[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: You’re pretty good at stealing BOSS credit.
[Party] [Chenxi]: When I was leveling this character, the area was packed with people grinding at the same time. Getting quest kills often came down to stealing. I stumbled onto this method by accident.
Back when he had been leveling alongside An Jing and the others, fighting for BOSS credit had been a constant headache — but ever since he discovered this method, he’d been able to secure it roughly eight out of ten times. Of course, none of them had ever shared that trick with anyone outside their group.
There had been a lot of people going for the BOSS just now, and Chenxi had been mixed into the crowd — activating a skill in that situation wouldn’t stand out particularly. Nobody should have noticed.
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: Very clever.
[Party] [Chenxi]: Only healers have a trick like that. Though it’s not without risk — if the BOSS hits hard and your teammate doesn’t pull aggro after you secure the credit, you can very easily get one-shotted.
Chenxi’s current gear was decent enough now, but back during leveling, using that trick meant sometimes An Jing and the others didn’t pull aggro away in time. Chenxi’s HP had been low, heals had been weak, and going down was a regular occurrence.
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: With me here, it’s fine.
Xia Zichen smiled slightly and said nothing more, following Canmo Wuhen to the next quest objective.
The remaining two challenging tasks: one required jumping off a high cliff together and turning in the quest to an NPC at the bottom. The time limit was one minute, the distance between the two players upon landing couldn’t exceed ten feet, and the time between their two landings couldn’t exceed eight seconds. The other was a jigsaw puzzle — each player would receive two differently-shaped puzzle pieces, and both puzzles had to be completed within three minutes, with the time difference between the two completions not exceeding thirty seconds.
At the cliff-jumping quest point, an uncountable number of players were leaping off the top. Many who hadn’t timed the double jump and the movement skill correctly were plummeting straight to their deaths. Others had the movement skill angled wrong and landed too far apart. Still others ran out of time and had to restart. The nearby channel was chaotic noise, and after attempting the same quest fifteen-odd times in a row, it was fair to say nobody’s temper was holding up particularly well.
Chenxi and Canmo Wuhen accepted the quest and began jumping into the fray alongside everyone else.
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: You jump first. I’ll follow right behind. If you use the double jump too early, use the movement skill to dash left, then type 1 in the channel to signal me.
[Party] [Chenxi]: Got it. I’ll aim to land it clean without using the movement skill.
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: Okay.
The two of them jumped from the designated spot one after the other. Before they leaped, Xia Zichen stacked a HoT on both of them — just in case the landing distance ended up a little off, as long as neither HP bar hit zero they’d survive.
Calculating time and distance, Xia Zichen adjusted the camera angle and about ten feet from the ground used the double jump to tuck sideways as a buffer, then landed smoothly right beside the NPC, losing only a handful of HP points — nothing significant. The next second, Canmo Wuhen landed right beside Chenxi, white robes drifting down as if floating, not a scratch on him.
The two quickly turned in the quest. Easy as it might sound, the cliff was extremely tall — by the time they hit the bottom, there were barely ten seconds left on the timer. Anyone who landed too far from the NPC would have run out of time and been forced to redo it.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: Chenxi, top player…
Noticing Wumei Qianlan’s message in the nearby channel, Xia Zichen paused in the motion of mounting his horse. He looked to his left and spotted Wumei Qianlan with a grayed-out name — dead — while Wenrou Shenlan sat cross-legged by her body, looking resigned.
Chenxi walked over and used a revival skill to pull Wumei Qianlan back up before her resurrection timer expired.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: You and the top player are doing the couples quest too? ^_^
[Nearby] [Chenxi]: Yeah. He wanted the bracelet.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: Ahem… darling, I’m getting a little worried about Chenxi’s emotional intelligence…
[Nearby] [Wenrou Shenlan]: If you could manage not to fall to your death, I’d be happy to worry about that alongside you.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: Hmph!
[Nearby] [Chenxi]: Take the jump slowly. Don’t rush the double jump.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: I’ve already died seven times T_T
[Nearby] [Chenxi]: …
[Nearby] [Wenrou Shenlan]: You two are done with this stage already?
[Nearby] [Chenxi]: Yeah, heading to the next quest point.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: How many attempts did it take you to land it?
[Nearby] [Chenxi]: One.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: …I shouldn’t have asked…
[Nearby] [Wenrou Shenlan]: Now you know. You two go ahead, Qianlan and I will keep jumping.
[Nearby] [Chenxi]: Sure.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: Top player, you’ve got it rough.
[Nearby] [Canmo Wuhen]: Not really.
[Nearby] [Wumei Qianlan]: I meant Chenxi’s emotional intelligence makes it rough on you.
[Nearby] [Canmo Wuhen]: Not really.
The same reply, yet it seemed like Canmo Wuhen had understood Wumei Qianlan’s meaning from the very first time she said it.
Not bothering to engage further with Wumei Qianlan’s teasing, Xia Zichen summoned the two-seater horse, pulled Canmo Wuhen on, and rode off without looking back.
After a few rounds of gathering quests, the two finally arrived at the last quest point for the jigsaw puzzle. The crowd here was even more chaotic than at the cliff-jumping spot — if the NPC weren’t positioned elevated above everyone else, just clicking on him to accept the quest would have been a challenge. Beyond the sheer number of people, the atmosphere here was noticeably more tense and miserable. He even spotted a few couples who had come to do the quest together and ended up arguing and breaking up over it…
This time, the two of them didn’t talk strategy and had no particular approach — they just went with the flow and started. The jigsaw puzzle was one of the slightly more challenging minigames in Sword Soul, though for this couples event it had been made considerably easier than the mechanism puzzles found in dungeons.
Each puzzle was divided into twelve pieces. After viewing the completed image, you clicked start and the pieces would be scrambled, entering the puzzle phase. Many people weren’t skilled at jigsaw puzzles, but once you played enough times and found the patterns, it wasn’t as difficult as it first seemed.
Xia Zichen looked at his puzzle, thought for a brief moment, and started assembling. It quickly took shape back to the original image, and the system immediately confirmed the puzzle was correct and the task complete. Only then did Xia Zichen notice that Canmo Wuhen had finished before him — though that was entirely expected.
With the quest turned in, both players received a token of mutual pledge, which could be exchanged for the couple’s bracelets at the event NPC in the main city.
[Party] [Chenxi]: You finished and didn’t say anything. What if I hadn’t finished within thirty seconds?
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: I knew you’d finish it. You didn’t say anything before you finished either.
Xia Zichen smiled slightly. That was fair — he had never for a moment considered that Canmo Wuhen might not finish his puzzle, so naturally the thought of giving him a heads-up had never crossed his mind.
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: Let’s head back to the city.
[Party] [Chenxi]: Sure.
After turning in the final quest, both players received a pair of bracelets engraved with each other’s names. Xia Zichen put his in his inventory. Canmo Wuhen, however, equipped his immediately.
[Party] [Chenxi]: The stats on this aren’t as good as what you had before.
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: They’re slightly lower, but it doesn’t affect my output. And this one is harder to come by.
That was true. Even if Canmo Wuhen swapped out part of his gear, his damage was still more than adequate — one piece of slightly lower quality wouldn’t make a meaningful difference, and if it ever really came down to it, he could always switch back.
Xia Zichen weighed it for a second, then went ahead and equipped the couple’s bracelet as well. Chenxi’s healing output was already sufficient — a small dip in one stat didn’t matter. Besides, this bracelet genuinely was something you couldn’t just get anytime. Events like this would come around again, but the exact same bracelet wouldn’t be offered twice.
Seeing that Chenxi had also equipped the bracelet, Canmo Wuhen sent a smiling emoji. Xia Zichen smiled back with one of his own.
After that, Canmo Wuhen headed back to his guild for a dungeon run. He had originally wanted Chenxi to come along, but Xia Zichen needed to sleep early tonight — there was a morning class tomorrow. Canmo Wuhen asked him to send a message when he logged off, then headed back to the guild territory to gather up.
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: I finally jumped that cliff successfully, hahahaha!!!
[Guild] [Xiao Dongxi]: Qianlan sis is rubbing it in — I’m still jumping…
[Guild] [Juhua Guniang]: At least you two still have a cliff to jump. My romantic partner straight-up quit on me =çš¿=… We’d only been together a few days, but still so frustrating…
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: What happened?
[Guild] [Juhua Guniang]: Not everyone has infinite patience. After jumping the cliff twenty-plus times, I spent forty minutes on the jigsaw and still couldn’t finish it. I genuinely cannot do puzzles… QAQ
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: Okay, I’ll admit even Shenlan stopped being gentle toward the end…
[Guild] [Fujia Hongniang]: Don’t be sad, I don’t even have a romantic partner. And let me share a consolation prize of a piece of news…
[Guild] [Juhua Guniang]: What?
[Guild] [Fujia Hongniang]: I was just sitting at the puzzle area watching people argue, and in one hour I watched seven couples break up over it, hahaha!
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: Why do I feel like you’re enjoying this?
[Guild] [Fujia Hongniang]: Hehe, sis knows me so well.
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: Oh right — did you see the top player and Chenxi while you were there?
[Guild] [Fujia Hongniang]: What?! The top player and Chenxi did this quest too?! I left the quest point ten minutes ago…
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: Yeah! Those two jumped the cliff on their first try. The envy, the jealousy, the hatred!
[Guild] [Fujia Hongniang]: AHHH, why didn’t you say so sooner — if I’d known I would have stayed!! Should I go back and see if they’re still there?!
[Guild] [Juhua Guniang]: Chenxi, Chenxi, calling Lord Chenxi!
[Guild] [Chenxi]: …Hongniang, don’t run — I already finished.
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: Done that fast?! Infuriating!
[Guild] [Xiao Dongxi]: Standing!
[Guild] [Juhua Guniang]: Standing in bronze!
[Guild] [Zili Gengsheng]: Standing +3.
…
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: You two finishing that fast — do you have any idea how many people want to put a hit out on you?!
[Guild] [Chenxi]: Come on, there aren’t…
[Guild] [Fujia Hongniang]: Putting a hit on the top player is suicide. Putting a hit on Chenxi is also suicide…
[Guild] [Wumei Qianlan]: …Okay, forget I said anything…
“You went and did the couples quest with Canmo Wuhen?” An Jing asked, having seen the guild channel.
“Yeah. Didn’t you guys do it?” He and Canmo Wuhen had decided on a whim, and Xia Zichen wasn’t entirely sure which guild members had done it and which hadn’t.
“No partner.” An Jing shrugged.
“Same-gender characters can do the quest too.” Throughout the task Xia Zichen had seen plenty of same-gender player pairs running it together, and it hadn’t struck him as particularly out of place.
“Bro wants a girl. Bro doesn’t want to do that with another guy.” An Jing gave a mild snort. “There are still two days left. I refuse to believe I can’t find a girl.”
“Hui-ge didn’t do it either?” Leaving An Jing to go find his girl, Xia Zichen turned to ask Tang Hui.
“Not interested. Too much hassle.” Tang Hui hadn’t given the quest a second thought.
“He’s definitely traumatized by what happened to Yicheng.” An Jing said with a slightly scheming grin.
Shen Yicheng had been staying at home for the past couple of days, so An Jing mentioned him without any particular concern about being overheard.
“What do you mean?” Xia Zichen asked, half paying attention.
“Yicheng and Lian Feier took an all-nighter to finish the couples quest.” An Jing shook his head. “I got tired just hearing about it.”
“How do you even know that?” He didn’t recall An Jing staying up all night playing the game recently.
“Hongniang told me. She slept too much that day and couldn’t fall asleep at night, so she left the game running all night and happened to see it.” An Jing said, looking rather pleased with himself.
Xia Zichen felt thoroughly helpless. People always said real life was full of gossip, but the in-game variety was no less abundant.
The guild was still buzzing with chatter about Chenxi and Canmo Wuhen. As the person at the center of it, Xia Zichen had no interest in getting involved, but the spectators were having a thoroughly enjoyable time speculating.
Right in the middle of everyone wondering whether Chenxi and Canmo Wuhen would get married on the very first day the marriage system launched, Shen Yicheng — who had been silent the whole time — posted a single line.
[Guild] [Wuqing Xue]: This Saturday at 8 PM, Lian Feier and I are getting married. Everyone in the guild who can log on, please come.
The guild, which had been lively with chatter just moments before, went strangely quiet. It was as if nobody knew quite what to say in response…
The arrival of this wedding had, in its own invisible way, drawn a clear and final line between Wuqing Xue and Chenxi…