He freed one hand and placed it on Yu Huaiting’s shoulder, redirecting his attention back to Chen Yu.
“Why did you come to the Yu residence?” Fu Songcheng’s gaze was sharp as a blade. “Doesn’t the Lin residence have story fragments?”
“We looked everywhere.” Chen Yu spread both hands, wearing an utterly justified, arrogant look. “I’m a ghost. Ghosts wander around and drift about everywhere—isn’t that perfectly normal?”
Actually, Fu Songcheng had guessed right. Chen Yu and Lin Feng had turned the Lin residence upside down and still hadn’t found any story fragments.
The vast Lin family, despite holding a funeral that looked grand and imposing, was unlike the Yu family—it was already a candle guttering in the wind.
Fu Songcheng watched him quietly, his gaze as if trying to see straight through Chen Yu.
Chen Yu grew uncomfortable under Fu Songcheng’s stare. He looked up at the ceiling, silently thinking of a way to slip away.
The power of the soul-guiding formation was rapidly draining.
Yu Huaiting was a novice, after all—trapping this wandering soul for a while was already quite impressive. Fu Songcheng, seeing Chen Yu’s form beginning to blur again, stared hard into Chen Yu’s eyes and asked, word by word:
“Last question. Answer me.”
“Since entering this instance, have you two experienced any form of emotional interference?”
The instant the question was thrown out, Chen Yu’s expression froze.
“We…”
Just as Chen Yu was about to speak—
Something changed!
In the bedroom that had only been filled with gusts of yin wind, the air suddenly distorted and boiled violently like scalding water!
A terrifying, suffocating suction force, without any warning, came raging in from some unknown space outside the room.
Bang!
The cinnabar of the soul-guiding formation Yu Huaiting had drawn on the floor, as if corroded, let out a piercing hiss and rapidly dissipated.
Chen Yu in midair let out a muffled grunt.
That terrifying suction force locked dead onto his soul, violently yanking him backward.
“Someone’s summoning him too!” Yu Huaiting snapped his eyes open, hefting his greatsword to charge forward.
But before he could swing, Chen Yu’s whole body transformed into a mass of black mist and vanished without a trace.
The bedroom returned to dead silence.
The red wedding curtains drooped limply.
The temperature began to slowly climb back, as if everything just now had been an illusion.
Yu Huaiting looked at the empty midair, then at the formation on the floor, wrecked beyond recognition. His expression was somewhat ugly.
“He got away.”
Yu Huaiting cursed. “I shouldn’t have cut in.”
Fu Songcheng looked at the small pinch of ashes from the tracking talisman on the table, his gaze deep.
“You say that like you’ll change next time.”
Having scolded Yu Huaiting, Fu Songcheng recalled in his mind Chen Yu’s shock and guilt when he’d heard the question about “emotional interference.”
“A Thought of Old Dreams…” Fu Songcheng murmured softly to himself. “Has it already reached the point of altering players’ emotions?”
“Don’t be angry.”
Seeing Fu Songcheng frowning in thought, Yu Huaiting leaned in and rested against Fu Songcheng’s shoulder.
“I’m not angry at you.” Fu Songcheng turned his head, looking into Yu Huaiting’s eyes, his tone more serious than ever. “When did you start liking me?”
Fu Songcheng now suspected that Death Party’s influence on emotions wasn’t confined to inside the instance.
Elsewhere.
Deep within the Lin residence.
A mass of black mist slammed violently into the ground, rolled a few times, and only then barely condensed into Chen Yu’s form.
“Chen Yu!”
Having felt Chen Yu being controlled, Lin Feng had used a summoning-type item, but it had been slow to take effect.
He’d nearly been ready to storm the Yu residence to find Chen Yu.
Lin Feng knelt on one knee on the floor, reaching out to help Chen Yu, but his slightly cold palm passed straight through Chen Yu’s body.
Facing Chen Yu in his soul-body state, Lin Feng was somewhat at a loss too.
“I’m fine.”
Chen Yu shook his head, gradually recovering from the state of having his soul wrenched.
He lifted his head, looked at Lin Feng’s bloodshot eyes, took a deep breath, and recounted what had just happened in the Yu residence’s bedroom.
Chen Yu still had lingering fears. “They seem to be able to use evil arts without relying on an assault challenge.”
Lin Feng listened, then stood quietly in place, sinking into thought.
He’d originally wanted to accumulate story fragments and repeat the same trick to kill the two of them. But from the current situation, Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting were even better at using evil arts than him and Chen Yu, who was a soul body.
Fortunately, those two didn’t have story fragments for now—otherwise Lin Feng wasn’t sure he could withstand their attacks.
…
“When did you start liking me?”
Quan Heng’s slender fingers tapped twice lightly on the tablet, letting out a very soft cold snort.
“Assistant.” Quan Heng didn’t turn his head, his voice low and cold.
The assistant immediately stepped forward quickly, bowing his head slightly, his tone respectful: “President Quan, what are your orders?”
Quan Heng’s gaze remained fixed on the screen. Watching Yu Huaiting’s somewhat intimate movements as he leaned close to Fu Songcheng, he asked with displeasure, “The 3.0 identity system—did it activate emotional interference?”
The assistant quickly checked the underlying code, then answered with a slightly tight voice: “Yes, President Quan. The identity system, when binding, is equipped with an emotional assimilation module.”
Quan Heng’s voice turned cold. “When the next version updates, turn this module off. Don’t give players incorrect guidance.”
“But, President Quan…”
The assistant hesitated. Bracing against Quan Heng’s icy low pressure, he forced himself to explain: “The identity system was originally designed with the emotional interference module precisely to increase the instance’s dramatic conflict and appeal through this soul-level emotional pull.”
“The other executives have been demanding higher ratings. Pure killing and puzzle-solving—the audience has gradually grown aesthetically fatigued.”
The assistant pulled up a complex data line chart and tactfully tried to dissuade him: “According to backend monitoring data, recently several of the hottest high-tier players’ solo broadcast ratings have become unstable. Especially Yu Huaiting, number one on the Power Ranking…”
The assistant paused, enlarging Yu Huaiting’s solo channel data: “Yu Huaiting’s livestream used to consistently rank in the top three. Recently, his combat frequency has dropped significantly. His original audience base has been lost, but he’s gained a lot of female viewers.”
Quan Heng looked as if he’d heard a ridiculous joke. “Making a killing god who’s cleaved through half the server with a greatsword act like a lovesick greenhorn, whining and being all lovey-dovey every day?”
Quan Heng turned around, looking down at the assistant from above, his gaze sharp as a blade: “What I say goes. Turn. Off. The. Emotional. Assimilation. Module.”
The assistant nodded immediately and fell silent.
Quan Heng was about to say something more when a heavily encrypted private communication request popped up on his personal terminal.
The sender’s name was:
Shen Ning.
Quan Heng glanced at the assistant still waiting for his orders, and waved his hand coldly. “You’re dismissed. We’ll deal with the emotional assimilation module after I finish handling this.”
“Yes.”
As if granted amnesty, the assistant immediately withdrew from the main control room.
…
Inside the instance.
“When did you start liking me?”
That sentence circled once through Yu Huaiting’s head.
There wasn’t a trace of teasing in Fu Songcheng’s eyes, and Yu Huaiting put away his flippant grin.
“When…”
Yu Huaiting rubbed his chin, his gaze falling on the void. “If you force me to say, I don’t know exactly when either.”
He turned his head, looking at Fu Songcheng’s cool, refined profile, and let out a soft laugh. “When I first learned I had a shared-senses lover, honestly, I really thought you were a massive burden.”
“Back then I scoured the item shop for ages, looking for an unbinding item.” Yu Huaiting’s tone was candid.
Fu Songcheng didn’t refute it—he just listened quietly.
He knew Yu Huaiting was telling the truth, because at the beginning, Fu Songcheng himself had also been scouring the shop for unbinding items.
“Later, didn’t I go find you? The first time I saw you, it was like seeing an incomparably sharp, poison-quenched dagger hidden in a pitch-black scabbard. Dangerous—yet it made you want to get closer.”
Yu Huaiting spread both hands, the very picture of a shameless rogue with perfect justification: “From disgust to curiosity, from curiosity to liking you—exactly when I started liking you, I’m not clear on that either.”
Leave a Reply