Upstairs.
Zhu Zeyu followed another team member surnamed Chen to retrieve the props, while [Hunter] spoke in an unhurried tone, pretending to know nothing about Director Jin’s little scheme.
“As expected of Director Jin. You’re sensible and clever.”
Director Jin let out a laugh and pulled over a chair to sit down.
Although [Hunter] was young, his mind was vicious, so Director Jin didn’t dare take him lightly.
He had already figured out that this man had deliberately allowed himself to be captured.
The purpose was simple enough: lure Jin Rongxu out of his secret hiding place, then use him as leverage to threaten Director Jin.
The only thing he didn’t know was who had leaked the information about Room 1356.
But that wasn’t important.
As long as he could lure [Hunter] into taking the bait and bring him completely under control, not only could he recover the seven hundred thousand bone gold coins he had lost, but he could also take the man’s abilities in the open-beta dungeon.
“I’ve already sent everyone else out.” Director Jin smiled kindly and gently. “When all is said and done, you’re just a young man with nowhere else to turn. There’s no need for us to resort to extremes.”
He understood the mentality of extremists far too well.
Most of the time, as long as you treated them a little more kindly, they would gradually lower their guard—or become emboldened and reveal their true intentions.
…
Zhu Yan was actually quite exhausted.
That was because another part of him was downstairs, busy running the Jin Rongxu who had just stopped to rest ragged.
For now, the thing still stubbornly refused to speak. But every time another light went out, it would start running around frantically, like a chicken that had just spotted a dog.
Inside the interrogation room.
The invisible Fog looked at Director Jin, who was ten times steadier than Jin Rongxu. By comparison, it only made his head ache more and left him even more mentally exhausted.
Even so, he remained thoroughly professional and put on a somewhat unsteady, threatening tone.
“Director Jin, I’m warning you too—don’t try anything funny.” He spoke coldly. “I have my own ways of finding out the truth. My props and resources are beyond anything you can imagine. Heh. You wouldn’t want anything unfortunate to happen to your nephew, would you?”
Director Jin hurriedly said, “Calm down, calm down. There’s no one else here. Just tell me directly—what will it take for you to release Jin Rongxu?”
In truth, Director Jin wasn’t nervous in the slightest. Instead, he miraculously felt relieved.
Just now, he had still been worried that there was a mole within the Alliance. Now, it seemed that he had simply been overthinking things.
As expected, [Hunter] still possessed the naivety of youth. Like most people who lacked cunning, he had been goaded into throwing out his trump cards after only a little provocation.
The words “props and resources beyond anything you can imagine” were enough to explain how he had obtained his information.
He probably possessed an item related to investigation or truth-seeking. Director Jin knew of one such item himself—the Surveillance Mirror.
And [Hunter]’s item likely had a limited number of uses or some other restriction.
Otherwise, he should already have realized Director Jin’s true intentions by now.
At present, [Hunter] appeared to be making empty threats, but in reality, he had already exposed his weakness.
Director Jin hurriedly put on the cautious, tentative smile of a parent worried about a child, and raised a hand to wipe away his cold sweat.
This time, he intended to make sure the other man took the bait completely.
Ideally, he would force him to reveal every last trump card!
“You’ve seen for yourself,” Director Jin said. “I’m acting in good faith. There’s no one else here, so I’ll be honest with you.”
He waved toward the outside once more, signaling for the people surrounding the room to disperse immediately.
Only after most of them had left did Director Jin turn back toward the empty interrogation room and begin earnestly persuading him.
“We all know that the open-beta dungeon is going to descend sooner or later. It’s an unstoppable trend. Even if it doesn’t descend here, it’ll descend somewhere else.”
“Let me be frank with you. As long as we can gain some benefits from the dungeon, what difference does it make to us?”
“Besides, no matter how vast the world is, nothing is more important than my family’s lives!”
…
Level B18.
Jin Rongxu stopped again, gasping for breath. He collapsed onto the floor, then stumbled back to his feet.
His face was drenched in cold sweat. The flashing word “Lie” had become a nightmare he could never escape.
What frightened him even more was that there truly was no exit.
The long, narrow corridor twisted and turned endlessly. No matter how far he ran, he could never reach the end. No matter how much he attacked or smashed things along the way, the walls remained utterly indestructible.
Moreover, as time passed, the space itself began to warp.
The corridor grew lower. The originally straight walls on either side bent inward, while the corridor stretched out lengthwise like a sheet of fabric being pulled taut, constantly compressing the space in which he could move freely.
Smack!
The darkness behind him advanced another segment.
Jin Rongxu sprang up from the floor and rushed forward. Turning sideways, he slipped through the gap in the corridor, which was now barely half a meter wide, like an eel.
“Damn… damn it…”
Jin Rongxu cursed brokenly. At last, his mental defenses collapsed completely.
“I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” he shouted. “I confess!”
Damn it, there wasn’t even anyone here.
Once he confessed, he could still tell everyone outside that he had solved the problem himself and escaped through his own efforts!
Zhu Yan was delighted.
He quietly condensed half a humanoid figure behind Jin Rongxu, logged into the account Account Deleted, found Director Jin’s private-message window, and started recording the conversation.
“I’ll talk!” Jin Rongxu’s disheveled figure appeared in the center of the view. “I—I have an ability of my own. I stole the abilities of two other people!”
“One of them was a woman named Zhang Xiaoxin, and the other one was called… called…”
…
Upstairs.
[Hunter] fell silent for a moment, as though weighing his options.
“Since you’re being so honest, Director Jin, I’ll be frank as well.”
His voice carried the restlessness characteristic of a teenage boy.
Zhu Yan deliberately followed Director Jin’s lead, laying all of his cards bare.
“We don’t trust you. Unless you let me and my companions accomplish our objective right now!”
Director Jin hurriedly agreed. “That’s easy, completely doable! As long as you can release Jin Rongxu, I’ll cooperate with anything else you need!”
At the same time, he used the Player Forum to send Captain Zheng a message, then asked, “Tell me, what are you trying to do? What do you need me to cooperate with?”
“Let me make one thing clear first: I want you to release Jin Rongxu immediately!”
Just as he had hoped, [Hunter] soon gave him an answer.
“We’re going to install ten connectors here.”
It was the same answer he had given during the dungeon upstairs.
“Your people aren’t allowed to destroy our connectors. Oh, of course, we’re not going to tell you where we’ve installed them.”
“Other than that, you don’t need to do anything. Just leave the [Connectors] there for twenty-four hours.”
Zhu Yan spouted the lie off the top of his head, his tone brimming with conviction.
“That won’t be a problem, will it, Director Jin?”
After thinking it over, [Hunter] added another condition.
“I want you to call all your core members here. My companions will begin installing the connectors now.”
“Once we’ve installed all of them, you can order your people to act!”
“Once you’ve done that, I’ll have my people destroy the instance from the outside and release Jin Rongxu.”
“Otherwise, whether he survives that unwinnable instance or not will be none of our concern!”
nto another world, I bought a slave for the first time, never expecting the silver wolf girl to be so cute... Lin Feng: I know it's cold, but you don't have to sneak into my bed! Yuna: Just sharing body warmth, if you dare do anything naughty, I'll definitely...
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!
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!
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.
