"Fox, we got Dark Wing's particulars."
"Human Archer, Level 14, decent-ish equipment. He's probably just a player who's kinda lucky."
"Kinda lucky? He led the party to defeat the Fire Lord, you think that was just luck too?"
"So what are you saying? That he's a powerhouse?"
"He's definitely no ordinary player. I suspect the server's first Hall of Fame achievement was his doing too."
"You mean he's the one who defeated the Wild Boar King."
"Yeah. Sure, he didn't reveal his name, but did you notice? The system had censored off two words."
"Dark Wing!"
"Inaction, you continue gathering info about him. Doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong, we have to build good ties with this guy first."
"Got it."
Li Yi called a cab and headed toward Chu Nan's mansion.
He was not playing the game today because Chu Nan was having a birthday party. As one of the people who had been invited, of course he had to go.
Sitting in the cab, Li Yi could not help but sigh to himself. The difference between this life and the past was huge.
In the past life, it seemed as though he had always been alone. Aside from the graduation gatherings, he could not remember ever contacting any of his classmates.
The cab stopped and Li Yi got off, walking into the mansion before him.
This was his first time coming to Chu Nan's house.
There were many people in the magnificent living room, every single one of them dressed luxuriously in a show of their status.
"Li Yi, over here!"
Yao Li was the first to spot him, waving at him.
The Chu family had allocated a living room especially to receive Chu Nan's classmates.
Quite a few classmates had come, both boys and girls. There were at least a hundred or more people, sitting in the room and making quite the ruckus.
"You got into your father's company? That sure is fast, I haven't even found a job yet."
"I'm so goddamn jealous, it really does matter what family you reincarnate into. When can you help your bros out?"
"D'you know what Lili's doing? She opened her own shop selling perfumes and colognes and the like, she's her own boss now."
"Really? I couldn't tell when we were in school, and I never saw her using perfume…"
Although they had just only graduated, now that all these classmates had gathered together, the topic of conversation that they kept coming back to had gone from idle chatter to talk about their life goals.
This person found a good job, that person became a boss, that other guy struck it rich. All of these achievements had become a way for them to compete and compare with each other.
It really was true. Once someone stepped into society, that innocence of old cannot be retrieved anymore.
Li Yi sat in a corner and started chatting idly with Yao Li.
Both of them played King of Pantheon, so their topic of conversation naturally revolved around the game.
"Yo, isn't this the Great Pro Gamer, our dear classmate Li Yi? I hear you struck it rich recently playing your games, huh? How many thousands have you earned?"
Just when the conversation was getting good between them, Hu Dezhi sat down beside them pompously.
Li Yi's face darkened.
Hu Dezhi was one of his former classmates. Their relationship had already been rocky when they were in school together, and Hu Dezhi liked to gather people and form gangs, acting like a gangster boss. He could manipulate and control everyone in the class except for Li Yi who never once gave him face.
The two of them fought once before. Hu Dezhi had brought two helpers but Li Yi took them all down alone, and this was a serious blow to Hu Dezhi's reputation around the school. In order to restore his dignity, he brought in some young guys involved in the underworld, intending to teach Li Yi a lesson. What he had not expected was that those young hooligans were all Chen Yang's lackeys, so not only did they not touch Li Yi, they even went back and ratted him out to 'Brother Yang'.
From then on, Hu Dezhi's days of tragedy began. Every so often, Chen Yang would 'invite' him out for a talk, and each time, Hu Dezhi would come back from the talk with a black nose and a swollen face. Finally, the guy ran out of options, so he treated Li Yi to a meal and apologized. Only then was the matter put to rest.
After that, the two of them barely had any interactions at all. Both of them stayed resolutely out of each other's business, but in a way that gave no ground to the other.
So what was Hu Dezhi doing by jumping out of the woodwork now?
"I've been doing okay." Li Yi's tone was extremely calm.
"Hahahaha, word on the grapevine is that the Great Gamer Li has earned quite a bit in the game. C'mon, why don't you tell us, your old classmates, how much have you earned exactly?"
Hu Dezhi crossed his legs conceitedly and took out a soft pack of Chunghwa cigarettes 1 , offering Li Yi one.
"Have you ever smoked one of these? Wanna try one?"
"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but if you want to smoke, please go outside." One of the Chu family's servants ran over to them and told Hu Dezhi to smoke outside.
"I won't smoke for now."
Hu Dezhi coughed a few times awkwardly, and the classmates that had stood behind him, watching the show as it unfolded, roared with laughter.
A glance at Hu Dezhi's stance and Li Yi knew that this guy had come here specifically to show off to him.
Everyone had graduated now, and they were no longer students. That meant that the methods that worked in school no longer worked now that they had stepped into society.
"I signed a few deals with my old man recently, and I only earned over 9000 bucks this half month. Oh dear, it's so tiring, I almost wanna quit."
Hu Dezhi's voice was very loud, so once he yelled like this, he instantly got everyone's attention.
Everyone's gazes looked their way, and the large hall fell quiet for a moment.
Hu Dezhi was even cockier now.
"It's just a small-time business, so I hope everyone will help support me and lend a hand in case of anything."
Hu Dezhi spoke as he gave each person a business card. Li Yi received one too, and it said, Dezhi Apparel Store, CEO: Hu Dezhi.
"Great Gamer Li, why don't you tell all our friends how much you earned with your gaming? Haha."
Looking around him, Li Yi saw that many people had on expressions of condescension. They clearly all wanted to see him become the butt of the joke.
Li Yi sighed softly. Why had he not noticed that these people were so opportunistic when they were studying together?
"Not much, I just earn a few hundreds of thousands in half a month."
Li Yi took out his LED card (a type of bank card that displayed numbers) and waved it at Hu Dezhi.
A string of numbers was displayed clearly on the card—156322.
"Hehe, is that for real?" Hu Dezhi's smile was a little forced.
"Is Li Yi here?"
Just then, Chu Nan walked into the room. When he saw Li Yi, he handed him an LED card.
"This is the first kill prize my brother gave you, 100 thousand in total. This is a universal card, you can use it wherever. You guys chat first, I'll go greet some guests. Be back in a jiff."
The living room was deathly silent.
Most of these classmates of Li Yi's, with the exception of Chu Nan whose family was slightly more well-to-do, came from middle-income families. To them, a job where you could earn more than ten thousand a month was already highly impressive.
Hu Dezhi's expression was extremely tortured. He had intended to make fun of Li Yi, but he had never expected to find that his earnings were not even one tenth of what Li Yi earned…
"No matter what we do, it's all in search of a better life. A bit of comparing here and there is fine, but what do you get from looking down on others and tooting your own horn? I'm just a gamer, plain and simple. I don't steal or rob, I just enjoy what I'm doing as I do it. It's fine for you to look down on me because I don't need your respect. Me, I just wanna be the best me I can be."
Li Yi took out a traditionally-styled crescent-shaped dagger and placed it together with the LED card worth ten thousand on the table.
"This is my present for Li Yi. Pardon me, everyone, I have something else to do, so I'll be going back to my game."
Li Yi left without a care.
A classmate with an eye for these things picked up the dagger and looked at it carefully before he cried out in surprise, "An authentic late-Qing Mongolian dagger with an official price tag of 28 thousand bucks."
Chunghwa is a premium Chinese brand of cigarettes known as the 'national smoke', and the soft pack is even more expensive and by extension, exclusive than the hard pack