The Great Benefactor System

Don't come over!

Stay away from me!

Chen Feng backed up two steps like a startled bird.

The landlady blinked in confusion. She had absolute confidence in her looks. Whenever she went out, men were so captivated by her that they stopped in their tracks.

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

The landlady narrowed her beautiful eyes. "Handsome, what are you afraid of?"

"Afraid? Who, me?"

He was facing a she-devil who had killed over a hundred people and turned them into human skins to hang up.

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

The landlady invited him in. "Then how about coming inside to get out of the rain?"

"No!"

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

"What a strange man."

Apparently displeased by his lack of interest, the landlady sashayed away.

Chen Feng let out a long breath. Then he touched his pants and found them a little wet.

Sweat?

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

This place was terrifying. No wonder so many transmigrators before him had met their end here.

Wait—the others before me!

Chen Feng suddenly remembered that in the previous cycle, he seemed to have inherited their systems. Surely loading a save hadn't reset that too?

"System, activate!"

He hurriedly called for the system, but three numbered boxes appeared before his eyes instead.

What are these?

Chen Feng reached out. Just as his hand was about to touch a box, a mechanical voice sounded beside his ear.

The first box bore the identifier DS-01-DSR. It said, "People are good by nature."

The second box bore the identifier DS-01-DER. It said, "Human nature is evil; goodness is a pretense."

The third box bore the identifier LS-02-SHSG. It said, "The realm, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide."

Chen Feng remembered that his Save-Load System had also had a strange string of letters and numbers before its name. 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.

Apparently, he could only choose one.

A system notification sounded beside 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?

When Chen Feng asked, he learned that System Points were a universal system currency that could enhance a system's functions. For example, one Point could replenish one Save-Load Count for the Save-Load System—effectively giving him another life.

The Great Benefactor System could issue charitable missions based on his experiences and reward him with System Points.

"Put the two together, and doesn't that make me immortal?"

Excited, Chen Feng looked at the mission list:

[He Ting, the landlady of Happiness Internet Cafe, is a demoness who feeds on people's souls. For years, she has used job offers for internet cafe attendants as a pretext to lure in homeless men, kill them, and turn them into human skins.]

[Mission objective: Destroy the power behind Happiness Internet Cafe.]

[Mission reward: 1–9 System Points, depending on how thoroughly the objective is completed.]

Chen Feng looked through the options.

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

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

As for the highest-tier reward...

Chen Feng stared at the words "eliminate the demoness" in the mission objective and pointed at himself. "Me, fight a demoness? Are you serious?"

How was that any different from throwing a meat bun to a dog?

I'll just report her. That should be enough.

The moment that thought crossed his mind, he saw the older and younger police officers 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 had been worrying about where to go. He could shelter from the rain under a bridge, but he remembered that an invisible monster capable of snapping a person's neck with its bare hands was still roaming outside.

He needed somewhere safe to spend the night.

Chen Feng waved the two officers down. "Hello, officers."

"Hello. Can we help you?"

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

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

"Begging?"

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

As far as she was concerned, he was either a drifter or a lazy bum. Maybe 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 flashed through Old Li's mind: "Cihang City Peacekeepers Ignore Citizen's Plight, Leave Him to Starve on the Street."

No exaggeration: every stroke of that headline could cost someone in charge their job.

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

"Good. That sounds great."

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

As soon as he got in, a wave of heat hit him.

In weather this hot, they would never leave the air conditioner off 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 Happiness Internet Cafe so long because they were investigating the landlady?

Just as he suspected, Zhang Ruobing began complaining after fastening her seat belt. "Master, we spent half the day on that. It was a wasted trip."

Old Li rested his hands on the steering wheel and smiled. "There you go getting impatient again."

"I'm not impatient," Zhang Ruobing protested. "We searched all afternoon and didn't find a single clue. I don't think these homeless men disappearing has anything to do with Happiness Internet Cafe."

"Hard to say."

Old Li told his apprentice not to jump to conclusions.

"Hard to say? According to our investigation, the landlady hardly ever goes out. Even if she is the killer, where are the victims?"

Most of them are hanging upstairs.

And one of them is right here in the car.

Chen Feng made those comments to himself, but something bothered him.

Anyone who killed people regularly knew that killing was easy; disposing of bodies was hard. The third floor was covered in hanging human skins. After searching all afternoon, even two pigs should have found them. How could the officers have found no clues at all?

Then he remembered how a group of people had gone upstairs earlier, yet he had been the only one to reach the third floor. There was more to this than it seemed.

Just then, the car's radio crackled.

"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 to say he was all right. "Why?"

"Someone reported another person trying to take their life at Cihang Bridge. We have to go."

"Why 'another'?" Chen Feng asked. "Does that bridge have a lot of incidents?"

Old Li nodded. "You're from out of town, so you wouldn't know. Ever since Cihang Bridge was built, people have kept jumping off it. The government eventually put up some 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 like like you back?'"

"Did it help?" Chen Feng asked.

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

Well, that certainly had an effect.

"Why are so many people taking their own lives?" Chen Feng asked. "Are Cihang City residents under that much pressure?"

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

After a pause, Old Li said ominously, "A water ghost."