Everything seemed too calm.
Shen Ning stood before the massive holographic monitoring matrix, her slender fingers swiftly swiping through the void, pulling up set after set of dense data.
“Run the attribute data report on the hundred thousand newly logged-in Source Star players again.”
Shen Ning spoke coldly, her voice echoing through the empty control room, carrying unquestionable authority.
“President Shen, it’s already been run three times.”
The assistant beside her carefully pushed the latest summary panel before Shen Ning. “All newly logged-in players’ vital signs, attribute fluctuations, and coordinate nodes are within normal range. No anomalous data outflow, no unexplained deaths or disconnection records. The backend data… is all normal.”
All normal.
Shen Ning stared dead at the twelve thousand—no, a hundred and twenty thousand—green dots on the screen representing the vital status of Source Star players, like stars in the night sky, steady and brilliant.
Distributed across the rest area and various instance zones.
But Shen Ning’s intuition kept telling her something was off.
Those empty shots of Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting lasting dozens of seconds, even minutes—those frantically purchased displacement items—didn’t look like simple “showing off wealth” or “strolling.”
How could these two monsters, who’d crawled out of the instance arena covered in blood and mud, suddenly have inexplicably strange movements?
Fu Songcheng, what exactly are you trying to do?
The screen flickered, and the feed cut back to the two’s livestream, the camera aiming at the rest area’s market.
Yet the frame still held only empty streets and a stall sign swaying slightly in the wind.
Not present again.
“President Shen, should we lock onto their coordinates?”
The assistant asked tentatively.
Shen Ning shook her head slightly. She wouldn’t be a sore loser like Quan Heng. Tonight she’d give Fu Songcheng another warning.
Without realizing it, she too had entered the chess game.
And at this very moment, at the edge of the rest area, in a dark, cramped back alley.
The dust in midair seemed to have hit pause, suspended motionless in the air. The distant clamor was infinitely stretched, becoming a low, viscous hum.
[Time Pocket Watch] in effect.
Time flow rate: 0.1x.
Time remaining: 9 minutes 45 seconds.
Fu Songcheng leaned against the cold wall, his slender fingers lightly rubbing the pocket watch in his palm radiating a bronze glow.
His gaze was cold and focused, without the laziness and arrogance he showed before the livestream cameras—replaced by the bone-chilling calm of a top-tier predator.
He’d received Chen Ke’s message.
[Chen Ke: Mr. Fu, just finished receiving this batch. All settled.]
[Fu Songcheng: How far along are you there now?]
Fu Songcheng tilted his head slightly, his gaze landing on Yu Huaiting beside him, who had his eyes closed resting. He lightly touched Yu Huaiting’s head.
The two had worked nonstop for three days.
[Chen Ke: Currently holding just under forty thousand.]
“Still a long way to go.”
Fu Songcheng recited inwardly.
A hundred and twenty thousand Source Star players, and they’d only caught under forty thousand so far.
“Speed it up.”
Fu Songcheng cut off the communication and tucked the Time Pocket Watch into his windbreaker pocket. He looked up at Yu Huaiting. “Huaiting, next.”
Yu Huaiting snapped his eyes open, a faint dark circle beneath them, but his gaze startlingly bright.
“Found them.”
Yu Huaiting’s voice was hoarse. He slowly raised his right hand, palm up.
[Skill Name: Life-Claim]
[Status: Activated]
The skill obtained from the Offering of Peace instance.
In Yu Huaiting’s vision, the entire rest area became a massive three-dimensional grid.
Hundreds of thousands of light dots moved across the grid, and among them, a golden dot representing a Source Star player was feasting at a luxury restaurant three blocks away.
Yu Huaiting’s fingers tightened slightly, and at his fingertips condensed a thread of extremely fine, extremely red silk.
The thread ignored spatial obstacles, like a venomous snake, instantly crossing three blocks to wind precisely around the neck of the Source Star player who was loudly holding forth.
But for them, this was practically effortless.
In the domain where time was slowed tenfold, Yu Huaiting’s wrist merely gave a slight flick.
A miniature hidden weapon, nearly impossible for the naked eye to catch, followed the locked trajectory and precisely grazed the Source Star player’s cheek, leaving an extremely shallow scratch too slight for blood to even seep out yet.
Judgment established!
Combat status activated!
At the same time, Si Yi coordinated with them from the corner, using his skill.
“Ready!” Si Yi’s voice rang out urgently in the communication channel.
Si Yi took a deep breath and slammed the enter key.
In that instant, in Source Star’s massive database, the vital-sign data of the locked player developed an extremely tiny fault—lasting only zero point zero one seconds.
His HP, in that instant, was forcibly modified by Si Yi to: 0.
Under the system’s judgment rules, this player was dead.
[Target deceased. Life-Claim skill released. Cooldown refreshed.]
This was only the first step—modifying the player’s data to refresh Yu Huaiting’s skill cooldown.
In the same thousandth of a second that the Source Star player was judged “dead” by the system, Bai Mu—also lurking beside Si Yi—made her move.
She followed the spatial coordinates left by Life-Claim, found the player, activated her skill, and pulled him back to Blue Star.
The Source Star player—still in the restaurant, not even having had time to feel the pain on his cheek—suddenly felt his body go empty.
The scene before him twisted instantly. The luxury restaurant’s lights, the exquisite food, the smiling faces of companions around him—all swallowed in an instant by endless darkness.
He didn’t even have time to cry out before his whole body, as if evaporated into thin air, was roughly flung by Bai Mu toward distant Blue Star—the lowly Child Star they regarded as beneath them.
“Person’s taken!”
Receiving the message, Si Yi typed again.
“Fake data packet uploaded! Node coverage complete!”
On Source Star’s surveillance panel, that player’s green dot flickered for less than a thousandth of a second—not even touching the alarm threshold—before returning to normal.
His coordinates still remained in the luxury restaurant, his HP still full, and even his heartbeat frequency data, under Si Yi’s forgery, appeared incomparably healthy.
But in reality, that spot was empty.
And the real Source Star player had already been thrown into Blue Star’s cage like a pig awaiting slaughter.
The entire process flowed like water, the coordination seamless.
The Time Pocket Watch slowed time, covering their movement traces. Life-Claim locked onto absolute coordinates. A tiny attack triggered the combat judgment.
Si Yi tampered with data to create a “false death” and refresh the skill. Bai Mu, Fu Songcheng, and Yu Huaiting found the target and carried out the spatial kidnapping. Finally, Si Yi filled the gap with fake data to evade the system’s player data calibration.
A chain of fraud.
A hundred and twenty thousand Source Star players, like parcels stamped with barcodes awaiting pickup.
“Cooldown countdown over.”
Fu Songcheng glanced at the pocket watch in his hand—the hands on the dial had reached their end.
The distorted space around them began returning to normal, the clamor pouring into their eardrums once more.
Without hesitation, he pulled up his personal panel and, in the [Attribute Point Allocation] column, decisively deducted one agility attribute point.
[Ding! One attribute point consumed. Item Time Pocket Watch cooldown reset.]
“Continue.” Fu Songcheng’s voice carried not the slightest fluctuation.
Yu Huaiting nodded and closed his eyes again.
Time slowed once more.
The hunt continued.
…
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