You Almost Died

Qiu Lingkai’s hearty laughter crackled through the eavesdropping earpiece, blurred by static and unreal.

“The ownership is in our hands?” he asked Zhu Yan for confirmation.

“In my hands.” Zhu Yan spoke in Qiu Dehai’s voice.

The invisible Fog seeped out of the puppet’s body, pierced through the layer of skin covering it, and slowly took shape behind Qiu Lingkai.

Naturally, Qiu Lingkai noticed nothing.

He was delighted, smugness brushing his brows and the corners of his eyes as he paced behind the desk and gazed ambition-filled at the puppet that looked like Qiu Lingfeng.

“The Abyssal Eye Club is an organization that only advanced horror creatures can join.”

“That’s what they say.” Zhu Yan smiled faintly.

“Qiu Lingfeng, what’s wrong with you?” Qiu Lingkai sneered.

Yang Zhanbai cautiously stopped about eight meters from the office.

He had attended several rounds of Human Alliance training and knew the upper limits corresponding to the various attributes on a human player’s activated stats panel after reaching Level 5.

From a rough assessment, neither of the two men was particularly high-level—at most, they were on the same level as Captain Zheng.

This distance was enough to ensure that he would not be discovered.

If he moved any closer, he would have to pay special attention to concealing even his voice and scent.

But who was “Qiu Lingfeng”?

He remembered that the Qiu general who had just gone inside was called Qiu Dehai, while “Qiu Lingfeng” sounded more like a brother of Qiu Lingkai and Qiu Lingxiao.

He had indeed heard that the Qiu family had sacrificed one of their sons.

Could a dead man appear in an office?

Yang Zhanbai entered the Player Forum and sent Guan En a private message asking about it. Then he took out a bottle of scent-and-sound concealer and carefully sprayed it all over himself.

He had stolen it from the Lazybones Craft Shop while clearing the instance Metabolism Module.

Its level was unknown, and he had no idea whether it could fool Commander Qiu and General Qiu.

Still, for the information about “Qiu Lingfeng,” and for the horror creatures mentioned by the two people in the office, the risk was well worth taking.

Yang Zhanbai cautiously took a few steps forward.

Everything remained normal in the earpiece. The two people in the office should have been completely unaware of him.

“You weren’t like this before.” The edges of Qiu Lingkai’s voice were somewhat blurred. “What do you mean by… ‘That’s what they say’? Ha! ‘That’s what they say’?”

There was an ulterior meaning in Zhu Yan’s words, and he replied with a faint, mocking smile, “Qiu Lingkai, I thought you were cautious.”

He had been splitting his attention to monitor the activity outside the office because he had seen through Yang Zhanbai.

The man looked bright and lively, but no one could tell whether that brightness came from the flare of a land mine exploding, or whether his liveliness was because sodium had encountered water.

A moment ago, the footsteps belonging to Yang Zhanbai had stopped outside the door, then vanished.

Sudden silence was the most abnormal thing of all.

A strand of Fog quietly drifted outside the office. It activated the ability Mind Reading and silently monitored Yang Zhanbai’s every move.

Inside the office.

“You’re the one who taught me to be bold when the time came, aren’t you?” Qiu Lingkai asked with a laugh.

“Qiu Lingfeng, we actually progressed very quickly. The strategy for the Carnival Wasteland wasn’t as difficult as we imagined. It’s only been this long, and we’ve already gone from…”

Yang Zhanbai could not help pressing a hand to his earpiece. His fist clenched so tightly that it trembled with tension.

Already gone from what?

Could it be the Hunt—

“That’s enough!” Zhu Yan cut him off sharply at the crucial moment.

That bastard Yang Zhanbai was still listening in.

If he heard the three words “Hunter,” Zhu Yan would have only two choices: kill Yang Zhanbai, or sacrifice the two major identities of Qiu Lingfeng and Qiu Lingkai.

How was he supposed to choose?

Zhu Yan admitted that he had not reached the point where he could personally kill a friend—even if that friend was merely a friend of Zhu Zeyu.

Qiu Lingkai looked at him. “What’s wrong with you now? Ever since you went to the Carnival Wasteland, you haven’t been acting right.”

Zhu Yan smiled.

Qiu Lingkai stared at him and suddenly frowned.

That did not seem like an expression Qiu Lingfeng would make.

When Qiu Lingfeng smiled, the expression generally did not reach his eyes. Usually, only the muscles around his mouth moved, leaving him looking gloomy and cold.

But this—

Qiu Lingkai felt that the bright, smiling eyes before him resembled the inorganic eyes of an impostor. Compared with those of a real person, they seemed subtly different.

“Qiu Lingfeng” gestured to him, silently indicating that he should turn halfway around.

“I’ll give you a chance,” Zhu Yan said. “People have to understand things at least once in their lives.”

Qiu Lingkai was bewildered.

He slowly turned around, his gaze sweeping over the carpet, the solid-wood bookcase, the simulated window view, and… a person.

Qiu Lingkai froze.

The uniform on this person had been torn to shreds, but his face was perfectly clean. Like Qiu Lingkai himself, smugness brushed his brows and the corners of his eyes.

“Zhu—”

Schk!

A sharp white bone blade pierced through Qiu Lingkai’s body as easily as a knife through a sheet of paper.

A cow cat silently leaped onto the blade, curled its tail, and lowered its head to elegantly lap at the blood flowing from Qiu Lingkai’s wound.

Zhu Zeyu held the blade in one hand and raised a finger to his lips.

“Walls have ears.”

He spoke in Zhu Yan’s voice and deactivated Mimicry.

The face that belonged to “Zhu Zeyu” began to change into another appearance.

With a cold foreign object invading his internal organs, Qiu Lingkai felt his life force draining away at terrifying speed. His entire body grew cold, and every sound from outside seemed separated from him by a layer of water.

He strained to open his eyes, trying to make out the other person’s appearance. Yet no matter how hard he tried to memorize that face, it refused to leave the slightest impression in his mind.

The only person with such an ability was—

“You are…”

Zhu Yan twisted the bone blade in his hand.

The words “Number One” melted soundlessly into the air. The cow cat was forced to leap down to the floor by the movement and unhappily swiped at Zhu Yan.

Qiu Lingkai’s body hung crookedly from the bone blade. He had completely stopped breathing.

Zhu Yan released his strength and tossed the bone blade, Qiu Lingkai’s body and all, to the side. Then he took out the new puppet and the memory reader.

…

Outside the office.

Yang Zhanbai’s brows were tightly furrowed, his expression grave.

What was going on?

Before this, he had been able to understand every sentence. The people inside had spoken back and forth, forming a coherent story.

But all of a sudden, that coherence had shattered, and he could no longer make sense of anything that followed.

Especially the ominous sound of a blade stabbing through a watermelon.

It wasn’t as if he had never seen a dead body. Could it be that—

Yang Zhanbai wanted to move closer and sniff for the scent of blood. He was even about to push open the office door when a familiar voice called out to him, trembling with intense fear and relief.

“Yang Zhanbai? I’m… really back?”

Yang Zhanbai spun around.

It was Zhu Zeyu.

His clothes were torn to tatters and covered in dust, making him look thoroughly battered.

There was even a fresh streak of blood splashed across his face, while both his hands were wrapped in suspicious red.

Yang Zhanbai was stunned. “Holy shit, why are you here of all places at a time like this…?”

He could no longer worry about the office. He hurried over and gestured for Zhu Zeyu to follow him through the emergency exit.

You picked a bad time to show up! You nearly died!