Chapter 88: Land of Exile

Chapter 88: Chapter 88: Land of Exile

Chen Qi arrived in the Royal Capital just as the sun was setting.

In the afterglow of the sunset, he saw Plum Blossom 10 for the first time.

She was a girl who looked to be about his age. Her face, which should have been cute and beaming with smiles, was instead tinged with a few threads of sorrow.

"Should I call you Jomoya Chris, or Red Heart 7? Or something else?"

"My name is Lin Biyun. Next time, you don’t have to call me Plum Blossom 10."

Lin Biyun’s voice held a hint of anger. This guy in front of her was clearly no straight arrow.

If it were anyone else joining the Order Keepers, they would have been thrilled to report to headquarters long ago.

But this guy had to drag his feet, putting it off again and again.

As Chen Qi’s recommender, Lin Biyun had lost a lot of face. The only reason she was showing him any kindness at all was because he hadn’t caused any major trouble yet.

At least he had sent Najir’s body back.

"Just call me Red Heart 7. Jomoya Chris is just a game character."

’No way I’m stupid enough to tell anyone my True Name,’ Chen Qi thought. ’The Extraordinary World is bizarre and dangerous. Who knows if some player knows a Curse.’

Lin Biyun was so open about her name because she had no choice.

She had become a player at the very beginning of the ninth game, receiving a blank Card after the shuffle.

"You’re a cautious one. Maybe you really will make it to Judgment Day."

"Let’s go. The Third Captain is already waiting for you."

Without any ceremony, Lin Biyun sat down in the passenger seat and directed Chen Qi toward a manor in the Royal Capital.

...

The Order Keepers only had a dozen or so members in total, so naturally, they didn’t have a pile of bureaucratic positions.

Everyone formed their own teams based on complementary abilities, with the most powerful player serving as captain.

The Third Team was Lin Biyun’s team. Since she had recommended Chen Qi, the Third Team had the right of first refusal.

"How many members do the Order Keepers have now?"

Chen Qi couldn’t help but ask, driven by curiosity.

Hearing this, a flicker of sorrow passed through Lin Biyun’s eyes.

"Including you, there are only 12 of us left."

"My next mission is to continue recruiting new members."

"For us, the number of players never decreases. The faces just change from familiar to strange."

Lin Biyun’s words startled Chen Qi. ’That’s a high rate of attrition,’ he thought.

It was true that finding replacements was easy. The Order Keepers surely had a way to detect Life Magnet Fields, and new players couldn’t conceal theirs, making them easy to find.

In reality, the main reason new players were exposed was that they were too high-profile.

For most ordinary people, it was inevitable that their egos would swell after gaining Superpowers, and they would always end up doing something reckless.

Like Ireland Zoff before.

But newly emerged players were too weak. Not everyone could undergo a complete transformation and make a stunning debut in just a few months like Chen Qi had.

The abilities of most were only good for bullying ordinary people.

Expecting them to fight Traitors was just sending them to their deaths.

As if sensing the doubt in Chen Qi’s eyes, Lin Biyun hesitated for a moment before offering an explanation.

"Who do you think is the greatest enemy of us Order Keepers?"

"Is it really the Traitors?"

Lin Biyun’s words made Chen Qi pause. ’Isn’t it?’

If he remembered correctly, Lin Biyun herself was the one who had told him that answer.

"I’ve only recently come to understand this level of things myself."

"When you get down to it, the struggles between players are just internal conflicts."

"The Traitors just want to become stronger. Maybe a few of them have other ideas, but the vast majority of players don’t want to destroy this game."

"Therefore, it’s a consensus among almost all players not to cause large-scale disturbances in the Lanyu Kingdom."

Lin Biyun’s words left Chen Qi deep in thought. The Order Keepers and the Traitors were indeed irreconcilable, but that didn’t mean they didn’t share common interests.

The King’s Game itself was a common interest for all players.

Essentially, they were all beneficiaries of this game.

Leaping from an ordinary person to a Superpower User—even with the huge risks and the chance of dying at any moment, Chen Qi believed most players had no regrets.

Take the owners of Red Heart 7, for example. Whether it was Jomoya Chris or Ireland Zoff, they never had regrets, only unwillingness to accept their fate.

The Order Keepers were established to maintain the Kingdom’s order, so whoever posed the greatest threat to that order was their current primary enemy.

"You mean external forces are trying to come in and cause trouble, and the newly recruited players are meant to defend against them?"

Connecting this with some of their previous topics of conversation, Chen Qi had a faint guess.

"Exactly!"

"In the last two years of every game round, right when we players start killing each other on a large scale, the small countries surrounding the Lanyu Kingdom start making frequent moves."

"In recent years, they’ve basically started treating the Lanyu Kingdom as a penal colony for their death-row inmates."

"And believe me, if these countries work together, they absolutely have the ability to send in over a thousand death-row inmates."

"I really can’t figure out why they do it. At most, it just causes a bit of trouble for us, but they never seem to get tired of doing it."

Lin Biyun’s brow furrowed slightly. This was a matter she would be responsible for going forward.

When she first received this assignment, she thought her captain was joking with her.

’Can nations really be this shameless with each other?’

Even the most vicious criminals were still just ordinary people.

At most, they could cause some riots, but those could be put down easily.

’Besides annoying King Gutaf and creating a little more work for the players, what was the point?’

...

’Our Lanyu Kingdom is actually being used as a penal colony by the surrounding countries?’

’Our international relations must be in the gutter.’

Suddenly hearing this truth, Chen Qi found it hard to suppress the urge to complain. The news was a bit of a shock to him.

Having grown up in the Lanyu Kingdom, he still had some affection for the place.

But he never would have imagined that the Lanyu Kingdom was so despised by its neighbors.

In fact, he should have connected the dots when he learned about the King’s Game, but Chen Qi had deliberately avoided such speculation.

Now, it had just been confirmed.

An entire country had been turned into a game by a Demon. Forget being targeted by neighboring countries; it deserved to get hit by a couple of nukes.

If he really thought about it, the response from the surrounding countries was actually far too mild.

They hadn’t cut off any form of exchange, whether it was economic, cultural, or diplomatic.

In fact, if you didn’t know the inside story, you wouldn’t feel like they were being targeted at all.

When Chen Qi was an ordinary person, he never felt there was anything wrong with the surrounding international environment.

And that, in itself, was the biggest problem.

The reactions of the neighboring countries were "unreasonable." An Alien, a Demon, had appeared next door—how could they sleep soundly at night?

The small countries were one thing, but even the Nulis Federation—the Sovereign Country of this sea region and a nation on the cusp of becoming a middle power—hadn’t come knocking on their door. This wasn’t how the law of the jungle was supposed to work.

Lin Biyun probably never imagined that her casual remark had sent a certain someone’s thoughts spiraling into the realm of international power plays.

’But if it’s just a thousand or so death-row inmates, that can’t be considered a huge problem, can it?’

’So what was the "huge problem" Lin Biyun mentioned earlier?’