Good and Evil Chapter 123: The Missing Fool in Love

Love is a great thing, but if you deceive someone in the name of love, it often ends by hurting both that person and yourself.

Zhou Hongwen’s father was named Zhou Jianjun. He was a factory worker, forty-five years old that year. He had worked at the factory all his life and was an extremely honest, down-to-earth man. Outside of going to and from work, he usually stayed at home. His relationships with the neighbors could not be called particularly close, but neither were they poor; they were simply ordinary.

Zhou Hongwen’s mother was named Chen Shulan. She worked as a waitress at a hotel and was forty-two years old. In temperament, she was much like her husband. Both of them were honest and unassuming people.

Zhou Jianjun and Chen Shulan were plain, hardworking people through and through. They were not natives of S City, but migrant workers who had come from elsewhere. It was only seven or eight years earlier that they had bought a home in S City and settled there. Zhou Hongwen was their only child and their sole hope. They had always cherished him deeply.

Although Zhou Hongwen was an only child, his parents were relatively open-minded in their approach to raising him. They cared greatly about his life and studies, yet they also respected his privacy.

In short, they loved him without spoiling him, and cared for him without trying to control him.

Although neither Zhou Jianjun nor Chen Shulan was highly educated, their way of raising Zhou Hongwen was something many parents could not manage. It was certainly worthy of imitation.

Zhou Hongwen had not been born into a wealthy family, but he had been sensible from a young age. When he was little, he often accompanied his mother to the hotel to help out. Although he had been very young, he had been an exceptionally adorable child, especially with those bright, clear eyes as black and round as grapes. Many of Chen Shulan’s colleagues at the hotel liked him very much, including her supervisor.

From elementary school through high school, Zhou Hongwen’s grades had never been outstanding, but he had always ranked around the top twenty in his class. His performance was steady, and he was modest and kind. He had never quarreled with any of his classmates. He was not particularly conspicuous among them, but whenever people mentioned him, they always remembered who he was. All of his teachers had held a favorable opinion of him.

The reason Zhou Hongwen’s parents knew what game their son had been playing, as well as what had happened in the game, was that they had found his former high-school classmates and roommates, Wang Zi’an and Yang Yang. The two young men had told them everything they knew.

According to Wang Zi’an and Yang Yang, Zhou Hongwen had started playing online games mainly because of their influence. Zhou Hongwen, Wang Zi’an, and Yang Yang had been roommates, classmates, and close friends.

Wang Zi’an’s family had not been native to S City either. They were outsiders, but unlike Zhou Hongwen’s family, they had never settled there or transferred their household registration. Wang Zi’an’s parents were both construction workers. Since his grandparents had died relatively young, his parents had taken him with them wherever they went for work, enrolling him in school wherever they happened to be.

As a result, Wang Zi’an’s grades were poor, and he ranked near the bottom of his class. He was not quite last, but he was not far from it.

Yang Yang, on the other hand, was a native of S City. His family was fairly wealthy, making him something of a second-generation heir. His grades were not very good either. It was not that every rich child failed to apply himself, but wealthy children were exposed to more things, and exposed to them earlier, than ordinary children. Yang Yang was no exception. His grades placed him somewhere in the middle of the class—not good enough to praise, but not bad enough to criticize. He was simply mediocre.

The first of them to encounter the online game Dungeon Fighter Online was Yang Yang. He had started playing as soon as the game launched. Unlike other games, DFO did not necessarily require players to spend money. It was a character-development game with many different ways to play. Players could level up and clear dungeons, enter the arena to fight other players, or simply leave their characters idle while chatting.

Of course, the way wealthy people played was different from the way ordinary people did. Rich players wanted to reach the level cap before everyone else and obtain powerful equipment. The only way to do that was to spend money. After all, every game was created to make a profit, and DFO was no exception.

Because Yang Yang’s family was wealthy, he never lacked pocket money. Not long after he began playing, he had already spent several thousand yuan on the game—a rare thing among students.

Wang Zi’an was the second to start playing. His grades had been poor to begin with, and he enjoyed going online. After following his parents to S City and meeting Yang Yang and Zhou Hongwen, he began playing the game under Yang Yang’s guidance.

Although Wang Zi’an loved to have fun, he knew how hard his parents worked. From the day he began playing until then, he had never spent a single cent on the game. Even so, his character’s level and equipment were quite impressive. That was mainly because he devoted so much time to playing.

Zhou Hongwen had also started going online and playing games under the influence of Yang Yang and Wang Zi’an. Although his grades were fairly good, he was a complete novice when it came to games. At first, Yang Yang and Wang Zi’an had been willing to take him along, but as time went by, Zhou Hongwen’s skills remained so poor that they gradually stopped wanting to play with him.

At the time, they were all seventeen or eighteen, an age when they naturally wanted nothing more than to have fun. Besides DFO, Yang Yang played many other games, including Jade Dynasty and World of Warcraft. Wang Zi’an, meanwhile, was the sort of player who practically lived in front of his computer and had countless daily tasks to complete. After introducing Zhou Hongwen to the game, neither of them paid much attention to him anymore.

It was only after the story of Zhou Hongwen spending day after day in the starting village, helping people clear dungeons in exchange for strawberries, gradually spread throughout the entire server that they learned he had met a girl named Wu Mengmeng in the game.

At first, Yang Yang and Wang Zi’an had both tried to persuade him. They told him that a game was only a game, and that the Internet was ultimately an illusion. He had never even met the other person in real life, so how could he know whether she was a man or a woman? Perhaps the person chatting with him looked like a girl, while the real Wu Mengmeng was nothing more than an oily, middle-aged man with hairy feet.

Zhou Hongwen was usually very intelligent when it came to his studies, but on this matter he stubbornly insisted that Wu Mengmeng really was a girl. They had once spoken to each other over video chat on QQ, and he had heard her voice. Wu Mengmeng’s voice was beautiful, with a childish, doll-like quality that made people instinctively want to protect her.

After Yang Yang and Wang Zi’an had tried to reason with him several times and seen that he remained determined, they stopped saying anything. Later, when the player dispute broke out in the game, they could not stand by while their friend was mistreated. As soon as the incident occurred, they rushed to the starting village to help Zhou Hongwen hurl abuse at the other players.

Everyone at the Internet café near their school knew about the incident. Most of the people using the café that day were students from their school. After what happened to Zhou Hongwen, nearly half the café became involved, joining him in verbally attacking those high-level players.

When it was over, Zhou Hongwen invited everyone at the Internet café to spend an hour online at his expense as a gesture of thanks. The fee was not expensive—just a little over one yuan per person for an hour—but there had been at least fifty or sixty people in the café. In an instant, nearly a hundred yuan was gone, which was a considerable expense for a student like him.

After that incident, Zhou Hongwen seemed somewhat depressed and spoke far less than usual. Even so, he continued logging in every day to help people clear dungeons in exchange for strawberries. He was still farming strawberries on the eve of the college entrance examination.

Zhou Hongwen, however, was good at keeping his studies and gaming separate. Although he enjoyed playing, he was not addicted to the Internet like Wang Zi’an.

After the college entrance examination, Zhou Hongwen was admitted to S University. Wang Ziwen failed to get into college and, after failing the examination, followed his parents to work at a construction site. Yang Yang was admitted to a university, but not to S University; he only got into an ordinary second-tier school.

From then on, the three of them went their separate ways.

The last time they saw one another was before the start of the school year, at the end of August. They had contacted each other through QQ and arranged to have a meal together.

In the past, Yang Yang had always paid whenever they ate together, since his financial circumstances were better than those of Zhou Hongwen and Wang Zi’an. This time, Wang Zi’an, who had already begun working, was supposed to settle the bill. In the end, however, Zhou Hongwen paid.

During the meal, Yang Yang and Wang Zi’an asked Zhou Hongwen how his strawberry collection was going. Zhou Hongwen told them that he needed only a few dozen more strawberries. Hearing this, the two teased him for a while, but it was nothing more than friendly banter. Neither of them took it seriously.

After that, they never saw Zhou Hongwen again.

It was only when Zhou Hongwen’s parents reported him missing and the police contacted them for information that they learned he had disappeared. At first, they could not believe it. But when they saw the police officers standing before them, they had no choice but to accept the truth. In the end, they told the police everything they knew.

When Zhou Jianjun and Chen Shulan later found Xu Lang’s detective agency, Yang Yang and Wang Zi’an also provided them with a useful clue. On the day before Zhou Hongwen left S University, he had left them a message on QQ.

“Perhaps everything you once said was right. I was too naive, too willing to believe in the Internet. I used to think love was supposed to be beautiful, sweet, and happy. But now I understand that love can sometimes be bitter.

“If love could be given a score, with one hundred as the maximum, then my love for Mengmeng would be ninety-nine points. Perhaps you’ll ask, shouldn’t loving someone mean loving them one hundred percent? At first, I thought so too. But in the end, I realized that you cannot give someone one hundred percent of yourself. I love Mengmeng ninety-nine percent, and I am leaving one percent to love myself. That is the last bit of dignity I have left.

“Thank you for introducing me to DFO and giving me the chance to meet Mengmeng. She was my first love. Although this love may appear bitter, the ending is still a good one. Tomorrow, I will meet her. Perhaps the two of us will finally have an answer.”

This was the last clue Zhou Hongwen left behind before disappearing.

When Yang Yang and Wang Zi’an received the message, they had initially been happy for him. Although they did not really believe in online relationships—especially romances that began inside a game—they had been sincerely happy to see that Zhou Hongwen’s persistence had finally moved the girl named Wu Mengmeng.

But afterward, when Zhou Hongwen’s parents came to them and told them he was missing, they began to feel that things might not be as beautiful as they had imagined.

After hearing what Yang Yang and Wang Zi’an had to say, everyone—the two young men, the police, and Zhou Hongwen’s parents—believed that his sudden disappearance must have something to do with the girl named Wu Mengmeng.

But the Internet was an illusion to begin with. Hundreds of thousands of people surfed the web and played games every day. People of every kind could be found there. With only this one clue, the police had no way to continue their investigation.

Thus, after helping Zhou Jianjun and Chen Shulan search for a while without finding anything, the police temporarily gave up and classified Zhou Hongwen as a missing person. With no other options, his parents finally sought out Xu Lang’s detective agency.

After reading through the information, Xu Lang fell silent for a moment.

When Xu Lang had been a police officer, he had been busy every day—either at a crime scene or on his way to one. How could he have had time to play games? Now that he was no longer a policeman and had opened a detective agency, he appeared to have plenty of free time, but he had still never played an online game. As a result, he was somewhat bewildered when he first encountered DFO.

“How much do you know about this game, Dungeon Fighter Online?” Xu Lang asked Jin Enpei.

Jin Enpei pursed her lips. “Games like this are mostly popular with boys. Girls prefer QQ Dance. Now that is fun.”

Xu Lang had never played QQ Dance either, though he had seen it before. He had once watched Jin Enpei playing it on the computer, her fingers striking the keyboard in a rapid clatter. The sight had made his teeth ache.

It was not that he felt sorry for Jin Enpei’s fingers. He felt sorry for the keyboard.

Since Jin Enpei had never played DFO and they had now received a case involving the game, Xu Lang said, “Then download it. We’ll play it together. Since the incident began with a game, we’ll look for clues inside the game.”

Jin Enpei had no objections to the proposal.

The two of them left the office and downloaded Dungeon Fighter Online onto an unused computer at the agency.

After more than an hour of downloading and installation, the game was finally ready to launch. DFO was a game operated by Tencent, and players logged in and registered through QQ. Xu Lang had originally intended to have Jin Enpei use her own QQ account, but she refused no matter what he said. With no alternative, Xu Lang registered the game using his own account.

Once the registration was complete, he logged in. Listening to the game’s sound effects and looking at its painfully crude graphics, Xu Lang could not help complaining.

“Damn, people actually play this game?”

Although he grumbled, his hands did not stop moving. Following the instructions, he created a character—a swordsman of the Ghostblade class.

When Jin Enpei saw Xu Lang choosing a name for his character, she nearly burst out laughing. His character ID was absurdly funny.

“Social Brother Lang.”

After creating the character, Xu Lang sat down before the computer and clumsily moved it through a dungeon, fighting monsters. Before he had even cleared a single dungeon, he began cursing.

“Damn it, why is this so difficult?”

“Pfft.”

Hearing him complain, Jin Enpei finally lost control and laughed.

Xu Lang turned toward her with a dark expression. “What are you laughing at? If you think you can do better, come try.”

“Fine. I will.”

Xu Lang had only said it because he felt embarrassed after hearing her laugh. He had not expected her to take him seriously. When she actually did, he stood up and gave her the seat.

Jin Enpei sat down and began operating the character with practiced ease. She swept through the dungeon like an invincible warrior, dominating the battlefield and displaying astonishing skill. Before long, she had cleared the dungeon, leaving Xu Lang standing beside her in stunned silence.

Xu Lang could not help muttering, “Could it really be that I’m getting old and can’t keep up with the times anymore?”

He was standing behind Jin Enpei. Although he had spoken quietly, she heard him clearly.

This time, Jin Enpei was clever enough not to laugh aloud. But the corners of her mouth lifted, and her eyes curved into crescents. It was obvious that she wanted to laugh; she had merely refrained so that Xu Lang would not lose face, unlike before.

Xu Lang could not see her expression clearly from behind, but he could sense that she was mocking him inwardly. There was nothing he could do about it. He could only pretend not to notice.

After all, he truly was not cut out for playing games.

After Jin Enpei cleared several more dungeons, she used up all her stamina points. Once she was finished, she turned to Xu Lang and asked, “Brother Lang, what do we do now?”

Xu Lang folded his arms, rubbed his chin, and studied the computer screen. After watching it for a while, he asked, “Can we broadcast messages in the game?”

Jin Enpei glanced at the screen. “Yes. Look, someone is broadcasting a message right now.”

As she spoke, she pointed toward the right side of the screen.

A large dialogue box occupied that side of the game window. Many players were speaking inside it, their words displayed in bright yellow and impossible to miss.

Xu Lang bent down and watched for a moment before frowning.