Judging by the thoughts of the tentacled monster...
If the distance became too great, this freak would switch to attacking someone else.
In both instances, the monster had completely ignored all other passengers on the train, targeting only Zhou Ke and the silver-haired girl.
Did they alone fit its killing criteria?
Moreover—
If one of them created distance, would it immediately shift to attacking the other?
Earlier, when the tentacle monster had been about to kill the girl, Zhou Ke had inadvertently taken a step forward.
In response, the monster had tossed the girl aside and turned its attention to Zhou Ke.
Zhou Ke formulated a hypothesis: the monster could only kill one person at a time, so it would always attack whoever was closer.
Testing this theory was simple.
Zhou Ke looked up and shouted at the silver-haired girl:
"Run toward me!"
"What?" The girl froze.
"Trust me!"
She gave him a quick once-over, weighing her options, before finally complying and sprinting in his direction.
[Target switched!]
The tentacle monster abandoned Zhou Ke and lunged for the girl again.
"Stop!" Zhou Ke barked.
The girl cooperated instantly, halting in place.
Zhou Ke immediately moved, rushing toward the monster.
Once he was closer...
[Target switched!]
The monster retracted its tentacle from the girl and lashed out at Zhou Ke instead.
Just as he thought...
This thing had no independent judgment—its behavior followed a simple logic:
1. It would only attack either Zhou Ke or the silver-haired girl.
2. It would always prioritize the closer target.
With that in mind, the solution became obvious.
Who would’ve thought that mind-reading, seemingly useless in this situation, could prove so unexpectedly effective?
"There’s no such thing as a useless magic tool... only unreliable magicians," Zhou Ke muttered.
Who said offensive abilities were better in scenarios like this?
"In the hands of a skilled magician, even rotten wood... can bloom."
Zhou Ke’s earlier panic vanished, replaced by icy calm.
He took a leisurely step back, his movements graceful and unhurried.
Now, the silver-haired girl, the tentacle monster, and Zhou Ke stood in a straight line inside the train.
And the distance between the two humans and the monster was perfectly equal.
Instantly, the monster froze.
To an outsider, it looked as though Zhou Ke’s half-step back had immobilized the creature.
But Zhou Ke knew the real reason.
A smirk curled his lips as he listened to the monster’s thoughts:
[Anomaly! Targets equidistant!]
The monster’s logic was simple: attack whoever was closer.
But if both targets were the same distance away, its judgment short-circuited.
This was the real key to breaking the deadlock.
The girl stared in disbelief, glancing between the motionless monster and Zhou Ke.
Since she couldn’t hear the monster’s thoughts, his effortless control over it baffled her.
But the next moment...
The monster extended both tentacles, striking at them simultaneously!
[Simultaneous attack!]
Its voice was guttural, its pitch rising sharply.
"So you’re not completely brainless," Zhou Ke murmured.
He wasn’t surprised by the monster’s reaction.
In fact, if the creature had just stood there dumbly, he’d have questioned the intelligence of the Skull Society’s assassins.
Zhou Ke quickly called out to the girl:
"Move back! Both of us—keep equal distance as we retreat!"
Since she couldn’t hear the monster’s thoughts, she had no way of deducing its attack patterns.
So she didn’t understand his reasoning.
But after seeing him immobilize the monster with a single step, she trusted him enough to obey without hesitation.
The girl moved with feline grace, leaping onto the train’s side wall to evade the tentacle before swiftly retreating.
Zhou Ke mirrored her, darting backward so fast he became a blur.
Their movements were perfectly synchronized, maintaining equal distance and forcing the monster to split its focus.
Once they’d put enough space between themselves and the creature...
CRACK!
The tentacles reached their limit.
The scene in the carriage now looked like this:
A tentacled freak stood in the middle.
Its two appendages stretched to either side, straining to reach its targets.
But its limbs had a maximum length, so...
It was stuck.
Both tentacles were fully extended, yet neither could touch their intended prey.
"This thing’s brain is pathetically simple."
Zhou Ke bent down, casually picking up a metal rod from the floor—a piece of the train’s railing dislodged during the chaos.
He tested its weight. Not bad.
In one fluid motion, he raised it and drove it down like a stake, impaling one of the flailing tentacles to the ground.
The girl watched, bewildered.
Zhou Ke met her questioning gaze.
"If you don’t get it, just copy me."
After a beat, she nodded.
Summoning a spear with her ability, she mimicked his motion, pinning the other tentacle with a decisive thrust.
Now, both of the monster’s limbs were immobilized.
"Move toward it with me—keep the distance equal," Zhou Ke instructed softly.
The girl complied.
Step by step, they advanced in perfect sync.
With the distance identical, the monster couldn’t focus on a single target.
So it tried to attack both simultaneously.
But...
Its tentacles were already nailed to the floor, rendering it helpless.
This was exactly why Zhou Ke had pinned them down.
They stopped right in front of the creature.
[Royal blood... eliminate!]
[Error! Targets equidistant!]
The monster’s thoughts crackled like static.
It thrashed wildly, but the rods held its limbs fast.
Zhou Ke’s eyes locked onto the skull emblem on its clothes, his expression darkening.
"I told you—send as many assassins as you want."
"However many come..."
"...I’ll kill them all."
A blade flashed.
Zhou Ke drew a dagger from his pocket and slit the monster’s throat in one clean stroke.
In the bloody mist of the monster's disintegrating skull, a crimson gleam slowly swirled in Zhou Ke's eyes before fading away.
The noise-like murmurs of the monster's thoughts had now vanished entirely.
The disappearance of the supernatural effect meant this freak was well and truly dead.
Zhou Ke stretched lazily once more, tilting his neck with casual ease.
It was as if he hadn’t just killed someone—merely woken up from a nap.
The silver-haired girl glanced at him, hesitating to speak.
"Ask whatever you want," Zhou Ke said softly.
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!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
【Prologue: The Beginning of It All – Use holy water to heal the saintess tainted by demonic energy, then converse with her.】 Shen Nian stared at his older sister sipping yogurt, lost in thought. So you’re telling me my sister is the saintess, and yogurt is the holy water? 【Main Quest 1: Brave Youth, Become an Adventurer! Reward: Rookie Adventurer Title.】 【Side Quest 1: Find the Adorable Kitty! Reward: 1000 Gold Coins.】 Shen Nian: "Wait, I’m a high school senior here—did some guy who got isekai’d accidentally bind his system to me?" Hold on, completing quests gives gold rewards? Titles even boost stats? Is this for real? (A lighthearted, absurd campus comedy—not a revenge power fantasy.)
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
