Inside the A-rank instance “Wasteland Forbidden Zone.”
Yu Huaiting was on the verge of madness.
The heavy sword in his hand had just severed the head of a gatekeeper NPC.
At this moment, he was trembling slightly.
“Fu, Song, Cheng!”
Yu Huaiting ground out the name through clenched teeth, his voice hoarse as if scraped with sandpaper.
He could clearly feel a numb, rhythmic rubbing sensation constantly emanating from his limbs.
That touch carried a gentleness that didn’t belong on a battlefield.
“Fuck! Do you have a goddamn problem?!”
Yu Huaiting staggered, nearly getting his shoulder pierced by a mechanical puppet charging in from the side.
He flung his arm out in a frenzy and slammed his right hand hard against the item in his tactical pocket—the “Sympathy Doll.”
[System Notification: Interaction failed! Agility -3%.]
“Get lost!”
Yu Huaiting’s eyes instantly flooded with bloodshot veins. Because of the shared senses, he not only had to endure the slaughter of the battlefield, but was also forced to withstand the restless, stirring arousal Fu Songcheng was inflicting on him from across the void.
Meanwhile, in the circular library of the other instance, Fu Songcheng had no reaction at all to the faint stinging on the back of his hand.
He stroked the doll, expressionless.
Listening to the system announce his rising attribute points, he prepared for the next round of screening.
[Round 2 borrowing begins! Time limit: 10 minutes!]
[Players, please act quickly. The one with the lowest value will be eliminated!]
The cold announcement echoed like a death knell beneath the soaring arched dome.
In the borrowing area, the five remaining players scattered instantly.
Lu Xiao huddled in the shadow of a bookshelf. Her eyes had gone completely murky, her fingers hooked like claws as she scratched viciously at her own left arm.
“Blood… not enough… need more…”
She muttered to herself, frantically smearing the dark red liquid oozing from her arm onto the books she’d selected.
The covers emitted a ravenous sucking sound, as if the words were hiding behind the paper, waiting for this bloody baptism.
Fu Songcheng had also torn open the wound on his left arm himself. Blood dripped from his fingertips as he, like the others, “fed” the books.
Fu Songcheng reasoned coldly in his mind: If everyone is bleeding, then blood will depreciate.
In the second round, everyone would use blood to elevate their books. He needed to find another way to break the deadlock.
He turned and, in the dead silence, walked toward the Librarian—who was holding his paper knife and elegantly cleaning up bloodstains.
To the other players, this behavior was tantamount to suicide.
But Fu Songcheng stopped three meters from the Librarian, extended his right hand, and made a gesture of request.
He pointed at the fountain pen stuck in the Librarian’s chest, then at the blank paper on the Librarian’s desk.
The Librarian stood up. His featureless face turned toward Fu Songcheng, his gaze lingering on him for a full five seconds.
For Fu Songcheng, those five seconds were suffocating.
Finally, the Librarian retrieved a pen and several sheets of paper and handed them to Fu Songcheng.
On the fourth minute, Fu Songcheng returned to the safe zone first, carrying his ten selected books along with the paper and pen.
The move drew sidelong glances from the players outside, but no one dared stop their “bloodletting” work.
To them, Fu Songcheng was giving up the fight.
Fu Songcheng sat down. His left hand was dripping blood, but his right hand was steady as a surgeon’s scalpel.
He opened the first book.
It was an utterly ordinary story.
A mother named Chen Mei, a widow who ran a pastry shop. Her life was encapsulated in a few hundred pages of yellowed paper.
With steaming baskets of buns, she traded the misty warmth for her son’s tuition, his suits, and his future.
At the end of the book, Chen Mei sat on a bench in a nursing home, watching the sun set.
Her son had become a so-called “successful man,” while she was merely waste—her value wrung dry, tucked away in a proper corner.
Waiting alone for the end of her life.
“Mediocre to the point of nausea.”
That was Fu Songcheng’s assessment.
This kind of mediocre biography rated extremely low in the rules system. Even smeared with blood, it would at best be a B-.
These ten books had been chosen at random—clearly, this one belonged to the most mediocre category.
But for a book, the greatest value wasn’t its content—it was the reader’s resonance.
What Fu Songcheng needed to do now was give this book meaning.
He put pen to the blank white paper.
“Suffering only begets more suffering. It cannot buy redemption.
Never loved—only ever needed.”
When the last character fell, he slipped the sheet of paper into the book. The gray cover, which had been utterly lifeless, suddenly began to tremble violently.
[Book resonance detected!]
[Re-evaluating the value of Wheat Fragrance…]
[Emotional weight: Medium.]
[Rating increased: C → A!]
That was a red light more dazzling than blood.
Fu Songcheng didn’t stop. He didn’t even bother to look up at the players in the borrowing area, frantically mutilating themselves.
His gaze was cold and sharp as he calmly flipped through the books in his hands.
For the remaining six minutes, Fu Songcheng transformed into the ultimate troll.
The second book, The Silence of the Nameless, recorded the story of an honest man who chose suicide after thirty years of workplace bullying.
“Since even death cannot make you utter a sound, let this silence become your eternal epitaph.”
Rating: A+.
The third book, The Rhapsody of a Loser, was the autobiography of a painter who fancied himself a genius yet lived in poverty his whole life.
He wrote with a cold sneer.
“Your so-called unrecognized talent is nothing but a mediocre man’s self-protection. Every stroke of color you paint is just a cover for the cowardice you dare not face reality with.”
Rating: A-.
One by one, Fu Songcheng rapidly reviewed and critiqued the books in his hands.
Meanwhile, outside the safe zone, the chaos had reached its peak.
The players had begun turning their eyes on one another. The books in their hands had already been soaked in their own blood—if they wanted to keep upgrading them, they’d need someone else’s.
Silently, they shoved and brawled with each other.
Every fresh wound on another’s body was enough to drive them mad.
Mad.
Everyone had gone mad.
The Librarian simply stood nearby, observing these players’ ugly behavior up close.
And against this bloody backdrop, Fu Songcheng sat at the edge of the light barrier, still writing his letters with elegant poise.
He was savoring this feeling—this reckless judging of others. Some hidden emotion deep in his heart was boiling over.
Fu Songcheng had never been a good man. He enjoyed this sense of superiority. The other players’ crude brawling, the annotations judging the authors’ mediocre, boring lives—all of it filled him with unparalleled excitement.
This was what he should be—solving every problem elegantly and calmly, not trapped among the mediocre masses in some office building.
For a moment, Fu Songcheng even felt that he was born for these instances.
Time entered the final countdown.
The four outside the safe zone charged desperately, terrified of being stranded beyond the barrier and eliminated.
Lu Xiao was drenched in blood, clutching eight books so red they were nearly purple. Her eyes held a madness utterly different from when he’d first seen her.
The other three players each used their own tricks—one even tore up his own clothes to wrap the blood-soaked books.
Fu Songcheng closed the last book.
Before him, ten books were neatly stacked, each radiating an eerie beauty.
That was the power of words—the marks carved into the soul by a blade. His critiques could indeed stir the emotions of the autobiography’s subjects.
[Round 2 borrowing has ended.]
[Calculating total submitted book value…]
The light screen slowly rose.
First place: Fu Songcheng. Average book rating: S-.
(System Note: Judge.)
Fu Songcheng figured the system was calling him a troll.
But that was deliberate on his part—condemnation tended to provoke stronger emotional reactions than praise.
Since he needed to resonate with the author and the book, he had to use the sharpest words to pierce straight into the hearts of both.
Second place: Lu Xiao. Average book rating: A.
…
Last place.
It was a burly man who had been trying to upgrade his books by snatching others’ blood. He now stared blankly at his ranking.
Fifth place.
The Librarian had at some point appeared behind him.
This time, the Librarian extended one slender finger and lightly touched the man’s back, over his heart.
The man’s body withered in an instant.
Like a dried flower drained of all moisture in a heartbeat, he rapidly shriveled and blackened, finally becoming a sheet of flesh.
The Librarian picked up the sheet of flesh and casually wrapped it around a book titled The End of the Greedy, using it as a cover, then placed it back on the shelf.
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