"I don't think it's appropriate to use the word 'stupid.'" Aske said lightly, "You just have no experience in this area. ”

"Then why do you have the experience?" Nora moved closer to him, slowly clasped her legs in her hands, pressed her cheeks to her knees, and looked at him with a faint gaze.

"Asker, you've never said anything about yourself."

"Do you want to hear it?" Aske glanced at her.

"Hmm." Nora hummed softly in a nasal voice.

"I'm not actually a native of Constantinople." Asker looked into the distance, "I'm from a plane far away. You can understand that it is a bit similar to the Land of the Dragon, except that it is very far away and almost impossible to reach by means of transportation - it is another world. ”

"Oh." Nora laughed, "I've often seen such a plot in novels where the protagonist travels to another world for no reason, and then starts to get mixed up, and seems to be a bit like you......"

She stopped suddenly, for Asker had no smile on his face, just a calm look at her.

"Where did I go?" Asker was silent for a moment, then continued, "Well, my family. My father died when I was very young, and I was raised by my mother alone. ”

"I'm sorry." Nora said, "I don't know ......."

"Don't be sorry, it's none of your business." Asker shook his head, "My father...... He lived a reclusive life completely out of touch with society, making a living by drawing and submitting to comic websites. ”

"My mother was a traditional rural woman, and the two of them seemed to know each other on a blind date. I'm still not sure if there was love between them. ”

"Speaking of feelings, my father really has feelings for the second dimension, which is a strange and strong emotion that I still can't understand."

"He's obsessed with a virtual singer in a music game, and I remember it as Orange."

"My father often pointed to the orange on the screen and said that this was his real wife."

Every time he said this, his mother would smile helplessly and dotingly, presumably taking care of his father as if he were an ungrown child.

Asker picked up a rock and threw it into the river in front of him, causing a ripple: "Later, when I was six years old, the music game was shut down. ”

"My father couldn't accept the disappearance of Tachibana, and he tried to redraw Tachibana on paper, but Tachibana is a 3D model, not a paper man."

So he began to learn to do MMD again, begging netizens everywhere to give character models. But the copyright of Tachibana is still in the hands of the game company, and if it is published on the Internet, it will be subject to a lawyer's letter, so no one has responded to his request......"

"Then he couldn't stand this anymore and committed suicide."

"You mean, your father, because of a fictional animated character, committed suicide?" Nora said in surprise.

"yes, that's speechless, isn't it?" Asker picked up another stone and weighed it in his hand, "This is just the story of a cowardly man who does not want to take on family responsibilities, immerses himself in his own false world, and finally chooses to end his life because of the collapse of the world." ”

"He walked freely, but he never thought about the impact it would have on me and my mother."

"Since then, things have taken a turn for the worse in our family. This dishonorable suicide caused a lot of mental pressure on us around the neighborhood, so my mother chose to move. ”

"Because of the death of people inside, our original house could not be sold and no one was willing to rent it. Later, my mother took me to rent a house on the other side of the city. ”

"She gave so much to raise me. In the most tense financial situation, she even worked three jobs a day, went out at 6 o'clock in the morning every day, and did not come back until 2 o'clock in the evening. ”

Asker let out a long breath and said, "She's really, done all the duty of a mother." ”

Nora didn't speak, but her eyes were a little red, and she lowered her gaze.

"So I can't be like the protagonist in those novels, after crossing over, I will completely stay in the plane over there, and make a comfortable cut with the family members of the original world, do you understand?" Asker looked at the mountains across the river and said seriously, "If you do that, what's the difference between me and my father?" ”

"A mother who worked hard to raise her son to adulthood, and then her son never came back, leaving her alone in the world without relatives...... This shouldn't be the end she deserves. ”

"I have to go back." "Back to that world," he said categorically. ”

"Asker." Nola's voice trembled, "What do you mean......"

"To the south, 100 kilometres from here, there's a coastal city called Kavala." Aske said lightly, "There's a fortune teller from the Land of Dragons, who you can understand as a prophet. He's the one who can break the fourth wall, and maybe he'll know how I can get back to where I was. ”

"Nola, we're not from the same world." He let out a long sigh at the end and said earnestly.

"Then if I go to your plane too......" Nora blurted out excitedly, her voice abruptly ending in her throat.

She thought of her father and mother, and her brother and sister. Just as Asker couldn't give up her mother in that world, how could she give up her family in this world?

"What if...... I mean if. Nora was silent for a long time before asking, with one last hope, "What if that prophet doesn't know how to get you back?" Or maybe he tells you there's no way back? ”

"I'll try to find it for a while longer." Asker was silent for a long time, and replied, "Five years." If I haven't found a way back within 5 years, then I will settle down in this world for the time being, and consider ...... Something you're thinking about right now. ”

Nora looked at him in amazement.

After a while, she showed a somewhat sad expression and laughed sadly:

"You're really good, Asker. Before I even said it, you already guessed it......"

She nervously wrenched the corners of her clothes with her hands, and her voice trembled and cried: "So you want me to wait for you for five years, right......?"

"It's not." Asker said, "I didn't ask you to wait for me. I'm just telling you what I plan for the future so that it doesn't affect your own choices. ”

"Five years, that's enough to change everything beyond recognition."

"yes, I understand." Nora lowered her head and said, "It's good to talk about it, I'm glad you can tell me this." ”

Her slender shoulders trembled, as if suppressing the urge to cry: "I actually...... Surprised you, right? I don't know why, but I fell in love with you......"

"Maybe it was on Hearthfire Island that time, I couldn't help but be a little tempted to see you draw your sword and rush at so many enemies by yourself...... When I was a child, I loved to read the novels of knights and princesses, and I once dreamed that a knight would be able to draw his sword and rush to the enemy without hesitation for me......

Asker looked at her quietly.

Nora said and talked, and gradually became unable to speak, and finally couldn't help but choke up and asked, "Asker, we can still be friends next, right?" ”

"Of course." Asker replied earnestly, "We've always been friends. ”

"yes, okay." Nora slowly stood up, patted the hem of her skirt in the moonlight, bit her lower lip and said, "I'm going back." That...... Good bye. ”

She turned away and left silently alone. Aske looked at her back, and his heart was heavy.

To be honest, rejecting such a girl's confession is naturally embarrassing for him.

It's just that from a moral point of view, this way of dealing with her is the least respectful of her.

Hey? Asker touched the "Ridiculous Dream" in his back pocket, and some kind of ridiculous thought immediately rose in his heart:

Isn't the entrance to Hearthfire Island on my side? Where is she going?

Nora walked down the river in despair, kicking the stones of the roadside into the water.

Ahead, Eleanor was crouching by the river in the night, boredly poking the fish in the river with her spear.

"How's it going, Nola?" Seeing Nora coming over, Eleanor stood up and said hello, only to notice the sad expression on her face that could barely be dissolved, "Rejected?" ”

Nora shook her head.

"Then he agreed?" Eleanor looked at her puzzled, "No, how the hell did he respond?" ”

"Can you turn around?" Nora pleaded faintly.

"Oh." Eleanor turned around, and Nora hugged her from behind. After a long time, a whimpering cry was heard.

"Ellie...... "What am I going to do?" her uncontrollable cry began to sound as it flowed slowly down the river into the distance. ”

"What the hell am I going to do......"

………………

Kavala, located on the northern shore of the Aegean Sea, was originally a coastal city in the Kingdom of Ancient Macedonia.

By the time of the Quaternary Period, the Macedonians, Cyres and Thracians were almost all mixed, and the outside world collectively referred to them as the Cyreus nation, so Kavala became a city-state of Cyris.

There were about a hundred similar city-states in the empire west of Constantinople.

It stands to reason that this kind of city does not attract much attention among players, but in fact Kavala is much more famous than other city-states, and even on a par with Constantinople.

Because there is an NPC from the Land of Dragons.

For many Western fantasy fundamentalist players, in a medieval fantasy world of swords and sorcery, there is a similar "Zhang Daniu" and "Nicholas. Chinese names such as "Zhao Si" are really a very atmospheric thing.

Although the design team of "Iron and Fire" always likes to say "I am your father", they can't do this kind of thing that ruins the style of the product.

However, there will always be some powerless changes in the general environment. In the year when "Iron and Fire" officially opened the open beta, due to the further decline in the world economic environment, the top finally set its sights on driving economic growth to the game industry.

At that time, almost all the well-selling games in China were made by foreign countries, and the large domestic factories distributed them as agents, while the small factories directly copied and plagiarized, and made an inferior version of the garbage page to make money.

In response to this phenomenon of admiring foreign countries, there is a policy to support domestic games, proposing to "carry forward China's traditional culture and adhere to the core of independent creation".

Then I didn't know what was going on when I implemented it below, and finally came up with a one-size-fits-all policy, announcing that "all games must have a point that can represent the traditional culture of our country".

If you don't have this point, I think that if you don't have an independent creative core, I won't give you a version number, and your game can't be released without a version number.

For those classical Xianxia games such as "Shushan Love" and "Flood Sword Immortal", it has no impact at all.

However, for a Western-style game of sword and sorcery like "Iron and Fire", it is nothing less than a huge shackle. How can Western-style games promote traditional Chinese culture?

There is no way, I can only make a setting of the country of dragons, and then get an NPC to put in Kavala, this NPC will also recite the "Tao Te Ching", so that it can be regarded as promoting the traditional culture of our country.

As a result, the comrades who came down from above to review were as wise as torches, saying that you don't bully me because I don't understand the game.

The player traffic in the open beta phase is basically in Constantinople, what does it mean for you to make a Chinese NPC in a corner of the countryside? Get me Constantinople.

The design team explained that Constantinople was going to fall in our main storyline.

Except for the two empresses, the other citizen NPCs are almost all dead, what will you do with the Huaxia NPC when the time comes?

Can't let him summon a fairy sword and fly away directly when the Seljuks captured the city wall, right?

The censor comrade said I don't care, anyway, you have to let players pay attention to this Huaxia NPC, and you have to create selling points and explosive points, preferably the kind that can be in the news media.

Can't you give him some kind of task, or some kind of fun setting, meme, or something?

So the design team had no choice, and after consulting the senior leaders, they could only add a "fortune-telling" setting to this NPC.

Theoretically, this NPC knows all about the game, and will often say something like "break the fourth wall".

(The fourth wall, where the characters in the play know that they are in the play and can even speak directly to the audience)

This NPC is worth 1 pound per fortune teller, and each player can only ask one question.

The more advanced the question, the more vague his answer became.

For example, if the player asks "Where do I want to get the potion recipe for Fire IV", the NPC will reply "Your destiny is on the fire elemental plane", which means that you want to go to the fire elemental plane to do it.

As for where it will be done, there is no comment.

Of course, there are some more playful players who will ask him strange questions, such as "How can I marry Princess Theodora".

At this point, the NPC will reply with "moderate play, stay away from addiction" and so on, all in all, it doesn't look like an NPC, but like a customer service behind the manipulation of the speech.

If you follow the game's setting, then there should be a similar, omniscient Dragon Country NPC in this world.

A few days later, Asker led people to the outskirts of Kavala, and soon found this magical NPC in the pavilion of Gusires on the seashore.

He is a Chinese old man with fairy wind bones, who looks a bit like the image of Zhang Sanfeng in Su Youpeng's version of "Relying on the Sky and Slaying the Dragon" in 03, and is shaking his head and chanting in Chinese at this time:

"It's a good way, it's a very good way. The name is famous, and the name is not very famous. ”

Beside him, a little boy carved in pink and jade Cyris translated, in fluent Cyris said:

"If a secret can be discovered, then it is no longer a secret."

"Makes sense, makes sense." Listening around were all Ciris, some dressed in the white robes of philosophers, some richly dressed, and they all nodded in agreement at first glance as nobles or wealthy merchants.

A certain philosopher in a white robe stood up and gushed as if in debate:

"The ideas of this master from the East are similar to Kant's agnosticism."

"Because this shore is a phenomenon of things that we perceive, and the other shore is a 'thing in itself' that exists independently of our cognition."

"Between this shore and the other shore, there is an unbridgeable gap in human cognition, human beings can only know the phenomena produced by things, but it is impossible to know the things themselves through the phenomena."

A priest of Syreus also stood up, drew a cross reverently on his chest, and recited the scriptures as if in prayer:

"Between you and me, there is an abyss. I can't get over here, and I can't get over there. ”

Asker looked at the bustle over there, his face full of bewilderment.

How can you, an ancient Chinese person who recites the Tao Te Ching, communicate with these philosophers and priests of Cyris without the slightest cultural barrier?

"Well, that's what I call a prophet." He pointed to the gazebo in front of him, the old man of Huaxia who was surrounded and praised by the Cyreus, and explained to the girls, "He can answer any doubts you have, but you can only ask one question per person for a pound." ”

"Prophet? It's really fake. The girls frowned and said suspiciously, "Can any doubt be answered?" ”

"That's right." Asker said, "If you don't believe me, I'll try it first." ”

"Master!" Swaggering into the pavilion, under the eyes of everyone's rejection and disgust, Aske rudely pushed away Father Cyris and the philosopher who were in the way, arched his hand to this Chinese NPC, and said, "I have a question, and I ask the master to solve my doubts." ”

"Copper plate divination, one pound at a time." This fortune teller who looks like Zhang Sanfeng said with his back hand.

One pound ...... Your foreign price is really smooth. Asker silently pulled out a bill and handed it over.

"The secret of heaven cannot be revealed, you come with me." Zhang Sanfeng said this, and put Askra into the uninhabited space next to him, and said proudly with his hands behind his back, "Ask." ”

"How can I go back to my original world?" Aske asked respectfully.

"Let the old man do the math." Zhang Sanfeng took out six copper plates from the sleeves of his robe and threw them on the ground. The copper plate rolled on the ground a few times, and finally stabilized, and there were actually six fronts.

"Well, Liuyang, dry for the sky." Zhang Sanfeng touched his beard and said, "The sleepy dragon has good luck and good luck, and I can't help but be happy, all my hopes are good, and my luck is gradually getting higher in the future." ”

"Since you are asking about travel, this hexagram is the upper hexagram, indicating that you can find your way back smoothly, and it is best to travel together."

"When you are obedient to the heavens, you should go to the place closest to the heavens. What is the highest mountain in the Northern Continent? Zhang Sanfeng was thoughtful.

"Alps, Mont Blanc." Asker replied. As for Mount Everest...... Not in the world of "Iron and Fire".

"Hmm. The Qiangua also refers to the dragon. Zhang Sanfeng shook his head and said, "Tianxingjian, the gentleman's unremitting self-improvement indicates that you should challenge a dragon, make it succumb and recognize, and you can help you go wherever you want to go." ”

"Dragons?" Aske thought for a moment and was shocked, "The dragon's lair of Mont Blanc, the demigod BOSS bronze dragon!" And its extraordinary properties happen to be an extremely rare space-time sequence! In other words, as long as I can defeat that bronze dragon boss, it will help me return to my original world? ”

"I see, thank you, Master." Asker said sincerely.

"Don't worry, young man, do you know the truth of Jitailai?" Zhang Sanfeng smiled and said meaningfully, "Everything is prosperous and must decline, and after the yang energy reaches its peak, it is inevitable that the yin energy will grow, and the law of all things is like this." ”

"You want to go back to the original world, but you don't know that when you finally get your wish, you will desperately want to come back?"

Asker had to ask again, but Zhang Sanfeng had already flicked the sleeves of his robe impatiently, urging: "Don't leak the secret of heaven, let's go!" Go! ”

So Aske came back inexplicably, and when the girls saw this, they rushed up to him and asked him gossipingly:

"How? Is that prophet really credible? Answer to you what? ”

Looking at the excited expressions of the girls, it is almost like a white-collar woman discussing a horoscope divination magazine, full of unreasonable fanaticism.

"You'll find out if you try it." Asker said helplessly.

The girls looked at each other, a little uneasy, and eager to try. In the end, it was Nora who was the first to stand up bravely and said:

"I'll go."

Under the expectant gaze of everyone, Nora came to Zhang Sanfeng, clasped her hands together and whispered:

"Master, I would like to consult on the question of love."

"You want to ask about marriage, right?" Zhang Sanfeng put his hands behind his back and said leisurely, "Ask." ”

"What I want to ask is: Can I and the person I admire and love come together in the end?" Nora said slowly, suddenly having the urge to shed tears, and silently wiped the corners of her eyes.

"1 pound." Zhang Sanfeng said.

After taking the banknote handed over by Nola, Zhang Sanfeng took out six copper plates and threw them away, then stared at the results on the ground for a long time, and said:

"Sister Lei Ze, this is a hexagram."

"Is there any salvation?" Nora Muran said.

"Don't worry, fortunately, you're asking about marriage." Zhang Sanfeng thought for a while, "If you want to fish in the water, you can't ask for it on the tree, and you will be able to climb and expose it at will, and your work will be mediocre." ”

"This hexagram is exchanged for the upper shock, the shock is for the eldest man, the exchange is for the girl, and the girl is from the eldest man. What you admire should be a man who is older than you, and his abilities are far better than you in all aspects, which makes you feel broken. ”

"Yes." Nora interlaced her fingers uneasily, believing in her heart, "Then what should I do?" ”

"When a man marries a woman, the righteousness of heaven and earth cannot be violated. Although there are twists and turns at the beginning and in the middle, it should be happy in the end, but you must not force it. Zhang Sanfeng touched his beard, pinched his fingers and counted for a moment, "What you need to do now is to go with the flow and wait for it to come to fruition." ”

"How long will it take?" Nola's eyes lit up and she hurriedly asked.

"Ten years." Zhang Sanfeng said, "If you can wait for ten years, there should be a good result." Judging from this hexagram, your marriage must not be rushed, and you would rather marry later than marry in vain, do you understand? ”

Decade?! Nora was stunned as if she had been struck by lightning, and her whole mind was confused.

In 10 years, I'm approaching 30 years old, so do I have to wait that long?

She walked back in a daze, and she didn't even hear what Zhang Sanfeng said to her at the end.

After returning to the team, everyone asked her all kinds of questions, and she just shook her head.

"Nola, what's wrong with you?" When the crowd had dispersed, Eleanor hurriedly approached her and asked with concern, "Did you ask about you and Asker?" How did the other party answer? ”

"Nothing." Nora shook her head and smiled hard, "He said it would end well." ”

"It's just that it's going to take a while." She whispered, and gradually fell silent.