Chapter 19

System: "..."

The handsome interrogator curled his index finger slightly and tapped it a few times on the smooth tabletop. After a long moment, he spoke. "If you want to leave, you should say you regret failing to control your emotions, regret acting on impulse, and regret having pessimistic thoughts."

"Of course, if you don't want to leave, pretend I didn't say anything."

Listening to the standard answer the man had given him, Xu Qingran suddenly asked, "Officer Niu, have you heard of someone named Shen Tingyu?"

The false title and real name came unexpectedly in the same sentence. The man fell silent for a few seconds before replying, "I imagine there are very few people in the empire who haven't heard of him by now."

Xu Qingran went on, "I heard he was also an E-type who came out of this Evil Tower. I also heard that, to date, he's the only prisoner who handed in a perfect 'answer sheet' before leaving."

"I just wanted to ask, Officer, do you think that record could be broken this year?"

Shen Tingyu naturally understood the implication behind his question.

"All right, you can leave now," he said, without giving either an affirmative or a negative answer.

Xu Qingran was a little surprised. After all, he felt as though he had only just sat down.

It had even been much shorter than the average time he had spent in the waiting room earlier, waiting for the other batches to finish. Still, he was quite happy to be done early, so once the man gave him permission, he left without a backward glance.

After Xu Qingran left, Shen Tingyu sat in the room for quite a while longer, his posture unchanged and his eyelids lowered, as though in thought. At last, the junior examiner at the door handed him a light pad and asked him to give his assessment of the young man he had just interrogated.

His gaze lingered on the blank page for a few seconds. He picked up a pen and wrote a few words, then stood and patted the junior examiner on the shoulder. "Thanks for your hard work."

With that, he left the small room at a steady, leisurely pace, his destination somewhere in the Evil Tower unknown.

The junior examiner looked down and saw a short sentence written in a bold, sweeping hand.

[Requires much stricter discipline.]

Xu Qingran had never dreamed that his seemingly easy interrogation would earn him a bracelet locked around his wrist.

When they put it on him, he was with the others who had finished their interrogations, waiting to fill their stomachs in a place resembling a cafeteria.

The bracelet was pure black, with a red bead set into it. Supposedly, the bead could closely monitor the wearer's physical condition and status. If it detected violent behavior or the like, it would immediately trigger the bracelet to deliver an electric shock.

As for the reason: "Your examiner classified you as a dangerous individual who requires strict supervision."

Xu Qingran watched the staff member leave, his face expressionless.

As he had said, the more gentle and modest a guy looked, the blacker his heart.

Perhaps because they felt a kinship in their shared misfortune, the group who had come in with him had already grown close in just half a day, gathering around a table and chatting happily. Xu Qingran had been at the back of the line, and by the time he got his food and sat down at a mostly empty table, the batch who had been called away at around the same time as him finally arrived.

The brother and sister were still glued to each other's sides, and he had not paid them much attention at first.

Then the two of them carried their trays over and sat at the same table as him. But they did not dare sit too close, staying quietly at the other end of the long table. They occasionally stole glances at him, wanting to talk to him but not daring to.

Xu Qingran focused on nothing else, devoutly eating his hard-won food.

The system, on the other hand, was chattering away. "You're making great progress, Host! You're already starting to get fanboys and fangirls!"

"Always remember, we have to work hard to complete the conquest target mission and raise your Spiritual Pool level to the maximum! Until then, lie low, work on whitewashing yourself, turn around your image in other people's eyes, and finally make a comeback and slap their faces!"

Xu Qingran's hand paused on his spoon, and he fell into thought.

Although he was not familiar with the people in his batch, the brother and sister seemed to have made quite a few friends already. Before long, the once-lonely table gradually filled up after they joined him, and the chatter grew very noisy.

They brought up the reasons they had been brought in.

"Ugh, I was in a bad mood that day, and I happened to run into some classmates who provoked me. I couldn't hold back, so I beat them up."

"I broke some bones in the vixen who seduced my boyfriend."

"My relative has a really foul mouth. That day, he started mocking my family again and said some really nasty things about my mom, so I slapped his face swollen. And that old man with no respect for his elders went home so angry that he reported me."

As they chatted and laughed, they suddenly looked at the kind-faced brother and sister and asked, "You two look so well-behaved. How did you end up being brought in together?"

The younger sister nervously pinched her little finger and answered in a quiet voice, "W-we killed someone..."

The table fell silent for a moment.

Then the older brother stroked his sister's head and said apologetically, "Sorry. Actually, it was because our father came home drunk that day and started beating us again. He beat Mom until her head was split open and bleeding, and he brought someone we didn't know to take my sister away and sell her for money."

So, while fighting back, they accidentally killed their father and the person who had come to take his sister away. He had nearly been ambushed by that strange man, and had only escaped because his sister struck the man with something.

But the tool she used was too hard and had a sharp corner, so the man died on the spot.

After hearing this, everyone at the table went from shocked to sympathetic in an instant.

The little system whimpered along with them. "Great Host, they're so pitiful."

Xu Qingran ignored it and kept his head down, eating. He only wanted to leave this crowded place that made him uncomfortable as soon as possible.

But the young man sitting beside him was rather innocent. Afraid Xu Qingran would feel left out, he took the initiative to ask, "Hey, why were you brought in?"

Xu Qingran stopped eating and looked up to see everyone at the table watching him.

He quickly lowered his eyes again and picked up his cup. "I killed a few people."

There was another brief silence. Now that they had experience, everyone followed up, "Why?"

Xu Qingran took a big gulp of water and replied in a hoarse voice, "No reason. I just didn't like the look of them."