The man stared at him for a few seconds, a length of ash building on the cigarette in his mouth before it dropped onto the counter. He didn't bother to flick it off.
"You're a guy who knows how to watch his mouth."
"Anyone who's lived this long knows how to watch his mouth."
The man let out a short laugh. "You're interesting. Fine, wait here."
He stood up from behind the counter and walked toward the back of the shop.
Chen Guan sat on the low stool without moving, his gaze casually sweeping across the interior of the shop.
The hardware items on the shelves were arranged haphazardly, some clearly gathering thick layers of dust, as if they were never meant to be bought. The whole place felt more like a front, its real purpose having nothing to do with selling goods.
Other than that, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
The leopard's ear twitched, angling toward the back of the shop.
From behind, the man exchanged a few words with someone, his voice lowered so much that the content was impossible to make out.
After about two or three minutes, he returned.
Someone followed behind him.
A young man, around twenty-five or twenty-six, wearing a black hoodie with the hood down, revealing a sharply defined face. His skin was dark-toned, and his left ear bore a silver stud.
He walked up to the counter, leaned against the shelves, crossed his arms, and looked Chen Guan over twice from above.
"He Chenguan?"
"Yeah."
"Came up from the southwest?"
"Yeah."
"Traveled this far to find work. No opportunities left back home?"
"Not many."
Chen Guan slowed his speech slightly, letting a note of weariness creep into his tone.
"Small place. The local teams have locked down all the exotic beast cleanup contracts—outsiders can't break in. Hauling jobs are getting rarer too. A man's got to eat."
The young man in the hoodie studied him, his gaze lingering on Chen Guan's face for two seconds before shifting to the leopard.
"This leopard yours?"
"Yeah."
"Mutated?"
"Yeah."
Listening to these standard questions, Chen Guan was already starting to feel drowsy.
Man, this is dragging.
The hoodie squatted down, extended a hand, and waved it in front of the leopard.
The leopard tilted its head, sniffed his fingers, then turned away, ignoring him.
"Got an attitude." The hoodie stood up, a faint smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.
"Been with me too long. Not friendly with strangers," Chen Guan said.
The hoodie's gaze returned to his face. "Take off the mask."
Chen Guan did as he was told.
Then, he felt an extremely faint wave of psychic energy, like something brushing lightly across his face—but the force dissipated quickly, as if it had been deflected by an invisible membrane.
The energy came fast and faded just as fast.
The hoodie's brow furrowed slightly. It was like biting into something and finding the taste off, but not being able to pinpoint why.
"Is there something on your face?"
"What kind of something?" Chen Guan's tone carried a hint of irritation, the natural reaction of someone being asked an odd question out of nowhere.
The hoodie stared at him for two more seconds, then looked away.
"Never mind."
He turned his head toward the middle-aged man behind the counter, and the two exchanged a glance. The middle-aged man gave a slight nod.
The hoodie refocused on Chen Guan, his arms still crossed, but his whole demeanor loosened a notch, settling into a matter-of-fact tone.
"Alright, He Chenguan, right? I'll go over the rules once. Only once."
"Go ahead."
Chen Guan snapped the mask back on. The thing worked well—aside from not being durable, shattering at the first hit, it had no flaws.
"First: don't ask what you shouldn't ask, don't see what you shouldn't see, don't remember what you shouldn't remember. All you need to know is that someone's paying you to do a job. You finish the job, you take the money, and you leave."
Chen Guan nodded.
"Second: once you take a job, you finish it. If you bail partway through, you face the consequences."
"What consequences?"
The hoodie grinned. "What do you think?"
Chen Guan didn't respond.
The hoodie didn't wait for an answer either, pressing on.
"Third: freelancers are not allowed to form private connections. No asking about each other's backgrounds. You don't know them, they don't know you. Everyone's here to make money. When it's over, everyone goes their separate ways."
"Last one." The hoodie raised a single finger, pointing it in the air. "Control your beast. If it bites someone it shouldn't, you can't afford the damage."
The leopard lay on the floor, its ear twitching, the tip of its tail lightly slapping the ground, looking utterly docile.
Chen Guan glanced down at it.
"He's better behaved than I am."
The hoodie snorted, then turned and walked toward the back of the shop.
"Follow me."
Chen Guan stood up, and the leopard rose with him.
Behind the shop was a narrow passage flanked by warehouse walls, rust stains and unknown climbing plants crawling up the plaster. Overhead, power lines hung so low they almost brushed the hair as they passed.
After two turns, an iron door appeared ahead, unlocked and left slightly ajar.
The hoodie pushed it open. Inside was a modest room, about thirty square meters, with a concrete floor and a tin roof.
The room already had people in it.
Three of them.
A bald man sat on the bed farthest in, wiping a short-bladed knife with a few old notches in the blade, well-used.
A lanky, tall guy leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, hands in his pockets—either sleeping or pretending to.
A woman sat on the edge of the bed closest to the door, holding a chipped enamel mug, drinking water. She had short hair.
All three glanced at Chen Guan when he entered.
The bald man's gaze lingered on him for less than a second before returning to his knife.
The lanky guy barely lifted an eyelid before closing it again. Chen Guan caught a faint trace of Long Ao in his posture.
The short-haired woman took a longer look, her eyes staying on the leopard longer than on Chen Guan himself.
"New guy. He Chenguan. Freelancer. Summoner class."
The hoodie announced him from the doorway in a bored, listing tone, then turned to Chen Guan. "Pick an empty bed, stash your stuff. Someone'll come tonight to assign tasks. Don't wander off before that."
With that, he left. The iron door clicked shut behind him with a dull thud.
Chen Guan stood at the entrance, surveying the room.
Two empty beds remained: one next to the bald man, one across from the lanky guy.
He chose the one across from the lanky guy.
The leopard followed him over, lying down by the bed, its tail curled around its side, purple pupils half-lidded, looking perfectly calm.
Chen Guan sat on the bed, took off his jacket, and draped it over the footrail, his movements so natural they suggested he was long used to such crude lodgings.
The room fell quiet for a while.
"Your leopard—purple?"
It was the short-haired woman who had spoken, her voice lower than expected.
"Yeah."
"Mutated?"
"Yeah."
"What rank?"
"Three."
] This is a dark fantasy-themed dating simulation game. The main gameplay involves containing various monster girls and investigating the truth of a world shrouded in mist alongside your companions. However, due to his love for the dark and bizarre atmosphere, Luo Wei ended up turning a dating game into a detective mystery game. Women? Women only slow down his quickdraw! To Luo Wei, the female leads in the game are more like tools to perfectly clear levels and squeeze out rewards. For Luo Wei, flirting with every girl he meets and then discarding them is standard procedure. Worried about characters losing affection points? No need. With his maxed-out charm stat, Luo Wei is practically a "human incubus." A little psychological manipulation and those points come right back. It's a bit scummy, but the paper cutout heroines in the game won't actually come at him with real cleavers. However... Luo Wei has transmigrated. He's accidentally entered the second playthrough of this game. His past actions have caused all the girls to transform into terrifying yanderes. Due to the game's setting, most of the heroines he once contained are "troubled girls." Obsessive, twisted, mentally unstable, all aggressive yanderes... The type who will kill you if they can't have you... Luo Wei wants to cry but has no tears left. "I really just want to survive..." In short, this is a story of battling wits and engaging in a love-hate relationship with yanderes.
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
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!
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
