Distant Blue Star.
Blue skies, green grass—but with the original humans gone, the cities were desolate and cold.
At this moment, this place had become a vast, heavily guarded prison.
Chen Ke stood on the athletic field of an abandoned high school, holding a tablet.
Before him were densely packed Source Star players, stretching beyond sight.
These “gods” who, not long ago, had worn flashy newbie outfits and swaggered across the system plaza, were now all squatting trembling on the muddy field like quails.
Their wrists and ankles bore shackles.
Chen Ke had ordered Xu Zhun to “zero-cost shop” them from the orange—no, from somewhere.
Daily consumption was enormous, and Xu Zhun spent every day driving a truck around hunting for Blue Star specialty “physical restraint items.”
“No whispering! Heads down!”
Not far away, Xu Qingyao viciously kicked over a Source Star player who’d tried to stand up and protest.
“You… do you know who I am?!”
The kicked-down male Source Star player felt he’d lost face before his own kind and craned his neck, shouting, “My father is a director of a Source Star energy conglomerate! You lowly creatures of Blue Star—you dare kidnap me?! He won’t let you off! You’re all going to die!”
Xu Qingyao sneered and walked up to him, looking down from above.
“Ooh, such a big official air.”
She crouched and patted the man’s cheek with her rough palm. After entering instances, her manicured nails had split, and her once fair, soft hands had grown rough and hard through round after round of training.
The girl who’d once struggled even to twist open a bottle cap now had astonishing grip strength, and her eyes carried the ferocity honed through rolling in mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
“Once you’re here, even if your father were the Jade Emperor it’d be useless. Understand, hostage?”
The Source Star players had just entered instances—unlike them, who’d been trained, the kidnapped ones were all tourists at heart, players at heart. In ruthlessness and strength, how could they compare to these special Dawn players?
Chen Ke and the other players also cooperated, suppressing the disturbances of this bunch of ragtag misfits.
Looking at the hostages awaiting distribution before him, his thoughts couldn’t help drifting back three days.
The private communication that had decided his fate.
At the time, the eight Dawn traitors had just settled into Fu Songcheng’s villa, and that night they received Fu Songcheng’s message.
[Fu Songcheng: Fake your deaths. Cooperate with me to capture Source Star people.]
Afterward, they’d cooperated with Fu Songcheng to use Si Yi’s skill to fake their deaths and wash away their player identities—becoming “dead people” in the system’s judgment—then returned to Blue Star through Bai Mu’s skill.
“Blue Star!”
Xu Zhun, back on Blue Star for the first time, shouted excitedly, “I’m finally back!”
Everyone was immersed in the joy of escaping death.
Even though, just to pull off the deception, Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting had left shocking but non-life-threatening wounds on them.
After creating his own fake death, Si Yi drank a recovery potion and, looking at Fu Songcheng, couldn’t help asking: “Why not send all the Blue Star people still in the instances back too?”
Fu Songcheng answered like this:
“Man is the butcher’s block, I am the fish and meat. If the fish returns to the sea, does the fisherman lose his net? If the pigs and sheep flee back to the pen, does the butcher lose his knife?”
“Either total victory, or nothing at all.”
Si Yi had gritted his teeth then and asked this question.
“What if… we don’t cooperate with you?”
Chen Ke and the others had already returned to Blue Star. They’d barely survived, barely gotten the chance to enjoy a moment of peace. Yet Fu Songcheng wanted to drag them into a war against the entire Source Star high-dimensional civilization—an egg striking a stone. Who would be willing?
Hearing this, Fu Songcheng didn’t get angry. Instead, he let out a soft laugh.
“Everyone will cooperate with me.”
“And no one’s being asked to go die.” Fu Songcheng’s tone carried a hint of strangeness, as if he couldn’t understand what reason they had to shrink back. “I’ll be in the instances, sending the Source Star people down continuously. I just need their skills.”
…
On Blue Star, Chen Ke asked the same question of the seven players before him.
“Are you willing to cooperate with Mr. Fu’s operation?”
He was the recruiter, the manager of these special players—but he couldn’t make decisions for them. Defecting hadn’t been his idea alone either.
The most crucial figure in the plan, Bai Mu, was the first to step forward.
“I’ll cooperate.”
“Me too.”
Xu Qingyao followed right after and added, “Even if my skill might not be useful, I still count as manpower.”
“Of course it’s useful,” Chen Ke comforted with a frown. “A money-saving skill is useful at any time.”
He took a deep breath and looked around at the players once called humanity’s hope.
At first, all of them had been ordinary people, chosen by Dawn because of their relatively special skills, coordinating and cooperating, continuously helping Dawn develop.
Dawn had also protected them, given them the best training resources, found top-ranked players to escort them, and called them humanity’s hope.
Now, they had the resolve worthy of that title.
With them here, Chen Ke was confident humanity could endure the long night and welcome the dawn.
“Good!”
Chen Ke’s nose stung a little, but he couldn’t lose face. He announced loudly, “For humanity!”
The memory ended here.
Chen Ke withdrew his thoughts and looked at the Source Star players on the field, chattering and densely packed.
Prisons, schools…
Blue Star had countless places to imprison these self-proclaimed noble beings.
Over these three days, day and night without rest, they’d been receiving the “packages” Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting bundled and sent down.
Sorted by category, shackled, locked into cells.
“Just under forty thousand.”
Chen Ke recited the number in his mind.
Not enough.
Far from enough.
Before being discovered, the more cards in hand, the better.
As long as the one holding the board hadn’t yet seen through the forged data packets, as long as the system hadn’t yet discovered these players were missing—
This grand, silent kidnapping would continue, until Fu Songcheng tore off all pretenses with the other side.
Leave a Reply