The Righteous Player(s)

Chapter 329: Bernardino

“…Tsk.” Longjing Tea smacked his lips.

Through the conversation between Annan and the Child, he could roughly guess what the Child did in the nightmare.

Unfortunately, Longjing Tea didn’t see it with his own eyes. He didn’t manage to record the moment and mock him immediately, giving him the feeling of missing out.

After all, Longjing Tea had witnessed the Child’s awkward chatting.

Cade (the Child) was not plain-looking at first. Instead, he could even be called handsome.

The only issue was with his receding hairline.

When the Child hadn’t retired yet, his family sent him on blind dates. At that time, Longjing Tea went to assist as a wingman.

Even the well-informed Longjing Tea was shocked the first time he saw how Cade functioned in front of an unfamiliar and beautiful girl.

During the first meetup, the process was rough, “Hey, what zodiac sign are you? I’m a Gemini, and we should get along very well”, “What’s your job? It’s amazing”, “Do you have any favorite games? Ah, you don’t play any games.”

Then, he ran out of bullets (conversation topics).

If the Child failed to capture any topic in a short while, he would suddenly blurt out questions like “The weather is good today”, “where are you from”, and “how do you think about the temperature here”.

He was especially good at forcing a conversation out — that shocked Longjing Tea.

Of course, Longjing Tea also learned the truth later.

This was actually Cade’s approach to indirectly push the date away.

In Cade’s words, if he tried to run away from the blind date, he would use such a euphemized approach to lower the energy of the date, making his date unable to continue the conversation.

But Longjing Tea finally got a definite answer after careful close-up (referring to him sitting at the next table) observation several times. All of the above was a lie.

The real reason was that the dumb Child had inexplicable low self-esteem and timidity.

Every time he was interested in his date, but he didn’t feel like having a good chance, he would give up on his own and distance himself. Then, he would get a reason “It’s not that I don’t chase after her. It’s because she looked down on me.”

That way, Cade wouldn’t feel guilty for not taking the initiative, nor would he regret the outcome.

That put Longjing Tea into questioning how marvelous Cade’s parents were.

Generally speaking, when they meet during the blind date, they would know what position they had in the matchmaker’s heart.

Usually, the results were lower than expected. The Child had such a comedian-like escape method. It stood to reason that the favorability of him was deducted to nothing long ago with the matchmakers.

But the surprising mystery was that every time Cade went on a blind date, the quality of the woman he was introduced to was always abnormally high. There were several times even Longjing Tea at the next table was enchanted.

As a matter of fact, Longjing Tea came from a wealthy family.

He thought about it and realized that Cade shouldn’t waste his youth like this. What if my best bro couldn’t find such a good partner in the future?

So Longjing Tea was like Cade’s father, cheering Cade up, talking to him, and giving him counseling talks.

But he never imagined that after Cade read to himself, “I can’t run away this time,” a couple of times, he still escaped immediately after arriving at the scene.

So Longjing Tea gave up completely.

From then on, he decided to use shock therapy. Every time the Child was pushed by his parents for a blind date, he would rush to the scene as soon as possible and mock the Child after the date ended.

Longjing Tea would continue to do so until he inherited his family business.

But fortunately, this situation for the Child had stopped.

The reason was quite simple.

The Child had gone bald.

As a result, the quality of the woman he was introduced to dropped significantly. The situation wouldn’t push the Child to the extent of being too nervous, and he could cope perfectly. Later on, as the Child became a popular streamer after retiring, he was exposed to more people. At the very least, the Child wouldn’t be nervous when he met other female streamers on the Fighting Cat Streaming Platform.

What happened today was unexpected. I haven’t seen the Child in this state for a few years, but I see it again here.

I’m really curious. What does the girl look like?

What a headache! I’m so curious.

“I really want to meet her…” Longjing Tea muttered, sighed, and closed the book.

I don’t think I can continue reading anymore.

The live streams nowadays are so interesting.

There was the event about the Child awkwardly approaching a girl with “how’s the weather?”, Citalopram being a tour guide in introducing “my family ruins”, Sister Hyphen’s in real life stream (IRL) about Dong Juan arriving in Rosebury, and Xiang Tiange smuggling dangerous goods into the city.

I really can’t sit still and study.

Longjing Tea’s state was like watching an entertaining stream on the phone while doing the literature review for the postgraduate entrance examination.

There was no way for him to focus and learn anything.

Even when the system only required him to read through the text from the beginning to the end, he realized that his learning process had stopped, given that the text on the 4th and 5th pages remained red. Thus, he gave up the idea of multitasking.

Maybe I should give myself a break… Longjing Tea thought to himself.

When Longjing Tea packed up and prepared to go back to his dormitory, he saw Teacher Clarence at the door, whom he hadn’t seen for about a couple of days.

Clarence wore black-rimmed glasses and the same red robe. He was listening intently, fidgeting his fingers on his right hand subconsciously. The noise was audible even at the current distance, so much so that it gave off the impression of cutlery scratching each other.

In front of Clarence was a gloomy old man in a wheelchair.

The old man was wearing a white coat that resembled a hooded gown. He lowered his head, exposing dark yellow bandages covered with dense black, strange runes.

At first glance, the old man gave off the impression of a mummy.

For some reason, the moment Longjing Tea saw the old man, he suddenly felt a chill in his heart. The old man then stopped his whisper at the same time.

Longjing Tea tried to recall but couldn’t remember what the old man had said previously.

This isn’t just an illusion.

Longjing Tea walked over without hesitation and respectfully greeted Clarence, befitting his status as the apprentice, “Good evening, Teacher Clarence.”

“En.” Clarence nodded. With a rare stern expression on his face that tended to smile, he said solemnly, “It’s very late. Head back to rest early.”

“Yes, teacher.”

“—Oh?” The old man let out a low, hoarse laugh at this time.

The laughter gave off the air of death, and it was terrifying.

“Is that your student, Clarence? Are you not going to introduce him to me?” The old man slowly raised his head with a kind smile.

His exposed teeth were as yellow as a corpse. It was as if the being under the bandage was not a person but a skeleton.

Clarence just nodded respectfully in reply.

He calmly pointed to Longjing Tea and introduced in a low voice, “Let me introduce him to you. This is Longjing Tea. An apprentice who has not officially embarked on the path of transcendence.”

He did not explain to the old man that Longjing Tea was neither his disciple nor his student.

But he also hinted at Longjing Tea, “It would be better for you to get to know him a little bit.

“This is Master Bernardino, Bernardino Telesio. He is the pope of the ‘Bell Ringer’, a Gold Rank wizard with the ‘Pure Spiritual Medium’ title. His magic falls in the school of Soul Snatch. He is also the founder of the profession [Telesio Spiritual Monk].

“At the same time, he is also my teacher and David Gerald’s mentor.”