Delta: Who are you saying has suffered a loss of strength?

Chapter 333 The Personality After Drinking

Han Che's gaze flickered slightly as he looked at the two badges Qi Yuzhe held up. "Exactly the same situation as mine."

"Then let me tell you about my experience, so you can take it as a reference."

"I suspect that becoming stronger again might require using those badges. My system has hinted more than once that I need to use badges to continue getting stronger."

"Use it?" Qi Yuzhe raised an eyebrow. "How can you use a badge? Just carry it around? Then why haven't you used it yet?"

Han Che shook his head. "My initial assessment is that this badge is probably similar to a brain-computer interface and needs to be implanted and bound to a system."

"Because it's a brain-computer interface, and the system keeps giving me suggestions, I'm a bit resistant..."

Qi Yuzhe looked at Han Che's expression, stared at the two badges in his hand, and pondered for a moment. "Perhaps your intuition is right..."

"After I defeated you and obtained the 'I am the Raven' badge, the system popped up and hinted to me once to use the badge, but at that time, I was severely injured by you and then I passed out, so I forgot about it."

"Then I went to the player world with you and haven't had a chance to use it since."

"My feeling after I evacuated from Dam Zero was completely different from when I entered Dam Zero; the dizziness was extremely intense."

"I even started feeling inexplicably sad, and then I started thinking about life... and then they told me I had received this other badge."

"I suggest we hold off for now, partly because neither of us is sure what the side effects might be."

"Another reason is that our current combat strength is sufficient, so there's no rush to take this risk. The item is in our hands; it can't escape. We'll figure it out later."

Qi Yuzhe also agreed: "I agree. Let's put it aside for now and talk about it later if needed."

Qi Yuzhe turned his head to look at Han Che, staring at his serious face as he pondered, and said, "Seriously, why did you create that kind of persona in the player world?"

Han Che raised his eyelids and glanced at him: "What kind of persona?"

"Uh, how should I put it, it's just very pure..." Qi Yuzhe thought for a moment, opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if he was thinking about the right words, "like a pure brute, with a kind of beauty in the folds of the cerebral cortex that have been ironed."

"?"

Han Che narrowed his eyes and frowned. "Are you really that subtle when you're cursing?"

"See! You can understand when I'm teasing you now!" Qi Yuzhe grinned, revealing a set of bright white teeth. "If we were outside, you might think I was praising you!"

"Get the hell out of here!" Han Che glared at him.

"You're the same way, pretending to be a proper college student in public. Look at the way you're smiling now, it's disgusting!"

"What do you mean by 'pretending'?" Qi Yuzhe raised an eyebrow, his smile widening even further. "I'm just a legitimate college student. And where did my smile look disgusting?"

Han Che moved forward a bit and pointed at Qi Yuzhe's face: "You know how disgusting Raven's smile is. Look at yourself now."

"If you could behave like that in the player world while in prison, I'd be thankful. At least in the player world you look like a normal person, but the way you're behaving now makes people want to punch you."

Qi Yuzhe was stunned for a moment after hearing this, and he looked down at his own appearance.

He was completely sunk into the sofa, his legs spread wide apart, one crossed over the other, his toes twitching.

He raised both arms and rested them on either side of the chair back, his posture too relaxed, like he was sprawled out on his own kang (heated brick bed).

Realizing that his posture was not quite right, he finally dropped the thunderous smile he had maintained all night.

"...My image in the player world is very different from what it is now?" he asked.

Han Che was taken aback by his question. "Could it be that I also...?"

Qi Yuzhe studied him for a while and nodded slightly. "You need to be more serious now than you are outside, or rather, more rigid."

"It's not that your image in the player world is bad; in fact, it makes you easier for people to get along with. I thought you were deliberately pretending for that purpose..."

Han Che denied Qi Yuzhe's guess, "No, I wasn't deliberately acting. I always thought I was like this in prison. Am I being serious now?"

"Serious. Just like the Geheros I know. That tone and expression, how should I put it, give me the feeling that he's ready to blow my head off with a cigarette at any moment."

"So when you put on that mask and stood there, I felt really uneasy standing next to you."

As he said this, he grinned again, making an exaggerated expression, like a child who had been frightened and was crying.

"I fucking thought you were acting," Han Che said. "You act like an innocent young man in the player world, but you're quick-witted."

"You look much better than you do now. Look at that smiling face of yours, what good is it except to show off your white teeth?"

Qi Yuzhe's expression suddenly froze, and the smile that had been radiating from his lips slowly returned to its original shape. "I smiled again?"

He rubbed the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, as if to confirm his expression. "I didn't make that expression on purpose. I was just talking normally."

The two fell silent at the same time.

Han Che and Qi Yuzhe exchanged a glance, both reading the same thing from each other's eyes.

"Will dangerous areas change our personalities?" Han Che asked first.

"Make the warden more like a warden, and the raven more like a raven..." Qi Yuzhe added.

"So our personalities were warped?" Han Che asked. "Did the danger zone directly alter our brains?"

Qi Yuzhe shook his head slightly. "I think it's because his personality has changed, but I don't think it directly reversed our personalities, because I'm currently doing my best to control myself and can communicate normally."

"It's more like getting drunk. Some people who are usually quiet become talkative after drinking too much, while others who are usually easygoing become crying and sentimental after drinking too much."

"It makes people naturally and unconsciously reveal another aspect of their personality." He gestured with his hand in front of him.

"Looking back now, grinning and sitting so casually are not my style, but I did it naturally."

Han Che pondered, "Your analysis makes sense, so what is this? What's the point of doing this?"

"Perhaps they don't want a hot-blooded warden, nor do they want a calm and intelligent raven."

"Think about it, what's the relationship between Gherus and Raven in the lore? They're enemies."

"If the warden is too easy to get along with and the raven is too easy to communicate with, then there will be no confrontation between them."

"But if the warden remains a cold-faced, stern prison lord, and Raven remains a mad prisoner, then everything makes sense."

Han Che paused, taken aback by Qi Yuzhe's last sentence. He had been listening intently, but Qi Yuzhe's final words had swayed him. "Stop trying to make yourself look good. Are you really a college student?"

"Yes, the real deal!" Raven's signature smile reappeared.

"It's so nice not having entered the workforce yet..." Han Che muttered to himself. "What are you studying? What year are you in?"

"Materials Science and Engineering, double major." Qi Yuzhe said these words with a hint of pride, but quickly deflated. "I'm a senior this year, and I even got a spot in graduate school, but I ended up here in jail."

He looked down at his prison uniform and gave a wry smile. "Sigh... it seems I won't be graduating now. My advisor probably thinks I've vanished into thin air."

"You're a top student?" Han Che was a little surprised, looking at the crow-like smile on the other side, finding it hard to believe.