Chapter 35: The Person Never Thought Of

“…Bunny Hero?”

Zhang Hengheng’s shout instantly warped the originally strange and tense atmosphere in an even weirder direction.

The few people present looked at Yin Luo, then at the rabbit doll, and couldn’t deny that there was indeed a certain subtle similarity between the two on some level.

“What on earth is going on in your head?” Ying Zixin sighed.

Probably, only Zhang Hengheng would have this as his first reaction to such a scene.

Yin Luo hadn’t expected Ying Zixin and Zhang Hengheng to follow so quickly. Realizing his current state, he suddenly became vigilant, muscles tensing as he considered whether he could instantly withdraw from these two.

Zhang Hengheng’s ability was likely speed-oriented. Judging by the playing cards he used earlier, his weapons were probably throwing knives or similar concealed weapons. He needed to be guarded against; close-quarters combat could be attempted.

Ying Zixin was more troublesome. That Thunder Attraction Technique of his dealt too much damage. Even if he blocked with frost, they might both end up severely injured. After all, he didn’t have as many strange items as Players did.

Perhaps he could try taking Zhang Hengheng hostage first, making them cautious about acting recklessly?

As for Lin Rudong and Lei Jue, the latter had lost his combat ability and wasn’t a threat. The former probably wouldn’t make a move at this moment either.

So, the most crucial issue right now was Ying Zixin.

The white-haired youth narrowed his eyes. Players weren’t like those Plastic Mannequins whose brains hadn’t even fully evolved. He still wasn’t strong enough yet; he couldn’t use Flesh and Blood Force to turn the blood flowing through their bodies into blades in his hand.

Maybe he could lure them towards those Plastic Mannequins and try using others to do his dirty work…

Wait.

Yin Luo jolted awake.

Why am I thinking about killing them or running away?

Am I not a Player too? Aren’t we on the same side?

I’m not the instance boss.

The white-haired youth lowered his eyes, stepped back, and released his grip on the long blade, letting it dissolve into water vapor that drenched the somewhat dirty white rabbit doll.

It seemed that overusing Corpse Frost Power and Flesh and Blood Force still had a significant effect on him. His thoughts were inevitably shifting towards those of a Fierce Ghost.

This couldn’t continue.

“Are you… okay?” Ying Zixin felt the killing intent that had been lingering around his heart dissipate, and his tightly clenched fists slowly loosened.

The white-haired youth slumped to the ground with some exhaustion, whispering, “It’s fine. Some side effects.”

He tried hard to make his state of mind calmer, not letting his head be filled with thoughts of slaughter.

Yin Luo suddenly recalled Aunt Jing’s description of that knife-wielding Fierce Ghost, Zou Zihao, in the last instance: “A mindless monster that can never leave here.”

He absolutely wouldn’t become like that, foolish and pitiful.

What exactly was the fundamental difference between Reality Quests and instance missions? Why did he need to complete two strange Main Quests in the instance world, while in the Real World instance, his mission seemed to be the same as other Players?

Perhaps in the next instance world, he could find the answer.

The group looked at each other for a while before Ying Zixin once again broke the somewhat stagnant atmosphere. “Oh right, did any of you find that piece of paper?”

“The paper?”

Lin Rudong, who had just followed the rabbit doll and experienced thrills but no real danger, shook her head.

“This one?” Yin Luo recalled their previous assistance and, feeling a bit guilty, handed over a slip of paper he’d found on a dead Plastic Mannequin. Actually, he had found more than one, but he had destroyed the extras.

Wait, why did he feel guilty? He clearly hadn’t done anything.

How could thinking about doing something wrong be called a mistake?

Thinking this, he felt justified again.

“Yes, this is it. We have one too.” Zhang Hengheng also took out his paper slip.

Lin Rudong glanced at it and read aloud, “Guess Where I Am?”

Her mind was meticulous, and she immediately found the key word. “‘I’? Not ‘we’?”

“Does this ‘I’ refer to a single entity with independent thought, or a group?”

“The words on each paper are identical, so it should be a single entity.” Zhang Hengheng compared the two slips. “So, does that mean we’re actually facing just one enemy?”

“Very likely. The coordination and intelligence of those Plastic Mannequins don’t seem like those of a group of brainless low-level monsters, and they’re endless. I suspect there might be a true monster behind the scenes controlling them.”

“Should we follow the clue on the paper and go look for them?”

Yin Luo blinked and listened quietly.

He realized his way of thinking seemed somewhat different from normal Players. This was a good opportunity to observe and learn more, to be better at disguising and imitating in the future.

No, wasn’t he a Player? Why would he need to disguise himself?

Yin Luo squeezed the rabbit doll’s face into a twisted shape.

Little Bear: Whimpering, too scared to move. JPG

The Players roughly finished their analysis. Ying Zixin glanced at Lei Jue on the ground, who was slowly showing signs of waking up. “He…”

Lin Rudong: “Uh…”

Her gaze drifted. Before the words ‘it’s fine’ could leave her mouth, the white-haired youth tilted his head and confessed without prompting, “I didn’t beat him up! Don’t try to get me to pay compensation, I didn’t even have the chance to make a move yet!”

What do you mean, ‘didn’t even have the chance to make a move yet’?

The tracksuit girl’s face stiffened. “It’s fine, the one in pain isn’t me anyway…”

Wait, why did I just blurt that out loud too!

Lin Rudong roared internally.

Ying Zixin: “…”

So, you do have a connection to this after all.

He had actually just wanted to ask how this Plastic Mannequin had died, considering the wound cross-section was a bit strange.

The close-cropped youth glanced at the white rabbit doll, but ultimately chose not to ask.

The greatest taboo among Players was delving too deep too quickly. The teammate who helped and supported you in this instance might be your opponent in the next, where only one could survive.

The more information exchanged, the sharper the knife that might be stabbed into your back could become.

So, unless they were very close, fixed teammates, no one would probe into another Player’s power. Doing so was already an offense; those with bigger tempers might even form an enmity on the spot.

At least the result wasn’t bad, with no one dead. The rest wasn’t important either.

Thus, the topic returned to the mission. “We have two options now. One is to find where this ‘I’ is, as the paper says. Maybe there will be unexpected gains. Or, we can just lay low and wait quietly for the mission to end. After all, this is a survival mission; there’s no requirement other than staying alive.”

Zhang Hengheng said, “Don’t forget, there have only been five of us so far. This Reality Quest has a total of seven Players. The last two haven’t appeared yet, their identities, abilities, and goals unknown. They are highly likely to be triggers of the mission too, and logically, they should know more information.”

Lin Rudong had her own considerations. “Sorry, if you plan to search for the core boss, I can’t accompany you. Lei Jue is in this state; he’s not fit for the upcoming fight.”

“It’s almost 2:40 now, about three more hours until dawn.” She glanced at the clock. “I think the difficulty of this Reality Quest is quite reasonable. It’s indeed simpler than a Common Level instance mission, so we’ll stay here and wait for the mission to end.”

“Alright.”

Finally, Ying Zixin and Zhang Hengheng looked at the white-haired youth. “What about you?”

Yin Luo blinked and said, “I want to stay here first. I have a question I want to ask.”

Lin Rudong pointed at herself. “Me?”

“Mm.” Yin Luo nodded.

Ying Zixin hesitated, wanting to speak but stopping himself.

“But…” the white-haired youth added, “If you run into trouble, you can message me on the app. I’m very strong and will get there quickly.”

“Okay, I will.” The close-cropped youth nodded seriously. “I know you’re very strong.”

“Tsk.” Zhang Hengheng clicked his tongue softly, noticing that the other’s mood had visibly brightened.

After clarifying their thoughts, the Players had new goals again. Ying Zixin and Zhang Hengheng parted ways with Yin Luo’s group and headed deeper inside.

When the two were almost out of sight, the tracksuit girl spoke. “What do you want to ask? Let me say first, I actually don’t know about a lot of things either.”

When Yin Luo proposed staying, she had guessed his intention.

After all, their only connection was the brief classmate bond from less than a year ago.

The white-haired youth, however, asked an unrelated question. “When did you enter the game?”

Lin Rudong, seeing a chance to build rapport, didn’t hide it. “A few months ago. This is my sixth mission.”

A Player who had completed six instances had power at this level?

Yin Luo compared it to his own strength. Mm, okay, he was indeed special. He needed to keep his disguise even tighter.

“Did you come in with him?”

“Him? Lei Jue? No. I was dying from a car accident. He, from what he said, was pulled into the game after a serious injury during training. To be honest, before we met in the instance world, he and I were just ordinary classmates.”

Lin Rudong, at this point, was also somewhat curious about Yin Luo’s situation. But remembering the ‘serious illness’ he mentioned, she could guess a bit and swallowed her question. “Anyway, life is unpredictable. Life and death shift in an instant.”

Yin Luo couldn’t understand her lament.

To him, this game was not a sudden tragedy, but a rebirth, a true new beginning.

The white-haired youth thought for a moment and asked, “Are instance missions self-chosen or forced?”

“Forced, of course. Are you a newbie? You’ve got great talent and adapted very well here.” Lin Rudong said, “Generally, when you first become a Player, the frequency is one to three times a month. It gets more frequent later. Honestly, I don’t know how long I can hold on.”

“You don’t like this game?” Yin Luo found it a bit hard to understand.

A game that granted strange and wondrous abilities, let you see different worlds and scenery, and accomplish things you couldn’t before—wasn’t this just like the dreams from childhood, fantasizing about being special, different from all the other ordinary people in the world?

“Maybe some people see this as an opportunity, but I’m not one of them.” As they chatted, Lin Rudong’s words became more frequent. After all, she also had many messy thoughts she could never share with her real-life family and friends.

She smiled. “Because before entering the game, I lived a very happy life too. I was about to graduate from university, and through my own efforts, I got an offer from a company I liked. My parents are loving, free and open-minded. I have many friends, we have many shared topics. I have no great pressure, nor any great regrets.”

“I don’t want to lose this life, so I’ll do my best to survive.”

She was really just a twenty-two-year-old girl. On a normal path, she’d complain about being busy at work, find joy in afternoon tea with friends, maybe get annoyed by potential future blind dates.

But she would never have to give up a normal life, distance herself from friends, part ways with her parents, learn combat, handle firearms, cut her hands practicing knife skills until they were scarred, or stay up all night, night after night, from the anxiety of the next instance world’s arrival.

She was grateful the game gave her back her life, yet resentful of the price it had tagged along.

“Is that so?” The white-haired youth mused thoughtfully, gaining a further understanding of the Player group.

He thought of his mother. If he died, she would be sad too, wouldn’t she?

“Yeah.” Lin Rudong lifted her hand and slapped the groggy Lei Jue, who seemed about to wake, back into unconsciousness. “Every Player struggling to survive has their own reason. Of course, some just purely enjoy this omnipotent power, wanting to prove they’re special to the world.”

Saying this, she hesitated for a moment, but finally spoke. “Be careful of other Players. All of them.”

“Huh?”

Lin Rudong explained, “Because Players also have special abilities in the Real World. Ordinary people are almost defenseless against this power. But some lunatics, driven mad by the instances, don’t care about consequences. They’ll try to drag their enemy down with them, or investigate a Player’s real identity to implicate their family and friends. So, you must be careful.”

Yin Luo had considered this scenario. “But I don’t think I’ve heard of similar news.”

Lin Rudong explained, “Because once a Player excessively uses their abilities in real life, the next instance the game throws them into will be far beyond their current strength level. They’ll almost certainly die trying to escape. So, most Players avoid making moves in the Real World.”

“And if the impact is too great, it might alert even bigger figures.”

“Oh? There are managers in the real world too?” The white-haired youth, for some reason, felt a surge of restless curiosity. Like a cat seeing something on the edge of a table, always tempted to push it just to see what happens.

“I don’t know if those people count as managers. I can’t even be sure they’re human. We usually call Them ‘Executioners’.” Lin Rudong knew quite a bit of information. “There was once a High-Level Player who, due to an enemy’s scheming in an instance world, was left with a short time to live. In his madness, he spread a Curse in the Real World. It parasitized tens of thousands of people and killed hundreds of innocent ordinary folks, all just to drag his enemy’s real-world family and friends down with him, preferring to kill wrongly than let them go.”

“That incident had a huge impact. Not only did the game issue a Reality Quest, forcing all Players within a five-hundred-mile radius to stop and eliminate him, but the Executioners even appeared.”

Lin Rudong didn’t like dragging things out and got straight to the point. “It was a monster clad entirely in black steel armor. It claimed to be the representative of All Beings, a Believer of the ‘Deity’. It killed that mad Player and took the body away. Later, it’s said that someone saw that Player’s soul in a terrifying instance, becoming fodder for Ghosts and being tormented for many years.”

That was a lot of information.

Yin Luo blinked. “All Beings?”

“Yes, the ‘All Beings’ from the All Beings APP. So many people speculate that the Executioners might be the agents of this Sinless Abyss game. Anyway, since then, Players have become much more restrained in the Real World. No matter how great the hatred, they’ll settle it in the instance world.”

“Then why have I never heard of these things happening in the Real World?” Yin Luo asked.

“Because their memories were erased.” Lin Rudong said softly. “The memories of tens of thousands of people, in an instant, rewritten.”

Truly terrifying.

And truly fascinating.

The white-haired youth mused thoughtfully. “I see. I’ll remember that. Thank you for telling me.”

“You’re welcome. After all, you’re very talented. I might need to ask for your help in the future.” Lin Rudong spoke as directly as ever.

She mentally erased the old image of Yin Luo and replaced it with the white-haired, red-eyed youth before her.

“Is there anything else you want to ask?”

“Mm, actually, a lot. But I think many things need to be explored personally to be interesting.”

Yin Luo changed the subject. “Right, I’d like to hear about the past.”

“The past, huh.” The tracksuit girl tried hard to recall, the butterfly knife in her hand spinning smoothly and rapidly like a pen twirled by a distracted student in class. “I can’t remember too clearly either. It’s been almost six or seven years, after all. What do you want to hear?”

“Everything, like about the old me.”

“Then I’ll start from the beginning. I was in a private middle school for junior high, then transferred to Rongcheng Situ Experimental Middle School for senior high. Same school as you, same class. You were already studying there in junior high. I don’t know anything before that.”

“But high school life was pretty much just that, right? Classes, problem sets, exams. Nothing too special.”

“Back then, you, mm… I tend to be blunt… apart from your looks, there wasn’t anything special about you. Didn’t really participate in extracurricular activities, grades were average, didn’t seem to have many friends either. Your presence wasn’t very noticeable. Anyway, you’re completely different now.”

“Is that so? Not a single friend?”

Yin Luo listened as if hearing someone else’s story, unfamiliar. The little bear in his arms, washed clean by the water vapor and now revived, also quietly stretched its ears longer.

“Seems like it…” Lin Rudong felt she was being somewhat disrespectful and tried to make up for it. “But I heard that in junior high, you were quite familiar with a few impressive senior students. Even after they graduated, their legends remained at Situ Experimental School.”

“Oh?” Yin Luo’s interest was piqued.

“But I only know one of their names.”

“Who?”

“Jing Song.” Lin Rudong was very certain this time. As a young person, no matter how tired or busy, one still has to surf the internet. “After graduating, he entered the entertainment industry. He’s actually quite famous now. People around me are still his fans.”

Yin Luo memorized the name, planning to look it up when he got back. He casually asked, “Were those my only acquaintances back then?”

“Mm…” Lin Rudong racked her brain. “Wait, I remember one more!”

She simply slapped Lei Jue awake again. “Hold on.”

Lei Jue, his head full of stars, groggily woke up to Lin Rudong’s direct question. “Lei Jue, what was the name of that intern P.E. teacher we had in the first semester of our first year of high school?”

“Huh? Huh?” Lei Jue looked completely lost.

Lin Rudong: “The one with very fair skin, very young, good-looking, but you guys said he had amazing physical ability.”

Lei Jue blurted out, “Lin something-Jing? Lin Shujing?”

“Yes! That’s it!” The tracksuit girl finally remembered. “Lin Yujing.”

The white-haired youth’s movements paused.