The Walk-in Closet Safehouse CH25
Chapter 25: New Mission
The sounds of fighting coming from Building C of the academic complex finally died down. Because it was located quite a distance away from the crowded library, the surrounding rooftops were mostly empty of safe houses. The few structures that stood here looked perfectly ordinary, with no flashing danger prompts in sight. It was clear that the people settling down in this corner were just regular players rather than hardened veterans.
As newcomers, everyone generally abided by the ultimate rule of survival: lay low whenever possible, and if you see a fight breaking out, watch from the sidelines but absolutely never join in.
Cui Ye had originally planned to live by that exact same rule. Unfortunately, her luck was just a little too poor. Fortunately, her raw strength and underhanded tactics more than made up for her bad luck, which was why she was still breathing while the people who wanted her dead had already turned cold.
Out in the pouring rain, Cui Ye had changed her clothes from the inside out. Now zipped back into her clean white hiking suit, she stood on the roof holding a heavy shovel, methodically scraping away the remnants of the giant mushrooms clinging to the building's concrete edge. Leaving them behind would pollute the area, and worse, it might draw the attention of malicious players. She didn't know if Qiu Ke had any teammates lingering nearby, so she was taking every possible precaution.
Having to perform an outdoor deep-clean under a torrential downpour made Cui Ye wish she could temporarily resurrect Qiu Ke just so he could scrub his own mess away. The return on investment for this fight had been painfully low. Sure, she had harvested a total of 60 gold coins from the three players the spores had drained into mummies, but manually repairing her safe house—which had sustained a grim 15% damage—instantly drained 45 gold coins right out of her pockets. And that wasn't even factoring in her snapped [Spiked Mace].
For a Level 1 Safe House, repairing 1% of damage cost a single gold coin. But as the structure leveled up, the maintenance costs multiplied drastically.
Worse, Qiu Ke had "clocked out" of the server before she could even execute a proper extortion loop. Aside from a single dagger, his corpse hadn't dropped a single coin, and he had even wasted a point of durability on her [Plushie Collector].
Counting her newly acquired [Demolition Office] item alongside her rabbit stud earrings, which had 76 uses remaining, she was set for a long time. However, after this encounter, she realized [Plushie Collector] was becoming significantly less effective in direct PvP combat; she would likely reserve it for hunting monsters moving forward. Compared to a guy like Qiu Ke—who possessed an astronomically thick health pool, hid behind a mountain of armor, and whose devious schemes stacked up as high as his physical stature—even the grotesque water monsters were beginning to look remarkably cute.
At the very least, the sole heirloom the man had left behind proved to be an incredible haul.
[Blood Blade: The favorite tool of a serial killer. It loves to drink fresh blood and is made of exceptionally sturdy material.]
Cui Ye sat perched on the very edge of the building’s roof, deducing that the dagger’s ability to snap her heavy mace was entirely due to those last words: "exceptionally sturdy material." It was the first time she had seen such a trait highlighted in an item description, suggesting the market value of the [Blood Blade] was likely astronomically high. But as for how she intended to use it...
She lightly gave her self-made fishing rod a test tug. Tied to the very end of her fishing line was the [Blood Blade], and skewered right onto the blade was a fat, juicy toxic mushroom. Down below, a passing water monster was instantly lured in by the swaying fungus. It swam close and snapped its jaws shut, only for its strange, petal-shaped mouth to be pierced cleanly through by the hidden dagger.
It thrashed violently in a desperate bid to break free, but its physical strength evaporated by the second as its blood was aggressively vacuumed out. Within moments, the creature's body shriveled up, transforming from a dangerous predator into a flat, dry piece of fish jerky.
The hook and the bait taken care of in a single stroke—it could be considered Qiu Ke’s sole act of charity toward the world.
By the time Cui Ye had burned through her entire pile of toxic mushrooms, the horizon was already breaking into the dawn of the next morning. Pulling an absolute all-nighter had netted her a clean 100 gold coins. This was an infinitely more efficient grinding method than strapping on her high heels, popping her umbrella, and wading out into the wilderness to hunt monsters manually.
If those toxic mushrooms hadn't completely lost their ability to multiply the exact second Qiu Ke expired, she would have absolutely found a secure glass display case to farm them as a sustainable, renewable resource. Still, being able to shed her status as a penniless beggar brought a wave of deep satisfaction to her heart.
Back inside the absolute safety of her Safe House, Cui Ye woke up from her catch-up nap and immediately opened her interface to check her funds. Her currency tab proudly displayed 110 gold coins.
Shifting her gaze over to the daily shop, she bought a [Food Voucher] for one gold coin, followed by an [Invisibility Potion] with a sixty-second duration for another five coins. Next, she reached her hand down to rummage through the depths of her [Christmas Stocking]; her fingers immediately registered a deeply familiar, smooth texture as the system chimed: [Yellow Banana Peel] +1.
Finally, she reviewed her custom wardrobe array, which yielded its standard refresh of five regular clothing items. None of them carried attribute modifiers or stat boosts, but she didn't mind. She picked out a thick, full-length down winter coat and zipped herself right into it.
Outside the perimeter of her base, the ambient temperature had plummeted into the single digits. Because of the heavy humidity from the non-stop rain, the damp cold bit far deeper than the actual forecast. Across the server map, countless players had been forced to dig to the very bottom of their storage bins to extract whatever heavy winter gear they possessed. Even though the garments felt cold, damp, and were actively spotted with patches of mold, people had zero choice but to throw them on.
However, absolutely no one noticed that the dark, brownish-black mold spots spreading across the fabrics were gradually losing their depth of color, turning paler by the hour. Whenever people moved around in these clothes, the mold spores brushed against bare skin, triggering a faint, subtle itch.
In the beginning, nobody paid the itching any mind. That changed when the elderly population and young children inside the residential towers began breaking into sudden bouts of severe fevers and colds. Within half a day of consuming standard medication, their bodies would turn burning hot, their heart rates spiking violently while their conscious minds drifted into advanced delirium.
The military medical officers stationed inside the towers found themselves completely surrounded by panicked patients and screaming family members. Entirely powerless against the condition, they could ultimately deliver only a single medical directive: strip off the contaminated garments immediately, aggressively scrub the living quarters for any traces of mold, and consume a [Healing Potion].
The system interface was flashing blatant infection warnings that would have verified the diagnosis, but the patients had already lost consciousness and lacked the capacity to speak. Even so, without the medical officers explicitly stating it, the rapid manifestation of deep red scales across the victims' faces made the grim reality immediately obvious to their families.
But understanding the problem didn't magically change their grim reality. People simply lacked the funds to buy potions. Terrified of venturing out into the dangerous terrain to farm resources, a massive wave of survivors opted to use moral leverage against the very military personnel working to protect them.
Compared to the deadly risk of hunting water monsters, stepping up to the medical counter to demand free [Healing Potions] was a drastically safer survival tactic. The crowd knew exactly what cards they were playing—and the military personnel were well aware of it, too.
While the soldiers on duty deeply despised this behavior, they couldn't bring themselves to simply stand by and watch a massive crowd of survivors succumb to the deadly mutation. It wasn't born out of raw pity for the mob; if they had any pity left to give, they preferred to direct it toward the families of their fallen comrades who had already died on the front lines. But precisely because of those sacrifices, they could not allow the shelter to collapse from the inside. This massive wave of high-fever, comatose patients had to be systematically quarantined and moved to a separate block immediately!
Right as the commanding officer was preparing to broadcast the quarantine directive to his fireteams, a small group of survivors came charging down the concrete stairwell. Their faces were flushed with intense, manic excitement as they screamed at the packed medical lobby:
"Hurry! Get to the eleventh floor! Goddess Wen He is granting a divine blessing—every single infected person can be completely cured!"
"Our whole family is free of the sickness! Goddess Wen He isn't asking for a single coin or resource in return! Praise Goddess Wen He!"
"All thanks to Goddess Wen He! I swear my eternal loyalty to the Goddess!"
The sheer euphoria, relief, and absolute reverence painted across their features looked profoundly genuine—yet carried an unnervingly uniform, carbon-copied quality. But the desperate crowd, clawing wildly for any available lifeline, didn't stop to analyze the anomaly. Regardless of whether it was a miracle or a hoax, they had to see it for themselves.
The moment the first person bolted and sprinted up the stairs, the remaining crowd's resolve fractured, and the entire mass followed closely behind. Watching the civilian wave surge upward, the captain’s brows knitted into a tight frown. He lifted his radio to his mouth, calling the squad leader stationed on the eleventh floor: "What's the situation up there?! Didn't I explicitly command your team to lock down room 1122 and deny that mother and son entry or exit?!"
"Report, Captain! The targets haven't stepped past their doorway. The civilians are pressing against the doorframe to beg for aid! A patient collapsed right outside their frame, and the woman simply opened her door to cast some kind of healing surge. She never set a single foot outside her room. I witnessed the patient make an immediate recovery, and now a massive crowd has caused a total gridlock in the hall. Since she didn't technically breach the quarantine boundaries, I..."
"You idiot! Disperse that crowd immediately!"
If his deductions the previous night had been based on mere suspicion, the unfolding situation completely verified it: this pair carried severe threat parameters. He and his fellow commanding officers had analyzed a massive volume of data compiled by central command. The military’s conclusion was uniform—veteran players were classified as extra-dimensional invaders, requiring absolute surveillance and strict containment.
According to intelligence extracted from captured operatives, the server world they occupied was structurally unique. Because it held the latent potential to evolve into a high-tier game map, the baseline probability of native players awakening unique talents was astronomically higher than in standard worlds. Furthermore, "liquidating" a talent user yielded a high system probability of permanently inheriting their unique talent trait. Numerous elite guilds were willing to spend massive capital to purchase targeted transit tickets to these specific server worlds, deploying hit squads for the sole purpose of executing large-scale harvest runs to bolster their faction's strength—a thoroughly parasitic, "locust strategy".
A world stripped of its core talent users during its foundational phase would suffer an accelerated countdown toward total collapse. Robbed of their defensive anchors, the surviving civilians would ultimately be forced to flee into other server worlds—a migration that amounted to nothing more than choosing a different flavor of demise. Without native talents users or advanced safe houses, they wouldn't survive more than a couple of servers, locking the system into a fatal downward spiral.
Therefore, regardless of how "Great, Glorious, and Correct" that mother and son tried to present themselves—and even if their ability was an exceptionally rare, high-tier healing array—the captain’s immediate instinct upon reviewing the data was absolute hostility. A wave of bitter regret washed over him. He never should have let a fleeting moment of sympathy dictate his actions during their encounter last night. He should have ordered a tactical execution right then and there!
But drowning in regret yielded zero utility now. A massive crowd of survivors had already formed a dense blockage outside Room 1122 to receive the divine healing array—and packed within that press were the immediate families and social circles of native talent users. A talent user who hadn't fully unlocked their progression track might possess the capability to shield one or two family members from the infection, but their social circles extended significantly wider than a few individuals.
Wen He stood perfectly framed in her doorway, gazing down at the massive wave of civilians kneeling across the concrete floor. Her eyes swiftly isolated two specific silhouettes in the crowd. Although her data sweep confirmed they were merely low-tier talent users, she didn't mind—after all, "minor streams eventually compiled into a massive ocean".
Radiant, holy feathers of light drifted gently through the air of the corridor. The expressions of the crowd grew increasingly devout as their physical agony steadily melted away. The burning temperatures of the patients dropped rapidly, and even the two talent users—who had initially harbored an intuitive sense of suspicion—fully abandoned their doubts upon witnessing the deep red scales fade from their relatives' skin.
Without waiting for a verbal cue from his sister, Wen Qiu had already spread his fingers wide, causing countless microscopic, near-invisible marionette strings to drop silently from the ceiling, anchoring directly into the napes of the survivors' necks. Following a sharp, localized prick of pain, the chaotic, noisy corridor plunged into an absolute, dead silence.
By the time the captain successfully gathered his squad and charged up the stairwell with rifles drawn, his radio line had already gone completely dead. Sensing a severe catastrophe, he let out a low curse—only to find their advance completely blocked at the top of the stairs by a literal human wall.
Every single civilian in the hall turned to face the arriving soldiers with perfectly uniform, wide grins plastered across their faces. Ignoring the verbal warnings and the high-caliber rifles pointed directly at their chests, the crowd began stepping forward in perfect unison.
The echo of heavy rifle fire violently ruptured the air inside Building 11, instantly throwing the surrounding military units across the compound into a state of high alert. Unfortunately, every single residential block was currently drowning in an identical state of total chaos. The third wave of infections had gone live, and the number of sudden mutations skyrocketed compared to the second wave. Even with armed military forces working to suppress the outbreaks, a widespread riot across the shelter was completely unavoidable.
A handful of opportunistic veteran players chose this precise window to execute their own resource harvest runs, causing the casualty count to spike heavily. The military reinforcement unit that had received the distress signal was pushing aggressively towards the shelter, but their estimated time of arrival was still locked at 30 minutes.
The absolute devastation unfolding across the residential sector appeared to possess zero overlapping boundaries with the students tucked away in the academic zone. On the contrary, an increasing density of unique safe houses was steadily cropping up across the school's rooftops.
At this stage, the server clock indicated less than 48 hours remained before the current game server officially hit zero. If a player harbored any intent of making it out alive, they had to successfully purchase a transit ticket for the next station. Everyone was entirely consumed by a frantic loop—clearing missions, farming gold coins, and actively hunting for the [Ticket Office]. Absolutely no one was monitoring the residential sector—until a highly specific prompt materialized over a certain player's interface:
[System: Your former teammate, He Fangzhou, has entered critical health parameters. Your former teammate, Wang Wei, has shouted your username in a state of absolute despair, triggering a Randomized Urgent Mission.]
Chapter Notes:
The sounds of fighting coming from Building C of the academic complex finally died down. Because it was located quite a distance away from the crowded library, the surrounding rooftops were mostly empty of safe houses. The few structures that stood here looked perfectly ordinary, with no flashing danger prompts in sight. It was clear that the people settling down in this corner were just regular players rather than hardened veterans.
As newcomers, everyone generally abided by the ultimate rule of survival: lay low whenever possible, and if you see a fight breaking out, watch from the sidelines but absolutely never join in.
Cui Ye had originally planned to live by that exact same rule. Unfortunately, her luck was just a little too poor. Fortunately, her raw strength and underhanded tactics more than made up for her bad luck, which was why she was still breathing while the people who wanted her dead had already turned cold.
Out in the pouring rain, Cui Ye had changed her clothes from the inside out. Now zipped back into her clean white hiking suit, she stood on the roof holding a heavy shovel, methodically scraping away the remnants of the giant mushrooms clinging to the building's concrete edge. Leaving them behind would pollute the area, and worse, it might draw the attention of malicious players. She didn't know if Qiu Ke had any teammates lingering nearby, so she was taking every possible precaution.
Having to perform an outdoor deep-clean under a torrential downpour made Cui Ye wish she could temporarily resurrect Qiu Ke just so he could scrub his own mess away. The return on investment for this fight had been painfully low. Sure, she had harvested a total of 60 gold coins from the three players the spores had drained into mummies, but manually repairing her safe house—which had sustained a grim 15% damage—instantly drained 45 gold coins right out of her pockets. And that wasn't even factoring in her snapped [Spiked Mace].
For a Level 1 Safe House, repairing 1% of damage cost a single gold coin. But as the structure leveled up, the maintenance costs multiplied drastically.
Worse, Qiu Ke had "clocked out" of the server before she could even execute a proper extortion loop. Aside from a single dagger, his corpse hadn't dropped a single coin, and he had even wasted a point of durability on her [Plushie Collector].
Counting her newly acquired [Demolition Office] item alongside her rabbit stud earrings, which had 76 uses remaining, she was set for a long time. However, after this encounter, she realized [Plushie Collector] was becoming significantly less effective in direct PvP combat; she would likely reserve it for hunting monsters moving forward. Compared to a guy like Qiu Ke—who possessed an astronomically thick health pool, hid behind a mountain of armor, and whose devious schemes stacked up as high as his physical stature—even the grotesque water monsters were beginning to look remarkably cute.
At the very least, the sole heirloom the man had left behind proved to be an incredible haul.
[Blood Blade: The favorite tool of a serial killer. It loves to drink fresh blood and is made of exceptionally sturdy material.]
Cui Ye sat perched on the very edge of the building’s roof, deducing that the dagger’s ability to snap her heavy mace was entirely due to those last words: "exceptionally sturdy material." It was the first time she had seen such a trait highlighted in an item description, suggesting the market value of the [Blood Blade] was likely astronomically high. But as for how she intended to use it...
She lightly gave her self-made fishing rod a test tug. Tied to the very end of her fishing line was the [Blood Blade], and skewered right onto the blade was a fat, juicy toxic mushroom. Down below, a passing water monster was instantly lured in by the swaying fungus. It swam close and snapped its jaws shut, only for its strange, petal-shaped mouth to be pierced cleanly through by the hidden dagger.
It thrashed violently in a desperate bid to break free, but its physical strength evaporated by the second as its blood was aggressively vacuumed out. Within moments, the creature's body shriveled up, transforming from a dangerous predator into a flat, dry piece of fish jerky.
The hook and the bait taken care of in a single stroke—it could be considered Qiu Ke’s sole act of charity toward the world.
By the time Cui Ye had burned through her entire pile of toxic mushrooms, the horizon was already breaking into the dawn of the next morning. Pulling an absolute all-nighter had netted her a clean 100 gold coins. This was an infinitely more efficient grinding method than strapping on her high heels, popping her umbrella, and wading out into the wilderness to hunt monsters manually.
If those toxic mushrooms hadn't completely lost their ability to multiply the exact second Qiu Ke expired, she would have absolutely found a secure glass display case to farm them as a sustainable, renewable resource. Still, being able to shed her status as a penniless beggar brought a wave of deep satisfaction to her heart.
Back inside the absolute safety of her Safe House, Cui Ye woke up from her catch-up nap and immediately opened her interface to check her funds. Her currency tab proudly displayed 110 gold coins.
Shifting her gaze over to the daily shop, she bought a [Food Voucher] for one gold coin, followed by an [Invisibility Potion] with a sixty-second duration for another five coins. Next, she reached her hand down to rummage through the depths of her [Christmas Stocking]; her fingers immediately registered a deeply familiar, smooth texture as the system chimed: [Yellow Banana Peel] +1.
Finally, she reviewed her custom wardrobe array, which yielded its standard refresh of five regular clothing items. None of them carried attribute modifiers or stat boosts, but she didn't mind. She picked out a thick, full-length down winter coat and zipped herself right into it.
Outside the perimeter of her base, the ambient temperature had plummeted into the single digits. Because of the heavy humidity from the non-stop rain, the damp cold bit far deeper than the actual forecast. Across the server map, countless players had been forced to dig to the very bottom of their storage bins to extract whatever heavy winter gear they possessed. Even though the garments felt cold, damp, and were actively spotted with patches of mold, people had zero choice but to throw them on.
However, absolutely no one noticed that the dark, brownish-black mold spots spreading across the fabrics were gradually losing their depth of color, turning paler by the hour. Whenever people moved around in these clothes, the mold spores brushed against bare skin, triggering a faint, subtle itch.
In the beginning, nobody paid the itching any mind. That changed when the elderly population and young children inside the residential towers began breaking into sudden bouts of severe fevers and colds. Within half a day of consuming standard medication, their bodies would turn burning hot, their heart rates spiking violently while their conscious minds drifted into advanced delirium.
The military medical officers stationed inside the towers found themselves completely surrounded by panicked patients and screaming family members. Entirely powerless against the condition, they could ultimately deliver only a single medical directive: strip off the contaminated garments immediately, aggressively scrub the living quarters for any traces of mold, and consume a [Healing Potion].
The system interface was flashing blatant infection warnings that would have verified the diagnosis, but the patients had already lost consciousness and lacked the capacity to speak. Even so, without the medical officers explicitly stating it, the rapid manifestation of deep red scales across the victims' faces made the grim reality immediately obvious to their families.
But understanding the problem didn't magically change their grim reality. People simply lacked the funds to buy potions. Terrified of venturing out into the dangerous terrain to farm resources, a massive wave of survivors opted to use moral leverage against the very military personnel working to protect them.
Compared to the deadly risk of hunting water monsters, stepping up to the medical counter to demand free [Healing Potions] was a drastically safer survival tactic. The crowd knew exactly what cards they were playing—and the military personnel were well aware of it, too.
While the soldiers on duty deeply despised this behavior, they couldn't bring themselves to simply stand by and watch a massive crowd of survivors succumb to the deadly mutation. It wasn't born out of raw pity for the mob; if they had any pity left to give, they preferred to direct it toward the families of their fallen comrades who had already died on the front lines. But precisely because of those sacrifices, they could not allow the shelter to collapse from the inside. This massive wave of high-fever, comatose patients had to be systematically quarantined and moved to a separate block immediately!
Right as the commanding officer was preparing to broadcast the quarantine directive to his fireteams, a small group of survivors came charging down the concrete stairwell. Their faces were flushed with intense, manic excitement as they screamed at the packed medical lobby:
"Hurry! Get to the eleventh floor! Goddess Wen He is granting a divine blessing—every single infected person can be completely cured!"
"Our whole family is free of the sickness! Goddess Wen He isn't asking for a single coin or resource in return! Praise Goddess Wen He!"
"All thanks to Goddess Wen He! I swear my eternal loyalty to the Goddess!"
The sheer euphoria, relief, and absolute reverence painted across their features looked profoundly genuine—yet carried an unnervingly uniform, carbon-copied quality. But the desperate crowd, clawing wildly for any available lifeline, didn't stop to analyze the anomaly. Regardless of whether it was a miracle or a hoax, they had to see it for themselves.
The moment the first person bolted and sprinted up the stairs, the remaining crowd's resolve fractured, and the entire mass followed closely behind. Watching the civilian wave surge upward, the captain’s brows knitted into a tight frown. He lifted his radio to his mouth, calling the squad leader stationed on the eleventh floor: "What's the situation up there?! Didn't I explicitly command your team to lock down room 1122 and deny that mother and son entry or exit?!"
"Report, Captain! The targets haven't stepped past their doorway. The civilians are pressing against the doorframe to beg for aid! A patient collapsed right outside their frame, and the woman simply opened her door to cast some kind of healing surge. She never set a single foot outside her room. I witnessed the patient make an immediate recovery, and now a massive crowd has caused a total gridlock in the hall. Since she didn't technically breach the quarantine boundaries, I..."
"You idiot! Disperse that crowd immediately!"
If his deductions the previous night had been based on mere suspicion, the unfolding situation completely verified it: this pair carried severe threat parameters. He and his fellow commanding officers had analyzed a massive volume of data compiled by central command. The military’s conclusion was uniform—veteran players were classified as extra-dimensional invaders, requiring absolute surveillance and strict containment.
According to intelligence extracted from captured operatives, the server world they occupied was structurally unique. Because it held the latent potential to evolve into a high-tier game map, the baseline probability of native players awakening unique talents was astronomically higher than in standard worlds. Furthermore, "liquidating" a talent user yielded a high system probability of permanently inheriting their unique talent trait. Numerous elite guilds were willing to spend massive capital to purchase targeted transit tickets to these specific server worlds, deploying hit squads for the sole purpose of executing large-scale harvest runs to bolster their faction's strength—a thoroughly parasitic, "locust strategy".
A world stripped of its core talent users during its foundational phase would suffer an accelerated countdown toward total collapse. Robbed of their defensive anchors, the surviving civilians would ultimately be forced to flee into other server worlds—a migration that amounted to nothing more than choosing a different flavor of demise. Without native talents users or advanced safe houses, they wouldn't survive more than a couple of servers, locking the system into a fatal downward spiral.
Therefore, regardless of how "Great, Glorious, and Correct" that mother and son tried to present themselves—and even if their ability was an exceptionally rare, high-tier healing array—the captain’s immediate instinct upon reviewing the data was absolute hostility. A wave of bitter regret washed over him. He never should have let a fleeting moment of sympathy dictate his actions during their encounter last night. He should have ordered a tactical execution right then and there!
But drowning in regret yielded zero utility now. A massive crowd of survivors had already formed a dense blockage outside Room 1122 to receive the divine healing array—and packed within that press were the immediate families and social circles of native talent users. A talent user who hadn't fully unlocked their progression track might possess the capability to shield one or two family members from the infection, but their social circles extended significantly wider than a few individuals.
Wen He stood perfectly framed in her doorway, gazing down at the massive wave of civilians kneeling across the concrete floor. Her eyes swiftly isolated two specific silhouettes in the crowd. Although her data sweep confirmed they were merely low-tier talent users, she didn't mind—after all, "minor streams eventually compiled into a massive ocean".
Radiant, holy feathers of light drifted gently through the air of the corridor. The expressions of the crowd grew increasingly devout as their physical agony steadily melted away. The burning temperatures of the patients dropped rapidly, and even the two talent users—who had initially harbored an intuitive sense of suspicion—fully abandoned their doubts upon witnessing the deep red scales fade from their relatives' skin.
Without waiting for a verbal cue from his sister, Wen Qiu had already spread his fingers wide, causing countless microscopic, near-invisible marionette strings to drop silently from the ceiling, anchoring directly into the napes of the survivors' necks. Following a sharp, localized prick of pain, the chaotic, noisy corridor plunged into an absolute, dead silence.
By the time the captain successfully gathered his squad and charged up the stairwell with rifles drawn, his radio line had already gone completely dead. Sensing a severe catastrophe, he let out a low curse—only to find their advance completely blocked at the top of the stairs by a literal human wall.
Every single civilian in the hall turned to face the arriving soldiers with perfectly uniform, wide grins plastered across their faces. Ignoring the verbal warnings and the high-caliber rifles pointed directly at their chests, the crowd began stepping forward in perfect unison.
The echo of heavy rifle fire violently ruptured the air inside Building 11, instantly throwing the surrounding military units across the compound into a state of high alert. Unfortunately, every single residential block was currently drowning in an identical state of total chaos. The third wave of infections had gone live, and the number of sudden mutations skyrocketed compared to the second wave. Even with armed military forces working to suppress the outbreaks, a widespread riot across the shelter was completely unavoidable.
A handful of opportunistic veteran players chose this precise window to execute their own resource harvest runs, causing the casualty count to spike heavily. The military reinforcement unit that had received the distress signal was pushing aggressively towards the shelter, but their estimated time of arrival was still locked at 30 minutes.
The absolute devastation unfolding across the residential sector appeared to possess zero overlapping boundaries with the students tucked away in the academic zone. On the contrary, an increasing density of unique safe houses was steadily cropping up across the school's rooftops.
At this stage, the server clock indicated less than 48 hours remained before the current game server officially hit zero. If a player harbored any intent of making it out alive, they had to successfully purchase a transit ticket for the next station. Everyone was entirely consumed by a frantic loop—clearing missions, farming gold coins, and actively hunting for the [Ticket Office]. Absolutely no one was monitoring the residential sector—until a highly specific prompt materialized over a certain player's interface:
[System: Your former teammate, He Fangzhou, has entered critical health parameters. Your former teammate, Wang Wei, has shouted your username in a state of absolute despair, triggering a Randomized Urgent Mission.]
[Randomized Urgent Mission: "The Hero Saves the Beauty, Divine Justice Descends From Above." (Pending Acceptance)]
Chapter Notes:
- "Moral kidnapping" 道德绑架: A major contemporary sociological term in China. It refers to the act of using hyper-righteous societal expectations, feigned vulnerability, or artificial moral standards to manipulate, guilt-trip, or force a person/institution into providing free assistance, even when the demanding party has contributed absolutely nothing to earn it.
- "Great, Glorious, and Correct" 伟光正: Historically derived from state-level political slogans praising structural institutions. On the modern internet, it is deployed almost exclusively as heavy, biting sarcasm. It describes an entity or faction that tries excessively hard to project an artificial, flawless image of flawless altruism, absolute righteousness, and pure benevolence, usually to mask a deeply sinister, self-serving agenda.
- "Minor streams eventually compiled into a massive ocean" / "Many littles make a mickle" 积少成多: A classic, foundational Chinese idiom meaning that minor, insignificant gains will eventually scale into a massive, unstoppable volume if one keeps accumulating them patiently over time.
- "Locust Strategy": A hyper-aggressive farming strategy where a faction or guild rapidly invades a specific zone to strip it of all available high-value resources before immediately abandoning it. Instead of managing the zone for sustainable, long-term yields, the players maximize short-term efficiency by deploying specialized teams to "clear-cut" the area.
- "The hero saves the beauty; justice descends from the heavens." 英雄救美，天降正义: "The hero saves the beauty" is the oldest, most cliché romantic trope in Chinese literature. "Justice descends from the heavens" is a modern gaming meme (famously associated with Pharah's ultimate ability phrase in Overwatch, used across the Chinese internet to describe a sudden, overwhelming aerial intervention).
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