Life is Far More Absurd Than Fiction

Fengning City!

A prefecture-level city in Yuanhai Province, Fengning City had kept pace with the nation's great leaps in development. It was a relatively prosperous mid-sized city with high per-capita spending. Compared to a provincial capital-level metropolis, it only lagged behind in population, area, and a start that had come a few years later.

It was a thriving city, bursting with growth.

The view narrowed onto a three-story building. It was a somewhat rundown apartment block, two streets away from the city's main road and right beside a produce market. Its only greenery was the creeping ivy on its back wall.

Aijia Apartment!

The first floor had been rented out as storefronts: a noodle shop, a mala tang shop, and a grain, oil, and dried seasoning store. The upper two floors were residential apartments. A straight hallway ran through each floor, with rooms facing one another on both sides. Between the two floors, there were around thirty rooms.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Russell expressionlessly knocked on the door to Room 213. He was the landlord of this apartment building, and he had come today to discuss renewing the lease. If the tenant did not plan to stay, he would terminate the contract and post the room online.

He knocked continuously for five minutes without any intention of stopping. He knew someone was inside, because the tenant was a female streamer who lived at night and usually caught up on sleep during the day.

Sure enough, under Russell's determination to knock a hole through the door if it was not opened, there was finally movement inside. A string of obscenities involving his relatives drifted over, and only then did the female streamer open the door in a spaghetti-strap nightgown. Another ten seconds passed before her bleary eyes managed to focus.

"Oh? Isn't this the handsome landlord? What wind blew you here today? You actually came knocking on my door?" The moment the streamer saw Russell, she wrapped both hands around his arm and spoke in a syrupy voice.

The sugar content was off the charts!

"Hehe, what a firm arm. I couldn't tell you had such a nice body."

Russell paid her no attention. He pulled his arm free and took a step back, keeping a certain distance from her.

It was not because the streamer was ugly. She had the standard internet celebrity face, and plenty of people called her a goddess during her streams. Nor was there anything wrong with Russell's orientation.

Russell had seen the streamer's ID card. He knew her double eyelids, pointed chin, and high nose bridge were all fake. Originally, she had small eyes, a flat nose, and a square face. Her flower-like beauty was the result of two great arts: makeup and plastic surgery.

Russell got straight to the point. "Miss, your lease expires next month. I came to ask whether you intend to extend it. If you do, you can pay six months' rent in advance today."

"You're so annoying. Talking about money hurts our feelings. How about giving me a discount on the rent?" The streamer shot him two flirtatious looks. It was not that she lacked money; she simply enjoyed teasing people.

Having grown used to online losers fawning over her, she was very interested in someone like Russell, who did not give her the time of day. If she managed to hook him, it would make her feel even more accomplished about her beauty.

Russell put on a smile. "Sorry, you're not my type. I prefer natural beauties!"

"..."

The streamer rolled her eyes, pulled her strap back onto her shoulder, folded her arms across her chest, and leaned against the door. "To tell you the truth, the toilet here gets clogged every other day. I don't plan on staying any longer. I'll move out at the end of the month. My sugar daddy has prepared an apartment for me."

"Alright. I'll come collect the door key at the end of the month. Remember to have someone clean the room. You can also pay a hundred yuan, and I'll have the cleaning staff handle it." Russell remained strictly businesslike, then added kindly, "Although the contract ends here, we may have opportunities to work together in the future. If your sugar daddy dumps you, you're welcome to move back in anytime."

"..."

This conversation could make silicone angry. The streamer took two deep breaths, unwilling to lower herself to the level of a hopelessly single loser like Russell. "Handsome landlord, remember to come at night when you collect the key at the end of the month. Don't disturb my beauty sleep during the day. And... message me on WeChat beforehand. I don't want to open the door for you while I'm streaming. It'll cause unnecessary misunderstandings among my fans, you understand?"

"No problem. Let's add each other on WeChat first, so it'll be easier to stay in touch!"

"Don't you already have my WeChat?" The streamer looked utterly bewildered. "We added each other when I first moved in."

Russell shook his head without the slightest embarrassment. "I deleted you after you sent me a selfie in the middle of the night last time."

The streamer's eyelids twitched. With her hands on her hips, she suppressed her anger and said, "Then there's no need to add me again if you deleted me. Just call to notify me!"

"I deleted your number too!"

Streamer: "..."

After adding each other on WeChat again, the streamer gave Russell's retreating back the middle finger and slammed the door shut with a bang. Tonight's stream had material now: a pure and reserved beautiful female tenant bullied by a tyrannical landlord, nearly losing both body and fortune. She desperately needed donations from her simps to soothe her wounded, tender heart.

Russell, male, twenty-five years old, single, no bad habits...

Being able to own a three-story apartment building in the city at such a young age—even if the building was rather old—was no small fortune. So it definitely had not come through hard work.

It had been an afternoon more than half a year ago. Russell had still been a junior police officer then. After work, his eyelids had twitched incessantly, and on a whim, he bought a lottery ticket. Then he received a call: his parents had been in a car accident... and they were gone.

They had gone swiftly and cleanly, leaving this apartment building to Russell as his inheritance.

The driver responsible had been a somewhat famous entrepreneur in the city. He had even received an Outstanding Entrepreneur Award and could barely be considered a local big shot. The cause was that he had closed a deal with a client over dinner, then drank and drove with his female secretary. Halfway down the road, his body jolted, his eyes went hazy, and his limbs turned weak. Unable to hold the steering wheel, he drove into oncoming traffic and crashed into Russell's parents' sedan, causing the tragedy.

Russell's parents were gone just like that. The entrepreneur and his female secretary were gone too. The accident was processed quickly, and the investigation determined that the entrepreneur bore full responsibility. There was no bullying with power during the proceedings. The entrepreneur's family voluntarily accepted all responsibility and paid a substantial sum in compensation, asking only that Russell keep the investigation's truth secret and let the entrepreneur die with a shred of dignity.

Of course, the entrepreneur's family might have been so cooperative because Russell had been wearing a police uniform.

Watching the entrepreneur's father, a gray-haired old man, kneel and weep for his son's reputation, Russell could only remain silent. The dead were already dead. What meaning was there in saying anything else?

While clearing out his parents' room, Russell found a diary hidden in a secret compartment in the bookshelf. It contained incoherent coded text, words clipped from newspapers, and a series of unordered Arabic numerals.

An ordinary person might merely have found it strange, but Russell was a cop... a police officer. At a glance, he recognized that it was not a diary, but a codebook.

This left Russell utterly confused. His father, Luohan Tang, was a balding, potbellied, middle-aged guy who picked at his feet. Other than collecting rent, he played mahjong. His mother, Fang Yanqing, was a woman whose figure had gone out of shape, and her daily routine was about the same: other than collecting rent, she played mahjong. What secrets could two ordinary commoners like them possibly have that required a hidden codebook?

Russell spent three days deciphering the codebook, comparing the Arabic numerals character by character against the first book from the left on every shelf of the bookcase. The conclusion left him dumbfounded: his parents were assassins!

With such a mysterious identity as assassins, what the hell was with collecting rent and playing mahjong every day?

True masters lived among the common folk? The greatest hermits hid in the city?

Even if they did not care about the cool image of being assassins and deliberately kept a low profile, they should at least have had decent gear. Yet Russell's parents not only lacked suits, leather shoes, and sunglasses—they did not even have hair gel.

Thinking of his father's beer belly, which wobbled three times with a single slap, and his mother's barrel waist, Russell felt that they had hidden themselves very successfully. No one would ever associate them with assassins. Especially his father, Luohan Tang: the first thing he did after getting up each morning was carefully comb over his bald crown, trying to sweep the hair from both sides toward the middle.

Who would believe that such a greasy middle-aged man, locked in a daily life-or-death struggle with his own hair follicles, was an assassin?

And besides, what kind of mindset did assassin parents have when they raised their son to become a police officer?

Life was more absurd than fiction. While deciphering the codebook, Russell discovered quite a bit more information that made his balls ache. For example, more than half the blind dates his mother, Fang Yanqing, had arranged for him were fucking people from the industry. Even his ex-girlfriend, who had supposedly been transferred abroad for work and reluctantly chosen to break up with him amicably, had been one too. He had even been sad about it for a while.

"I hate assassins!"

Russell covered his face with one hand. In this family, it had almost turned out that everyone except him was an assassin.

After being depressed for a while, Russell resigned from the police force. He could not expose his parents, nor could he bring himself to wear the uniform again. So he transferred the three-story apartment building into his name, became a landlord, and recently even started learning mahjong.

Russell had thought the matter would end there, but he had underestimated his own death-seeking nature. Curious about his parents and ex-girlfriend, he hacked into his father's chat account and lurked in the Assassin Group every day.

The account was on the computer, and Russell succeeded in guessing the password after only two tries: his mother Fang Yanqing's Chinese pinyin, plus the number 520. Based on what Russell knew about his parents, his father had definitely been the passive one when setting the password.

The Assassin Group was lively. It often hit 99+ unread messages in the blink of an eye. Aside from discussing work in code, these people mostly bragged and joked around. Their identities came in every variety: comic artists, film critics, photographers, script editors, and even people living on welfare. All were professions with an extremely high degree of freedom.

Most outrageous of all, six out of every ten assassins were full-time web novel authors.

At first, these assassins had all worked as freelance contributors for publishing houses. Later, physical books were bombarded into oblivion by ebooks, and publishing houses went bankrupt on a massive scale. They collectively switched careers and became web novelists, doing quite well for themselves. They were exceptionally skilled at formulaic commercial fiction.

Russell believed they had not told the truth about their respective identities, for obvious reasons. If this group was serious, then eighty percent of the web novel authors on Qidian deserved serious reflection. Especially those authors who habitually dropped their novels, or suddenly stopped updating before abruptly returning from the dead—check them, and every single one would be a hit. No exceptions.

Through their daily bragging, Russell gradually came to understand the real lives of his parents and ex-girlfriend. They were not as glamorous as in the movies, and they all felt disgust and revulsion toward their identities as assassins.

Unfortunately, once they entered this line of work, they could not simply make one score and walk away. They hated their identities, but had no way to escape. Unless the group owner... the boss who knew everyone's real identities... died, they would have to accept their fate for the rest of their lives!

Take Russell's father, Luohan Tang. He had originally been a retired soldier with nothing to his name. To raise money to marry Fang Yanqing, Russell's mother, he had been dragged into this pit by his old squad leader. By the time Russell was born, it was already too late for him to quit. He had even dragged Fang Yanqing into the pit, where she was responsible for booking train tickets, gathering intelligence, drafting assassination plans, and moonlighting as the accountant.

From then on, Russell lurked in the Assassin Group and watched them brag. To be honest, these people came from all corners of the country and loved nothing more than arguing. Russell learned quite a bit of obscure knowledge from them.

The innermost room on the apartment building's third floor was where Luohan Tang and Fang Yanqing had lived the longest. It was also where Russell had found the codebook. There were many secrets in this room. Russell had cleared away everything he could find, but he worried that some secrets remained hidden and undiscovered, so he had continued living here.

Russell first checked the phone he had found wedged in a gap in the bedside table. Seeing that it had no missed calls or messages, he casually set it aside to charge. Then he turned on the computer, logged into the account with practiced ease, and began his daily lurking.

At that moment, a mechanical synthesized electronic voice rang out in the room. More precisely, it sounded inside Russell's mind, and no one but him could hear it.

Host, please note: the third mission world will begin shortly. A ten-minute countdown will now commence. Please prepare!

The voice repeated the prompt three times, but Russell did not respond. He picked up a cigarette from the computer desk and lit it, then sat silently without moving. He did not smoke, but sometimes he lit one to ease his fatigue.

Russell, male, twenty-five years old, single, no bad habits... and he had a system!

New author, new book! This newbie begs for bookmarks!