Chapter 9   – Ye Xiu’s Two Hands

Chen Guo actually didn’t have a habit of pulling all-nighters. Only, today was the opening of a new server, so she came to see the liveliness. After seeing it, she quickly grew sleepy and fell back on her chair only half-conscious.

This type of sleep quality was obviously quite poor. It was just that Chen Guo was too lazy to get up. In this half-asleep half-conscious state, her ears couldn’t help but drift to the frantic keyboard tapping and mouse clicking sounds. To a boss at an Internet Cafe, these sounds were very familiar to her. But the sounds Chen Guo heard were somewhat different. These sounds were hurried and then slow, gentle and then heavy. Hearing this mechanical rhythm, Chen Guo had never thought that the tapping of a keyboard and mouse could sound like drums. Was she dreaming?

Chen Guo suddenly woke up and listened again carefully. It seemed like it truly wasn’t a dream. These sounds came from beside her — from that newly hired network manager, Ye Xiu.

Chen Guo sat up wanting to see and the jacket slid off of her body. She promptly grabbed it at it and recognized it as Ye Xiu’s jacket. It looks like this person’s quite attentive.” Chen Guo said secretly. Only, how long has this jacket not been washed? It’s kind of smelly.

Chen Guo picked up the jacket and sat down. Right when she was about to talk to Ye Xiu, she all of sudden sat there dumbfounded.

A pair of hands that made people’s cheeks stream with tears appeared in front of her eyes — Ye Xiu’s two hands.

These two hands looked extremely thin. His fingers were long and slender and his joints weren’t rough like ordinary male’s were. His fingertips were thin and his fingernails were clean and tidy. This was completely inconsistent with his sloppy outer appearance.

Chen Guo had originally never been a very attentive person. But after a lady with extremely beautiful hands came to the Internet Cafe, she became influenced and gradually began paying attention. Now, she was astonished by Ye Xiu’s two hands.

The hands were beautiful hands. The tapping sounds were also like music. But his actions… …Ye Xiu’s left hands bounced around on the keyboard. Cheng Guo only had one feeling: his hands moved extremely slowly.

Hand speed, the amount of actions done in a certain amount of time, usually counted in minutes, were abbreviated as APM. Glory wasn’t a strategy game. Players only controlled a single character, but skill usage was complicated. As a result, the number of fine actions that needed to be done were high, so high hand speed was a must.

A player with a high hand speed made quick and meticulous moves. The strength and duration of each keystroke all directly influenced the extent that the in-game character moved. These changes added further complexity to battles. Only, these types of good or bad changes had differences. For example, some people only raised their APM to look good and never stopped making actions. But making every action count and having high APM, only pro-level players could do.

APM. This was the publicly recognized skill level divide in Glory. When ordinary players tried to go above 200 APM, they were basically hitting their keys randomly. Even for pro-gamers, going above 200 APM needed a certain battle scenario. The level of the opponent couldn’t be too weak, so that they needed to go over 200 APM to fight.

For ordinary players, 70% of the players were between 80 to 120 APM. 25% couldn’t even reach 80 APM and the other 5% exceeded 120. Though among experts(5%), it is said that there was no lack of players that could reach 200 APM, that professional level of skill.

Chen Guo’s hand speed hovered around 120 but could exceed that under certain circumstances. Therefore, Chen Guo believed that she was among that 5%, an expert among ordinary players.

But for Ye Xiu, Chen Guo didn’t doubt that his APM hadn’t even reached 80. Right when she noticed this, Chen Guo suddenly found that that rich rhythmic tapping sound also disappeared. The sounds she had heard could only be heard so distinctly because of his slow movements.

“Am I dreaming again… …” Chen Guo shook her head. She wanted to hear that previous dreamy sound, but found that it wouldn’t appear no matter how hard she listened. The hands she noticed now operated as if they were disabled, yet were also hands that made people jealous.

Chen Guo was now engrossed in these two hands so much that she even forgot to look at the screen. But soon, Ye Xiu’s two hands stopped. Only then did Chen Guo react and look at the screen. She immediately widened her eyes: “Midnight Phantom Cat?”

After saying this, the Midnight Phantom Cat had already fallen down from up above dropping numerous items.

And at this moment, Chen Guo saw an eye-grabbing system announcement flash through the screen: Tenth Server, Midnight Phantom Cat First Hidden Boss Kill: Lord Grim.

“D*mn!!” Chen Guo slapped her hands onto Ye Xiu’s back: “You have real skill!” It didn’t matter whether his hands were disabled or not. To be able to be the first one to kill, this was something that Chen Guo had never achieved before.

”

Right when Ye Xiu was about to look at the dropped items, this slap truly came unexpectedly. It almost made him swallow the cigarette in his mouth. In the end, only a strand of silver-white smoke fell freely onto the keyboard. Chen Guo, who had originally been peeking at how Ye Xiu worked, saw this scene. Everything about being the first to kill the hidden BOSS had already been completely forgotten. She pulled at Ye Xiu’s headphones and snarled next to his ear: “Who let you smoke here?”

“Huh?” The cigarette in Ye Xiu’s mouth hadn’t been extinguished yet. He didn’t really understand what Chen Guo meant.

“NO SMOKING, did you not see that!?” Chen Guo pointed at the wall.

Ye Xiu turned his head and carefully examined the two words on the wall: “Are you kidding me? No smoking at an Internet Cafe?”

“This area is no-smoking. The smoking area is on the other side.” Chen Guo pointed.

。

“Then let’s go over.” Ye Xiu said.

“No, smelling smoke makes my head hurt.” Chen Guo said.

“Then what do we do?” Ye Xiu looked as if he had encountered an impossibly difficult problem.

“You can’t smoke one less cigarette?” Chen Guo furiously said.

“I can’t or my head will hurt.” Ye Xiu said.

“You you you… …” Chen Guo discovered that she had begun to understand this Ye Xiu. Although he could casually accept living in that tiny storage room, he was definitely not an easy person to deal with.

“I’ll go to the smoking area myself then. Boss, you should go rest.” Ye Xiu said at this moment.

“Wait a second, you never said how you got the first kill!” Chen Guo said.

“Nothing much. The team all died. The BOSS’s life was low. It was easy pickings.” Ye Xiu said quite casually.

“Oh so it’s like this.” Chen Guo’s tone still carried admiration. The reward for being the first one to kill this sort of low level hidden BOSS wasn’t special. It was at most some extra experience and money. There wouldn’t be any top quality equipment. But this would be forever recorded on the standings and he would be a legend on this server. A lot of players liked this sort of feeling. To the majority of ordinary players, getting on this sort of standing could only happen in the beginner levels. Once the dungeons became harder, no matter if it was a regular or a hidden BOSS, killing it required a certain amount of skill to beat. When they got to the heavenly domain, even those highly skilled teams had no chance. All of the records there were set by professional teams.