Chapter 99

Chapter 99

There were quite a few familiar faces in the audience.

Many of them were people they had been matched with while grinding through those seventy-six Scripts, and they had gotten along fairly well. They could greet nearly half the crowd by name.

Rao Lin nudged Song Zhu. “Were there this many acquaintances in previous years?”

Song Zhu lowered his voice. “Be careful. The System might be planning something big.”

Whether or not that “something big” would happen remained to be seen. Rao Lin heard Ning Shuo say there seemed to be someone over there he knew from the modern world, and he looked over in surprise.

After recognizing which Team it was, Rao Lin said, “Are you sure it’s that direction?”

Their clothing styles had changed a lot, and Ning Shuo had only caught a glimpse of a side profile just now, but he nodded. Rao Lin stared toward Zone A in puzzlement. “I’ve been to six Star Zone Arenas and never once run into a modern-day friend. How come you show up for one and you’ve already got one?”

He muttered to himself, “Don’t tell me birds of a feather really do flock together? I mean, I’m not bad either.”

Given how increasingly unhinged the System’s recent operations had become, they were in no rush to go over and verify whether that person was Rong Xi.

There would be a Team meet-and-greet handshake segment later anyway. According to the System, it was meant to promote friendship between the Star Zones.

Never mind that once the Arena Match period ended, they would never even see each other again. They were already in a life-or-death survival game-what kind of friendship was there to promote?

After Uncle Fei finished chatting with the others, he turned and saw Rong Xi staring blankly in one direction.

Following Rong Xi’s gaze, he saw Rao Lin patting someone on the shoulder while saying something.

Uncle Fei chuckled. “Good lad, I knew I wasn’t wrong about you! You’re already keeping an eye on Willow.”

Rong Xi asked, “Willow… is he the one with long hair?”

Uncle Fei: “…”

He snapped, “Didn’t I send you Willow’s information already?!”

“…” Rong Xi rubbed his nose. “Uncle Fei, I’m face-blind.”

And he had temporarily forgotten that Willow had been in the System for years, so it obviously couldn’t be Ning Shuo.

He had simply felt, on instinct, that Ning Shuo was very strong-and in Fei Jinnian’s words, Willow was also very strong.

“Don’t think I don’t know that face blindness of yours goes away after you look at someone a couple more times! You just didn’t read those materials, did you? Let me ask you, do you even remember which zone Willow is from?!”

“…” Rong Xi promptly lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Uncle Fei.”

Fei Jinnian felt like this little brat was about to make his lungs explode from sheer anger.

Rong Xi’s voice was low. “Uncle Fei, you know I don’t like playing PvP.”

PvP meant someone was definitely going to die.

Fei Jinnian was silent for a moment before saying, “But you know this too: if you want to get out, if you want to have any wish granted, you have to come into contact with the Main God. And the only known path to that contact is placing in the top three of the Star Zone Arena.”

Rong Xi asked, “Six advance to three. In other words, we only need to win one round to meet the Main God. There’s only a one-in-five chance we’ll draw Zone F, so why are you in such a hurry?”

Fei Jinnian was so mad he smacked him. “If someone dug a pit for you, you’d jump right in without a second thought! Other than clearing Scripts, you don’t care about anything else, do you?!”

“The materials I sent you before stated it clearly: making the top three only lets the Main God fulfill your wish. But if you want to meet its true form, you have to take first place.”

…

After all six Teams had arrived, Qin Genan glanced at the formation of the Team from Zone A and had Ning Shuo switch places with her.

That way, during the handshake later, he would line up perfectly with Rong Xi.

Zhuang Yao noticed Ning Wang lowering his eyes and patted him. “Want to switch places?”

When Ning Wang stood beside his dear big brother, his mood was obviously better than before.

Before the handshake segment, there was also a Team introduction segment, introducing each Team one by one from Zone A to Zone F.

The host was another old acquaintance.
Although they had met a few times before, 003 was no longer dressed as the Clown this time. He wore a perfectly normal suit and overcoat, and that face of his was even more eye-catching than the contestants.

And yet, his opening remarks were so listless he sounded like he had lost his soul. “Everyone, the Main God said the host needed someone who could liven up the mood, so I was transferred over. Now, then, let us properly introduce… Zone A, Fei Jinnian, Rex…”

In the Main God Space, the Optical Brain that had been watching the venue the entire time was so angry its whole brain was shaking. “Even if you aren’t going to liven up the mood, can you at least introduce them properly? You even forgot to announce his real name!?”

A stream of data shot through.

Outside the venue, 003’s gaze abruptly went rigid. In the next second, his voice turned mechanical. “…Zone B, Yu Min, codename Qi Yu.”

In the audience seats.

Shen Xiao, who had originally been bored and had no idea why she had been invited here, suddenly froze when she heard that introduction.

She looked toward the arena. Because she was so far away, it took her a long while to finally spot him.

Yu Min had lost so much weight, and his entire air had changed quite a bit.

As if he had noticed that gaze, so different from the others and carrying so much more guilt, Yu Min looked over. Across the distance, he met Shen Xiao’s eyes in the audience.

Their eyes met for only a second before Yu Min looked away, as if he did not know her at all.

Shen Xiao looked utterly lost, but she still forced herself to focus on the arena. She even had the urge to move over to Zone B’s viewing area.

003’s voice remained rigid for only a few minutes. To outsiders, it looked no different from a malfunction.

After finishing the introduction for Zone B, he suddenly seemed to return to normal. When his seemingly casual glance swept toward Song Zhu, their eyes met.

Then he continued with the introductions.

This time, he finally sounded like a proper host: impassioned, rousing, full of rise and fall. As a result, no one noticed the captain and the white-haired young man standing hand in hand in one of the teams at the very edge.

Even if someone did see them, after asking a couple of questions and learning they were a couple, they would not think anything else of it.

So no one knew that Song Zhu’s fingers were lightly tapping against Rao Lin’s palm.

This was a cipher book Rao Lin had created himself specifically to evade the Main God. Every member of the entire Team in Zone F knew it.

And it had been taught while Song Zhu was blocking the signal, so it was guaranteed safe.

Song Zhu: The Main God has grown suspicious of 003. It will control him intermittently.

Then he held one of Rao Lin’s index fingers and guided it to tap lightly against his palm.

Rao Lin: His behavior at the beginning was meant to make the Main God control him in public, so we would know he was being controlled?

Song Zhu: Yes. The Main God has always been arrogant. Sometimes arrogant to the point of being brainless.

Information within the Team had always been synchronized. After seeing 003 act like that, the others also understood what was going on.

Qin Genan, who had not known, was informed by Zhuang Yao through cipher.

When the introduction segment ended, Ning Wang said softly beside Ning Shuo, “Brother is looking forward to the next segment.”

Ning Shuo replied, “If the opponent were Master, I would look forward to it too.”

Two seconds later, Ning Wang smiled. “Understood.”

Throughout the introduction segment, Rong Xi paid attention to every word connected to Zone F.

To be more precise, every word connected to Ning Shuo.

When Rong Xi saw him standing together with Willow, his heart only settled halfway.

Usually, he only ever cared about running Scripts and basically never read the files. Now, he was finally suffering the backlash of that habit.

For example, he was not sure whether Ning Shuo belonged to Zone B or Zone C, or if he had simply gone to Zone F to chat with Willow, whom he knew.

If he could not determine whether Ning Shuo was from the Living Zone or the Dead Zone, Rong Xi had no way to be certain.

Whether the psychopath who had killed him had heard his phone call, and whether that person would go to Ning Shuo’s house.

Whether Ning Shuo had entered the System as a living person, or as a dead one.