Taoist priest goes to America

Ang Lee looked at the despairing Ides and selected "Delete Saved Data" with his finger.

The system displayed a prompt: "Are you sure you want to delete all archived data? This operation is irreversible."

Ang Lee clicked "Yes".

The boxes were grayed out, and one by one they were cleared from left to right.

"Ah—" Ides' body jerked violently, but immediately fell back to the floor. Doyle's hands went under Ides' armpits, grabbed Ides' shoulders, and pressed his knees against the back of Ides' knees.

It pulled Doyle backward and pressed him down, causing Ides to lose his balance and fall forward, where he was pinned to the ground.

Ides opened her mouth and let out a miserable cry, like a string that had been pulled too tight suddenly snapping.

He looked at Ang Lee, his eyes no longer filled with tears, but with bloodshot veins.

Ang Lee didn't look at him. He exited Pokémon HOME and opened the Monster Hunter series game aggregation page. Ides' account was linked to all versions from the 3DS era to the Switch, PS, and PC, with thousands of hours of save data in each version.

He immediately opened the Hunter's Notebook, which was filled with records of the various sizes of the Golden Crowns. It took Ides thousands of monsters to collect all the sizes; it was the result of him repeatedly quitting and restarting the quest, spending days and nights grinding.

Ang Lee selected "Clear Medal Data," and a blood-red warning box popped up on the screen. He clicked OK. The gold crown icons dimmed one by one from left to right.

Next up was the HR999 character, whose completion time exceeded three thousand hours. Ang Lee selected "Delete Save File" and clicked confirm.

The screen flickered, the character disappeared, and the previous background became blank. Only the option "Create New Hunter" remained.

Ides lay on the ground, mouth agape, eyes fixed on the ceiling. His lips moved unconsciously, like a fish thrown ashore.

Ang Lee quit Monster Hunter and started another game, and then another game.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Ides' account has a max-level battle pass, with 100% completion every season, and hundreds of camouflage outfits unlocked, all of which are ultimate skins obtained through time and effort.

Ang Lee clicked on the "Armory" page, and an option to "Reset all camouflage progress" popped up on the screen. His finger hovered over the "Confirm" button for a few seconds before pressing it.

One by one, the camouflage patterns on the screen turned gray—gold, platinum, Damascus, atoms, Orion—all disappeared.

After hearing the crisp "thud," Ides' forehead pressed against the ground. His body trembled violently, and his eyes revealed an uncontrollable rage seeping from the depths of his bones.

Ides is known online as the "Complete Collector" and is a legend in the dark knowledge circles of the Call of Duty forums.

Each season's "Master" camouflage is the result of hundreds of hours of painstaking work, and some limited-time camouflages from certain seasons will never return once missed.

However, all of this was ruined by Ang Lee.

"No...don't touch those anymore..." Ides' voice could no longer be squeezed out of her throat.

Lee Ang meticulously reviewed and deleted all of Ides's tablet account's achievements: the gold-plated weapons in Destiny 2, the privilege cards he had spent years collecting in Madden NFL, and the creative mode save file in Minecraft with countless monuments built on it.

Ides lay on the ground, scratching at the floor like the middle-aged man he had abused, his nails scraping against the marble floor with a sharp sound.

His fingers moved aimlessly across the ground, his nails wore down and blood seeped from his fingertips, but he couldn't feel it.

But all his efforts were in vain. Doyle held him tightly, leaving him paralyzed on the ground in a helpless rage, frantically scratching at the floor.

Ang Lee put a cigarette in his mouth and opened another auction website.

Through Isya's memories, Li An learned that Ides also owned several sets of physical Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

These precious cards were recently purchased at a high price by him, but they haven't been delivered to him yet and are still hanging in the auction house.

There's the 20th anniversary silver fragment version of the original "Blue-Eyes White Dragon," the limited edition "Fireproof Dragon" released at the 2016 World Championship, and the "Chaos Warrior" and "Chaos Emperor Dragon" acquired from Japan at a high price, etc...

Ang Lee clicked the mouse and put them all back on the auction list, setting the starting price extremely low, which sparked a heated discussion on the Internet.

"Which spendthrift son is selling credit cards? Has the family gone bankrupt?"

"Maybe it was his clueless wife who secretly sold it!"

"Holy crap, what a good guy! Such a good guy!"

"Sigh—don't they feel the pinch selling off their father's land?"

"Don't buy it if you feel sorry for him!"

"No price gouging! First come, first served!"

Ides's several rare decks, acquired with real money, have disappeared. The "limited legendary card that only one percent of players own" that he boasted about on the forum has become a grayed-out "uncollected" label.

"I just bought this card! I just bought this card... You damn bastard, fuck you! Fuck you!" Ides even forgot the fear of death and cursed Li An without regard for life or death.

The force that erupted was so great that Doyle almost couldn't hold him down.

Ang Lee turned and smiled at Ides, then continued the sale process.

The notification popped up on the screen, closed, popped up again, closed again, and each "ding" was like a needle piercing Ides's eardrum.

Ides lay on the ground, watching the auction page update on the tablet screen, watching the rare cards she had just acquired being snapped up by strangers from all over the world.

His body was curled up on the ground, his hands covering his head, his fingers digging into his sparse hair, his nails scratching his scalp until it bled, and he pulled out the few remaining strands of hair.

Ang Lee then entered one of Ides's fiancée's accounts on the payment page. The white girl liked to have casual sex with many men, but Ides had no choice but to accept the arranged marriage. Two days ago, he was so disgusted with Ides that he kicked her out of his villa.

"No...no! No! No—" Ides's voice was like the last low growl of some large animal before its death, squeezed out from the deepest part of its lungs, long and hoarse.

"I can't give it to that bitch! I can't use the money I got from exchanging my cards to give to that bitch!!!"

"Give it to yourself... to your own account is fine! Don't give it to her..."

Ides' voice had changed, from a roar to a helpless cry like a child, with snot coming out of her nose like bubbles from a fish.

"What if your parents find out about the transfer record after it's transferred to my account and trace it back to me?" Li An chuckled as he watched Ides cry, his finger pointing towards the tablet.

Ang Lee pressed "Confirm". The sound of the mouse clicking echoed in the empty basement, like a death knell tolling.

Ides reached out into the air, desperately grabbing at it twice, but grasped nothing. Then she curled up into a ball, her forehead pressed against the marble floor, her shoulders shaking violently.

His voice came from between his arms.

"Gulp...kill me...please...kill me..."

Ang Lee took the cigarette out of his mouth, flicked off the ash, and the ash landed on Ides's hair.

He did not answer.