The City Shrouded in Sin (The Black Death) Chapter 120: The Little Child

Wang Xiaodie rose early that morning. After a moment’s hesitation, she decided to put on the maid outfit after all.

Wu Hui seemed to enjoy seeing her in it.

Unlike when they had been on the raft, there were now two little girls in the room competing with her. As for Ren Yin, she had no chance of competing at all, so there was no point considering her.

For now, Wang Xiaodie’s greatest hope was to shed her status as a slave—and, preferably, to have Wu Hui acknowledge her as his girlfriend.

In that respect, she was ahead. After all, despite all their research over the past two days, the twins still had not slept with Wu Hui. Hmph. They really were nothing more than a couple of little girls.

It was hard to say what qualified a fellow who was forever losing himself to other people to feel so superior.

Ren Yin rose as well. Today she wore a plain white dress that gave her an air of elegance. Every so often, she reached up to adjust her glasses.

Li Xiaojing and Li Xiaoyue had each chosen an outfit with equal care.

“...”

Wu Hui stood there holding a copy of *The Psychology of the Sexes*, wanting to say something but unable to find the words. In the end, he said nothing, because nothing seemed appropriate at the moment.

He still had much to learn. The scene before him was rather complicated from Wu Hui’s perspective.

Emotional understanding had always been his weak point. Even if he could raise the attribute directly, the skill itself still had to be practiced from the beginning. Those with high related attributes simply learned faster.

At present, he had raised Emotional Understanding to six points. His Logical Speed, meanwhile, had successfully surpassed twelve points and reached thirteen.

A weak point was not so easy to make up for. Wu Hui needed to improve his Memory, Logical Knowledge, and related abilities far more urgently than Emotional Understanding, which, in his view, was of limited practical use.

After all, he had lived for twenty years that way without it affecting his life. Nor had he encountered any situation in the games so far that truly required emotional understanding.

Developing evenly across the board was certainly a good approach, but it would inevitably be slower.

And being slow meant being weak.

Being weak meant dying.

So he would be better off focusing on one area. The activation of his Intelligence attribute was tied to various skills. The items Wu Hui used primarily required Memory and Knowledge, followed by Imagination, Logical Speed, and Logical Depth. Emotional Understanding came last.

At present, Wu Hui’s Intelligence had reached twelve, his Physical Fitness eleven, his Mystery twelve, and his Perception ten. All of them were already close to, or had reached, the human limit.

That was the realm of a fourth-level player. Beyond it lay the fifth level, where players entered the intermediate ranks and gradually began to surpass the limits of humanity.

Still, Wu Hui was confident he could defeat an ordinary fifth-level player. After all, his collection of items was no joke.

“We only just arrived in Dayun City today. We can’t possibly spend the whole day holed up at home, can we?” Li Xiaojing wore a sports T-shirt and held a baseball bat, chewing bubble gum as she spoke. “Shouldn’t we go out and do something?”

“Sure. These are the attractions and restaurants I looked into yesterday with Ren Yin. They’re popular, and there’s no obvious sign that their positive reviews have been artificially inflated.”

Wu Hui pulled out the information he and Ren Yin had prepared almost casually the day before.

Li Xiaojing was momentarily speechless. She still wasn’t used to Wu Hui producing a complete plan the instant she made a suggestion.

It made her look awfully stupid.

“The weather doesn’t seem very good today. There are too many clouds. We should stay in the room,” Li Xiaoyue declared from beneath the air conditioner, clutching a watermelon that no one knew where she had bought.

“If there are no clouds, you’ll start complaining that the sun is so strong you’re going to die! No making excuses.”

The sisters began bickering again. Everyone else had long since grown accustomed to it and made no attempt to separate them.

Whenever Li Xiaoyue was bullied by her younger sister, she would take all sorts of ridiculous pictures of her and send them to Wu Hui as revenge. That was how the sisters spent every day, loving and tormenting each other in equal measure.

The clouds outside made Wu Hui uneasy. His instincts were warning him, yet he could sense nothing at all.

It was a profoundly contradictory feeling.

This sort of sensation... After thinking it over, Wu Hui realized he had experienced it before. Before he became a player, his elder sister must have revealed more than a few problems in front of him. Each time, however, she had applied for assistance and altered his perception.

His memories had then become slightly disordered.

Now that something similar was happening, he felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

But if the problem lay in his perception, it was incredibly difficult to notice. Wu Hui was not currently inside a game, and his vigilance was limited.

Outside, several hundred meters away, a group of police officers surrounded a corpse and conducted an investigation. Their preliminary conclusion was murder: the victim had been pushed from a great height.

“I’ve been worked half to death these past few days. Why are there so many cases? Did they all have to pile up until now?” The usually conscientious officer opened with a complaint. “Couldn’t people die a little more quietly? Criminals these days can’t even hide a body...”

On the streets, arguments were becoming more frequent as well. Horns blared one after another. The roads were not even particularly congested, yet every driver seemed determined to ignore the others’ shouting and abuse.

Ren Yin closed her eyes, then opened them again. Her hearing was keen enough to gather every miscellaneous sound in the city.

But her face was filled with bewilderment.

She looked exactly like Wu Hui, who was racking his brains yet getting nowhere.

In the end, Li Xiaoyue was dragged out by her sister.

She followed behind everyone with the air of someone who had lost the will to live, drifting along like a ghost. “It’s so hot outside...”

“It’s only twenty-six degrees, and there isn’t even any sun! What’s hot about it? And don’t go clinging to Wu Hui!” Li Xiaojing blocked her path.

“If you’re jealous, you can come along too. If you act so prim and proper every day, someone’s going to steal your man.”

Li Xiaoyue began scratching at her sister, and Li Xiaojing retaliated in kind.

Yes, Wang Xiaodie thought from behind them. They really were just like children.

“Cousin, look. They’re your friends.”

The voice of little Ke Wenbei rang out. He wore round-framed glasses and had an innocent, harmless face.

Wu Hui suddenly felt an urge to walk over and beat him up.

His scan had revealed that Ke Wenbei was also a third-level player with ten points of Intelligence. Even his roommate, whose seven points of Intelligence were not especially low, acted like an imbecile in Ke Wenbei’s presence.

Well, his roommate could not truly have been that stupid and still been admitted to the same university as Wu Hui. Of course, to Wu Hui, which university he attended made little difference. His main concern had been remaining in his hometown, Evergreen City.

Why had he suddenly felt like hitting someone? Ke Wenbei’s pretending to be a child had nothing to do with him. Wasn’t it perfectly normal for a child to hide his abilities a little, to avoid being misunderstood by adults? Wu Hui had done similar things when he was young.

Why was he suddenly angry?

Wu Hui abruptly raised his head.

A mass of black cloud hung overhead, blocking—or perhaps replacing—the sun.

The sunlight filtering through it seemed to have acquired a layer of shadow.

“You guys came here to play too?” The Second Brother still wore his cheerful grin. “Wu Hui, look at this.”

“?”

Wu Hui followed the direction he indicated and saw the artificial lake in the scenic area. A strange, broken length of wood floated on its surface.

“Don’t you think that looks like a naked woman?” the Second Brother asked.