The virtual arena was no different than the virtual space in terms of appearance, the entire place being an endless starry sky.

The difference was that, with one thought from Gu Xiqiao, pavilions, towers, and animals would appear, bird chirping sounds could be heard in your ears, and the scenery was extremely lifelike.

Feeling playful all of a sudden, she thought about Jiang Shuxuan’s figure, like his perfectly sculptured face, the thin lips and high nose, a pair of cold, onyx eyes. His eyelashes were actually quite long, but not many people noticed that, since they didn’t dare to look directly into his eyes.

And finally, the faint glint in his eyes that was full of invisible pressure.

When the outline of the figure appeared in front of her for and looked at her for an instant, Gu Xiqiao was taken aback. It was incredibly realistic and flawless, from his appearance to his breathing, there was no difference at all.

If the person in front of her was not so realistic, she wouldn’t have known that she could remember so many details of this person so clearly.

She waved a hand, vanishing the entire scene in front of her, leaving behind only the vast starry sky.

Standing still for a while, she then simulated an open space. Moving both her hands and drawing patterns in the air, she started practising and testing her newest power. Green lights rose suddenly, and then a huge crater about ten meters deep appeared on the ground with a ’boom’.

[Beauty Qiao, your power is looking good, it seems like there is great potential in Tendon Forging level.] The system spirit floated beside her. [Try out the Eight Trigram array again, when you advance another two levels, then you can condense your chi into a physical item filled with power, just like Jiang Shuxuan did with his frost blade.]

Gu Xiqiao nodded her head, and with a thought, eight pieces of jade floated around her body, the entire space sealed off immediately.

[When you have enough points, the virtual arena can still be upgraded. When it reaches a certain level, it can be brought into reality too.] While Gu Xiqiao had been playing, the system spirit had found information regarding the virtual arena in its database. [You have to earn lots of points!]

“It’s not like I can earn points whenever I want it,” Gu Xiqiao said, sighing, “Even the 1,000 points the last round nearly killed me.]

[Take it slowly, we’re not in a hurry.] The system spirit said, floating around the virtual space, [Oh, you continue to stay here, Beauty Qiao. I’m going out a few rounds!]

“Go ahead.” The system spirit had been in this empty space for who knows how long, she knew it wouldn’t be able to resist.

Playing around in the virtual arena for a while more, she experimented on the skills that she knows, before coming to a stop, doing her daily missions instead. After she was done, she took out the development plans for Baixing Village.

***

The next day, Gu Xiqiao woke up early to do her morning exercises as usual, with Haha and Xixi remaining by her side all the way. She met a lot of familiar people on the road, and when she reached the place that she normally practises her Five Animal Play, the familiar figure of an old man was there.

“Little Gu, you’re finally back,” The old man smiled as he looked at Gu Xiqiao. When he hadn’t seen her a few days back, he had inquired about it to Jiang Shuxuan, who was also doing his exercises that time, and found out that she had gone traveling.

After a few days, he finally saw her again, “Come and take a look whether I’m doing this right or not.”

The old man had discussed with her previously, and started using the slightly modified version of her Five Animal Play. Although he didn’t have the compatibility with it, when he moved this time, there was an obvious flow in his meridians. After finishing up the motions, he sighed happily. “People in my house recently said that it looked like I got younger.”

He also felt that his body was much lighter, he used to be only able to jog for half an hour last time, but now he could go for at least an hour!

He felt that this must have been Gu Xiqiao’s doing, but she would always smile without saying anything when he said so, and the old man could only sigh and not bring it up again.

The two had not seen each other for a long time, and they had a lot of catching up to do, talking for a long time.

When they couldn’t avoid the fact that it was time to eat, they parted ways.

Mrs. Zhang had prepared a familiar soup, with the same taste. Gu Xiqiao drank it down and thought, ’If this goes on, it wouldn’t be hard for me to gain weight.’

After eating, she got ready to go out. When Xixi heard that she was heading out, and it flew to her shoulder immediately, indicating that it would also follow. Gu Xiqiao rubbed its head. “I’m heading out to settle some things, why do you want to come with, trying to act cute?”

“Beauty Qiao, I have great capabilities, who knows when you will need it. Master Jiang had also told me to follow you wherever you go, in order to protect you. If anything happens to you, he will pull out my beautiful feathers!”

“Alright, you can follow me, but don’t talk and don’t eat anything others give you,” Gu Xiqiao agreed, knowing that if it was Jiang Shuxuan’s order, she wouldn’t be able to refuse.

Xixi gave Haha a triumph look at Gu Xiqiao’s agreement and compromise.

“Woof woof woof!” (Get lost, you bitch!)

“Chirp chirp~” (Sigh, going with Beauty Qiao makes me so happy~)

“Woof woof woof!” (Get down you shameless thing!)

“Chirp chirp chirp~” (Are you going to bite me if I don’t come down~)

Haha’s inner heart: Damn retard!

***

Gu Xiqiao’s plan today was to first stop by Nine Heavens Network company to check in. Since Mu Zong wasn’t there for the time being, she wanted to see how Luo Wenlang was holding up with managing the company. After that, she would go to the hospital to see how Mu Jiatong and Luo Wenlin were doing.

Instead of driving her own pink car, she took a taxi to the city center.

After visiting the company a few times, the receptionist was already familiar with her, and let her up without much questions. She only spared a glance at her shoulder, which held a beautiful flaming red…bird?

When she got into the elevator, the system spirit who had been out the whole night woke up in a daze. [Morning, Beauty Qiao~]

’It’s not morning anymore,’ Gu Xiqiao took out her phone to look at the time, and raised an eyebrow. ’Being a mass bunch of data, you still need sleep?’

[It feels different,] The system said, materializing into a spirit form in front of her. [I didn’t need to rest last time, but now I can leave to take on a shape, so I’m considered to be a living being now, and rest has now become a way for me to replenish energy. Of course, when I get upgraded to the highest level, then I can truly become a life on my own.]

[Being able to feel tired and sleepy is really a good feeling.]

’You can become a life on your own?’ A pair of beautiful eyes widened in surprise.

[There is information pertaining to this in the database, but I think it’s impossible, there had never been a record of anyone ever succeeding in the entire database. Anyway, I’m already satisfied with things now!] The system spirit said, as it followed Gu Xiqiao to exit the elevator.

’I’ll try my best,’ Gu Xiqiao said, giving a small sigh. She felt that the goal was too difficult to achieve, but if there was even a sliver of hope, she would definitely try.

[Beauty Qiao, you’re the best!]

She had come at an inconvenient time, Luo Wenlang was having a meeting with the upper management. The secretary was one that Mu Zong often used, and she was one of the few that knew Gu Xiqiao’s identity. She greeted her with respect and brought her to the general manager’s office, and also gave her a pile of documents for her to look over.

Gu Xiqiao leaned on the front of the table, flipping through the documents.

She read through the pile quickly, taking just one second for each paper, and five minutes later, she was done with them. While she had flipped through the documents, she also picked out several ones that she deemed important, setting it to the side.

The secretary watched as Gu Xiqiao read through the papers quickly, and she assumed that she was merely glancing through it without reading it in detail, so she didn’t say anything. But then Gu Xiqiao picked up the pile and handed it to her, “The first book, page two, the second book, page five, the third book, page five, the fourth book, page seven and the fifth book, page six. The reports and bills are not tallied.”

Without further words from Gu Xiqiao, the secretary flipped to the mentioned pages to read through it.

Twenty minutes later, “Miss Gu, I will take care of it.”

The secretary assured Gu Xiqiao, she was Mu Zong’s secretary after all, and there were a lot of small and big matters she was in charge of, and so was familiar with the workings of the company. But she didn’t expect to see someone who could read through the documents so fast, and spot the problems in them with just a few quick glances.

She had turned the pages so fast, did she really finish everything? Even if she could read ten lines at a glance, it wouldn’t be that fast, right? What more, a lot of these documents required a large number of calculations to be done.

The secretary looked shocked, but she had her fair share of meeting all kinds of talent before, so she recovered quickly and pushed aside her feelings, and proceeded to update Gu Xiqiao on the recent developments.

After a few minutes, Luo Wenlang finally came through the door. When his eyes fell on Gu Xiqiao, he looked at her with surprise. “Why are you here!”

“Just having a look around.” Gu Xiqiao dismissed the secretary with a wave. “How’s it going, everything alright?”

She knew that this was the first time Luo Wenlang was managing the company, and was most likely unused to it.

“I was caught unprepared for a bit, but fortunately, Uncle Wang is here to teach me, it’s been better than expected.” Luo Wenlang laughed lightly. As a genius second to only Gu Xiqiao, his intelligence was not comparable to regular people. Although it was hectic on the first day when he took over, but with the help of Wang Bo and the secretary, he pulled together everything by the second day.

Seeing that he was sufficiently independent, Wang Bo left him alone and dove right into his sea of data once again.

Luo Wenlang served a cup of tea to Gu Xiqiao, staring at Xixi on her shoulder in curiosity, and then seemed to think of something. “That’s right, I went to pick up someone with Uncle Wang yesterday night.”

Xixi had vowed to Jiang Shuxuan that he wouldn’t speak in front of outsiders, and it took a lot of effort on its part to swallow down the words it wanted to say, ’Have you fallen for my beauty?’

“Who?” Gu Xiqiao asked, raising an elegant brow. Since the both of them had gone together, it must be someone quite important.

“According to Uncle Wang, he’s a great hacker that has just returned from overseas,” Luo Wenlang smiled when he said that. “Our company will be adding another talent soon, from the looks of it.”

A hacker that had just returned? Gu Xiqiao suddenly recalled something that Jiang Shuxuan had said yesterday night. “If he’s such a great god, why is he interested in a small company like ours?”

This time, Luo Wenlang hadn’t managed to speak, and the system spirit floated in front of Gu Xiqiao, giving her a cheeky smile. [Beauty Qiao, you look down on me too much. The things that I produced are all out of this world, have you forgotten? All the firewalls on the internet on earth are nothing in my eyes, I can even pull out all the secrets of your military bases now for you to see!]

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep