Chapter 55: Gentle Rejection and Fortune Telling
“I don’t think ‘stupid’ is the right word.” Asker said lightly. “You just don’t have experience in this area.”
“Then why do you have experience?” Nuo moved closer to him, slowly wrapping her arms around her legs, resting her cheek on her knees, and looking at him with melancholy eyes. “Asker, you’ve never talked about yourself.”
“Do you want to hear it?” Asker glanced at her.
“Hmm.” Nuo hummed softly.
“I’m not actually from Constantinople.” Asker looked into the distance. “I come from a very distant plane. You can think of it as being a bit like the Dragon Kingdom, but very far away, almost impossible to reach by any means of transportation – it’s another world.”
“Oh.” Nuo smiled. “I often see this kind of plot in novels, where the protagonist inexplicably travels to another world and then starts to thrive, it seems a bit like you…”
She suddenly stopped awkwardly because Asker was not smiling, but just looking at her calmly.
“Where was I?” Asker was silent for a moment and continued. “Well, my family. My father passed away when I was very young, and I was raised by my mother alone.”
“I’m sorry.” Nuo said. “I didn’t know…”
“No need to apologize, it has nothing to do with you.” Asker shook his head. “My father… he lived a reclusive life, completely detached from society, making a living by drawing and submitting his work to manga websites.”
“My mother was a traditional rural woman. It seems they met through an arranged marriage. I’m still not sure if there was love between them.”
“Speaking of love, my father had real feelings for the 2D world. It was a strange and intense emotion that I still don’t understand.”
“He was obsessed with a virtual singer from a music game. I still remember her name was Orange.”
“My father often pointed at Orange on the screen and said that she was his real wife.”
“Every time he said that, my mother would smile helplessly and indulgently. She probably treated my father like a child who hadn’t grown up.”
Asker picked up a stone and threw it into the river ahead, creating ripples. “Then, when I was six years old, that music game shut down.”
“My father couldn’t accept Orange’s disappearance. He tried to redraw her on paper, but Orange was a 3D model, not a 2D character.”
“So he started learning how to make MMDs, begging netizens everywhere for character models. But the copyright of Orange was still in the hands of the game company, and posting it online casually would result in a lawyer’s letter, so no one responded to his request…”
“Then he couldn’t take it anymore and committed suicide.”
“You mean, your father committed suicide because of a fictional anime character?” Nuo said in shock.
“Yes, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” Asker picked up another stone and weighed it in his hand. “This is just the story of a cowardly man who was unwilling to bear family responsibilities, immersed in his own false world, and finally chose to end his life when the world collapsed.”
“He left freely, but never thought about the impact it would have on my mother and me.”
“From then on, our family’s situation took a turn for the worse. This dishonorable suicide brought a lot of mental pressure from our neighbors, so my mother chose to move.”
“Because someone had died in it, our old house couldn’t be sold or rented out. Later, my mother took me to rent a house on the other side of the city.”
“She sacrificed so much to raise me. When the financial pressure was the most severe, she even worked three jobs a day, leaving home at 6 am and not coming back until 2 am. Sometimes, when she got home, she couldn’t control her exhaustion and fell asleep leaning against the door frame. I had to help her back to bed.”
Asker let out a long breath and said, “She really did everything a mother should do.”
Nuo didn’t speak, her eyes were a little red, and she lowered her head.
“So I can’t be like the protagonists in those novels, who, after transmigrating, completely stay in that plane and cut off ties with their families in the original world, do you understand?” Asker looked at the mountains across the river and said seriously. “If I did that, what would be the difference between me and my father?”
“A mother painstakingly raises her son to adulthood, and then the son never comes back, leaving her alone in the world… That shouldn’t be her ending.”
“I have to go back.” He said resolutely. “Back to that world.”
“Asker.” Nuo’s voice trembled. “You mean…”
“100 kilometers south of here, there is a coastal city called Kavala.” Asker said lightly. “There is a fortune teller from the Dragon Kingdom there, you can think of him as a prophet. He is someone who can break the fourth wall, maybe he knows how I can return to my original plane.”
“Nuo, we are not from the same world.” He finally sighed deeply and said seriously.
“Then if I also go to your plane…” Nuo blurted out excitedly, but her voice stopped abruptly in her throat.
She thought of her father and mother, and her brother and sister. Just as Asker couldn’t abandon his mother in that world, how could she abandon her family in this world?
“If… I mean, if.” Nuo was silent for a long time, and then asked with a last glimmer of hope, “If that prophet doesn’t know how to send you back? Or if he tells you that there is no way to go back?”
“I will continue to try to find a way for a while longer.” Asker was also silent for a long time and replied, “Five years. If within five years, I still haven’t found a way to go back, then I will settle down in this world for the time being, and consider… what you are considering now.”
Nuo stared at him blankly.
After a while, she showed a sad expression and smiled wryly:
“You’re really amazing, Asker. I haven’t even said it yet, and you’ve already guessed it…”
She nervously twisted the corner of her clothes with both hands, her voice trembling with a hint of crying. “So you want me to wait for you for five years?”
“No.” Asker said, “I’m not asking you to wait for me. I’m just telling you my plans for the future so that it doesn’t affect your own choices.”
“Five years is enough to change everything beyond recognition.”
“Hmm, I understand.” Nuo said with her head down. “It’s good to be honest with each other, I’m glad you told me all this.”
Her slender shoulders trembled, as if she was suppressing the urge to cry. “I actually… surprised you too, right? I don’t know why, but I just fell in love with you…”
“Maybe it was that time on Furnace Island, seeing you draw your sword and charge towards so many enemies alone, I couldn’t help but feel a little moved… When I was young, I loved reading novels about knights and princesses, and I also dreamed of having a knight who would draw his sword and charge towards the enemy for me without hesitation. Maybe it’s the image I’ve always longed for and fantasized about, and it overlaps with you…”
Asker looked at her quietly.
Nuo gradually couldn’t continue speaking, and finally, she couldn’t help but ask with a choked voice: “Asker, we can still be friends, right?”
“Of course.” Asker answered seriously. “We’ve always been friends.”
“Hmm, good.” Nuo slowly stood up, patted her skirt under the moonlight, bit her lip, and said, “I’m going back. Then… goodbye.”
She turned around and left silently. Asker looked at her back, his heart heavy.
To be honest, rejecting a girl’s confession was naturally a difficult thing for him.
But morally speaking, this was the least he could do to respect her.
Huh? Asker touched “Absurd Dreams” in his back pocket, and an absurd thought immediately arose in his mind:
Isn’t the entrance to Furnace Island with me? Where is she going back to?
Nuo walked along the river, lost in thought, kicking the stones by the road into the water.
Ahead, Eleanor was squatting by the river in the night, boredly poking at the fish in the river with her spear.
“How did it go, Nuo?” Seeing Nuo approaching, Eleanor stood up and greeted her, only to notice the sadness on her face that couldn’t be erased. “He rejected you?”
Nuo shook her head.
“Then he agreed?” Eleanor looked at her in confusion. “That’s not right, how did he respond?”
“Can you turn around?” Nuo asked softly.
“Oh.” Eleanor turned around, and Nuo hugged her from behind. After a long time, sobs could be heard.
“Ellie…” Her uncontrollable crying became louder, slowly drifting along the river. “What should I do?”
“What should I do…”
…
Kavala, located on the north coast of the Aegean Sea, was originally a coastal city of the ancient Macedonian kingdom.
By the Fourth Epoch, the Macedonians, Thracians, and Siris people had almost completely intermarried. The outside world collectively referred to them as the Siris people, so Kavala became a Siris city-state.
Similar city-states, large and small, numbered about a hundred in the Empire west of Constantinople.
Logically speaking, this kind of city shouldn’t attract much attention from players, but in reality, Kavala’s fame far surpassed other city-states, even rivaling Constantinople.
Because there was an NPC from the Dragon Kingdom here.
For many players who were Western fantasy purists, having a Chinese name like “Zhang Daniu” or “Nicholas Zhao Si” in a medieval fantasy world of swords and magic was really a mood killer.
Although the “Iron and Fire” design team always liked to claim “I am your daddy,” they couldn’t do such a thing that would ruin the style of the product.
However, the general environment always brought about changes that were beyond their control. In the year when “Iron and Fire” officially launched its open beta, as the global economic environment continued to decline, the higher-ups finally turned their attention to the gaming industry to stimulate economic growth.
At that time, almost all the best-selling games in China were foreign-made, with large domestic companies acting as agents for distribution, while small companies directly copied and plagiarized, creating inferior versions of garbage web games to make money.
In response to this phenomenon of worshipping foreign things and fawning on foreign powers, the higher-ups issued a policy to support domestically produced games, proposing to “promote our country’s traditional culture and adhere to the core of independent creation.”
Then, during the implementation, for some reason, it ended up with a one-size-fits-all policy, declaring that “all games must have a point that can represent our country’s traditional culture.”
If there was no such point, they would deem it as lacking a core of independent creation and would not issue a game license number. Without a license number, the game could not be released.
For those classical Xianxia games like “Swords of Mount Shu” and “Legends of the Primordial World,” there was no impact at all.
However, for a Western-style game of swords and magic like “Iron and Fire,” it was simply a huge shackle. How could a Western-style game promote traditional Chinese culture?
There was no other way but to create a Dragon Kingdom setting out of thin air and put an NPC in Kavala. This NPC could even recite the “Tao Te Ching,” which was considered promoting traditional Chinese culture.
As a result, the comrades from the higher-ups who came down for inspection had discerning eyes and said, don’t think I don’t understand games.
In the open beta stage, most of the player traffic is in Constantinople. What’s the point of putting a Chinese NPC in a remote corner of the countryside? Put him in Constantinople.
The design team explained that Constantinople would fall in their main storyline.
Except for the two Empresses, almost all the other citizen NPCs would die. What would happen to this Chinese NPC then?
He couldn’t just summon a flying sword and fly away when the Seljuks breached the city walls, right?
The inspection comrade said, I don’t care, anyway, you have to make players pay attention to this Chinese NPC, and also create selling points and hype, preferably the kind that can make it to the news media.
Can’t you give him some kind of quest, or some fun setting, meme, or something like that?
So the design team had no choice but to add a “fortune-telling” setting to this NPC after consulting with the higher-ups.
Theoretically, this NPC knew all the game settings and often said things that “broke the fourth wall.”
(Breaking the fourth wall, which means that the characters in the play know that they are in the play and can even talk directly to the audience.)
The price for this NPC to tell fortunes was 1 pound each time, and each player account could only ask one question.
The more profound the question, the more vague his answer would be.
For example, if a player asked “Where can I get the potion formula for Fire IV,” this NPC would answer “Your destiny lies in the Plane of Fire,” meaning that they had to go to the Plane of Fire to get it.
As for where to get it specifically, no comment.
Of course, there were also some players who liked to have fun and ask him strange questions, such as “How can I marry Princess Theodora.”
At this time, the NPC would answer “Play games in moderation, stay away from addiction,” and so on. In short, he didn’t seem like an NPC, but rather like a customer service representative was controlling his speech behind the scenes.
If according to the game settings, then there should also be a similar omniscient Dragon Kingdom NPC in this world.
A few days later, Asker and his team arrived at the outskirts of Kavala and soon found this magical NPC in an ancient Siris pavilion by the sea.
He was a Chinese elder with a celestial air, looking a bit like Zhang Sanfeng from the 2003 Su Youpeng version of “The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber.” At this time, he was shaking his head and reciting in Chinese:
“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”
Next to him, a delicate Siris boy translated fluently in Siris:
“If a secret can be known, then it is no longer a secret.”
“That makes sense, that makes sense.” The people listening around were all Siris people, some wearing white philosopher robes, and some dressed luxuriously, obviously nobles or wealthy merchants. They all nodded in agreement.
A philosopher in a white robe stood up and said eloquently as if debating:
“The proposition of this master from the East is similar to Kant’s agnosticism.”
“Because the phenomenal world is what we perceive, while the noumenal world is the ‘thing-in-itself’ that exists independently of our cognition.”
“Between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world, there is an insurmountable gap in human cognition. Humans can only perceive the phenomena of things, but they cannot perceive the essence of things through phenomena.”
A Siris priest also stood up, devoutly crossed himself, and recited the scriptures as if praying:
“Between you and me, there is an abyss. I cannot cross to your side, and you cannot cross to mine.”
Asker looked at the lively scene with a dumbfounded expression.
How can you, an ancient Chinese person reciting the “Tao Te Ching,” communicate with these Siris philosophers and priests without any cultural barriers?
“Look, that’s the prophet I was talking about.” He pointed to the Chinese elder in the pavilion ahead, who was surrounded and praised by the Siris people, and explained to the girls, “He can answer any of your questions, but each person can only ask one question, and the fee is one pound.”
“Prophet? Really?” The girls frowned and said suspiciously, “Can he answer any question?”
“Yes.” Asker said, “If you don’t believe me, I’ll go try it out first.”
“Master!” Asker swaggered into the pavilion, pushing aside the Siris priests and philosophers who were blocking his way under their disapproving and disgusted gazes. He cupped his hands to the Chinese NPC and said, “I have a question, please enlighten me, Master.”
“Fortune telling with copper coins, one pound per session.” The fortune teller, who looked like Zhang Sanfeng, said with his hands behind his back.
One pound… you’re really fluent in quoting foreign prices. Asker silently took out a banknote and handed it over.
“Heaven’s secrets must not be revealed, come with me.” The fortune teller said, pulling Asker to an empty space next to him, and said arrogantly with his hands behind his back, “Ask away.”
“How can I return to my original world?” Asker asked respectfully.
“Let me calculate.” The fortune teller took out six copper coins from his sleeve and threw them on the ground. The copper coins rolled on the ground a few times and finally settled down, all six of them heads up.
“Hmm, six yang lines, Qian represents heaven.” The fortune teller stroked his beard and said, “The trapped dragon finds water, good fortune arrives, joy fills the brows, all aspirations will be fulfilled, and fortune will gradually rise in the future.”
“Since you are asking about travel, this hexagram is the best, indicating that you will be able to find your way back smoothly, it is best to travel with companions.”
“Qian represents heaven, follow the time of heaven, you should go to the place closest to heaven. What is the highest mountain peak on this northern continent?” The fortune teller said thoughtfully.
“The Alps, Mont Blanc.” Asker replied. As for Mount Everest… it didn’t exist in the world of “Iron and Fire.”
“Hmm. The Qian hexagram also symbolizes the dragon.” The fortune teller shook his head and said, “Heaven operates vigorously, a gentleman should constantly strive for self-improvement, which indicates that you should challenge a dragon, make it submit and acknowledge you, and it will be able to help you go to any place you want to go.”
“Dragon?” Asker thought for a moment and was shocked. “The dragon’s lair on Mont Blanc, the demigod boss Bronze Dragon! And its supernatural characteristic happens to be the extremely rare Time-Space Sequence! In other words, as long as I can defeat that Bronze Dragon boss, it will help me return to my original world?”
“I understand, thank you, Master.” Asker said sincerely.
“Don’t be hasty, young man, do you know the principle of good fortune following misfortune?” The fortune teller chuckled and said meaningfully, “Everything that reaches its peak will decline, when yang energy reaches its peak, yin energy will inevitably grow, this is the law of all things.”
“You are so eager to return to your original world, but you don’t know that when your wish finally comes true, you may be eager to come back again.”
Asker wanted to ask more questions, but the fortune teller impatiently flicked his sleeve and urged: “Heaven’s secrets must not be revealed, go! Go!”
So Asker returned inexplicably. Seeing him back, the girls swarmed him, asking him all kinds of questions:
“How was it? Is that prophet really credible? What did he tell you?”
Looking at the girls’ excited expressions, it was like white-collar women discussing horoscopes and fortune-telling magazines, full of irrational enthusiasm.
“You can try it yourself and see.” Asker said helplessly.
The girls looked at each other, both a little uneasy and eager to try. Finally, Nuo was the first to bravely step forward and say:
“I’ll go.”
Under everyone’s expectant gazes, Nuo came to Zhang Sanfeng and said in a low voice with her hands clasped together:
“Master, I want to consult about love.”
“You want to ask about marriage, right?” Zhang Sanfeng said leisurely with his hands behind his back. “Ask away.”
“I want to ask: Can I eventually be with the person I admire and love?” Nuo said slowly, suddenly feeling the urge to cry, and silently wiped the corner of her eyes.
“1 pound.” Zhang Sanfeng said.
After taking the banknote Nuo handed him, Zhang Sanfeng took out six copper coins and threw them again. Then he stared at the result on the ground for a long time and said:
“Thunder over Lake, this is the worst hexagram.”
“Is there any hope?” Nuo said woodenly.
“Don’t worry, it’s a good thing you’re asking about marriage.” Zhang Sanfeng thought for a moment. “To seek fish, one must go to the water, seeking it in a tree is not in accordance with nature. After much hardship and effort, it is difficult to achieve one’s desires, and even with hard work, there will be no reward, and luck will be mediocre.”
“This hexagram has Dui above Zhen. Zhen represents the eldest son, and Dui represents the young girl, with the young girl following the eldest son. The person you admire should be a man older than you, and his abilities in all aspects are far superior to yours, which is why you are attracted to him.”
“Yes.” Nuo nervously interlocked her fingers, her heart already ten points convinced. “Then what should I do?”
“Marriage between man and woman is the great principle of heaven and earth, it cannot be violated. Although there will be twists and turns at the beginning and in the middle, the ending should be happy, but remember not to force it.” Zhang Sanfeng stroked his beard, pinched his fingers, and calculated for a moment. “What you need to do now is to let nature take its course and wait for the right time.”
“How long do I have to wait?” Nuo’s eyes lit up and she asked hurriedly.
“Ten years.” Zhang Sanfeng said, “If you can wait for ten years, there will be a good outcome. Judging from this hexagram, you must not rush your marriage. It is better to marry late than to marry wrongly, do you understand?”
Ten years?! Nuo froze as if struck by lightning, her mind in turmoil.
In ten years, I’ll be almost 30 years old, do I really have to wait that long?
She walked back in a daze, not even hearing what Zhang Sanfeng said to her at the end.
After returning to the team, everyone asked her all kinds of questions, but she just shook her head woodenly.
“Nuo, what’s wrong?” When everyone dispersed dejectedly, Eleanor hurried over to her and asked with concern. “Did you ask about you and Asker? What did he say?”
“Nothing.” Nuo shook her head and tried to smile. “He said that there will be a good outcome in the end.”
“Just, we have to wait for a while.” She whispered, gradually falling silent.
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