Chapter 53 - 49: Identity Exposed for Real This Time

Chapter 53: Chapter 49: Identity Exposed for Real This Time

Yin Zhen swam out of the seawater, climbed onto another deck, and looked up to see a woman in a Diving Suit standing before her.

Wet red hair clung to the sides of her face, and a few light brown freckles were scattered across her nose and cheekbones.

Zoe!

Zoe looked at Yin Zhen. Her expression shifted from vigilant confusion to gradual relaxation. The corners of her mouth curled up as she reached out a hand.

"It’s great to see you again, 717!"

Yin Zhen’s pupils constricted sharply. She turned her head to look at Ian, who had just climbed out of the water, her hand instantly gripping Night Song in its holster.

"Don’t kill him!"

Zoe raised a Water Curtain between Yin Zhen and Ian, separating the two.

Yin Zhen quickly backed away. She raised her muzzle at both of them, remaining completely silent as her Super Sensing silently unfurled, scanning the surroundings for anyone else.

Suddenly, it felt as if an iron nail had been driven through her brain. A sharp ringing pierced her ears, nearly splitting her skull open. Blood spurted from her nose. She let out a muffled groan and almost dropped her gun.

"Don’t use any Spiritual System Extraordinary Abilities here! The core of the Aggregation is right nearby!"

Gritting her teeth, Yin Zhen raised her gun once again.

Zoe had already dispersed the Water Curtain and pulled Ian up from the ground. "717, I mean no harm, and Ian isn’t a bad person either. Since fate has brought us together, I think we can be friends instead of enemies."

Yin Zhen didn’t know how Zoe had recognized her, but that firm tone indicated it wasn’t a probe; Zoe was absolutely certain she was 717, not Lucia.

What should she do next? Admit it or deny it?

Her mind raced, weighing the pros and cons.

Ian removed his damaged helmet, exposing his emerald eyes entirely for the first time. Unsoftened by lenses, their profound depths seemed almost sharp. "She isn’t 717 either. She’s an... invader from another world!"

Only this could explain how S717 was so anomalously different from Zoe.

Zoe looked at Ian in confusion, then turned her gaze back to Yin Zhen. "What’s an invader?"

After a moment of great shock, Yin Zhen let out a scoffing laugh. As expected of the male lead of the Red Corpse World!

Even if he lacked combat prowess, his Wisdom was outstanding. He possessed Insight and analytical skills far beyond those of ordinary people, perfectly complementing the female lead and even acting as her behind-the-scenes strategist. It was a classic character dynamic. He was definitely the male lead; there was no mistaking it!

After a brief moment of thought, Yin Zhen understood what had happened.

"It was Victor, wasn’t it?"

On the first day Victor had taken her to the training grounds, the anomalies with that medical staff member on the sidelines hadn’t escaped his sharp eyes. She hadn’t seen that medic on the second or third day and assumed he had fled. Now it seemed Victor had caught him.

The important matter Victor had been busy with must have been this!

Ian didn’t deny it. Victor had indeed told him.

Twenty years ago, before the outbreak of the Blood Plague, Ian had been known as Yi Zhi, a Huaxia virology Ph.D., an anomaly within his Martial Arts family. According to the traditions of the East, Victor, who had studied Martial Arts under his family, had to call him senior martial brother.

Following the outbreak of the Blood Plague, he and Victor had survived many life-and-death encounters, traveling together across the ocean from the East to arrive here. During this journey, he had experienced certain events that changed his eye color from the dark brown typical of Huaxia people to emerald green. As a result, everyone assumed he was of mixed race before the Blood Plague and a native of this continent.

This was the Source of the Blood Plague outbreak. His goal was to find the cure and bring it back to his homeland so that Huaxia could shine once more!

Everything had been perfectly normal until right before this expedition. Victor had pulled him aside and told him that they had captured someone—a normal human who likely came from another world, whose soul had somehow possessed a Blood Clan member’s body.

The Spiritual System interrogation capabilities of the Cavendish family were infallible. Victor couldn’t yet analyze the cause and effect, and with the task force’s departure imminent, he specifically instructed Ian to keep an eye on Lucia for him.

Along the way, Ian suddenly felt that the trajectory of the entire world had become bizarre and incomprehensible, as if an invisible hand had scrambled everything. It made him involuntarily wonder about the true nature of this world and whether what he was doing still had any meaning.

To figure it all out, Ian had contacted Zoe before departure and asked her to assist him. Zoe’s Extraordinary Ability was Water Control, making her a ruler of the sea. She didn’t have the complicated schemes of others, making her the perfect candidate.

Yin Zhen lowered her gun, casually wiped away her nosebleed, and asked Zoe, "How did you tell?"

Zoe smiled, her expression holding a purity devoid of any calculation. "You have a noble soul. I saw it."

Yin Zhen’s face scrunched up. A noble soul? Noble, her ass! Even the system called her vicious!

In truth, this was exactly the case. Zoe didn’t ’see’; she perceived. She could perceive the color of a soul.

"What do you want?" Yin Zhen dropped her gun-wielding hand by her side. Since things had come to this, there was no point in denying it anymore.

Before Ian could speak, Zoe stepped forward. She hadn’t taken Ian’s talk about an ’invader’ to heart at all. Treating Yin Zhen like an old friend, she happily shared, "I joined the Rebel Army! Eliminating the β-type Biomass Aggregation is my first mission. Its spiritual power is too strong, and I’m worried the mission might fail. Will you help me?"

Yin Zhen and Zoe were from the same batch of experimental subjects and shared extremely similar genes, which gave Zoe a peculiar sense of attachment to Yin Zhen. Unfortunately, Yin Zhen didn’t feel the same. Her rationality completely suppressed her genetics.

"Zoe, that’s not the point right now," Ian chimed in with a reminder. The experimental subject’s mindset was still too immature; Zoe needed to grow up.

Yin Zhen looked at Ian. "Are you with the Rebel Army too?"

"I don’t belong to any faction. I only do what I believe is right."

Yin Zhen nodded. She tried to say the word ’invader,’ but found that when she harbored the intention to leak this information, she simply couldn’t utter it. The system was choking her words back.

She rephrased her thoughts.

"I can’t answer the question you raised right now. If you can keep my secret, I can be the first to tell you when I’m finally able to speak of it." Yin Zhen paused, then added, "As long as I can guarantee my own safety, this matter isn’t some life-or-death secret that I absolutely must take to the grave."

Yin Zhen gave up on salvaging her cover and began thinking about what to do next.

If Nan Jiamu hadn’t lied to Sheng Yehan, then after her seventh transmigration, the protagonist of the Red Corpse World would join this invasion game and invade her world. This meant the system would open up to Zoe. Since Zoe was the protagonist, she would possess the highest authority and have access to much more intelligence. As fellow Players, they would definitely be able to communicate with each other.

Yin Zhen needed to know: if she killed the protagonist of a world, would that world and everyone in it truly vanish along with them?

If so, she would choose to become a member of the Blood Clan, join the Red Corpse World, try to team up with Zoe, and kill Nan Jiamu!

If not, she would still try to team up with Zoe to kill Nan Jiamu!

Yin Zhen hoped it was the latter.

Her world’s name in the invasion game was ’Ancient Abyss’—as in the proverb, ’The stray bird yearns for the old forest, and the pond fish longs for the ancient abyss.’ Ancient Abyss was her home, the place where her parents rested in eternal peace. If possible, she didn’t want her homeland to be destroyed.

Previously, just to survive, she hadn’t wanted too much contact with Zoe. But after seeing the Villain Card of Dark Destiny, she had formed a rough guess about protagonist halos. To kill Nan Jiamu, cooperating with Zoe was her only option.

Since she had no other choice, there was no need to resist it anymore. So what if she had to bear the fatal risks of interacting with the protagonist? Building up enough affinity with Zoe while she had yet to fully mature might even yield greater benefits down the line.

Once she truly inherited Dark Destiny and gained the means and ability to contend against a protagonist, if Zoe’s existence ever threatened Ancient Abyss, Yin Zhen would have the power to kill Zoe and eliminate the threat.

At this moment, Yin Zhen suddenly felt that Fateful Encounter—this Golden event—seemed more like a main questline belonging exclusively to her.

A main questline whose direction and ending were unknown even to the ’author’!