In the blink of an eye, the young man standing at the other end of the room vanished.
Several lines of dark red text appeared where he had been standing. The letters twisted and shuddered, carrying the same unnaturally gleeful feeling as the young man’s laughter.
“Welcome to the instance of Hunter No. 3.”
“Hunter No. 3” was, of course, another title Zhu Yan had made up on the spot.
In the notice from the Frenzied Paradise, he himself was referred to as Hunter No. 1.
So Qiu Lingxiao’s pitiful older brother should probably be… Hunter No. 3, more or less, right?
Whatever. Once you had a tall enough hat, you could slap it on anyone.
“Now that things have come to this, this is a room you can’t leave unless you commit suicide.”
“Pay attention. It’s not that you can’t leave if no one commits suicide. It’s that you can’t leave unless you commit suicide!”
Silence descended.
“Fuck!” someone cursed furiously. “Isn’t this just telling us to die?”
The rule was indeed a very simple paradox, but it was vicious to an outrageous degree.
Only suicide could get them out.
Wouldn’t that mean they would die whether they left or stayed?
Some players began sobbing quietly. Others erupted in fury, grabbing fire axes and hacking away.
“To hell with suicide!”
“What Hunter No. 3? I’ll kill him and see whether I can get out!”
Part of Zhu Yan had already transformed back into fog.
Only one hand and a mouth remained untransformed. He floated leisurely above the fluorescent light, dripping a few drops of highly concentrated Trembling Euphoria into his mouth.
Mmm. A refreshing, icy Pepsi flavor.
After only a few drops, his spirits were restored, as if he had never suffered any loss at all.
He lowered his head and watched the player throw himself into hacking at the walls and floor.
Driven by the same emotions, several other players joined in as well.
For a moment, one attack ability after another slammed into the walls of flesh. Zhu Yan watched it all and yawned.
A simulated instance was still only a simulated instance. It wasn’t particularly satisfying, because the rules could only be used to frighten people; they were not actually real.
That was why Zhu Yan had only dared to impose a rule that would result in instant death upon contact—one that most people would probably not dare to test.
Next, he planned to sit back and enjoy the players’ distress in the room.
When the time came, he would leave the spotlight to Zhu Zeyu.
As long as he could find a way for the puppet Zhu Zeyu outside to destroy that fake Connector, he could seal the space from this side and put on a fine little show of “rescuing people from the jaws of death.”
Inside the room, however, the players were growing increasingly uneasy.
Skill after skill crashed into the walls and ceiling, yet the bizarre space remained completely unmoved. The Hunter was nowhere to be seen.
“Let me join in too,” said the young man in the baseball cap. “I’m sorry. I touched that thing by accident, and that’s what caused all this…”
Two Alliance players stood behind him. At that moment, both were staring gravely at the lines of text ahead of them, which looked no different from a death sentence.
“What good is apologizing now? The important thing is figuring out how to get out.”
The older of the two players shook his head.
“We’ve heard about the Hunter’s abilities. There are practically no loopholes in this rule.”
As soon as he said this, one of the inspectors was the first to lose control.
He tore open the thin protective suit and began breathing heavily, his face covered in tears.
“Are we really going to die here?!”
“What about the Alliance?” another voice echoed, its tone edged with despair. “Can’t the Human Alliance do anything at all?!”
“Exactly! I’m still young! It took everything I had just to survive this long!”
“We came to the shelter because we trusted it. Who could have expected something like this to happen?”
“Aren’t you senior players from the Human Alliance? Think of something!”
Cries of fear, complaints, and shouts of anger and unwillingness filled the cramped space, their violent emotions churning like boiling water.
One of the Alliance players had no choice but to raise his hand high and step forward to restore order.
“Quiet!” he shouted. “Everyone, stay calm!”
He was hardly calm himself. The scarlet rule-text illuminated his tightly furrowed brows and the fine beads of sweat on his forehead.
Only after the crowd gradually settled down did he dare continue.
“Given the current situation, the chances of getting out on our own are extremely low.”
Seeing that the people were about to start protesting again, he hurriedly brought out the next words, silencing them.
“Director Jin! We’ve already reported the situation to Director Jin!”
“Please remain calm, everyone—the Alliance’s elite forces are all mobilizing. Director Jin has already given the order. We’ll be rescued very soon!”
…
Downstairs.
Zhu Zeyu read, word by word, the information about the instance that Director Jin had personally sent him. His brows drew together little by little, and even cold sweat had appeared on his forehead.
The private message contained a detailed account of the instance’s “rules,” as well as the experiences of the players dragged inside. Naturally, it also included Zhu Yan’s self-explosion.
“We haven’t seen any sign of a Hunter at Captain Zheng’s location.”
Director Jin’s voice was already highly agitated.
“According to him, there are no monsters in that instance, but there aren’t any explicit rules either.”
“It seems to be an enclosed space. He has to test the rules from inside.”
“Otherwise, I imagine the outcome will be…”
Director Jin hesitated, unable even to say the word “death.”
From Zhu Zeyu’s perspective, Director Jin seemed so anxious that he could no longer sit still.
He did not even dare return to his office. Instead, he could only pace back and forth here, surrounded by a group of senior players, desperately trying to come up with a solution.
Director Jin really was in a panic. His jet-black hair looked as though it had been soaked through with sweat, giving it a greasy sheen.
Damn it.
How could this instance be so torturous?
Ordinary instances were difficult, but at least there were traces to follow. This one was practically impossible to solve.
This Hunter had chosen to act as the tiger’s accomplice, and on top of that, he was impossible to track down.
By now, so many people were trapped in a sealed space, yet they had not even managed to touch the hem of his clothes!
“How many abilities does this Hunter actually have?” Director Jin’s voice was thick with unease. “By all rights, he’s upstairs, so the instance should only have manifested upstairs.”
“How did he even know about Level B13? And how the hell did he get down there? How did he bring the instance to both places at the same time?!”
Silence reigned on both sides.
More than a dozen senior players lowered their heads in unison, not daring to say a word.
Faced with Director Jin’s anxiety, only Zhu Zeyu tentatively raised his hand, looking for all the world like a nervous student.
“Director, don’t we have a prophet? What does the prophet think about this situation?”
That might have been fine if he hadn’t mentioned it. But the moment he did, Director Jin’s anger flared.
That prophet really was right about all the bad things and wrong about all the good ones. The control room, the router—what utter nonsense.
The Hunter had not even gone to either of those places, yet the instance had still manifested!
“You don’t need to know that,” Director Jin said coldly.
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
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.
