Chapter 84 - 79: Black Domain Walker

Chapter 84: Chapter 79: Black Domain Walker

The alleys in the urban village were incredibly narrow. Overhead, a dense canopy of power lines and clotheslines completely blocked out the moonlight. Black Domain Walker was hiding here, in a place that even food delivery drivers found to be a massive headache.

Before Yin Zhen even reached the outside of the building, she heard a woman’s furious voice.

"Li Ming! Have I said anything about you laying around at home for the past three years? Did I say a single word when we sold our house and moved here? Do I deserve to spend the rest of my life with a useless piece of trash like you? Don’t I have the right to pursue a better life?"

The muffled crying of a child could be heard, sounding exhausted, as if they had been weeping for a long time and were nearly out of energy.

"You say I have no morals? What are morals? When we can’t even afford our child’s tuition, can morals be exchanged for money? I’ve had enough! Tomorrow at the Civil Affairs Bureau, I expect you to sign the papers without a fuss. I’m taking the child, and you won’t need to pay child support. If you want to live such a pathetic life, then you can rot here by yourself!"

Yin Zhen, who had climbed up a tree, saw a woman dragging a seven- or eight-year-old girl out of the stairwell. The girl was still crying, stumbling as she was pulled along. Tear tracks stained the woman’s face as she hurried her child downstairs and into the landlord’s apartment on the first floor.

Emerging from the shadows, Yin Zhen reverted to her human form and headed up the stairs to the third floor. The door was left ajar, so she gently pushed it open and stepped inside.

The apartment was cramped, with the living room and bedroom squeezed together. The floor was littered with takeout containers, cigarette butts, and crumpled balls of paper. The air was thick with the nauseating stench of stale smoke and rotting food.

A man sat hunched over a computer, his back to the bedroom door. Several sheets of drawing paper were scattered across the desk, covered entirely in dark, twisted sketches.

Hearing the footsteps, Li Ming suppressed his anger and asked, "What more do you want?"

He turned around, his pupils suddenly contracting. Pulling a handgun out of thin air, he didn’t aim it at Yin Zhen, but instead pressed the muzzle firmly against his own chin.

"I can be the seventh!"

Li Ming’s voice trembled, but his grip on the gun was steady. Yin Zhen noticed that he was missing two fingers on his right hand—an old injury. Yet, the remaining fingers resting on the trigger were incredibly strong, already pressing down slightly.

The Shadow Servant, which had almost reached Li Ming, paused on the floor, awaiting Yin Zhen’s next command.

"Your dying struggle is meaningless," Yin Zhen’s voice sounded from beneath her mask, devoid of any warmth.

Li Ming’s lips twitched. "You must be Blossoming Prosperity, right? You killed Quentin. You are indeed very powerful, but I’m curious—how exactly did you find me?"

"That’s not important."

Li Ming’s voice suddenly rose in pitch. "Not important? You gained Strength from the Blood Clan and became much stronger than me. You have all of this, yet you won’t let me have it too? Is that fair? There isn’t a single good person in this world! Why are you helping them? My parents, my friends, my wife, and even my child—they’re all selfish leeches!

"I worked hard for most of my life to achieve success and give my family a good life. But my relatives got jealous and lured my dad into gambling. When my dad ran away from his debts, they expected me to pay them off. Because I refused, they chopped off two of my fingers. My mom threatened suicide to force me to give her money, my partner kicked me out of our company, and my wife..."

His eyes grew red as he let out a low, bitter chuckle.

"You’ve seen those Blood Clan nobles in the Red Corpse World. They lounge in gold-inlaid pools, drinking the purest blood plasma, maintaining their immortality with the blood of the lowest class. This world is exactly the same!

"The rich sit in high-rises, eating our taxes and drinking our blood, and then they tell us to look for the problems within ourselves, saying we just aren’t working hard enough. And you actually want to help them? Why are you helping them?"

"Are you done talking?" Yin Zhen frowned slightly. She wondered, "Do all villains talk this much? Will I become like this in the future, too?"

Black Domain Walker’s fingers tightened on the trigger. "You’re not going to answer my question?"

"I have no need to answer the questions of a dead man."

Li Ming’s pupils trembled for a moment before he burst into laughter. "Hehe, hehehe, you can try and see what happens if you kill me here. Go ahead, try it."

"Why shouldn’t I?" Yin Zhen asked.

A crazed and triumphant gleam burst from Li Ming’s eyes. "Because I’ve already set everything up here! As the seventh Player, once I die, the sacrifice will be complete, and the gates of Ancient Abyss will open! This world will be destroyed right alongside me!"

"Is that so? Then I’ll just... kill you somewhere else!"

A terrifying burst of murderous intent suddenly erupted from Yin Zhen.

"Wait! I haven’t finished speak—"

Just as Li Ming started his sentence, Yin Zhen furrowed her brows and decisively activated the Effect of the ’Why aren’t you dead yet’ Title, lunging at Li Ming alongside the Shadow Servant.

BANG!

At the sound of the gunshot, Trouble, the Special Task Force members, and their consultant Bai Qiang—who had all just arrived at the bottom of the building—halted in their tracks and exchanged glances.

"Hurry upstairs!"

Bai Qiang was so anxious that she almost used Shadow Instant Teleportation. She had analyzed that Black Domain Walker harbored self-destructive impulses. If they pushed him too hard, it was highly likely he would let himself become the seventh Player to die, dragging the world into destruction with him.

When the group barged into Li Ming’s apartment, the room was completely empty. The wheels of an overturned chair were still spinning, and there was a fresh bullet hole in the wall.

"Where is he?"

Trouble quickly and meticulously searched inside and outside the apartment, not even missing the exterior walls below the windows, but there was no one to be found.

"The thermal imager showed that there were two people in this room earlier. They vanished the instant the gun went off."

"Looking at the situation here, Professor Bai’s psychological profile was incredibly accurate."

The Information Center had actually narrowed the suspects down to three people, but Bai Qiang had chosen to follow this team. Pushing up her non-prescription glasses, she instructed, "Use this place as the center point and search the surrounding area. Pay close attention to any places where a body could be hidden. I deduce that Black Domain Walker’s so-called sacrificial ritual was set up right here."

"Understood!"

The Special Task Force captain led his squad members out, while Trouble and the others continued to inspect various parts of the room.

Bai Qiang picked up a crumpled ball of drawing paper from the desk and smoothed it out, pretending to examine it. Secretly, she glanced at her System Panel. There was no prompt indicating that the mission was complete. Had Black Domain Walker’s teammates rescued him ahead of time, or...

[Special Event ’Overture of War’ Completion Progress: 100%]

[With your participation and assistance, the first crisis of Ancient Abyss has been successfully resolved, but the Chapter of chaos has just begun. Do you have the resolve to guard Ancient Abyss until the end of time?]

[Rewards obtained...]

Bai Qiang had no time to care about the rewards. Instead, she immediately opened the forum and sent a private message to Blossoming Prosperity.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Did you kill him?

[Blossoming Prosperity]: Kill who?

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Stop playing dumb!

[Blossoming Prosperity]: (Confused)

[Blossoming Prosperity]: Five million per head. You pay the money, I kill the target. Anything else is off the table!

"Was it really not her?" Bai Qiang frowned. "No, she’s definitely faking it. Just you wait. I’ll skin you alive!"

In a scrap yard outside the urban village, Yin Zhen finished replying to Bai Qiang’s private message and touched her forehead. The bloody graze left by the bullet had already healed thanks to her Structural Repair ability. She had even collected the bullet casing, leaving absolutely no traces behind.

Yin Zhen had Ying carry Li Ming’s corpse as she continued to use Shadow Instant Teleportation to travel further away. Along the way, she did her best to use the surrounding buildings as cover so her movements wouldn’t be captured by satellites.

It wasn’t until she reached the borders of Guan City and felt an inexplicable resistance that she finally stopped.

She wondered, "Is it because Nan Jiamu is in Guan City that the others can’t leave, or is the current map of Ancient Abyss just this small?"

Puzzled, Yin Zhen looked around. She was surrounded by desolate woods, far away from any railways or highways, and completely free of surveillance cameras. She hid inside an abandoned, uninhabited bungalow.

While Black Domain Walker’s hacking skills were incredibly formidable, his physical body was pathetically weak. Yin Zhen had snapped his neck with a single hand. He had only transmigrated once and didn’t possess any useful Items.

However, what Yin Zhen hadn’t expected was that Black Domain Walker could actually trigger the Effect of the ’Villain Aura’. She wasn’t sure if he possessed an Aura Experience Card or if he already had a true Villain Aura.

At the exact moment he uttered, "I haven’t finished speaking," the Effect of the ’Why aren’t you dead yet’ Title failed to activate. Black Domain Walker had counterattacked and fired his gun.

Unfortunately for him, Black Domain Walker still wanted to live. That shot hadn’t been aimed at himself, but at Yin Zhen.

In that instant, Yin Zhen’s Cannon Fodder’s Intuition was triggered, and she saw a vision of her own tragic death, her head blown open by the bullet. But with Ying’s assistance and the enhancement of the Blood and Flesh Ascetic Method, Yin Zhen instantly boosted her body’s reaction speed. The shot ultimately veered off course, the bullet grazing her temple before burying itself into the wall.

Yin Zhen had knocked him unconscious and wrapped him in shadows to carry him away, only snapping his neck once they were far from the urban village. If Black Domain Walker had truly shot himself back there, the mission would have been doomed to fail.

Even now, Yin Zhen couldn’t say for sure whether it was Black Domain Walker’s inherent cowardice that led to this outcome, or if her Protagonist Halo Experience Card—which had only one second left—had exerted a faint influence at that critical moment.

Regardless, she had won.

On the card table, the color of the Dark Destiny card deepened once again, no longer transparent. This Villain Card was destined to be hers, and it had to be hers!

Yin Zhen finally received the rewards for this event: 50,000 words, the Golden Item ’Plot Kill’, and a pick-one-out-of-three reward for personally landing the killing blow.

She wanted both the Duplication Card and ’an answer’, but she could only choose one. Without overthinking it, Yin Zhen chose ’an answer’.

"I want to ask, how can I kill Nan Jiamu without causing the destruction of Ancient Abyss?"

Yin Zhen had repeatedly weighed this question countless times. It seemed like a single inquiry, but it actually encompassed two things she desperately wanted to know.

First, could she even kill Nan Jiamu?

Second, was Nan Jiamu’s death intrinsically linked to the destruction of Ancient Abyss?

After a long pause, the system, which had been silent for so long, finally spoke.