The coldness of the dagger spread along his jawline. Yu Huaiting’s Adam’s apple bobbed involuntarily, brushing against the cold handle.
Those imperious pale eyes flickered slightly. In the end, it was Yu Huaiting who surrendered first.
He turned his head aside, avoiding Fu Songcheng’s gaze.
“…Fine. You win.”
His voice carried a heat even he hadn’t noticed.
His heart pounded violently in his chest, a sour, tingling sensation rushing up his spine straight to the back of his head.
Yu Huaiting of course knew Fu Songcheng couldn’t really make a move—they were bound by shared senses now, their lives linked. If that blade cut, Fu Songcheng would bleed too.
But reason was one thing; the body’s reaction was another.
Being held at the throat by Fu Songcheng with a dagger, looking up to see this person’s focused gaze fixed on him—it actually made his blood boil.
Yu Huaiting turned his face away rather awkwardly, a suspicious faint blush rising at the base of his ears. The undercurrent in Fu Songcheng’s eyes instantly receded, and reason retook the high ground.
He abruptly withdrew the dagger.
Insane.
Fu Songcheng cursed himself inwardly.
What was he even doing?
He’d actually let himself be dumbed down too, using Yu Huaiting’s usual tricks to counterattack—boring and beneath him.
“You can go back now.”
Fu Songcheng stepped back half a pace, widening the overly dangerous distance between them. He pressed his clenched right fist to his lips and gave an uncomfortable little cough.
Yu Huaiting didn’t shamelessly press closer again.
He stood up and gave Fu Songcheng a complicated look, the excitement from moments ago still not fully faded from his eyes.
“Fine. I’ll stop teasing you.”
Yu Huaiting patted the nonexistent dust off his clothes and strolled lazily toward the door. “Tomorrow at noon, twelve sharp. Enter the instance on time.”
“Got it.”
Fu Songcheng coldly dropped two words.
A flash of white light, and Yu Huaiting returned to his own rest room—now next door to Fu Songcheng’s.
He threw himself into the wide sofa and let out a long breath.
With a flip of his wrist, he summoned Fu Songcheng’s Sympathy Doll directly from the system space.
The thing was only palm-sized, dressed in a crisp dark suit, with gold-rimmed glasses on its nose—a miniaturized, rigid, boring Fu Songcheng.
Yu Huaiting pinched the doll by the back of its neck with one hand and dangled it in front of his eyes, his face full of disdain.
After binding the shared senses, stroking the other’s doll granted temporary attribute bonuses.
But he, Yu Huaiting, was the number one player on the Power Ranking.
Did he lack these mosquito-leg-sized attribute crumbs?
Laughable. Didn’t need them at all.
Back in the instance, when he’d been teased by Fu Songcheng with the Sympathy Doll to the point of being left hanging, he’d even tried attacking the doll in a fit of embarrassed rage.
The result was a system notification of [Interaction failed], and it had even temporarily deducted a point of his attribute value—so infuriating he nearly snapped his greatsword in half.
But now…
Yu Huaiting stared at the doll’s frosty little face and, as if possessed, reached out a finger and poked its soft cheek.
The doll showed no reaction, just staring at him blankly with those dead-fish eyes.
“Tsk, the glasses are really in the way.”
Yu Huaiting muttered.
The real Fu Songcheng wore glasses, giving off a refined-scoundrel vibe. But the in-game Fu Songcheng had eyes sharp as knives—glasses didn’t suit the Fu Songcheng he knew.
He extended two fingers and carefully removed the gold-rimmed glasses from the doll’s face.
Looking at the doll without the glasses blocking it, Yu Huaiting raised an eyebrow in satisfaction. “Much easier on the eyes.”
He set the glasses-less doll upright in the most conspicuous spot on his nightstand, then shook his head and pulled up the system shop, continuing to browse for buff items.
……
Meanwhile, Fu Songcheng’s rest room had gone completely quiet.
He walked to the workstation and sat down, bringing up his system panel.
[Current Available Points: 6630]
Of that, 5,500 were compensation from the Return to the Living World instance settlement; the rest was his previous balance.
Fu Songcheng unhesitatingly opened the attribute enhancement panel.
“Allocate 3,000 points to Constitution. Allocate 3,000 points to Mental Resistance.”
[Ding! Allocation successful. Current Constitution: 125, Mental Resistance: 23.]
The life-and-death crisis in the “Ya’nan Village” instance had sounded a warning bell for him.
If he hadn’t exploited the shared-senses mechanism with Yu Huaiting—frantically milking Yu Huaiting’s Sympathy Doll to temporarily stack his attributes—he might not have beaten Li Guoping, and would have lost his life in that eerie village.
Fu Songcheng looked at his panel. “My stats are still too low. A lot of my tactical ideas—my body just can’t keep up.”
He did need stronger self-preservation ability. Yu Huaiting’s line—”the more self-preservation you have, the less trouble I have”—was infuriating, but it did make sense.
Having handled his own attributes, Fu Songcheng brought up the system search bar.
His slender fingers tapped on the virtual keyboard, entering two characters: Shen Ning.
[Searching…]
[Query result: ???]
Fu Songcheng’s brows knitted. Looking at the three huge question marks on the screen, his gaze turned deep.
The system can’t find her?
He opened his personal item inventory and dug out the love letters he’d bought earlier to curse Yu Huaiting with. He’d bought fifty at once back then; he’d used one to curse Yu Huaiting, leaving forty-nine.
[Special Item: Love Letter]
Fu Songcheng picked up the black pen beside him and wrote the two characters “Shen Ning” on the envelope.
[System Notification: Locking onto target…]
[Warning! No physical existence of this player found! Letter sending failed!]
Fu Songcheng’s hand holding the pen jolted to a stop. How could that be?
Her name was right there at number one on the Rating Ranking, visible to all players. Never mind the system search failing—even the paid Love Letter item was reporting “no physical existence found”?
This Shen Ning came from the instance world.
She couldn’t be found in the Death Party game—so who exactly was she?
…
At the same time, at the other end of the endless void.
Behind layers upon layers of gauze curtains, a hand so pale it was nearly translucent reached out and gently drew the curtain aside.
Shen Ning slowly woke from a long slumber and a bizarre dream.
The attendant who had been standing silently in the shadows by the bed immediately stepped forward, movements soundless, and respectfully handed over a cup of clean water at just the right temperature.
Shen Ning said nothing. She took the cup and drank lightly, head lowered.
The cool liquid slid down her throat, seeming to press down the intense emotions and the smell of blood from the dream.
She handed the empty cup back to the attendant and slowly raised her eyes.
“Go check the records for Instance D632.”
She paused, as if recalling details from the dream. This was the first time in all her many visits that she’d found the story answer she wanted in the Return to the Living World instance.
“The player matched to the ‘Zhang Xinci’ identity—who exactly is it?”
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