Great Benefactor System

Don't come any closer!

Stay away from me!

Chen Feng shrank back two steps like a startled bird.

The Landlady blinked in confusion. She had absolute confidence in her beauty. Whenever she went out, men were so smitten they could barely walk.

But this man was actively avoiding her. It was far too strange.

Narrowing her lovely eyes, the Landlady asked, "Handsome, what are you afraid of?"

"Afraid? Me?"

He was facing a demoness who had killed over a hundred people, turned them into human skins, and hung them up.

Chen Feng forced himself to look calm, but inside he was screaming, P-p-p-please don't kill me, miss! I don't want to end up hanging from a rope!

The Landlady invited him in. "Why don't you come inside and get out of the rain?"

"No!"

Chen Feng refused without hesitation. He might not want to work, but he still wanted to live.

"What a strange man."

Apparently annoyed by his lack of interest, the Landlady sashayed away.

Chen Feng let out a long breath. When he touched his pants, he found they were a little wet.

Was it sweat?

He looked down at his crotch. "Oh, it's piss. I knew something like this wouldn't make me sweat."

This place was terrifying. No wonder so many of the transmigrators before him had fallen here.

Wait—the others!

Chen Feng suddenly remembered inheriting his predecessors' systems in the last loop. Surely loading his save hadn't reset those too?

"System, activate!"

He hurriedly called out to the system, but three numbered boxes appeared before his eyes.

What were these?

Chen Feng reached out. Just as his hand was about to touch one of the boxes, a mechanical voice sounded in his ear.

The first box was numbered DS-01-DSR. It said, "Man is born good."

The second box was numbered DS-01-DER. It said, "Human nature is evil; goodness is but a pretense."

The third box was numbered LS-02-SHSG. It said, "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide."

Chen Feng remembered that his Save-Load System had also come with a strange string of letters and numbers. He understood at once: each box represented a system.

Let's open one and see!

Chen Feng grabbed the first box. The other two gradually faded away and vanished.

Apparently, he could only choose one.

A system notification sounded in his ear.

[Ding! Congratulations on activating the Great Benefactor System.]

[This system will help you earn large amounts of System Points, grow quickly, and complete your mission to save the world.]

System Points?

After asking, Chen Feng learned that System Points were a universal currency for systems. They could be used to upgrade a system's functions. In the Save-Load System's case, one point could replenish the Save-Load Count by one—effectively giving him another life.

The Great Benefactor System could issue charitable missions based on its user's experiences and reward him with System Points.

"If I combine the two, won't I be immortal?"

Excited, Chen Feng looked at the mission list:

[He Ting, the Landlady of the Happiness Internet Cafe, is a Demoness who feeds on people's essence. She has long used job postings for internet cafe attendants as a pretext to lure in homeless men, kill them, and turn them into human skins.]

[Mission objective: Destroy the Happiness Internet Cafe's operation.]

[Mission reward: 1–9 System Points, depending on your performance.]

Chen Feng looked over the details.

Investigating, gathering evidence of the Internet Cafe's crimes, and reporting it to get it shut down would earn only the lowest-tier reward.

Storming the Happiness Internet Cafe and driving off He Ting would earn a mid-tier reward.

As for the highest-tier reward...

Staring at the words "eliminate the Demoness" in the mission objective, Chen Feng pointed at himself. "Me, fight the Demoness? Seriously?"

He might as well serve himself up on a platter.

I'll just report her and call it a day.

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he saw the two officers, one older and one younger, come out of the Internet Cafe.

"Master."

"How many times have I told you? Use my rank when we're working!"

"Captain, didn't you say you were quitting smoking?"

"Ah, this is my last one!"

Perfect timing.

Chen Feng's eyes lit up. He'd been worrying about where to go. He could shelter from the rain under a bridge or somewhere like that, but he remembered the invisible monster roaming outside—the one that could snap a person's neck with its bare hands.

He needed somewhere safe to spend the night.

Chen Feng waved them down. "Hello, officers."

"Hello. Can we help you?"

"My name's Chen Feng. I'm from out of town."

Chen Feng made up a story on the spot. He said he'd lost his wallet and phone, knew no one here, and was starving. "Could you spare me something to eat?"

"A beggar?"

The female officer, Zhang Ruobing, looked Chen Feng up and down. "There's a construction site right there. You could earn a hundred or two for a day's work. You're a grown man with two working arms and legs. How did you end up without money for food?"

So he was either a vagrant or lazy. Possibly both.

Zhang Ruobing hated people who wanted something for nothing. "Master, ignore him. Let's go."

"Wait, don't go!"

At his apprentice's words, a headline for tomorrow's front page flashed through Old Li's mind: "Cihang City Police Ignore Citizen's Plight, Let Him Starve to Death on the Street."

No exaggeration: every stroke in that headline could cost some official his job.

Old Li immediately caught Chen Feng by the hand, afraid the man might starve to death right in front of him. "My surname's Li. Just call me Old Li. I know a good beef noodle place. Let's get you fed, then take you to a shelter where you can rest. How's that?"

"Sure. That sounds great."

And so, under Zhang Ruobing's disdainful gaze, Chen Feng got into a police car for the first time in his life.

The moment he climbed in, a wave of heat hit him.

In weather this hot, they would have had the air-conditioning on while driving. The car must have been parked here for a while.

Chen Feng looked at the two in the front seats and wondered, Were they in the Happiness Internet Cafe so long because they were investigating the Landlady?

As if confirming his suspicion, Zhang Ruobing began complaining as soon as she fastened her seat belt. "Master, we spent all that time in there for nothing."

Old Li gripped the steering wheel and smiled. "There you go, getting impatient again."

"I'm not impatient," Zhang Ruobing protested. "We searched all afternoon and found nothing. As far as I'm concerned, those missing homeless men have nothing to do with the Happiness Internet Cafe."

"Hard to say."

Old Li told his apprentice not to jump to conclusions.

"Hard to say? Our investigation shows that the Landlady hardly ever goes out. Even if she really is the killer, where are the victims?"

Most of them are hanging upstairs.

And one of them is right here in the car.

As Chen Feng grumbled inwardly, something puzzled him.

Anyone who killed regularly knew that killing was easy; getting rid of the bodies was hard. The third floor was covered in human skins and corpses. After searching all afternoon, even two pigs should have found them. How had the officers failed to turn up a single clue?

He remembered the strange way a whole group had gone upstairs earlier, yet he alone had reached the third floor. There was more to this than met the eye.

Just then, the car's radio crackled to life.

"This is 823235... Received... Understood."

Old Li put down the radio and turned back with a grave expression. "Sorry, Mr. Chen. Are you terribly hungry right now?"

Chen Feng waved a hand. "I'm all right. Why?"

"Someone reported another person trying to jump off Cihang Bridge. We have to go."

"Why 'another'?" Chen Feng asked. "Do things happen on that bridge a lot?"

Old Li nodded. "You're from out of town, so you wouldn't know. People have kept jumping off Cihang Bridge ever since it was built. Eventually, the government put up signs on the bridge to try to change that."

Chen Feng paused. "Signs?"

"Whenever someone walks across the Bridge of Life, lights on the railing come on and display messages. Things like 'Tired?', 'How have you been lately?', and 'Does the person you love love you back?'"

"Did it work?" Chen Feng asked.

"It did," Old Li said. "A year later, the number of suicides on the bridge had increased sixfold."

Oh. So it worked pretty well.

"Why do so many people kill themselves?" Chen Feng asked. "Is life in Cihang City that stressful?"

"The suicides have nothing to do with the messages or stress," Old Li told him. "The reason so many people die at that bridge is..."

After a pause, Old Li said grimly, "A Water Ghost."