It was already late at night, but the Special Administration Bureau, located within Yan Capital’s Third Ring Road, was still brightly lit.
From the outside, the building looked like an ordinary fashion magazine company. The magazine it published had middling sales—not outstanding, but not poor either—and attracted almost no attention.
In reality, however, ten underground floors beneath the magazine company concealed an enormous and highly sophisticated organization.
At midnight, glaring red warning lights suddenly flashed throughout the Special Administration Bureau. Song Wen practically flew out of the elevator and sprinted toward the conference room.
Shen Siyu, head of the Enforcement Department, was already waiting inside. The moment someone pushed open the door, she shot to her feet, visibly anxious.
“Where’s Jiang Sui? You still haven’t found him?”
Song Wen wiped the sweat from his forehead and shook his head grimly. “His phone won’t connect, and I can’t reach him on WeChat. I went to his house too. Nobody was there.”
“What about the tracker?” Shen Siyu pressed.
Jiang Sui carried a tracker specially developed by the Administration Bureau using the most advanced satellite-positioning technology available. Even if he were hidden in the remotest mountain corner or deep underground, the Bureau should still have been able to locate him.
Song Wen sounded even more miserable. “No signal.”
So far, there were only two known places where the tracker could receive no signal: outer space several light-years away, or the mysterious Yellow Springs Game.
Song Wen scratched the back of his head. “Minister, do you think Boss might have entered an instance?”
Shen Siyu’s expression immediately turned grave, her brows drawing tightly together.
The Yellow Springs Game had been online for nearly three months, and countless players had disappeared because of it. The Administration Bureau had established a special task force specifically to investigate the game, but the player death rate was so high that they had been able to obtain very little information.
Recently, the Bureau had been assembling a high-risk infiltration team and planned to send members into the game to gather more clues.
Jiang Sui was the leader of that team. With him there, the group’s survival rate would increase by at least thirty percent.
But before the operation had even begun, Jiang Sui had vanished.
“If he really entered the game without making any preparations…” Shen Siyu’s eyes were filled with worry.
Song Wen, however, looked much more relaxed. “Minister, if Boss really got pulled into the game, isn’t that the last thing we need to worry about?”
After all, Song Wen himself had been dragged into the game a month earlier. The only reason he had survived was because he had been carrying a piece of Jiang Sui’s bonded metal.
Jiang Sui had not even been inside that instance. Yet across an unknown distance—and possibly even across different dimensions—he had remotely controlled his bonded metal and instantly killed the instance Boss.
With the Boss no longer interfering, Song Wen had naturally completed the mission with ease.
Song Wen thumped his chest confidently. “So if Boss really entered a game, the one who should be trembling is the Boss of the instance!”
Shen Siyu: “…”
“Boss should be fine.”
A crisp female voice interrupted their conversation. A young woman pushed open the conference-room door, walked quickly to Shen Siyu, and handed her a report.
“Minister, compared with Boss, I think we should pay more attention to Shanghai. The people we sent there reported that the A-rank surveillance target in Shanghai has disappeared.”
Song Wen’s eyes widened. “He’s missing too?… Could he also have entered an instance?”
Shen Siyu rolled her eyes at him. “How could there possibly be such a coincidence?”
“We don’t know yet whether he entered an instance,” Sheng Li said. “But our specialist went to Lu Jin’s university and couldn’t find him.”
“Just a few hours ago, surveillance footage still showed him attending class. A few hours later, he had vanished without a trace. Whether he realized he was being followed and escaped, or disappeared for some other reason, we still don’t know.”
*
Outside the instance, the Administration Bureau had been thrown into chaos by Jiang Sui and Lu Jin’s disappearances. Inside the instance, the two men were fighting so violently they nearly tore the instance sky apart.
Huang Youquan trembled inside the phone.
How had his low-level instance managed to match with two top-tier players?
Was this reasonable?
What the hell was the System doing?
Never mind Jiang Sui, who had appeared out of nowhere. Lu Jin alone was a genuine Netherworld Reaper! The System’s judgment had gone completely off the rails to identify him as a player!
Shouldn’t an A-rank malicious ghost be assigned to deal with a Reaper?
He was only a C-rank small fry!
…
After several exchanges, the air smelled faintly of scorched metal and dust, and several new wounds marked Lu Jin’s body.
Although the shadow-puppet body was an advanced shell made to imitate a human body, its durability was about the same as ordinary human flesh. It was painfully fragile.
Fighting while wearing it was like running in high heels or swimming wrapped in a long dress. It restricted every movement and was unbelievably inconvenient.
Lu Jin was planning to switch into his Reaper form. It would be more economical, more convenient, and would raise his combat strength another level. But just as he was about to leave the puppet body, the mechanical child’s voice abruptly rang through the air, cold and jarring:
[Ding—]
[Player Yu Nan has died.]
Lu Jin’s heart jolted, and he instantly withdrew his hand.
Jiang Sui stopped moving too.
Both men looked toward the guesthouse at the same time, their expressions turning serious.
Only twenty minutes had passed since they left the guesthouse and started fighting. Yu Nan had clearly been paired with a veteran player, and the Boss was locked inside Lu Jin’s phone. How could he suddenly have died?
For a moment, neither man spoke. Yet without any discussion, both stopped fighting and sprinted toward the guesthouse.
Lu Jin moved at an astonishing speed. He was a Reaper, after all, and even while wearing the shadow-puppet body, he could still draw on Reaper power far beyond that of an ordinary human.
Yet Jiang Sui stayed directly behind him without falling back even a little.
In less than ten minutes, both returned to the guesthouse. One climbed over a balcony, the other vaulted through a window. With perfect unspoken agreement, both avoided the main entrance and slipped back into the guest-room area as if they had done it countless times before.
The moment they reached the corridor, Lu Jin casually moved beside Xu Moyang and lowered his voice. “Where’s Yu Nan? What happened to him?”
Only then did Xu Moyang notice Lu Jin had returned. Like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline, he threw himself around Lu Jin’s leg.
“Brother! You’re finally back!”
A ghost all alone in this haunted place had almost scared the ghost out of him!
“…Stand up before you talk.”
Xu Moyang sprang upright and wiped away tears that did not actually exist. “I don’t know exactly what happened either. Apparently an NPC told Brother Nan to clean the executive suite on the top floor. Not long after he went in, something happened.”
No one knew what exactly had taken place inside the executive suite. They had only heard the System’s death announcement, followed by the heavy smell of blood. Blood seeped from beneath the suite door, soaking the corridor carpet and staining the ceiling of the floor below.
Lu Jin looked up. Twisting trails of blood crawled across the ceiling in chaotic, eerie patterns, like red spider lilies blooming wildly beside the Bridge of No Return.
“Brother Lu…”
Xu Moyang also looked at the blood overhead and asked quietly, “What do we do now?”
This was Lu Jin’s first time encountering a situation like this too. But the game was a sealed world, and there was no way to contact the outside.
“Let’s clear the game first.”
*
“What time is it? What time is it?!”
The elevator doors slowly opened like twin sickles, and the manager stepped out with a dark expression.
“So much time has passed, and you’ve only cleaned a few rooms? Why are you so slow?!”
The players all lowered their heads and barely dared to breathe. No one dared answer.
Only Lu Jin looked thoroughly irritated.
He had been dragged into this game for no reason, had just discovered someone was following him, and had not even managed to pin the man to the ground and beat the answers out of him. He was young, after all, and the frustration had left anger simmering in his stomach.
Now the manager was yelling directly in his face, and Lu Jin’s temper rose too. He answered coldly, “Only half an hour has passed. Isn’t it normal that we haven’t finished cleaning in such a short time?”
The manager glared at him. “You’re slow and you think you’re right?”
Lu Jin raised a brow. “If you can do better, do it yourself.”
As he spoke, he held the mop out to the manager.
The other players were stunned.
What was he doing? Had he not noticed someone had just died? How could he still dare openly oppose an NPC?
The manager trembled with rage and stared at Lu Jin. His eyes opened wider and wider until, with a wet pop, one eyeball actually fell out and landed in his palm, dripping blood.
The eyeball rolled around twice in his hand. Several tiny tentacles growing from the white of the eye wriggled wildly, making the sight even more horrifying.
The surrounding players turned deathly pale, their sanity plummeting as they forgot even to breathe.
The manager stared darkly at Lu Jin. Resentful energy exploded around him, thick as asphalt melting under extreme heat.
“What did you just say? Say it again.”
Lu Jin remained completely unmoved and even sounded slightly impatient. “I said, if you can do better, do it yourself. Hurry up. My arm is getting tired holding this.”
Then he forcibly shoved the mop into the manager’s arms.
The surging resentment vanished in a second. The manager was pushed backward two steps by a massive force and fell flat on the floor, utterly bewildered.
Manager: “…?”
No, seriously. How was this reasonable?
Where had his resentment gone? What happened to his terrifying aura?
The manager looked completely lost. He did not even know where his eyeball had rolled.
His assistant was the one who reacted first, picking the eye up from the floor and carefully stuffing it back into his socket.
Supporting each other, the assistant and manager staggered upright.
Something was wrong with this player.
Deeply wrong!
He was actually not afraid of him!
The manager swallowed his anger and shouted unhappily, “You only get to act this arrogant because the boss isn’t here! Just wait until the boss comes back. Then you’ll see!”
“Mm.” Lu Jin lazily leaned against the guest-room door, his face calm. “I’m looking forward to his return.”
Huang Youquan shrank inside the phone.
Help! He did not want to come back at all!!!
The scene fell into a stalemate. The manager clearly had no way to deal with Lu Jin.
After all, every ghost had once been human. They came from the same roots, so ghosts were not necessarily stronger than living people. Instances did strengthen ghosts to a certain extent, but aside from the Boss, most ordinary ghosts needed specific conditions to be triggered before they could harm humans.
The manager’s trigger condition was “fear.” Once a player became afraid of him, his abilities would rise explosively.
But Lu Jin… this bastard was not afraid of him at all!
Far from being afraid, Lu Jin even moved two steps closer and examined the eyeball the manager had just shoved back into place with obvious interest.
“Your eyeball is pretty entertaining,” Lu Jin said seriously. “Take it out and let me have a look.”
Manager: “???”
“Are you even human?”
“Me?” Lu Jin’s lips curved. “Guess.”
Guess? Guess your damn head!
The manager was so angry he felt his lungs might burst. He had never met a player who refused to follow the expected script this badly! If Lu Jin dared trample over him like this, then today he absolutely had to teach the brat a lesson!
He might not be able to deal with Lu Jin, but the instance was full of danger. Just because he could not handle the young man did not mean another NPC could not.
The manager glanced meaningfully toward the executive suite on the top floor. A strange, malicious smile slowly spread across his face.
Hadn’t someone just died there?
The manager shouted, “No matter what, you only cleaned six rooms. Your KPI is below target, so you must be punished! Every one of you is going to clean the executive suite!”
