Zhu Zeyu was actually struggling to hold it in.
He used every last bit of his strength to twist the laugh that was bubbling up to his lips into a weird, lopsided grimace, then typed out a serious reply to Captain Zheng on the Player Forum.
"I checked over everything with the rest of the team, it should be fine."
If anything went wrong after that, he'd gladly admit he was the Hunter.
Captain Zheng clapped him on the shoulder, looking at him like he was saying, "Good job, kid."
"They've already worked out the deal."
The message from Captain Zheng flickered across Zhu Yan's retina.
"As soon as the door opens, you go with the rest of the team and unload all your abilities on the Hunter. Watch for my signal."
"This time, think of it as your new recruit training."
Even at a critical moment like this, Captain Zheng still had the mood to joke with Zhu Yan.
"No other new recruit gets this kind of treatment. You're getting special treatment, kid!"
It really was special treatment.
If he played his cards right...
Zhu Yan suddenly felt a little pathetic.
With resources this scarce, he could only do his best to make the most of every event, pushing his mission completion rate as high as he possibly could.
He made his "puppet" Zhu Zeyu lift his head, staring nervously at the closed steel door of the interrogation room.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Captain Zheng pull his mask on with a grave, tight expression.
Every single player was tensed up and ready for action. Zhu Yan didn't even need to look to know that under every gas mask was a face set in grim determination.
He guided his puppet to fall back beside the gas canisters as per the agreed plan, and placed his hand on the switch right alongside his teammates.
...
"I kept my end of the deal. I had my people break the instance Jin Rongxu was trapped in."
The Hunter spoke, thick with self-satisfaction.
Jin Rongxu had indeed stumbled out of that endless, looping corridor.
It felt like a lifetime had passed as he stared at the familiar elevator doors in front of him. The elevator doors were wide open, and beyond them was nothing but the solid wall between the negative 17th and negative 19th floors.
Above the elevator doors hung a completely warped, smoke-emitting pull ring.
Everything looked perfectly normal.
So normal, it was almost as if that eerie instance had never existed at all.
The Mist drifted lazily over his head, idly dabbing a few drops of Thrill Delight onto itself.
Jin Rongxu wiped his face roughly with his sleeve, and caught sight of the message Director Jin had just sent him.
"You're out?" the message read.
Jin Rongxu understood everything in an instant.
It was humiliating.
He had been tricked and locked inside some random instance, and he'd needed Director Jin to pull strings just to get him out.
Jin Rongxu gritted his teeth and typed a reply.
He watched the elevator doors slide shut, and the car glide upward as if nothing had happened at all, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached.
...
"Keep your word, Director Jin," the Hunter said. "If you dare go back on our deal, I'll make sure that video gets leaked to the public immediately."
That threat, paired with the existence of the video, erased the last of Director Jin's lingering doubts.
If the Hunter had just released Jin Rongxu cleanly without leaving any leverage for himself, Director Jin would have immediately suspected a trap. But the fact that the Hunter was using the video to blackmail him only made him think the Hunter was naive and inexperienced.
Director Jin nodded, and sent a message to his people outside.
"I know he's really out. I'll keep my end of the deal. Release him."
...
The steel door made a heavy clanking noise, and slowly swung outward.
The second the sound rang out, the Hunter and the team outside both sprang into action at the exact same time.
The Hunter revealed its true form in the interrogation room, a dark shadow that bolted straight for the exit at full speed.
The players pounced like cats that had just spotted a mouse, but the Hunter darted left and right with incredible agility, dodging almost every weapon the players threw at it.
"Release it!" Zhu Zeyu heard a teammate yell right beside his ear.
He immediately twisted the valve on the gas canister, and thick white fog burst out, quickly spreading to fill the entire hallway.
Zhu Zeyu pretended to activate his ability Complaint, and started hurling insults and curses at the Hunter somewhere in the gas.
Meanwhile, the Mist-like Zhu Yan solidified into a human shape, covered his mouth and nose, and sprinted at top speed, before slamming straight into the Net of Heaven and Earth prop.
Zhu Yan had already figured it out.
This thing wasn't really a capture net, it was more like a high-voltage power grid. Anyone that ran into it would get hit with a high-level electric shock, but as long as they chugged a couple sips of Universal Potion, they'd be completely fine in no time.
The "shock" sent Zhu Yan flying backward. He hit the ground and slid all the way down the length of the hallway.
He quickly swallowed the potion he had been holding under his tongue, and watched as the whole crowd of players came sprinting toward him, spamming their skills wildly.
"There he is!"
"Catch him, quick!"
In the observation room, Director Jin could barely contain his excitement. He hurried over to the window to get a better look.
Several times, the Hunter was so close the players almost grabbed the back of its coat, but it twisted free every single time.
But it was clearly injured.
In its final desperate burst, it dodged Captain Zheng's wind blade, and ran straight back toward the Net of Heaven and Earth.
"He's getting away!" Zhu Zeyu shouted.
Just as everyone expected, the moment the Hunter's figure reached the edge of the prop, it flickered and vanished, reappearing outside the net and darting straight for the elevators.
"Stop him!" Director Jin was so worked up he was practically pressing his whole face against the glass.
He watched Zhu Zeyu and Captain Zheng, who were the closest to the exit, lunge forward like arrows shot from a bow, his heart in his throat.
But the Hunter was too fast. Zhu Zeyu and Captain Zheng dove right past where it had been, and missed completely.
The figure flickered once more right in front of the elevator doors and vanished. Seconds later, it popped up in the heavily guarded lobby, limping as it sprinted straight for the main entrance.
"Hunter!"
Zhu Yan heard Liu Lei's voice ring out, and pushed his speed to the absolute limit while still keeping up his act.
He was completely worn out. Pretending to limp while also running at top speed was such a damn pain.
And on top of that, to sell the illusion that the Hunter had a partner, he still had to go back to the elevator in his Mist form and run the whole route a second time!
"Fire," Liu Lei ordered without hesitation.
But the Hunter's speed was so absurdly over the top that there was nothing they could do. The second the gunshot rang out, the lurching figure vanished through the main doors, gone without a trace.
"He got away?"
Liu Lei was sweating through his uniform. He knew he had messed up on the job. The thing was injured, for God's sake. How did an injured Hunter just slip right through his watch and vanish?
"Captain Liu!" one of his subordinates called out right in his ear. "Hey - stop that person!"
Another figure in gray clothing suddenly darted out, moving so fast even Liu Lei could barely track it as it streaked across the lobby.
This figure was far more agile than the first Hunter they'd chased. It kept flickering in and out of sight, like someone using a malfunctioning invisibility item.
A string of gunshots went off, one after another, but none of them hit their mark. That second figure also vanished through the main entrance, and was completely gone.
Liu Lei's face darkened. He immediately led his team rushing outside to check.
There was nothing at the door at all, except for a broken metal pull ring, crumpled and lying crooked on the ground.
...
Zhu Yan slipped back into Zhu Zeyu's body, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might jump right out of his chest.
Shit, that was exhausting.
But the payoff was perfect. Both "Hunters" had escaped right in front of every single witness, no one had suspected a thing.
He left a wisp of [Mist] upstairs, so he could still catch the absurd remarks Liu Lei was making about the fake [Connector].
"If this thing can connect to dungeons, there's a good chance it can connect to [Carnival Paradise] too," Liu Lei guessed with a perfectly serious look, which was exactly what Zhu Yan wanted to hear.
"Those two people probably used this thing to get back. Too bad it's broken now, damn it."
A low-ranking soldier beside him spoke up, "If it wasn't broken, we'd probably be the ones getting ourselves killed."
Liu Lei shot him a glare, then sighed.
"Take this back and send it to the Research Department."
"I'll go report to Director Jin. The Hunter got away again, but we've confirmed the target has an accomplice!"
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.
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.
ng to die together with you." Lin Xuan is dead, his body thrown into the river by his scumbag lover and her accomplice. She, the president of the Su Group, is decisive, ruthless, and ice-cold. For three days and three nights, she had his body fished out of the river, and without hesitation, she kissed the bloated corpse of Lin Xuan. She laid down beside him in a cold coffin, their fingers intertwined, a smile lingering on her lips as she closed her eyes. The noble and cold-hearted woman, only bending for one man—Lin Xuan. Lin Xuan, with his golden finger, is reborn and returns to the day of his wedding to the treacherous woman. Su Qiang comes to steal the bride. Lin Xuan's eyes light up, eager to pledge his loyalty on the spot, but instead, her kiss transfers a glass of drugged wine into his mouth, causing him to pass out... 【Male Protagonist with Single Female Lead】【Yandere Tycoon】【Action-Packed】【True vs. Fake Heir】
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
