep a night on the top floor of the Tower. He feels much better;
Wounds heal quickly in the game, even though the scar might remain.
Regardless, Xü Beijin thinks he definitely isn’t as weak as Lin Qin is making him out to be.
But, it was also his fault earlier, so he can only accept this development.
They continue to wait quietly, as they watch the golden dot on the map of the control panel jump around.
Once, the dot even jumped somewhere near them, but they couldn’t grab it in just three seconds.
Though they were also able to see what the thing actually is.
The data port for logging in is attached to a door handle, while the one for logging out, is attached to a rusty key buried under the barren grounds outside the Tower.
Because it was buried, Lin Qin couldn’t react in time. He dug up the dirt a little, and only saw what it was but couldn’t grab it in time.
Otherwise, with his speed, he could have grabbed the port without fail.
At least they know what it looks like, now.
They continue to wait in silence. It’s really quite boring, so he looks at his stream to check on the Ultimate Nightmare.
Surprised, he finds that the Raining Hellfire just happened in the Ultimate Nightmare.