There were five people standing opposite him, and the account he bought was a total dud, so he barely got in a hit.

Damn.

Chris Brooks sat up straight, skillfully using the universal moves available to every character—rolling, jumping, taking to the air—dodging each of their skills one by one.

[Current]Don't Frown: You T...

[Current]Don't Frown: Can you be reasonable!!

[Current]Love Unheeded: There’s no reasoning with a scammer like you.

[Current]Don't Frown: No, really, this account has changed hands... What do I have to say for you to believe me?!

Just as he finished typing this line, Chris Brooks accidentally pressed the wrong key.

It was over.

He watched as, on the game screen, his rather weak character took a heavy axe blow, and his health dropped to almost nothing in an instant.

[Current]Love Unheeded: Either pay back the money, or die and lose a level—your choice.

With that, the other side pressed the attack, and Chris Brooks didn’t struggle anymore, quickly getting killed and sent back to the respawn point.

He hadn’t even recovered from this baffling death when a huge server-wide announcement popped up in the lower left corner.

【[Announcement]Love Unheeded: Idle Pavilion is hunting down Don't Frown 24/7, as usual. Anyone who teams up with her for dungeons, we’re not responsible for friendly fire.】

What the heck?!

Chris Brooks stood at the respawn point, pondering for a while, then mounted up and headed toward the forum NPC.

Wherever there are people, there’s a “jianghu”—a world of intrigue. In the game world of Nine Heroes, even a small world is a jianghu. Likewise, where there’s a jianghu, there’s conflict, and the best place for drama and gossip is always the forums.

Chris Brooks scrolled down a page and found a post about himself... or rather, about this account.

【Idle Pavilion is hunting down the female scammer Don't Frown across the entire server.】

Chris Brooks skimmed it and finally understood why, right after logging in, enemies had come knocking.

The original owner of the account was a scammer. Two years ago, she first scammed the leader of a small guild, cleaned out his account, and transferred the guild funds as well. When the scam was discovered, she put the account up for sale and disappeared.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Less than half a month later, someone bought the account. The buyer claimed to be a wealthy, overseas-educated woman looking for a strong guild to run dungeons and PK. Soon, she joined the server’s top guild, Idle Pavilion, and successfully hooked up with one of the guild’s big shots. The two got married in-game and were lovey-dovey for over half a year. Then, one time when the big shot was away on a business trip, he came back to find his account cleaned out, and his in-game wife had borrowed a lot of money and gear from guildmates in his name—then vanished again.

It wasn’t until someone noticed that the bank account number she used to borrow money was exactly the same as the original owner’s that everyone realized—the account had never changed hands at all!

Reading this, even Chris Brooks had to admire her.

With skills like that, why not do something better?

Scamming money and feelings—this really pissed off the Idle Pavilion big shots. The entire 200-person guild started camping Don't Frown 24/7. After being killed twice, Don't Frown put the account up for sale again.

Idle Pavilion wouldn’t let it go, posting countless server-wide announcements and forum threads, declaring that anyone who dared buy the account would be hunted down, no matter if it changed hands or not. This made the account impossible to sell for a while, the price dropping lower and lower, until finally, it landed in the hands of an unlucky buyer who bought it without looking—

Which was him.

...No wonder the price was so low.

Chris Brooks expressionlessly scrolled to the last page of the thread, where the latest reply read—

1932F: The server’s two biggest scumbag women: one is Don't Frown, the other is Emily Harris. These two could debut as a “jerk duo.”

Chris Brooks memorized the poster’s ID.

The person who hadn’t even frowned after being killed just now now wished he could reach through the screen and beat the other guy up.

Love Unheeded sent thirty private messages in a row, and the world chat was buzzing.

[World]Dizzy Flowers: What’s going on? Don't Frown is back? Spent all the money from the last scam?

[World]Destined Grace and Pearl: Let’s see which guild is going to suffer this time!

[World]Wind Chaser: Love is awesome!

[World]Freer Than The Wind: Seriously, Sis Frown, why do this to yourself? Why not just start over with a new account? Why insist on dying on this one?

[World]Destined Grace and Pearl: Hey, shut up upstairs! Don’t give her ideas! What if she listens?!

…………

The world chat was so noisy and fast that you couldn’t even read a full sentence.

It wasn’t until the yellow system announcement had scrolled by for a while that players finally noticed.

【System Announcement: Player “Don't Frown” has used a Name Change Stone to change their name to “Little Sweet Chris.” From now on, the player “Don't Frown” is officially renamed “Little Sweet Chris.”】

[World]Destined Grace and Pearl: ???

[World]Dizzy Flowers: ??

[World]Freer Than The Wind: ???