Guide on How to Fail at Online Dating

Jing Huan had a class in the morning the next day, so he got up at 8am and felt sleepy in the breakfast shop. His head kept drooping as if he was fishing.

He had been tormenting himself for a long time last night as he studied how to play the accompaniment, how to record himself, and how to upload the recording… it took him two hours to figure everything out.

"Huanhuan, did you turn into a thief last night?" Gao Zixiang carried the breakfast for the three of them over with a tray. "Didn't you leave pretty early yesterday?"

Jing Huan rubbed his eyes. "Didn't sleep well."

"Even your voice is hoarse." Gao Zixiang sat down. "Caught a cold?"

"No."

It was just that it took a few recordings yesterday before he was satisfied, which was why his voice was hoarse now.

Good songs were difficult to sing after all, Jing Huan sighed.

He drank two mouthfuls of soybean milk, its viscous sweetness spreading on the tip of his tongue, which sobered him up a little.

"PFFTT-" Lu Wenhao, who was sitting next to him, was wearing his earphones and wasn't in a hurry to eat. His gaze had been fixed the entire time on his phone screen, and he was laughing so hard his mouth was constantly agape.

Jing Huan frowned. "What's wrong with him?"

"Low humour threshold bei, he has been laughing since he got up until now." Gao Zixiang pointed at his ear. "This thing? He didn't even take it off when he was brushing his teeth."

Jing Huan uttered an "oh" and didn't worry about it. He lowered his head and took a bite out of a xiaolongbao; the xiaolongbao was filled with an adequate amount of filling and quite a lot of soup spilled out after just one gentle bite.

Lu Wenhao vaguely heard their conversation. He took off one side of his earphones. "Hey, Xiangxiang, you didn't see your guild's group chat this morning right?"

Gao Zixiang shook his head. "It's so early in the morning, how would there already be people in the guild's group chat?"

"There are! There are already 99+ messages! Someone shared a song in the group chat, it's one of the entries for NCH's singing contest from another server." Lu Wenhao found it amusing when he thought about it. "It's super popular now. It's only been uploaded for a night, but it already has tens of thousands of likes, and it soared straight to the top of the competition likes ranking list, isn't that amazing?"

"So you've had your earphones in the whole morning because you were listening to someone sing?" Gao Zixiang said, "It's a girl ba?"

Lu Wenhao, "It is a girl… no, the main point isn't her gender."

Jing Huan leaned over to Lu Wenhao's side. "Let me hear it, I'd like to see what kind of voice could make you listen to it all morning."

Lu Wenhao obediently placed his earphones gently into Jing Huan's ears.

A familiar voice travelled into his ears. "The horses run towards the south, but the people look towards the north!

Towards the north, the grass are just dry and yellow, with dust flying high!"

"PUU- cough cough… cough…" Jing Huan was shocked, and his food got caught in the middle of his throat, choking him until his face flushed red, and he quickly flung the earphones away in a panic.

Lu Wenhao was stunned. "What, what's wrong?"

Jing Huan shook his head, still coughing quite harshly, and he couldn't speak for quite some time.

Gao Zixiang quickly handed him a bottle of mineral water. Jing Huan accepted it and gulped down a few mouthfuls before he finally calmed down.

"Nothing…" He mumbled, "Just choked."

"You gave me a fright, your face's red from coughing so hard." Lu Wenhao said, "Tsk, you even flung my earphones on the ground… so how was it? Not bad right?"

Flushed from coughing? He turned around with a stunned look. "You just said… what about this song?"

Lu Wenhao was baffled. "This song, it sounds good?"

"No," Jing Huan took a deep breath. "You said something about a likes ranking list…"

"Oh oh, this song took first place on the likes ranking list ah, it got more than 100,000 plays in just one night. It just proves that NCH isn't over yet, and all that talk about how they've been losing players is just bullshit." Lu Wenhao said with a smile.

Jing Huan was completely stunned now. He blurted out, "How can this song be ranked first for the number of likes?"

Lu Wenhao was stunned as well. “What do you mean by that? Wasn’t it sung pretty well?”

Jing Huan snapped out of his daze a little, his sleepiness already vanished without a trace. “What I meant was&#k2026; didn’t you say last night that no one would listen to this sort of encouraging song?”

After he went back last night, he made a careful study before choosing this《Loyalty to the Country》; not only was it encouraging, it was also very optimistic. He had sung it before during military training in high school, and he had been the lead singer at that time too.

Because he was a little OCD, if one section wasn't sung well, he would feel uncomfortable all over when he heard the recording, so he made several recordings before uploading it.

According to his plan, this recording of his would soon be submerged in the sea of other works with nary a ripple, then he would peacefully get a participation award.

"This song is no longer within the category of 'encouraging." Lu Wenhao said, "Isn't this more of a novelty?"

Jing Huan, "…"

Time to call the police.

Gao Zixiang picked up the earphones out of curiosity and listened to part of it.

Honestly, although this song choice made its listeners a little speechless, this girl sounded so impassioned when she sang it that it was actually seemed quite imposing. The more one listened to it, the more into it they would get.

"It's indeed not bad." Gao Zixiang suddenly recalled something. "But Huanhuan sings it better than she does. We sang this in class during our high school's military training, and Huanhuan was the lead singer, amazing right?"

"Amazing." Lu Wenhao said, "Let's put this on the list when we go KTV next time!"

Jing Huan was no longer in the mood to listen to what they were saying anymore.

This incident made him feel muddle headed throughout the whole morning, and after class, he immediately went home without stopping to rest and didn't even bother to eat.

He opened up the game, and right when he entered NCH's interface, even that hung for a bit before loading.

【Is Gege Big has sent you a friend request.】

【Xiao Jiejie wanna date? has sent you a friend request.】

【Fallen Autumn Leaves has sent you a friend request.】

…………

The right side of his screen was crammed with friend requests, and no gaps could be seen at all. Jing Huan had been playing games for several years, but he had never seen anything like this before.

Just as he felt at a loss for what to do, a megaphone suddenly popped up to his left.

[Megaphone] Flowers Born in Sludge: Xiao! Tian! Jing! Has! Come! Online! Coordinates in the outskirts 81.22!

Jing Huan, "?"

Before he could react, countless characters gushed over from outside the map, and he was instantly surrounded by a giant crowd of people.

【Xiao Jiejie wanna date? has invited you to join his party. Yes, No.】

【Wait till Daybreak has invited you to join his party. Yes, No.】

【Twilight gradually cools has invited you to join his party. Yes, No.】

Innumerable dialog boxes popped up, and Jing Huan didn't even have the time to reject them all. His in game character was covered by so many dialog boxes that it couldn't even move. When he found a gap in between the boxes, he quickly flew away and fled to his house in the game.

NCH had a home system, and it had a lot of ways to play with it, but normally Jing Huan couldn't be bothered with it. His house was the lowest grade house that could be found in the game.

[Friend] Vigorous Little Mosquito Repellent: Goddess, are you there? [starry eyes]

Great, even his form of address had changed.

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: …a goddess isn't here, but I am. What's going on today??

It was just one song, it shouldn't be this exaggerated ba.

[Friend] Vigorous Little Mosquito Repellent: You've been peeled in the forum.

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: ???

Jing Huan's first thought was: the day for getting onto an 818 has come at last.

That's all right. He was willing to sacrifice his small self to entertain the public.

Friend] Vigorous Little Mosquito Repellent: You're now the goddess of the male players of NCH.

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: …

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: NCH has finally driven its players mad.

Vigorous Little Mosquito Repellent wasn't spouting nonsense. A post popped up on NCH's forum today that detailed all of the experiences of the ID "Xiao Tianjing" ever since its birth.

First of all, she had bad luck; an ignorant young girl bought the account of a notorious female swindler, and after getting hunted down and insulted for several days, she finally managed to clear her name. After that, she let bygones be bygones and joined Idle Pavilion, and even helped her guild get the first clear of the new guild instance.

What a strong and magnanimous girl ah!

Moreover, she was loyal. She had only been revolving around Yearning For ever since she bought her account and turned a blind eye to all other men. She was fearless in the face of Yearning For's ex who was both hunting her down and threatening her, and she bravely expressed her love in a live broadcast and was determined to not give up even after getting rejected by Yearning For an n number of times.

What a serious and brave girl ah!

And lastly, there was her voice. She sang well, and the song she chose was both stern and positive. One glance at her, and you could tell that she was a good, patriotic girl, and she was nothing like those other girls who sang《Meow Meow Meow》and《Shape Up》.

What an upright and reserved girl ah!!!

Jing Huan wanted to flip a table when he saw all this.

He had never established this many character settings ah!!

Jing Huan closed the forum and activated the function of "rejecting stranger's messagers", and it was finally a lot quieter.

He transported himself to the main city since he wanted to do a daily, but before he even got his quest, a bunch of party invites filled his screen.

Party formation settings couldn't be turned off in NCH. Jing Huan stood in the main city in a daze for a while without being able to take even a single step in any direction, so he could only slip back home once again with his tail between his legs.

… it's so troublesome to be famous.

He stood at home, not knowing what to do for a moment — until he clicked on his friend list and saw his friend's name lit up.

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: Gege! T.T

[Friend] Yearning For: ?

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: There are a ton of people blocking me, and I'm stuck at home now since I can't get out at all QAQ

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: Can you help me [wipes tears], I haven't done a single daily today…

When he was alone, other players could always invite him into their parties at any time.

But if he was already in a party, then he wouldn't get invited anymore. A dialog box wouldn't pop up when other players requested to join their party either since one could just accept or reject in the party interface, so it wouldn't be much of a hindrance.

But in NCH, a one-man party wouldn't be considered a party. Even if he formed a party by himself, he would still be judged by the system to be alone and could be invited to join parties by other people.

So now he only had three options: one was to wait for the enthusiasm of the people outside to wane, the second was to go offline, and the third was to find someone to form a party with him and do his dailies with him.

Actually, Jing Huan didn't expect Yearning For to help him at all. He had other friends in his friend list that he could call, but he still PM-ed Yearning For first.

For no other reason than to make his existence known after he just came online.

He opened up his friend list and after pondering for awhile, he clicked on Love is For You to Eat's dialog box.

"Chichi, where are you? Could you form a party with me-"

Jing Huan had just typed out his message, but before he could send it, Yearning For's reply came first.

[Friend] Yearning For: Where are you.

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing:（*·Δ·*）!!

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: Gege come to my house! Unit number 1219!

Ten seconds later, a black robed man appeared in the scene.

Xiang Huaizhi cast a glance at the simple and crude house, created a party, then pulled Xiao Tianjing into the party.

"What daily do you want to do first?" He asked.

A few seconds later, Xiao Tianjing turned on her mic. She coughed once. "Let's do the sect master's one first ba, Gege."

"Got it."

The male players who had been guarding outside by the house's cart driver caught ahold of the instant Xiao Tianjing appeared and sent her a party request-

【Xiao Tianjing is already in Yearning For's party, your invite has failed!】

Male Players: "…?"

Who was the one who said that after Xiao Tianjing's pestering, Yearning For did feel moved but rejected her in the end?!

Jing Huan lay in the party and comfortably did his dailies while thinking about what he should do next.

He was a catfisher, so he would naturally hide when he could. Those who mixed around in the forums were all very cunning, what if he got exposed by someone?

However, he still had to get the participation award, so he couldn't just back out of the competition…

Just as he was feeling vexed, a row of yellow characters popped up in the game.

【Immortal Mengmeng has set you as a private message target, please take note of your private message channel.】

Fuck, why was this sister here again?! Why hasn't the soul of the deceased departed yet?

[Private Message] Immortal Mengmeng: Wow, not only do you want the guy, but you even want the prize too. Look at how capable you are.

[Private Message] Immortal Mengmeng: Just wait for the semis ba, I don't believe your trick will work a second time.

Jing Huan was stunned. He opened up the competition interface to take a look, and only then did he realise that his ID was displayed as first place on the likes ranking list with Immortal Mengmeng following closely behind.

He clicked on Immortal Mengmeng's entry to listen to it.

It was strangely good.

Jing Huan typed as he wanted to mock her a bit, but before sending it out, he suddenly remembered something and stopped.

He raised an eyebrow and suddenly laughed.

Sister, you're the one who delivered yourself to my doorstep, so you can't blame me for this.

Xiang Huaizhi didn't know himself why he had agreed to do Xiao Tianjing's dailies with her, he clearly had a few of his own he hadn't finished yet.

He dragged his party and walked over to the Fairy Fox Cave's sect master and helped her hand in her quest. Suddenly, a familiar name appeared on the left side of his screen-

[Megaphone] Xiao Tianjing: Immortal Mengmeng, I'd like to think that I've been very patient with you, yet you still insist on pressuring me so harshly, so I don't need to leave you anymore face either. Here, I'll give you an answer: I can let you win the singing contest, and I can give you the Top1 placing on the likes ranking list, but not! Gege! No matter how many times you threaten me! No matter how many times you hunt me down! My love for Xiang Gege! Will never change!!!

—

Juurensha: In which no matter what Huanhuan does, he just digs his pit deeper…..hahaha good job Huanhuan!