Xun Ji countered, “And you? You opened the System Mall just to drug me with something useless so I couldn’t compete?”
“You competing would be dangerous.” Lin Yule looked at him openly. “I set something up to kill Lu Zhou. I was afraid you’d get involved.”
“Set something up—like tampering at the final checkpoint?” Xun Ji asked. “I read the site investigation report. Under the ice at the checkpoint machine, there were tons of scrap magnetic shards from the old armory. The support pillars and dome had been weakened too, making them shatter easily.”
“Lu Zhou wore Lin Family-sponsored Ice Claws, made of a new material that repels those magnets massively. The moment he stepped on the checkpoint, the repulsion would shatter the ice, following your designed path to collapse the support pillars and dome.” Xun Ji said. “You planned to bury Lu Zhou in the Ice Cellar collapse.”
“Correct.” Lin Yule admitted. “Too bad he’s tough—one pillar only cracked, and the checkpoint machine shielded him.”
“Not luck.” Xun Ji shook his head. “Yan Feng wanted Lu Zhou to fall from the Ice Waterfall, so he sabotaged your carefully designed Ice Claws. When Lu Zhou entered the Ice Cellar, the claws’ spikes were down to less than two-thirds. The repulsion wasn’t enough—the ice didn’t fully shatter.”
Lin Yule tsked in disgust. “Useless trash. Can’t even kill properly and ends up saving the guy.”
“But why?” Xun Ji couldn’t fathom it. “Why kill Lu Zhou? Why worry about me getting involved?”
“You think I shouldn’t kill Lu Zhou because you know my Task.” Lin Yule mused. “Your system really is different from mine.”
“Of course.” Xun Ji said half-truths. “Yours is to redeem the Protagonist, right?”
“Exactly.” Lin Yule admitted freely. “I thought your Task was the same at first. After all, ever since you got close to Lu Zhou, his Blackening Value kept dropping.”
Kept dropping? Xun Ji was shocked inside but kept a calm face. How? Had all his Tasks gone to waste?
“A Xun, thanks to you, I barely lifted a finger and Points came rolling in.”
Heh, same grind for the System, but different pay?
“But now I’m sure—your Task is the opposite of mine, right?” Lin Yule’s almond eyes probed him. “I checked the site. The Micro Sonic Bomb in that salute cannon—you made it, didn’t you?”
“You couldn’t bear for him to go fully deaf, but had to complete your Task, so you made it temporary deafness.” Lin Yule smiled, dimples showing. “A Xun, you’re still such a good guy.”
The expression faded from Xun Ji’s face. He scrutinized Lin Yule inch by inch, from head to toe, lingering on those expectant almond eyes.
“It’s you.” He said two words.
Light sparkled in Lin Yule’s eyes. He stared unblinking at Xun Ji. “Didn’t expect we’d reunite like this.”
Xun Ji stayed calm. “You’re the murderer?”
“Murderer?” Lin Yule blinked, then nodded. “Yeah, I did kill someone.”
Xun Ji nodded too, dropping the topic. “When did you recognize me?”
“First time I saw you here.” Lin Yule grinned slyly. “After all, I’ve never met anyone else who dips strawberries in sugar.”
Xun Ji: “…”
Of all things. He and the System had foolishly thought the guy saw him as an NPC, but his Tasker identity was exposed from the start.
“And you? When did you suspect me?” Lin Yule asked.
“From the beginning.” Xun Ji answered. “That day the System glitched—you and Luo Xunan were top suspects. Luo Xunan was close to Lu Zhou, so I focused more on him. But you were always around for Task-related stuff, so I knew it was you.”
For the first Key Plot Point Task, Xun Ji was supposed to stop Lu Zhou from getting the scholarship in the principal’s office. Luo Xunan went there to help Lu Zhou, drawing suspicion.
In fact, Lin Yule had gone too. He’d asked Lu Zhou about the Physics Competition in the cafeteria—info only insiders or principal’s office visitors would know.
Later, when Lu Ting was hospitalized, Luo Xunan visited out of concern—but Lin Yule had followed, even buying her picture books.
For the second Key Plot Point Task, Lin Yule was bolder. He first tried blocking Xun Ji from the Ice Marathon with the Ice Hockey Team shortage excuse. Rejected, he used the System Mall drug.
Thinking back, Xun Ji hadn’t eaten or drunk anything suspicious, but suddenly spiked a fever—only Lin Yule had physical contact.
Lin Yule hadn’t seriously hidden his Tasker status.
“Killing the Protagonist collapses the world—we’d die too.” Xun Ji said with a headache.
Lin Yule paled—he clearly hadn’t gotten that alert from his System.
“I just wanted to test if he could be killed.” He sounded aggrieved. “I didn’t want you stuck here doing Tasks.”
“No more messing around.” Xun Ji warned. “Tell me all your Tasks, exactly as they are.”
“Fine.” Lin Yule didn’t mind the commanding tone. He grinned. “A Xun wants to know anything, I’ll tell you.”
But his smile drooped. He stepped closer, hugged Xun Ji’s arm, shook it, and said softly:
“But compared to A Xun, I still prefer calling you Brother.”
Xun Ji looked at him silently for a long time, then pulled his arm free.
Lin Yule paled, looking up uncertainly.
Xun Ji pulled him into an embrace, patting his back gently, soothingly.
“Yeah, long time no see.”
Shanxin Welfare Institute.
Two young children squatted under a big locust tree, heads together, faces serious.
– Brother, good guys or bad guys—which should we be? Which is stronger? Which happier?
– Don’t know. Let’s both try.
– Okay, I’ll be the good guy, Brother the bad one. At least one of us will be happy.
– Deal.
– Wait, no—I’ll be the bad guy, Brother the good one. Good guys are rare, harder to be. Brother’s smarter, so he should do it.
– Deal. You be bad, I’ll be good.
![No Redemption for Dark Protagonists [Quick Transmigration]](https://i0.wp.com/dobynovels.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/quickkk.jpg?resize=151,215 "No Redemption for Dark Protagonists [Quick Transmigration]")
