Chapter 43: What decent person practices their aim in Counter-Strike?

"Zero is still waiting for the boss's word over there, saying they want to refer to our VIP users' opinions."

The reply on the other end of the line was mixed with the crunching sound of chewing, accompanied by the faint splashing of water from time to time.

"Fine," the girl pouted. "You're eating potato chips in the bath again. Why don't you replace the rose petals with potato chips and marinate yourself until you smell like a bag of chips?"

"That won't do. I'm a girl, I need to smell nice so people will like me."

"Show off your bank balance, and I guarantee the line of people chasing you could stretch from Brooklyn to Manhattan, only trailing my admirers by two blocks."

Dragging her suitcase, the long-legged girl ignored the crowd of drivers waving and soliciting customers, and walked straight toward a black Mercedes with anti-peeking privacy film parked by the curbside.

The car was empty, with a single set of keys resting on the driver's seat.

The Mercedes started up and quickly merged into the stream of traffic.

"Doesn't the boss always call himself a demonic manager? How did a mere high school student slip through his fingers?"

The long-legged girl took off her oversized sunglasses, revealing an exquisite and alluring face.

If Lu Mingfei had been here, he might have found this face somewhat similar to Tohno Ayaki, the traditional Japanese beauty he met during his interview, except their temperaments were vastly different.

"You said it yourself, he's a demonic manager, not the Buddha."

"And our DK user isn't the Monkey King either; he doesn't have the somersault cloud."

"In the boss's words, perhaps he used to be just a macaque mixed in with a troop of monkeys, but now he's showing a tendency to evolve toward the Monkey King, and might even evolve into the Great Sage Equal to Heaven in the future."

"His performance these past few days really makes one look at him in a new light. I thought he'd be wrapped around that little white flower's finger just like Tom until enrollment." A look of disbelief still lingered on the long-legged girl's face.

"So what kind of love potion did the boss feed him? After just a afternoon nap, he's like a completely different person, actually daring to ruthlessly chew out the woman he fears most and the girl he likes best."

"Who knows, maybe this is the devil's handiwork." A splashing sound came from the other end of the phone, as if a beauty had just emerged from the bath.

"Let's not think too much about it, us employees. We can never guess the boss's mind anyway.

He said the stage isn't set up yet, and it's not time for the protagonist to make an entrance, so we just need to bring him back.

I figure, with your mind-blowing figure and cold, alluring face, you should be able to turn that little virgin head over heels with just a flick of your finger, making him obediently return home to await Her Majesty the Queen's favor."

"I've always let my actions speak for themselves." The implication was that she disdained using cheap tricks like seduction.

Amidst the conversation, the black Mercedes arrived near the hotel where Lu Mingfei was staying, and the long-legged girl quickly spotted someone keeping watch from a white SUV not far away.

She let out a "tsk" and booked a room in the hotel across the street, located one floor higher than Lu Mingfei's room, offering a commanding view perfect for snooping.

The sniper rifle and scope were still on the way, so she had to make do with military binoculars for the time being.

The long-legged beauty dragged her bed right up to the window, closed the curtains while leaving just a sliver of space at the bottom, and observed Lu Mingfei's movements through that tiny gap, exuding the ultimate covert spy vibe.

At this moment, Lu Mingfei was tinkering with the little gadgets he had bought.

Specialized capsaicin and various highly irritating liquids were mixed in proportion and poured into a spray bottle and a thoroughly cleaned condom—functioning essentially as a makeshift wolf-whistle pepper spray and a stink bomb.

While he harbored no intention to harm others, he maintained defenses against them.

He was heading to the countryside tomorrow, and Lu Mingfei didn't want to get kidnapped halfway; he simply had to make some preparations.

Shancheng was full of mountains and forests where a single misstep could land you in prison for life, otherwise he would have whipped up a few Molotov cocktails to carry with him.

He slid the steel strips out of a medical lumbar support belt, replacing them with a screwdriver and a file bought from a hardware store, and punched a row of holes along the straps, filling each aperture with silver-gray steel rivets.

The remaining wrench and hammer went into his backpack, alongside some materials used to process a tree branch he scavenged from a woodworking shop.

Once prepared, though not armed to the teeth, he had both offensive and defensive measures covered, making his combat effectiveness at least two to three times greater than going bare-handed.

Best of all, none of these items were contraband. Even if he ran into a sudden inspection, he could pass them off as a teenager's chuunibyou fantasies, at most earning a stern reprimand and lecture.

Just as he picked up a steel rivet to get back into the groove, a strange sensation of being watched suddenly welled up from the depths of his heart.

He snapped his head toward the window, only to be met by a fiery red sunset and various buildings dyed a bloody crimson in the twilight.

After a split second of scanning, Lu Mingfei's falcon-like gaze locked onto the curtained room diagonally across from him in the opposing hotel.

A man's sixth sense told him that the peeping gaze just now definitely came from that exact spot.

"So obsessed with a teenage boy, could Cassel College actually be a seminary? With this kind of operational style, the principal is at least a cardinal."

Cursing softly, Lu Mingfei turned on the light and drew all the curtains shut, completely cutting off any view from the outside.

Just as he put his things away, Gudelian ran over to knock on the door, inviting him to dinner.

The coincidence was far too coincidental to feel like a coincidence at all, and the sliver of goodwill he initially held toward Gudelian quietly vanished.

Meanwhile, as he dealt with Gudelian and prepared to take him out for an ultra-spicy Mandarin Duck hotpot, the long-legged girl—who had failed her peeking and nearly gotten caught—knitted her pretty brows.

She stared at the room tightly blocked by curtains, through which not even a shred of light leaked, and fell into a brief silence.

As a professionally trained ninja, she was certain that her surveillance just then had been thoroughly covert, completely devoid of killing intent or any other dangerous aura that might easily trigger vigilance.

Yet even so, she had been detected in a short span of time and her position exposed.

Lu Mingfei's razor-sharp look from a moment ago gave her an illusion.

If what he was holding wasn't a freshly dismantled steel rivet, but that hand-crafted slingshot of his, or even a sniper rifle, she might have caught a pebble or an armor-piercing round the moment she was spotted.

Watching the old man and the young man walk out of the hotel entrance, the long-legged girl dialed an international call:

"Potato Chips, are you sure Lu Mingfei's military training took place in a barracks rather than the Afghan battlefield?"

"Of course. He's the school's only shooting genius who hit all tens across the board. Before that, he had never even touched a gun, nor had he practiced at shooting clubs like rich kids do."

The girl who had been bantering with her earlier joked: "Of course, it's also possible he's a one-in-a-million prodigy who practiced his marksmanship in Counter-Strike and CrossFire.

But why do you ask?"

"I just got spotted by him." The long-legged girl put away her binoculars, sitting cross-legged on the bed and questioning her life choices.

"No way, Long Legs, aren't you supposed to be the world's greatest ninja? How did you get flushed out by an ordinary high school boy?" the girl nicknamed Potato Chips exclaimed in surprise.

"I don't know, but I'm really interested in him now." The girl with exceptionally long legs and the nickname Long Legs flashed a smile that could captivate both men and women, looking somewhat like Tamamo-no-Mae from Japanese mythology—beautiful yet dangerous.

"Don't break him, otherwise it won't be easy to explain to the boss."

"Relax, I know my limits."