Four Split Personalities

"Thank you~"

Motan took the small plate of snacks from Double Leaf, grabbed a dark pastry without much thought and stuffed it into his mouth, mumbling, "It should be like that. Since the Gold Coin Commerce Association wants to make their stance clear, it doesn’t matter if His Majesty the Emperor is the hundred-thousandth visitor; he will definitely be considered a lucky guest. Ha... they’re really generous, waiving a room fee of more than five hundred thousand gold coins just like that."

Double Leaf smacked her lips and raised an eyebrow, "It’s not that expensive. I think even you could afford to stay there at the original price for a few days."

"Ha ha, who’s to say otherwise."

Even though he knew that the other party had a hidden agenda, Motan did not resist this kind of probing and simply nodded openly, smiling, "But on the other hand, saying that you are the little princess of Fire Claw Territory... aren’t you being a little disrespectful to genetics? I’ve heard that Sir Xi Luo is eight feet tall, with a waist as wide, can breathe fire, and eats people. With your height, you’d probably only come up to his thigh, right?"

Clearly, those of us with a God’s Eye View know that he’s just continuing to sow confusion. After all, ’Hei Fan’ and Xi Luo have met, so he couldn’t possibly make such wild guesses.

This natural, snarky, random, and carefree confusion permeates every detail of his interactions with Double Leaf. It’s extremely nuanced and not at all noticeable; it’s impossible for Double Leaf to detect any issues without key information as everything Motan says has been spot on from the start.

Only such ingenious subliminal messaging, based on an absolute advantage in intelligence, could deceive Double Leaf.

The reason Motan does this is that he once again categorizes her as ’a foe that could take him down any time and is worthy of his full effort.’

The previous discussion about ’winning and losing’ with Double Leaf made him reconsider his already upturned impression of her. Motan had to admit, even though this brat had exposed many weaknesses in front of him and he held a certain advantage, perhaps due to some sort of bug, it still didn’t mean he was ’stronger’ than her, much less that he could ’win’.

If he were in Double Leaf’s position, he wouldn’t have the confidence to perform better than her, and in some details, he might even do worse. For instance, it was Double Leaf who realized something was amiss at the Sālāmù’ēn Iron Gate Courtyard ambush. Without her and the Red Badge from Shaliya, Motan was more likely to have been killed. So, if Shaliya hadn’t left him that mark with remote sensing capabilities before, would he have even gone back to the Iron Gate Courtyard?

Maybe, but possibly.

That’s Motan’s answer, meaning if Double Leaf hadn’t noticed, he very likely could have died because of his own recklessness at that time.

Though he’d never show signs of weakness or introspection in his actions or words, Motan at this moment was not one to shy away from his mistakes; on the contrary, he found them genuinely thrilling.

The madman’s approach to setbacks and miscalculations was ecstatic to the point of madness.

So, when he discovered that Double Leaf was just as unfathomable, if not more so, than the ’SUN’ of his past impression, he was ecstatic beyond measure.

But back to the topic at hand...

"Xi Luo • Fire Claw isn’t as ’impressive’ as the rumors suggest. In fact, his stature can practically be considered stunted among orcs."

Double Leaf rolled her eyes nonchalantly and chuckled, "Moreover, with the ability of the Gold Coin Commerce Association, if they really wanted to, finding out my background wouldn’t be hard. That they went along with my nonsense just shows that those ugly goblins really don’t care about such things. Forget being the little princess of Fire Claw Territory; even if I claimed to be Xi Luo • Fire Claw’s aunt, I bet they would nod and say they believe it."

"Correction, the Gold Coin Commerce Association has a high concentration of goblins, but that doesn’t mean all its members are goblins. In fact, about seventy percent of their affiliates are of other races; it’s just hard to climb to high positions, that’s all."

Motan earnestly made a clarification, then looked up at the Golden Brilliance ceiling of the pavilion hall with a half-smile and said, "I wonder how long this meeting is going to last. Time is precious to me."

"Why’s that?"

Double Leaf looked at Motan indifferently and smirked, "Planning to sneak off in the dead of night to watch adult films while you’re not in the game?"

"Don’t bother, I don’t even know what I’ll do."

Motan shrugged his shoulders and stuffed another piece of dark cake into his mouth, also pulling out a Chicken Tail Mana Potion to take a gulp.

He was telling the truth because, until now, he hadn’t "fragmented," so there was always the possibility that something could go awry at any moment, a major uncertainty.

And tonight, quite inconveniently, he had a few very important things to do, which really bothered Motan.

After all, his character had never been particularly good, so scenarios that were difficult to get out of were very likely to occur...

The only thing he could do was to pretend to be absent-minded, telling Double Leaf his initial plan to ensure that even if he disconnected, it wouldn’t affect tomorrow’s basic rhythm. Beyond that, he could only leave it to fate.

"Speaking of which, how come you don’t feel a thing..."

Double Leaf suddenly furrowed her brows, looking dubiously at the third piece of pastry Motan was holding, about to stuff into his mouth, "Are you forcing yourself?"

"What do you mean ’forcing myself’?"

Motan closed his mouth—which was wide enough to swallow the whole pastry—and blinked, "Are you talking about this homemade sweet treat with love? It tastes quite good."

Indeed, the item Double Leaf handed to Motan was food, which she had personally made using the small kitchen of the Liuliting Pavilion. This very self-aware genius girl knew all too well that, given her disastrous level of cooking skill, even if she wholeheartedly followed a recipe, she was very likely to create something that tasted particularly strange. And if she deliberately aimed to make it taste worse...

[Unappetizing Black Sliced Cake]

Maker: Double Leaf

Consumable

Use: Recovers 5% Physical Strength Value and 5% Magic Power over ten seconds, with a certain chance to trigger a [Dry Mouth] status, reducing the Physical Strength Value limit by 10% for ten minutes, which can be removed by drinking.

[Note: Deliberately added too much salt, pepper, and chili, and accidentally overcooked, a plain unappetizing sliced cake.]

From the item description, it was clear that Double Leaf was purposely tricking Motan. To be honest, she didn’t have much confidence initially since, according to her plan, this creation should have looked quite appealing but tasted awful. Unfortunately, due to her poor control over the heat, the cake ended up burnt, and since it was served by her own hand, Double Leaf thought Motan would likely read the item description cautiously before consumption and refuse to eat it.

But it seemed Motan hadn’t read it; he seemed to be like many gamers who wouldn’t bother looking at the descriptions of such everyday items as chairs, rice, or tea—otherwise; the system wouldn’t display this information constantly, or else everyone would see nothing but data frames everywhere they looked.

To the girl’s surprise, not only did Motan snatch up the thing and stuff it into his mouth, but he also ate it with relish, and soon after, took another piece...

By the time he picked up the third piece, Double Leaf’s emotions had shifted from surprise to dread, and after receiving an unexpected answer from him, she took a small chunk of the dreadful black sliced cake and bit into it.

And then...

"Spit!"

She spat out the bitter, astringent, spicy, and somewhat ashy substance, glaring at Motan with indignation, "You jerk, did you have to go this far just to trick me into tasting it?"

"What do you mean ’this far’? Isn’t the prefix of this thing ’unappetizing’? Don’t you even know what you’ve made?"

Motan spoke lazily and then, under the girl’s ghost-seeing gaze, he picked up another piece, stuffed it into his mouth, and sneered while chewing...

"Foolish woman, I am not pretending. You, in your shallowness... have never tasted the real hell."

Chapter 540: End