Chapter 20: Reality (1)
Next to the Life Crystal, two large squads of inspection team personnel had sealed off the area completely. Dozens of armored vehicles had been set up with tents to form a camp, and the crowd was kept outside. These were all relatives and friends of the players in the instance, and having already witnessed their loved ones’ deaths on the livestream, each of them now cried with heart-wrenching grief.
The atmosphere outside the camp was somber, filled with whimpers.
Inside the temporary camp, Sinister Spirit Types were standing by, ready to rush in at any moment to heal critically injured streamers.
In the tense air, suddenly—the Life Crystal erupted with a massive burst of light, and everyone’s spirits lifted instantly.
“It’s out!” someone screamed sharply.
※※
【Calculating instance rewards for you—】
【Because you triggered the main quest, you are awarded 3 full days of survival time. However, since you did not complete step 1 (Go to the institute), step 2 (stop the fifth sun from launching), or step 3 (stop the sixth sun from launching), we regret to inform you that you have not earned any additional survival time from the main quest.】
【Because you completed the hidden main quest, you are awarded 30 full days of survival time.】
【Your current remaining time: 33 days, 0 hours, 6 minutes.】
【As you are among the first batch of players to trigger the hidden quest, you will receive an additional reward: an unknown weapon.】
【Drawing reward…】
【You have obtained D-level: Finger-Operation Compass.】
The paused survival timer for players in the instance resumed, and life began its countdown once more.
Jian Yuntai swayed slightly as the surrounding scenery changed drastically.
After the world had distorted in the instance, temperatures had risen uncomfortably high. Yet now, returning to reality from the high-heat instance, he suddenly felt a coolness spread across his body.
Thud, thud, thud—
Thud, thud, thud—
All around, mangled bodies fell to the ground. Some were intact corpses, while others had collapsed into piles of fragmented flesh, breaking apart the instant they hit the floor.
The pungent stench of blood made people gag.
“Dadan’er, your wounds!” Fatty ran over holding Jinjin, urgently shouting at the inspection team. “Where are the Sinister Spirit Types? Hurry up and send them! Don’t you see the person’s about to pass out?”
Jian Yuntai felt darkness swirl before his eyes. Not far off, a member of the inspection team approached with a gun. He forced himself to stay conscious and slipped the Finger-Operation Compass he had just obtained into his jacket pocket.
He still didn’t know exactly what the item did and planned to examine it somewhere less crowded.
He Qingzhou bounced over, excitedly exclaiming, “I got an extra thirty days of survival time!”
Young Master Xue slumped to the ground: “Congratulations. Next livestream you can take a day off and go home to sleep.”
He Qingzhou gave him a blank look. “You think everyone can slack off like you? Only thirty days and you already want to skip work? Suicide?”
Young Master Xue, looking completely unbothered, said, “I’m taking the day off anyway.”
Five streamers had participated in the Six Suns instance. Except for Jiang Liu, all the others had survived—a remarkably high survival rate. Fatty, being socially exuberant, immediately started clamoring to organize a group meal.
He Qingzhou and Young Master Xue both agreed, then turned their attention to Jian Yuntai.
Jian Yuntai clutched his stomach, pale with hunger.
Young Master Xue and Fatty exchanged a glance, both recalling Jian Yuntai’s enormous appetite.
Fatty coughed and teased, “How about splitting the bill?”
Young Master Xue added, “Or maybe we could do a buffet.”
“You two are so cheap. We’re all official livestream staff—surely we can afford a proper meal,” He Qingzhou said proudly, straightening his back and patting his chest. “Why wait? Let’s eat today. I’m the oldest here, so the bill’s on me. Don’t even try to fight me for it!”
“…” Fatty and Young Master Xue looked at him with genuine respect.
Meanwhile, two large squads of inspection team personnel came running from the north and south.
The northern squad arrived first, a mix of armed soldiers and one plainclothes Sinister Spirit Type. As soon as the Sinister Spirit Type approached, she crouched and began treating Fatty’s minor scrapes.
Fatty was stunned. “Wait, my friend has a giant hole in his chest, and you’re treating me first? If you’d waited a few seconds, I’d already be healed!”
The Sinister Spirit Type glanced at Jian Yuntai. “Orders from above: do not heal him.”
“…?” Jian Yuntai paused slightly.
The other three looked at one another in confusion. Before anyone could react, the southern squad of the inspection team arrived.
They looked far more organized, each tightly gripping their weapon, eyes locked on Jian Yuntai as if he were the enemy.
Tap tap—
A soldier stepped forward cautiously. “Please come with us.”
“?!” Impatient as ever, Fatty exploded. “Which department are your superiors from? This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone not even treated for their injuries before being dragged away in such a hurry!”
“There are Sinister Spirit Types on the vehicle,” the soldier lowered his posture further and repeated, “Please come with us.”
“Meowww!” Perhaps sensing the tension, Jinjin’s fur bristled, and he let out a threatening hiss.
Jian Yuntai patted the cat on the head. Immediately, Jinjin’s ears flattened and he wagged his tiny tail, pawing at Jian Yuntai’s hand.
“Fatty, it’s okay.”
He took a few steps toward the inspection team. Instantly, the soldiers raised their guns, surrounding him in a tight circle. Jian Yuntai glanced back at the crowd and smiled. “We’ll have that meal another day.”
The group departed.
Fatty and the others, though worried, knew there was nothing they could do and accompanied him back to the dorm.
Once they had all left, the inspection team efficiently dismantled the temporary camp. Tents were taken down, sleeping bags and spare blood bags loaded back onto armored vehicles. The crowd that had arrived so massively dispersed just as quickly.
Soon, the area was empty, leaving only mangled corpses behind.
Only then did the people who had been blocked outside cautiously move forward, red-eyed, to collect the bodies of their loved ones.
※※
“He’s coming, he’s almost here!”
Inside the livestream building, all staff members were on high alert, their eyes fixed unwaveringly on the main entrance.
“Jian Yuntai. Committed an A-level felony. The Xiang’an Team dispatched thousands to capture him. Detained for one month. Risk assessment: A. Later released under supervision by the Xiang’an Team. Current risk assessment…”
“S-level!” The crew-cut man held a paper report in his hands, his expression shifting in alarm. “How has his danger rating gone up even further? Have the livestream supervisors all gone mad? Why on earth would anyone bail out someone this dangerous?!”
The staff around him were equally confused, their faces a mix of panic and fear.
Nothing like this had ever happened before: a serious criminal captured by the Xiang’an Team was actually being released on bail, and then transferred to the recruitment team for livestreaming.
Wouldn’t the higher-ups be worried about accidents happening?
“What else does the report say?” someone urged. “Quick—check what crime he’s supposed to have committed.”
The crew-cut man lowered his head in anxiety and read.
“Sinister Type skills—Top secret.”
“Crimes committed—Top secret.”
“Family background—Top secret.”
“….”
As he scanned line after line, everything was marked top secret. The only line that wasn’t classified caught his eye—and his face instantly turned pale.
“Mental condition… extremely unstable!”
“???” Everyone felt as if they’d been struck by lightning. The more timid ones felt the urge to flee immediately.
“If I remember correctly, the last person evaluated as extremely unstable…” someone whispered, “…was Hacker Bai!”
At that moment, the inspection team had already pushed open the bulletproof glass doors.
Everyone quickly fell silent, suppressing their apprehension. The crew-cut man folded the paper report and tucked it into his jacket, taking two steps forward like a man going to his death. Before approaching, he muttered, “I’m going.”
The others tried to give him courage. “Don’t worry. With this many inspection team members around, he won’t just go berserk and attack you.” Even saying it out loud sounded more like reassurance for themselves than for him.
In the tense and anxious atmosphere, the inspection team soldiers split into two lines. They formed a vertical formation on both sides. Ignoring the guns in their hands, the setup almost looked like a ceremonial welcome, only missing the words, “Welcome.”
Tap tap—
Tap tap—
Footsteps echoed.
In the vast hall, the sound of a pin dropping could be heard. Only Jian Yuntai’s measured steps rang out. The contact of his boots on the tile seemed to pound directly into the crew-cut man’s tiny, nervous heart.
“…”
Watching the young man approach, the crew-cut man braced himself mentally for a storm.
Yet, to his surprise, the boy merely glanced at him and politely nodded. “Thank you for guiding me.”
The crew-cut man was taken aback, almost flattered, and responded quickly.
After leading Jian Yuntai to the reception room, he jogged back, while the staff continued to gather, curious. The crew-cut man muttered in astonishment, “He seems… not so bad.”
“What?” The others echoed, surprised. The fierce confrontation they had expected never happened. One whispered, “He looks quite young… and very handsome, not like a lunatic. Did the Xiang’an Team make a mistake?”
Everyone was a bit stunned.
The lead inspection soldier remained alert. “When Hacker Bai hacked the Alliance missile system and fired a missile that leveled his own hometown, he smiled kindly too.”
“…” Some of the staff were nearly in tears.
He was right—they had no memory! They must never fall for the boy’s pretty, innocent face!
※※
Jian Yuntai sat on the sofa, waiting.
The reception room was neatly furnished, with sunlight streaming in through the windows, making the room bright and warm. On the wall opposite, at least a dozen posters were hung, all featuring familiar popular streamers.
Naturally, none of them were Jian Yuntai.
He withdrew his gaze and turned his eyes toward the coffee table.
On a white porcelain plate were several neatly stacked mung bean cakes. Their green hue was delicate, and just from afar, their sweet fragrance wafted through the air.
“…” Jian Yuntai’s eyes almost went wide.
He hadn’t eaten any pastries in a long time. Mung bean cakes especially reminded him of childhood. They were hard to find in the slum district, and even if he could buy them, he never would—he couldn’t justify spending money on such a luxurious snack.
“You earned a total of 1,679 Coins from this livestream,” the reception room door opened with a creak. A short-haired woman entered, smiling warmly. “At a conversion rate of 100:1, that’s nearly 170,000 in currency. Enough to buy a whole box of mung bean cakes.”
After the world had warped, prices had skyrocketed. Food and water were scarce, and snacks like mung bean cakes had risen several times over in cost. Even 170,000 could only buy a single box.
“But you don’t need to pay this time. I’m covering it myself—it’s a little gift for our first meeting,” the short-haired woman said as she turned on the projector. “Let me introduce myself—I’m your manager, Liang Yan.”
Liang Yan extended her hand.
Jian Yuntai stared at it, frozen for a long moment.
A trace of helplessness appeared in her smile. “Relax, I’m not trying to butter you up for nothing. After all, we’re going to be colleagues from now on, so we might as well start off on good terms.”
With that, she didn’t insist on shaking hands but instead pushed the plate of mung bean cakes toward him.
Jian Yuntai didn’t hesitate and started eating.
Throughout the process, Liang Yan kept watching him curiously, occasionally shaking her head, her gaze strange and unreadable.
Jian Yuntai looked up. “What’s the matter?”
“I just… can’t believe it. You’re completely different from what I imagined,” Liang Yan said, opening a sealed folder and plugging a USB drive into the computer.
Immediately, the projector displayed a surveillance video.
At first, Jian Yuntai wasn’t particularly interested, but after a few seconds, his expression grew serious.
By the time the clip progressed, he was completely stunned—he was actually shocked by the version of himself on the footage.
A line of trucks moved down a narrow road.
Suddenly, a dark figure darted in front of one of the trucks. The driver couldn’t react in time and hit the figure. The person was thrown with a thunderous crash a short distance away.
Everyone in the vehicle was terrified. They cautiously got out, and a soldier ran up, crouched, and checked the person before shouting, “No pulse! You hit someone—kill them!”
“Quick, get medical help!” the driver called to the others.
But before anyone could act, the soldier was suddenly struck as if by an invisible pendulum, his body flying like a kite with its string cut, smashing through the armored truck’s windshield.
Glass shattered everywhere, clinking continuously.
In the midst of everyone’s horrified stares, the figure slowly stood up again, expressionless, and raised a hand.
The next second, all the armored trucks lifted off the ground!
They collided heavily in midair, casting massive shadows over the onlookers. The truck cabins crumpled like giant hailstones, falling to the ground and then lifting again.
The crowd panicked, raising their guns.
Bang bang bang—
Bullets rained down.
They couldn’t even aim properly—they just fired in the general direction. The onslaught lasted five or six minutes, magazines scattered everywhere, and some people instinctively gasped.
Every single bullet stopped half a meter in front of the boy. They were so densely packed that it sent chills down the spine. Before anyone could react, he slightly lifted his hand, and all the bullets reversed direction.
“…………!!!”
Fear gripped everyone. They didn’t even think to reload—they just turned to find cover.
Screams and wails filled the chaotic scene.
The surveillance footage cut off abruptly here. The last image on the projector showed the boy’s pale face, his pupils jet black. He lifted his foot and walked step by step toward the camera.
“…Did I kill them?” Jian Yuntai immediately lost his appetite, his face darkening.
He could be ruthless to enemies, but they had to be enemies! He never wanted to harm the innocent unless absolutely necessary. Each person represented a family; if he had really killed so many, how many families would be shattered?
Thinking this made him clench his lips tightly, a heavy sense of unease pressing in. “Why… do I not remember any of this?” He paused, then looked up. “What happened after this in the video?”
“The rest is top secret. My clearance doesn’t allow me to view it. Once your rank rises to Noble, you might be able to investigate it yourself,” Liang Yan reassured him. “But don’t worry—no one actually died at the time.”
“No one died?!”
“Hmm… well, the soldier you launched into the air at the very start broke his spine. That counts as a work-related injury, so he went home on paid leave,”
Jian Yuntai exhaled in relief but, still confused, asked, “If no one died, why did the Xiang’an Team even try to arrest me?”
“Do you have some misunderstanding about the Xiang’an Team?” Liang Yan said with a laugh. “If you’d only killed a few hundred people, they wouldn’t have noticed at all. The crime you committed back then wasn’t attacking the inspection squad—it was hijacking military supplies.”
“…”
At that moment, Jian Yuntai remembered how hungry he had been at the time, and how he had followed the truck after smelling the food.
He grew even more puzzled and asked, “Hijack a few trucks of food… and that counts as a serious crime?”
“Who told you the trucks were carrying food?” Liang Yan looked at him with mild surprise. “I can’t go into details on this. Like I said before, once your rank rises, you’ll understand the truly shocking thing you did. And besides, your focus was wrong from the very start. I showed you that clip only because of that one moment.”
She rewound the video to the moment the soldier shouted, “You killed someone!”
“Understand now?” she asked.
Jian Yuntai frowned. “Understand what?”
Liang Yan sighed, her expression incredulous as she emphasized, “At that moment, you came back from the dead!”
“…” Jian Yuntai stared at her as if she were crazy.
People don’t just come back from the dead. This was the biggest joke imaginable.
He didn’t believe it—until Liang Yan said the next words, which left him no choice but to accept it.
“After the world warped, adults split into four Sinister Types: Monster, Human, Spirit, and Ghost. Monster Types mutate into animals—powerful ones can lift tens of thousands of pounds and fly across the sky. Human Types are like magicians; they can summon the wind and rain, using spells to attack. Spirit Types heal or use poison, and Ghost Types evolve through mental power.” She paused, then asked, “Have you heard of the missile terror attack in Baihe City six months ago?”
Jian Yuntai nodded immediately.
Of course he had heard—the incident had caused a huge uproar at the time. The entire city had been flattened. In the end, a man surnamed Bai came forward to claim responsibility. Since his real name wasn’t disclosed, the public gave him a nickname: ‘Hacker Bai.’
“Hacker Bai was a Ghost Type. His ability let him connect to networks with his mind. Without touching a thing, he could hack into any system he wanted and do whatever he desired. If he hadn’t willingly turned himself in, the Alliance would have been powerless.”
Liang Yan’s expression grew astonished. “He destroyed a city and killed hundreds of thousands, yet his crime was rated B—while you were rated A!”
“…!” Jian Yuntai rubbed his forehead in pain.
Liang Yan spent a few more minutes on the computer, pulling up the recorded live stream from the Six Suns instance.
On the screen, Jian Yuntai was pierced in the right chest by willow branches. Jiang Jiu struck him with a stick—but the stick seemed to freeze midair.
“You were already dead at that moment. You don’t even remember the process yourself. Clearly… you came back from the dead again,” Liang Yan said. “Think carefully: which Sinister Type has the ability to come back from the dead?”
Jian Yuntai pressed his lips together. “None of them.”
“Exactly. After the world warped, people believed there were only four Sinister Types. But just a year ago, our expert team made a major discovery—the Fifth Sinister Type.”
Liang Yan spoke gravely. “The Divine Type.”
“!!!”
Jian Yuntai’s pupils trembled. “You mean…?”
“You are the Divine Type.” Even though no one else was in the room, Liang Yan instinctively lowered her voice. “The only outward manifestation of the Divine Type is ‘immortality.’ You’re the second person ever discovered as a Divine Type in this world. As for the first…”
She pulled a photo from the sealed folder.
It was a photo, though really just a shot from behind.
Amid overgrown trees and wild grass, a man stood on a ruined city wall, his figure framed by the setting sun. His long white hair cascaded like a waterfall, thick and soft, catching the sunlight at his waistline in a faint golden glow.
Even just the back view radiated majesty.
A person like that looked incongruously elegant in this post-apocalyptic environment. Jian Yuntai stared, lost in the photo, when Liang Yan’s voice spoke beside him.
“Wei Shenglu. His existence is why we went to such lengths to get you released.”
She paused, her gaze steady and earnest:
“We want you to… kill him.”
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