Third Day

Wang Xuan squeezed out of the bustling Tower Gate Plaza and headed home without looking back.

The old resettlement district on the edge of Starfire City was packed with uniformly allocated houses, all drab and gray.

His home was in a corner of this "pigeon coop," a tiny one-room apartment left behind by his parents.

It was rather darkly amusing. In this world, especially on Origin Earth Star, both the Longevity Families and the Federation desperately encouraged childbirth.

As long as one was willing to marry and have children, they would receive plenty of credit point rewards and be directly assigned a house, even if it was only the most basic kind.

No one made things difficult in this matter. After all, to them, the lower-class population was expendable material. The more, the better.

Wang Xuan's parents had been like that.

They had given birth to him, left him the credit points and this house, raised him for three years, then entered a Plot World and never came back.

For ordinary Players, once their five chances were used up and they had no extra Plot Cards, dying in a Plot World meant truly dying.

Wang Xuan used his key to open the thin metal door. It creaked.

The room smelled of dust, and the furniture was pitifully sparse.

He shut the door behind him, leaned against it, and let out a long breath.

A safe zone.

The rules of the Heavens Tower covered the area. Extraordinary powers were suppressed, and Players could not harm one another.

But was it really safe?

Those three Royal Clan members he had killed out there, Yu, and the Shen Royal Clan—would they really let this go?

Anyone could tell the answer was no.

As for the Longevity Families... Wang Xuan laughed at himself. With his current abilities, as a bottom-tier Player who had just left the novice village and luckily earned an SSS rating, he probably was not even worthy of catching the attention of those true giants.

To experts who could pluck stars and seize the moon at will, he was no different from an ant—at most, a slightly sturdier ant.

He walked to the bed and sat down, then dragged out a small box from beneath it. Inside were rows of tube-shaped synthetic nutrient supplements.

He twisted open one tube. The pale gray paste had little flavor and could only provide the most basic energy and nutrition.

This stuff was the everyday staple for the vast majority of ordinary Players on Origin Earth Star. It was cheap and filling, but tasted like utter garbage.

Wang Xuan expressionlessly drained a tube.

"Next time I enter a Plot World, I need to prepare more food and try bringing it out in a Storage Bag." The thought flashed through his mind. The textbooks did not say whether it was possible, but theoretically, a Storage Bag could hold things, so bringing them out should not be a problem, right?

He could not keep eating this pig feed forever.

The first day after returning passed peacefully.

The occasional hum of hovercars drifted past outside the window, and faint noise came from the direction of Tower Gate Plaza in the distance, but none of it had anything to do with his little room.

Wang Xuan spent most of his time sitting cross-legged on the bed, circulating the Divine Illumination Scripture.

Sitting in Divine Illumination, he drew his mind inward and repeatedly tempered his newly broken-through Three-Unity Great Xiantian realm.

He possessed the [One-Click Max] talent. Any cultivation technique he obtained could instantly reach an unprecedented ultimate realm.

But it was not as though he could not cultivate on his own. It was just that the speed... was like a snail crawling. After experiencing the exhilaration of one-click max level, going back to slowly cultivating was simply torture.

Still, cultivation itself could settle his state of mind.

On the second day, things outside became livelier.

First, the footsteps grew more numerous, pacing back and forth near his home.

Then came deliberately hushed conversations, along with gazes secretly peering inside through the cracks of the door and windows.

Wang Xuan ignored them.

He cultivated when it was time to cultivate and drank nutrient supplements when it was time to eat.

On the afternoon of the third day, the sound of a key entering the lock rang out.

Click.

The door opened.

Wang Xuan did not even raise his eyelids, remaining in the state of Sitting in Divine Illumination. This house had been allocated, so it was perfectly normal for others to have keys. Besides, that thin metal door could not stop anyone.

A young man entered, about Wang Xuan's age. His face was piled with smiles, but the smile was somewhat stiff.

"Wang Xuan? Hey, it really is you! I'm Zuo Feng, remember me? We were elementary school classmates!" The newcomer walked in familiarly and casually shut the door behind him. "Not bad, brother. I heard you went on a killing spree in the Heavens Tower and even killed Royal Clan members out? Awesome! You're the only badass our class ever produced!"

Zuo Feng.

Wang Xuan did have someone like that in his memories. The surname was fairly uncommon. They had been in the same elementary school class, but had rarely interacted, and his impression was vague.

Zuo Feng kept rattling on, talking from embarrassing elementary school stories to recent events, trying desperately to act familiar. His enthusiasm was a little exaggerated.

Wang Xuan did not respond. Even his breathing rhythm did not change.

Yet in his perception, Zuo Feng's heartbeat was absurdly fast. The sound of blood rushing through his veins carried tension, along with something deeper... fear and despair.

The act was far too clumsy.

After talking for a long time and seeing that Wang Xuan showed no reaction at all, like a stone statue, Zuo Feng's smile finally could not hold.

That exaggerated warmth ebbed away like a tide, replaced by bleak misery.

He fell silent for several seconds, then suddenly relaxed. His shoulders slumped, and he dropped to the floor.

"Forget it. I can't keep acting." Zuo Feng's voice became very calm, even carrying a hint of relief. "Wang Xuan, I know you saw through me."

"Eighteen years of studying... that might have been the happiest time of my life." His gaze was unfocused as he stared at the ground. "At eighteen, I didn't awaken a talent and entered a Plot World... I don't even know what hellish place I entered. I somehow muddled through and came back alive."

"Then I saw 'that.'" Zuo Feng tugged at the corner of his mouth, as though laughing and crying at the same time.

He turned to Wang Xuan, whose eyes remained closed, his gaze hollow. "I no longer have any hope for the rest of my life. I didn't come here today because I wanted to."

Zuo Feng paused, took a deep breath, and said as though exhausting all his strength, "Wang Xuan, please avenge me. Do everything you can to kill the Royal Clan, kill the Longevity Families, and overturn this goddamn world!"

As soon as the words fell—

His hands suddenly rose beyond his control and, at a bizarre angle and with immense force, fiercely clamped around his own throat!

There was no struggle on Zuo Feng's face, only complete calm and relief.

Crack!

If you can't find the book by title, try searching for the author. It may have simply been renamed!

A sharp snapping sound rang out.

His hands forcibly twisted his own neck apart.

His head hung at an impossible angle, and his body collapsed limply to the floor. A trace of flushed red remained on his face, while his eyes stayed open, fixed in Wang Xuan's direction.

The room was deathly silent.

Wang Xuan slowly opened his eyes.

He looked at Zuo Feng's corpse, his gaze complicated.

"So even a safe zone isn't absolutely safe." He murmured, "Killing yourself... the rules allow it."

After Zuo Feng, the door opened again.

This time, a middle-aged woman entered. Wang Xuan vaguely recognized her. She had been a neighbor on the same street before, and she had even given him candy when he was little.

When she entered, her face was full of despair. Her lips trembled as though she wanted to say something, but no words came out.

She looked at Wang Xuan, then at Zuo Feng's corpse on the floor, and tears immediately streamed down her face.

There were no pleasantries and no nonsense.

She merely mouthed a silent "Sorry" at Wang Xuan.

Then, just like Zuo Feng, her hands rose beyond her control and twisted her own neck apart.

Thud.

Another corpse fell.

Then came the third, the fourth...

Men and women, young and old.

Some faces were very familiar to Wang Xuan—classmates, former playmates.

Others were unfamiliar, but upon careful recollection, they seemed to have briefly crossed paths with him sometime during his eighteen years of life.

As though following a predetermined order of appearance, they entered this tiny room one after another, from childhood to adulthood, from vague memories to clear ones.

When they first entered, some still tried to force a smile and say, "Long time no see." Some broke down immediately, pointing at Wang Xuan and cursing him hysterically for provoking the Royal Clan and dragging everyone down with him. Others simply cried, endlessly.

But in the end, without exception—

After a brief bout of madness or despair, they would strangely calm down and leave behind a few final words.

"Wang Xuan, live well."

"See a higher view for me."

"Kill them all!"

Then came that crisp sound of crack.

Their necks twisted apart, and they fell to the floor.

Wang Xuan remained sitting cross-legged on the bed, his eyelids lowered, like an old monk in meditation.

When night completely fell, the door closed for the last time.

Those who had entered during the day never went back out.

Yet at some unknown point, all the corpses on the floor had vanished. Even the bloodstains had been cleaned away completely. The floor was spotless and gleaming, so clean it was almost glaring.

The room was pitch-black. No lights were on.

Wang Xuan kept his eyes open, staring into the darkness before him.

At some unknown point, his right hand had clenched into a fist. His nails dug deep into his palm, and blood dripped through his fingers onto the old cement floor.

Drip.

Drip.

The sound was faint, but exceptionally clear in the silence.

He thought of someone from the history of his previous life—Huang Chao. How did that saying go again?

Would he trample the bones of officials across the heavenly streets?

No! It was, follow the records and kill them by clan genealogy!

Wang Xuan slowly exhaled. His breath was heavy and carried a rusty scent of blood.

He was not a stone.

So many people he knew had died before him, one by one, and in such a cruel manner, dying for him.

How could he possibly remain unmoved?

It felt as though a piece of red-hot iron was lodged in his chest, scorching and suffocating him, crushing his breath.

Anger? Grief? Killing intent?

All of it.

But one thing was even clearer to him.

"If I wag my tail and beg for mercy, would they not have to die?" Wang Xuan asked softly into the darkness, as though asking himself.

The answer was obvious.

No.

From the moment they signed that Servant Contract, their fates had already been decided. In the eyes of the Royal Clan, they were stepping stones, consumables, and disposable chess pieces.

Although Wang Xuan did not know the specific terms of the contract, he recalled the thousands of Players who had suddenly died as funeral offerings after Shen Chenzhou and Yu Qingtian were killed in the Plot World. He knew the contract was far from simple, and death had merely been a matter of sooner or later.

The Royal Clan used this method for no more than to plant a thorn in his heart and leave behind a shadow.

Even if they could not achieve that, disgusting him a little would still count as accomplishing their goal.

It was despicable.

But effective.

Wang Xuan spread open his hand and looked at the wound in his palm where his nails had pierced it. Blood was still slowly seeping out.

"Longevity Families, Royal Clan..." He chewed over the words, a cold curve tugging at his lips.

Who knew how many more despicable methods awaited him? These five days would likely be hard to endure.