Free Web NovelMu Shicheng fitted himself with a diving apparatus as well. They had bought the equipment from the system long ago—only three points apiece.
He glanced at Bai Liu. “Let’s go. Time to meet up with them.”
Du Sanying and Zhang Kui were in the same carriage. Du Sanying wiped the water from his face and looked up, breathing hard. Beside him, Zhang Kui, Liu Huai, and Fang Ke all looked equally battered and exhausted.
Before any of them could recover, Bai Liu and Mu Shicheng emerged from the fog at the far end of the carriage. Bai Liu stuffed his 360 mirror fragments into Du Sanying’s “Deceptive Fabric,” then, completely ignoring the venomous look Zhang Kui shot him, casually tossed the bag into Zhang Kui’s arms.
“You should have twenty fragments on your side,” Bai Liu said. “There are about ten seconds left before the explosion. Hold onto them tightly.”
[System notification: Player Zhang Kui has obtained 380 mirror fragments. Collection progress (380/400)]
“As for you two.” Bai Liu turned toward Liu Huai and Fang Ke.
The moment his calm, unreadable gaze settled on them, both men stiffened involuntarily.
“Now that the mirror fragments have been collected, you’re no longer useful,” Bai Liu said evenly. “In fact, you’ve become potential liabilities. So why don’t we...”
Liu Huai immediately clenched his teeth and cut in. “We won’t sneak attack you. Killing us now would just waste time, and our health points are already nearly bottomed out. Attacking you now wouldn’t benefit us at all—it’d just get us killed. We’ll stay far away.”
He stared at Bai Liu’s utterly emotionless eyes and felt a creeping sense of despair.
“If you still don’t believe us...” Liu Huai swallowed hard. “I just want to survive. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove I won’t attack you.”
Bai Liu replied calmly, “Then cut off your hands.”
Liu Huai stared at him in shock.
Even Mu Shicheng froze for a moment. The two of them turned toward Bai Liu in near-perfect sync.
Bai Liu, meanwhile, seemed completely unaware that he had said anything outrageous.
“I’m not interested in killing people,” he explained matter-of-factly. “But your existence is still a risk. You need your hands to use that dagger skill, right? Besides, cutting them off won’t kill you. It’ll just lower your health to around the same level as mine. That way, even if you wanted to attack me, the risk to yourself would be much greater.”
Then Bai Liu turned to Mu Shicheng.
“And without his hands... you can deal with a Liu Huai like that, can’t you?”
Mu Shicheng stared at him for several seconds. “You— I—”
His expression twisted into a complete mess before he finally clicked his tongue with a sneer.
“If Liu Huai cuts off his hands, taking him down would be easy.”
Bai Liu looked back at Liu Huai politely.
“Alright then. Go ahead. We don’t have much time.”
A storm of emotions flashed across Liu Huai’s face. At last, he gritted his teeth, turned to Fang Ke, and asked him for help.
Fang Ke accepted the dagger Liu Huai handed him with a complicated expression.
The instant Liu Huai’s severed hands hit the floor, Mu Shicheng’s face briefly went blank. But he recovered almost immediately. He didn’t look pleased, nor triumphant. If anything, his eyes had reddened slightly as he turned away, standing silently beside Bai Liu with his pitch-black monkey claws hanging at his sides.
“As for Fang Ke—” Bai Liu began.
Before he could finish, Fang Ke let out a sharp yelp and decisively chopped off one of his own hands.
“Is this enough?!” he wailed tearfully. “Wuwuwuwu—”
Bai Liu paused.
“...I was only going to ask you and Liu Huai to hand over your items and points. I wasn’t asking you to cut off your hand.”
Fang Ke: “...”
Wuwuwuwu.
Bai Liu delivered these robbery demands with such calm composure that they sounded perfectly reasonable.
After exchanging a long look with Liu Huai, Fang Ke obediently handed over all their items and points.
Then Bai Liu turned his attention to Zhang Kui.
“You too. Hand over your points and items. Otherwise they’ll just go to waste when you die.”
Zhang Kui, who was already being forced into a horrific death by Bai Liu: “...”
This bastard was squeezing every last drop out of him—grinding up the bones, scattering the ashes, then selling the ashes for profit.
Bai Liu was vicious beyond belief.
Zhang Kui’s teeth practically creaked from fury, but there was nothing he could do. Bai Liu cleanly robbed all three high-level players and finally stopped, looking thoroughly satisfied.
Du Sanying and Mu Shicheng, who had watched the entire process unfold: “...”
The two stared darkly at Bai Liu, who looked absurdly practiced at robbing, extorting, and bleeding people dry.
The same thought surfaced in both their minds at once:
What prison had collapsed and let this menace out?
Bai Liu, the unemployed worker, counted through his spoils in satisfaction before cheerfully waving goodbye to Fang Ke and Liu Huai.
“Bye-bye. Let’s play together again sometime if we get the chance. You gave me a very enjoyable gaming experience.”
Liu Huai and Fang Ke: “...”
Absolutely not.
Their gaming experience had been terrible.
Under Bai Liu’s appreciative gaze—the gaze of someone looking at renewable livestock—Fang Ke and Liu Huai fled as though chased by wild dogs.
Mu Shicheng was speechless. Bai Liu was obviously planning to rob them again if they ever met in another game.
When Bai Liu finally withdrew his gaze and turned toward Du Sanying and Mu Shicheng, Du Sanying nearly burst into tears from nerves.
“B-Bai Liu,” he stammered, “I really don’t have many items left! I used most of them already! Please don’t rob me!”
Bai Liu looked genuinely surprised.
“Why would I rob you? We’re teammates.”
Then he paused, sounding faintly regretful.
“You really don’t have any left? I thought with a luck stat of one hundred, you’d have hoarded a lot of items.”
Mu Shicheng: “...”
Could he at least stop looking at Du Sanying like a fat sheep waiting to be slaughtered?
Tears pooling in his eyes, Du Sanying nodded frantically.
“I really don’t have any!”
Bai Liu had no intention of robbing Mu Shicheng. Mainly because he still needed Mu Shicheng’s help, and besides, Mu Shicheng’s skill was theft—anything Bai Liu took would probably just get stolen back anyway.
Still, Mu Shicheng also seemed like the kind of thief with absurdly high standards who rarely bothered stealing. Earlier, while Bai Liu had been looting Liu Huai and Fang Ke, Mu Shicheng had merely stood there with folded arms, shooting him sidelong looks of contempt, like someone watching a homeless scavenger rummage through trash.
Bai Liu rubbed his nose.
Well, he really had been a poor homeless man to begin with.
As the train sped forward, the tunnel walls on both sides began to crack apart and collapse. Torrents of water burst inward from every direction, flooding through shattered windows and ruptured gaps in the carriage.
Within seconds, the water had risen above Bai Liu’s waist.
The violent current tossed him around until he nearly lost balance, but Mu Shicheng grabbed him quickly. Du Sanying clung to a seat and shouted over the roaring water:
“Bai Liu! Zhang Kui’s going to explode in this carriage! Let’s guard both ends! Mu Shicheng and I still have enough health and defensive items—we’ll hold the line! Stay farther away!”
Bai Liu pressed a hand against his diving mask and flashed an OK sign.
The water rose over his cheeks as he turned and awkwardly paddled away.
There was no helping it.
He still couldn’t swim.
Du Sanying and Mu Shicheng took position at opposite ends of the carriage, both activating defensive items for protection.
At the center of the carriage sat Zhang Kui.
Wearing a diving mask, his face was deathly pale, his teeth clenched tight. Bai Liu had stripped away every item he possessed, leaving him with nothing but the diving apparatus to keep him alive until the blast.
All he could do was clutch the “Deceptive Fabric” bag filled with mirrors and wait for death.
The carriage doors at both ends had been sealed off. No matter how clever Zhang Kui was, without items, without time, and with others keeping watch over him, escape was impossible.
He was trapped.
There was nowhere left to run.
Mu Shicheng and Du Sanying both stared at the scene in momentary silence.
To them, it was strangely familiar.
Zhang Kui had trapped Mu Shicheng with methods just as filthy countless times before, leaving him crawling out of games battered and bloodied, nearly dead on more than one occasion.
As for Du Sanying, only a few stations ago he himself had been cornered inside a carriage by Zhang Kui and forced into a desperate sprint for survival.
Neither of them had expected the tables to turn like this.
Now they were the ones trapping Zhang Kui.
The more Mu Shicheng thought about it, the more he wanted to laugh.
Bai Liu clearly had a luck value of zero, but ever since meeting him, it no longer felt like only bad things happened around him.
Without even # Nоvеlight # trying, Bai Liu seemed to return all the suffering Mu Shicheng had endured.
Mu Shicheng knew Bai Liu hadn’t done any of this for his sake.
...And yet, he still couldn’t stop himself from feeling pleased.
Inside the bag, the mirrors were growing hotter and hotter. Zhang Kui trembled violently.
Suddenly, as though his mind had snapped, he began desperately looking around for help. Underwater, he seemed to be shouting something frantically while gesturing wildly, but no one could hear him anymore.
Mu Shicheng narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the words through the diving mask.
“Inside—the—mirrors—there—is—”
Before he could decipher the final word, the mirrors in Zhang Kui’s arms erupted with a blinding red light.
A hideous scream burst from Zhang Kui as violent streams of bubbles exploded around him along with the blast itself. Mu Shicheng instinctively threw up an arm to shield his eyes.
The mirrors exploded.
The massive shockwave rattled the entire train. Muddy bubbles surged upward from below while the explosion-driven currents slammed through the submerged subway again and again, hurling the train violently in every direction.
Du Sanying lost his grip on the carriage door and was flung repeatedly across the compartment. By the time he finally stopped, he had already lost several health points and was thoroughly dizzy.
Bai Liu, meanwhile, had prepared much more carefully. He had wrapped himself tightly in the defensive items he’d robbed earlier and hidden in a distant carriage, only returning after the explosion subsided.
[System notification (To all players): Player Zhang Kui has been confirmed alienated due to Mental Value reaching 0 and has exited the game.]
Mu Shicheng stood in front of the bag lying at the bottom of the carriage.
Inside was a mirror.
Aside from the triangular piece missing from its center, it looked completely untouched—exactly the same as before the explosion.
It rested quietly underwater. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
There was no sign of Zhang Kui’s body anywhere nearby. At such close range, the explosion had most likely torn him into pieces and scattered him into the current.
The thought of floating in water mixed with Zhang Kui’s remains made Mu Shicheng feel faintly nauseous, but his attention was quickly pulled elsewhere.
He lowered his gaze toward the mirror.
Because of the missing shard, the reflection staring back at him lacked one eye, giving it an eerie appearance.
They only needed twenty more fragments to clear the game.
And yet, an intensely ominous feeling rose in Mu Shicheng’s chest.
It was the exact same feeling he had experienced the first time he saw Bai Liu smiling at him in this game—
The unmistakable premonition that he was about to suffer some truly catastrophic bad luck.
