Chapter 115 - 108: Fate of a Beast of Burden

Bai Qiang sat on her living room carpet, her hair a messy tangle from her own frantic scratching.

Every time she looked at that Golden Card in her sea of consciousness, her heart would spasm with unbearable pain.

She was simply out of luck, having inexplicably inherited this card, gained the protagonist aura, and acquired a word count of over four hundred thousand. She reviewed the aura’s Effect, exclusive Talent, team-up privileges, and the suppression rules against villain Identities, among other things.

Her conclusion was that being the protagonist never ended well!

"Can I quit? Please, I’m really not cut out to be the protagonist. I’m just a useless bum content to idle my life away!"

[The protagonist Identity cannot be voluntarily abandoned. If the protagonist Identity is lost for other reasons, the Player will be directly downgraded to a Gray Card. All word counts, Talents, Titles, and Items will be cleared.]

Bai Qiang choked on her words. Was she doomed either way?

It had not been easy for her, a Player who debuted with a Silver Card, to survive this long. She had teetered on the brink of death more times than she could count, and she had woken up in the middle of the night countless times to organize intelligence and deduce the situation.

Even so, she had been demoted to a Copper Card after only four rounds due to the penalty from a failed event. If she truly lost everything and became a Gray Card, she would die in the very next round. It was a guaranteed death!

"Ahhh, I don’t care anymore!" Bai Qiang shouted frantically.

At the very least, she still had over four hundred thousand words, which seemed impossible to use up. Despite the detrimental negative buffs of the protagonist aura, its life-saving Effect was still quite good.

"I have to survive first, at the very least."

Bai Qiang opened the forum. Seeing that Blossoming Prosperity still had not replied, she frantically bombarded them with messages again.

If she were in Chi Hai, she wouldn’t have dared to do this for fear of being beaten up. But now she was in Ancient Abyss, and she was the protagonist. No matter how much she acted out, she wouldn’t die, so what was there to be afraid of?!

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Come out and explain!

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: You promised we would meet and have a frank talk. Are you going back on your word?

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Blossoming Prosperity, don’t make me look down on you!

One minute later.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: [Pleading] I’m begging you, okay? Just explain things clearly to me. I know you must have suffered a massive injustice, but if you don’t speak up, I have no way to help you. You’ll be hunted down by the officials!

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: I don’t have that deep of an affection for Nan Jiamu. I won’t hold any grudges against you, trust me. [Sincere]

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: I just want to know what we should do next. Are we really going to watch Ancient Abyss be destroyed? Or are you planning to leave Ancient Abyss and join Chi Hai? [Cracked]

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Acknowledge me, please! [Sobbing] [Sobbing] [Sobbing]

[Blossoming Prosperity]: Tomorrow morning at 9 AM, Tiansheng Department Store, the corner café.

Having finally received a reply, Bai Qiang was so excited she almost jumped up. Tomorrow, she definitely had to interrogate this person properly and figure out the grudges between them and Nan Jiamu.

Bai Qiang lay on her bed to sleep, but a sense of restless anxiety lingered in her heart.

The Information Center must be in complete chaos by now.

Bai Qiang didn’t want to care. She just wanted to get a good night’s sleep and wake up tomorrow to feed the stray cats in her neighborhood. Right now, she was Bai Qiang. She wasn’t Adeline, nor was she the protagonist of Ancient Abyss. She was going to live Bai Qiang’s life.

She closed her eyes, and then opened them again.

Tomorrow at 7 PM, a new batch of Blood Clan invaders would descend upon Guan City. The last wave had been five hundred, but this time, the number would be at least a thousand, and the Information Center was leaderless...

Bai Qiang rolled over. What did it have to do with her? She was just a psychological therapist, not a savior.

She tossed... and she turned... and then she abruptly sat up!

"Bai Qiang, you’re destined for a life of toil!"

She decided to forget about it and just go over to take a look. She would treat it as working a shift for the system; otherwise, she wouldn’t feel at ease holding onto a word count of nearly 500,000.

Meanwhile.

Yin Zhen successfully found Zoe and pulled her back to her home.

The nights in Guan City were different from Night City. There were no eternally burning neon lights, no stream of flying cars zipping by. There were only old streetlamps casting dim yellow halos of light, a few scattered windows illuminated in the residential buildings, and the occasional sound of parents scolding their children.

Zoe spent the entire journey looking around in all directions. She marveled at the large trees lining the road, gasped in awe at the chirping cicadas, and let out an exclamation of wonder at a stray cat that darted out from behind a trash can.

"May, did you see that? A cat! A real cat!"

Yin Zhen tugged hard on Zoe’s arm, afraid that if she let go, the girl would take off chasing after the cat.

There were cats in Night City too, but they were incredibly rare, and all of them were mutated to some degree. They rarely appeared in front of the Blood Clan citizens. Zoe had only ever seen mechanically manufactured bionic cats and dogs.

Yin Zhen quickened her pace. She couldn’t let Zoe stay out in the open for too long. The curfew was still in effect, and drones occasionally flew overhead. Zoe couldn’t withstand anyone’s interrogation right now, especially since she couldn’t even speak Chinese.

Upon returning home, Yin Zhen deadbolted the door, drew the curtains, and forcefully pressed the curious baby Zoe down onto the sofa.

Zoe was currently using the body of a single office worker from the building opposite theirs. The woman was in her twenties, with short chestnut hair, wearing bear-patterned pajamas and slippers. She had dark circles under her eyes from staying up late to work overtime, exuding the aura of an exhausted corporate slave from the inside out.

However, those eyes belonged to Zoe—curious, bright, and carrying an innocence unpolluted by the mundane world.

"Lucy!"

Zoe recognized the little girl holding a phone next to the coffee table and happily waved at her.

Lucy raised her head and said in a highly mechanical tone, "Hello, Zoe."

Then, Lucy lowered her head again, turning her attention back to the phone. Various images flashed rapidly across the screen before Yin Zhen snatched the device away in the next second.

"Children aren’t allowed to play on phones."

Lucy tilted her head up and said to Yin Zhen, "The time since my birth is greater than your age—"

Before she could finish her sentence, the pitch-black Ying emerged from behind Lucy and covered her mouth.

"What’s its name?"

Zoe had noticed the Shadow Servant earlier but hadn’t gotten the chance to ask Yin Zhen about it.

Yin Zhen poured a glass of hot water for Zoe. "Its name is Yin Xiaoying. It’s a shadow that came to life. Ying, go cook two bowls of instant noodles. Lucy, you go help Ying out too."

"I have not inputted the program for cooking instant noodles."

"Then you can stand in the kitchen, watch Ying’s cooking process, and input it."

"Understood."

Having sent Lucy and Ying away, Yin Zhen looked back at Zoe.

Zoe held the water glass but didn’t drink. She cradled it in her palms, feeling the warm sensation radiating from it. Her eyes darted everywhere, from the chipped tea set on the coffee table to the dusty set-top box on the TV cabinet, from the stack of storage boxes fashioned out of delivery cartons in the corner to the potted cactus on the balcony.

Yin Zhen didn’t rush Zoe. She watched as Zoe pressed a hand to her chest to feel her heartbeat, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.

Yin Zhen was also very curious as to why Zoe hadn’t turned into a member of the Blood Clan after possessing this body, but instead remained in a human state.

After a long while, Zoe finally looked at Yin Zhen and said, "When I first arrived here, I felt my body mutating. Then, I used the method Source taught me to seal all my Strength deep within my body. Right now, I’m a complete human—very fragile, but also very vibrant.

"This feeling is very unfamiliar, but I like it a lot. It’s not a state of being dead; it’s interacting with the world through breathing. It’s alive, and this world is alive too. There are living trees, living bugs. Is this what life is? True life."

Yin Zhen looked at her and asked a crucial question: "Can Source turn other Blood Clan members back into humans as well?"

Zoe’s eyes dimmed for a moment before she slowly shook her head.

"No. Source didn’t truly turn herself back into a human; she’s merely imitating one. She’s imitating a human’s heartbeat, breathing, body temperature, and metabolism. She imitates it so authentically that she can fool everyone, including herself. That’s how she managed to become the leader of the Rebel Army, because she made everyone believe that as long as they followed her to overthrow the Blood Clan, she would have a way to return everyone to the human era. But she doesn’t. She’s been lying all along."

Zoe’s voice was very soft as she said the last sentence. There was no anger or condemnation, only a sense of sorrow laced with understanding.

"What else did Source tell you?"

Zoe thought for a moment before saying slowly, "Source showed me the origin of everything. That white creature... Source called It ’Chalk.’ The white of the Cretaceous period, the white deep within the geological strata, the white from before the beginning of time."

Yin Zhen listened patiently as Zoe continued.

"Chi Hai and Chalk originally sank into the deep sea together. They were submerged there for a very long time—so long that no one knows when they first came into existence.

"Later, humanity began extracting underwater resources, digging deeper and deeper until they breached a place they shouldn’t have. Chi Hai was excavated and brought back to the human world, and then the Blood Plague broke out. Initially, Source was just a worker on an offshore drilling platform. After the Blood Plague erupted, she turned into a member of the Blood Clan too. Following an accidental fall into the sea, she encountered Chalk. Source obtained Strength from Chalk, and It gave her the mission to retrieve Chi Hai and Chi Hai’s Strength, but Source failed."

[Congratulations, Player. You have completed the hidden event ’Chi Hai’ and uncovered the complete worldview of the Red Corpse World.]

[Reward: 50,000 words, Special Item: Auditor’s Work Certificate.]

[Auditor’s Work Certificate]: Target a visible entity, hold up the work certificate, and yell ’Content Violation.’ The target will be temporarily shielded in a subspace. They will not take any damage, nor will they be able to interfere with the main world’s plot in any way. Duration: 8 hours.

[Friendly Reminder]: The Auditor’s authority is exceptionally vast, so use it with caution! After sealing the target, you may submit evidence of their ’content violations,’ such as being excessively gory and violent, pornographic, or ideologically incorrect. If the evidence is solid, the seal’s duration will be doubled, and the system will urge the target to rectify their behavior. If you abuse this to frame righteous and upstanding innocent citizens, the work certificate will be revoked. Cooldown: Seven days.