Free Web NovelBai Liu’s earlier sneak attack had indeed allowed him to seize the initiative for a brief moment, throwing Miao Gaojiang into momentary panic. But once Miao Gaojiang regained his composure, he quickly realized there was no way they could lose.
With patient ease, he toyed with Bai Liu’s relentless attacks as though teasing a monkey, occasionally glancing sideways at the battle unfolding between Miao Feichi and Liu Huai behind him.
Liu Huai truly was an assassin built for ambushes and covert kills.
Unfortunately, Bai Liu was not a qualified thief.
He had failed to steal anything that could secure them an escape route, and Liu Huai—a player unsuited for direct combat—was rapidly being overwhelmed beneath Miao Feichi’s relentless assault.
Miao Feichi ripped open a packet of Mental Bleach with his teeth and swallowed it down. The combination of constant combat and plummeting mental value had driven him nearly berserk; the twin blades in his hands spun into a dense storm of silver light.
Liu Huai was visibly struggling against a high-level player who had already lost control like Miao Feichi. And Miao Feichi had no interest in dragging the fight out.
His twin blades swept horizontally in one clean motion.
Both of Liu Huai’s arms were severed at the shoulders.
Miao Feichi immediately turned and regrouped with Miao Gaojiang.
[System Notification: Player Miao Feichi has used Crescent Moon Twin Blades to attack Liu Huai. Attack successful. Player Liu Huai’s health has dropped by 17. Player Liu Huai has 20 health points remaining!]
Destroying an opponent’s attacking limbs was one of the crudest yet most effective combat methods in the game.
In simple terms, severing someone’s hands was a primitive form of disarming—it forcibly interrupted the connection between a player and their skill weapon.
That was why Liu Huai had cut off Mu Shicheng’s hands back then.
And why Bai Liu before him—and Miao Feichi now—had chosen to cut off Liu Huai’s hands.
Blood erupted from Liu Huai’s shoulders.
His dagger clattered to the floor alongside the severed hands still loosely gripping it, producing a sharp metallic ding.
Liu Huai collapsed to his knees. His face was pale as soaked paper, his breathing ragged and uneven.
He had completely lost the ability to fight.
He had already done everything he could.
This was as long as he could hold Miao Feichi back.
[System Warning: Player Liu Huai’s mental value is fluctuating violently, dropping to 57. Hallucinations are about to occur. Please restore mental value immediately!]
Under normal circumstances, Miao Feichi would have killed Liu Huai immediately.
But time was short.
Finishing off an A-rank player like Liu Huai would still take a moment, and right now there was someone else Miao Feichi wanted dead even more.
Grinding his teeth, Miao Feichi whirled around with his blades raised.
“Bai Liu—!!”
He lunged forward from a crouch, blades carving through the wall itself.
The twin blades tore forward with enough force to rip apart rotten wood and flatten weeds. Wallpaper and plaster exploded under the pressure of the blade wind, debris erupting into the air.
Within the cloud of dust and fragments, Bai Liu twisted sharply in midair. Using Mu Shicheng’s monkey claw skill, he intercepted the descending twin blades for a split second, shedding most of the impact.
But only most. free𝑤ebnovel.com
Miao Feichi’s rage exploded outward.
The blades crashed down—
—and one of Bai Liu’s arms was severed cleanly at the shoulder.
Blood sprayed violently into the air.
[System Warning: Player Bai Liu’s health has dropped from 6 to 3!!! It is continuing to drop! Please move away from the dangerous scene immediately!]
One more strike.
That was all it would take.
If Miao Feichi landed another hit, Bai Liu would die.
Liu Huai lay collapsed in a pool of blood, coughing violently.
His rapidly dropping mental value distorted everything before his eyes into a strange, floating blur, as though the world had slowed into warped slow motion.
He could no longer hear anything.
All he could see was Bai Liu—blood spraying from his severed shoulder—falling slowly through the air.
For a fleeting moment, Bai Liu’s calm gaze met his.
That single glance yanked Liu Huai violently back to reality.
He clenched his teeth and struggled upright.
It wasn’t over yet.
Nothing was over.
This was only the beginning of Bai Liu’s plan.
For Jiayi—
Bai Liu absolutely could not die.
Liu Huai forced his trembling vision downward, searching desperately across the floor.
Finally, he found them.
His severed hands still gripped the dagger.
The blade pointed upward. A tiny droplet of blood glimmered at the tip.
Liu Huai stared at that speck of crimson light.
Bai Liu was currently entangled with both Miao Gaojiang and Miao Feichi. No one noticed the blood-soaked corner where Liu Huai remained.
At last, his gaze hardened.
Dragging himself forward on his knees, Liu Huai crawled toward his severed hands.
He stared at the upward-facing dagger.
Then he inhaled deeply.
Closed his eyes.
And threw himself onto the blade.
[System Warning: Player Liu Huai has been attacked by Nightblade. Mental value dropping... Calculating the mental value drop caused by one’s own skill weapon attacking oneself... Calculation complete. Player Liu Huai’s mental value has dropped to 7!!]
[System Warning: Player Liu Huai has entered Berserk Mode!!!!]
[Player Liu Huai Personal Panel (Berserk State)]
[Mental Value: 57 → 7]
[Stamina: 39 → 319]
[Agility: 1140 → 1510]
[Attack: 731 → 2200]
[Resistance: 1003 → 2100]
[Comprehensive defense and attack power have risen. The sum of panel attribute points exceeds 5000. Rated as an A++ level player. Player Liu Huai’s rank has risen from A to A++.]
[System Notification: Does Player Liu Huai wish to use skill (One-Hit Kill) at full power? After full power usage, the personal skill will upgrade to A++ rank, but the player’s stamina bar will be affected by overdraw and cannot be recovered using stamina recovery agents for 24h.]
Liu Huai slowly stood.
His entire body was drenched in blood.
Both arms were gone.
One dagger was clenched between his teeth, while another remained embedded deep in his °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° chest.
His eyes were cold and inorganic, yet beneath that numbness lingered a desperate resolve buried to the bone.
He looked like a true death-soldier assassin—someone trained to kill at any cost.
And Bai Liu was the one commanding that assassin.
Very likely, his final master.
Tears slid soundlessly from Liu Huai’s hollow eyes.
[Confirm]
[System Notification: Player Liu Huai has confirmed usage. Dagger attack +6037. Comprehensive panel attack data +2200. Total attack data is 8237. Player Liu Huai’s stamina is dropping rapidly...]
Miao Feichi’s raised blades were just about to descend when instinct screamed at him.
A freezing chill swept toward his back.
Something dangerous was approaching at terrifying speed.
His combat instincts forced him to turn instantly—
—and he saw Liu Huai.
Armless.
Dagger clenched between his teeth.
Eyes burning with ruthless determination.
Charging straight at him.
“Feichi, watch out!!”
Miao Gaojiang yanked Miao Feichi backward, but Liu Huai reacted even faster.
The moment Miao Gaojiang moved to shield his son, Liu Huai abruptly changed targets mid-charge.
His expression twisted into something savage and grotesque.
Tears streamed down his face as he let out a silent roar—
—and drove the dagger viciously into Miao Gaojiang’s abdomen.
“How could you...” Miao Gaojiang stared at the blade buried in his stomach in disbelief. “...break through my defense...?”
[System Notification: Player Liu Huai used personal skill (Flash Strike). The skill crit has broken through Player Miao Gaojiang’s defense, causing 30 seconds of stiffness. Mental value has dropped to 51, hallucinations are about to appear. Due to mental value fluctuation, Player Miao Gaojiang’s defense value is dropping...]
At the exact moment Miao Gaojiang stiffened and fell into a mental trance, Bai Liu sharply sensed the change.
That previously impenetrable skin had softened.
Even if only slightly.
Without hesitation, Bai Liu lunged forward with his remaining monkey claw.
Miao Feichi saw it instantly.
His eyes turned bloodshot.
“Don’t you fucking touch my dad!!”
He raised both twin blades at once—
one aimed at Bai Liu,
the other slashing horizontally toward Liu Huai.
Liu Huai tore the dagger free from Miao Gaojiang’s abdomen.
His stamina was almost depleted.
He no longer possessed the strength to unleash another critical strike.
At best, he could barely evade Miao Feichi’s attack.
There was no way he could stop him.
But Bai Liu didn’t care in the slightest about the blade descending toward him.
His concentration was absolute, almost frighteningly calm.
His monkey claw continued reaching toward Miao Gaojiang as though he had completely abandoned concern for his own life.
He had entrusted his back entirely to Liu Huai.
Just as they had agreed from the beginning.
[“...I don’t think I can do it. After stabbing Miao Gaojiang once and then blocking Miao Feichi’s attack for you—the risk of this plan is too high, Bai Liu. If you leave your back entirely to me, you’ll die!”]
[“But Mu Shicheng trusted you with his back countless times. And you kept him alive every single time, didn’t you?”]
[“...But I made him lose his arms.”]
[“You used the dagger in your hand to betray Mu Shicheng. But by the time this ends, you probably won’t even have hands left to betray me with, Liu Huai. I always choose to believe the other side can do something before it actually happens. So—you can do it, right?”]
The sharp drop in mental value blurred Liu Huai’s vision into a hazy trance.
He followed the path of Bai Liu’s outstretched monkey claw—
until his gaze finally settled on Bai Liu’s face.
That overwhelming sense of familiarity from their coordinated assault caused Bai Liu and Mu Shicheng’s faces to overlap endlessly within Liu Huai’s fading consciousness.
The person before him—
the thief who moved without hesitation, who entrusted his back completely to him—
was Bai Liu.
And yet somehow also the friend he had once lost forever.
“Shi-ge...”
Liu Huai mouthed silently.
Betrayal felt like a dagger lodged in his own heart.
Tears streamed down his face before he even realized it.
He slammed Miao Feichi aside and threw himself in front of Bai Liu.
At that point, Liu Huai could no longer distinguish whether the person behind him was Bai Liu or Mu Shicheng.
He simply acted on instinct.
Like the assassin in a [Thief and Assassin] duo should.
Stand behind the reckless capuchin thief—
—and use everything to clear away every obstacle in his path.
Miao Feichi couldn’t stop his blades in time.
He watched in horror as they slashed straight into Liu Huai’s body.
At almost the same instant, Bai Liu twisted sharply.
His monkey claw finally hooked onto Miao Gaojiang.
[System Warning: Player Liu Huai has been attacked by Miao Feichi’s Crescent Moon Twin Blades. Health dropping 17... 16... 13. 4 points remaining! Please leave the dangerous scene immediately!! Health is continuing to drop!]
[System Notification: Player Bai Liu has successfully used personal skill (Thief’s Monkey Claw) to steal Siren’s Bone, Ghost Mirror (Fully assembled)... and other items from Player Miao Gaojiang’s warehouse.]
Bai Liu yanked a white fluorescent whip from Miao Gaojiang’s stiffened body.
Then, without even a moment’s hesitation, he swung it directly toward Miao Feichi’s descending twin blades.
In Bai Liu’s hands, Siren’s Bone could not unleash much attack power due to his F-rank panel.
But this weapon possessed one absurdly overpowered trait:
Its attack priority was extraordinarily high.
A high attack priority meant that whether damage was dealt or not, the strike itself would always register as successful.
The whip cracked through the air.
It slammed directly into the twin blades embedded in Liu Huai’s body and knocked them violently aside.
Liu Huai—already hanging on by a thread—felt his legs buckle beneath him.
He collapsed to his knees in the blood pooling beneath his body, his eyes unfocused.
[System Warning: Player Liu Huai has only 2 health points remaining! Please leave the dangerous scene immediately!]
Miao Gaojiang’s thirty-second stiffness effect was nearly over.
Yet an inexplicable sense of dread suddenly gripped him.
Liu Huai was no longer capable of fighting.
Bai Liu himself was on the verge of death.
Once Miao Feichi recovered, he could finish both of them in seconds.
Even though they had succeeded in stealing items, there was no possible way for them to reverse the situation now.
None of the stolen items were powerful enough to completely turn the tide.
Then where—
where was this suffocating sense of danger coming from?
Miao Gaojiang rapidly reviewed the stolen items in his head.
Almost all of them were objects Bai Liu himself had deliberately thrown away earlier while pretending to be dead.
Did Bai Liu really go through all this just to retrieve the things he had tossed over while playing tricks?!
No—
Wait.
Miao Gaojiang froze.
There was one strange item.
One item that hadn’t belonged to Bai Liu.
Or rather—not entirely.
The Ghost Mirror.
Last night, after collecting the fragments, they had assembled it.
But the Ghost Mirror appeared completely useless.
The system description stated only that its functions were unknown, required self-exploration, and could only be used once per dungeon.
After assembling it, nothing happened.
It simply became an ordinary-looking mirror capable of storing objects inside.
Miao Feichi had even complained endlessly about it.
“That’s it? A mirror-shaped storage container? Isn’t the system backpack already enough? Only a ghost would use something like this to store items.”
But there had already been something stored inside that mirror.
The bombs from The Last Train to Blast Off.
Miao Gaojiang had never cared about those bombs.
With his skills fully activated, explosions of that scale couldn’t kill him so easily.
And under his protection, Miao Feichi would survive as well.
His earlier judgment had been correct.
There truly was nothing in his inventory capable of instantly killing both of them.
But there was one thing he hadn’t expected.
He never imagined that someone inside this dungeon could immobilize him for a full thirty seconds.
If he remained frozen in place while his skills were active, he himself might survive the explosion—
—but Miao Feichi, whose resistance was far lower, would absolutely die in a point-blank blast.
Bai Liu hadn’t planned to use the bombs earlier because they wouldn’t necessarily kill Miao Gaojiang and his son.
But Bai Liu and Liu Huai—with their critically low health—would certainly die.
These two weren’t launching some coordinated thief-and-assassin ambush.
This was a suicide attack.
A completely life-risking all-in gamble.
Bai Liu was playing a two-for-two trade.
From the very beginning—
he never intended to ambush them.
He intended to kill them.
“Feichi! Stop attacking!! Get away from him!!”
Miao Gaojiang exploded into a roar, veins bulging in his bloodshot eyes.
“Get behind me!!!!”
One of Bai Liu’s feet rested on the bookshelf.
The other stood atop the fully assembled Ghost Mirror, now as tall as the shelf itself.
He crouched there casually.
Blood dripped from his scarred monkey claw onto the mirror’s surface.
That same hand gripped the softly glowing Siren’s Bone.
Blood from a wound on his forehead flowed down across his eyes and lashes, staining his entire face crimson.
Yet he still looked down calmly at the father and son below with an almost peaceful smile.
His hand had already plunged into the mirror’s surface.
Ripples spread like water.
Something massive was being dragged outward.
“Too late, Miao-baba,” Bai Liu said with a faint smile.
“Does it feel good watching your son die?”
“But don’t worry. I’m not cruel enough to separate a father and son.”
“You’ll die together.”
“Oh, well—not exactly together.”
“Your resistance is stronger than his, so you’ll get to watch your son die first.”
“And then you can follow after him.”
Miao Feichi had already hidden himself behind Miao Gaojiang.
He still didn’t fully understand what was happening, but the terror in Miao Gaojiang’s roar was enough to make him obey instantly.
Miao Gaojiang stared upward at Bai Liu standing barefoot atop the mirror.
He forced himself to remain calm.
“The bombs can’t kill me.”
Ordinarily, it would take at least five explosions of that scale to truly kill him.
Bai Liu slowly lifted his blood-covered gaze.
He looked down at them with detached tranquility, like a bored god casually deciding the fate of mortals.
“You seem to have forgotten something.”
“You’re not just a player right now.”
“You’re also a monster.”
“A terminal patient who feeds on children’s blood.”
“And monsters have weaknesses.”
Miao Gaojiang’s breathing abruptly stopped.
His pupils shrank violently.
That was right.
When players possessed monster identities, they also inherited the monster’s inherent weaknesses.
Normally the effect was minor.
Negligible, even.
But at a critical moment, even the smallest weakness became fatal.
The weakness of the patients cultivated inside this damp, dark facility had actually been obvious from the very beginning.
The system simply had never sold any related items.
“You can’t endure light.”
Bai Liu reached into the mirror again.
Ripples spread outward.
Then he dragged out a massive black bomb.
“And you can’t endure fire.”
“Or more accurately—dryness.”
He casually dropped the bomb.
The instant it hit the floor—
blinding light and scorching heat erupted outward.
The red glow of the explosion swallowed Bai Liu’s figure atop the mirror.
It swallowed Liu Huai’s hollow eyes lying in the blood below.
Miao Gaojiang’s eyes nearly split apart.
“STOP IT!!!!”
BOOM—
The entire building shook violently.
Flames, smoke, and shattered debris exploded outward in a deafening roar.
[Love Welfare Home Monster Book updated—Plant Patient (2/3)]
[Monster Name: Plant Patient]
[Characteristics: Movement speed 500, requires a large amount of moisture to grow, prefers damp environments.]
[Weaknesses: Blood Lingzhi, Dryness, Light (3/3)]
[Attack Method: Sucking blood and flesh, toxic mist pollution.]
[Congratulations to Player Bai Liu for collecting this page of the Monster Book for the main identity line (Plant Patient).]
[System Notification: Player Bai Liu has used the Ghost Mirror item once. This item has entered CD reset status in the Love Welfare Home dungeon and cannot be used again in this dungeon...]
“So?” Bai Six asked with rare interest as he looked at the Monster Book interface. “How did you survive?”
“From what you said earlier, Liu Jiayi’s brother survived too. How did both of you make it out alive?”
Bai Liu answered lazily, “At the last second before the explosion, I dragged Liu Huai into the mirror using the whip. I was fairly certain the Ghost Mirror could withstand the blast, so I gambled on it.”
“To be honest, I thought I was going to die too.”
“Our health was already so low that even being clipped by the explosion should’ve killed us.”
“But I got lucky.”
“I was only knocked unconscious.”
“I just woke up not long ago.”
“And Miao Gaojiang?” Bai Six asked. “Did they die?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Bai Liu sounded neither frustrated nor emotional—only calm and analytical. “I miscalculated.”
“At the last moment, Miao Gaojiang used some method to attack himself and force his mental value below twenty, activating Berserk Mode to survive the explosion.”
“But their health still dropped significantly.”
“After the explosion, the nurses immediately dragged both of them away. They’re in the operating room being treated right now.”
“At the very least, they won’t be able to make a move against you tomorrow. The nurses won’t allow it, and the Welfare Home itself won’t permit it either.”
“A lot of investors were injured in the explosion. Their beds were damaged too, along with the Blood Lingzhi growing on them.”
“They’re all currently undergoing treatment.”
“So the matching process scheduled for tomorrow has been canceled.”
“Overall, my objective was achieved.”
Bai Six fell silent.
On the other end of the line, he could hear Bai Liu’s breathing gradually weakening.
What irritated him most was that he genuinely wanted to ask how Bai Liu was doing.
But simply asking felt unbearably disgusting to him.
So he stayed silent instead.
“Hello?” Bai Liu spoke lazily. “If you’re not going to talk, I’m reporting you for passive chatting to scam call fees.”
“How are you?” Bai Six finally asked flatly, speaking extremely quickly. “It’s annoying to ask, but I need to know your condition if you’re going around nearly dying just to create opportunities for me.”
Bai Liu lay motionless on the ground.
One arm was gone.
The other hand—mangled by the explosion—barely managed to hold the phone.
He stared upward through the massive hole blasted into the ceiling.
The night sky outside held no stars.
Only endless darkness.
The charred floor beneath him and the blackened sky above looked the same, as though both had been burned to ash.
For a fleeting moment, Bai Liu felt as if he were already dead.
Like a wandering soul calling back to his fourteen-year-old self from beneath a starless sky.
“I’m fine.”
Bai Liu smiled faintly and lowered his gaze.
Exhaustion seeped into his voice.
“Everyone’s still alive.”
“We all did well tonight.”
—
