“Eh? This kind of elevator door… an old-fashioned model? I’ve never seen one. Let me have a look.”
Seeing Hidden Blade block the shaft entrance, Xu Feiyu immediately stepped up to him.
Off to the side, He Xiaowei’s forehead was already beaded with sweat.
He had no idea what was happening with Zhou Qian’s group below. The shaft was so deep—what if they couldn’t hear anything up here? And if they could hear but had run into ghosts and were pinned down, unable to haul up the ropes, what then?
Only by sheer will did He Xiaowei manage to keep calm. He maintained an unruffled expression as Xu Feiyu approached the opening.
The next instant he saw his Master, Hidden Blade, sidestep out of the way and let Xu Feiyu reach the gate.
At that moment He Xiaowei finally relaxed: only the rope Hidden Blade had just tied remained visible. The other lines were gone. He exhaled silently.
“Master, I never realized you’re such a daredevil—each stunt riskier than the last…”
He Xiaowei swallowed and whispered through the private-chat tool.
At a distance Hidden Blade shot him a glance. “Mainly, you have to trust your teammates.”
Right—who was down below? Zhou Qian and Bai Zhou.
He Xiaowei believed he could always trust Zhou Qian.
The very next second Xu Feiyu gave a startled cry and dodged aside as something floated up the shaft: scraps of spirit-money and powdery flakes that looked like crushed bone.
“What the hell…” Xu Feiyu frowned.
Hidden Blade gave her a cold look. “I think we’d better go down and check.”
“I’ll send two men with you,” she said, motioning to two subordinates. Then to the remaining one. “You—search the office floors. And—”
She fixed Hidden Blade with a stare. “No tricks. We have ways to deal with you.”
Hidden Blade feigned puzzlement. “We’re on the same team now. We can’t attack each other. Why the threat?”
Then, as though understanding, he added, “Ah, I get it.”
Only then did Xu Feiyu realize she’d said too much: her men were present, and if she admitted having bands of other colors, she’d be telling them that once their numbers exceeded the instance limit, she might kill them.
Seeing her face, Hidden Blade said, “Since I’m in your camp I’ll help you—together with my disciple, who’s also my Shepherd. We’ll give you what you want, you guarantee we survive to the end.”
In veiled words he meant: if violet’s numbers grew too large, she must not kill him and He Xiaowei.
Xu Feiyu, pleased he hadn’t spoken openly, smiled. “You’re a god-level player; that’s your strongest bargaining chip. I value talent. After the run, you’re welcome in our legion.”
[Wristband update — Orange 9 | Yellow 23 | Green 25 | Blue 19 | Indigo 14 | Violet 25]
Eighteen floors beneath the office building.
Glancing at the notice, Zhou Qian instantly guessed what had happened—yellow was down by one, so He Xiaowei had switched to purple, and Hidden Blade had put on a band as well.
Looking away from the panel he told Bai Zhou, “Seems we should head for the underground river. Good news, though—Little Dragon’s found a lot of weapons. I’ve told it to sneak back.”
Bai Zhou had already relayed everything from the roof via private chat. He nodded and led the way. Qi Liuxing, sword in hand, took the rear.
The transport company’s building sat high.
Following the subterranean river, Zhou Qian soon entered a ravine that looked much like Purple Mist Mountain.
Keeping alert, he asked Bai Zhou, “You heard Hidden Blade the moment he noticed something?”
“Mm. His first words to He Xiaowei weren’t on private channel,” Bai Zhou replied.
Through the comm Zhou Qian mused, “And you prepared right away?”
Bai Zhou opened his mouth and shut it again. “So…?”
“So you two coordinate pretty smoothly.”
Zhou Qian dimmed his torch, shining through his sleeve to minimize exposure. While being able to illuminate the path clearly, he also tried to reduce the possibility of exposure.
He stared at bai Zhou and added, “How many runs have you two cleared together?”
Bai Zhou sensed a trap. “……”
Zhou Qian sighed theatrically. “You’re dodging me now, Zhou Ge.”
Bai Shou: “I just think your question is loaded.”
Zhou Qian laughed. “What trap? Don’t worry, I won’t get jealous.”
Bai Zhou paused. “Not many—twenty-odd. Mostly farming repeats.”
“Remembered that clearly?” Zhou Qian narrowed his eyes.
Bai Zhou smiled gently. “See? Whatever I say…”
If he refused, he looked evasive; if the number was small he’d be told he remembered too well, if large it was worse. It was like that old “who would you save” dilemma—only now Zhou Qian had found a fresh angle.
“Zhou Ge, you misunderstand.” Zhou Qian’s eyes sparkled. “He’s in my legion now—we’re teammates. I need chemistry with him too. Next time I’m running twenty instances with him.”
Bai Zhou frowned and clasped his hand. “Pick any instance. I’ll go with you.”
“I want to go with Hidden Blade. We’re less in sync.”
“If Hidden Blade goes, He Xiaowei trials with him. They’ll team together.”
Zhou Qian squeezed Bai Zhou’s hand. “Why not just admit you’re jealous?”
No sooner were the words out than Bai Zhou swept his right hand and made a stroke. The Tang sword Breaking Dawn had appeared in his hand.
“Whoa, Zhou Ge, a little jealousy doesn’t call for blades.”
But Zhou Qian knew the motion meant danger ahead. Joking aside, he pulled the Rib of God from his bag. Behind them Qi Liuxing’s sword rang as he strode up, eyes locked ahead.
Someone walked toward them: a tall, slim man in a black trench coat with outstanding features. His hair was combed neatly and if you looked closely, you could see wax on it.
If he hadn’t been holding a gun in his hand and appeared in this world, he would’ve looked like he was about to step onto an idol stage, ready for his debut.
What intrigued Zhou Qian was that the system showed all his stats as “??”—he was another god-level player.
Blue Harbor’s many trial instances existed for god-level players to bond with Shepherd; there was little here worth solo grinding. A god-level came only to find a Shepherd—so where was his?
In a flash Zhou Qian saw the point.
He asked, “You’re Xu Yang? And the woman on the roof is your Shepherd? Nice feint.”
“You’re quick,” Xu Yang replied, looking at Zhou Qian. “I’ve heard of you—the Peach Blossom target. Impressive. And you—”
His eyes moved to Bai Zhou. “I’ve searched for you a long time. Never thought to meet here.”
Zhou Qian threw Bai Zhou a sidelong glance as Xu Yang went on. “Your reputation precedes you, though I’ve never seen you. For such a hidden instance… it must be quite the treasure. Chose Zhou Qian as your Shepherd, did you?”
Ignoring the gun, Zhou Qian muttered privately, “Zhou Ge, you sure collect fanboys.”
Bai Zhou: “I don’t know him.”
“I’ll poach them all to my side,” Zhou Qian said.
Bai Zhou: “……”
Xu Yang raised the gun slightly and produced three purple bands with his left hand.
“A swordsman who has accumulated a lot of experience—your power’s about to peak.
“A rising newcomer worth enough trouble for Peach Blossom to hunt.
“And the most mysterious, perhaps strongest god-level player alive—no matter how you hide, I can trace your aura…”
His gaze swept Qi Liuxing, Zhou Qian, Bai Zhou. “But so what? None of you can use skills here. Only weapons matter, and you’ve found none.
“To play in this kind of instance requires luck first—you spawned where there are no weapons. Info second—you run solo, who shares intel with you? Oh right, your legion… Level 1? Just formed. No network to feed you data.”
Zhou Qian actually knew plenty about Xu Yang; he’d studied every top‑ten legion in detail. Xu Yang had brought his Feidu Legion to a high rank in record time—indeed impressive.
As a god‑level player, Xu Yang had sensed Hidden Blade and Bai Zhou, but he’d let only Xu Feiyu appear first; while everyone thought she was the lone enemy, he waited for Bai Zhou and Zhou Qian to show themselves, creating a rear‑flank trap. In a way, his tactics echoed Zhou Qian’s own plans.
Xu Feiyu’s name didn’t show in legion lists, so when she appeared Zhou Qian hadn’t been on full alert. She was Xu Yang’s Shepherd, a hidden piece that surfaced only when needed to cover him.
Xu Yang continued, “The kid swordsman, no band—take one and put it on; you have three minutes. As for you two—
“I know you don’t truly mean to join violet. This area’s crawling with yellows. You lack weapons but surely hold many yellow bands. Hand them over. We’ll all wear purple and hunt clues. I don’t want you swapping colors and betraying me later.
“So—empty your stash, cycle through every band till they’re gone, then willingly join my side. Otherwise—”
He lifted the gun; the threat was clear.
“Xiao Qi, put on purple first,” Zhou Qian said.
“Qian—” Qi Liuxing frowned, but trusting him completely, he stepped forward and donned the band.
Zhou Qian rolled up his left sleeve and looked at Xu Yang.
As expected, Xu Yang’s eyes widened at the white band, though he masked it quickly.
Zhou Qian smiled. “You don’t know what white does either, do you? No need to destroy it—might be useful later.”
After a pause Xu Yang chuckled and turned to Bai Zhou. “Yours is yellow, right? Good—burn through all your yellow bands in two minutes, or I’ll start shooting. Reminder—
“The system banned skills and lethal gadgets, which means the provided weapons are the only ones that kill. This gun’s tracking is 99 percent accurate. Even if you blink or use props, the bullet will find you.
“So—don’t imagine you can dodge.”
Tightening his finger on the trigger, his murderous intent was obvious.
He looked back at Zhou Qian. “White, eh? I didn’t have that intel—thanks. You’re smart. When your friends are in my sights you’ll cooperate. Right, Zhou Qian?”
A man and a woman walked along with seven subordinates behind them.
Every one of them wore a violet wristband.
Of the two leaders, the man was Xu Yang and the woman Xu Feiyu. Their features were so alike that they were clearly siblings.
Inside the game, however, their roles differed sharply: the elder brother was a god-level player, while the younger sister acted as his shepherd.
The siblings had founded the “Feidu Legion”, which now ranked seventh overall—an impressive showing for a budding guild.
The name Feidu comes from the line: “Wild geese fly high yet cannot cross the boundless moonlit world. Fishes and dragons dive deep, tracing patterns in the water.”
Xu Yang can transform into a goose.
In the poem, no matter how well geese fly, they cannot traverse the endless moonlight. Xu Yang chose “Feidu” for the legion because he intends to be the lone goose that breaks convention and soars past the moon*.
*Clarity: The name takes fly [fei] (飞) and [du] (度), which in the poem refers to cannot (as in cannot cross the boundary). In this sense, the name translated would be like Flying Beyond (as in flying beyond the boundary).
Passing a derelict factory, he ordered two men inside to scout while he and his sister kept going.
Along the way Xu Feiyu raised a pair of binoculars and spotted an office building in the distance.
Sensing something, she reached into her trench-coat pocket and pulled out a small wire cage.
Inside a hamster scurried back and forth in agitation, as though it feared something.
“That building is radiating heavy negative energy. Even from here my Scout Mouse can feel it… Brother, there’s definitely something interesting in there—shall we take a look?”
She was about to step ahead when Xu Yang caught her arm.
She halted, turned, and saw the grave look on his face.
“What is it?”
“I can sense a god-level power,” Xu Yang said. “A very… strong god-level player.”
Xu Feiyu’s expression also turned serious. “So this instance really is unusual. Looks like its hidden reward is quite the prize.”
“We’ve watched Peach Blossom a long time. Their latest move was to convert Blue Harbor City, then open this hidden instance. Looks like our trip was worth it.”
Xu Yang pulled several hats from his pack and handed them to her. “Have everyone put these on. They suppress killing intent—and my power. That way we can approach quietly without being noticed.”
“Brother, always the cautious one.” Xu Feiyu grinned. “But the intel says weapons are clustered in only a few spots. This god-level in the office building probably hasn’t found any yet. The game’s barely begun. Since we’ve run into them, why not force them to wear violet? Imagine—making a god-level player work for us.”
“Peach Blossom is already bullying masses into their green camp. We’d better hurry or we’ll lose the race for the hidden quest.”
“Agreed,” Xu Yang said after a moment. “Take some men with guns, probe that god-level. With everyone’s skills suppressed there’s no need to fear them.
“Still, I feel a power that’s too strong—maybe more than one god-level. I’ll stay out of sight for now. If you’re in danger, I’ll come at once.”
“I know. On the surface I’ll handle it—they won’t realize I have such a big brother backing me.”
Laughing, Xu Feiyu distributed the hats to her people and led them silently toward the office building.
On the rooftop
After Zhou Qian’s party disappeared below, He Xiaowei noticed Hidden Blade half-crouched at the parapet, scanning the surroundings.
Suddenly Hidden Blade gestured for silence, then re-closed the lattice elevator gate, gathered the ivy that Qi Liuxing had cut, and draped it back over the grille—especially hiding the ropes tied to Zhou Qian’s group.
“What is it, Master?” He Xiaowei whispered.
Hidden Blade took out a private-chat device, stuck one earpiece into He Xiaowei’s ear, and said, “Someone’s coming—and they already sense us.”
“How do you know?”
“Their hostility just dropped sharply—so faint it’s almost gone,” Hidden Blade replied. “That means…”
That meant the newcomers were strong—strong enough to cloak their killing intent—and that they had detected a god-level nearby.
Likely they were god-level too.
Unlike “137”, who was low-key and elusive, many knew Hidden Blade’s reputation. Once another god-level sensed him they might disguise any trace the moment they realized who it was.
But they hadn’t reckoned with Hidden Blade’s upgraded intuition. Since finishing Murder Exhibition and Baquet of the Red God, his danger-sense radius had grown enormously. Though they masked their aura, they had already stepped inside his range.
He Xiaowei slowly pieced it together and looked at Hidden Blade. “So, Master, you want to…”
Hidden Blade said, “Green and violet numbers never drop—those camps must be flaunting weapons, forcing players to join. We don’t yet know which one is Peach Blossom. If we get threatened into a camp, we can join as moles and gather intel.”
He Xiaowei’s eyes lit up. “Qian-er really planned ahead. I had to wear yellow, but he never let you put one on, and all the spare yellows are with him… heh-heh.
“If they coerce us, we pretend to yield. When the moment’s right we grab yellows from Qian-er and ‘defect’—then turn on them!”
“Exactly,” Hidden Blade nodded. “All thanks to Zhou Qian keeping an ace up his sleeve.”
Thought for a couple of seconds
“Right, let’s do it. Don’t worry—I can really act now. It’s just…” He Xiaowei rubbed his palms together. “Haa, it’s just that we’re all spread out. Yun Xiangrong and Yin Jiujiu are who-knows-where, and now the two of us are leaving too…
“Right here it’s only Big Boss Bai Zhou wearing yellow. Qian-er’s holding some white band we still don’t know the use of. Meanwhile the green and purple teams keep swelling, and our camp is a pile of loose sand…”
Hidden Blade turned, narrowed his eyes to scan the distance, and said, “All we need is to slip into another camp and gather intel. As for everything else, I’m sure Zhou Qian has it mapped out. You really don’t have to fret for him.”
He Xiaowei, the resident healer, could never rest easy about teammates—especially the reckless ones.
He always felt that no matter how hard he chased with his heals, he still couldn’t keep Zhou Qian alive.
He couldn’t help sighing. “I’m just afraid that once we’ve left, Qian-er will be lonely.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Hidden Blade gave him an incredulous look. “Bai Zhou’s with him. With those two glued together, you think Zhou Qian needs you?
“And honestly, Big Boss’s icy aloof persona shatters the second Zhou Qian’s around. Back then I’d never have believed it was him—actually, I still can’t.
“Zhou Qian has the nerve to call me Su Daji? Don’t you think he’s more like her? I’m not talking about looks or gestures, but his knack for bewitching people—it’s uncanny!”
He Xiaowei mused, “Hmm, Qian-er really is charming—it’s hard to put into words, but—”
Hidden Blade: “……”
—See? What did I tell you.
“But Master, it seems you like Qian-er too. You’re happy to listen to him,” He Xiaowei said earnestly.
Hidden Blade: “…………That’s just your imagination.”
Back to the present.
Xu Feiyu reached the roof with three subordinates.
After threatening Hidden Blade and He Xiaowei, she took off her cap and patted the dust from it. “Mmm… these things are really useful. Hidden Blade—
“I’ve heard of you. You rank quite high. I’ve always admired you. I never thought we’d meet here—let alone find you… in such a plight.”
Hidden Blade gave her a flat look, said nothing, and bent to pick up the wristband.
“Hold on,” she said, lifting her chin to stop him. “Agreeing so quickly?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Orange and indigo bands are disappearing fast. Anyone wearing them has been threatened by you or someone like you. The system logs show the two drops for a single color often come minutes apart. That tells me if someone refuses to switch bands, you really kill them. I have no other choice. Of course—”
He looked up, eyes intimidating. “That doesn’t mean I’m weaker. I was just unlucky—couldn’t find a gun or ammo. I work alone, so I have less intel. You’re ahead only because you learned the weapon locations first.”
After a pause Xu Feiyu laughed. “Well said. I like people who understand the situation. In an instance, information warfare decides life and death. On that front you are inferior—you have to admit.
“Still, you agreed so cheerfully. I’m pleased. But… I have to check.”
She opened the cage and let the little hamster out. Patting its head, she had it run a circle around He Xiaowei and Hidden Blade. “See if they’re hiding any extra bands.”
“You’re something else… First you insist we wear a band, now you won’t let us.” Hidden Blade pointed to his bare wrist. “Three-minute limit’s almost up—I refuse to die a joke.”
“I wouldn’t let you die. You’re a god-level player—experienced and useful for the tasks ahead.” Xu Feiyu smiled, waiting for the hamster to scurry back.
Getting its answer, she said, “I’d hate to lose you so soon. All right—let’s begin.”
Under her gaze Hidden Blade and He Xiaowei swiftly switched to purple bands.
Xu Feiyu looked satisfied. “Such cooperation—nothing better than win-win. Let’s start our search in this building. Behind you… what’s that? Looks like some sort of mechanism.”
“Indeed. I think it’s an elevator shaft. Something’s down there—we were about to look when you arrived.” Hidden Blade met her eyes. “Why not have your men explore below? Floors one through seven are full of info to harvest. Leave the roof to me.”
Remembering her brother’s warning that there might be more than one god-level here, Xu Feiyu narrowed her eyes at him and smiled. “You’ve only just joined my team—how could I let you go alone? We’ll all go. It might be very interesting below.”
Without changing expression Hidden Blade summoned his curve-blade, hacked the ivy away again, and moved in front of the grille, blocking it with his body to hide the ropes.
A god-level player’s senses were sharp. Earlier he’d used a private-chat device with He Xiaowei so the other god-level wouldn’t overhear—but anything he now said to Xu Feiyu could carry down the shaft, where Bai Zhou should be listening.
The ropes Zhou Qian’s group had used had a safety lock at the anchor to prevent sabotage, so Hidden Blade couldn’t undo them.
Now, under the pretext of pulling an identical rope from his pack, he kept himself between the grille and Xu Feiyu, eyes flicking toward the spot where Bai Zhou’s ropes were tied—
He hoped Bai Zhou and the others would reel the lines up from below. If they vanished, Bai Zhou could stay hidden while he and He Xiaowei infiltrated the purple camp to gather intel.
On the roof of the office building, the spot that looked like a lightwell was covered with ivy. Through the gaps in the leaves they could see wire mesh inside.
Qi Liuxing slashed several times with his sword. The foliage fell to the ground, but the wire remained intact.
He Xiaowei quickly fished a pair of pliers from his pack and finally cut the mesh open. Only then did everyone get a clear look at the sealed shaft itself—it really was an elevator shaft.
According to the building’s original design, the elevator should have reached straight to the roof, so an enclosure one door high had been built up here.
But the elevator was of a very old style—distinctly different from a modern one. Three sides were concrete walls, while the door was a rusty iron grille that looked more like a jail cell than a lift, giving off an eerie vibe. The grille required a hand-crank mechanism to open.
He Xiaowei tried yanking the grille for a long time but couldn’t force it open. He then gripped the crank, attempting to turn it, but the gears were rusted solid.
Seeing this, Zhou Qian took a can of lubricant from his bag. “Try this.”
He Xiaowei poured the whole can over the crank. The trick worked, and soon he could turn it.
As he strained, the grille door let out a loud creak—“ga-ching, ga-ching.”
With that, the lattice elevator door slid open.
Noticing He Xiaowei’s next move, Zhou Qian immediately warned, “Careful, don’t step inside.”
“Mm-hm, got it.” He Xiaowei halted and turned to Zhou Qian. “So what now…?”
Zhou Qian didn’t answer right away. He walked to the shaft, shone his flashlight inside, and found it empty—no elevator at all.
Had He Xiaowei stepped in, he would have plunged the full seven stories.
Zhou Qian angled the beam downward and bent to peer in. What he saw surprised him—the bottom was pitch-black, as though a monster’s gaping maw had swallowed every glimmer of light.
The shaft was astonishingly deep—far more than seven floors.
He heard a rustle beside him and turned to see Bai Zhou.
Bai Zhou had produced a rope. With a clang he tied one end to the grille, looped the rest around his waist.
Meeting Zhou Qian’s gaze Bai Zhou said, “I’ll go down for a look.”
Zhou Qian frowned slightly but said nothing more.
Stepping up, he gripped the rope. “Be careful. Call me at once if anything happens. You still have that butterfly pollen—if worst comes to worst I can get to you right away.”
“Mm, don’t worry.”
Bai Zhou fitted a head-lamp, leapt into the shaft, and began descending slowly.
To protect players, the rope payed out at a very slow speed.
Even so, it felt like ages before Zhou Qian sensed a tug on the line.
Then Bai Zhou’s voice came through the earpiece. “Nothing unusual so far. Leave two people up top. Anyone else interested can come down.”
“I’m coming.” Zhou Qian glanced back. “Xiaowei Ge, you’re afraid of ghosts—you and Hidden Blade stay here. Xiao Qi, you and I will go down.”
Zhou Qian and Qi Liuxing each took a rope. After double-checking the grille’s sturdiness, they entered the shaft together.
The depth was indeed far beyond seven stories.
While descending, Zhou Qian used a measuring device to calculate.
When they finally reached bottom, he checked the tool: “137.5 meters.”
Qi Liuxing asked, “Find anything?”
Their voices echoed loudly in the narrow shaft.
Zhou Qian adjusted to it and whispered, “From the roof down, starting at the seventh floor mark, it’s 137.5 meters to the bottom.
“Before climbing up I measured the building height—each floor, including ceiling thickness, is about 5.5 meters.”
Qi Liuxing instantly caught on. “137.5 meters equals twenty-five floors; subtract the seven visible floors and the shaft is eighteen floors deep! Could this symbolize… the eighteen levels of hell?”
“Let’s keep looking.”
After landing on the ground, Zhou Qian shone his light toward where the elevator door should be.
A grille ought to have been there too, but Bai Zhou had already cranked it open.
At that moment, Bai Zhou stood in pitch darkness, his figure haloed faintly by the lamp on his head. He was staring at something ahead, tall and straight.
Zhou Qian led Qi Liuxing over and lifted his flashlight—only to see a startling sight:
Before the three of them yawned a vast pit.
Down its center ran a tunnel, damp traces glistening—an underground river of sorts, destination unknown.
On either side of the river—directly under the office floors—two large pits spanned roughly the same footprint as each floor above.
The pits had been evenly divided into three sections each making a total of six smaller pits.
Five were heaped with piles of white bones with only one lay empty.
The bones were stacked neatly into mounds almost forming small hills. From this, there must have been countless remains.
Most grotesque, every skeleton lacked a skull—only bodies lay here, the necks severed cleanly, as if by a seasoned executioner.
After inspecting the bones, Zhou Qian turned his light on the lone empty pit.
Down here, safe from other players’ eyes, he swapped to a higher-wattage torch and saw that its floor was covered with spells and strange symbols.
Sweeping the beam back over the five bone heaps he spotted something new—each pile had a number carved beside it.
Those numbers were years.
Checking them carefully, he found they matched the years the shipping company had posted losses.
That was odd.
“Interesting,” Zhou Qian narrowed his eyes. “We thought in the first five years the company lost money every July because storms sank their ships, so later the boss began sacrificial killings to placate the sea god, and sure enough after five straight losses, sacrifices stopped the accidents and profits flowed.
“But it turns out mystical coincidences aren’t coincidences at all—they’re engineered. It seems…”
He looked at Bai Zhou.
Meeting his gaze, Bai Zhou clearly shared the thought and continued, “It seems the truth is the other way around.”
Every July the company’s vessels met disaster, triggering huge compensation.
After five years the boss began sacrifices and things improved.
That felt too mystical, too convenient—why always July? Was there really a sea god?
Flip the story and everything fits.
The July disasters weren’t fate or divine wrath—they were man-made.
Zhou Qian said, “We have limited clues, so follow them. Every case has a serial killer. This one too.
“If the motive was to calm the sea god, the corpses should match the years the company profited. They don’t. Instead, each loss year has a mound of bodies.
“So killing coincides with losses. Why? Shouting ‘stop thief’ while being the thief—quite a twist.”
“The cargo ships set out. At sea someone kills the crew and steals the freight, then blames it on storms or tsunamis.
“The murdered sailors’ bodies are secretly brought here. Everyone assumes they were lost at sea.”
After a pause he added, “Earlier, with the storm theory in mind, I rechecked the ledger notes and confirmed it.
“If ships are hijacked, why is it never uncovered and always chalked up to accidents?
“Likely there’s an inside man aboard who, before the ‘accident’, sends false distress signals pointing to bad weather.”
“Someone able to plan all this and stash so many corpses here… the killer is very likely the boss.
“By boss I mean the general manager who runs operations, not the shareholders. Zhou Ge—”
Zhou Qian looked at Bai Zhou. “The ‘boss’ office you saw on the second floor was really the GM’s?”
“Mm,” Bai Zhou replied. “The sign said ‘General Manager’. I didn’t know the company had other owners, so I called him boss.”
“Exactly. The cabinet we opened downstairs held only financials. I checked the annual reports—three shareholders, none handle day-to-day. They hired a GM.
“See the scheme? The company isn’t his. He draws a salary yet steals its cargo. While the firm bleeds money, he profits by fencing the goods.”
“Hold on,” Qi Liuxing said. “If you rob and kill at sea, why not just dump the bodies overboard? Isn’t that easier?”
Bai Zhou answered, “These talismans—and the items I found on the second floor—show he’s superstitious. I first thought he sacrificed to stop losses. Now it seems he used the spells merely to ward off vengeance.”
“Right. The GM sometimes sailed with the ships,” Zhou Qian said. “He was scared—afraid the dead would become water ghosts and drag him under. I’d say…
“He cut off their heads so their spirits couldn’t see, think, or find the way home—or the way to revenge.
“This shaft descends eighteen floors—probably symbolizing the eighteen hells. The victims are killed by the GM in life and crushed under an array in death—the killer wants them forever unable to rise and retaliate.”
With the shaft explored, Zhou Qian planned to have Little Dragon scout the underground river later for more clues.
He was about to suggest the three leave when he noticed Qi Liuxing stiffen. After a moment the boy let out a heavy sigh.
In the darkness Zhou Qian couldn’t see his face, so he raised a dimmer torch and aimed it at him.
Under the muted light the youth’s lips were heavily pursed and expression solemn.
“What is it?” Zhou Qian asked.
“I…” Qi Liuxing lowered his head slightly. When he looked up, his expression was calm again. “Nothing. I was just thinking how frightening human nature is.”
After a silence Zhou Qian said, “But you still trust me, don’t you?”
Qi Liuxing glanced at him and nodded.
Zhou Qian went on, “Human nature is scary, yet sometimes lovely. This is what you guys taught me that. So Xiao Qi, you and Xiaowei Ge have taught me many positive things—I don’t want only negatives left for you.
“Growing up is cruel, but not entirely so. I don’t have time now to untie your knots—we’ll talk after the instance.”
He patted the boy’s shoulder. “By the way, Ke Yuxiao’s case isn’t so simple. His oddity in Flowers of Evil keeps nagging me—there’s something I’ve overlooked. Also—”
Staring into Qi Liuxing’s eyes he said, “Don’t feel burdened. We’re not here solely for your revenge. This hidden instance must have a big reward.
“Zhou Ge even said the game chose me, opening hidden content specially. I already collected the Four Days of Creation items—no reason to miss the fifth.
“For now, let’s head up.”
He bit the comm mic, grabbed a rope, and was about to climb when Bai Zhou suddenly lunged over.
From behind, Bai Zhou wrapped one arm around Zhou Qian’s waist and hauled him back, retreating until they were clear of the shaft, back against the cold wall.
Then he raised his other hand and, before Zhou Qian could speak, covered his mouth.
Qi Liuxing had no idea what happened, but reflexively drew his sword on Bai Zhou, eyes full of threat—afraid some supernatural force had possessed him.
But he immediately met Bai Zhou’s steady gaze.
In the darkness Bai Zhou removed his hand from Zhou Qian’s mouth, placed a finger to his own lips for silence, then pointed upward toward the shaft opening.
“Sorry,” Qi Liuxing mouthed, sheathed his sword, and slipped aside, body taut, fully on guard.
At that very moment, on the roof.
Hidden Blade and He Xiaowei had guns pressed to their heads.
The two assailants wore purple wristbands.
Amid crisp footsteps, another person with a purple band appeared, gun in hand—a strikingly beautiful woman.
Tall and icily elegant, she glanced at the men’s wrists, smiled, and tossed a purple wristband at Hidden Blade’s feet. “You’re wearing nothing. Now you’ve seen this. Within three minutes you must put it on, or the system will kill you instantly.”
She looked at He Xiaowei and tossed him another. “Threatening your friend with system rules saves my bullets. As for you—if you don’t switch to purple my people will blow your brains out. Well? Move.”
Dark clouds hung over the ruined Blue Harbor City 2301. The air pressure in the city was unusually low, and this decrepit villa where twenty-seven people had died felt especially eerie, making it hard to breathe.
After settling on a rough plan of action, Zhou Qian and the others prepared to leave.
Because of the Banquet of the Red God instance, Hidden Blade’s intuitive skills had improved even further.
Before departing, Hidden Blade closed his eyes and could directly sense whether there were any potential dangers within a 500-meter radius.
A few seconds later he opened his eyes and looked at the rest of the group. “I don’t feel any negative energy. We should be fine.”
“Mm. Let’s go.”
Zhou Qian turned around, stepped over the front door Bai Zhou had kicked in, and was the first to leave the villa.
Qi Liuxing took another look around. After confirming there really were no additional weapons or wristbands hidden on the furniture, he was the last to walk out.
Just as his foot crossed the threshold, everyone received a system message:
[Wristband colors and quantities updated: Orange – 14; Yellow – 25; Green – 25; Blue – 25; Indigo – 23; Violet – 25]
Most wristbands hadn’t changed.
Except the indigo and orange ones.
Two indigo bands were gone, but shockingly six more orange bands had disappeared.
The game had barely started, and the orange count had already plunged from twenty-five to fourteen.
Not long ago Zhou Qian and Bai Zhou had speculated that the sudden loss of five orange wristbands meant five orange-band wearers had been killed—very likely out of vengeance.
But now another six oranges were gone all at once—what was going on this time?
“The system doesn’t report every single wristband the instant it disappears, but the intervals are short—so this is still fairly timely.
“Two fewer indigo bands isn’t enough to see a pattern, but what the hell happened with orange? It’s so weird.”
He Xiaowei scratched his head. “Man, my heart’s pounding like crazy…”
Zhou Qian and Bai Zhou didn’t reply. The two walked abreast in front. He Xiaowei hopped up for a look and found their expressions rather strange— as if they were looking at the road ahead yet also past it, at something farther away.
After a moment He Xiaowei realized—they were probably sharing the little dragon’s vision to monitor what it was finding.
“How’s it look?”
In He Xiaowei’s eyes, Hidden Blade liked to play the master and keep silent. Qi Liuxing used to fake being deep, but now he actually seemed deep—throughout the whole exploration He Xiaowei hadn’t seen him smile once.
So whenever He Xiaowei had questions, he could only ask Zhou Qian.
After a while he saw Zhou Qian raise his hand and point at an office building they were heading toward. “Little Dragon finished searching that one and moved on to another farther away.”
He Xiaowei: “So what about the building it just searched?”
“After that system notice, I did have a guess. Little Dragon’s findings basically confirm it—” Zhou Qian concluded. “Wristbands of the same color show up in batches.”
He Xiaowei reacted quickly. “You mean that office building ahead is all yellow bands too?”
“Right. Little Dragon picked up seven at once,” Zhou Qian said. “By system rules Little Dragon counts as my tool, so any wristbands it finds are considered my discoveries. That means you guys aren’t bound by the three-minute wear rule. I’ll go in and collect them myself.”
He Xiaowei: “Doesn’t matter. The five of us were going to be the yellow team anyway.”
“Sure, but leaving them unworn gives us room to maneuver. We can wait and see.”
Saying this, Zhou Qian—accompanied by Bai Zhou—entered the building alone and took the seven yellow wristbands, then let the others in.
Now Zhou Qian, Bai Zhou, and He Xiaowei each wore a band. Hidden Blade and Qi Liuxing’s wrists were temporarily bare.
What they’d entered wasn’t a villa but an old office block.
There was no elevator, only seven floors—which wasn’t very high.
The players were on the first-floor office area. There were no computers, and the only vaguely modern item was an antique typewriter.
Apparently this building dated to about the same era as the killer’s hideout just now.
The killer had been set free, many who shouldn’t have died became victims, and history slid into ruin.
As for buildings still standing, they must have existed in that old timeline before the killer’s release. History collapsed afterward.
Once everyone was inside, Hidden Blade shut the ground-floor office door and stood guard with his blade.
With keen instincts, he would alert them at the first whiff of danger.
Standing by a battered desk, Zhou Qian glanced at Hidden Blade’s vigilant posture and nudged He Xiaowei with his elbow. “Hey, your master’s skill is more like a sharp-nosed dog—how’d he turn into a fox?”
Hidden Blade clearly heard that. He frowned and swept them with a probing gaze.
Meeting his eyes, Zhou Qian smiled and spoke in earnest. “Just curious. You overturn my image of foxes. Foxes usually bring to mind Su Daji—seductive, good at luring people. But you’re a rare… combat fox. Impressive!”
Hidden Blade: “……”
—I knew it would be like this.
If I hadn’t been cornered in that Murder Exhibition instance I would never have shown my true form! Really it’s all He Xiaowei’s fault—he couldn’t even tell which was the real me?!
He Xiaowei had been waiting for Zhou Qian’s wristband analysis while thinking of searching nearby, but suddenly felt a chill. Looking up, he saw his master’s rather unfriendly stare.
His heart thudded.
—Fuck, it was Qian-er who bad-mouthed him, why glare at me!
“Master, I’m innocent,” He Xiaowei said.
Hidden Blade: “…………”
Zhou Qian chuckled, then seriously steered the topic back to wristband numbers.
He Xiaowei never understood how Zhou Qian’s brain shifted gears so seamlessly. He just heard:
“I still lean toward the idea that those five people died, hence five wristbands vanished. At that time we had no other info, so we could only assume it was vengeance.
“But just two or three minutes later another six orange bands disappeared… maybe it’s not mere revenge. Especially since the Peach Blossom Legion wants me dead and laid traps in advance.”
Hearing this, He Xiaowei frowned. “A lot of Peach Blossom members must have shown up.”
Zhou Qian said, “We just found a bunch of yellow bands, while orange suddenly dropped hard… That shows wristbands of one color spawn in clusters.
“That means teams entering the instance will likely pick up the same color first. Take us: my white is an exception, but everything else we’ve gathered is yellow.
“So I can deduce the Peach Blossom group also grabbed a single color—maybe purple, maybe blue, we don’t know yet. At a time like this…”
Zhou Qian looked at He Xiaowei. “If you were a Peach Blossom member, what would you do?”
“I’d round people up first!”
Understanding dawned and cold sweat broke out on He Xiaowei’s back. “The system says the goal is fewer survivors, and after ten hours if the number’s over a limit we all die… but that’s ten hours away.
“In those ten hours plenty could happen—like killers, side quests. So if I were Peach Blossom I’d recruit a big team, make them help me explore! Then later… I’d figure out how to get rid of them!”
“Exactly.” Zhou Qian nodded firmly. “We have enough to infer this: the Peach Blossom Legion started this instance and pushed Blue Harbor City toward ruin.
“They certainly got more intel than we did— wristband stashes, even weapon locations—so they grabbed them all right away. As for what happened next…
“Say Peach Blossom quickly found lots of green and blue bands. They put on green first, then ran into eleven people.”
His eyes deepened. “Those eleven were another team that found orange bands and had put them on. Peach Blossom forced them to join the green side; they refused. Peach Blossom wasted no words, used weapons to kill five as intimidation.
“Unlike Peach Blossom, the newcomers had no weapons. After witnessing the cruelty, the six survivors had to swap to green bands.
“Thus forced into Peach Blossom’s green camp, they couldn’t turn on Peach Blossom even if they later found weapons—unless they also found a new color and switched. But Peach Blossom would likely kill them before that. Don’t forget—Peach Blossom surely stockpiled other colors, like blue.
“In short, Peach Blossom will conscript many people to scour the instance and compel them to hand over all weapons and info.
“When they’re no longer useful, Peach Blossom will just switch to the pre-collected blue bands, collectively ‘betrays’, and slaughters every former green teammate.
“That’s Peach Blossom’s perfect scheme, and why eleven orange bands vanished in two batches.”
He Xiaowei: “Damn, Peach Blossom is vicious! What do we do?”
“Same plan as before.” At this point Zhou Qian suddenly grinned.
Seeing his confident smile, all of He Xiaowei’s worries evaporated.
Sure enough, he heard Zhou Qian say, “In a way, Peach Blossom is handing us the answer.”
He Xiaowei rubbed his palms eagerly. “How so?”
“For this instance, we don’t yet know the hidden quest specifics—and neither does Peach Blossom, or why recruit so many helpers? They probably only know the quest is tough and need lots of labor.
“However, Peach Blossom must know the maximum survivor count after ten hours. Their trick hinges on precisely managing same-team numbers. Without that number they’d risk a wipe.”
“In short, teammates with the same band color can’t kill each other. Peach Blossom plans to rotate colors: first exploit teammates to finish the hidden quest, then switch colors and wipe them to hit that ‘max number’…
“So once we figure out how many Peach Blossom players are here, we can roughly deduce what that maximum is.”
Having sorted wristbands and Peach Blossom matters, the group now needed the murder info linked to this office building.
Zhou Qian said, “Little Dragon’s main job is finding wristbands and weapons. It swept all seven floors just now, using skill points to sense everything; there are only those seven bands in the whole place—no weapons. Also… while sharing its sight, I didn’t see any corpses.”
He turned to Bai Zhou. “Zhou Ge, you didn’t either, right?”
“No,” Bai Zhou replied. “Corpse-finding isn’t Little Dragon’s specialty, but visually, no bodies where it passed.”
Hidden Blade said, “But to me this building absolutely has corpses. The negative energy here is strong… far worse than the villa.”
At that Zhou Qian summoned his Rib of God to sense.
Sure enough, he felt a massive surge of resentful power and saw related stats skyrocketing on his panel.
The instance’s special limits kept him from using skills, and he was at full health so he couldn’t trigger his ultimate, but using the bone to gauge vengeance was easy.
Since the vengeance was indeed this strong—where were the bodies?
Zhou Qian scanned the office: peeling, rotten desks and chairs, a rusty printer, filing cabinets… finally his gaze landed on the walls.
“Could the corpses have been chopped up and walled in?” he asked.
He Xiaowei: “What the—?”
“Just recalling a precedent,” Zhou Qian said. “We’ll have to split up and look.”
After a quick discussion they divvied up tasks.
Hidden Blade would check the seventh floor and see if the roof offered a view of the city. He Xiaowei and Qi Liuxing took floors four through six; Zhou Qian and Bai Zhou handled one to three.
The others headed upstairs. Zhou Qian stayed on the first floor. He went to the nearest rickety desk, opened a few drawers, and found a document.
The company name read “Blue Harbor City Yuanhang Shipping Co.”
Apparently, a maritime transport firm.
The document was just a simple personal work plan, with no useful info for now. Rummaging further, Zhou Qian found several keys.
Remembering the locked filing cabinet, he took the keys over.
But the lock was rusted solid—useless.
While Zhou Qian pondered which tool to use, Bai Zhou walked over.
Grabbing the iron lock, Bai Zhou said, “Let me try.”
Zhou Qian glanced at him, nodded, and smiled slightly. “Go ahead.”
Bai Zhou gripped the lock with both hands and yanked hard.
The iron itself was sturdy and tough to break directly, but Bai Zhou didn’t focus on the lock. He just kept pulling outward. Soon the cabinet’s sheet-metal face warped into a huge arc under his force.
With a clang, the side hinges tore loose and both doors, still chained by the lock, ripped away from the cabinet.
Eyes wide, Zhou Qian turned to Bai Zhou in surprise. “Zhou Ge, your skills are all disabled?”
“Mm.” Bai Zhou met his gaze. “Why?”
“Nothing. Just praising your arm strength.” Zhou Qian laughed.
The violent tug had also dumped many files. The two crouched to gather them and discovered they were all ledgers.
The company had run many years. The accounts were intricate, making it complicated to read.
Too lazy to explore the upper floors, Zhou Qian plopped onto a desk with an armful of books.
He said nothing else, simply opened the first ledger and then lifted his eyes at Zhou Ge.
That look carried meaning outsiders couldn’t grasp, but Bai Zhou understood instantly—
Back in school, countless times during evening study when Zhou Qian suddenly craved a popsicle, he’d give Bai Zhou that exact look.
Catching it, Bai Zhou stepped forward and pressed a hand on his shoulder.
Zhou Qian blinked at him. “Mm?”
Bai Zhou leaned close and whispered in his ear. “I’ll check the second and third floors. Be careful down here alone.”
Whenever Bai Zhou spoke to Zhou Qian his enunciation was extra soft.
Zhou Qian’s ear tingled with his breath, warm and a bit itchy.
He reflexively touched his earlobe—and realized nothing was there.
When he’d first arrived in Blue Harbor he’d dressed flamboyantly and even pierced several studs, but as the instance fractured, that shop vanished and so did the studs.
Same with the tattoo parlor.
After leaving Murder Exhibition the two had gotten matching “Z” tattoos, but now the letters had vanished from their skin without a trace.
“Zhou Ge—” Zhou Qian looked at him again.
“Mm?” Bai Zhou leaned in, as if to listen.
His profile was right against Zhou Qian’s. When he blinked, Zhou Qian could feel his lashes brush his cheek.
“Nothing.” Zhou Qian turned his face, his raised chin brushed Bai Zhou’s cheek.
Startled, Bai Zhou’s taut profile went even stiffer.
Seeing that, Zhou Qian smiled.
Then he said, “When we get out, let’s get new ink—okay?”
The moment he spoke, Zhou Qian saw Bai Zhou’s brow knit slightly.
After a pause he added, “Anyway, I’ll head to Zone X to find you first.”
Bai Zhou still had a hand on his shoulder. He squeezed hard before letting go and answered, “Okay.”
Lowering his head, Bai Zhou placed a gentle kiss on Zhou Qian’s forehead before heading upstairs.
Watching him leave, Zhou Qian hopped off the desk, pillaged the whole first floor, then settled in to sift through ledgers.
Years of accounts were voluminous. Zhou Qian dug out the earliest books and sped through them—it would take time.
By the time he’d skimmed several volumes, the others had finished exploring and returned.
He Xiaowei, very excited, ran over clutching a sheet of paper. Spreading it on the desk, he said, “It’s the building’s schematics. Guess what? There’s an elevator drawn here! See the floor plan—clear as day! So why can’t we see any elevator in the building?”
Qi Liuxing added, “We measured—the interior space is smaller now, so the building should have had an elevator. It’s just sealed up.”
“That fits.” Hidden Blade said, “I went to the roof from the seventh floor and saw a sealed structure—looked like the lightwell closed off. Now it seems that was probably the elevator shaft.”
“Mm.” Zhou Qian looked up from the book. “I found finances from construction. Notes say the building did install an elevator, but when another building in town had a fatal elevator crash, the boss thought it unsafe. Since this place only had seven floors, he halted the project. Also—
“In its first five years the company kept losing money. Specifically, month by month they were profitable except every July—each July showed a huge loss.
“That pattern improved in the sixth year onward. Profits every year and no more massive deficits.”
“Wait…” He Xiaowei said. “Maybe the shaft was dug but later the elevator wasn’t installed—so the shaft is empty! The bodies could be inside! And maybe the roof links to it—should we check now?”
“A sealed shaft is definitely suspicious, but it may not be that simple. I’ll go down first. You judge whether to follow carefully.”
That was Bai Zhou.
Zhou Qian met his eyes across the room. “Zhou Ge, if you say that, you must’ve found something on two and three?”
Bai Zhou said, “The boss’s office is on the second floor. He was superstitious—lots of books on the Five Phases, arrays, and talismans to ward off evil. Also many ship models.”
“Right, a shipping firm.” Zhou Qian mused. “Maritime transport… always risky. Trouble every July likely ties to storms, waves, capsized ships. Compensation for cargo and crew families—that would cause huge losses.”
“Exactly. I suspect the boss is a killer. His motive may have been human sacrifices.”
Bai Zhou said, “The shaft might not hold intact corpses, but it’s surely linked to the sacrificial rite. He wanted to offer some lives to the sea to calm its fury and stop his losses. That’s why he killed.
“Whether Blue Harbor truly has supernatural forces is unclear, so be careful.
“Also, if the death-trigger mechanics are like the small sub-instance with Ruan Mei, we need extra caution. Learning motive and manner of death is crucial for later tasks.”
“Yeah. At the museum exhibition we got limited intel on those killers. We only know how to avoid Ruan Mei and the swastika murderer. The rest we must investigate.”
Zhou Qian nodded, then told Bai Zhou, “And Zhou Ge, remember—you’re no different from us now, just ordinary. No need to spearhead alone. We’ll work together.”
After the brief discussion, they headed up the stairs toward the roof.
On the way another system message arrived:
[Wristband colors and quantities updated: Orange – 12; Yellow – 24; Green – 25; Blue – 20; Indigo – 18; Violet – 25]
By the time they reached the rooftop, it pinged again:
[Wristband colors and quantities updated: Orange – 11; Yellow – 24; Green – 25; Blue – 20; Indigo – 14; Violet – 25]
He Xiaowei immediately said, “Yellow barely changed since we’re holding them here… but besides that… green and violet never drop at all!”
“Mm. One of those is Peach Blossom’s color, no doubt.”
Reaching the roof, Zhou Qian spotted the sealed elevator shaft at a glance.
He continued, “We may not have weapons here, but that’s fine. Once we grasp the killers’ methods and the death-trigger rules, we’ll have another powerful weapon of our own.”
Inside the basement of the old villa there were as many as 27 corpses.
After Zhou Qian, Bai Zhou, and He Xiaowei finished exploring, they returned to the first floor, reuniting with Qi Liuxing and Hidden Blade, and asked about their situation.
Hidden Blade had been keeping watch near a window, observing the surroundings. Qi Liuxing explored the second floor alone, bringing down a pile of photo albums and diaries, placing them one by one on the dusty coffee table.
The group first opened the photo album.
The photographs within were shocking—
Various women appeared with all their joints broken, bodies twisted into impossible positions, tied up with colorful ropes. Some wore princess dresses, legs wide open; others wore café maid outfits, bent at the waist, heads twisted at unnatural angles… Each victim was different in appearance, dress, and posture, yet they shared one common trait—they all appeared to be underage girls.
All of these photos were taken while the victims were submerged in water.
They had been beaten, their bodies broken, placed in glass containers in the basement, immersed in an unknown liquid—like specimens preserved alive.
Qi Liuxing tapped on the diary next to the photo album, saying, “This house likely belonged to the killer. Here’s his diary. There’s something else strange I’ve found, but first, look at this diary.”
Opening the diary, the first page contained chilling text—
“That day when I returned home, my parents weren’t there. I called my sister, but no one responded. I was hungry and couldn’t find food in the kitchen, so I looked for my sister to make something. I searched everywhere and didn’t find food, only the smell of blood…
“Following the scent, I went upstairs, saw blood flowing from under the bathroom door, more and more blood, so sweet-smelling…
“What could possibly have such sweet blood? Curiosity filled me!
“To find the source, I pushed open the bathroom door. The blood was flowing from the bathtub. Pulling back the curtain, I saw my sister lying in a pool of blood…
“I don’t remember the exact date, but I’ll always remember how she looked in the blood. So beautiful. Her skin was white like snow, especially after soaking in water. The red blood looked like blooming flowers nourished by snow, vivid and captivating.
“My sister was always beautiful, but in that moment she was most beautiful. She was probably dead, yet she radiated vibrant life! I’d never felt this before!
“I once saw the death of Granny Wang next door—her skin sagging, so ugly I had nightmares and vomited for days afterward. But my sister was different!
“For a girl to die at such an age and still be so beautiful…
“That day I was 15… My sister was maybe 16 or 17, I don’t remember, but she wasn’t yet an adult. She killed herself, probably heartbroken over a boy. She was foolish. Why die for someone else? Yet, if she hadn’t been foolish, I wouldn’t have seen such beauty.
“Thank you, sister. Because of you, I discovered true beauty. I’ll dedicate my life to chasing this beauty. Beautiful girls should die young, at their most vibrant.”
Those lines on the flyleaf were enough to make anyone’s flesh crawl—the killer’s motive was laid bare in stark, unmistakable words.…There could be no doubt this diary was written by the murderer himself.
Beyond the flyleaf many pages had been torn out—about half the notebook by thickness.…What remained recorded the killer’s inner thoughts about his crimes.
“19X9… don’t know the date; made another specimen today. I’m happy.”
“19X9, still no idea what day of the week it is… I lurked outside the high-school gate for ages. Hee-hee, I waited till they came out of class… so many young, pretty girls… Such vitality—freshest of all. They should stay in this moment forever! …After I got back I went to the basement for a look. They’re so beautiful, truly beautiful, beautiful just like my sister. The way life flows away like that… it’s too moving.”
……
Thus the flyleaf named the reason he killed; the rest recorded which day he made what specimen, how pretty each one was, and so on.…But with so many pages missing, much information about the victims and how they were turned into specimens had vanished too.
If those missing sections really were all victim data, that raised new questions.…Assuming one page per victim, the diary’s original thickness suggested the killer murdered over a hundred people.
Why, then, were there only twenty-seven corpses in this basement?
…And how had he managed to keep killing for so long without getting caught?
Thinking this, Zhou Qian asked Qi Liuxing, “You said you thought something was odd. What’s odd?”
“These newspaper stories are weird.…
“And look at these sheets—wanted posters with sketches of a fugitive. They must’ve been pasted on the streets so people could inform on him.”
Qi Liuxing unfolded a paper and Zhou Qian skimmed it and quickly saw the key points.
The headlines blared: “Identity of the brutal culprit who imprisoned and tortured seventeen girls confirmed—please view portrait below and offer any leads.”
“…Serial-murder case solved; thanks to informants.”
“Three hundred people sign petition demanding death penalty for killer of blossoming youths!”
……
The diary, newspapers, sketches, photos, and the bones in the villa’s basement together restored much of the truth for the “players”—
The murderer was plainly twisted.
At fifteen he had witnessed his sister’s death in the bathtub, which birthed a pathological aesthetic obsession.
As an adult, every time he thought of that scene, he yearned to recreate that tableau.
Once circumstances allowed, he set his plan in motion, turning his dream into reality.
He kidnapped girl after girl, bound them, submerged them in water inside glass tanks until they died, and photographed them at the brink of death—to capture what he believed was “the most beautiful instant of life.”
When seventeen girls had disappeared, the police took notice and searched the whole city.
Eventually the police must have located his house.
But before they arrived, the killer had fled.
Searching the home, the police found seventeen bodies. Canvassing neighbors, they confirmed his appearance and ran his portrait nationwide as a wanted man.
His atrocities enraged everyone—people plastered his image everywhere, praying he’d be caught.
While on the run, whenever he saw the posters he tore them down—some he trashed, some he took home. He also collected every news story about his crimes so he could respond at once.
That explained why his room contained wanted posters and newspapers.
On the surface the timeline seemed coherent, yet many points defied explanation.
The papers spoke of only seventeen victims—why were there twenty-seven bodies in the basement?
The papers said the killer had become a fugitive, so the police must have searched his home. The corpses, merely soaked, weren’t destroyed. Standard procedure would return them to the families.
Under no circumstances should bodies have remained here.
Where had things gone wrong?
On the side, He Xiaowei sorted the clues and said, “So much doesn’t add up—it’s really weird. If the killer was arrested, why are the victims’ corpses here?
“The diary’s victim count, the news reports, the bodies downstairs—they’re all different! So strange!”
Qi Liuxing thought a moment. “I suddenly have an idea…”
He glanced at Zhou Qian for confirmation.
Zhou Qian patted his shoulder. “Go ahead—let’s see if we’re on the same page.”
Qi Liuxing said, “I feel there’s only one explanation. If the killer stayed under arrest, none of this fits. But if he was arrested and then released, things start to make sense…
“These newspapers are from before his first arrest—back when he’d killed only seventeen. Those corpses were taken away, not left in the basement.
“Later he was released and resumed killing. Judging by how many pages were torn out—if each page stood for one victim—he killed over a hundred people, moving from place to place.”
Picking up the diary, Qi Liuxing continued, “For unknown reasons, the pages about the first seventeen victims were destroyed—perhaps by the killer, perhaps not. At that time, the later sections hadn’t been written yet…
“So the flyleaf alone proved only that he was mentally disturbed or suspicious. It wasn’t enough to convict him, certainly not enough for execution.
“After that… say he murdered twenty more somewhere, got discovered, maybe even caught again, but later the diary pages about those twenty were likewise torn out…
“This happened several times, right up to now!”
He Xiaowei scratched his head and after a moment said, “I get the sequence, and most issues fit—but the key one doesn’t. Police found corpses in his house and knew he was the killer—why did they release him? Again and again?”
Zhou Qian said, “Back then forensic tech was primitive. The evidence chain to convict might have been incomplete.
“Or… new key clues emerged that exonerated him, so he was repeatedly freed.”
Even if police found countless bodies in his basement, without direct evidence linking him to the killings, full conviction was difficult.
“I’m busy with work, seldom home. I keep my key under the porch flowerpot—someone could’ve taken it and made a copy.”
“Someone used my house to dump murder victims! How terrifying!”
“I rarely go to the basement… I did hear noises down there at night but never imagined so many corpses!”
“Officer, I truly knew nothing!”
……
To convict, the chain of evidence must be complete. If its critical link was missing—in an age without CCTV and with limited investigative methods—the killer had ample excuses.
He Xiaowei could instantly imagine countless lines the murderer could use.
Then he said, “But still—he pulled this stunt at least twice. Could cops really let him off that easily? Even lacking evidence, they should at least—”
Zhou Qian cut him off, “What if, right then, a new suspect appeared? And the clues about that suspect were even more direct, more solid?”
“What…?” He Xiaowei froze, then comprehension dawned. “You mean… the power of the Murder Exhibition Hall?! Holy shit…
“You’re saying…”
“I’ll use Ruan Mei—the woman who killed her own children—as an example,” Zhou Qian said. “She killed once every year or two, but the Exhibition Hall clearly links time and space. In Hall A, walking from Gallery 1 to 7 we confronted seven bodies—actually we visited seven murder scenes. Each scene was special: only the corpse, none of the surrounding environment.
“In a sense, seven layers of time overlapped, intersecting only at those bodies. We saw just the corpses.”
He continued, “That alone shows the Hall can connect timelines. While there we saw past crimes pushed into the present for us. But time-linkage is two-way—we forgot that.”
Qi Liuxing quickly picked up. “You mean we saw scenes from the past—but people in the past might have seen us, or at least traces we left.”
“Right. I’ve been wondering what the exhibition’s purpose really is…” Zhou Qian narrowed his eyes and looked at Bai Zhou. “Think carefully: we were the ones who touched the infants’ corpses. If people in the past could see that, they’d find fingerprints on the bodies—ours. Enough for police to create new clues.”
“Fuck, I got it! Every corpse is a time space node. The cops who caught Ruan Mei found your fingerprints replacing hers, so you became suspects in her place!”
He Xiaowei’s eyes bulged. “Ruan Mei had staged everything as accidents—doctors saw nothing, so she killed many babies before being noticed…
“The evidence chain against her was flimsy to start with. Once new prints appeared, police naturally decided she wasn’t the killer and let her go…”
“Exactly. Whether Ruan Mei kept killing afterward I don’t know. What’s before us is this villa’s owner: once released, he went on to kill over a hundred girls.”
Zhou Qian said gravely, “The Murder Exhibition Hall is helping serial killers escape justice so they can kill more… That means the Hall is altering history—enter the classic paradox.”
He Xiaowei: “What paradox?”
Hidden Blade answered while still watching the window, curved blade in hand. “The Grandfather Paradox: if you travel back and kill your maternal grandfather, how can you still exist?”
He Xiaowei: “Oh, right—that’s why the idea of parallel timelines arose; you’d be in a parallel world, not your own. But now…”
Bai Zhou, rarely vocal, said, “Now it means Blue Port City has no parallel timelines. If you went back and killed your grandfather, both of you would vanish.”
He exchanged a glance with Zhou Qian—both instantly agreed: this, presumably, is why Blue Port collapsed.
Ruan Mei’s child murders are exhibited in Hall A; the serial killer of streetwalkers in Hall B; Hall C has more than one killer—the Swastika Killer and the Pentagram Duo.…Other halls they hadn’t even visited—like the girl-specimen killer, whose case was likely in Hall D or beyond.
Each hall linked different time spaces.
Ruan Mei, the Swastika Killer, the Pentagram Killers, and this specimen-maker had all been caught in original history, likely headed for execution.
Capture of the killers meant no further murders and life went on.
Yet while visitors searched for clues in the Exhibition Hall, they touched bodies and left new traces.
Someone touching an infant’s neck, for instance, became direct evidence of strangulation. Past-era police, finding these traces, shifted suspicion.
Thus, true serial killers were released back then.
When they finished Hall A, Zhou Qian had suspected killers might reach present-day Blue Harbor City through the Hall.
Now he saw he’d underestimated it.
In truth, killers could arrive in present Blue Harbor City and shuttle between now and the past, continuing their murders.
Take the twenty-seven victims in this villa.
In normal history those girls never died.
The Hall provided clues to new suspects. The killer was acquitted, leading to their deaths.
History was rewritten.
In the original timeline those twenty-seven girls might have lived happily, married, borne children, generations flourishing…
Their deaths meant none of their descendants ever existed.
Twenty-seven lives lost early would, via butterfly effect, hugely impact history—
And that’s just one killer freed.
Remember, the Hall freed many killers. The cumulative effect on Blue Harbor’s history is incalculable.
No parallel timelines exist here. The Grandfather Paradox self-repairs—kill a grandfather and you vanish too.
Thus in Blue Harbor 2031, countless grandparents were murdered in the past, and their descendants blinked out of existence.
Correspondingly, countless buildings disappeared—because the architects, the workers who built them, never existed.
Most of those cases happened more than three centuries ago in what is now Blue Harbor.
Over the long span the cascading effects grew, until the entire city collapsed into the apocalyptic ruin it is today.
So the questions that remain are: where are those serial killers now, and what main quests will the players face next?
While Zhou Qian pondered, Qi Liuxing suddenly exclaimed, “Qian Ge, I just noticed—what’s with your wrist? How come you’ve got a white band? The system never listed white.”
“There’s no white, right. So maybe it’s a hidden color the system hasn’t announced yet.”
Zhou Qian said, “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet are the seven colors of the rainbow, yet the system listed only the last six—no red. That’s odd too.”
“Even though you have to wear any band you find, white is still strange…” Qi Liuxing frowned in concern.
Just then Zhou Qian laughed: “Because our Zhou Ge’s surname is Bai*—white’s my lucky color.”
*Clarity: It means white.
Qi Liuxing, Hidden Blade, He Xiaowei: “…”
“Enough—back to business.”
Zhou Qian never felt embarrassed; embarrassment was always others’ burden.
He said calmly, “With furniture this old, and all the bones shattered, those twenty-seven may well have been this killer’s final victims over three hundred years ago. He was never caught again; the corpses decayed here until today.
“The victims have rotted for three centuries, but the killer? He likely crossed to the present via the Exhibition Hall.
“Following this reasoning, Ruan Mei and the rest may appear too. We have to watch not only other players but also the killers. We also need to ponder why red and white bands haven’t appeared.
“Still, gleaning all this from one villa is pretty good. To learn more about the killer we’ll search other buildings—plus keep hunting for bands and weapons. Those will be our bargaining chips.”
Just after Zhou Qian assigned tasks, a new system message arrived—
[Band colors and counts updated: Orange – 20; Yellow – 25; Green – 25; Blue – 25; Indigo – 25; Violet – 25]
[Additional rule: if a player dies, the band they wear will be destroyed immediately]
He exchanged a look with Bai Zhou—
Five orange bands were gone. Were five people simply swapping bands, or… were they dead?
Zhou Qian frowned. “Someone who found a green band and then a violet one would be persuaded by violet-band players to switch teams that fast? At game start, in so little time? Unlikely. He’d keep extra bands as leverage. Much more likely… those five are dead, not re-banded.”
Bai Zhou nodded agreement. “Probably an old grudge.”
With weapons scarce, unknown tasks, and team strategies uncertain, no one would waste weapons lightly—under rational analysis.
But if old vendettas surfaced, people would act irrationally, settling scores first. That was likely why those five died.
“Either way, somebody probably already found a stash of lethal weapons—we need to hurry.”
With that, Zhou Qian summoned the little dragon and patted its head. “Find me weapons and bands, can you?”
The blue dragon hopped obediently to the floor. “Yip!”
Having absorbed massive life-force in the Demon King Father-and-Son instance, it could now act frequently.
Its specialty was searching, and it was fast. Sending it to fetch bands and weapons was almost overkill.
As it was about to leave, Bai Zhou rarely called it back. He placed his palm on its forehead.
Moments later he lifted his hand and said, “Now both Zhou Qian and I can see whatever you see. I also added directional sensing—if anything happens, we’ll feel it at once and rush over.”
The dragon responded coolly, “Oh.”
Seeing this, Bai Zhou frowned, reaching to pat its head—
But the dragon instantly dodged.
Zhou Qian blinked twice, then squatted and held out a hand.
The dragon hopped over, lowered its head, and nuzzled Zhou Qian’s palm several times.
Zhou Qian smiled. “Be careful out there, okay?”
“Yip yip!” The dragon nodded sweetly and flew out the window.
Bai Zhou, witnessing it all: “…”
Waving after the dragon, Zhou Qian turned back to Bai Zhou and grinned. “Seems it likes me more than its own dad, huh?”
Unable to pat the dragon, Bai Zhou instead gently tousled Zhou Qian’s hair and smiled. “Mm. All of us like you.”
The author has something to say:
Hidden Blade, He Xiaowei, Qi Liuxing: We can’t bear to watch…
The bounty on Zhou Qian, Qi Liuxing’s death, Wu Ren’s death, the mysteries around Yin Jiujiu, and their dispatching of Yun Xiangrong to Zhou Qian’s side during all this…
It was likely all part of a grand scheme.
This conspiracy had long been in the works by the Peach Blossom Legion.
The system just made it clear that the semi-open instance “Blue Harbor City” may have collapsed due to player interference. That suggests the Peach Blossom Legion might have done something behind the scenes to bring about this situation.
They most likely took advantage of the period when Zhou Qian’s group was playing in the Baquet of the Red God instance. They had ample time to set up a trap, all for the purpose of luring Zhou Qian into this instance and then killing him.
The Peach Blossom Legion knows far more about Blue Harbor City’s current predicament and the implications of a collapsing instance. By exploiting this information gap, dispatching Zhou Qian and his companions in this instance would be child’s play for them.
Zhou Qian isn’t short on gold. He has a god-level player at his side who has been active in the game for years. A reward of 100,000 gold wouldn’t be enough to keep him here.
He’s likely to stay and take up the challenge—not for the money, but because of his thrill-seeking, daredevil personality.
Even so, banking on his personality alone wouldn’t be enough. The danger is blatantly obvious—would everyone around him really be swayed to jump into the fire along with him, no questions asked?
Hence, Ke Yuxiao has made an appearance in this instance.
If Zhou Qian and those with him were 80% likely to remain before, Ke Yuxiao’s arrival raised that to 100%. Unlike ordinary players, a god-level player isn’t bound by time limits to enter instances every so many days. If Ke Yuxiao hid at the Peach Blossom Legion’s main base, killing him would be extremely difficult.
Thus, Zhou Qian and his team definitely wouldn’t let this opportunity slip by—especially after Ke Yuxiao just killed Qi Liuxing and even chopped up his body to put in soup, fueling their hatred.
At this moment, as Qi Liuxing looked toward the figure standing not far away holding a lantern, he paused for a long time before letting out a deep breath. Lowering his sword, he walked up to Zhou Qian and said, “Qian Ge, they’re not aiming to kill me. Ke Yuxiao killed me but then showed up in the collapsed Blue Harbor City instance, purely to ensure you stay here—so the Legion’s people can ambush and kill you. So—”
“I’ll handle my own revenge. You can’t fall for this. We have to get out.”
Zhou Qian lifted his eyelids and looked Qi Liuxing in the eye. “Ever since you met me in Apple Paradise, do you think… I’m the type to wimp out?”
“Of course not, but…” Qi Liuxing frowned. “Is this really about being tough or not? You have to think about your own safety.”
“If this really were the Peach Blossom Legion’s home turf, there’d be no reason to let Ke Yuxiao’s taunts keep us here to be slaughtered… But you saw the system’s announcement. This instance is still under its control, and it’s still issuing quests. So, it remains part of the game.”
“Maybe the game’s designer enjoys seeing players turn on each other, but given how he operates, he’d never let himself be just another tool in a player’s hands. You all saw there are plenty of newly ascended S-rank players here for the first time. At its core, this is a game with a certain balance. Which means we still have a chance.”
“I guess the designer simply left open the possibility for a semi-open instance to be converted into a closed instance, letting people hatch their plots and schemes. The Peach Blossom Legion only got hold of that information sooner and used it to switch Blue Harbor City’s mode.”
Raising his left arm, Zhou Qian shifted his gaze from Qi Liuxing to Ke Yuxiao off in the distance. Sure enough, the moment Ke Yuxiao extinguished his lantern, he vanished.
[Item: Projector Lantern]
[Effect: If you and your friend are far apart but want to chat face-to-face, what should you do? Use the Projector Lantern! Its ingenious 3D projection tech ensures your bond won’t be broken by distance!]
[Note: Perfect for couples. But remember, during the trial version, it’s all an illusion—if you’re seeing your girlfriend through this, don’t forget that you can’t actually touch her!]
“Look at that. He doesn’t even dare to come in person—just hides in some corner of an instance.”
Watching the spot where Ke Yuxiao’s projection disappeared, Zhou Qian lowered his arm and continued, “If we didn’t have the power to back it up, staying just because he provoked us would indeed be reckless. But since we do, we can turn this broken-down Blue Harbor City…into our own turf!”
[Attention! Attention! 10 seconds remaining to choose whether to stay.]
[10, 9…]
Glancing nonchalantly at the system message, Zhou Qian went on, “I’ve invited you all to join the guild. Approve my request.”
“At first, I wanted to develop the guild in secret—have Wu Ren pull people in front and me staying hidden, waiting for a big opportunity later on. But as expected, that Peach Blossom lot won’t spare anyone around me. So—”
[3, 2, 1]
[Time’s up. The game will officially begin in 15 seconds.]
Zhou Qian walked a few steps forward, turned around, tapped his panel a few times, then lifted his left wrist and faced everyone again. “Now, you’re all with me. Our Peerless Thousand Troops Guild won’t lurk in the shadows; we’ll face them head-on.”
“If the Peach Blossom Legion really dragged a bunch of their people in here to kill us, that’s exactly what I want. This instance is where we’ll wipe them out and avenge Gao Shan and Wu Ren.”
“In short, this is our guild’s first battle against Peach Blossom since we officially formed, and we’re going to make it a brilliant victory. One battle is all it’ll take for us to become famous. We’ll gather countless players, maybe even smaller guilds. With just this one fight, we could stand on equal footing with the Peach Blossom Legion!”
As Zhou Qian spoke, both his gaze and tone burned with fervor.
He Xiaowei felt like he had just heard a rousing speech, every cell in his body roaring for combat.
When he finished speaking, Zhou Qian’s eyes swept over everyone, ultimately settling on Yun Xiangrong.
Yun Xiangrong said, “I’m staying because the system mentioned seeing a god after completing the quest. I…”
She paused, frowned, and finally chose to turn away. “As for this guild business, that can wait. First, I want to see what these wristbands are about.”
In the end, Yin Jiujiu couldn’t hold back and followed, and before long the two vanished behind a nearby building.
Qi Liuxing glanced at them and frowned, shaking his head. “I think Yun Xiangrong’s in a real tough spot right now.”
He didn’t say it in front of the gamblers, but—Yun Xiangrong probably believes that if she tags along with Zhou Qian, everything she did before would be wasted.
She’s likely hoping to see if there’s a chance to reach the inner core of the Peach Blossom Legion. Or, since Peach Blossom hasn’t killed her yet, she might think they still find her useful, meaning she could still find a shot at taking them down.
Beside him, He Xiaowei couldn’t help saying, “No matter what, when things got so dangerous at the end of that last instance, neither she nor Yin Jiujiu tried to pull anything. I was suspicious of Yin Jiujiu at first, but if she really had some scheme, she could’ve acted when we were caught in the god battles…”
“Sure, Yin Jiujiu’s been a pain to us before, but I still see her as a teammate. Now we’re tangled up in this terrifying kill-or-be-killed scenario, and they’re on their own. That’s too dangerous.”
But Zhou Qian said, “They’ll be fine for now.”
He Xiaowei: “?”
Zhou Qian continued, “The system said our skills and damaging items are all locked, and lethal weapons have to be found. Hidden in that is another meaning: lethal weapons are most likely limited. For instance, if the weapon is a gun, then there must be limited guns and limited bullets.”
“Let me give a simple example: if you, I, and your master each had only one bullet, would you use it right away?”
He Xiaowei thought about it, then shook his head decisively. “N-no. If I used mine first, I wouldn’t be able to attack the two of you. You could kill me anytime.”
“Exactly. So, ignoring the Peach Blossom Legion, from the game mechanics alone, it’s unlikely anything big will happen to them at the start. Even taking Peach Blossom into account…”
“Look at Wu Ren’s example. Those two have probably come and gone from Peach Blossom’s base plenty of times. They have a thousand ways to kill or capture them, or to see whether they could threaten me. Yet they haven’t done it.”
“So, if those two really were Peach Blossom’s pawns, the Legion still has plans for them beyond simply killing or kidnapping them. Meaning they’ll be safe for the moment.”
That was enough to convince He Xiaowei for the time being.
He glanced at his system panel, then asked Zhou Qian, “Hey? Why is the guild leader slot empty? You’re not taking it?”
“I’ll be deputy. We’ll keep the leader position open for Wu Ren.”
Having said that, Zhou Qian spun around briskly and headed toward a nearby villa. “Let’s start searching.”
A few steps later, he heard hurried footsteps from behind. Without looking, Zhou Qian knew it had to be Bai Zhou.
He casually reached back, and sure enough, Bai Zhou took his hand. Zhou Qian smiled, waited until Bai Zhou walked up beside him, and then turned his head to look at him.
Low clouds weighed heavily on the sky, and the entire city lay in shadow.
Yet Zhou Qian’s eyes always shone with a glow that pulled people forward.
He truly was a born leader.
Bai Zhou regarded Zhou Qian deeply, then gave his hand a squeeze. “Ke Yuxiao killed Qi Liuxing in order to appear in this instance and guarantee that you, wanting revenge, would join it.”
“On the surface, that logic holds up, but it’s also too contrived—if they wanted to lure you here, there were many simpler ways to do it.”
“Yeah, I get it. So Xiao Qi’s death might not be as straightforward as we think. I’ve got a good sense of it.”
Zhou Qian reached the front of the building, traded a look with Bai Zhou.
“Stand back.” Bai Zhou pulled Zhou Qian behind him and kicked in the dark wooden door.
Just then, all the players simultaneously received a new system message—
[A player has just found a yellow wristband first.]
[This player has triggered a new rule: Any player without a wristband who discovers one must put it on within three minutes or die on the spot. Once you’ve already equipped a wristband, this rule doesn’t apply. If you find multiple wristbands at once, you can choose any color you like to wear.]
[After equipping a wristband, you may replace it at any time to switch teams. Removing your old wristband destroys it immediately. You must equip the new one within three minutes.]
[Now announcing total instance players: 100.]
[Now announcing wristband colors and quantities: Orange – 25; Yellow – 25; Green – 25; Blue – 25; Indigo – 25; Purple – 25.]
[Whenever a wristband is destroyed, the total for that color goes down. The system will display updated counts in real time.]
Zhou Qian scanned the rules without much comment, simply shining a flashlight inside.
By then Qi Liuxing, Hidden Blade, and He Xiaowei had all caught up.
He Xiaowei said, “Guys, these rules are a total trap. Anyone wearing the same color wristband is considered teammates and can’t fight each other. But the system just said we can change wristbands freely. At first I thought we’ve got two god-tier players and a ton of money, so maybe we could just pay other teams’ players to defect. Then I realized a huge pitfall—”
“The system said the fewer survivors, the better. If we buy off too many people and overshoot whatever number the system eventually sets…we can’t fight each other anymore, so we’d all just get wiped out!”
Qi Liuxing mulled that over. “There are 100 players but 150 wristbands in total. We’ll likely have to switch alliances multiple times to deal with future situations. We’d better figure out how to find more wristbands.”
“Agreed. Combine your two ideas. Collecting wristbands—and obtaining them by purchase if needed—is our main goal. Also, we need to bring into our fold any player who manages to find a functional weapon.” Zhou Qian glanced at Bai Zhou. “Zhou Ge, we got enough funds?”
Bai Zhou nodded. “Plenty.”
“That settles it,” Zhou Qian said with a smile, then added, “Also, don’t get too caught up in the PvP. The system said it needs to investigate why the instance collapsed, so there must be story clues for us to uncover. For instance, this house here looks quite interesting…”
Shining his flashlight around the room, Zhou Qian moved the beam down at his feet.
A black mass was stuck to the carpet—there was no telling how many years it had been there. Crouching to examine it, he said, “Looks like blood—long dried.”
It wasn’t only on the carpet; there were blackish stains on the walls throughout the house.
They had entered what seemed to be the living room of a villa.
There was no TV, and the carpet, coffee table, and sofa were all old-fashioned, resembling designs from the previous century.
In addition, the house was sealed tight; an unpleasant, long-entrenched moldy odor filled the place.
A setting like this inevitably makes one think of murder or hauntings.
Sure enough, before long, He Xiaowei—who was exploring—yelled, “Fuck!”
“What happened?”
Zhou Qian hurried over with the flashlight and saw that He Xiaowei had opened a stairwell leading down.
A nasty stench rushed straight at Zhou Qian the moment he approached. Sweeping his flashlight forward, he saw what He Xiaowei had nearly stepped on—a human head.
It had already decomposed into a bone-white skull long ago.
Bending down and lifting the skull to look at it from different angles, Zhou Qian realized it had sustained grievous injuries. Its forehead was clearly caved in with a missing fragment, and the back and sides had comparable wounds, suggesting the victim was heavily beaten before death.
The person must have suffered extreme brutality while alive.
Nearby, He Xiaowei spoke again: “Hey! There’s something here!”
He tapped the floor beneath the skull and found it was hollow. After prying it open, he found three wristbands inside—one white, two yellow.
“How should we choose?” he asked Zhou Qian. “White’s sort of unlucky, right*?”
*Clarity: In Chinese culture, white is the traditional color of mourning.
Zhou Qian ignored that final comment and merely shot He Xiaowei a faint glare. Then he said, “We both found these, so we both need to wear one. Let’s just pick randomly for now.”
With that, Zhou Qian reached into the hollow, already seeming to have a preference. But partway, he withdrew his hand.
Turning around, he looked toward Bai Zhou, who was walking over, and asked on purpose, “Zhou Ge, which color should I wear?”
Having spent so many years with Zhou Qian, Bai Zhou should have been used to answering such questions easily.
But their long separation sometimes made him forget. He almost blurted, “Just pick what you like,” when something came to mind.
He paused, looked at Zhou Qian, and smiled slightly. “White.”
Zhou Qian smiled in satisfaction, turned around, took out the white wristband, and put it on.
He Xiaowei: “……”
It was pitch-dark down the stairs, and their flashlights had limited range, so they hadn’t seen much before. Now, with Zhou Qian, He Xiaowei, and Bai Zhou wearing one white and two yellow wristbands, they stood at the top of the steps and shone their lights downward. Bones were scattered across the entire stairwell.
Right near them—by the skull—were the sternum and two arm bones. Farther down were the leg bones, and at the bottom of the stairs lay several stark-white toe bones.
All three wore solemn expressions at the sight.
It wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened here—
Someone, badly injured, was imprisoned in the basement.
The murderer locked the door from the basement to the outside. Desperate to seek help, the victim used their final breath to crawl up the stairs, possibly scratching or pounding on the door, trying to get out. But in the end, they failed and died right there.
Who knows how many years passed. Perhaps a minor earthquake shook the remains apart at some point. The skull ended up on the topmost step, while the rest of the bones tumbled down below.
How desperate must that person have been in their final moments?
After a pause, Hidden Blade stayed on the ground floor to look around, while Qi Liuxing headed to the second floor. Zhou Qian and the other two ventured into the basement.
Once there, they discovered even more bones.
Rows of massive glass tanks stood in the basement, each holding a skeleton. The glass was heavily water-stained, implying that when these people were placed inside, their bodies had been kept submerged.
One of the glass tanks had shattered; its shards lay scattered on the floor, untouched. Some still bore traces of blackened blood.
That made the full story clearer—
Many victims had been locked in those glass cylinders. The one on the stairs was the only one who managed to break the glass and try escaping. He must have cut his foot on the shards, kept moving by his will to live, and made it up the stairs…
Only to die there in the end.
He Xiaowei frowned deeply. “Damn. Drag people home, beat them, put them in huge basement glass tanks—maybe even fill them with water to soak them… What kind of sick fuck does that?”
Zhou Qian’s eyes narrowed sharply. “I’ve seen something like this before. So many victims… The killer must be a serial murderer.”
Something clicked for He Xiaowei, and he stared at Zhou Qian with wide eyes. “You mean… the Murder Exhibition Hall?!”
“Exactly,” Zhou Qian said. “There were a bunch of galleries there we never got to see. Maybe now, the instance will show them to us in a different way.”
Hearing Bai Zhou’s words, Zhou Qian couldn’t help but feel anger rise within him.
That kind of place was quite rare in the instance. Bai Zhou had spent a lot of effort and money to buy it. By moving in, Zhou Qian had also used the opportunity to make their relationship official.
Zhou Qian reunited with Bai Zhou in Blue Harbor City, and in that house, Bai Zhou fell in love with him. Thus, both Blue Harbor City and that house became crucially important in Zhou Qian’s memories.
But now, those memories seemed like they had turned into a dream—one that someone was warning him would vanish once the dreamer woke.
Bai Zhou nodded slightly and looked at him. “There seems to have been a huge upheaval in Blue Harbor City.”
Zhou Qian glanced at him. “Yes, let’s head out and have a look. Also—”
He turned to He Xiaowei and asked, “Have you gotten in touch with Hidden Blade yet?”
He Xiaowei’s face showed growing anxiety. “No. Ever since I came out, I’ve been looking everywhere for him, and he still hasn’t replied. You don’t think…something happened to him?”
After thinking for a moment, Zhou Qian said, “The instance has ended, but we haven’t received any notice of his death. Since he didn’t die inside, he must have come out with Ke Yuxiao…”
“Hidden Blade has an extremely keen intuition. If there were danger outside, he would definitely sense it. After all, he’s a god-level player. Given his movement skills, if he noticed something amiss, he’d certainly have enough time to escape.”
“If he couldn’t escape…then it means he ran into something special. It’s likely someone set up a low-risk, hard-to-detect trap right at the instance exit—something that wouldn’t trigger a severe danger sense but is still impossible to guard against. Something like—a ‘Universe Teleportation Mirror’.
“Remember, in this game all teleportation items, while powerful, have a very limited range. So I suspect that even if Hidden Blade fell into danger, he’s still nearby.”
When they had logged into Banquet of the Red God, it was next to a single brick—
More precisely, half a brick.
It wasn’t intact. One side looked like a sharp weapon had sliced off a large chunk.
Back then, Zhou Qian hadn’t known the significance of this damaged brick. Now he more or less understood—
During a decisive battle between two Supremes, one cleaved at the other with a blade, turning vast seas into mulberry fields. Countless city walls were reduced to dust, yet somehow most of this one brick survived that grand conflict. Thus, the neat cut was a testament to the sweeping events in history it had “witnessed”.
That brick was located in a museum, the same one Zhou Qian had been in after rescuing Wu Ren from the Magic Crucible instance. Now, as they exited the instance, they found themselves in the exhibit hall of that museum, right where the brick was displayed.
At first glance, the exhibition hall seemed fine. But when Zhou Qian and his teammates left the building, they discovered the surrounding area had turned into a stretch of barren land. All the other exhibition halls, including the one containing the Crucible, had seemingly disappeared into thin air.
Zhou Qian looked up at the sky. The multi-colored dome unique to Blue Harbor City was gone, and many of the skyscrapers that once pierced the heavens were nowhere to be seen. If the buildings had been toppled or demolished, there would at least be debris or remnants of construction materials. Yet it was as if they had been plucked away by the hand of God or had never existed to begin with.
Neon lights, bright colors, and the bustling vibe had all retreated from Blue Harbor City. The once-thriving metropolis had become a desolate place, silent enough to send chills down one’s spine. It felt as though this world was stepping toward its end.
All along the way, Zhou Qian noted that many main roads had vanished, and hardly any shops or tall buildings remained. On what few passable roads were left stood a handful of people—far fewer than the original city population. Most of them looked lost, wandering around aimlessly, as if they had no idea why they were there.
These people were NPCs.
Players could instantly confirm it via the system panel.
Meanwhile, another group of people roamed around with weapons in hand, their eyes alert. Unlike the NPCs, these individuals were all players.
Some of them, like Zhou Qian’s group, had just emerged from an instance. Others were new arrivals to the city, having just reached S-rank themselves.
They had come here with high hopes—perhaps meeting a god-level player by chance, becoming that player’s “tamer”, and then venturing together into advanced trial instances, delving deeper into the game.
None of them had expected that their long-hoped-for destination would turn into this.
“Stay sharp. I suspect…we’re about to enter a large-scale PvP scenario.”
Zhou Qian spoke quietly, narrowing his eyes as he surveyed the surroundings, his expression suddenly turning grim.
Scanning the sparse buildings around them, he continued, “Based on distance, Hidden Blade should be in one of the nearby buildings. Let’s rescue him first. We might encounter an ambush, so be on guard.”
Hearing that, He Xiaowei grew even more anxious. “PvP? I don’t even care about that right now. I’m too worried about Master. He…damn it, I’m definitely taking down the Peach Blossom Legion!”
After a moment, while He Xiaowei was still filled with righteous anger, Zhou Qian and Bai Zhou concentrated on watching the area, thinking about where Hidden Blade might be held.
Then something happened that no one expected—Hidden Blade simply walked out of a nearby building.
Seeing this, He Xiaowei breathed a huge sigh of relief. He had just shouted “Master!” and was about to rush over when Zhou Qian suddenly grabbed him by the back of his collar.
He turned his head to find Zhou Qian looking deadly serious.
“What’s wrong, Qian’er?” He Xiaowei asked, very puzzled.
Zhou Qian kept his guard up as he watched Hidden Blade approach step by step but spoke to He Xiaowei. “Why would the Peach Blossom Legion just let him go so easily?”
He Xiaowei’s heart sank at those words. “You’re thinking…could it be…”
Zhou Qian pressed his lips together. “In any case, we need to be cautious.”
God-level players have excellent hearing, and Hidden Blade’s expression showed he had clearly overheard their conversation. He frowned, somewhat annoyed, then immediately spoke to Zhou Qian, “I did see Priest earlier. He babbled some cryptic nonsense at me for a bit, then left.”
“I was also curious why he just let me go. Now, seeing your reaction, I understand. He wants to sow discord among us.”
“Don’t blame me for being blunt.” Zhou Qian stared straight at Hidden Blade’s eyes and spoke with no courtesy at all. “We have Ke Yuxiao’s precedent before us. We don’t know what’s up with him. It’s possible he was fine during Flower of Evil, but afterward, his mind got controlled. If you’re still the same Hidden Blade, I certainly won’t doubt you. But for all we know, you might have been hypnotized or something… None of us can say for sure.”
Hidden Blade: “……”
He did look a bit annoyed, but Zhou Qian had a point. If their positions were reversed, Hidden Blade would be just as cautious. He ran an irritated hand through his hair, then glanced tentatively at his idol Bai Zhou. “So, Big Boss, you—”
Bai Zhou lifted his hand and placed it in the air in front of Hidden Blade’s forehead, as if sensing something. A moment later, he turned to Zhou Qian. “His mental energy is pure. I don’t see a problem for now.”
Zhou Qian didn’t dwell on it further. He nodded, stepped forward, and patted Hidden Blade on the shoulder. Then, leaving He Xiaowei to drag Hidden Blade around asking about any leads on Ke Yuxiao, Zhou Qian moved aside to check his system messages.
He had received a message from Wu Ren, asking him to join a guild. Wu Ren had invited Zhou Qian to be a deputy commander. A guild can enable an admin anonymity feature so that other players don’t know who the deputy commander is, which suited Zhou Qian’s taste for behind-the-scenes control.
Moreover, Wu Ren wrote in the message that he had already applied for guild territory. Essentially, guild territory is also a semi-open instance. The naming starts from No. 0 in order, and the territory they applied for was No. 387.
However, it hadn’t been officially granted yet. According to game rules, the guild must reach certain membership requirements, and each member has to pay a certain amount of gold, experience, and even life force to obtain a specialized guild territory.
The guild’s name was Peerless Thousand Troops. Zhou Qian mused on the character “Thousand” and “Peerless”*.
*Clarity: The name of the guild is [Qian Jun Wu Shuang] (千军无双). The Thousand [Qian] (千) is a homophone for the Qian in Zhou Qian’s name, while the Peerless [Wu] (无) is a homophone for the Wu in Wu Ren’s name.
He was really tempted to complain about how awful it sounded. So he opened his friends list, found Wu Ren, and quickly sent a message: “That guild name is terrible. Is it possible to change it? I’ll pay whatever it costs.”
Right then, Zhou Qian noticed Wu Ren’s icon had gone dark. Immediately after, the message he sent popped up a red notice. “Delivery failed.”
Zhou Qian’s face changed dramatically. Bai Zhou, closest to him, noticed at once and took his hand to quietly ask what was wrong. Soon, He Xiaowei and Qi Liuxing also came over.
“What’s wrong?”
“Something’s happened to Wu Ren,” Zhou Qian said gravely, frowning deeply.
“What? I…I was planning to meet up with him to have barbecue, hot pot, and soda…” He Xiaowei, who had just been relieved by Hidden Blade’s safe return, suddenly panicked again.
He immediately checked his own friend list and saw that Wu Ren’s icon was indeed dark.
Over the course of their time with Zhou Qian, they had been following his light diet. He Xiaowei clearly recalled that before they entered the instance, Wu Ren was there to send them off.
Secretly, behind Zhou Qian’s back, Wu Ren had whispered to He Xiaowei, “Eating what Zhou Qian eats every day is so bland, my mouth’s about to grow wings and fly away. Once you guys are done, let’s sneak off for some hot pot and barbecue.”
He Xiaowei raised an eyebrow and replied, “You can drink as much soda as you want.”
Wu Ren bumped his shoulder lightly. “Yes! We’re both adults now; we deserve soda freedom!”
Yet that promise would never be fulfilled. Realizing he could never again go for hot pot or barbecue with Wu Ren, He Xiaowei looked completely dumbfounded.
Qi Liuxing had died inside an instance, and there was still a workaround using in-instance methods to save him.
Gao Shan had died with Zhou Qian by his side, so at least Zhou Qian had used the Rib of God to preserve his spirit.
But Wu Ren—? Nobody even knew where he had died, and they had no clue who…
No, on second thought, He Xiaowei did know who was behind it. If it wasn’t the Peach Blossom Legion, who else could it be?
Wu Ren had only gone to a simple trial instance to farm some experience—there was no way he would just inexplicably die in there, with no chance even to ask for help, no inheritance arranged, no final words. That meant he was trapped somewhere and murdered!
They barely had time to discuss Wu Ren’s situation when the system suddenly sent out a message—
[A previously unknown collapse has been detected in semi-open instance Blue Harbor City 2301. Players can log out within one minute. After that, the instance will be sealed to investigate the cause of the breakdown. Once it’s sealed, the semi-open instance will become a closed instance.]
[Inside a closed instance, players will unlock a hidden quest. The reward for completing that quest is up to 100,000 gold, and there is a chance to meet an actual god.]
[Based on a preliminary investigation, it appears an evil force may be lurking in Blue Harbor City. The system cannot rule out the possibility of player involvement, so all of you are suspects.]
[A closed instance has a limited capacity. Before the system announces further rules, the number of players must be reduced as much as possible.]
[To ensure fairness in removing extra players, all skills and damaging items are disabled. The system will provide you with weapons, which you must search for throughout the city.]
[During your search, you will see wristbands of different colors. You must wear one on your wrist. Players with the same color wristband will be considered a single team, and teammates cannot attack each other.]
[The investigation is expected to last 10 hours.]
[Again, your mission for these 10 hours is to find lethal weapons, find different color wristbands, choose which team to join, and kill anyone not on your team.]
[Note: After 10 hours, the system will calculate how many players the instance can still handle. If the number exceeds that limit, everyone will be wiped out. In other words, all of you will die.]
[More details will be released over time.]
[All players must decide within one minute whether to stay or leave.]
……
“So…so we’re basically being told to kill each other?”
He Xiaowei’s heart pounded violently. He was about to make a decision when suddenly he heard the sound of Qi Liuxing drawing his sword.
He looked up and saw someone standing amidst the rubble not far away.
With the bright multi-colored light gone, the sky looked dim and gray. That figure stood there alone, holding a lamp in the grayish haze, reminiscent of some solitary image out of a monochrome painting.
He wore a long azure robe, giving the initial impression of a refined, scholarly noble from ancient times—a sight that instantly reminded He Xiaowei of the first time he ever saw him. That man was, of course, Ke Yuxiao.
Sensing the surge of killing intent beside him, He Xiaowei turned his head. Qi Liuxing had his sword aimed at Ke Yuxiao. In response, Ke Yuxiao smiled. In that smile, cruel malice filled his eyes, and any previous gentle façade collapsed in an instant.
“Well, you really did come back to life. Are you hoping to kill me?” Ke Yuxiao gave Qi Liuxing a quick glance, then looked at Bai Zhou and Zhou Qian, who stood not far away.
Narrowing his eyes, he flashed a slightly manic look. “Then seize this opportunity. Let it slip, and it won’t come again. Stay in this instance—and kill me.”
A gentle breeze carried a faint fragrance across his cheeks, making the peach blossoms appear even more vivid.
Yet the endless sea of pink brought no trace of delight. It was laden with killing intent, ushering in only death and fear.
Wu Ren realized he had fallen into a trap.
In truth, from the very start of their meal and conversation, there had been plenty of slip-ups in Wu Nianrou’s words. He hadn’t failed to notice them.
But Wu Nianrou was the younger sister who had taken care of him for over a decade.
Every suspicion vanished the instant he recognized that the person at his side was Wu Nianrou.
All lines of logical reasoning collapsed in the face of sentiment.
Hence, Wu Ren threw caution to the wind and came here.
All along, Wu Ren’s greatest wish was to regain his sight.
He hoped not just to be the one taken care of by his younger sister, but to look after her in return.
His recent impatience to advance further stemmed from the fact that his sister was about to marry. He wanted to witness the wedding himself, to hold her hand and entrust her to the groom.
No matter what, the first person Wu Ren longed to see once his eyesight returned was undoubtedly Wu Nianrou.
But he never expected that his wish could be fulfilled without meeting any god in the game—
Nor did he expect he would see “her” face under such circumstances.
His mother, with whom he had barely spent any time, bore the surname Ke.
It was only upon recalling this that Wu Ren finally understood.
But why would Ke Yuxiao disguise himself as Wu Nianrou?
Why was “Wu Nianrou” so drastically different when appearing alongside Qi Liuxing from the sister Wu Ren knew?
Just as the key point dawned on him, a vast wave of fear and alarm surged in Wu Ren’s expression. He hastily raised his wrist, hoping to message Zhou Qian.
“I didn’t come to kill you. I came to save you.”
“I won’t abandon my king.”
“This is the moment you can make use of me. You must seize the opportunity.”
……
Zhou Qian’s every word rang clear in his mind.
In that instant, Wu Ren’s ears buzzed, his heart pounding so fast it felt near bursting.
All he wanted was to send a message to Zhou Qian without delay.
Yet just then, the ground gave a violent tremor. In the distance, branches of the peach trees stretched madly in all directions. In the blink of an eye, several thick limbs lashed out, binding Wu Ren’s arms and legs so tightly that he couldn’t send even a single character.
“You…”
Raising his head, Wu Ren cast an indecipherably complex look at the “little sister” before him.
It had happened so abruptly: all trust smashed to pieces, all understanding abruptly overturned…
For a moment, Wu Ren found himself speechless.
Then he noticed that his “little sister’s” own gaze was likewise full of conflict. Tears streamed down her face, brimming with the purest grief.
Seeing this, even more astonishment welled up within Wu Ren’s fear-filled heart—
The person in front of him truly did regard him as her brother.
Yes. The one who had lived by his side day and night was indeed the person standing here now.
But he… in the end…
Fixing her eyes on Wu Ren, Wu Nianrou wiped away her tears and spoke. “Big Brother, you want to contact that Zhou Qian, don’t you? I’m the one who’s been with you for more than ten years. Why would you betray me over an outsider? Don’t reveal my secret to him, alright?”
Wu Ren could no longer hold back. He asked, “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on…”
Step by step, Wu Nianrou came closer, her eyes filled with utter despair. “I’d like to know that, too. Why… can’t I fully govern my own body?”
“Big Brother, I really… worry about you so much.”
……
When Ke Yuxiao was six years old, he learned that he would soon meet his eight-year-old older brother.
Anxious for a long time, he created a personality who identified as female, named Wu Nianrou.
At that time, his mother, Ke Mengyun, lay in the ICU, still connected to a ventilator.
She was being looked after by her cousin, who was also the one who had contacted the Wu family before.
Ke Yuxiao sought out this cousin and portrayed the situation as dire: if “the other side” discovered he was actually a boy, they would not give him any money.
The Wu family heavily favored sons over daughters and imposed many restrictions on its daughters-in-law—like not even letting them eat at the same table. It was precisely these constraints that had driven Ke Mengyun to divorce.
Her cousin was well aware of this, so at first, she was skeptical: the child was only six—how could he grasp all that?
But she didn’t dare to be careless. She herself had no means to raise such a large sum of money. If they took a wrong step, there truly might be no way to secure the funds to save her cousin’s life.
Thus, the cousin tentatively reached out to the Wu family. From Wu Ren’s father, she learned he really believed he had an as-yet-unseen “daughter”.
This left the cousin—despite her confusion—with little choice but partial belief. She even went so far as to buy little dresses and a wig for Ke Yuxiao. On the day he met his father and brother, she dressed him up as a little girl for real.
When she accompanied Ke Yuxiao to meet Wu Ren and his father, neither one noticed a thing; in fact, they seemed quite fond of this “daughter”. From then on, the cousin dared not say a word.
Of course, she had no idea that the one meeting the father and son that day wasn’t “Ke Yuxiao” as he usually was. Fully aware of his ill-temper and somber disposition, he had specifically allowed the Wu Nianrou personality to handle the meeting.
After that first introduction, Wu Ren and his father met with the cousin and Ke Yuxiao a few more times. Sure enough, the Wu family did provide money.
Throughout this process, the cousin never dared mention anything, merely waiting for Ke Mengyun to wake up so they could discuss it together.
Some time later, Ke Mengyun regained consciousness, recovered, and was discharged from the hospital.
Her cousin told her the entire story, asking if they really needed to keep it under wraps.
Ke Mengyun, finding it very suspicious, called Ke Yuxiao in for a serious talk.
Back then, she had ended her marriage by lying about everything and had not contacted the Wu family in all those years, so naturally, she had never disclosed the truth. Of course, there was also the fear that if the Wu family discovered she had given birth to a healthy boy rather than a girl, they might seize custody of him.
For these reasons, she had never come clean.
But then… what was going on with Ke Yuxiao?
How could a normal six-year-old conceive the idea of dressing up as a girl to fool the grown-ups? What was he thinking?
During their talk, Ke Yuxiao worried his mother would assume he was mentally ill and feared she might inform the Wu family, which would in turn make Wu Ren’s father and brother see him as mentally ill as well—and then they would abandon him. So he never told her that a separate personality dwelled inside him.
All he said was, “Mom, I just felt sorry for how hard things are for you. We both have it tough. Acknowledging them might get us some money, so what’s the harm?”
Even later, the cousin tried persuading Ke Mengyun. “They think he’s a girl, so the Wu family won’t truly accept him. You promised Grandma Wu that ‘her granddaughter’ would come visit regularly, and you can use the chance to get more support money. That’s fine, right? But if they find out Xiao Xiao is a boy, won’t they just take him back with them?”
In the end, Ke Mengyun was persuaded.
Essentially, it was Wu Ren’s grandmother who suggested having this “granddaughter” come home.
Probably only she still remembered that there was a granddaughter, and she felt genuine concern for her.
In earlier days, compelled by the Wu family’s rigid conventions, she’d agreed to the divorce. But she never dreamed Ke Mengyun would make a clean break so permanent that she would never let the grandmother see her granddaughter again.
Her health was failing and it seemed unlikely she would live much longer. Under such conditions, wanting a final few visits with her granddaughter was hardly unexpected.
At this point, her only wish was to see Ke Yuxiao—she had no intention of taking him by force. But if the entire Wu family later discovered the granddaughter was actually a grandson, they might have had a different plan.
In some respects, the child Ke Yuxiao seemed extraordinarily precocious.
But after all, he was only six, and his understanding was limited.
Through these events, Ke Mengyun discovered her son’s vanity. Yet her vain little boy didn’t appear to realize that if he claimed his rightful identity as a boy, it might actually have been even easier to get what he wanted.
Of course, this was not an outcome Ke Mengyun wished for.
Hence, she didn’t push the matter further.
The Wu family’s money had saved her life, and the relationship had begun to thaw. She also kept her elder son, Wu Ren, in mind and often visited him. Yet she never again met with any other Wu relatives, nor spoke a word about how Ke Yuxiao was really a boy.
Several more years passed. Owing to work, Ke Mengyun had to relocate abroad for an extended period.
Ke Yuxiao refused to go. Seeing how kind Wu Ren was to him, and unable to force her child to leave with her, she temporarily agreed to his staying.
From then on, she returned to the country once or twice a year.
During that time, Ke Yuxiao stayed with Wu Ren.
He disliked living in the Wu family’s main residence, and Wu Ren, worried he would be bullied there, eventually moved with him to an apartment downtown.
No one knew that every time he was around Wu Ren, Ke Yuxiao would deliberately awaken the Wu Nianrou personality.
Assured that Wu Nianrou’s temperament was indeed kind and gentle, Ke Yuxiao spent most of Wu Nianrou’s time with Wu Ren in slumber.
He knew his mother thought him vain and only using the Wu family for financial support—
But only he understood that if he fell asleep, another person would tend to Wu Ren as a caring sister, and in exchange he received his brother’s devoted care. It was an extraordinarily good deal.
All he had to worry about was whether his body might produce other personalities, or whether at some point, when Wu Nianrou was in charge, she might suddenly fall asleep, and he would wake up in her place—how would he handle that?
In those moments, he would despise the wig and dresses he was forced to wear and loathe everyone’s misconception that he was female.
But at the same time, he enjoyed Wu Ren’s devotion and had no choice but to continue posing as Wu Nianrou. Unlike her, he couldn’t mimic a woman’s voice, so he simply refrained from speaking.
Unaware of the truth, Wu Ren assumed every time that his sister was upset with him.
When he was little, Ke Yuxiao used the Wu Nianrou personality to charm people and get money, all to avoid being discarded onto the streets.
As he got older, if anyone bullied him, Wu Ren—though blind—had a knack for diplomacy and could always resolve the trouble.
Or for ordinary daily tasks, as long as the main personality didn’t emerge, that was actually advantageous. Ke Yuxiao himself struggled in social settings, while Wu Nianrou, with her gentle nature and feminine demeanor, never argued with others, and thus dealt with many things more smoothly.
In time, Ke Yuxiao himself wasn’t sure whether he’d gotten used to this life or become addicted, but he never changed, nor did he reduce the amount of time Wu Nianrou occupied the body.
By these peculiar means, he kept his secret safe right up until now.
After discovering that Zhou Qian was drawing Wu Ren to his side—while Wu Ren’s companion, Ke Yuxiao, belonged to the Peach Blossom Legion—Priest set in motion a plan to make use of Wu Nianrou, in addition to orchestrating the Qi Liuxing scheme.
But unlike the Qi Liuxing situation (where Ke Yuxiao could easily create a new personality to pose convincingly as a novice player leveling up from scratch), by the time Priest hoped to exploit Wu Nianrou, there was no longer time.
She was still far from reaching S-rank. They couldn’t wait for her to become an S-rank player before showing up in Blue Harbor City to see Wu Ren. With no other option, Ke Yuxiao took a gamble and had her confess everything to Wu Ren in real life, trying to lure him to their headquarters.
Her story was riddled with obvious holes—like how she had “luckily” encountered a high-level player who helped her power-level.
Fortunately, Wu Ren trusted her without question and indeed headed straight to this place.
The Peach Blossom Legion’s headquarters was inside the semi-open Instance No. 3.
Under Xie Huai’s might, it grew stronger day by day, and Xie Huaying stood guard there.
Wu Ren, a mere ordinary S-rank player arriving alone, had no chance of escaping.
In truth, as soon as Wu Nianrou told Wu Ren she was getting married, this entire trap had already begun.
The night before that day, Ke Yuxiao’s body lay in bed, eyes closed.
In his mental landscape, he met with Wu Nianrou.
Wu Nianrou, somewhat curious, walked through a sea of radiant flowers.
At the center stood Ke Yuxiao, with row upon row of little houses behind him, each harboring a different personality. Some were familiar to Wu Nianrou, and others she’d never met.
“It’s getting more and more beautiful here… Is it because of that game? Ever since you became a god-level player, your spiritual power has soared, so your mental world is this lovely?” Wu Nianrou asked.
“Yes. And there’s something else I need to tell you—I’m going to die,” Ke Yuxiao replied.
At first, Wu Nianrou just looked puzzled.
Once it dawned on her, she panicked. “What do you mean? Are you talking about you, the main personality… or about the body?”
“Of course I mean this body. I’ll die along with it. By then, all of you will perish as well,” Ke Yuxiao said.
“I don’t understand…” Wu Nianrou found it incomprehensible.
“I didn’t understand at first, either,” Ke Yuxiao said. “I’m terrified of death. If I weren’t… I wouldn’t have created so many personalities to handle all sorts of things for me.
But the Peach Blossom Legion changed me, and Master changed me… He showed me a completely different world. I’m willing to die for his grand vision.”
At that moment, Ke Yuxiao recalled something he once told Priest:
“My dear Priest, I truly admire you. I’m willing to be the finest chess piece at your disposal.”
Sometime later, Priest, as if formulating a new strategy, sought him out. With a cryptic expression, the Priest asked,
“I remember you said you’d comply with any command of mine. So if… I were to order you to die?”
……
Snapping out of the memory, Ke Yuxiao gave Wu Nianrou a satisfied smile.
“When I first heard him say that, I was scared too. After all, I couldn’t fully trust him. But once I truly grasped the magnitude of their ambitions, I was willing.”
“Why fear death? When you face it willingly, it stops being so frightening. Darkness must descend on this world as soon as possible.”
“I don’t need you to,” Ke Yuxiao said. “I’m only informing you. If I die, you die, too… Ah, such a pity—without us, who will look after Wu Ren? He’s blind, isn’t he.”
“And I do care about him. Because he’s also my brother.”
“Nianrou, let all of us die together.”
……
Back in Semi-Open Instance No. 3.
Wu Nianrou advanced toward Wu Ren. “Big Brother, can you imagine how terrified I was… how distressed? When I believed myself truly a girl, I discovered my body was male.”
“When I thought I was just like all of you, I found out I was a fraud. I’d never truly belong to myself. I’ve always been just a tool, controlled by others…”
“And yet there’s always been one thought in me: I must look after you, treat you well. Because that notion exists in this body, I was born into this world. I suppose I should thank you for that.”
“Big Brother, I really can’t bear to lose you. I was still hesitating. But as his first creation, I can sense many things. Lately, he… killed him. So… he’ll definitely kill me, too…”
Wu Ren quickly interrupted her. “Hold on. Who did he kill? Are you saying you have other personalities in your body? You’ve got multiple personalities, right? That’s how Ke Yuxiao hid his identity in Flower of Evil?”
“Nianrou, don’t do anything hasty. You might be brainwashed. If you tell me the truth, I can help you!”
“I’m not brainwashed, Big Brother. I’ve thought it over carefully. I see no hope… I’ll never truly live. And Ke Yuxiao is only using you. I can’t let that happen. If I’m gone, who’ll take care of you? I have no choice but to make you die first.”
“Brother, don’t be afraid. You go on ahead. I’ll follow soon.”
Wu Nianrou lifted a blade and aimed it at Wu Ren’s chest.
“It’s not me who’s brainwashed, it’s you.”
“Brother, no god has ever existed in this world. The gods abandoned this land long ago, disappointed by humankind. There’s no one who can restore your eyesight. Everything Shao Chuan is doing is in vain. All your so-called companions—futile. I don’t want you to suffer anymore.”
“Don’t be scared of the pain. I’ll make it quick.”
A flash of steel, then a sudden spray of blood.
Droplets of crimson spattered onto the ground, soaking into the roots of the peach trees.
Perhaps it was only her imagination, but Wu Nianrou felt the peach grove looked even more luridly bright—
The color of her brother’s blood, she thought in a daze.
Footsteps sounded behind her, and Wu Nianrou turned to see Xie Huaying.
“I’m someone who usually saves people,” Xie Huaying said with a sigh. “I rarely kill.”
Wu Nianrou’s gaze went blank. “Then… when do you plan on killing me?”
Before Xie Huaying could answer, Wu Nianrou lost consciousness—
Because the primary personality, Ke Yuxiao, had retaken control of the body.
He stretched lazily and looked at Xie Huaying.
Seeing the surprise in her eyes, he said, “She’s exhausted. Let her rest.”
Blinking twice, Xie Huaying tilted her head before letting out a sigh. “I’m not one to get hung up on life or death, yet somehow seeing what you’re going through leaves me sighing with regret.”
Ke Yuxiao only asked, “So the agreement between Priest and me—does it stand?”
“Of course. Even if you don’t trust us, you can trust the prop,” Xie Huaying replied. “If the worst should happen, I’ll resurrect you.”
……
Blue Harbor City 2301.
Inside an apartment in Building No. 7.
When a husband came home, he was welcomed by candlelight filling the room, along with the bright smiles of his wife and daughter.
Seeing the cake on the dining table, he laughed. “I completely forgot it was my birthday!”
He walked over and gave his wife a kiss, then scooped up his daughter and spun her around once before setting her down again.
His wife returned his kiss on the cheek and, taking their daughter by the hand, headed into the bedroom. “We’re going to get your present. You can guess what it is—if you guess right, send me a message. Otherwise, we’re not coming out!”
The husband quickly picked up his phone and typed a text: “I can see you haven’t actually gone in yet, so I’ve already figured it out.”
“Wrong answer. Looks like you’re not getting it easily,” his wife teased him playfully. By then, she and their daughter had gone inside and shut the door.
Over the next six messages, each reply came back as “wrong”.
From the seventh onward, there was no response at all.
He assumed his wife might have taken the game to another level or was just making him wait, so he didn’t think much of it.
Only after sending message after message, taking a shower, and still getting no response—nor seeing his wife emerge—did he begin to panic.
He rushed to unlock the bedroom door with his fingerprint, only to find an empty room.
—His wife and daughter had vanished into thin air.
Moments later, the room vanished too. The entire apartment vanished, leaving the man standing alone in a patch of wasteland.
He felt utterly bewildered, unable to explain why he was out there.
Wife, daughter…
These words flickered in his mind, but soon he found he could no longer recall them, as if he had never been married in the first place.
……
Meanwhile, over in Building No. 8…
A tall, striking man was walking toward the apartment building with a woman in his arms, the two of them very close.
Just before reaching the entrance, the woman hurriedly pushed him away. “No, Luo Yu. I-I’m scared he’ll see. We can’t let him find out about us yet.”
“Alright.” Luo Yu released her waist willingly and blew her a playful kiss. “Go on in. I’ll see you next time.”
“You… You’re wonderful. You’re the nicest man I’ve ever met,” the woman said, blushing, and made her way inside. Yet before reaching her own unit, her face turned pale as she let out a shrill scream—
A pool of blood was seeping out from under the door!
“A’Hua! Are you in there, A’Hua!” Calling her husband’s name in horror, she pressed her finger to the lock and opened the door. The moment it swung wide, something struck the back of her head. She collapsed into unconsciousness.
By then, danger was spreading throughout the city.
At that moment, Zhou Qian’s group exited the instance and returned to Blue Harbor City.
Sensing how drastically the surrounding buildings had changed, Zhou Qian turned and saw Bai Zhou’s tense expression.
“What’s wrong?” Zhou Qian asked.
Bai Zhou looked at him and answered, “I just got a system alert: Blue Harbor City has suffered an ‘unknown collapse’, and the system will compensate me financially.”
“Unknown collapse?” Zhou Qian frowned. “What do you mean?”
Once Wu Nianrou finished doing her makeup, Wu Ren headed downstairs with her.
Having just come out of the game, Wu Ren felt a bit out of sorts. After all, he had gone from the colorful world of Blue Harbor City back to the darkness of the real world and couldn’t immediately adjust.
But he’d been home for a while now, and after twenty years of living blind and being very familiar with this place, he easily found his cane at the doorway. Once the two of them went out, Wu Nianrou no longer had to guide him; he could make his own way down the stairs.
By this time, Wu Nianrou was wearing a wig and a dress, with her makeup exquisitely done. Stepping outside, they were greeted by the neighbors.
“You two siblings going out again?”
“Look how close the Wu siblings are! Not like my two—they fight every single day!”
“Young Nianrou, you’re getting married soon, right? Congratulations!”
“I bet Wu Ren can’t bear to let you go!”
……
This was an old residential complex, and the two had lived here for many years. Unlike a lot of younger folks who didn’t even know their neighbors’ names, Wu Ren and Wu Nianrou were quite familiar with most of the older residents here, greeting them warmly.
Wu Ren said, “Uncle Liu, hearing your voice, you’re even healthier than before!”
Wu Nianrou said, “Auntie Zhang, you look thinner now! One of these days, I want to come do square dancing with you.”
Exchanging greetings along the way, they left the complex and walked down a well-known side street to a restaurant they both liked.
When they were little, it was just a simple roadside eatery.
Over more than a decade, as they grew up, it transformed into a grand restaurant, yet the owner was still the same person, as honest as ever. Every time he saw these longtime customers, the brother and sister, he gave them the best discount.
“The private room you two always take isn’t available this time. Is it okay if we switch you to another one?”
That was how the owner greeted them.
“Wang Ge, you’re treating us like strangers,” Wu Ren said with a laugh.
The owner asked, “The same as usual?”
“The same as usual!” said Wu Ren. Then, leaning on his cane with one hand and linking arms with Wu Nianrou with the other, he entered a smaller private room.
As usual, the food arrived quickly, and soon the table was filled with dishes.
Wu Ren’s blindness made eating a bit inconvenient, so Wu Nianrou naturally peeled shrimp for him. Her manner was entirely habitual, as if she’d been doing it for him all her life.
Each time she placed a freshly peeled shrimp into Wu Ren’s bowl, she would glance at him, eyes alight, as though gazing upon a cherished idol.
Now that she understood her true situation, Wu Nianrou felt only deeper despair.
And the more despair she felt, the more complicated her expression grew when she looked at Wu Ren.
“Brother—”
Wu Nianrou suddenly spoke up just as Wu Ren had a bite of shrimp.
“What is it?” Wu Ren asked.
“I…” Wu Nianrou let out a sigh. “Something has happened to me recently, and I don’t know how to explain it to you. I…”
It took Wu Nianrou a moment to realize he was referring to her “fiancé”.
She smiled. “No. It’s just… lately I’ve ended up in a strange game.”
The moment he heard this, Wu Ren shot to his feet, accidentally knocking over his bowl. “What did you say?”
Wu Nianrou quickly helped him sit back down, and as she tidied the fallen bowl and chopsticks, she said, “You know how I’ve been working overtime, living in the apartment near my company, hardly coming home to see you. Because of that, I’ve been worried about you. That day, in my apartment, I was thinking I should come back here to check on you… when all of a sudden, a very strange watch appeared on my nightstand.”
She paused, then looked at Wu Ren’s left wrist. “Brother, even though our watches look really different, you… wouldn’t also happen to—”
Wu Ren groped in the air until he found her hand, then gripped it tightly. Frowning with concern, he asked, “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”
“I picked it up and heard a voice asking me—did I want a wish granted? A wish? Of course I did. I want your eyesight restored.
“Brother, you’re always urging me to get married, but if I do, who’ll take care of you? I can’t bring myself to leave you alone. So I…”
Wu Nianrou hesitated, then asked, “From the look on your face, and the fact that you have a watch too, I’m guessing you’ve known about this game for a while?”
After a long silence, Wu Ren let out a heavy sigh.
He buried his face in his hands, looking infinitely remorseful. “I wanted you to have a normal life… not be influenced by me. That’s why I didn’t tell you. But I never expected you’d end up in that game too. You… ah, if only I’d told you sooner, warned you never to get involved! It’s too dangerous!”
“It’s okay. I’ve had decent luck.” Wu Nianrou held his hand. “Once I got into the game, I met someone pretty powerful and stuck with him. Whenever we entered harder instances, we never went for hidden achievements—just cleared them fast to grind experience.”
That startled Wu Ren. “Your level’s already pretty high?”
“Yes, I’m about to reach S-level,” Wu Nianrou said. “I’ve done over twenty instances, and I’m finally close. It hasn’t been easy… Oh, I specialize in long-range attacks. My logic is, if I fight from a distance, I can still run away if things go badly. See? Your sister’s as clever as ever.
“I just don’t know what happens after S… The system’s been pushing me to hurry into the next instance. I have a feeling it’s dangerous, and I decided… I’d better tell you first. So if anything happens to me, at least you’d know. Right, Brother—what level are you?”
“I’m already S. Right now I’m exploring how to keep advancing. After S, you can take the Shepherd route—or other paths—but lots of people are confused and don’t know what comes next.”
Wu Ren continued, “Fortunately, I found a very dependable team. We’ve formed a legion to open up new territory in this game. It’s better than doing it alone. Once you reach S, I’ll bring you in!”
He went on, “I’m even the legion commander!”
Facing his little sister, Wu Ren couldn’t bring himself to say he was merely a figurehead. He still wanted to savor her admiration for a bit before telling her the truth.
Sure enough, Wu Nianrou’s eyes brimmed with admiration when she looked at him, though on closer inspection, a certain strange gleam seemed to lurk there.
Sadly, Wu Ren couldn’t see it.
He promptly asked, “When are you going into that next instance? In the next couple of days?”
“Yeah. My time limit’s almost up. I was waiting for that top-tier teammate of mine, but I haven’t been able to reach him lately…” Wu Nianrou frowned, her tone turning uneasy.
Wu Ren immediately said, “I’ll go with you. Which instance is it? I probably can’t access anything under S-rank, but if we form a master-disciple bond, there are some instances I can lead you through. I can check and see.”
Wu Nianrou opened her system panel. “Huh? Looks like we really can match a master and disciple. Let’s give it a shot?”
Wu Ren said, “Yes, let’s try. After we finish eating, I’ll help you clear that instance. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Once you clear it, you’ll be S. And I happen to have an entry ticket to Blue Harbor City. I can introduce you to my friends. Right, what’s the name of the instance?”
“Let me see… It’s called Pink Story,” Wu Nianrou replied.
After a moment, Wu Ren said, “Strange. I can’t find any information about it.”
Being blind in the real world, Wu Ren had a unique way of searching for info—by laying the palm of his right hand on his left wrist, letting him directly access the system interface in his mind.
Double-checking and still finding nothing, Wu Ren said, “It might be a specialized instance unlocked just for your particular skill set and personal traits, so we can’t see it on our end.
“Okay, so let’s become master and disciple, and you be party leader. Then pull me into it.
“Those specialized instances can be really tough, so it’s a good thing you told me in time. If you barged in alone and got matched with some unreliable teammates, the consequences could be disastrous.”
“Mm! With you around, Brother, I’m never worried!” Wu Nianrou smiled and started peeling another shrimp for him. “Eat first, or it’ll get cold.”
They finished their meal and hurried back to the residential complex so Wu Ren could help her clear the instance.
Midway, though, Wu Nianrou guided him in a different direction.
“What’s wrong, Nianrou?” Wu Ren asked.
“Before I leave… I want to visit our old school,” she answered.
Wu Ren was a few years older than Wu Nianrou, so ordinarily they wouldn’t have been in the same grade.
Plus, he should have attended a special school for people with disabilities.
But since Wu Nianrou wanted to take care of him, Wu Ren intentionally repeated a grade so they could attend high school together and graduate together.
In those circumstances, she had to put in far more effort than most, helping him navigate a normal school curriculum despite his blindness.
Fortunately, because of their family’s situation, the teachers were sympathetic and arranged for special accommodations for Wu Ren’s exams.
“Our school?” Wu Ren was slightly surprised. “I thought you didn’t like our alma mater.”
His expression turning serious and guilty, he added, “If it weren’t for me… you wouldn’t have had to deal with people’s ridicule.”
Wu Ren remembered perfectly how, because of him, Wu Nianrou was often mocked by classmates, leaving her friendless.
Among girls, going to the restroom in groups was common, yet nobody ever asked Wu Nianrou to join them. She was always alone, never befriending anyone.
Moreover, the things Wu Ren overheard people saying about his sister didn’t match the sister he knew at all.
Some said she was withdrawn, some said she was fierce, others said she was noisy, overbearing, outgoing, and lively…
Some even thought his sister had a mental illness.
In time, Wu Ren cut himself off from everyone else. As far as he was concerned, he and his sister only needed each other.
On their way to school, Wu Nianrou asked him, “Brother, back then, what did you think of me?”
Wu Ren answered, “I used to say, ‘Why should you care what they think? Aren’t the two of us getting by just fine?’ I really have no regrets in this life. My only regret is that I couldn’t be with you from the start.”
Wu Nianrou said nothing, just looked at him briefly and continued guiding him forward.
Moments later, they arrived at their old high school.
The second she stepped onto campus, Wu Nianrou said, “You’re right. I never did pay attention to anybody else. As long as the two of us siblings are happy, that’s enough. So… even if I didn’t get along with anybody else here, we still shared our high school years. Whenever I think of those days, it makes me happy.
“Mm… I was willing to come back to our alma mater, to revisit the past.”
At the end of that sentence, her voice sank a little.
Wu Ren didn’t sense anything amiss, merely patted her on the shoulder with a smile. “I get it. You’re nervous about going into a difficult instance, right? Don’t worry, I’m here. There won’t be any problems. And if you ever want to come back, you can—any time. We’re already here now, so let’s walk around a bit… oh, the lotus flowers should be blooming by now, right?”
“Mm. Let’s go see the lotus pond. I’ll describe what I see for you,” Wu Nianrou said, voice growing quieter and quieter. “I always want to be my brother’s eyes.”
—But sadly, I can’t do it anymore.
……
Wu Ren was eight when he first met his “younger sister”.
His parents had divorced when he was small. He stayed with his father, while Ke Yuxiao stayed with his mother.
Wu Ren had never heard of Ke Yuxiao and always assumed he had a younger sister.
Even Wu Ren’s father believed all along that he had a daughter, not a son.
Unlike Wu Ren and his father, who knew nothing, Ke Yuxiao—who lived with his mother—knew the whole story.
His father’s family clung to feudal beliefs, placed extreme importance on having a male heir, and deeply discriminated in favor of sons over daughters.
Under those circumstances, even though Wu Ren’s mother gave birth to a boy, because he was blind and “defective,” he still failed to satisfy the Wu family’s expectations. She was forced to conceive again.
While pregnant with her second child, she and Wu Ren’s father were at odds more fiercely than ever.
At her wits’ end with all the family’s demands and restrictions, she was desperate for divorce.
Her husband’s family wouldn’t agree, claiming that because she was pregnant, they wouldn’t let her leave. So, out of frustration, she lied that the fetus was a girl. Ironically, that lie was what made them finally relent. Furious and disheartened, she walked away from the Wu family with that lie hanging in the air.
Wu Ren initially learned he had a younger sister he’d never met, so he wasn’t very attached to her.
As for Ke Yuxiao, he felt no bond with Wu Ren either.
Then came a pivotal moment when Ke Yuxiao’s mother fell seriously ill and needed money.
By then, the Wu family had basically forgotten about her and Ke Yuxiao and didn’t care at all.
But for some reason, Wu Ren’s grandmother, who might have secretly kept track of the existence of a “granddaughter” all this time, stated that if Wu Ren’s mother returned that granddaughter, she would be willing to pay for the medical treatment.
At that time, Ke Yuxiao was terrified.
He feared his mother would die, feared that he’d have no one left, feared that he would end up on the streets.
Because of what Wu Ren’s grandmother said, that divorced couple was about to meet again, and Ke Yuxiao would soon meet his older brother Wu Ren.
He was overwhelmed with anxiety—what could he do to meet their expectations?
If they realized his mother had lied, would they be enraged and leave?
According to his mom, his dad definitely wouldn’t love him… But his brother—he might have a shot with him, right? What kind of younger sister would he like? Probably a sweet, understanding, well-behaved little sister. Right—his brother was blind. He needed a sister who could take care of him…
If they found out he was a strange, ill-tempered boy, would they abandon him?
No! They can’t abandon me! They can’t learn Mom lied to them!!
If Mom dies… I’m still so young, and I’d be begging on the street!
What should I do…
After half a month of anxious insomnia, Ke Yuxiao discovered someone else inside his body.
—A gentle, well-behaved, thoughtful “little sister” who would certainly please his brother and devote herself to taking care of him, who regarded him as her entire world.
Her name was Wu Nianrou.
She was created by Ke Yuxiao to please Wu Ren and his father, to ensure this body wouldn’t starve on the streets.
Her personality was designed to be completely perfect.
Her mind was simple, and her world was small.
—All she wanted was to look after her brother.
She would spend her entire life taking good care of him.
That way, she would never be abandoned.
……
After leaving the school, Wu Ren took Wu Nianrou home.
They went into the living room, locked the door, sat together on the sofa, and then entered the game.
When Wu Ren opened his eyes, he saw a pink-tinted world.
The farther he walked, the more off everything seemed—there were many players coming and going, and… this wasn’t some special instance at all. It looked more like a semi-open instance!
Could it be some legion’s base?!
Wait… What’s that smell?!
He walked down a corridor and beheld rolling hills of peach blossoms.
Wu Ren’s eyes went wide in shock.
He hurriedly called for Wu Nianrou.
“Nianrou? Nianrou, where are you?!”
After a few tries, the person who appeared before him was, incredibly, Ke Yuxiao—who was part of the “Sword Qi & Xiao Heart” duo with Qi Liuxing.
“K—Ke Yuxiao? Wh-what’s going on?” Wu Ren looked him over. “Whoa! Looks like you’re into crossdressing? How come I never knew that before? Does Xiao Qi know you like dressing like this?”
In the next moment, though, Wu Ren heard that hauntingly familiar voice speak, soft and eerie.
“Brother, none of them care about you. Only I do. Only I worry about you and look after you. But now, I’m going to die. I can’t bear for you to suffer alone in this world. I have no choice…
“I’ll kill you. Then we can die together, okay?”
The author has something to say:
I’d originally planned to write some more about Blue Harbor City, but I ran out of time.
My keyboard kept acting up, which was a headache. Ugh.
Also, each personality can actually be viewed independently.
A beam of heavenly light broke through the gloomy clouds and fell, illuminating a bright halo.
As Zhou Qian walked step by step toward that halo together with Bai Zhou, he heard He Xiaowei’s question and felt him tug his arm. Stopping in his tracks, he turned around and gave him a rather baffling look.
He Xiaowei’s face went pale. “Oh no, do you think he turned into a skeleton? He’s trapped in the ‘past’!”
Zhou Qian said solemnly, “If that really happened, and you’re only remembering him now, then it’s too late.”
He Xiaowei: “…”
Zhou Qian narrowed his eyes, then suddenly broke into a rather pleased smile. “Still, I’m quite happy. This means your master isn’t so important in your heart. Now if it were me and—”
He Xiaowei: “…………”
After a few seconds of silence, a flash of insight struck He Xiaowei. He immediately said, “If both you and my master fell into the water at the same time, the two of us would definitely rescue you together! So, Qian’er, what’s really going on with him?”
Zhou Qian sized him up and asked, “Remember that person who was taken away by the police in our last instance?”
“I do!” He Xiaowei’s eyes went wide. “He managed to cling to life! His completion rate was just limited, so he missed out on the later rewards… but he survived!”
“Exactly. This game loves toying with players, but it never says you’re forced to die. A lot of people just keep doing instance runs, and once they do enough, they can still reach S-level. If you want rare achievements or rewards and want to gradually get closer to the truth of the game, that’s when you need to risk your life.
“The game’s designers give players options. Those who don’t want to take risks are given a way to leave the instance safely, which is the standard method of clearing it.” Zhou Qian glanced at him. “When we triggered the clearance condition near the Red God’s inn, do you still remember what the system said?”
He Xiaowei smacked his forehead. “I got it! The system said that if we didn’t step into the red circle, we’d trigger the standard clearance mode. If those players withstood Amei’s attack and found a way back to the timeline with the deserters, they’d be able to clear the instance. We chose to step into the red circle, and that’s how we triggered the hidden storyline!”
“Right,” Zhou Qian said. “So if you were Ke Yuxiao, and you saw that message, would you stay in the instance, run off to the temple to curse the other players, or would you take the standard route out right away?”
He Xiaowei let out a breath. “I get it. Going to the temple to curse us might work, but after all, Difu’s intention is to incite everyone’s mutual hatred. If Ke Yuxiao really tried that, he’d be in danger too. Nobody knows what the price would be if you curse so many people to death…
“Not to mention how many villagers are guarding that place, so going to the temple itself would be a huge hassle! He wouldn’t make such a reckless move!
“If he had time, maybe he’d slowly think of a way, but if he learned he could leave the instance, there’d be no need to waste any more time!”
The more He Xiaowei thought about it, the more confident he became. “Besides, he killed Xiao Qi—he absolutely wouldn’t come see us. He won’t come to this timeline. The hidden mission is bound to fail. He’ll definitely escape as soon as possible via the standard clearance method!”
“Right. As for Hidden Blade, on the one hand he probably didn’t have time to get to where the red circle was and then follow us into this timeline; on the other hand, he might be trying to pursue Ke Yuxiao.
“Your master is still a god-level player, so there’s no way he wouldn’t be able to leave by the standard method. That means he and Ke Yuxiao must both be out of the instance by now. But once you leave an instance, the other forces of the Peach Blossom Legion can get involved. So, tsk—”
Zhou Qian looked at He Xiaowei. “What we need to do now is hurry and get out ourselves. The real danger for him isn’t inside the instance; it’s outside.”
He Xiaowei: !!!
“I’m going first!”
With that shout, He Xiaowei quickly sidestepped Zhou Qian and charged into the halo ahead of him.
Zhou Qian watched him run off, smiling, then looked at Qi Liuxing behind him.
In that instant, the smile on Zhou Qian’s face disappeared.
Right now, Qi Liuxing had his head bowed in silence.
From the moment he’d been revived, it seemed he’d been holding something in. He couldn’t allow himself to be overwhelmed by emotions or pain, because he had to look at the bigger picture—everyone being in such a dangerous place was partly his fault, so of course he couldn’t drag them down and compromise their clearance.
Now that the danger had been resolved and they were about to clear the instance—his concerns for his teammates’ safety also fading—he’d inevitably returned to that same feeling of agony at being betrayed by someone he had deeply trusted.
Zhou Qian asked him, “After you get out, do you want to take care of him yourself?”
After a brief silence, Qi Liuxing looked at him and answered, “I do. But there’s more to this… there’s something behind all of it that I want to figure out before I kill him.
“For example, back in Flower of Evil, why did his thinking end up the way it did…
“I definitely want revenge, but I’m worried there’s more to all of this.”
Hearing that, Zhou Qian suddenly laughed.
Qi Liuxing asked him, “Why… are you laughing?”
Zhou Qian replied, “It’s a gratified smile. I think you’ve grown a lot. Today, you and Xiaowei Ge both make me feel very gratified.”
Qi Liuxing: “…”
Frowning slightly, Qi Liuxing glanced off to the side, then glanced at Bai Zhou out of reflex.
Looking back at him, Bai Zhou must have understood what was on his mind, because he reached over and took Zhou Qian’s hand, leading him onward. “Zhou Qian, let’s go.”
Zhou Qian withdrew his gaze and looked at Bai Zhou, blinking once. “Oh, okay.”
A moment later, Zhou Qian, Bai Zhou, He Xiaowei, Qi Liuxing, Yun Xiangrong, and Yin Jiujiu all stepped into the halo, waiting to be sent back to Blue Harbor City.
During that process, Qi Liuxing suddenly thought of something, straightened, and turned to look at Zhou Qian. “I just remembered—before Ke Yuxiao killed me, he said Blue Harbor City would be wiped out together with someone named Shao Chuan. Under those circumstances… might we be walking into an ambush once we leave?”
Zhou Qian replied, “Yes, they’ll definitely make a move. Things got weird starting from that bounty in ‘Murder Exhibition’. Also don’t forget, there’s still plenty of unexplored info left in that instance.”
Qi Liuxing said, “You mean… the way that exhibition hall displayed corpses from different times all in one space—there’s more to it than meets the eye?”
“Right. Fortunately, Blue Harbor City is a semi-open instance like the real world, so once we’re back, we can fully recover HP and MP. At that point…” Zhou Qian paused briefly, then said, “If we run into ghosts, we’ll kill ghosts.”
……
On the other side.
In the “past” timeline, not long ago.
After temporarily shaking off the villagers who were hunting him, Ke Yuxiao hid in a tree on the mid-slope of a hill.
He had no clue how to clear the instance right now.
It felt like only the tip of the iceberg had been shown to the players, and he had zero knowledge of the real story underneath.
He came here for one purpose: to kill Qi Liuxing. He didn’t care about any hidden achievements; all he was waiting for was for Priest on his side to give him the method for standard clearance.
If the situation got too dire, Priest should still have a special item that could take him away.
Since he currently had no leads on how to clear the instance, Ke Yuxiao set his sights on the Goddess’s temple, thinking about first diverting the villagers’ attention, then sneaking in somehow.
—If he could curse the other players to death there, that would naturally be best.
At that moment, he spotted Hidden Blade not far away.
Unexpectedly, Hidden Blade was dressed like a villager and was even following Alayne’s mother. It looked like that group had already earned Alayne’s full trust.
As for Hidden Blade, his five senses were sharp, and his sixth sense was extremely keen.
Following a gut feeling, he looked toward the slope and sensed someone’s presence. With Alayne’s mother covering for him, he immediately dashed toward that slope. By the time he got in front of Ke Yuxiao, he’d already summoned a curved blade.
Faced with Hidden Blade’s approach, Ke Yuxiao backed away step by step.
“There’s no need, really no need. We god-level players are already so few—why do we have to kill each other? It’s not right.”
His words sounded fearful and placating, but on his face there was only limitless mockery and malice.
Hidden Blade kept silent, simply raising the blade and pointing it at him.
“You see… it’s really unnecessary. Because—” Ke Yuxiao continued to smirk, his voice suddenly turning menacing. “I don’t even take you seriously at all!”
Faced with such open scorn, Hidden Blade didn’t show a hint of anger.
He continued advancing toward Ke Yuxiao, studying him carefully up and down, trying to gauge his fighting capacity.
Noting Hidden Blade’s scrutinizing gaze, Ke Yuxiao added, “And why don’t I take you seriously? Because someone like you—another god-level player—could just about be considered a failed product! Everything you’re doing right now is just giving them more experimental data… You’re both pitiful and laughable.
“Look at yourself and compare: after you were successfully created, I followed my master, and Bai Zhou ended up chosen by Shao Chuan… But you?
“None of the top legions even gave you a second thought. What does that tell you?
“Hidden Blade, I actually know you well. You’ve been pursuing the way of the blade for a long time. You started playing this game even earlier than Bai Zhou. But so what? Talent is everything—”
“I just realized something. I never noticed how talkative you are,” Hidden Blade finally cut him off. “When Zhou Qian is about to kill someone, he likes chatting with his enemies. It’s his little hobby—he doesn’t just want his opponents dead; he wants them to die with full comprehension and deep regret. He wants to savor toying with people, watching them die of sheer frustration.
“But you’re different. You never expected me to show up, so there was no way you had a trap ready for me. So all your talking now is just bluffing.
“Your talent might have something to do with identity concealment or hiding your intentions, but either way, you’ve just exposed one thing… you can’t fight.”
Ke Yuxiao still had plenty of mysteries about him—like how he avoided everyone’s notice back in Flower of Evil despite the shared thoughts, preventing Zhou Qian and the others from discovering his real motive. That was crucial.
So Hidden Blade wouldn’t kill him so easily.
He’d just come over to keep Ke Yuxiao from heading to the temple. Now that he’d found him, and while there was still time, Hidden Blade’s only goal was to test Ke Yuxiao’s true abilities and see what skills he had.
Once he finished speaking, Hidden Blade’s body vanished from its spot and reappeared right in front of Ke Yuxiao, attacking with lightning speed.
In a flash, his curved blade swept through the air, its arc forming a ring of light that slammed down at Ke Yuxiao.
Ke Yuxiao made no attempt to counterattack, only pulled out a small pearl and squeezed it. Instantly, he retreated precisely 112 meters away, narrowly avoiding that strike.
When he landed, stray hairs fell across his forehead. Ke Yuxiao looked at Hidden Blade and smiled. “See? You can’t kill me.”
“Hmm, a Ground Shield Pearl with a range of 112 meters—exactly the distance of my attack. So you were prepared for all of us in advance.”
Hidden Blade recalled that once, after leaving an instance with Bai Zhou, Bai Zhou had offered him a heads-up: There’s an item called a Ground Shield Pearl that lets you dodge attacks within 112 meters. That’s the same max range as your move. You’d better train that move again. Otherwise, at a critical moment, a little pearl could cost you your life.
Ground Shield Pearls weren’t exactly common.
Clearly, Ke Yuxiao brought one specifically for this, ready to counter Hidden Blade’s move.
Right after he spoke, Hidden Blade darted close to Ke Yuxiao again. This time, he dispensed with flashy long-range attacks and simply relied on his most direct blade technique—each strike fierce and ruthless.
Though Ke Yuxiao was a god-level player, he was extremely quick at evading rather than meeting force with force.
Seeing this, Hidden Blade changed his blade work again and again, chasing Ke Yuxiao in a close-quarters fight while watching for how he dodged, continuing the conversation. “To counter my attacks, you prepared the Ground Shield Pearl. So it’s not entirely true that you don’t take me seriously. Obviously you do.”
Hidden Blade’s comeback took Ke Yuxiao a bit by surprise, but after a moment, he sidestepped another flash of the blade and sneered, “You’ve lived in someone else’s shadow this whole time—can you really be okay with that?”
“Not everyone wants to rule the world. If someone appears with better skill at the blade than me, and I can follow him to improve further, why not? Besides, I could throw the same question back at you—aren’t you all listening to Priest? So do you really want to be controlled by him, living under his shadow?”
When the last word fell, Hidden Blade, in an unbelievably quick burst of movement, stepped on multiple points around Ke Yuxiao.
In a split second, a giant net of blade light surrounded Ke Yuxiao.
At that very same moment, a system prompt about clearing the instance appeared—that was triggered because Zhou Qian’s group activated both the standard and non-standard clearance conditions simultaneously.
A set of wings abruptly flew out and draped over Ke Yuxiao, blocking most of the damage for him. However, part of the blade light got through and stabbed directly into his body. As several wounds appeared, Ke Yuxiao coughed up a huge mouthful of blood, and his HP instantly dropped by 40%.
“40% in exchange for blocking your finishing move. That’ll do.” Ke Yuxiao said this to Hidden Blade, then gazed into the distance. “But really, instead of the two of us fighting pointlessly here, we might as well conserve our strength and clear the instance.
“Clearly we can’t get into that red circle now, so our only choice is the standard way out… Next, we’ll have to fight Amei and a bunch of ghosts from another world, then figure out how to return to the timeline that’s ‘normal’ for us.”
After that brief probe, Hidden Blade didn’t keep pressing the attack.
Amei was formidable, and those otherworldly ghosts felt no fear. Hidden Blade needed to save his mana to face her.
Plus, Ke Yuxiao had clearly planned all kinds of highly targeted items for this trip, whereas Hidden Blade’s own inventory was more limited.
As for why Ke Yuxiao wanted to kill Qi Liuxing, that motive was worth investigating—maybe the real fight would only begin once they left the instance. If Hidden Blade could save items, he would.
Thus, what followed was simple: Hidden Blade stuck to Ke Yuxiao, preventing him from going to the temple to cast a curse, while keeping an eye on what he did.
In mutual vigilance, they moved to lie in wait around the area near the Tarar Inn.
Amei, after all, was the inn’s proprietor. The ghosts from another world traveled to various timelines through her artifact. Before Samhain ended, she needed to bring them all back, returning everyone to the underworld.
But that small artifact Amei had used to travel between different timelines was already in Zhou Qian’s possession. If she wanted to move between timelines, the only thing she could rely on now was the three-headed statue in front of the inn.
The system’s explanation for the standard clearance condition was: [You must survive and find a way to return to the timeline of the deserters, which is your true timeline.]
Regarding the full storyline, in truth, there were no “deserters”.
In that sense, it might look like there’s a bug in the game design—yet actually, it was a deliberate loophole, allowing players who chose the standard clearance route a way to leave.
Because Hidden Blade and Ke Yuxiao hadn’t triggered the hidden storyline, nor activated the doomsday or Trinity or Heaven’s Mandate segments, as far as they were concerned, they were still “deserters”.
To avoid capture by the villagers, they had to lie in wait for Amei, find a way to defeat her, and force her to take them back to the real world. This was what both Hidden Blade and Ke Yuxiao had in mind.
Even though this Amei was still stuck in the “past” and, with her memory lost, believed that timeline to be the real one, it was still treated as a valid “clear” in the system’s eyes.
Around daybreak, Hidden Blade and Ke Yuxiao finally cleared the instance.
Upon seeing the evaluation that they only reached 25% completion, the pitifully meager rewards, and the negligible experience, Hidden Blade didn’t care in the slightest.
He was only curious about one thing—whether it was during his own probing attacks or their final battle with Amei, Ke Yuxiao had never once used his flute. Why had he never played it?
At first glance, that detail meant nothing. But if he thought about it deeper, there might be more to it.
The instant he left Banquet of the Red God, Hidden Blade had a strong intuition that things were about to go south. His heart, rarely so uneasy, pounded violently, and the veins at his temples throbbed so hard it almost hurt.
A rare sense of danger made him grip his blade tightly.
But the enemy lurking in the shadows was impossible to guard against—someone had set a trap right outside the instance portal.
The moment Hidden Blade was transported out of Banquet of the Red God, the surface of a mirror beneath his feet flashed. The next moment, he found himself in a room resembling a study.
Ahead of him sat a man in a suit, quietly writing at a desk.
Hidden Blade frowned. “You’re Priest?”
Finishing a line of text, Priest finally raised his head to look at him. “Nice to meet you.”
……
Real world. Unit 1007, Building 17 at Yuanlai Complex.
This was Wu Ren’s home.
While Zhou Qian and the others were in Banquet of the Red God, Wu Ren had gone off to solo a trial instance, choosing a difficulty level he could handle this time.
He cleared it successfully, and after leaving the instance, he got to work on forming Zhou Qian’s legion.
Before Zhou Qian left, he hadn’t decided on a legion name, so Wu Ren decided to exercise his power as the “king” by naming it himself.
He was the nominal head of the legion but, in truth, was just a puppet under Zhou Qian’s control. He couldn’t make any major decisions, and he was well aware of that—but he figured naming the legion was something he could do.
Thus, once he finished gathering a few members and even paid out of his own pocket to purchase a virtual base, Wu Ren left Zhou Qian a message and returned to the real world.
He wanted to check on his younger sister, Wu Nianrou.
Leaving Blue Harbor City in the game, Wu Ren returned to the recliner in his real-world apartment.
The moment he came back, all color left his vision, replaced by darkness.
He was so addicted to the game world because there he could see color, and he had extraordinary eyesight for throwing hidden weapons as an assassin. Even so, he had to return to reality for the sake of his family.
Not long after he returned, he heard Wu Nianrou’s voice.
“Brother, is there something weird about your room? Every time I come in, it feels like I get dizzy for a long, long time. But when I check the clock… it really only shows a few minutes passing…”
The reason Wu Nianrou experienced this phenomenon was, of course, the game’s system at work.
In order to keep outsiders from noticing anything unusual while a player was logged in, the system would, as needed, apply various measures to anyone who entered the player’s space—so that the game proceeded quietly, without attracting attention.
“What’s going on? Could you have low blood sugar?” Wu Ren, who couldn’t see his sister, turned his face generally in her direction. “Come on, I’ll take you out for a bite.”
“Sure, but wow, Brother, you’ve been acting like a big spender lately. What’s up with that?” Wu Nianrou walked over to help Wu Ren stand and guided him to the living room.
Wu Nianrou had been tall and strong since she was a kid, so helping Wu Ren was never difficult. Wu Ren was used to it and let her lead.
Faced with Wu Nianrou’s question, Wu Ren of course couldn’t say the money came from his gaming.
He simply smiled. “I’m blind—where would I earn money? That’s the dowry Mom and Dad left for you. I was afraid you might get tricked by some guy, so I never gave it to you.
“Listen, a man can seem great, but you can’t tell for sure until after you’re actually married. If he treats you well even after marriage, I’ll hand over all that money to you both!”
“Mm, my brother’s the best.” Wu Nianrou smiled, letting him rest on the sofa, then headed toward her own room. “Just wait a minute while I do my makeup, then we’ll head out.”
“Alright, you go ahead.” Wu Ren leaned back on the sofa with a smile.
He very much hoped to meet a true god in the game soon, someone who could cure his blindness.
Out of Wu Ren’s sight, Wu Nianrou went into her bedroom and stood before her vanity.
Reflected in the mirror was clearly a man’s chiseled face—he even had a bit of stubble on his chin.
Yet the expression was soft, and there was a gentle affection in his eyes. He picked up an eyebrow pencil with casual ease, an action oddly captivating in contrast to his masculine features.
This was yet another personality of Ke Yuxiao.
The author has something to say:
Wu Ren: I thought I had a younger sister, but it turns out I have a younger brother. He can even do a fake voice.
Kinky Translations 