Chapter 30: Retiring from the Industry

Yu Xun'ge felt tears welling up—mostly from holding back a yawn. She was truly exhausted. "Let's go, let's head home. I found someone I suspect is a player, though I haven't made contact yet. You might actually know them."

On the way, she shared the information she had "scouted": "It’s not the kind of thing you can ask about openly; everyone is keeping their secrets. The person I saw this time, we didn't exactly meet face-to-face; we were both on our guard. Later, I tried asking around from a different angle about whether anything strange had been happening, and that’s when I heard something."

"Do you know a gaming streamer named 'Snow Knows Winter'? Has his gaming skill suddenly become incredibly sharp lately?"

Yu Xunhuan’s eyes lit up. "Yes, he's a good friend of mine. We've known each other for a long time. Not long ago, our gaming group was talking about him, saying it’s like he suddenly had an epiphany."

Yu Xun'ge replied, "Hmm. When I was chatting with that other player later, they mentioned Ye Dong too. They suspect he has a skill related to sound. I watched his stream replays; every time he shouts things like 'Stand up!', 'Hang in there!', or 'I believe in you!', his team suddenly becomes incredibly powerful."

Yu Xunhuan was bewildered: "What on earth?"

Yu Xun'ge explained, "I told you about Divine Talents, right? They are incredibly bizarre. I can manipulate someone's luck for a short time, so it’s not impossible for another player to use sound to influence others."

On the way home, Yu Xun'ge left the matter of Ye Dong to Yu Xunhuan and stopped worrying about it. Yu Xunhuan was still an ordinary person, and now he was the one interacting with Ye Dong instead of her. Whether he could maintain his friendship with Ye Dong or evolve it into a deeper brotherhood was entirely up to his own abilities.

Yu Xun'ge didn't have Yu Xunhuan take her back to her small villa. She disliked having outsiders step foot into her territory. She planned to sell the villa in a while and buy a small apartment where a dungeon entrance would appear. After that, whether she traded resources with the authorities or kept them for herself to grind dungeons, it would be a good choice.

After having a meal at the Yu family home, she declined Yu Xunhuan’s offer to drive her back and returned home on her own. Then, she began her secluded study.

It’s just to say that if you weren't an academic genius before, it’s only because you hadn't found the right major.

For the next period, Yu Xun'ge focused earnestly—almost religiously—on reviewing every single beginner and intermediate alchemy recipe. Each recipe came with a video on how to brew the medicine, and she tried hard to memorize every move made by that undead mentor. When she finished all 400 beginner and intermediate recipes and started reviewing them for the second time, she discovered that the undead female mentor in the videos would occasionally provide a sentence or two of explanation.

Yu Xun'ge thought: "Teacher, you are aiding the enemy!"

Perhaps to a true scholar, humans from Blue Star were no different from any other race besides the undead. Just as goblins didn't care about war or glory, only money and business, once they reached the legendary level in their professional skills, they only saw the inheritance of the craft.

She didn't overthink it; instead, she cherished every bit of it.

Occasionally, when she hit a dead end, she would cook a meal for the stray cats outside. "Meow Meow Hostel" lived up to its name; cats came and went, but none stayed for long. No cat ever lingered for more than three days. It wasn't that there weren't resident wild cats in the villa area, but they only came for meals occasionally and never moved in.

Although Yu Xun'ge loved cats, she had no intention of keeping one. She was too busy and had to go out to stir up trouble from time to time; where would she find the time to care for a pet that required constant attention?

This kind of relationship was perfect. She only needed to make a little extra meat with less salt and seasoning every day when she practiced her cooking skills and leave it outside. She could pet and cuddle different cats without having any responsibility.

An open-ended cat-keeping relationship.

The food she made for the cats, while using the most ordinary ingredients from the real world, still provided buffs after consumption. Some would increase strength for a short time, others would boost movement speed, and they all tasted excellent. Both the cats and Yu Xun'ge loved them.

Although the skills learned from the other world also taught you by playing videos in your mind, it was different from following along while watching. The former was projected directly into one's mind, saving reaction time and constantly reinforcing memory.

In less than half a year, Yu Xun'ge transformed from someone who wasn't skilled in cooking into a master chef who had mastered hundreds of recipes.

Once you understand one thing, you understand them all. Now, even if she didn't follow a recipe and just threw ingredients together, the taste was still decent—it just lacked the buff effects.

She hadn't ordered takeout in a long time because what she made herself was much better than anything bought outside. Furthermore, several of her dishes had the effect of "no matter what you do, you will become more focused" after eating. Even if the effect only lasted a few minutes, she found that her learning efficiency during those minutes was much higher. She could easily spot details in the alchemy videos that she had previously overlooked.

Yu Xun'ge simply spent half a day baking over a thousand small cookies that increased focus, eating them while she studied.

In August, Yu Xun'ge took the time to return to her agency to officially terminate her contract and then issued a formal statement of retirement from the entertainment industry.

It was better for her to stay out of the public eye given her current situation. The anomaly she mentioned to Yu Xunhuan about Ye Dong wasn't a lie; look at how Yu Xunhuan’s gaming group was discussing Ye Dong’s changes.

Such changes might be dismissed as gossip by ordinary people, but for players, they could quickly associate them with the game. She suspected that in her previous life, Ye Dong suddenly moving to S City to find Yu Xunhuan might have been because his secret was discovered, and he had come to find a friend he still trusted to group up with.

The news of Yu Xun'ge’s retirement created a stir online for a few days. People dug up the fact that someone had died at her agency not long ago and that her manager had been involved, with some speculating if she had been harmed.

Yu Xun'ge answered what she could. Not caring about vanity was one thing, but that didn't mean she was willing to carry some bad reputation for no reason or be subjected to sleazy rumors.

"I am fine, I have not been harmed. I’m just tired, I want to take a break for a while and live the life I truly want."

"I haven't become suddenly rich, nor have I married into a wealthy family. I just calculated my savings, and it’s enough for me to live on."

"Yes, the person selling bags in the picture is me. I never loved those things; it was just necessary for my career as a star. Now that I’ve retired, I can naturally sell off the things I don't need."

"If I were truly so short of money that I couldn't survive, I wouldn't have retired. Thank you all for your concern."

"The company is fine, we parted on good terms."

"There is no 'rich boyfriend.' I don't plan to date or marry. I have no interest in spending someone else's money; my money is only enough for me to spend on myself."

Yu Xun'ge spoke with righteous indignation, as if she hadn't been the one who went to the Su family residence to snatch their gold just a short while ago.