Chapter 31
Chapter 31
After their brief discussion, Qin Lan finally understood the process behind the Final Destination instance.
He also understood why Luan Zimo had deliberately come here and placed herself in danger.
Special classes obtained from unsolvable instances were said to far surpass those produced by ordinary instances in both power and rarity.
As one of the Central Region’s foremost geniuses, Luan Zimo naturally wanted to remain ahead in every respect.
That was why she had come here specifically.
When her turn arrived on the death list, all she had to do was submit to death, consume a rare cursed artifact to resurrect, and stroll out with her special class.
Final Destination was actually one of the safer unsolvable instances.
The existence of the “death list” meant each person would die only once.
Furthermore, no one else would face any danger until the person before them on the list had died.
In a sense, it was safer than some 4-Star or even 3-Star instances–as long as one possessed a resurrection method.
For someone incapable of dying, however, it became a battle royale with the difficulty turned all the way up.
Death’s attention would remain fixed upon them, bombarding them with every possible method of death until they could no longer breathe and finally perished.
“Han, can you lend me a cursed artifact that can resurrect me?”
Qin Lan wore a bitter expression.
Before Han Chan could answer, Luan Zimo began mocking him.
“Lend you one?”
“Cursed artifacts like that are consumables. They’re permanently destroyed after a resurrection. Who would lend one out?”
“Besides, most cursed artifacts with resurrection effects are bound to their owners. Only the person who originally brought one out of its instance can use it.”
“A resurrection artifact that can be freely traded and has no conditions for use would be an ultimate treasure in any Safe Zone. What makes you think anyone would lend one to you?”
Qin Lan deflated at her words.
The corners of Luan Zimo’s mouth rose when she saw his reaction.
“Han Chan, didn’t you invite him to join Shanhai Pavilion?”
“It doesn’t look like he’ll have a chance to get out.”
Han Chan smiled without committing himself.
“Who knows? Nothing is absolute.”
“Still pretending,” Luan Zimo scoffed. “People from Shanhai Pavilion just love acting mysterious.”
Tap, tap…
As the two bickered, someone suddenly knocked on the window beside them.
It was a shabbily dressed homeless man.
His face and hair were filthy, his tangled locks soaked by the rain. A thick but ragged leather coat hung around his body.
He held up a piece of waterlogged cardboard bearing several crooked lines of writing.
Originally, it had probably contained some half-true tale of misery–a dead father, a runaway mother, a missing sister, a crippled brother–followed by a reason why passersby should give him money.
But the cheap cardboard had soaked through in the rain. Most of the ink had blurred beyond recognition, leaving only a few scattered words legible.
Together, those words formed a broken message.
[After… me…]
[None… of you… will… escape…]
The next instant, a screw came loose from the massive LED billboard above the homeless man.
The entire screen and its heavy metal frame tore free without warning and crashed down on top of him.
Sparks scattered everywhere. Blood seeped into the rainwater on the ground, twisting forward like a crawling snake.
Luan Zimo’s and Han Chan’s expressions both shifted as they watched.
They knew this was a warning from Death.
Qin Lan, meanwhile, was busy evading a pit bull that another customer had brought into the restaurant, trying to prevent the suddenly crazed dog from mauling him to death a dozen seconds later.
For some reason, Death seemed to have gone mad. It no longer cared what method it used to kill Qin Lan.
“Good dog. Nice dog. Here, boy… Damn it, you still want to bite me? I tried being nice, and you threw it back in my face!”
“Taste my pepper attack!”
“Aha! Bet you didn’t expect me to mix mustard into it too!”
Chaos erupted both inside and outside the restaurant.
Luan Zimo stared at the homeless man’s corpse, then abruptly stood.
“I don’t have any more time to waste on you two.”
“I need to find clues to the special class mission before that man dies.”
She glanced at Qin Lan, who was riding the pit bull and had it trapped in a naked choke, then pressed a hand to her forehead.
“You can keep following him if you want… I’m leaving.”
“Stay here any longer, and I feel like his stupidity might rub off on me.”
Han Chan smiled and waved goodbye.
Only after Luan Zimo walked out of the restaurant and vanished into the rain did he kindly remind Qin Lan, “Qin, it’s already unconscious.”
“Would you like to take a walk outside?”
Qin Lan rose, panting, and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Sure. It makes no difference where I go…”
“I’d like to see what new ways Death has saved up for me.”
He gave the unconscious dog a disgusted kick, raised his middle finger at its owner for good measure, and followed Han Chan out of the restaurant in a foul mood.
Just as Qin Lan expected, disaster struck him approximately once every twenty seconds.
These incidents included, but were not limited to:
[Being sent flying when a motorcycle robber lost control during a snatch-and-grab.]
[A flowerpot hurled from an apartment by a couple in the middle of an argument.]
[A heartbroken girl leaping to end her troubles and landing directly on Qin Lan’s head.]
[A severed high-voltage cable whipping through the wind.]
…
After attack upon attack, Qin Lan became completely numb.
Shock had given way to fury, and fury had now settled into tranquility.
He even felt a faint anticipation, wondering what creative new design Death would come up with next.
“You always manage to show me something new.”
When an armed Black man suddenly appeared, Qin Lan smiled in resignation.
Left, left, right, right, up, up, down, down…
No B-A-B-A.
Qin Lan deftly twisted away from every bullet, then drove a fist into the bewildered gunman’s face.
He had completed the bonus objective for escaping death some time ago.
But no notification had told him which new class he would receive.
Instead, he had received only one baffling message.
[You have exceeded Death’s expectations. Do everything within your power to entertain Death.]
“So powerful…”
“My apologies for failing to make Lord Death use its full strength…”
A forklift came flying from nowhere and sliced Qin Lan in half, forcing him into an involuntary Gojo cosplay–or rather, a two-and-a-half Gojo cosplay.
After resurrecting again and successfully avoiding the forklift, Qin Lan discovered that he had unknowingly arrived before a casino.
It was a large casino in the city center. The building was lavishly decorated, but a [Temporarily Closed] sign hung outside.
Judging by the location and decor, the casino’s owner had to possess considerable influence.
The moment Han Chan saw its entrance, he released a long breath of relief.
“We finally made it…”
“This should be over soon, right?”
Qin Lan immediately turned toward him, his eyes even more suspicious than before.
“What do you mean?”
Han Chan had behaved strangely ever since they entered the instance.
No matter how one looked at it, Qin Lan’s public identity was that of a “novice Anomaly Hunter.”
Luan Zimo’s assumption that he would inevitably die should have been the natural response.
This was an unsolvable instance. Even Luan Zimo did not dare claim that she could survive Death’s designs forever.
Yet Han Chan had never once worried about Qin Lan’s safety. Instead, he placed extraordinary trust in Qin Lan’s judgment.
He had even guided Qin Lan all the way to this casino as though following a map.
It was as if Han Chan had known from the start where they needed to go.
His earlier comment that he had “asked too soon” felt stranger still.
Han Chan saw the questions in Qin Lan’s mind and smiled.
“Remember when I told you that the limitations of my Talent prevent me from using cursed artifacts?”
“Would you like to know what my Talent does?”
Qin Lan narrowed his eyes and took two steps back.
“Hold on. Is it really all right to tell me classified information like that?”
“This feels like the part where you silence me to keep the secret…”
Han Chan tilted his head and laughed.
“Oh? You’re afraid of being silenced?”
“Does that mean your resurrection ability only works against anomalies?”
Qin Lan’s mind went utterly blank, as though lightning had struck it.