Grid Tower (The Ruler) Chapter Eighty-Eight: Child

The next day, they planned to spend the afternoon playing before heading back. Once again, Li Xiaoyue began to regret coming. She hated the outdoors. Wasn’t it better to stay at home, bask in the air conditioning, hug a book, and drink cola?

Being able to stay with Wu Hui outside did not remotely make up for the misery of spending two days in the open air.

In that sense, Li Xiaoyue was still less love-struck than her younger sister. Her decision to sneak into Wu Hui’s tent was more because the heat had become unbearable than because she was truly so shameless as to want to do something improper.

As for Ren Yin, she had crawled in mainly to keep Li Xiaoyue from being too embarrassed. If it were truly just a man and a woman alone together, Li Xiaoyue would probably not have been able to sleep.

If no one else were around, she would not have minded doing some exercise with Wu Hui, either.

She was thinking about the team as a whole. Unlike those sisters, who had men on the brain all day long. Well, though Ren Yin turned out to be the fastest among them to make a move.

No romance, only companionship of that sort, and Wu Hui got to run into it. He was lucky.

When morning came, Ren Yin carried the still-drowsy Li Xiaoyue back to their original tent. But it did no good; after their telepathic link, Li Xiaojing knew everything anyway. The two sisters were already at each other’s throats.

Ren Yin sighed. “Don’t start fighting over jealousy. Shouldn’t cooperation be your biggest advantage?”

The sisters had natural rapport and almost innate telepathy. Their teamwork was excellent. If they turned hostile over fighting for a man, that would be far too foolish, and Wu Hui would probably look down on them as well.

This warning from Ren Yin was quite kindly meant. Li Xiaoyue and Li Xiaojing accepted it humbly.

That left only two choices. Either neither of them would be with Wu Hui, or they would find a way to share. But if they chose the former, then whenever they met someone else they liked later, their affection would still pile up together, and the problem would remain unsolved.

The sisters sank into thought and indecision.

Ren Yin said no more, and went off to play in the water with Wu Hui instead. No one knew whether she was simply considering the team’s interests, or taking the chance to monopolize Wu Hui a little longer.

Women, no matter how calm, were still women. Or rather, not just women. If a person truly wanted nothing, gave only and asked for no responsibility or return, then they would have to be stupid to a certain degree. She was simply using a different method from Li Xiaoyue and Li Xiaojing.

This also fit economics quite well: when demand exceeds supply, one naturally gains the upper hand. Wu Hui had many choices, so the girls would lower their standards.

Yesterday’s defeated elementary school kids came back again, and this time they had brought a helper. But when this helper saw the second boy from the dormitory, he actually called out “Cousin.”

Turns out they were distant relatives.

The reinforcements switched sides on the spot, delivering a heavy blow to the little boys. The eldest and the third quietly gave the second boy a thumbs-up.

Wu Hui glanced at the elementary schooler calling himself Ke Wenbei and said nothing.

The dorm mates and the little boys buried the hatchet and started playing together, showing a surprising sense of mutual appreciation. They had completely forgotten why they had come to the beach in the first place.

Ke Wenbei stared with wide eyes, watching Wu Hui from the shadows.

He looked utterly harmless, after all, just a child.

Who would suspect an elementary school kid of having any wicked intentions?

“Hmm...” Li Xiaoyue stood nearby. She did not like children very much, because children were always noisy. They also liked to break her things. So she kept as far away as possible, and besides, that name reminded her of something.

It was a very similar name: Ke Wenjie.

The first person she had ever killed in her life would not be a name she forgot lightly.

At once, Li Xiaoyue felt a little dazed.

Little Ke Wenbei stared with wide eyes, seemingly not noticing Li Xiaoyue’s or Wu Hui’s gaze.

Now they were going to swim again, so Wu Hui and Ren Yin both put away their glasses, and the group continued playing in the seawater. After heading back at noon and finishing lunch, Wu Hui still had to go to the tribunal to collect his reward.

Summer vacation really was quite idle. During the game’s rest period, Wu Hui had plenty of time to prepare, adjust his mindset, and release stress.

Of course, his stress was not actually that great. After all, he had a flexible moral bottom line. Ren Yin’s stress had grown so much that she had to relieve it in such an primal way. As for Li Xiaoyue, she had been well protected in the last game, so there was no problem.

But in any case, after fighting bitterly in the game and killing people, if they did not enjoy themselves once they got out, no one would be able to endure it.

After all, they were not fighting for some grand ideal. They were merely competing with people who were, in fact, rather innocent, for the right to survive.

Killing people who had no grudge against them did indeed accumulate psychological pressure. But they could not avoid it either.

Under those circumstances, it was understandable that player crime rates were high. They still could not yet become fully accustomed to it like the higher-level players.

The next game was The Playwright, difficulty level three. Last time The Playwright game had been about survival on a deserted island, and it seemed there might be a continuation.

This time the difficulty had increased by one level, and by rights there was a fair chance it would be the sequel to the previous round. For Wu Hui, the only real issue with that one was that, apart from everything else, spending ten or fifteen days alone would make even him feel somewhat suffocated.

It took too long, unlike the others that were finished in a dozen hours or so. If he had been mentally prepared, he should not run into that problem again.

“What are you thinking about, big brother?”

Ke Wenbei suddenly leaned up in front of Wu Hui with an innocent expression.

The more such words were used, the more they made the elementary schooler seem anything but simple. Wu Hui reached out and, by habit, pushed up the bridge of his nose with his finger, only to remember that he was not wearing glasses now. “Thinking about adult matters.”

His attitude toward children was simple: perfunctory. He clearly did not want to bother with him.

That was understandable. He often treated his dorm mates that way too. He did not want to say much. Explaining the things he was thinking about in his head was troublesome, and very often, even when he thought he had made himself perfectly clear, other people still would not understand.

When the gap in intelligence became large enough, that was how it was. There was a father who always felt his daughter spoke unclearly, suspected she had a problem with her intelligence, and sent her for a test.

It turned out that the daughter’s IQ was nearly forty points higher than her father’s. In fact, IQ values are determined by how many percent of your peers you outperform; for example, if the average is one hundred, then being below a certain percentage corresponds to ninety or eighty.

So the reason her father could not understand her was not that the daughter was stupid, but that the father was too stupid and she was too smart.

At that point, not only should she have taken an intelligence test, she should probably have had a paternity test as well. Of course, one could not say for certain, since heredity was hard to predict.

This child did not seem ordinary.

Ke Wenbei very sensibly walked away, and then drifted over to Li Xiaoyue’s side.

The second boy from the dormitory came over and, uncharacteristically serious, said, “Sigh. A while ago, this kid’s older brother died. But his parents haven’t told him yet.”

Wu Hui fell silent. He could already confirm that Ke Wenbei was the younger brother of Ke Wenjie, the chubby boy from the second game.

Seeing the relatives of someone he had killed in reality did feel strange. Of course, the final blow back then had been dealt by Li Xiaoyue, not him.

P.S. This is the second update of today. Please vote and bookmark.