Chapter 108
Chapter 108 Pulling Him Into the Water
The meal was eaten in silence.
Both of them had their own thoughts and had no intention of speaking first, so they fell into silence.
Ling Mo was naturally thinking about the game earlier. He was starting to truly realize that this game was off; it was filled with indescribable oddities.
Including the fact that the game was distributed globally for free; no game company had ever been this extravagant before.
He had been curious and tried to look up the development company, but he found only the company name and nothing else, which was also just two characters taken from the game’s name—Shen Lin.
Back then, he merely thought some wealthy big shot had crossed over to the gaming world, but now, connecting all the dots made it seem far more complicated than that.
Xia Xinyan had said that this game was not just a game.
What did she know?
Though he was itching to ask, Ling Mo didn’t dare to bring it up.
She had said that, at this stage, she couldn’t tell him those things yet, as it wasn’t the right time.
He said he could wait.
Since he said that, he wouldn’t ask again.
At least in front of Xia Xinyan, he would keep any promise.
However… not being able to get answers from Xia Xinyan didn’t mean he couldn’t seek answers through other means.
Ling Mo started to pay more attention to these matters.
Meanwhile, Xia Xinyan…
She was pondering the golden staff’s situation.
It’s safe to say that a virgin is still a virgin; even though he had acted so strong before, when it came to actually getting intimate, he couldn’t help but shrink back…
One could say that Ling Mo had seemingly reverted to his original shy self; just a hint of ambiguousness was enough to make him blush immensely.
So the previous boldness was indeed due to that haunted dungeon…
She had never thought she would have this side to her.
Tsk, what a pity; if only she had had a girl by her side when playing the haunted dungeon last time, maybe she would have found a relationship.
Forget it, what’s in the past is in the past.
What matters is capturing what comes after.
With that in mind, Xia Xinyan glanced briefly at Ling Mo.
He seemed lost in thought, absently pushing rice around on his plate, looking like he was in a daze.
Xia Xinyan lowered her eyes.
This guy probably hadn’t gotten over the awkwardness from before, huh?
What an embarrassment.
All those films he’d watched had turned him into toilet paper, right?
Holding a bit of a “you-can-do-better” spirit, she cleared her throat and asked, “Mo Mo, what are you thinking about?”
Ling Mo came to himself, only to realize she had finished eating, and he paused for a moment before suddenly asking, “Xinyan, have you ever bought fighting skills in the mall?”
Xia Xinyan: “?”
How was this not what she expected?
Wasn’t he thinking about that事？
Though a bit surprised, she quickly responded, “Yeah, my abilities lean more toward melee, so of course I had to learn some close-combat skills.”
When she displayed her fighting power in the dungeon before, she had already prepared her explanation.
After all, her fighting ability wasn’t something that could just be glossed over with a few years of training.
And her foundation was indeed the advanced combat skills she learned back then.
Ling Mo nodded thoughtfully, “I just bought a book on basic combat skills too; this game can directly implant knowledge into our brains, it’s simply too high-tech.”
Though he couldn’t directly ask Xia Xinyan about the game’s details, testing the waters with this roundabout approach was fine, right?
—Too bad Xia Xinyan could guess his thoughts without even thinking.
She slightly squinted her eyes and responded noncommittally, “It is indeed high-tech.”
Seeing she didn’t say much, Ling Mo cleared his throat, “If the game could just transmit knowledge directly into our heads, then we’d probably never have to attend classes again.”
Just like those sci-fi movie worlds.
However, Xia Xinyan smiled and shook her head, “You’re thinking too simply, Mo Mo.”
The game could indeed stuff knowledge directly into players’ brains and could reach a point where they were proficient in every skill, but to put it plainly, it was still just dead knowledge.
It only taught them what skills were optimal in which situations but didn’t explain other ways to salvage situations or ways to escape in different scenarios.
It’s like memorizing a long poem; you can recite it fluently from start to finish, but if you randomly pull out a segment, you’d struggle to recite it unless you mentally go through the whole poem to remember that specific part’s beginning.
The analogy might be a bit off, but that’s the gist of it—it’s just dead knowledge without understanding how to connect the dots.
If one doesn’t learn and understand, then players who’ve also learned basic combat skills can be seen as chiseled from the same mold, and if they were to fight two of them together, they’d be fighting until the end of days; if one were to lose, it wouldn’t be due to being outmatched, but simply because they couldn’t keep going.
To put it another way, the basic combat skills in the mall are like a gun; once learned, the system gives you that gun, but whether you hit your target depends on how skilled you are with it—this is the understanding and adaptation of combat skills, turning dead knowledge into personal strength.
Thus, teaching this way is absolutely infeasible. Traditional education would be like first letting students learn and master how to use a firearm before doing live exercises, while this method is just tossing a gun at students and sending them to the shooting range. In that situation, most people wouldn’t even know how to turn off the safety, and the worst-case scenario would be shooting themselves.
“Just like my current abilities; since I’m boosted in speed, but weakened in strength, my fighting style should lean toward quick strikes instead of frontal confrontations—that’s adaptation.” Xia Xinyan continued explaining to Ling Mo, “To defeat an opponent who has also learned combat skills or even one whose skills are higher than yours, you need to turn that knowledge into your strength and utilize it, got it?”
Ling Mo contemplated, “…Got it.”
Seeing this, Xia Xinyan nodded in satisfaction.
This kid can be taught.
After a moment, she suddenly added, “Mo Mo, you really want to know the truth behind this game, right?”
Hearing this, Ling Mo froze.
Was she willing to tell him?
“Not yet;” noticing his expression, Xia Xinyan shook her head, smiling slightly, “I don’t want to hide anything from you, so I’ll put it this way: all this information was told to me by my dad, but the details aren’t confirmed. I’m also looking into it. One thing’s for sure, though; this isn’t just a game, in the near future, it will likely impact the entire world.”
She sensed Ling Mo’s thoughts and simply decided to sell her unseen dad out.
She didn’t really know much about those matters; she only understood this game well, but knew almost nothing about what lies behind it.
Initially, she planned to figure it out by herself, but now she changed her mind.
Since Ling Mo was once her, then their views on some issues should be aligned too. She didn’t believe he wouldn’t be interested in the game’s background, so she thought to pull him into it, working together would be much better than her floundering alone.
Plus, who knows? Maybe Ling Mo could figure it out before her, which would spare her some effort.
…Cough, how could she have such thoughts?
She was really being lazy…
