Yuan Zhu, the King of the Grind, Sends His Head a Thousand Miles

"They're back. They're all back."

Once the Boss Template receded, his human side completely took over.

Just by looking with his naked eyes at objects he had long taken for granted and giving them a little thought, a flood of related information automatically surged up from the depths of his brain. It even forced his thoughts to branch out, launching a brainstorming session that drew on more knowledge and perspectives to digest and absorb the information anew.

The more he associated, the more related knowledge it brought forth. Then came a chain reaction, setting off an avalanche of knowledge inside his skull!

At this moment, Yuan Zhu felt stronger than he had ever been before. Not strong in the sense of brute force, but strong in his brain, his mental reactions, and his ability to comprehend and integrate knowledge!

Worthy indeed of the "Three-Core Unity" soul processor. It forced his mind to overclock, turning him into a super genius. Every second, he was carrying out Pig Brain Overload Calculations on the level of a senior high school student taking mock exams.

Fragments of the original owner's memories and knowledge were drawn toward Yuan Zhu's soul, rushing in like moths to a flame. Following his Earthling values and thought processes, they were understood and absorbed all over again, becoming his own knowledge and common sense.

Put another way, it was like shattering the worldview, outlook on life, and values that the original owner had spent eighteen years building into tiny pieces of knowledge, then pouring and molding them anew according to Yuan Zhu's current Earthling shape, creating a new Yuan Zhu.

...Just like what the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture had originally intended to do to him.

"With these bits of knowledge and everyday common sense, you're becoming more and more like a native," the Little Elf said, equally pleased by Yuan Zhu's changes.

Yuan Zhu pressed his temples to ease the agonizing pain in his head while recalling and sorting through his situation. "I remember now. Today was the weekend. I was a part-time employee at Fire Fang Cleaning Company, and for the high pay, I took an order alone that involved the far outskirts."

"I came here mainly to maintain and trim the lawn, fertilize the garden, and clear out the rabbits and rats overrunning the nearby woods. I arrived at nine in the morning, ate a lavish all-meat feast at noon, and then... I was gone that afternoon?"

As Yuan Zhu recalled his identity and background, information about Fire Fang decompressed in his mind and unfolded before him.

Though Fire Fang called itself a cleaning company to the public, Yuan Zhu was not simply a cleaner or sanitation worker doing dirty jobs. Strictly speaking, Fire Fang's employees ought to be called scavengers.

Besides providing routine cleaning services for the wealthy and great nobles, they more often provided services that could not see the light of day for the upper classes—such as helping rich people dispose of servants, lovers, enemies, and the like who had kicked the bucket in accidents, preserving a measure of dignity.

Moreover, Fire Fang's business was extensive, covering the underground world's sale of stolen goods and corpse disposal. It specialized in cleaning up the traces left behind by gang shootouts and murder scenes, and was highly skilled at recovering bodies and removing bloodstains.

Beyond those businesses, the company was even famous throughout the city for its complicated yet comprehensive "professional exorcism rituals, Haunted House consecrations, ghost-catching, and soul-soothing." It cooperated with many religious institutions in the city, had received official recognition from the municipal government, and was a well-known "model evil-exorcising company."

Finally, Fire Fang had a gray-market pillar industry: exterminating "pests." This was often bundled with exorcism packages and force-sold to customers. Their hunting range extended from cockroaches, fleas, and bedbugs, to Goblins overrunning sewers and underground karst tunnels, all the way up to earthbound spirits, evil spirits, and resentful spirits. There was nothing they could not handle.

Among these jobs, catching and killing Goblins was the most profitable. Though somewhat dangerous, the market price of Goblin corpses had continued to rise over the past two years. Rumor had it that several major pharmaceutical companies had successfully developed a pharmaceutical technique for "large-scale, low-cost, high-efficiency extraction of Longevity Substance from pseudo-sapient lifeforms."

This technology had actually existed long ago, and rich people had spoken of it with great relish. It simply had not been mature enough, and the threshold was too high; it could only be researched and synthesized in small quantities in laboratories. Moreover, the raw materials for the "medicine" involved intelligent creatures, which had once sparked widespread negative public opinion.

In fact, tracing back more than three hundred years to ancient times, the Xi Kingdom Royal Family, entrenched in the distant East, had already pioneered a classical external-alchemy method while battling wits and courage with extraterrestrial magical races: using qi cultivators from Overseas Immortal Mountains as ingredients, freshly pressing Elf Race members, and refining Longevity Elixirs.

Now, after more than three hundred years of adjustment and generations of reproduction, Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, and the rest had gradually integrated into every corner of Du Ling Star. They were no longer hated and viewed as enemies under the label of "aliens," but treated as "sapient species and ethnic minorities"—and subjected to racial discrimination.

Racial equality and harmonious coexistence were the correct public stance. No major corporation dared to brazenly slaughter them on a large scale.

The Elf Race in particular, with the highest looks, generally long lifespans, and low reproductive capacity, had been the first to gain acceptance from the native human race two hundred years ago. After all, in that era, the sole Extraordinary System with the greatest value—magic—was held in the hands of the Elf Race.

Although the magic system had now completely declined, the Elves had long since transformed themselves. They had accumulated sufficient capital, entered human society, occupied important positions, cooperated with one another, bound their interests together, and deeply integrated into humanity until they could no longer be cut away.

After the Elves came the Crystal Wall Human Race, who had spent a century reproducing for several generations, extensively intermarrying and mixing with native humans, fully adapting to the environment of Du Ling Planet, and becoming impossible to distinguish from everyone else.

As for these "Crystal Wall humans," whose bloodline origins were utterly different but whose appearances and customs were not all that different, the native human race had no good way to deal with them. After all, though their biological origins differed, they strangely had no reproductive barrier. That was simply defying heaven.

Over several centuries, the Crystal Wall Human Race had long mastered Duling's local language and writing, completely changed their customs, and integrated very successfully. They had even established countries on the New Continent with "Crystal Wall humans" as their main ethnic group. Native humans were not a monolith either, and could only reluctantly accept it.

No matter how bad Crystal Wall humans were, they had to be better than Dwarves and Orcs, right? At the very least, everyone shared the same aesthetic style, so they could barely accept them.

After the fully localized humans, the third race recognized by the world's major nations was the Dwarf Race, around one hundred and fifty years ago.

Compared with the humans and Elves who actively integrated into Duling, the Dwarves who had crossed over were few in number and extremely low-key. They deliberately avoided conflicts with humans, preferring to wander the world. They were either digging holes in mountains or mining underground, then trading with humans using magic-based metallurgical technology.

Over time, humans sensed the goodwill they displayed. With the Elf Race and Crystal Wall humans having already reached reconciliation one after another, the Dwarves also became the third sapient race recognized by the native human race, enjoying the same rights.

As for another famous magical-world race, the Orcs—they had never been accepted by Duling humans due to their ugly appearance and barbaric, brutal civilization.

Instead, over the past several centuries, they had been continuously hunted, confined, enslaved, assigned to protected zones, internally divided and balanced against one another, with the strong selected and sold to farms, plantations, and factories... Aside from scalping them, humans had basically done everything else.

It could be said that the emergence of the Orcs had greatly eased conflicts among humanity's various internal races, while also making an indelible contribution to the alliance between humans and other magical races.

Once there were Orcs who could do the work of three people and labor even harder than large livestock, the slave trade that had yet to become widespread was thoroughly left out in the cold. Racial discrimination within the Duling human race was put on pause, and even the discrimination between Duling humans and the Crystal Wall Human Race was buried beneath racial conflict with the Orcs.

After all, these things really didn't look human at all! Together with blue-skinned Ogres and green-skinned Trolls, they were known as the three beast brothers. They had to be discriminated against fiercely! Even so, the Orc Race, shouting, "Are kings, marquises, generals, and ministers born to their stations? Orcs shall never be slaves!" had gradually awakened racial consciousness under the guidance of interested parties over the past century and launched several waves of racial movements. Their scale grew ever more magnificent until they finally won the equal rights due to a "sapient race."

Now, the only population on Du Ling Star that remained enormous yet had not been classified as a sapient species, and was nominally not treated as "human," was the Goblins that infested the world like cockroaches and rats.

The Goblins of Du Ling Planet were not the Goblin cartels from World of Warcraft, who had mastered Goblin Engineering and sold weapons everywhere.

The Goblins on this planet were savage, backward, unintelligent, and unhygienic. They bred as rapidly as rats, and were more like the goblins who liked imprisoning female adventurers in caves.

The manor before him had a long-term and massive demand for "Goblin orders" from Fire Fang. Company employees came on average once every week or two to deliver goods, and scavengers would be arranged the next day to clean the site.

The two sides had always maintained an unspoken understanding. Whenever fresh Goblins were harvested, they would be washed, disinfected, and set aside in advance. Even a part-timer like Yuan Zhu knew how extravagant this manor was, which was why he had proactively snatched this order today: to secretly transport a batch of "Goblin deliveries" and easily earn a tidy sum.

Combined with the routine lawn maintenance, garden upkeep, and rat-and-rabbit poisoning, it meant another paycheck plus tips. And every time he came to this manor, the owner fed him. Fish and meat came without limit—it was simply wonderful!

What he earned in a single day was more than what an ordinary worker's family earned in a week.

Looking back now, where in this world were there so many bargains for the taking?

Why had he joined Fire Fang? Because Brother Yuan Zhu's nature had always been that of a fiercely ambitious grinding maniac. He was wildly ambitious, yearning for success, wealth, power, and even more, strength! He was not satisfied with the highly valuable credential of a senior high school education. Duling differed from Earth: its productivity remained at the late stage of Earth's First Industrial Revolution and had not entered the second, yet it had been supplemented by all manner of gods and extraordinary powers, even surpassing Earth in some fields.

In such a world with comparatively underdeveloped productivity, educational resources were scarce to begin with. A senior high school diploma was already equivalent in value to an Earth bachelor's degree, and one from a prestigious university at that.

Yuan Zhu obtaining such an education was proof of his king-of-the-grind personality. Not only had he completed senior high school as a bottom-rung commoner, he had also worked while studying and supported his younger brother through middle school as well.

On top of that, at a steam-powered factory manufacturing lighting fixtures, he simultaneously worked part-time as a technician, maintenance engineer, and warehouse manager. He received only one and a half salaries, and even proofread the boss's account books for free.

Outside this primary job, he also worked part-time in underground bare-knuckle fights at an abandoned warehouse near his home. Though he lost more than he won, the organizer was at least a rule-abiding man, and the referees knew their craft. At worst, he ended up black and blue with broken ribs, without the risk of serious injury or disability.

Such a grinding maniac naturally would not settle for the status quo. On the contrary, Yuan Zhu always seized one opportunity after another, seeking chances to rise above the crowd and climb upward in an era of severe class stagnation.

After a long search, Fire Fang Cleaning Company caught his eye. It was a company of relatively low status and pretension, always dealing with bottom-rung commoners and the underground black market.

The jobs were all dirty and exhausting: collecting corpses, cleaning murder scenes, going into sewers to hunt Goblins, killing cockroaches and poisoning rats... But though its status was low, it allowed him access to circles beyond ordinary people.

For example, those famous exorcism and evil-banishing jobs really did clean up and eliminate the weakest forms of anomalous contamination. The company also had dealings with temples, Daoist Temples, and Churches, allowing employees to encounter people who possessed extraordinary power.

Fire Fang was not some stable, leisurely company either. From time to time, employees suffered serious injuries and resigned voluntarily, or simply vanished into thin air. Thus, the company frequently recruited externally, while Yuan Zhu intended to enter higher-end circles. It was a perfect match.

And after that... he had indeed been far too naive.

Did he really think orders that were easy and paid well could be snatched so easily? In the end, not only had he delivered the Goblins, he had successfully delivered himself along with them!

In his mind, Yuan Zhu linked together all the clues and oddities from the past, finally realizing that being dragged into this tragedy had not been entirely unexpected.

There was a fixed destiny in the unseen. It was because he refused to settle for his circumstances and craved wealth and opportunity that he had joined Fire Fang. Then, wanting to easily earn several days' wages, he had come to this manor and lost his head. In a sense, he had gotten exactly what he asked for.

As he pieced together this information, he also explored the manor and discovered many traces of past Sacrifice Rituals, along with a large number of specially prepared dried Goblin corpse specimens.

The manor's owner had a perverse hobby. Not only did he secretly conduct live sacrifices, he treated sacrificing and torturing Goblins as entertainment. Afterward, with great satisfaction, he made the Goblin offerings into specimens, collected them in an exhibition hall, and showed them off to his friends.

It was likely this sick pursuit that left his heart increasingly hollow, driving him to make ever grander sacrifices and expand his prey to his own kind.

Yuan Zhu had happened to arrive at just the right time.

If he had come to deliver goods a week earlier, he would certainly have escaped intact. If he had arrived a week later... the employee making that delivery would certainly have vanished by accident. But by the time it was Yuan Zhu's turn next, the secret here might not have been exposed.

The reason this group of believers had screwed up this time was entirely thanks to the Immortal Scripture. Without the Aberrant Spiritual Root and without the Boss Template, whoever came would have died. Then, so long as they were willing to pay, Fire Fang would even actively cover it up and provide the finest cleaning services.

Then every evil deed would be concealed, and they could invite the next lucky delivery boy to come offer up his head.

"Damn it, this world is so dark! Brother Zhu Zi was such an inspiring, hardworking, grinding maniac, yet in the end he worked so hard that he lost his own head?"

Yuan Zhu was filled with regret and indignation over the original owner's fate. Why? Why did hard work equal delivering meals? So long as you could endure hardship, would there be an endless stream of heads for you to deliver?

"This is the price of wanting to cross class boundaries. If you want to touch extraordinary power, naturally you must be prepared to pay the price. Ha, keep all this stuff safe. At the very least, it can prove that this manor's owner is a repeat offender. The friends he invited all have dark histories too."

The Little Elf began instructing Yuan Zhu on how to organize the materials in his hands, which places to pry open people's cabinets, and how to turn up valuable treasures that were easy to hide...

Soon, Yuan Zhu found a parchment covered in names inside a hidden compartment in the study, but he could not see it clearly, understand it, or read it.

Unlike the other materials, the Little Elf clearly sensed lingering "traces of contamination" on the parchment. This was a list imbued with power, providing multiple effects such as secrecy, binding, and counter-curses.

"Good stuff! Save it quickly, then hand it over to the police!"

While turning up the parchment, Yuan Zhu also found another document and finally understood the identity of the organizer behind this Sacrifice Ritual.

This was an amateur organization called the White Feather Wish Association. The manor owner was its deputy Cult Master, providing the sacrificial venue and responsible for purchasing offerings. The Cult Master possessed occult knowledge, understood how to sacrifice and pray to unspecified targets—gods—and knew sacrificial techniques for avoiding their notice.

This Wish Association did not worship any real, clearly defined target. Once a sacrificial target was established, a connection would form between the two sides, and afterward they could only serve that one master properly.

The White Feather Wish Association's goal, instead, was to use uncertain sacrifices to frequently and massively summon the attention of Evil Gods at random, conceal themselves well, and randomly complete a one-time transaction where nobody knew anyone else.

Relying on this "no-liability sacrificial method," the Wish Association had drawn in quite a few like-minded people who likewise did not want to fulfill a believer's obligations but still wanted benefits.

Then it ruthlessly collected membership dues before randomly luring Evil Gods to descend, banking on random strokes of luck. The success rate was truly dismal, but both the Cult Master and deputy Cult Master made money.

As time passed, the members joining the Wish Association gradually realized that the success rate was too low and the membership fees too expensive. Though they did not need to take responsibility for the gods, it was still a terrible deal.

Thus, the deputy Cult Master, long unsatisfied with abusing and torturing Goblins, decided to raise the grade of the sacrifices and target humans. Doing so could both increase the odds of getting an Evil God to join the bargain and satisfy his own twisted needs.

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