One has to admit, after D completely discarded his feelings toward J, he became a lot sharper.
Back then, whenever they encountered disagreements, although he didn't agree with J in his heart, he would still pretend to agree when he had no other choice.
But at that time, his acting skills were truly clumsy, and he couldn't fool J's eyes at all.
But now, he was different. He would absolutely never show his true self to J again.
He understood very clearly that if every word he said right now was fake, J would immediately see through his intentions.
After all, they had known each other for many years and were very familiar with each other's temperaments and personalities.
If D suddenly showed remorse and promised to correct his mistakes, J definitely wouldn't believe him easily.
Only words blended with truth and lies could more easily confuse someone.
Therefore, D had to honestly express some of his real inner feelings, so that those false words would carry more weight.
Besides, D understood well that J was someone who valued friendship deeply. The many times J had tried to persuade him were exactly because he didn't want to give up on their friendship.
Because of that, D mixed their friendship into his lies, essentially playing an emotional card.
Everything he did now was for the sake of stabilizing J temporarily, giving himself more time, and then finding a chance to kick this obstacle away.
Ironically, after throwing away the shackles of friendship, D really did manage to fully control J.
Originally, when J heard D say he shouldn't hurt the living beings of this world anymore, he still felt a bit skeptical.
After all, judging from the content of the first half of D's speech, D was exactly like J had imagined, he never truly regarded the living beings of the previous world as anything at all.
In J's eyes, the living beings of this world and the previous world were no different, so it was impossible for D to suddenly change his view.
But when J heard D's final sentence, "But if wiping out an enemy would make me lose a friend, I don't think it's worth it.", he was moved.
All of his doubts toward D were shattered in that moment.
He truly hadn't expected D to say something like that. At this moment, his eyes couldn't help but turn slightly red.
In fact, the many times he had tried to persuade D before, J had countless things he wanted to say. For example, "Don't tell me all the years of our friendship can't compare to that baseless hatred?" Or, "Can't you, for my sake, for our friendship, let go of your hatred?"
However, whenever they argued, those words always lingered on the tip of his tongue but were never spoken.
This wasn't because J didn't want to say them, but because he was afraid of hearing D's answer.
He feared that the answer he would get from D's mouth would be that their friendship was nothing compared to the hatred in D's heart.
If that was the case, he didn't even know how he would face such a truth.
So even though he desperately wanted to know the answer, he never dared to ask.
But what he didn't realize was that if two people's bond was truly deep enough, such a question would never appear at all.
Both sides would naturally understand their place in each other's hearts, without needing to ask to confirm their feelings.
Now, without J asking, D had taken the initiative to give the answer, and the answer was exactly what J most wanted to hear, how could J not be happy?
He looked at D, his face full of excitement. "I… I…" He paused several times, then took a deep breath and finally spoke.
"With those words from you, I can finally relax!"
———
At this moment, in the Trial Grounds, inside the rainforest.
Grayfist brought the Pillagers and his subordinates back to the rainforest once more.
Just as they entered the rainforest, Grayfist immediately found Black Blade.
He looked at Black Blade proudly, raised his brows and said, "Your lord has returned victorious! Mission over-completed!"
"Well? Miss me?"
Grayfist was a natural drama king. He just normally didn't like to play with these little tricks. If he really wanted to act, he wasn't necessarily inferior to Black Blade.
After Xu Yuan issued the mission, Grayfist led the Pillagers and the player subordinates to the outer edge of the rainforest.
Then he divided the entire group into small teams, each consisting of both players and Pillagers.
The ratio of players to Pillagers was roughly eight to two.
Then he unified the players' way of speaking, the gist of what they had to express was that they had already captured many Pillagers, and the next part of the plan was to infiltrate the rainforest to capture the last remaining villager.
After forming the teams, Grayfist had all the squads spread out across the outskirts of the rainforest.
One of the squads didn't wait long before they spotted the Void Iron Golems.
They then "accidentally" allowed themselves to be discovered by the Void Iron Golems.
Since they were "outnumbered and weak," they were quickly subdued by the Iron Golems.
At this moment, they were being "held hostage" by the Void Iron Golems, escorted toward the plains.
This was why Grayfist said the mission was over-completed.
Originally, Xu Yuan's plan was just to leak information, but now Grayfist even delivered extra spies, wasn't that over-completion?
Hearing Grayfist's words, Black Blade rolled his eyes and didn't respond to him.
After briefly checking the number of people who returned, he immediately understood what Grayfist meant by "over-completed."
"Sorry, this isn't a kindergarten. Over-completing a mission won't earn you a little red flower."
Hearing Black Blade's reply, Grayfist snapped back unhappily.
"You must've been an lawyer in your past life, why do you argue so much? Will praising me twice kill you?!"
If it were any other time, Black Blade would have definitely argued back for a while, but there was more important business right now.
Just before Grayfist returned, Black Blade had received parrot intel sent out by the Pillagers captured by Annoying Village HIM.
Black Blade originally thought intel from Annoying Village HIM's side would be difficult to pass along, but he didn't expect it to arrive so quickly.
He was preparing to bring the parrot to Xu Yuan to report the situation, but unexpectedly, Grayfist had returned too.
"All right, let's go find our king and report."
———
[In the Central Plaza of the Rainforest]
"Maybe you won't believe it, but when I first designed this game, my idea was that this game could become a world belonging to every person who entered it."
"It was with that idea that I created this game. But after creating this world, I was the first one to abandon it..."
After their last 'casual chat,' Notch had relaxed a lot in front of Xu Yuan. Seeing that Xu Yuan wasn't busy at the moment, he seized the opportunity to chat a bit more.
Seeing that Notch seemed to have opened up, Xu Yuan thought for a moment and made a bold decision, to test Notch's attitude toward friendship.