He'd actually reached max level?
Curious, Zheng Xun tapped his wristband. A translucent virtual screen popped up, displaying all his information.
[Name: Zheng Xun] [Level: lv99] [Spirit: 999] [Combat power: 999] [Card slots: Time Stop Card ×1, Resurrection Card ×1] [Weapon: Inflatable Hammer (romantic pink with a star pattern, a favorite of manly men)] [Subordinate: Little Red Riding Hood (a reclusive girl with four faces; don't call her a kid, call her Sister Hong)] [Evaluation: Hard to believe someone actually grinded the beginner stage 1,000 times and reached max level doing it. Good luck, you boring lunatic]
Zheng Xun was speechless when he read the final evaluation.
Did they think he'd wanted to grind it a thousand times?!
So annoying.
Although the evaluation had taken an inexplicable jab at him, the good news was that his persistence in the beginner stage had actually gotten him to max level.
It was hard not to think of the legends of the sword god of Ten-Mile Slope.
Even though he'd reached max level, Zheng Xun wasn't particularly proud of it.
The White Tower had been around for so many years that plenty of people had probably reached level 99 already.
It probably wasn't much of an achievement.
Stay humble.
Knowing nothing about the outside world, Zheng Xun naturally had no idea that the person currently at the top of the individual rankings was only level 48.
Before the White Tower's first upgrade, the level cap was set at 50.
Zheng Xun's situation was a bug among bugs.
Having soloed a 3S dungeon 1,000 times, he was already on another plane in both spirit and combat power.
But Zheng Xun himself didn't pay much attention to such things. His goal was simple: survive in the new world after his rebirth.
"It's not easy getting by in this new world, what with the guilds and all this spooky stuff."
Zheng Xun muttered as his fingers tapped rapidly across the screen, checking out its other functions.
Livestreaming, Cloud Space... all the basic functions were there.
It was much like the wristband interface he'd seen on Xu Li's before.
But the observant Zheng Xun noticed that his wristband had a hidden page that could only be opened with his fingerprint and facial recognition.
[Dungeon holographic simulation function] [This function is privately customized and limited to a single ID worldwide] [Using the dungeon simulation function, players may repeatedly enter a dungeon up to a set number of times] [Death while using this function does not affect reality] [Dungeon for this simulation: Huaiyin No. 4 Middle School] [Please set the number of simulations (maximum: 1,000)] [The simulation may be stopped at any time]
The hidden function was a pleasant surprise. With it, Zheng Xun could simulate any game dungeon he was about to enter.
Better yet, the simulation could be stopped at any time. He no longer had to complete it a thousand times before he could leave, as he had at the beginning.
Although he'd been so sleepy that his conversation with Xiao Jun had grown hazy toward the end, Zheng Xun was fairly sure his next dungeon would be Huaiyin No. 4 Middle School.
"First, let's set the number of simulations..."
Zheng Xun tapped the screen with his fingertip.
"Let's set it to 1,000. I can stop whenever I want anyway."
[Number of simulations: 1,000] [Dungeon simulation commencing]
The clock on the wristband's main screen switched to a timer, indicating that the simulation had begun.
Zheng Xun took his Inflatable Hammer out of Cloud Space.
It was five in the afternoon in the dungeon, but the sky was overcast and gloomy, making the deserted school look even more dismal.
With the atmosphere thus set, Zheng Xun rubbed the tip of his nose and sneezed.
What's that smell... It smells like rotting meat. That's awful.
The gate of Huaiyin No. 4 Middle School wasn't much different from that of an ordinary middle school. The retractable electric gate for vehicles had long since broken down, and its track was overgrown with dead grass.
There was another, narrower gate for students, just wide enough for one person to pass through. It stood between the retractable gate and the security booth.
He glanced at the school sign standing nearby and pushed open the narrow gate beside the security booth.
Creak-
The rusty alloy gate squealed.
Zheng Xun walked in, Little Red Riding Hood following behind him, her little leather shoes tapping twice.
After that, she made no further sound.
Once inside the school, Zheng Xun felt that it was darker than outside the gate, though he didn't know if it was just his imagination.
Only five minutes had passed.
A vast sports field lay before him, with a rubber running track and white goalposts. There was no one around.
The teaching building was on his left. It was four stories tall and L-shaped.
Seen from a distance, the windows were pale blue. Probably because the school had been empty and no one had maintained it, quite a few panes had holes in them, and some windows were missing entirely, like gaping, hollow mouths.
Zheng Xun's gaze swept across a row of windows on the third floor. One was half broken.
When he looked over, he had the feeling that a shadow had flashed past, though he couldn't tell whether it was a reflection or something else.
Maybe it was his imagination.
Without looking into it further, Zheng Xun gave his surroundings a quick glance and looked away.
Little Red Riding Hood was right beside him. At some point, she'd returned to the appearance of an ordinary little girl.
Zheng Xun looked down and spoke quietly to her.
"Sister Hong, why do you think there aren't any NPCs in this dungeon? This school isn't small. If I have to search floor by floor, when am I ever going to finish?"
"I don't know."
"..."
Zheng Xun hadn't expected a useful answer from her in the first place. He just treated her as a rather useless audience; otherwise, he'd be lonely on his own, and talking to himself would be too strange.
"Forget it. I'll take you for a walk, then. We can call it a stroll."
Little Red Riding Hood quickly slipped her little hand into Zheng Xun's. Although her face was too stiff to make many expressions or convey much emotion, the little gesture seemed to show that she was happy.
Zheng Xun wasn't quite so happy. Holding her hand was like holding a block of ice.
So cold.
The adult and child held hands, ready to set off and look for useful clues so they could clear the dungeon as quickly as possible.
But the moment Zheng Xun looked up, he stopped in his tracks.
A person dressed like a security guard had appeared in front of him at some point.
The guard had a round face and a plump body. He held a white enamel mug in one hand and a bottle of mineral water in the other, and he had a bit of a stutter.
When he first saw Zheng Xun, he didn't shout at him to leave. Instead, he smiled with a somewhat honest, simple air.
"H-hello..."
Zheng Xun took half a step back, hiding behind Sister Hong.
Sister Hong was bewildered.
"Who are you?"
Zheng Xun asked warily.
"Y-you're the n-new guy, Little Zheng, right? The people in the security office t-told me."
Apparently, he'd mistaken Zheng Xun for a new security guard. No wonder he hadn't chased him away.
"I'm Little Zheng."
Zheng Xun readily accepted his new identity.
"This is my little sister. Come on, say hello to uncle."
He swung the hand holding Little Red Riding Hood's, and the little girl obediently waved.
But the plump guard's face turned ashen.
"Wh-who? Brother, there's n-nobody next to you! D-don't scare me!"
"..."