Chapter 197 "Get lost, the farther the better.
"We must target the user's pain points, find our core advantage, and then drive it home!!!"
"Make the users so satisfied they can't leave us!!" Your journey continues on empire
Inside the company.
Chen Miao sat in the meeting room, feeling drowsy, as he listened to the manager kicking off the morning meeting with his own style of speaking. Perhaps because he went to bed too late last night, he felt especially tired today.
He touched the jade pendant he wore against his chest.
Felling the warmth from the jade pendant, his thoughts began to drift.
This jade pendant had been with him since childhood, left to him by his parents who had disappeared a long time ago. He hadn't seen them since and had no idea where they had gone, which left him an orphan.
...
"Sure, why not."
At eight in the evening, ready to head home, Chen Miao turned to his coworker's invitation to spend the night at the internet café, and said with a grin, "We have a day off tomorrow, so tonight we can play to our heart's content."
"It's on me."
"But, wait a minute, I need to ask my wife for leave, or she'll be anxious waiting at home."
"Hey hon, I won't be home tonight. The colleagues are going to pull an all-nighter at the internet café. Go to sleep early, don't wait up for me."
...
"..."
Inside the living room.
The coffee table was laden with all kinds of duck snacks, chips, marinated dishes, and Chen Miao's favorite iced cola. Lord Miao was curled up on the sofa, eagerly adjusting the projector, ready to start their night of indulgence as soon as Chen Miao got home.
"What movie shall we watch tonight?"
After setting up the projector, Lord Miao picked up her phone and scrolled through it, searching for movies that came highly recommended by netizens. It was then she received Chen Miao's call.
"You're not coming back?"
"Yeah."
"..."
Lord Miao bit back the words she'd been promised that morning, and after a moment, whispered, "Got it."
...
"Hey."
Inside the internet café.
A coworker looked at Chen Miao and smiled, "I've worked with you for so long, and I still don't know what your wife's name is."
"Lord Miao, I like to call her Little Miao."
Chen Miao took off his headset, wiping down the keyboard as he spoke offhandedly.
"What about her full name?"
"Full name?"
He abruptly paused, looking bewildered as he stared at the game screen on his computer. Had they been together for so long that he couldn't remember his wife's full name?
Little Miao... full name... Lord Miao...
But soon he remembered, tapping his head with his hand, his voice tinged with sadness, "She's been an orphan since she was little, with no parents. She named herself Lord Miao, so that's her full name."
...
"Morning, baby, I'm home."
In the middle of the night, Chen Miao, drunkenly stumbled through the front door of his home. After a half-night of gaming, they had gone out for drinks, marking the end of a rather enjoyable holiday. As soon as he opened the door, he saw a neatly arranged assortment of snacks on the table, along with the previously broken but now fixed projector.
He froze for a moment, sobering up a bit.
Suddenly, he remembered the promise he had made to Little Miao that morning.
A spasm twitched at the corners of Chen Miao's mouth, and he tiptoed toward his bedroom. Upon pushing the door open and seeing Lord Miao sleeping soundly, he stood silently for a long while before quietly stepping back out.
...
Just like that, since entering the fourth layer of the dream, Chen Miao forgot that he was in a dream the moment he arrived, and his subconscious constructed the world he was most familiar with.
It wasn't Fengtian City.
It was Earth, where there were no wristwatches, but mobile phones.
He had come home, within the fourth layer of the dream.
Time passed by, day by day, until three months later.
"I've had enough!!!"
In the living room, with an unbearable and angry expression, Chen Miao violently smashed the vase on the table to the ground, hysterically shouting, "Have you ever thought about me? Do you know how exhausting it is for me out there every day?"
"Every day outside, I have to put on a smiling face for everyone!"
"I can't afford to offend anyone!"n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om
"When I come home, I finally get a bit of space for myself, and you ask me for emotional value, ask to spend time with me, to play with me, saying you missed me because you haven't seen me all day."
"Yes, you stayed home and played all day, and you missed me."
"But I don't miss you at all!"
"I've been out working hard all day, and when I get home, I don't want to do anything. I just want to lie in my own room, to not laugh anymore. Can you understand that? I'm tired of smiling. When I get home, I don't want to smile anymore!"
"Can't you just stop bothering me?"
"I don't want to play this boring, garbage game at all!"
As he said this, Chen Miao, with his emotions collapsing, harshly threw the gaming console that connected to the projector in the living room onto the ground, and pointing at Lord Miao, he roared, "Get the hell out!"
"..."
Holding two game controllers in hand, wearing a strappy dress and standing pitifully in the living room, Lord Miao was frozen in place, frightened by Chen Miao's sudden outburst. Tears in her eyes were rolling, as if they were about to fall out any second.
She looked down at the controllers in her hands, which she and Chen Miao had just stickered together a few days ago.
And next to her, the gaming console that had just been smashed.
The tears finally couldn't hold back and fell to the floor.
After a while, she gently placed the controllers on the dining table, opened the door, and walked out.
"Damn it!"
Chen Miao looked toward the departing figure of Lord Miao, still somewhat unresolved in his anger, he cursed, "You're a damn adult, not a child. You need someone with you every day, do you think this is play-acting?!"
"Get lost, the farther the better."
...
At this moment.
In Zhenba City.
Hungry Monkey, Yuan Buping, and Zhou Shen were sitting in a barely open barbecue stall. The other members of the Tomb Guardian were maintaining order in the surrounding area to prevent the progress of 'Sea of Human Suffering' Phase Two from rising continually.
The reason why the barbecue stall was barely open was that if they hadn't been pointing guns at the owner's head, the owner probably wouldn't have wanted to do business in such times.
Only they had the leisure to sit down and eat barbecue now.
"Can Miao come out?"
Zhou Shen, with no appetite for the food in front of him, was only concerned with one issue—whether Miao could come out. They had already learned about Miao's plan and knew that if nothing went wrong, Lord Miao shouldn't turn into a Resentful Spirit.
The world would not be destroyed.
But if Miao couldn't wake up, he would lose his biggest backer, meaning he wouldn't just be unable to advance any further, but he would likely be stripped of his current position as well.
No matter how great Miao's achievements were, they would mean nothing if he was no longer there.
"He'll definitely come out,"
Hungry Monkey, on the other hand, casually picked up a skewer of meat and stuffed it in his mouth, grinning nonchalantly, "If this had been the previous mission, I would have been in despair, but this one, piece of cake."
"Just the fourth layer of dreams, right?"
"Is that enough to trap Miao?"