“Everyone’s here?”
Zhu Yan was a little surprised.
“This is quite the occasion.”
The welcome party had already ended.
The students chattered excitedly as they filed out under the direction of several Alliance members, heading toward the buses.
Even Yang Zhanbai and Qi Yinming had been sent away.
Only Zhu Yan had been left behind for some reason. He followed Guan En down a corridor that wasn’t particularly long.
“The next dungeon is about to begin. You need to familiarize yourself with the team members now and get ready for it,” Guan En explained.
He thought of what Jin Rongxu had said to him and took another careful look at Zhu Yan.
To be honest, the guy looked full of vitality, with a healthy flush in his face.
He didn’t look at all like someone who had just recovered from a serious illness—or someone whose body was still struggling to recover from a devastating injury.
Still, the twins had always been reliable. They had no reason to lie, either. So their claim that he “couldn’t gather qi” was probably true.
“Then what about Yang Zhanbai…”
A flicker passed through Guan En’s eyes.
To be honest, he was also a little envious of Yang Zhanbai’s ability, “Shang Yang.”
It simply wasn’t his kind of ability. He had neither the qualifications nor the power to reach for it.
Besides, for now, he couldn’t bring himself to kill him—not personally, at least. He couldn’t bear to personally kill a player who appeared to be entirely free of stains.
All he could do was keep him alive for the time being, following the leaders’ orders.
“Yang Zhanbai is entering the dungeon with me.”
For an instant, Guan En’s smile nearly collapsed.
But he quickly adjusted his expression and made a joke.
“Why are you worried about Yang Zhanbai? I’m taking fewer people, so the dungeon will be easier.”
“Jin Rongxu’s level is so high. Following him might not be any safer than following me.”
Zhu Yan smiled as well. “Officer Guan, your level isn’t low either, is it?”
Guan En didn’t answer directly. “It is easy to advance when you’re working in the Alliance.”
After running several dungeons back-to-back, his suppression ability had indeed been raised to nearly level seven, putting him roughly on par with Jin Rongxu.
Guan En led Zhu Yan upstairs and pointed out the floor directory inside the elevator.
“The Rapid Response Department is on the fifth floor. Under normal circumstances, you won’t be able to find anyone there. Everyone is in a dungeon.”
“During this period, Director Jin has also been overseeing the Tactical Support Department, so I go over to help from time to time.”
Oh.
Zhu Yan wasn’t sure what use this information would be.
But caution was always wise, so he committed it to memory.
When the elevator doors opened, a bulletproof glass door stood across the corridor.
Guan En swiped them through the security checkpoint and led Zhu Yan toward the room at the very end.
It was an office, apparently Jin Rongxu’s personal one.
A large desk stood just inside the entrance. Jin Rongxu sat silently behind it, his back to the light.
The moment he saw them enter, he raised his head and looked at Zhu Yan without a word.
“Captain Jin,” Guan En greeted him.
“Zhu Zeyu. You’re here.”
Jin Rongxu stretched lazily and nodded at Guan En. “You can leave. Prepare properly for your next dungeon. I’ll be looking forward to your performance when you return to the team.”
I’ll be looking forward to you helping me harvest a new ability.
Guan En silently repeated the thought in his mind.
Then he collected himself. Without saying anything else, he simply answered, “Yes,” and closed the door behind him.
Jin Rongxu’s cold, sinister gaze remained fixed on the door.
Only after a while did he speak. “Have a seat, Zhu Zeyu.”
Zhu Yan followed the direction of his finger and only then noticed that the three leather sofas beside them were already occupied.
One man was covered in muscle and wore a sleeveless T-shirt. Another had a bowl cut. Three others had closely shaved heads and wore uniforms, making them look as though they had come from the military.
A girl sat on the sofa on the other side.
She was dressed very fashionably, wearing a black off-the-shoulder top with a ruffled neckline, a pair of extremely baggy ripped jeans, and black pointed-toe shoes poking out from beneath the cuffs.
A baseball cap was pulled low over her head, and she was sucking on a lollipop.
“Whoa. The key figure in the dungeon is here.”
Zhu Yan froze. “What did you say?”
Most of the others looked grim, with an indistinct trace of fear in their expressions.
But the female player looked quite relaxed, and her outfit was unusually bold.
She was probably the only person here who wasn’t afraid of Captain Jin, Zhu Yan silently concluded.
The girl lifted the brim of her baseball cap slightly.
“Yes, you.” She confirmed it again. “Wow, that’s strange. Until this morning, I couldn’t make out anything about this dungeon. What the players would experience—all the information was just one big blur.”
Zhu Yan glanced at Jin Rongxu.
Seeing that Jin Rongxu showed no sign of objecting, he continued, curiosity getting the better of him. “When did you start being able to see it?”
“Ah, sometime around eight or nine this morning.”
The girl sighed. “Ugh, I really am only third-rate. It took me until then to figure it out. Honestly.”
But Zhu Yan understood.
That was probably around the time he had gone out with Yang Zhanbai.
That was when he had activated the ability “Roleplay” and hidden inside the puppet.
The only difference was that his level had dropped from seven to the apparent zero, and he had crawled into a fake body.
Yet this female player had still seen through him.
So what exactly had she seen?
“What did you see?”
Jin Rongxu sat beside them, watching without making a sound.
His “Mind Reading” ability was active, allowing him to clearly hear what Zhu Zeyu was thinking.
…The time she saw it was when he went out with Yang Zhanbai…
The only difference was that he had left the building and was closer to the police station.
So what exactly had she seen?
No anomaly. There was no anomaly at all.
“This.” The girl hesitated.
“Just say it,” Jin Rongxu instructed. “What did you see?”
“Him.” The girl pointed at Zhu Yan. “He was shot or stabbed by someone with a very blurry face, someone wearing a cloak. I couldn’t see clearly. Anyway, he was attacked.”
Zhu Yan fell silent for a moment.
A blurry face—that had to be the “Hunter”…
No, that meant himself.
Of course, it couldn’t be ruled out that it was a terrifying creature.
“And then?”
“It wasn’t afterward. It happened at the same time. He rushed in close and tore that cloak off the blurry man. The man escaped, and he collapsed.”
Of course he collapsed. Of course he did.
The puppet’s “Realism” effect wasn’t for show.
If it had really suffered an injury like that, being able to lift its hand would have been a miracle.
Damn it, he needed to buy more “Repair Potions” from Dragonfly.
But if the “Hunter” was there too, then that dungeon…
Could he really have gotten exactly what he wished for again?
Things were going this smoothly?
“So, what is the dungeon about?” Zhu Yan asked, putting on a trembling performance. “Am I still alive? I’m not going to die, am I?”
“The dungeon is a type of Chinese-style horror that Captain Jin specializes in. I could tell it had something to do with a mother. I forgot the dungeon’s name. You can ask Captain Jin to tell you.”
The girl continued, “As for whether you got killed—you didn’t. You even handed that cloak to Captain Jin.”
Zhu Yan was thrilled.
Jin Rongxu leaned back in relaxation, crossing one leg over the other in contentment.
Mm. He was thrilled too.
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
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?!
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
