This Isn't an Assessment, It's a Free-for-All!

The air in the Operating Room of Despair was thick with formalin and the acrid stench of blood.

Inside the Benevolent Heart Director's head, which was made from an enormous glass medicine bottle, a black heart was pounding wildly at an unnaturally rapid rate.

It was dumbfounded.

As a third-tier, partially formed rule Anomaly that had occupied the western suburbs for years, it had devoured countless self-important explorers and City Appearance Bureau elites. Within its absolute Domain, it was the one and only truth that held sway over life and death.

But now, the high schooler in the blue-and-white uniform before it had smashed a gaping hole straight through that truth.

No, he hadn't just smashed a hole in it.

He had dumped a full twenty square kilometers of heavily contaminated wasteland straight into its sterile operating room, as if he were taking out the trash!

"Y-you... what kind of monster are you...?" The Director's voice, like sandpaper scraping against bone, trembled violently.

For the first time, an emotion called "fear" arose in its subconscious.

The dark matter pollution pouring from the black abyss behind the boy was outrageously concentrated! A purity of 99.5%! Was this a divine kingdom or a damn nuclear waste disposal plant?!

And the bus flickering with eerie green ghostfire, along with the moss-covered staircase that had abruptly crashed onto the floor, both radiated the aura of its own kind—an aura that made even a third-tier Anomaly like it tremble.

This was the power of rules!

And rules even purer and more overbearing than its own!

"You still haven't answered my question." Su Bai dusted off his hands and strolled halfway around the bloodstained metal operating table as if he were out for a leisurely walk.

With both hands in his pockets, his eyes gleamed with the fervor of someone who had spotted a prize fat sheep.

"So, are you coming to work as a security guard on my school bus, or are you going to be a stepping stone in my staircase? I'm a very democratic person. I never force anyone."

The Director was beside itself with rage.

It was a third-tier Anomaly! The master of this forbidden zone! Yet a living human had humiliated it like this!

"Your illness... is beyond cure... humane destruction... is required!!!"

The Director let out a heart-rending roar.

At its roar, the entire Domain of the Operating Room of Despair began to boil violently.

Countless blood-red gashes instantly split open across the once-snow-white walls. Then hundreds, even thousands of mutilated mutant corpses in tattered hospital gowns squeezed out of the cracks like dumplings tumbling into a pot.

Some of the corpses had lost their legs; others were missing half their heads. All of them let out anguished wails, clutching rusty scalpels, hemostats, and even bloodstained syringes.

"Kill him... for me... mince him into paste!!!" The Director brandished its two enormous chainsaws and issued the order to kill.

Facing the sea of corpses surging toward him like a tide, Su Bai didn't even blink.

"So you want to outnumber me?" Su Bai sneered. "A gang fight is the last thing I'm afraid of."

"School bus, move out!"

"The Thirteen Steps, receive your guests!"

Su Bai issued the supreme commands directly in his mind.

Rumble-!!!

The Midnight School Bus parked behind Su Bai erupted with an engine roar like the howling of a vengeful ghost.

The two balls of eerie green ghostfire at its front flared brightly, and thick gray smoke of resentment spewed from its exhaust pipe.

Screech-!!!

A piercing brake squeal exploded through the Operating Room of Despair.

The mutant corpses charging at the front stiffened the instant they heard it.

[Core rule one: Forced Boarding, activation check triggered!]

Although the corpses lacked complete consciousness, their hearts were full of hatred for the living and greed for flesh and blood. Their greed values far exceeded the thirty percent threshold.

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

Waves of incomparably overbearing spatial force, like countless invisible giant hands, seized the dozens of mutant corpses at the front.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh-!

Under the Director's incredulous gaze, those menacing subordinates flew into the air like bits of trash sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and were forcibly dragged, helpless to resist, through the Midnight School Bus's open door.

Bang! The door shut.

The excited sounds of the fourteen evil spirits tearing and chewing immediately came from inside the bus. Severed limbs slapped against the windows, and blood instantly smeared the glass.

But that wasn't enough. There were too many corpses.

The remaining hundreds of corpses went around the bus and were about to reach Su Bai.

Su Bai snorted coldly and snapped his fingers.

"Hongdou, show them the way."

The female ghost in red, who had been standing quietly beside Su Bai, instantly became a red afterimage and rushed straight into the heart of the corpse sea.

"The sky grows dark... rain's about to fall..."

"Who's behind you... watching you..."

The ethereal, mournful singing instantly cut through the clamor of wails.

Hongdou swung her deathly pale hands, and an intensely chilling aura of resentment enveloped a wide area around her.

Many of the mutant corpses instinctively turned their heads, trying to find the source of the singing.

[Rule one: Death Gaze, triggered.]

Crack! Crack! Crack!

A rapid succession of cracking bones rang through the operating room like firecrackers. The heads of whole swaths of mutant corpses twisted a full hundred and eighty degrees. They dropped to the ground with thud after thud, dissolving into pools of foul-smelling black water.

The remaining corpses had learned their lesson. They shut their eyes and kept charging forward without looking back.

But as they rushed on, they realized something was wrong.

At some unknown point, the floor beneath their feet had turned into moss-covered concrete steps.

One step, two steps, three steps... thirteen steps!

Buzz-!

The instant hundreds of mutant corpses stepped onto the Thirteenth Step, they vanished into thin air!

Every last one had been forcibly dragged into the Thirteen Steps' endlessly looping death maze!

The operating room fell eerily silent for a full three seconds.

The Director stood alone before the operating table. The black heart inside its glass medicine-bottle head seemed to have forgotten to beat.

What the hell kind of fight was this?!

The assets it had painstakingly amassed over more than a decade, hundreds of elite enforcers-in a single encounter, one batch had been sucked away by a lousy bus, another had had their necks twisted by a female ghost, and a broken-down staircase had gobbled up every last one of the rest?!

Which of them was the third-tier Anomaly?! Who was the master of this forbidden zone?!

Outside, beyond the outpatient lobby of Benevolent Heart Hospital.

Brother Long and the three other explorer streamers were slumped on the ground, clutching the military-grade streaming device, their eyes practically bulging out of their sockets.

Although the Operating Room of Despair was an independent spatial Domain, the forced connection with Su Bai's divine kingdom had caused a massive crack to appear in its spatial barrier. The streaming device's camera had just happened to capture the scene through the crack—a veritable massacre.

The millions of viewers in the livestream had collectively been struck speechless.

After a brief pause, the bullet comments flooded the screen like an erupting volcano.

[Holy shit shit shit shit!!! What did I just see?! That kid is slaughtering a third-tier Anomaly's army single-handedly!]

[That bus eats people! That female ghost in red twists heads off! That staircase devours things! What the hell kind of divine kingdom is this?!]

[What happened to the F-rank Wasteland Divine Kingdom? What happened to spending his whole life digging coal? This is the goddamn Grim Reaper descending!]

[No wonder Gu Chengfeng lost... If it had been those berserkers, they probably wouldn't even have been enough to pick his teeth with...]

[Where are the City Appearance Bureau people? Come take a look! Sending this kid to do an assessment was like putting a fox in a chicken coop! He's taking everything for free!]

Meanwhile, Bai Lan, far away in the City Appearance Bureau building downtown, was staring intently at the livestream on the big screen.

Without realizing it, she had squeezed a crack into the coffee cup in her hand.

"Captain Bai..." Zhang Lei, standing beside her, swallowed. His voice trembled. "Brother Su... he really doesn't seem to be there to do an assessment. He really went there to stock up..."

Bai Lan took a deep breath and slammed her coffee cup down on the table.

"Mobilize the Abnormality Division's first and second squads immediately!" Bai Lan barked, unprecedented gravity flashing in her eyes.

"Captain Bai, are we going to rescue Su Bai?" Zhang Lei froze.

"Rescue my ass!" Bai Lan couldn't help swearing. "I'm going to save that hospital!"

"The rules that kid has are too terrifying! If we don't stop him, he'll swallow the whole of Benevolent Heart Hospital, foundations and all, into his divine kingdom! The balance of spiritual power in Linhai City will be completely shattered!"

"Get the car! Top speed! Head to the western suburbs immediately!"

Inside the Operating Room of Despair.

Su Bai had no idea that the outside world had been turned upside down because of him. His attention was fixed entirely on the Director before him.

The mobs had been cleared out. Now it was time to deal with the big boss.

"Well, Comrade Director?" Su Bai pulled a scalpel out of his pocket, one he'd picked up who knew where, and tossed it in his hand. "I've already made suitable arrangements for all your subordinates. Now you're a commander without an army."

The black heart inside the Director's glass head suddenly stopped beating.

Then an aura of resentment ten, a hundred times more violent than before erupted from its body!

It was a third-tier Anomaly! The strongest urban legend born of this forbidden zone!

"I'm going... to tear you... to pieces!!!"

The Director went completely berserk.

It raised its two enormous chainsaws, and its body vanished from where it stood.

Teleportation!

Absolute mastery of a third-tier spatial rule!

Su Bai felt a chill on his back as an aura of extreme danger instantly enveloped his entire body.

Buzz-!

Two roaring chainsaws, carrying the terrifying power to tear through space, appeared directly above Su Bai and slashed down in a cross!

The strike was so fast that even Hongdou didn't have time to return and defend him!

The chainsaws were about to cleave Su Bai into four pieces.

But the corners of Su Bai's mouth suddenly curved into a chilling smile.

"Do you think teleportation is cool?"

Su Bai didn't dodge or turn around.

As the chainsaws fell, he said just one thing.

"I didn't buy a ticket."