A visit

"Captain Wang, we successfully eliminated the Mutant Cockroach. No casualties."

"Mutated creatures elsewhere have almost always caused casualties, though players have stepped in just in time. There weren't any players here, but this Mutant Cockroach didn't kill anyone. The people at this company were really lucky."

Several officers discussed it quietly. Only after a while did they notice their captain staring into space. "Captain Wang?"

Seemingly snapped out of his thoughts, Captain Wang said softly, "Did you notice that young man named Xiao Hao?"

"The young man who scared off the cockroach?"

"Yes. Something's off about him."

The officers exchanged puzzled looks.

They hadn't noticed anything off about him. Like everyone else, he had looked shaken, and he had been meek and hesitant around the police.

At most, he had shown more courage and presence of mind than the others when faced with danger.

Captain Wang had spent over a decade as a detective and had extensive interrogation experience.

The young man had seemed no different from anyone else, but his instincts told him that he was hiding something.

Besides, the man who had wet his pants had told him how Xiao Hao had scared off the cockroach.

Every word of his explanation made sense, yet Captain Wang still felt something was wrong.

That cockroach had clearly been running for its life.

With such heavy firepower ahead of it, it was certain to die under that hail of bullets!

Yet despite that, it had insisted on heading toward them, even at the risk of its life.

That meant there had been something behind it that terrified it far more than they did!

Could someone really achieve that effect just by exploiting his identity as a human to frighten it psychologically?

They were human too. Why hadn't they had the same effect?

There had been a whole group of them, and every one of them had a gun!

Just what could have made it think that this group of armed humans was far less dangerous than whatever was behind it?

Captain Wang frowned deeply and ordered, "Take away that cockroach we shot full of holes. Also, get me this company's surveillance footage. I want to see why the Mutant Cockroach ran!"

"Yes, sir!"

Meanwhile, squeezed into a subway car, Xiao Hao rubbed his temples helplessly.

He had still drawn attention.

Fortunately, he hadn't exposed any of his abilities. Even if the police obtained the surveillance footage, they wouldn't be able to see anything.

After returning home, Xiao Hao searched online for news to check the situation elsewhere.

Sure enough, mutated creatures had appeared all over the world. However, mutations were relatively rare. Most cities had only one or two cases, and some hadn't had even one.

Xiao Hao was utterly baffled.

If each city had only one or two cases, why had he happened to run into one?

What rotten luck!

Of course, Xiao Hao wasn't foolish enough to believe everything in those reports.

They were probably still concealing quite a lot.

Still, Xiao Hao guessed that the truth would be made public soon.

Only by making it public could they improve the survival chances of the players selected for the open beta.

Since he didn't have to go to work anyway, Xiao Hao simply stayed in his tiny rented room and gathered information.

Inside a secret base in the Dragon Kingdom, the Dragon Transformation Pool was established.

The Dragon Transformation Pool consisted of players from various games. It was desperately short on members, with only sixty-five people-a drop in the bucket for an entire nation.

Moreover, most of those sixty-five players were merely making up the numbers. Fewer than ten truly possessed powerful supernatural abilities.

The finest special forces soldiers from various fields were putting sixty-two of them through training.

The remaining three were already special forces soldiers themselves. They had become the Dragon Kingdom's three great pillars.

One couldn't help marveling that the Dragon Kingdom was the most efficient nation in the world when it came to taking action.

It had already accomplished this much on the very first day of the break from the games, putting it far beyond the reach of other nations.

The players being drilled looked miserable, but not a single one gave up on the training.

Anyone who had made it out of a survival game had an overwhelming desire to live.

The Dragon Transformation Pool had an astonishingly large support team. It numbered over ten thousand, and every member was among the best of the best. Captain Wang was one of them.

After eliminating the Mutant Cockroach, Captain Wang had been assigned to the Bole Group.

Most of the sixty-five members were missing people who had returned and been identified as players immediately. A smaller number had been discovered through investigations.

The Bole Group's task was to find the remaining players hiding among the population.

Xiao Hao ranked near the top of the list of suspected players.

Captain Wang couldn't see Xiao Hao using any supernatural abilities in the surveillance footage. Yet that only made him feel that this young man was even more extraordinary.

Mutated monsters could at least put up a fight against other players.

But faced with him, that creature hadn't even had the courage to attack!

With that thought, Captain Wang ordered, "Get ready. We're going to pay this mysterious young man a visit."

The officers were already geared up and ready to go. "Yes, sir!"

Inside a black minivan, several officers read Xiao Hao's file with mixed feelings.

"Captain, his file says he's an orphan. Should we find his parents first before going to see him?"

"Time waits for no one. The players said their 'break' lasts only seven days. We can't possibly find the parents who abandoned him over a decade ago in just a few days."

"This might be a sensitive subject for him. Let's avoid it as much as possible when we talk to him."

"He's had a rough life all these years. He was even bullied at school. If necessary... bring the bullies to justice and punish them severely!"

"We investigated the company he works for. This job of his... the company isn't exactly operating legally, and not one of its executives is any good. He... ah..."

The more they discussed it, the heavier their hearts grew.

When an orphan was bullied, no one would stand up for him.

He had probably experienced more of the world's cold indifference in those years than most people did in a lifetime.

If someone like that suddenly gained power, they would be lucky if he didn't destroy or rule the world. And now they wanted him to step forward and devote himself to others?

Conversely, Captain Wang wasn't at all surprised that someone like him could survive the game.

Although he couldn't confirm whether Xiao Hao was a player, Captain Wang was already treating him as one.

Even if he ultimately turned out not to be a player, the Fear-Based Survival Method he had proposed alone warranted that treatment.

The minivan drove into a working-class residential neighborhood, and several officers in plain clothes headed straight into an old apartment building.

As they learned more about Xiao Hao's past and saw the environment he lived in, the officers felt a weight pressing against their chests.

Xiao Hao lived on the seventh floor, but there was no elevator. By the time they climbed up and were about to knock, they were out of breath and found themselves hesitating.

He had to climb all those stairs every day. It must have been exhausting.

This world had never treated him kindly, yet their task now was to persuade him to treat that same world with kindness.

Knock, knock, knock.

Xiao Hao, who was looking through information, frowned.

He always paid his rent on time. His landlord rarely came looking for him, and even when he did, he was never this polite.

Knock, knock, knock.

Xiao Hao initially wanted to pretend he wasn't home, but then reconsidered. Since they had already come to his door, they must have finished their investigation. Pretending to be out would only make him look as though he had something to hide.

Closing the laptop he used for work, Xiao Hao got up to answer the door.

If it's good fortune, there's nothing to fear. If it's trouble, there's no escaping it.

The wooden door creaked open, and Xiao Hao saw the Captain Wang from the detective squad that morning.

Sure enough, the man had noticed something after all.

Xiao Hao's expression remained unchanged. The man might be a seasoned veteran, but Xiao Hao, who had struggled to survive in the Steel Forest for nearly twenty years, was no pushover either.