“What you face is a civilization and technology far beyond yours by tens of thousands of years, its foundations so rich that what you’ve glimpsed is only its surface.”
Seeing he remained unmoved, Shen Ning sighed and slowly turned around. “I knew what kind of person you were, yet I still couldn’t help giving you chance after chance.”
Fu Songcheng didn’t think she was saying anything meaningful—instead, alarm bells blared in his mind.
“Then I’ll have to keep you here for now.”
Shen Ning stepped back. “When the forced instance entry time arrives in two days, I’ll personally send you back to the instance. You won’t get any rest time.”
Almost the instant Shen Ning’s words fell, Fu Songcheng moved.
Without a wasted word, his right foot slammed against the ground, his whole body bursting out at astonishing speed like a hunting leopard, fleeing the room.
Fu Songcheng yanked hard—the metal door was violently pulled open.
Yet the scene outside the door made his pupils contract sharply.
Shen Ning’s assistant, who’d long been waiting outside, stood there expressionless, holding a specially made, sleek black firearm.
Fu Songcheng didn’t even have time to dodge before the muzzle spat a faint blue light.
Whoosh—
A tiny tranquilizer dart pierced precisely into Fu Songcheng’s neck.
The overpowering drug swept through his entire body in less than half a second.
Fu Songcheng felt every taut muscle instantly lose control, his brain as if struck by a heavy hammer, his vision warping and darkening rapidly.
His body lost support and slumped softly forward, crashing heavily onto the hard floor.
Shen Ning looked down at him with regret, while the assistant deftly holstered the gun, stepped forward, and lifted him into the hibernation pod.
The last second before his vision plunged into complete darkness, what Fu Songcheng thought of was Yu Huaiting.
Right now, that fool was probably still waiting for him in the instance.
Whenever Fu Songcheng went to Source Star to probe for information, he’d return to the instance in ten minutes at most.
This time, he’d be leaving him alone.
…
Who knew how long passed before Fu Songcheng slowly came to.
His powerful physical constitution, honed by long years on the edge of life and death, brought his consciousness back an hour earlier than the drug’s projected failure time.
He was trapped inside the hibernation pod.
Almost the same second he opened his eyes, the red lights on the pod’s inner side began flashing madly, piercing alarms echoing through the cramped space.
His early awakening had triggered the system’s vital-sign abnormality alarm.
Without any hesitation, Fu Songcheng’s instincts drove him to swing his right arm, elbowing the pod’s reinforced glass.
Bang!
A dull impact sounded, and the glass’s surface showed not a ripple.
Damn it.
Fu Songcheng cursed inwardly.
This was Source Star. This body of his was just the most ordinary mortal shell, without any of the attribute bonuses obtained in instances.
Without those terrifying strength and speed, every impact he made now seemed feeble.
Through the glass blurred by nutrient fluid, Fu Songcheng saw several figures appear above him.
They were the staff who’d come running at the alarm.
They were anxiously fiddling with the control panel, their lips moving rapidly, seemingly arguing fiercely about something.
Because of the pod’s high-strength soundproofing, Fu Songcheng couldn’t hear a thing and could only stare at their lip movements.
“Insufficient drug dosage…”
“President Shen said don’t kill him yet…”
“Then inject another dose of sedative.”
Seeing this, Fu Songcheng’s heart sank to the bottom. What had happened while he was unconscious?
Enduring the soreness all over, Fu Songcheng stopped his meaningless violent impacts and rapidly scanned the cramped pod.
His many trips to Source Star hadn’t been for nothing. In the documents he’d searched before, it was written that Source Star’s laws were extremely strict. To prevent research accidents from causing subject deaths, all medical and hibernation equipment was required to have a purely mechanical emergency escape device installed.
The one he was in must have one too.
Sure enough, his hand found the emergency valve—right beneath the cushion behind his neck.
Outside, the researchers had already placed their hands on the re-injection button.
A ruthless glint flashed in Fu Songcheng’s eyes. With all his strength, he yanked the lever outward!
Click.
It was the sound of a mechanical structure disengaging.
In an instant, the hibernation pod’s protective mechanism was triggered. To protect the subject, the physical locks on both sides of the pod door sprang open automatically.
Pssht—!!
Accompanied by the thick hiss of high-pressure gas, the reinforced glass pod door burst upward before the stunned eyes of the technicians outside.
No one had expected such a turn.
Though Fu Songcheng’s body was weak, combat instinct was carved into his very bones.
The instant he landed, he rose and struck—one fluid motion.
Bang! Bang!
Two dull impacts of flesh. The other two guards who’d been about to draw their guns were smashed directly in the temples. They didn’t even manage a grunt before slumping to the ground.
Fu Songcheng didn’t pause for a moment. Crouching low, he dashed out of the office and raced through the corridors.
Relying on his keen instinct for building structure, he avoided the main passages and slipped into a changing room.
He smashed open a locker at top speed, found a hat, then hurriedly changed into a hoodie, tucking some other clothes into its pocket.
“Test subject F-720 escaping… Attention, test subject F-720 escaping…”
A robotic voice echoed through the corridor.
Fu Songcheng pulled his cap low and turned left and right, entering an office. When he came out, he was already dressed as a white-coated researcher, hurried in manner.
Only after dodging the cameras and finding a secluded storage room did he relax slightly.
In the corner of the storage room were piled some electronic devices about to be scrapped. Fu Songcheng’s gaze landed on an old portable laptop with a dusty screen.
He walked over and tried to connect the power and boot it up.
The instant the screen lit up and the time display popped out, Fu Songcheng’s heart convulsed violently.
He had slept a full day.
Fu Songcheng tried several default passwords to get the laptop open, then clicked into Source Star’s online community and Death Party’s livestream forums. Dense, red-highlighted exposé posts instantly flooded the entire screen.
Public opinion online had spiraled completely out of control, becoming a storm sweeping across two civilizations.
Just half a day ago, Chen Ke had publicly and unreservedly exposed on the public screen the truth of how Source Star used Blue Star as a testing ground, harvested Blue Star’s assets, and toyed with humanity.
There were even video clips of captured male Source Star players cursing furiously.
At the same time, Chen Ke publicly issued a recruitment order on the public screen: full recruitment of all Blue Star players possessing “time-type” skills and items.
Without the pocket watch in Fu Songcheng’s hand to lower the time flow, Chen Ke and Bai Mu and the others—no matter how strong—couldn’t catch many Source Star players in a day.
But time-type items came at great cost.
To reset that pocket watch’s cooldown, Fu Songcheng had, over the past few days, converted nearly all the points Xu Qingyao had brought out of Dawn into base attributes to exchange for pocket watch cooldown resets.
Recruiting this player was also to fill his own gap.
Though Chen Ke’s call to action was enormous, stirring the blood of countless Blue Star players, Dawn’s voice was clearly louder, and more people responded.
Dawn simultaneously issued a statement: Chen Ke was a traitor to humanity, calling on all players to join forces to hunt him down.
Dawn and the Source Star test players were chasing and killing Chen Ke within the game. The voice of resistance seemed somewhat faint before power—but this suicidal truth revelation had triggered an unprecedented tsunami within Source Star itself.
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