Zhu Yan didn’t give anyone a chance to stop him.
As soon as he finished speaking, he swiftly pulled open the door and slipped sideways into the hallway.
"Hey!" Qi Yinming called out, his face full of panic as he tried to intervene.
But with a click, the door locked.
Through the peephole, Zhu Yan’s footsteps were steady as he headed in the direction Tu Shan had gone.
Yang Zhanbai rubbed his temples.
"Forget it, let him go." He shook his head. "Trust his abilities."
Silence hung around them.
Qi Yinming stared at Yang Zhanbai in disbelief, while Yuan Chen and Qin Yang didn’t dare make a sound.
It was Xu Tongguang who finally broke the silence. "Should I go ask the guys in Room 106 across the hall to hit me a few times?"
Five seconds later.
The door to Room 303 opened again.
One by one, they filed out and crept toward Room 106.
...
The hallway felt like it had been dragged through a melting freezer.
The pale light from the emergency lamp revealed water stains on the pitch-black ceiling. A droplet of water gathered, forming, then splashed right by Zhu Yan’s foot.
There was no white mist here, but the cold was growing thicker.
After walking just a few dozen feet, Zhu Yan’s body went stiff, his knees soaked through with the chill.
He kept his guard up, pressed against the wall, listening closely for any movement ahead, and shook his whiskers.
Almost as soon as he left the dorm, he activated [Impersonate], turning into the mouse he’d seen back in the cafeteria area of [Xishan University].
According to the intel Tu Shan had given him, there were no horror creatures on the floor above.
But as it turned out, the creature on that floor knew exactly what was going on—it just hadn’t revealed itself.
In Zhu Yan’s view, that strange horror creature probably had the ability to turn invisible, just like the supermarket owner, or it could be lurking somewhere in the dark, watching.
Under these circumstances, it was better to move stealthily in rat form.
Better to follow along first and find out what that horror creature’s true intentions were.
"...I really don’t mean any harm, man, where are you taking me?"
Chen Zhaoxing’s panicked voice came from up ahead, trembling noticeably.
To Zhu Yan, it sounded like he was holding back laughter.
But to Tu Shan, who was leading the way, it clearly came across as pure terror.
He didn’t answer Chen Zhaoxing’s question; instead, he barked, "Shut up! Just keep walking forward and stop your damn yapping!"
Zhu Yan stayed close behind, watching Chen Zhaoxing’s shoulders shake.
"Why do you pick on someone weak like me instead of going after Zhu Zeyu?"
He huddled his neck to avoid the blade, fanning the flames as he went.
"Don’t you want to know how many people are on Zhu Zeyu’s team and what their abilities are?"
"What if I tell you their info, and you let me go? Deal?"
Zhu Yan was speechless.
Chen Zhaoxing really seemed to be enjoying this too much.
He was about to be sacrificed to a horror creature, and he wasn’t panicking at all—what was he playing at?
Zhu Yan crouched cautiously behind a wall, perking up his ears, keeping an eye on the scene ahead.
Sure enough, Tu Shan slowed down, a hint of interest creeping into his tone.
"Oh? Info on Zhu Zeyu?"
He did need that.
Sure, now he had [Hunter] backing him up, but knowing the enemy made victory certain.
Zhu Zeyu’s ability was incredibly strange—even with a level-eight military knife, Tu Shan wanted to play it safe.
"Go ahead and tell me." Thinking this, Tu Shan pressed the blade harder against Chen Zhaoxing’s neck, until a thin, shallow line of blood appeared.
Feeling the sting, Chen Zhaoxing immediately screeched like a parrot whose tail had been stepped on.
"Ow, ow, ow! Ahh! It hurts, it hurts—"
He twisted his neck, and catching Tu Shan’s murderous glare, quickly changed his tune.
"—Zhu Zeyu’s team has a huge flaw! If you exploit that, you can take the whole team down!"
That was enough to cool Tu Shan’s desire to kill Chen Zhaoxing right then.
He moved the blade away symbolically, asking ominously, "What flaw?"
Chen Zhaoxing winced and said, "There’s this player named Xu Tongguang—his ability is really weird."
Zhu Yan was dumbfounded.
Even though Xu Tongguang himself had a strange vibe that was hard to describe, having a teammate like Chen Zhaoxing was definitely a curse in his life.
Zhu Yan poked his mouse head out from behind the wall and watched as Tu Shan stopped. Up ahead, in the deep hallway, that unsettling thin mist began to rise again.
The grayish-white fog faded into the dark depths of the corridor.
Zhu Yan retreated cautiously.
Back when the fake [Hunter] in the cloak had appeared, the hallway had also filled with this kind of mist.
What exactly was the mist?
What did it represent?
Could that horror creature use the fog to watch or monitor?
If he even considered that possibility...
Zhu Yan backed up further, making sure to keep a distance from the blurry gray-white haze.
If that were the case, blindly following in and attacking Tu Shan with [Impersonate] while inside the fog wouldn’t be a smart move.
"What’s so special about his ability?" Tu Shan pressed impatiently.
"He lets other people take over his body, use it as a vessel," Chen Zhaoxing fabricated with a straight face. "Yeah, like a possession kind of thing."
"Some ability like that exists?"
"It does," Chen Zhaoxing said firmly. "And when someone takes over his body, they not only control his movements but can still use their own abilities. It’s like he’s a puppet shell!"
Zhu Yan caught the scent of osmanthus flowers.
He watched the gray mist churning softly, gently swallowing the figures of Tu Shan and Chen Zhaoxing, and felt a sudden wave of nausea.
After retreating several more steps, Zhu Yan heard Chen Zhaoxing’s next words.
"Zhu Zeyu’s motives toward you are anything but pure. He was originally planning to use Xu Tongguang as a vessel to meet you and lower your guard."
After rambling for a long time, Chen Zhaoxing finally dropped the bomb.
"So, I suggest you act polite first, then just swing your knife and chop at that blonde Xu Tongguang. Stab him too, that’ll work!"
Zhu Yan was dumbfounded.
Was this really Chen Zhaoxing’s purpose for coming out?
Luckily, Tu Shan wasn’t planning to let him off easy.
"Alright." From the sound of it, Tu Shan was sneering.
But the fog was getting thicker.
It seemed like a barrier had formed at the end of the hallway. The dense mist churned beyond some invisible line, completely swallowing the figures of Tu Shan and Chen Zhaoxing.
"Keep walking," Tu Shan ordered.
But then, Chen Zhaoxing let out another string of weird shrieks.
"Ohhh!! A cockroach! Look at this!"
The fog was too thick; Tu Shan could only see Chen Zhaoxing ahead.
"What—"
He opened his mouth to ask.
The next second, Chen Zhaoxing threw his hand backward, precisely stuffing two antennaed things into Tu Shan’s mouth, then sprinted at full speed out of the thick fog!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
his freshman year, Su Bai accidentally bound the "Indulgence Tycoon System." 【Sleeping in? Reward: +$1,000】 【Spent $288 at a street barbecue stall? Cashback: +$2,880】 【Dropped $14,396 on in-game skins? Special reward unlocked: A brand-new Porsche Panamera!】 Luxury cars, penthouses, corporate shares, financial empires… College life was all about living freely and doing whatever he pleased! … When the adorably naive academic genius faced family medical bills and financial struggles, Su Bai waved his hand dismissively: "Your future is on me." "Wuwu~ Big Brother is so good to me! I’ll become a scientist to repay you!" When the genius girl got bullied by a shady professor? Su Bai casually dropped a billion-dollar investment, forcing the university to grovel and beg for her return. A company’s funding chain collapsing? Su Bai smirked—cash was the one thing he’d never run out of. Years later, when people traced the rise of the AI prodigy beauty, who was the man behind her success? Not just that—Su Bai also became the tsundere campus belle’s unattainable dream, the contrast senior’s daily necessity, and the beautiful counselor’s emotional anchor…
to panic—he has a system. As long as an investment target dies, he can claim a reward. And since he is immortal, the one thing he has plenty of is time. ... Countless years later. “Immortal Emperor of Longevity? I invested in him.” “Supreme Celestial Venerable? I invested in him.” “Undying Empress? I invested in her.” “...” “Heh. Once they’ve all died, even the Heavenly Dao will have to kneel and call me Dad.”
