MMO: Pierce Heaven Til' It Breaks

“Who dares bully my Jiaojiao? I’ll kill him!”

“Bring a few more people over. All you gotta do is scare him off a little, don’t kill him for real, or else it’ll get complicated. At the most, just bust up his *sshole or kick him in the balls.”

Li Yi went, “…”

“Which motherf*cker dares to harass my Jiaojiao?”

Ten minutes later, Li Yi used a different tone as he yelled loudly, stressing his vocal cords. After a while, he called Jiaojiao again.

“It’s done, that son-of-a-b*tch’s has gone into hiding, you’re safe for now.”

“There isn’t anyone else aside from you outside, is there?” Jiaojiao was still slightly worried.

“Nope, the coast is clear.”

“Creak~”

The door opened and Jiaojiao poked her head out, noticing Li Yi.

“You’re Perverted Wing? Why do you look kinda familiar? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before…” Jiaojiao observed Li Yi and murmured, almost to herself.

“Can I go in?”

In the past life, Li Yi had already become extremely close to Jiaojiao, such that there were no barriers between them. Now, however, he had no choice but to play along with her exasperatedly. He was trying to build a good relationship with her, but according to her current limits.

“Come in then.” Jiaojiao boldly opened the door wide.

Li Yi walked inside and taunted her, “What’s with the sudden gutsiness? Doth my ears deceive me?”

Jiaojiao said with a contemptuous humph, “Tsk, I’ve always had plenty of guts. Well, the reason I dare to allow you in is ‘cuz you look just like a weak little bottom, so you clearly don’t have much fighting power.”

Li Yi chuckled. In order to present Jiaojiao with a best first impression, he had not acted particularly fierce.

“C’mon, have a drink.”

Jiaojiao brought out a canned drink and handed it to Li Yi.

“I’ve never met an online friend in real life before, you’re the first. Could be worse, you look like you couldn’t hurt a fly.”

The two of them were already rather familiar with each other in-game. This was especially true of Li Yi, who always played a few relatively harmless pranks on her. As a result, the two of them were not awkward around each other at all, and soon the conversation warmed up.

Their conversation seemed to cover every topic under the sun, covering everything from the game to airplanes. They even talked about cruise ships and cannons, until finally, they began to trash-talk the b*stard downstairs.

“That b*stard downstairs is always threatening me and yelling at me. My mom can’t even get a good night’s sleep because of him.”

“Shouldn’t you report this to the cops?” Li Yi sniggered inwardly.

Jiajiao said with a straight face, “Report my *ss, I just moved here so I don’t know the place or the people. Don’t you watch the news? This pretty girl tries to report something to the police but they detained her instead, and in the end, they took turns doing you-know-what to her.”

Li Yi was shocked. “Where did you read this news?”

Jiaojiao thought it over. “I think it was on a pop-up site called SIS or something.”

Li Yi said, “…”

“You’re always at home, right? Then I’ll call you again next time. Come to think of it, though, why do I feel like your voice sounds just like the b*stard from downstairs?”

Li Yi chuckled. “D’you wanna know why? You damned b*tch.”

“F*ck!”

A drink bottle flew at him, but Li Yi had anticipated this, so he tilted his head and avoided it.

Jiaojiao was so angry that her little face was completely red. “You son of a gun, that’s way dirty, that’s low! You live downstairs from me, and yet… and yet…”

“And yet what?” Li Yi drank his beverage, his expression calm.

“You harassed me!” Jiaojiao roared.

“It was your fault for not telling me your address.”

“You gave me a fake address!” Jiaojiao was even more furious.

Li Yi’s expression was completely unrepentant. “I was bored so I had to find something fun to do. Why the temper? Come, smile one for me.”

“F*ck you, you son of a gun!” Jiaojiao was clearly still mad.

“Oh, sh*t!”

Li Yi suddenly remembered something. He smacked his thigh hard and then ran out, shoving the door open as he went.

“Whatchu doing?”

“My character wasn’t in a Safe Zone when you turned off the power. Damned b*tch, you’ve done it this time!”

When Li Yi said that, Jiaojiao was stunned for a moment. She ran toward her bedroom hurriedly, put on her helmet, and entered the game.

Li Yi logged into the game and appeared in Eastcloud Valley’s palace. Everything before him was a cloud of white, which clearly meant that he was currently in soul form.

Upon checking his equipment, Li Yi’s heart sank and he ran toward the direction of his corpse.

Everything in his Backpack was still there, but one item was missing from his equipped equipment. The +16 Maylia’s Ring of Windstorms was gone!

The place where Li Yi and Wind-on-Snow had their conversation earlier was not a Safe Zone. Instead, it was an area where monsters between Levels 15 and 25 spawned. The sudden power outage had forced Li Yi out of the game, but his in-game character could not log off that quickly. It would take 5 minutes of inactivity for the system to kick him out.

If he was surrounded by a monsterling for 5 minutes, it did not matter if Li Yi had 8,500+ HP. It would still be too much for him to tank.

When he ran back to his corpse, Li Yi’s heart twisted in his chest.

An Elite-level Ice Toad with a blue name was crouching next to his corpse, croaking away.

The Ice Toad had very high ATK and could use poison as well. Even without witnessing it, Li Yi could guess that he had been killed by this Ice Toad.

Li Yi resurrected and shot madly at the Ice Toad, killing it within a dozen seconds or so. He took a long, deep breath before he went forth to loot it.

If the equipment a player dropped was not picked up by anyone else, it would never disappear. However, if this Ice Toad had picked up the Ring of Windstorms, things might get hairy.

The chances of the toad dropping it again were not 100%. There was a certain probability that the Ring of Windstorms would vanish forever.

[You obtained a piece of Toad Skin…]

…

It did not drop the Ring of Windstorms…

Li Yi’s heart sank.

“What’s the matter? You didn’t drop anything, did you?” Jiaojiao sent him a voice message.

“I lost the +16 Ring of Windstorms.” Li Yi sighed slightly.

Jiaojiao could see the true attributes of all of Li Yi’s equipment because Li Yi had never once hidden it from her.

“Perverted… Perverted Wing, that… that’s can’t be true, can it?” Jiaojiao was stunned as well.

Li Yi said angrily, “Why would I lie to you?”

Jiaojiao’s voice had changed. “Sorry, I… I didn’t mean it.”

A +16 Maylia’s Ring of Windstorms was no longer something that could be bought with Gold Coins. It would be no exaggeration to call it a priceless treasure.

“C’mon, please say something? Sob sob, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean it,” said Jiaojiao, her voice choked.

Li Yi was exasperated by Jiaojiao’s reaction. “What’s the matter with you? Why are you crying? It’s just a piece of equipment, and it’s not like I’ll kill you for it. If you really feel bad about it, let me have my way with you as compensation.”

“I’ll agree to anything but that, sob sob…” Jiaojiao was still crying.

Jiaojiao’s level may be low, but she knew perfectly which pieces of equipment were worth thousands and which were not worth a penny. She was perfectly aware that once one lost an uber legendary Epic-level item like Maylia’s Ring of Windstorms, it was extremely likely that it would never be found again.

“It’s fine, I was kidding. It’s just a piece of equipment, if I dropped I just gotta farm for it again. Why are you crying over it?”

“Sob sob sob, I can’t afford to compensate you for it.”

“I never asked you for compensation. If you really want to make it up to me, sure, just take your time, haha.”

Jiaojiao was silent for a while and only replied after a long pause, “You sure are a weird one. You lost such a precious piece of equipment, so why are you not mad in the slightest?”

“I play the game to make myself happy, so why should I be mad?”

Li Yi’s words rendered Jiaojiao instantly speechless.

If this was the past life, Li Yi would never be able to act so blasé about it. However, things were different in this life. After learning his lesson from the past life, Li Yi was much more open-minded about everything.

Forget causing him to lose one piece of equipment, he would not be angry at Jiaojiao even if she stripped off all his equipment and sold it to an NPC.

“Why?” Jiaojiao could not help but ask one more time.

“Do you really wanna know why?” Li Yi coughed slightly and said, half teasingly and half seriously, “Because in my eyes, you’re much more important than the Ring of Windstorms.”

This incident truly did not mean much to Li Yi, but the impact Li Yi’s actions had on Jiaojiao were extremely immense.

Initially, Jiaojiao had always harbored a sliver of wariness against Li Yi. After all, the two of them were not yet as close as they had been in the previous life. After this incident, however, Jiaojiao’s last defenses against Li Yi vanished without a trace.

“Alright, don’t give it any more thought. The ring’s gone anyway, so why shouldn’t we make ourselves happier about things? If I can get one of those, I’d definitely be able to get a second. If you overthink it, you’ll just make yourself unhappy.”

It was a strange sight. Li Yi was the one who lost his equipment, but here he was comforting Jiaojiao.

Li Yi walked around the area and killed all of the monsterlings he saw, looting every single one. However, he still could not find anything whatsoever, so he had no choice but to shake his head helplessly and log off.

The first thing Li Yi did upon logging off was to spend 3,000,000 buying a solar charger online. With this, forget the main power switch getting turned off, he would not be affected even if the whole world lost all power.

It was a lesson learned the hard way. Li Yi did not fancy the same thing happening again in the future.

Thinking back on Wind-on-Snow’s words, Li Yi went to the official site. Just a casual glance and he instantly had a headache.

The picture of him hugging Wind-on-Snow full frontal in order to provoke her was currently going viral on the official site. It looked like this was the reason Wind-on-Snow decided to stop playing the game…

“Sigh…” Li Yi shook his head helplessly. He was all-powerful in the game, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about a photo making its rounds on the official site.

His previous title of Archer God had changed as well, becoming Toucher God.

The trending topic these days had been Tyrannic Dynasty, but with that, the spotlight had turned back to the evergreen Li Yi.

“Thank goodness Lil Snow doesn’t look exactly the same in-game as she does in real life, or else…”

Now that it had come to this, Li Yi could only count on the silver linings.

“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Just then, his room door took a heavy hammering, and Jiaojiao’s voice reached his ears.

“Perverted Wing, log into the game and check your mailbox.”

“Why? D’you wanna come in?” Li Yi got up.

“I’m going upstairs, my mom’s almost home so I gotta cook for her.” Jiaojiao ran back upstairs.

“My mailbox?”

Li Yi scratched his head and put on his helmet, logging into the game.

Rubbing the Return City Stone, Li Yi returned to Shattered Frost City and went to a mailbox.

A mail jumped out at him, and Li Yi chose to open it. There was a loud “ding”, and a floating ring surrounded with purple light appeared in his hand. It was—Maylia’s Ring of Windstorms!