Old Li stared at Zheng Xun as though he were looking at a devil in the flesh.
The devil smiled gently.
: Hahahahaha, is Erchui finally going after an NPC?
: I knew this kid was cooking up something nasty when he went quiet.
: When Erchui goes quiet, trouble is brewing.
: So will this actually work?!
Zheng Xun was as good as his word. With swift, fluid movements, he knocked Old Li unconscious with the enamel mug.
Nothing happened.
"Done." Zheng Xun picked Little Red Riding Hood up by the back of her collar as though she were a cat. "Come on, let's go. No time to waste."
He dashed out the door and headed straight for the classroom building.
At the entrance to the building, he would see a vague figure. That was the second NPC, a girl named Xiaoyin.
In a normal run, Xiaoyin would run away at the entrance, and players wouldn't be able to catch her even if they gave chase.
That was what had happened when Zheng Xun led the team through the first time. Everyone had seen it.
But just because a person couldn't catch her didn't mean something else couldn't.
Zheng Xun smashed open the rickety doors of the classroom building with his hammer and pointed at the fleeing Xiaoyin. "Honghong, get her!"
Little Red Riding Hood's face split into a grin, and she stuck out her tongue in excitement. She shot forward like a red firecracker with bared teeth and claws.
The bullet comments were stunned.
: What kind of move is that?
: Chasing an NPC?
: Wait, wouldn't most people run away in fright when they saw that ghostly NPC?
: Poor NPC, scared out of her wits and fleeing from a player.
: Never mind the NPC, isn't Erchui's destructive power insane?! He just tore the doors down like that? Is he a demolition crew?
: Speaking of which, what does he even want with the NPC?
: Holy crap, he's kidnapping her!
Little Red Riding Hood was worthy of her former status as a high-risk NPC in the White Tower. Before long, she brought Xiaoyin to Zheng Xun as her captive.
The NPC sat on the floor with her legs bent, looking terrified. Zheng Xun crouched down, his hammer still resting on his shoulder.
"Don't be scared," he said. "I won't do anything to you."
Xiaoyin was even more frightened after hearing that.
"I wanted to ask if you know how to unlock that 3S side quest."
Xiaoyin shook her head vigorously.
"That's a shame."
Zheng Xun looked regretful and raised his hammer high. Xiaoyin squeezed her eyes shut.
A gust of wind swept past her ear.
Unharmed, Xiaoyin looked up in surprise and saw that Zheng Xun had already reached the stairs on the first floor.
"Come on, what are you standing around for? Let's hurry up and finish the plot."
Xiaoyin scrambled to her feet and followed Zheng Xun upstairs.
Zheng Xun was fast.
Though he was always listless outside the instances, Zheng Xun's physical abilities far surpassed those of other players inside them.
He raced up the stairs so fast he left afterimages. On the livestream, the viewers could only see the occasional glint of moonlight reflected off the surface of his hammer.
: Isn't Erchui a little too fast? What kind of stamina is that?
: He's flying too low.
: Zheng Xun's style isn't common among players, is it? White Tower instances are full of danger, and most of them are horror instances. You're considered brave if you don't get scared to death. Who else is like him, tearing the place apart?
: Does Erchui dislike solving puzzles? Is it really okay not to solve them? Isn't the formula for White Tower instances solving puzzles plus killing monsters?
: The puzzles in the first instance weren't hard, so it's hard to tell. If that's the case, a one-sided player like Erchui is bound to lose value.
: You can't blame Erchui. After all, there's Master Ma outside the White Tower [doge].
For a while, the bullet comments were all discussing whether Zheng Xun could solve puzzles.
"So can he?" Cheng Jie asked outside the instance.
With nothing else to do, the four of them had gathered around the wristband screen to watch the livestream.
Li Shuang answered him in a soft voice. "It's hard to tell. He doesn't seem to have come across anything he had to solve a puzzle to get past."
"That's true." Xiao Jun leaned toward the same answer. He turned to the other male team member, who had been silent. "Xiao Wu, what do you think?"
Xiao Wu seemed even more introverted than Li Shuang. Startled by the sudden mention of his name, he jumped.
"I, I think... he should be good at it."
"Oh? What makes you say that?" Cheng Jie was quick to get friendly with people. Even though this was their first meeting, he had his arm around Xiao Wu's shoulders.
Xiao Wu's shoulder sank under the weight, and his voice grew even quieter.
"He, he said 'the old person dotes on the child' when he looked at the photo in Little Red Riding Hood's instance. That's how he figured out which were the wolf and the grandmother in the boss stage. I, I think he can solve puzzles."
His voice grew quieter as he spoke, but he still worked up the courage to add something.
"Just because he made it look easy doesn't mean it was easy."
The four people outside the instance were also within camera range, and many people agreed with Xiao Wu.
: Exactly. Zheng Xun doesn't just charge in blindly. He makes his own judgments.
: That triple kill was genuinely amazing, almost beyond reason.
: Zheng Xun made that judgment way too fast. Was that really his first time in Little Red Riding Hood's instance?
: I haven't heard of anyone unlocking Little Red Riding Hood's instance before.
: It was the first time. Instances for server life-and-death battles are generally brand new.
: It could have been a coincidence. Maybe he guessed.
: He guessed right all three times with that hammer? There has to be more to it than that.
Xiao Wu's words set the other three thinking.
Cheng Jie was the first to respond.
"I didn't expect you to know him so well. Xiao Wu, have you been watching replays of Zheng Xun on the sly?"
Although Songbird's attitude toward Zheng Xun wasn't as negative as Azure Mist's, it didn't encourage its members to imitate his behavior either.
To put it bluntly, Zheng Xun's reckless lone-wolf style was a scalpel when used well, but if used poorly, it could tear a team apart.
The major guilds' teams were now essentially organized systems. As they pushed into increasingly difficult instances, the monsters' levels kept rising. If a team failed to coordinate, it was nothing new for the whole group to be wiped out.
But Zheng Xun was too exceptional. If a major guild wanted to recruit him, it would probably have to make many personnel changes.
Songbird needed Zheng Xun, but it didn't need too many people like him, so it hadn't made a big show of mobilizing everyone to study him.
Xiao Wu had been quietly studying him on his own.
"I... I happened to catch the livestream, and studied it several more times afterward."
"Eh, what's so interesting about that stuff? Watching it once is enough." Cheng Jie waved a hand casually, then remembered something. "But Xiao Wu, I don't think I've ever seen you before. Are you a substitute on the second team?"
"Y-yes! I'm not well-known, and I'm not very capable. It, it's normal that you don't know me, Brother Cheng."
Cheng Jie was easygoing and didn't fuss over seniority like many core guild members. Apart from occasionally saying things that didn't sound very nice, he was generally easy to get along with.
"Don't be so stiff. Why do I get the feeling you're a little scared of me? I don't care about seniority and all that."
"O-okay."
Xiao Wu agreed meekly.
After Xiao Wu agreed, Cheng Jie couldn't tell whether it was just his imagination, but he felt that Xiao Jun was looking at him a little strangely.
"What is it, bro?" He couldn't keep things to himself and asked whatever was on his mind.
"Nothing." Xiao Jun smiled. "I just suddenly realized it's pretty nice to be clueless."
"...Was that a dig at me?"
"You're overthinking it."
Cheng Jie looked utterly baffled. Xiao Jun had always been more shrewd than him, and he couldn't outmaneuver him. The more he said, the more likely he was to expose his own intelligence.
His head full of questions, he turned back to the livestream. What he saw gave him a huge shock.
"Holy crap, what's Zheng Xun doing? Forcing the boss to jump off the building?"