Mortal Kombat: Scumbag Men Stealing Away Yandere Girls

Bai Weiran pursed his lips. "...One is dead, one is alive? You noticed too?"

Qin Ning felt a lump in her throat. "Yes, how can it not be considered a discovery?"

Knowing something is one thing, hearing him confirm it himself is another.

Brother Weiran, are you not even willing to give me a perfunctory reply or coax me anymore?

Qin Ning felt her heart sinking into the deep sea.

Well, I guess I'll just have to lock you in the basement and give you a good beating—

“I was thinking the same thing as you.” Bai Weiran nodded, took a step forward, and put Qin Ning’s soft little feet back on the chaise lounge, making her lie in a beautiful reclining position.

"This game definitely has third-party forces involved."

Qin Ning: …………?

I'm in despair, on the verge of turning to the dark side, and you're still thinking about your crappy game design?

Bai Weiran sat down directly next to Qin Ning, his expression serious, and began to analyze the situation carefully.

"The first day is for confirming the faction. If the second and third days are for individual missions corresponding to the two factions, then the storyline should end on the fourth day. But this theater is set to have five days."

Bai Weiran touched the two straps hanging down from the edge of the hat.

"It's like the difference between mobile games and single-player games. Mobile games have no time limit, they can go on indefinitely, you can do whatever you want, and add or remove content based on player feedback. It's not surprising that there is redundant content. But this kind of well-designed theater is an ingenious sandbox game. It seems open, but everything is actually designed."

“In the design of single-player RPG games, every task, scene, and character resource has its necessity. In addition to making the content rich and compact, there is also a major requirement to control resources. The more game resources there are, the higher the cost will be. Controlling resources can effectively control game costs. If you think about it from their perspective, they need to build sets, and each set needs to hire suitable actors to play NPCs. They must maximize resources. From the designer's point of view, there is no way there can be useless content.”

Bai Weiran's expression darkened, becoming as serious as if discussing the state of the nation.

"So, what kind of person does the mission on the fourth day revolve around?"

"Not only that, the problem can also be seen from the configuration of the NPCs. I support you, Wu Ji supports the enemy, but A Chao has no faction to support and he can choose to defect to either side of us - then why is this character given the identity of a prince, or the current emperor's younger brother?"

Bai Weiran had never watched palace dramas or written scripts, but he rationally deduced the underlying mechanisms from the perspective of the plot design.

"The problem is also evident from the map layout; this is a real-life set..."

The sickly and delicate Consort Qin could no longer bear it. She grabbed Bai Weiran by the collar, abandoning all her elegance, and fiercely pulled him in front of her.

"Who wants to hear you talk about these games? Answer my question!!"

Before Bai Weiran could answer, someone knocked on the door, and Ziwei pushed the door open and peeked in.

"...Ziwei has come to pay her respects to the Imperial Concubine..."

Upon seeing the scene inside the room, I felt incredibly awkward.

What did I see that I shouldn't have seen?

"Uh, sorry, did I come at a bad time...?"

The project team members outside completed their tasks one after another and began to pay their respects to the concubines of both sides.

Two other project team members followed behind Ziwei.

Qin Ning had no choice but to release her grip on Bai Weiran's hand and begin her interrogation, adopting the role of a noble consort.

Bai Weiran was very meticulous. He let the person who came to pay his respects in alone and asked about how he obtained the token.

The process of obtaining the token is full of hidden secrets. It can be used to find clues and deduce the mole hidden among them. Bai Weiran did not let them come in together to prevent the mole from having the opportunity to use other people to speak and muddy the waters.

The faction assignments had just finished when curfew began.

During these five days, there will be four nights with a curfew and soldiers patrolling. All players are ordered to stay in their palaces. If they go out and are discovered, they will be arrested and imprisoned for a day and a night. During the next day, they can only stay in the prison and cannot move around, thus wasting mission time.

The task was also sent to my phone.

All players must find a quest item called the "Golden Cup".

The Golden Cup is soaked in poison, making it colorless and odorless, killing silently. Possessing it allows you to poison the enemy camp at any time, directly killing one person and weakening their power.

Each room contains clues to finding the golden cup, such as an acrostic poem, a riddle, or a puzzle, which will keep everyone guessing throughout the night.

Bai Weiran leaned against the wall and could hear the sounds of people rummaging through drawers and cabinets in the next room, searching for clues.

He and Qin Ning were completely quiet here, without making a sound—Bai Weiran had thoroughly searched the room as soon as he entered.

Do you understand the value of a veteran gamer? If you play a single-player RPG and don't know how to break into houses and ransack them, you're not a qualified veteran gamer. If you don't include something for players to enjoy the fun of raiding, you're not a good game designer.

Bai Weiran found an acrostic poem in the painting on the wall. Unfortunately, the organizer and designer were too literary, and he couldn't understand it at all. He couldn't comprehend the literary jargon of these scholars.

It's a dead end, a puzzle where you try to solve a word puzzle with numerical values.

But it's alright, he has other ideas.

The shadows of patrolling soldiers were reflected in the window. Bai Weiran pressed himself against the door, calculating the time, preparing to slip away once this group of people had passed—unexpectedly, he was grabbed from behind and slammed against the door as soon as he turned around.

The imperial concubine had alluring eyes and a stubborn expression.

You haven't answered my question yet!

Bai Weiran was unaware of the double meaning in Qin Ning's words.

...Is she addicted to playing?

He's not a drama queen, and he's not good at taking on roles, but if she insists on playing along—

"Asking such a question is pointless—" Eunuch Bai chuckled softly.

"Imperial Consort, I will do everything in my power to ensure you live a good life." He gently placed his hands on Qin Ning's shoulders.

Qin Ning was taken aback.

For a moment, reality and illusion intertwined, and the two dreamt of the past, with gauze curtains fluttering and the palace deep within. Under the dim candlelight, their shadows were stretched long, hinting at the secret affair between the eunuch and the imperial concubine.

Golden palaces and jade towers, a cold encirclement that imprisons the human heart and a lifetime.

And they whispered among themselves.

"I have been thinking this way for more than a decade."

"Victory means life, defeat means death—that's too narrow-minded. If I die, I only hope you can still live well, and that you won't be caught up in the bloodshed of palace intrigue anymore. That would be good enough."

There's no passionate, dramatic "For you, what does it matter if I die?" nor "For a beauty, I'd risk everything, wielding my sword and roaming the martial world with boundless heroism."

Bai Gonggong disliked this kind of involutionary logic that led people to a life-or-death struggle.

He even felt that many passionate words were not meant to move others, but rather to move himself.

Look, I use my infatuation with her and my recklessness to prove my passion and chivalry.

A real-life, action-packed fairy tale is great, but Bai Gonggong isn't suited to it.

Everyone has their own way of living—he prefers to live in the space between passionate fairy tales and reality, finding a place to settle down.

He spoke these words with a calm and steady demeanor, like a small boat rippling across a calm lake.

Don't exert too much effort, don't slack off or do nothing, just relax and enjoy yourself.

However, the overly sensitive and delicate yandere girl was terrified by his words, "If I die, that's fine too." Her mouth trembled and her lips turned white. She grabbed Bai Weiran's already wrinkled collar and pulled him back to reality from his old dream.

"What would you do if you died? Do you want to die, Brother Weiran—"

If you die, leaving us behind, what's the point of our current struggle?

She was so flustered that Bai Weiran had to use force to hold her down.

A hint of doubt flashed through his mind, but he was too preoccupied with other thoughts to delve into it at the moment.

"You're overthinking it," he reassured her with a smile.

"I'm just saying 'if,' not 'certain.' 'If' is a hypothetical statement."

Qin Ning threw herself into his arms without a second thought, wrapping her arms around his waist, and tears welled up in her eyes.

"I don't care, you can't die, you can't die!"

Yandere characters are truly prone to being easily pleased and angered.

Bai Weiran assumed he had said something wrong, and shook his head with a smile as he touched her little hat.

“It’s nothing, it’s just a metaphor, and besides, everyone dies eventually—” he shrugged.

"Bai Weiran isn't that important, he's not some invincible big shot." He made a self-deprecating joke, but Qin Ning looked up and glared at him fiercely with tears in her eyes.

"Shut up! Your mouth is the toughest thing on your body, I hate it!!"

Several minutes passed in this entanglement. Bai Weiran, hearing the commotion outside, gently pushed Qin Ning away, pressed one hand to his chest, and gave her a Western-style bow while dressed in ancient costume.

Qin Ning burst into laughter after seeing this.

"Then I must now go and do my best for your safety, Your Highness."

"You stay here and don't move. I'll be right back."

Just as Bai Weiran closed the door, a soldier NPC came towards him in the corridor, shouting and pointing a weapon at him, threatening to arrest him for violating curfew regulations.

Don't ask why the Grand Eunuch was also arrested; this is immersive theater, not seeking realism, but only dramatic effect.

He raised both hands in a gesture of surrender, his expression light and cheerful. He even voluntarily put on the shackles, leaving the actor playing the soldier completely bewildered.

No, bro, this is just a game, it's not real. Why are you being so proactive?

Your skill is so adept that I suspect you have a past with the police.

The soldier was puzzled and slowed down, but Bai Weiran urged him on.

"Quick, take me to jail!"

"………………" I've never heard of such a strange request in my life.

Qin Ning stood there in the room for a while, then slowly walked back to the chaise lounge.

She rested her elbow on a soft pillow, propping her forehead up, lost in thought.

The eunuch playing the NPC hurriedly pushed open the door to enter according to the plot. He saw the beautiful woman on the imperial concubine's seat, who was incomparably beautiful and had a lovely face. The beauty mark under her eye was so captivating that it was hard to look away. She also had a touch of melancholy and mystery about her.

He thought, "My goodness, she's even prettier than the models we hired."

When Bai Weiran arrived at the dungeon, he found that the cell was already occupied.

When the gray-haired prince saw him, he quickly unfolded his fan, his dashing demeanor obscuring half of his face.

"Hey! Isn't this Grandpa Bai? It's been a few days, and you've gotten such a mess?"

As expected of good friends, Bai Weiran and Wu Ji, both game designers, had the same idea.