Yan Wei had just taken a step towards the black smoke when he suddenly paused.
He pulled out the remaining players’ Student files and said, “Not everyone can go over. We’re not racing against Broken Scythe; we’re competing against the Ghost/Monster in this instance that wants to kill everyone.”
To put it simply, Broken Scythe was a pawn used by He Luo and was not to be feared.
They needed to race against He Luo.
He Luo could mislead Wu Hua and the others, and he could use the same method to guide other players. The Ghost/Monster had far fewer restrictions in this campus than the players did, and as the instance progressed, the Ghost/Monster would only grow stronger. They had to quickly bring as many players as possible to their side; otherwise, it wouldn’t be long before they had to face both the Ghost/Monster and all the other players at once.
“If we all go to the small grove to deal with Broken Scythe, that’s just another way of falling into a trap. One person should take the files and find all the remaining players in the shortest time possible, while the other three go to the small grove to put out the fire.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Yu Feizhou and Lin Zhen almost simultaneously said, “I’ll go find the players.”
Beside Yan Wei, Yan Mingguang also slightly opened his mouth; although he didn’t speak, his intention was clear.
“No way,” Lin Zhen scoffed, “Everyone wants to take the easy route, huh? Don’t compete with me; I haven’t had many fights these past few days, and it’s been way too different from my previous runs. Let me handle this kind of thing where I can actually hit someone.”
As he spoke, he snatched the stack of documents from Yan Wei’s hands and casually said, “Anyway, if anyone doesn’t want to join, I’ll just beat them into submission. Little pet, remember to contact me on the walkie-talkie when the time comes; I’ll distribute walkie-talkies to all the players who join our side.”
With the documents gone from his hands and before he could respond, Lin Zhen had already taken his black longbow and leaped away, disappearing from their sight in an instant.
Yan Wei glanced at his empty hands, realizing that the once-held files were now gone. The lonely path was left with only him, Yu Feizhou, and Yan Mingguang. The black smoke rising not far away was striking, like a hand pulled from the ground, gripping the throat of the sky.
He turned his gaze and smiled faintly.
“Lin Zhen, this guy…”
Yu Feizhou spoke softly, “He’s always sharp-tongued with friends he recognizes.”
A soft heart beneath a tough exterior.
Going to the small grove to put out the fire and deal with Broken Scythe seemed to require more manpower and was more troublesome, but it wasn’t actually that difficult. On the surface, Broken Scythe’s actions were essentially a straightforward scheme; both sides were in the open, competing to see who was better—this was something Yan Wei understood; no one took Broken Scythe seriously.
Instead, the real challenge was to pull players to their side before the Ghost/Monster could act, which meant facing the possibility of the Ghost/Monster appearing from the shadows at any moment.
That was the unpredictable and treacherous situation.
The three of them withdrew their gazes from where Lin Zhen had disappeared. Yan Mingguang looked at Yan Wei, his pure black eyes reflecting Yan Wei’s figure, his voice cool and calm, layered with trust: “What do you want to do next?”
Yan Wei was quite pleased with this question, his brows slightly moving as he said, “They want to kill us, but their strength isn’t enough; we must leverage our power. Since they’re trying to leverage their power by deliberately setting fire in the small grove, it indicates that their leverage point is right there, where they’re waiting for us to go. The strategy is simple: whatever they want us to do, we’ll make them do it.”
“Let’s go.”
The flames slowly began to rise higher.
By the time Yan Wei and the others arrived nearby, a small area of fire in the grove had already begun to spread. Wu Hua, along with the other two from Broken Scythe, was standing boldly in front of the flames, waiting for Yan Wei and the others.
As Yan Wei rushed to the small grove, notifications of new players joining their side echoed in his mind multiple times, suggesting that Lin Zhen was also competing for time.
They didn’t waste any time, quickly moving close from a blind spot to observe the surroundings.
However, just as Yan Wei steadied himself, Wu Hua suddenly turned his head and shouted towards their direction, “Stop hiding; I know you’re here.”
Yan Wei paused—Yan Mingguang and Yu Feizhou were well hidden, but his physical presence was a hindrance.
A flicker of contemplation crossed his eyes, and before he could make a decision, Wu Hua shouted again, “What do you think the relationship between Punishment Notice and Stairway is? I believe that destroying the Punishment Notice, making the source of Resentment disappear, is the way to end everything and draw out the Stairway. Yan Wei, right? Perhaps you really are Yan; since you’re so clever, you must think we’ve been fooled by the Ghost/Monster…”
The flames seemed to grow larger, and under the bright daylight, the thick smoke drifted with the wind, darkening the area, and it seemed one could even see the fluctuations of temperature in the air.
Wu Hua’s expression was filled with malice: “But does it matter whether you believe in the Ghost/Monster? Just trust the clues Lou provided; that’s the key. If you don’t show up, let the fire burn slowly. It won’t reach the Punishment Notice during the day, but it will at night, right? In any case, it will be us who destroy the Punishment Notice, and we will win. If you still want to win, why not come out and talk?”
—But if they came out and fell into a trap, they would still win.
Yan Wei’s gaze sharpened.
He used the skill Perception Burst on Yan Mingguang and Yu Feizhou: 【Good calculations.】
【What should we do?】 Yu Feizhou’s tone was quite worried, 【What he said seems to make sense. Letting the fire burn means they win, and we can consider ourselves safe. Should we just go out and fight them directly? They definitely won’t just stand there and watch us use extinguishing items.】
【Pay attention to their positioning.】
Even though Wu Hua had already discovered his position, Yan Wei remained hidden, crouched behind a rock, pointing at where Wu Hua and the others were standing.
【Did you notice? They’re not in a normal alert mode; the three of them aren’t covering all directions. They not only haven’t secured various angles, but there’s also a slight flaw. With your two physical indices, plus my Perception, we can find this flaw and break through. Using close-range extinguishing items here is feasible.】
Yan Mingguang: 【The trap is right there.】
【Don’t rush out yet; I want to see where these clowns get their confidence from.】
As Yan Wei spoke, he slowly closed his eyes, retracting all his senses to the extreme, only allowing his Perception to slowly spread out, heading towards the flaw deliberately left by Broken Scythe, focusing on probing.
After a moment, Yan Wei’s lightly closed eyes moved slightly, his eyelashes fluttering, and his expression paused slowly.
Seeing that no one had come out yet, Wu Hua frowned, unsure if he was trying to provoke Yan Wei and the others into a trap or genuinely thought this way. He sneered, “Are you choosing to watch us win? Turns out Yan is just like this.”
Even Yu Feizhou, who usually had a good temper, showed displeasure at this moment: “Let’s go out; we have ways to deal with them.”
Yan Mingguang, who had been standing coldly beside them, heard this and frowned slightly, then took out the Long Whip.
But Yan Wei suddenly grabbed him.
The man turned to look at him, his killing intent dissipating in an instant.
Yan Wei slowly opened his eyes, his amber eyes bright and clear, mixed with an indescribable emotion.
“So this is the trap they prepared for us,” he raised an eyebrow and chuckled softly, “This isn’t a trap at all; it’s clearly a pie waiting to be eaten.”
Yu Feizhou: “What do you mean?”
“Their trap is Severed Space; I’m afraid Wu Hua thinks of Severed Space as some kind of killing side quest. The original plan is canceled; this time, we don’t need to engage in a battle of wits with them; we’ve already won at the starting line. I suddenly understand what Lin Zhen, that lunatic, thinks about every day; the feeling of directly brute-forcing through is indeed… well, quite good.”
“Let’s go, we can just go over and have some fun with them.”
In the file room.
The floor was scattered with various documents, folders, and papers covering the dusty ground. Zhou Tian was half-squatting in front of the bookshelf, quickly searching. Gao Ming was on the other side, in front of him were some files Zhou Tian had thrown out.
Amidst the chaos on the ground, they kept hearing notifications of players joining their side.
But Zhou Tian’s expression was not good; she looked somewhat confused.
“Did you find anything special?” she asked Gao Ming.
Gao Ming shook his head: “Just these for now—duty rosters for He Luo’s class, a list of class committee members, and some of their previous exam papers. The information on the class committee and exam papers is just that Tang Yizhuo has good grades and good relationships, while He Luo and Qian Xuanxuan have poor grades and poor relationships. Yan Wei has already told us this, so it shouldn’t be the special information he’s looking for. I can’t find anything else at the moment.”
“Could it be that we’re overthinking this?” Zhou Tian frowned, “I can’t find anything here either; this school event is really good, the Student Union’s activity manual has hardly anything in it. However, these documents do corroborate what we know, so it’s not completely useless. Let’s keep these for now and search again.”
“Okay.”
In the small grove behind the dormitory.
The fire had spread a bit more.
Yan Wei was the first to step out, swaggering into view of Wu Hua and the others. Yan Mingguang and Yu Feizhou followed behind, but his gaze remained fixed on Yan Wei, as if the three players from Broken Scythe were not worth a glance.
Wu Hua finally saw them approach and smirked, “You’re willing to come out?”
Yan Wei curled his lip.
He raised his hand, pointing to the location of the Severed Space he had sensed earlier, and said, “Is this place your confidence?”
Wu Hua’s expression darkened suddenly.
He said in a deep voice, “I underestimated you. But… what does it matter if you know? What can you do to us?”
Yan Wei spread his hands.
“I was thinking I couldn’t delay even for a second, but I didn’t expect to find your trap just now; it’s a place we’re quite familiar with—this has freed up quite a bit of time, so I can talk to you now.”
Yan Wei withdrew his hand, casually putting it in his pocket, instinctively leaning half against Yan Mingguang. His tone was slightly mocking: “Since I entered Lou, there are some people I admire greatly, but most of you keep playing out the common human emotions—greed, desire, and aversion. When human emotions go too far, they turn into selfishness without boundaries—Lou magnifies life and death, and also magnifies the evil beneath life and death. Honestly, I don’t like competing with people like you because winning against petty people is meaningless. Not to mention winning against foolish petty people…”
Wu Hua opened his mouth several times but couldn’t find the opportunity to speak.
Seeing the flustered expression on the other’s face, Yan Wei slowly raised his hand and articulated each word: “Is this the seed player of the eighteenth level? Looking at your expression now, you’re subconsciously starting to sort out your logic from earlier, right? Oh, have you finished thinking, or do you still think your straightforward scheme has no issues?”
As he spoke, he opened his palm, and the clear patterns of his palm began to glow faintly with a bright white light.
Three Moon Wheel Fragments slowly appeared.
He continued, “There’s no such thing as a foolproof plan, no invincible ground, and no strictly flawless strategy; there’s only a matter of probability. So when you think you’re in an invincible position, it means you’ve already lost. Even you know that setting fire to the small grove seems to guarantee your victory regardless of the outcome; don’t you find that strange?”
“When has the Ghost/Monster ever been so kind as to leave you a foolproof opportunity to break the situation? The absence of the Ghost/Monster to stop you only indicates one thing—that you’re not opposing them, not competing with them.”
In the flames, thick black smoke mingled with the brightness, but the white light in Yan Wei’s hand grew even brighter.
“I’d like to thank you for two things. The first thing, thank you for helping me make mistakes; just the fact that the Ghost/Monster didn’t come to stop you from setting the fire tells me that destroying the small grove is not a viable path, and we can only enter the small grove at night to search for the Punishment Notice. The second thing, thank you for allowing me to find another Moon Wheel Fragment.”
The fourth fragment.
When Yan Wei was probing earlier, he discovered that this was not just a Severed Space caused by a Legendary Item; he also found that the three fragments in his hand had already reacted—three fragments could combine to draw out the fourth!
He didn’t even need to venture into the Severed Space; the three fragments in his hand, under the mutual attraction, slowly began to piece together, and then…
The fourth Moon Wheel Fragment was directly drawn out from the Severed Space!
With a whoosh, the fourth Moon Wheel Fragment, glowing with a bright light, suddenly broke through the air from the location of the Severed Space and was directly absorbed onto the three fragments, instantly merging together!
Only one fragment short of a complete Moon Wheel, it resembled a crescent moon, emitting a faint, bright white light, a round moon with a missing corner, yet still shining brilliantly.
—It also restored some of the functions that this Legendary Item possessed!
Yan Wei grasped the incomplete Moon Wheel in his hand, and at that moment, the enhancement from Perception surged rapidly, even covering the entire small grove!
The corners of his mouth curled up slightly as he looked at Wu Hua, who was shocked and speechless, and said with a smile, “Hey, it seems like you guys lost.”
