91: Chapter 91 A Mission That Was Destined to Be Unfinished

In fact, when Xiao Niao and Hu Gualing were whispering their guesses about the truth behind Fantasy Jianghu, they had already caught Chen Mo's attention.

However, it wasn't a particularly pressing matter; no matter what conclusion they reached, it wouldn't have much of an impact on him.

On the contrary, he was more interested in the blacksmithing skills Hu Gualing displayed in the Forging room. Although the technique wasn't exactly brilliant, it showed that Gualing wasn't stupid; he knew how to apply real-world skills to the game.

Of course... none of that was important.

The only thing that truly caught Chen Mo's attention was the mission Xiao Niao triggered—helping Head Manager Xie Dongdong find information about her father.

The two NPCs, Head Manager Xie Dongdong and Xie Xiaotian, did indeed have a father.

It was the night Chen Mo had just become an Apprentice Main God. At that time, after he had finished creating the Novice Village, adding the NPCs, and preparing all the game's functions, he decided to take a final look at everything. If there were no issues, he could proceed with opening the server to make money.

Upon closer inspection, he found that the village had farmers for planting, a Pig Keeper for raising pigs, and people raising chickens, ducks, and geese. There were doctors, blacksmiths, and carpenters. One could say that the entire Xiao Huang Village was almost self-sufficient, but it was missing a Hunter.

Without a Hunter, where would the villagers get wild game if they wanted to eat some?

With this thought in mind, Chen Mo decided to create another Hunter NPC.

Since the other game elements were already completed, Chen Mo adopted a relaxed mindset and let himself go in fleshing out this Hunter's character design.

First, he gave him a very domineering name—Xie Renxiong!

A hero among men; it sounded very high-profile at first listen.

Secondly, such a domineering Hunter would surely return from every hunt with a full load, so his material conditions definitely wouldn't be bad... Therefore, Chen Mo first gave him a very large courtyard.

Then there was the family situation.

For someone like Xie Renxiong, whose family never lacked meat for any meal, it wouldn't be logical for him to be unable to find a wife. So, the possibility of him being a bachelor was ruled out first.

But if he were to be given a beautiful wife and a happy, perfect family...

Chen Mo was somewhat unwilling.

It wasn't that he would be jealous of an NPC, but it felt somewhat unfair to the other NPCs in the village—all the good things couldn't just be hogged by Xie Renxiong alone.

So Chen Mo decided to simply give Xie Renxiong a widowed background and have him look after a daughter and a son as 'baggage.' This would make him quite a sympathetic character.

When this idea appeared in his mind, Chen Mo felt quite satisfied. He immediately waved his hand to create the two NPCs, Head Manager Xie Dongdong and Xie Xiaotian. Then, he waved his hand again, preparing to let this domineering widowed single-dad Hunter, Xie Renxiong, make his debut, but he couldn't help but freeze awkwardly.

Because, after all the tossing and turning of creating the courtyard and the son and daughter, he had run out of main god points...

In other words, the siblings Head Manager Xie Dongdong and Xie Xiaotian not only lost their mother at a young age, but now they didn't even have a father.

Chen Mo felt it was a real pity that he couldn't let the NPC Xie Renxiong debut in the game.

But he was just a Hunter NPC, not some key character. If he was gone, he was gone; the game had to run as it should.

However, Chen Mo hadn't expected that Head Manager Xie Dongdong would actually issue a quest to Xiao Niao to find her father.

The person Xie Renxiong didn't even exist in the game, so where was Xiao Niao supposed to look? This mission was simply impossible to complete!

Fortunately, the quest System in Fantasy Jianghu wasn't like traditional online games; there were rarely failure penalties for not completing them. At most, it would just sit in the quest log as an eyesore.

Of course, if it were one of those players with OCD who wanted to accept every quest they saw and felt they must complete every quest they accepted, they would definitely be driven crazy. One could only hope Xiao Niao wasn't that kind of guy...

---

Past six in the morning, Xiao Niao woke up on the bed in the warehouse and stretched. He suddenly felt refreshed all over, as if he had never slept so comfortably before.

Moreover, he was nearsighted and always wore corrective glasses, only taking them off when sleeping. So usually, the first thing he did upon waking was look for his glasses to put them on; otherwise, everything before his eyes would be hazy and he couldn't see anything clearly.

But this morning, he could seemingly see things a bit clearly even without his glasses. It felt as if his eyes were clearer than before? He didn't know if it was just an illusion...

After a quick wash, Xiao Niao put on his glasses, pushed up the rolling shutter door, and went out to find food.

Although it wasn't yet seven in the morning, many IT white-collar workers in the electronic industrial park had already arrived to clock in for work. Some even came down from upstairs with dark circles under their eyes to buy coffee; it looked like they had worked all night and were drinking a few cups of coffee to sustain their lives before continuing to work.

Xiao Niao looked at these people in a hurry and couldn't help but shake his head and sigh: There was no need to work so hard.

In his heart, he had forgotten that just yesterday, he himself was one of these desperate workers. It was just that the sudden appearance of Fantasy Jianghu had brought him into a whole new world, temporarily pulling him away from the troubles of real life.

He found a roadside stall, ate a portion of rice noodle rolls, and walked back to the warehouse.

He turned on his computer.

He opened a web-wide crawler.

He typed in "Tang Yao," made some simple settings for target data patterns and target characteristics, and hit the "Enter" key. Countless characters flashed chaotically and rapidly on the screen as the crawler began to index automatically.

Perhaps the name "Tang Yao" didn't have much distinctiveness, but Xiao Niao had set restrictive conditions based on known information, which greatly reduced the difficulty of the search. Before long, the search results returned, summarized and arranged on the computer page according to relevance.

"Tang Yao, daughter of Tang Yuanming, the founder of Jiangzhou Shuangyuan Group..."

Xiao Niao was attracted by the information at the very top with the highest relevance. He couldn't help but click into the original webpage and saw the full information.

"Tang Yao, high school student, car accident, vegetative state..." Several keywords immediately connected in Xiao Niao's mind.

He quickly browsed the webpage and found a picture.

Although the person in the picture was pixelated, from the body shape, she seemed almost identical to the Tang Yao in the game.

And the age also matched.

Furthermore, Gualing said she was from Jiangzhou Jiangnan, which also coincided with this Jiangzhou Shuangyuan Group...

Xiao Niao scrolled to the bottom of the webpage and found that this was a disclosure document from a listed company, stamped with several official seals. It shouldn't be fake.

Could it be that this vegetative Tang Yao was the same Tang Yao he and Gualing knew in the game?

She had been in a vegetative state due to a car accident over half a year ago... No wonder she didn't know what was happening in real society.

Xiao Niao wasn't too surprised; instead, he felt a slight sense of disappointment.

After all, compared to his previous various speculations, an ordinary vegetative person was far too normal and easy to accept...

Realizing this psychological change in himself, Xiao Niao couldn't help but give a self-deprecating smile.

However, it was worth thinking about: since Tang Yao had already become a vegetative person, how was she able to enter Fantasy Jianghu and become the first player?

Xiao Niao vaguely felt that if he could figure this out, he might be able to touch upon a bit of the truth of this game.