【Hunter】 looked as though he had just heard a hilarious joke.
He threw his head back and laughed, his whole body rocking with mirth.
“Impersonating Zhu Zeyu… Mm, yes. But there’s something I hope you understand.”
Blood traced winding paths across the floor as Jin Rongxu was forced backward, stumbling into a corner. He still had the military saber clenched in his hand.
“Zhu Zeyu has never existed.”
Zhu Yan said this lightly.
“But he is the only version of me you’re qualified to know.”
He spun the genuine Level 13 longsword in his hand, then brought it down in one clean stroke.
Jin Rongxu hastily raised his saber to block. The blades met with a crisp clang.
Then came the soft sound of something cracking.
Jin Rongxu stared at the weapon in his hand.
Cracks were spreading across the blade at a speed visible to the naked eye.
【Hunter】 looked down at him with an amused smile.
The blade pressing him down withdrew with startling speed. A hard-soled ankle boot immediately stomped onto the fake saber, and metal fragments burst outward with an explosive crack.
Jin Rongxu let out an enraged shout.
One fragment skimmed his skin, leaving behind a short trail of blood.
At last, he realized what was happening and stared at his left palm.
But Zhu Yan was faster—
The instant the three characters 【Hunter】 finished appearing, the knife plunged through his heart once again, without the slightest mercy.
Jin Rongxu’s eyes flew wide.
Through his gradually blurring vision, the three characters 【Hunter】 appeared with a “Sent” notification.
Behind the red text was the young man’s brazen, dazzling smile.
As Jin Rongxu watched, 【Hunter】 slowly crouched down. Amid the suffocating, heavy pain in his chest, he felt a light pat on his shoulder.
“You know, the Seer can be very useful sometimes.”
His tone was relaxed, as though he were simply making small talk.
“I often use her to decide what I should do next. Ah, are you sending a message to someone, Captain Jin?”
Jin Rongxu was indeed trying to type a few more words.
But his mind was exhausted and terrified. The shapes of the characters jumped chaotically across his retina, making it nearly impossible to form a complete sentence.
【Hunter】 was gently, almost pityingly, pinching his chin as he examined him, as though inspecting a piece of merchandise.
But then the other man twisted his wrist without mercy. The blade jerked, shattering the last remnants of Jin Rongxu’s awareness.
“Not bad.”
In the final moment before consciousness faded, Jin Rongxu vaguely heard him say:
“At least his face isn’t damaged… Once the injuries to his body are repaired, he should make a decent puppet…”
…
Director Jin leaned uneasily against a small door behind the auditorium stage.
Compared with earlier, the noise from the foyer had faded considerably.
But the buzzing din, like the hum of insects, could still be heard from here. Even more frightening was the appearance of the words “Hunter” in Jin Rongxu’s private messages.
There was no preamble and no follow-up.
Nothing but the bare three characters 【Hunter】!
The red text was painfully stark in the darkness.
Director Jin hid behind several players from the 【Human Alliance】, steadying himself as he sent a reply to his nephew.
“What happened?”
After thinking for a moment, he opened Zhu Zeyu’s private-message window as well.
“What exactly happened in there? Has 【Hunter】 arrived?”
Neither side replied.
Nervous yet hopeful, Director Jin turned his head to look behind him, wishing for a crack to appear in that bizarre door.
It was far too quiet here.
He waited for quite some time before finally receiving a reply from his nephew.
“I’m all right, Director.”
…
In the changing room, Zhu Yan tossed aside the bloodstained clothes in his hands, then straightened the uniform jacket on Jin Rongxu’s body.
He had randomly grabbed the clothes from the box of costume props and used them as rags to wipe away the blood.
The uniform jacket, meanwhile, had been taken from Jin Rongxu’s ring.
That man had an entire pile of treasures in there. Zhu Yan hadn’t had time to sort through them yet.
The female voice continued broadcasting in his ear, announcing some good news while urging him to proceed with the next step.
“…Dear 【Hunter】, would you please tear your attention away from this new 【Walking Corpse】?”
Zhu Yan lowered his head and checked the remaining details.
“Don’t worry. This is a special reward for clearing this stage—a celebration of your first successful use of the rules.”
“In thirty seconds, the 【Walking Corpse】 will be complete.”
“Congratulations, dear 【Hunter】!”
Thirty seconds.
How much time would replacing the rule require?
Zhu Yan turned to glance at the changing-room door, then looked back at the 【Rule Directory】 in his field of vision.
With a thought, a line of red text appeared in the darkness.
“Would you like to replace an existing rule?”
“Yes,” Zhu Yan said silently.
“Please wait patiently for two minutes,” the red text replied.
It was about time…
He returned to the body of “Zhu Zeyu” and led three old 【Walking Corpses】 and one new one out of the changing room, back onto the brightly lit stage.
The 【Illusion】 was spreading rapidly.
In less than ten minutes, the students onstage had already taken on a different appearance.
They—or rather, it—was no longer so blurry that it seemed ready to crumble. Instead, the forms had been reconstructed in slightly higher definition.
There was an unnatural, oily smoothness to them. Zhu Yan thought they looked like images that had been sharpened, then covered with a layer of skin-smoothing and soft-focus effects.
They faced the audience, smiling with unnatural precision.
Zhu Yan swept his gaze across the spectators below.
Under the circumstances, the audience was clearly quiet in a way that was far from normal.
Some of the parents in the front rows and players wearing 【Human Alliance】 uniforms had already been assimilated. Their clothes and hair reflected the stray light from the stage lamps with an abnormal, polished sheen.
The clamor of ordinary people and their heart-wrenching cries of despair came from deeper within the darkness.
When Zhu Zeyu and Jin Rongxu appeared once more, those intensely suppressed emotions erupted again.
“When are we going to be allowed out?!”
“My son is dead! My son is up there—my son is dead!”
“That’s enough! So many people have died already! When are we going to be allowed out?!”
Zhu Yan glanced at the red text on the stage.
The rule replacement still required several dozen seconds.
For now, the red text remained unchanged, displaying itself as usual.
Using the 【Zhu Zeyu】 account, he sent Director Jin a message.
“Director, we’re out. You can try moving now.”
Then he gently nodded toward the audience, bent down, and picked up the female teacher’s microphone.
“Sorry to keep everyone waiting.”
His voice rang throughout the auditorium.
【Mist】 had already found Director Jin. As Zhu Yan sent the four 【Walking Corpses】 toward the rear door where Director Jin was hiding, he watched the uneasy, shifting sea of heads below.
“Captain Jin has completed the attack.”
Director Jin opened the door.
The four 【Walking Corpses】 and the players who had been taken away separately filed out one after another. Zhu Yan should leave as well.
“We have fulfilled the conditions specified by the rules!”
Bzzz—crackle—
The stage lights flickered.
The instant they went dark and came back on, someone screamed at the stage.
“He’s gone! He disappeared!”
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."
m back to his original world. In the end, he realized he had overthought things. [Hey, why is Shen Manni, the female lead, acting strange? Shouldn't she be fawning over the male lead at this point?] [Zhou Qiaoqiao, are you sick? Weren't you supposed to break off your engagement today?] [Damn it! An Youyi, please do your job as an undercover agent and sell my information to the protagonist, you idiot!] ... At this moment, Xu Mo himself didn't know that these female leads had already heard his inner thoughts. Then they decided not to play by the rules. Xu Mo: Please respect my profession as the big villain!
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
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.
