Zhu Yan strolled back. Passing by the cafeteria, he took advantage of the sandwich shop clerk's inattention and emptied an entire sandwich shelf from a distance.
He could finally understand Feng Qiang's thrill now.
Damn, assuming one sandwich sold for 1 bone coin, he had just stolen eight or nine of them. Converted, that was eight or nine hundred straight into his pocket.
Zhu Yan slipped back to the dorm, completely satisfied, and sent a message to Yang Zhanbai and the others.
In fact, the messages on his phone hadn't stopped. Yang Zhanbai had been remotely reporting to him on the newcomers' progress through the instance.
The last message from two seconds ago read as follows:
"I really can't take it anymore, family, I'm throwing up from watching. I don't even know how many died, I just know some people are literally reduced to bones."
"Fuck, I'm begging you to come with me tomorrow. I really threw up, puked all over the floor."
Zhu Yan asked, "Did anyone pass?"
"Yes." Yang Zhanbai replied instantly. "Holy shit, you finally showed up!"
"A girl with super-speed passed, and another guy who could fly got a bit injured but also passed."
"Someone who could turn invisible passed, and there was another one who passed while playing on his phone. I have no idea what his deal is."
Zhu Yan counted. "Only 4 passed in total?"
Yang Zhanbai sat on a plastic chair, his face pale.
Sitting in the row in front of him were a few players with equally terrible complexions. One of them had transparent insect wings on his back, and one wing was torn in half.
Some people were gathered around comforting them; Qi Yinming used a cotton swab dipped in Panacea Potion, carefully applying it to the wound.
Yang Zhanbai looked up at the sports field below.
Chaos, utter chaos.
The formations had completely lost their shape. Many people, taking advantage of the fact that they hadn't entered the field yet, ran around looking for teammates, trying to use the power of a team to break through.
On the field, monsters were still gathered around corpses, feasting heartily. Occasionally, the sound of hard bones being crushed could be heard.
"Today is over! It's already over!"
The Carrion Slime's shrill voice pierced through the gray fog. It held high a bone spur, vigorously waving the red flag attached to it.
"Students who haven't passed, rest where you are!"
The slime split its mouth open, imitating the sound of a whistle.
"Do not run, do not leave the sports field! You have seen the consequences!"
Hearing this, Yang Zhanbai felt another bout of dizziness.
He subconsciously looked towards the field's fence. Outside it lay scattered dozens of skeletons still tinged with pink, and the ground was covered in a thick layer of rust-colored sludge.
It was the students who had run out—
Not long after leaving the fence, they had melted like ice cream in the summer.
It was the exact same cause of death as that boy before the Old Wolf instance began!
Yang Zhanbai withdrew his gaze. Thinking of the exam starting tomorrow, another wave of nausea hit him.
Just thinking that someone was willing to be a lapdog for such things, volunteering to be a Hunter, made his stomach churn with acid.
The key was that this Hunter had also usurped his online handle, and no one knew who it was.
"We're having a meeting tonight."
Yang Zhanbai walked up to Qi Yinming and patted his shoulder with a dark expression.
"We have to figure out a way. In this instance, we absolutely cannot let the Hunter run wild again."
"What do you plan to do?" Qi Yinming asked in a low voice.
His glasses were already dirty, and a strand of hair was stuck to the side of his face with sweat.
The student's injured wing had completely healed. With a deathly pale face, he dazedly thanked Qi Yinming.
Qi Yinming stood up. "Let's go, back to the dorm first."
Yang Zhanbai looked down at the new message. "Brother Zhu probably slept all day. He says he bought food for us, enough to go around, and told us to just head straight back."
He sighed with emotion, "What a righteous brother!"
The two walked through the bleachers, which reeked of blood, excrement, and vomit, and signed out.
Then they stepped over the sticky layer of mashed flesh that had already attracted mosquitoes and flies.
Yang Zhanbai's expression turned icy.
Qi Yinming dry-heaved and said, "I secretly checked almost everyone's right hand today."
"Logically speaking, if the Hunter has always existed, there definitely should be something on the palm of their right hand."
"I didn't check the people on Tu Shan's side, but for the people on our side, their palms were all blank."
Yang Zhanbai stopped in front of a vending machine to buy three cans of drinks.
"There are two possibilities. The first is that the Hunter isn't fixed, and only exists within the instances. Once they leave the instance, the mark disappears."
"The second is that the Hunter has always existed, but he's hiding among Tu Shan's group, afraid to show his face."
The drinks clattered into the bottom of the vending machine.
Yang Zhanbai reached in to grab them, his brows tightly furrowed.
He exchanged a glance with Qi Yinming, and in tacit understanding, they stated the password to return to the dorm.
"Stay safe!"
The next second.
Two figures crashed haphazardly onto the dorm floor, startling Zhu Yan, who had just finished taking a shower.
Yang Zhanbai hurriedly scrambled up from the floor and excitedly grabbed Zhu Yan's left hand.
"I just thought of a great idea!"
Huh?
Zhu Yan grabbed a towel, using the motion of drying his hair to guard his right palm, and asked, "What's wrong with you?"
"Are you doing alright mentally? Want something sweet to eat?"
"I'm fine." Yang Zhanbai was somewhat agitated.
"It just suddenly occurred to me that we aren't completely clueless about the Hunter, right?"
Here we go again.
Zhu Yan resisted the urge to go back to bed and patiently continued to listen.
"Oh? Let's hear it."
Yang Zhanbai furrowed his brows, his tone extremely serious.
"Based on the broadcast, the Hunter is indeed opposed to the players' stance."
"The players have to throw the Hunter into the building's main structure... Remember?"
Zhu Yan nodded. "And then?"
Who would dare throw him?
No, wait, who even had the strength to throw him?
"So, my deduction in the last instance wasn't actually wrong."
"The Hunter really is on the same side as the thriller creatures."
Zhu Yan nodded. "Right, I think so too."
"It's just that..." Yang Zhanbai thought of the information Brother Guan had told him about that person.
"Brother Guan said that the suspect who might be the Hunter can change their appearance, turning into any person or thriller creature."
"I've been reviewing everything today. Brother Zhu, do you think it's possible that he temporarily replaced that Bar Boss from before?"
"That would also explain why I became the Hunter."
"By the time you went down to kill him, he had already run away, and the one you killed was the real Boss."
He could even guess that.
Although his reasoning was completely off the mark, there were parts that were correct.
"Then the mark on my hand..." Zhu Yan feigned confusion.
"The Solace Mother." Yang Zhanbai furrowed his brows. "I suspect he colluded with the Solace Mother."
"When you made the deal back then, you went to a clone of the Solace Mother. That clone might have been him in disguise too."
"He gave the Solace Mother a heads-up in advance, had the Solace Mother mentally attack you so that you would propose the trade yourself, and then snuck in to put the mark on you."
The more Yang Zhanbai deduced, the more reasonable it sounded to him.
"Think about it, his approach kills two birds with one stone. When we first found the Solace Mother, it had no intention of giving us anything."
"Its goal has always been to eat us!"
"And that shapeshifting Hunter used this method to add fuel to the fire, luring us right into the mouths of the horror creatures."
What a colorful imagination.
Zhu Yan suddenly felt a bit relieved.
"Then what should we do now?"
Yang Zhanbai pondered for a moment.
"He shouldn't know my forum ID, I haven't told anyone yet."
"Last time I went to the library, I casually asked who the dean of students was."
Yang Zhanbai looked up, his eyes shining as he looked at Zhu Yan, then at Qi Yinming.
"How about I change my forum avatar and ID, pretend to be the dean, and try sending a private message to that Hunter?"
"I was browsing the forum earlier and came across the official account of the Nightmare Bookstore."
Yang Zhanbai spoke very slowly, "If a place like that can join the Player Forum, why can't horror creatures?"
"What if he knows the dean?" Qi Yinming asked. "What if they have each other's contact info?"
Yang Zhanbai shrugged, "Then it's nothing more than a wasted attempt."
"If we don't try, how will we ever know?"
Zhu Yan was utterly speechless.
Why are they plotting out loud right in front of the Hunter again?
Are you trying to bait the Hunter, bro?
【Prologue: The Beginning of It All – Use holy water to heal the saintess tainted by demonic energy, then converse with her.】 Shen Nian stared at his older sister sipping yogurt, lost in thought. So you’re telling me my sister is the saintess, and yogurt is the holy water? 【Main Quest 1: Brave Youth, Become an Adventurer! Reward: Rookie Adventurer Title.】 【Side Quest 1: Find the Adorable Kitty! Reward: 1000 Gold Coins.】 Shen Nian: "Wait, I’m a high school senior here—did some guy who got isekai’d accidentally bind his system to me?" Hold on, completing quests gives gold rewards? Titles even boost stats? Is this for real? (A lighthearted, absurd campus comedy—not a revenge power fantasy.)
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
Cheng's father told him he was getting remarried—to a wealthy woman. Cao Cheng realized his time had finally come: he was about to become a second-generation rich kid. Sure, it might be a watered-down version, but hey, at least he'd have status now, right? The wealthy woman also had four daughters!! Which meant, starting today, Cao Cheng gained four stunning older sisters?? But that wasn't even the whole story... "My name is Cao Cheng—'Cheng' as in 'honest, smooth-talking gentleman'!"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
