That sentence was like a poison-quenched knife stabbing into Quan Heng’s soft spot.
He remembered Shen Ning and Fu Songcheng’s deal—to shut him up, she’d had Fu Songcheng kill him on the spot.
He had once been high and mighty, treating Blue Star players as ants, as data, as consumables to entertain Source Star’s audience.
But now, he’d been erased by his own world, and picked back up like scrap by the Blue Star player he despised most.
How ironic, how humiliating.
He clenched his teeth hard, his throat choking, his inner defenses crumbling bit by bit.
Fu Songcheng took in his reaction and struck while the iron was hot.
“I want you to help me.”
Fu Songcheng leaned back against the chair, regaining his negotiating posture. “Drag everyone into the water—including Source Star.”
“Betrayed by your own planet—don’t you want to strike back?”
Quan Heng closed his eyes and didn’t answer.
“No rush for your answer.”
Fu Songcheng chuckled softly—which sounded unbearably grating to Quan Heng.
He stood, walked to the storage cabinet nearby, took out a white emergency medical kit, and casually tossed it onto Quan Heng.
“There are some snacks in the office, a water dispenser in the corner. Deal with it yourself. Don’t die.”
Fu Songcheng glanced at the watch on his wrist. “I’ll come find you again later. You can take your time thinking—refuse to cooperate and be killed by me, or work with me and take revenge on the planet that abandoned you.”
In negotiations, he never gave the other party a choice—calling it negotiation, but really it was threat.
Shen Ning had no choice, and Quan Heng had no choice either.
Advantage or disadvantage, as long as he was there, he was always the one in control of the situation.
Able to let go, able to pull it back.
Fu Songcheng’s office was specially designed.
Surrounded by thickened one-way soundproof glass, from inside one could clearly see all the employees’ working states in the hall outside, but from outside one couldn’t see in, let alone hear in.
Only if the omnidirectional amplifier on the desk was actively turned on could sound clearly transmit to the big office hall outside—designed for management convenience, though Fu Songcheng had almost never used this function.
At this moment, the office door was locked from the outside by Fu Songcheng. Quan Heng couldn’t open it from within and could only be trapped here waiting for Fu Songcheng’s next visit.
He lay on the floor like a fish out of water, watching Fu Songcheng’s back disappear beyond the door, his gaze complicated.
Fu Songcheng glanced at the electronic calendar on the office hall wall.
In the real world, only three days had passed since he’d logged into the game.
But Fu Songcheng had genuinely spent a full month inside Death Party’s instances before the game’s major version update arrived and all Blue Star humans entered the instances.
The time flow ratio between Death Party’s rest area and the real world was roughly 15:1.
Dawn had probably realized the existence of “observers.” They had Bai Mu and knew the time flow gap between the game and reality, but hadn’t announced it—probably afraid the “observers” would discover they could exploit the bug.
But Fu Songcheng had still gotten ahead of them—he’d already captured one “observer.”
Fu Songcheng walked to the employee area of the big office hall, found a computer still not powered off, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
His slender fingers flew across the keyboard. In the search engine’s search box, he typed three characters.
—Yu Huaiting.
Back in reality, some mysteries that couldn’t be verified in the instances—now was the time to unravel them.
The stinky dog wouldn’t mention his past, forcing Fu Songcheng to investigate himself.
The enter key pressed, Fu Songcheng quickly scrolled down, searching for possibly relevant pages.
Finally, his gaze locked onto an old webpage from a few years ago.
A local forum’s donation plea news piece.
The webpage’s title read plainly: “Parents Killed in Horrific Car Crash, Leaving a Six-Year-Old Orphan; High-Schooler Aunt Drops Out to Struggle Raising Him, Begging Society for Help.”
The news’s accompanying photo was a blurry shot of a thin, small boy and a high-school girl in uniform.
The little boy’s name was Yu Huaiting.
Fu Songcheng’s breathing paused slightly.
He clicked into the poster’s profile—Yu Huaiting’s “high-schooler aunt.”
The profile recorded her life over the years—many donation posts, and many people responding, but her and the little boy’s life never seemed to improve. Later, replies grew sparse.
The last post’s timestamp was late at night, eleven years ago.
[Please, everyone, help me! I borrowed online loans to treat the child’s illness, and now I’m being violently debt-collected… What do I do?]
Fu Songcheng sneered. If the loans had really been for Yu Huaiting’s sake, it wouldn’t have led to him meeting such a pitiful little Yu Huaiting.
Playing the victim to swindle money.
Below the post, there were only a scant few replies.
But among them was one comment—an anonymous account with no avatar, posting only a string of garbled characters, followed by a URL link.
Fu Songcheng stared at the post’s publication date.
That date was exactly when he and Yu Huaiting had first met, shortly after they’d parted.
Fu Songcheng leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.
The air seemed to have turned to needles, stabbing him sharply.
Just then, the amplifier above the big office hall suddenly crackled with static.
Then, a weak voice echoed through the empty hall.
“He was… sold by that aunt of his to the country next door to yours.”
It was Quan Heng.
He’d crawled to the desk at some point and turned on the amplifier connecting to the hall outside.
Fu Songcheng didn’t move, sitting quietly there, all ears.
Since someone was willing to tell the story voluntarily, it was faster than piecing the truth together himself like fishing a needle from the sea.
“That country is chaotic—a lawless zone.”
Quan Heng’s voice came in broken fragments, narrating the past of the person beside Fu Songcheng. “He was illiterate then, knew nothing. The people there treated him like a dog, trained him as a thug.”
“He was formidable, able to fight. He never questioned the ins and outs of a job—whatever task he was given, he’d complete it with the most ruthless means. When he grew up, he was quickly noticed by the biggest boss there, who kept him close as a blade.”
Quan Heng’s laugh came through the current. “He’s good-looking and ruthless enough. Over there—men, women… who knows how many people threw themselves at him, rubbed up against him.”
“You’re the first he actively approached.”
Perhaps because at this moment there were no billions of Source Star viewers, no system data records—only his rival in love and his lifesaver.
Quan Heng was no longer clinging to his pride and stubbornness as before.
He had to admit his utter defeat.
He’d chased Yu Huaiting for so long, even stooping to illegal interference, losing everything he had, yet hadn’t earned a single proper look from Yu Huaiting.
And Fu Songcheng didn’t need to do anything—just stand there—and Yu Huaiting would willingly sheath his fangs and sidle over, wagging his tail.
Quan Heng watched Fu Songcheng through the one-way glass in the glass office. “Now I think I get it.”
“Probably because only you can give him a sense of security.”
Able to shine himself, without being overshadowed by Yu Huaiting, and without overshadowing Yu Huaiting’s light either.
Shining together.
Quan Heng’s dozens of rewinds had given him some experience, but making one person play another was so very hard.
He still hadn’t scored full marks when the standard answer walked off with Yu Huaiting right in front of him, and severed his connection to Source Star.
Quan Heng found it somewhat funny too—he’d developed Death Party for immersion and simulating reality, giving many player items high authority and operational space.
In the end, it had been used by Fu Songcheng to capture himself.
Leave a Reply