Chapter 689: Enemy of the whole server
The shaking stopped.
The next second, the cocoon-like darkness surrounding him gradually dissipated. Blinding light spilled from above. Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but narrow his eyes, taking several seconds to finally adjust to the long-lost brightness.
He quickly realized that he was currently standing in a corridor on the cruise ship.
It looked almost identical to his memory.
The corridor was completely empty, with closely shut metal cabin doors on both sides. Those large and small fissures that had previously stretched across the walls had vanished at some unknown point. It was as if a “reset” button had been pressed, and everything had been restored to a brand-new state.
Wen Jianyan turned his head. As his gaze swept over the numbers on the wall, it inadvertently fixed:
“……Floor 1?”
On the wall next to him, a massive number was starkly displayed in dark red:
1F.
“Can you sense the specific structure of this instance right now?” Wen Jianyan asked.
“No,” Wu Zhu replied.
He raised his head, his deep golden eyes staring intently into the air.
“It’s repelling me.”
It had been the same when the “Lucky Cruise” instance first opened. It shielded itself from his gaze and shielded itself from his power. When Wu Zhu first boarded the ship, the only thing he could faintly sense was the location of his own heart.
And now that his heart had been returned to its original owner, this method was clearly a dead end.
Wen Jianyan didn’t feel too surprised by Wu Zhu’s answer either.
“Then we’ll just have to take it one step at a time.”
He sighed.
“Has the instance started?” Wen Jianyan asked again.
“Not yet,” Wu Zhu paused. “But soon.”
He could feel that the strong sense of “being watched” hadn’t appeared yet… but some invisible, disgusting, and uncomfortable presence was gathering and condensing all around. Like some sort of viscous slime, it flowed through the air, accumulating power, seemingly waiting for a focal point to erupt.
“I understand. Then—”
As he spoke, Wen Jianyan began to walk forward. However, he had barely taken a single step when the rest of his words suddenly caught in his throat.
Wu Zhu: “?”
Wen Jianyan silently looked down at his upper body.
The hem of his shirt, with its buttons popped off, hung wide open. Below it lay a large expanse of his lower abdomen. A slightly chilly breeze blew past, raising a layer of goosebumps on the exposed skin.
“………………” Wen Jianyan closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and gritted his teeth, seemingly holding back something. “Didn’t I tell you before not to ruin my buttons!”
Wu Zhu knew he was in the wrong.
“Sorry, couldn’t hold it back.”
He took a step forward: “I’ll—”
This reply felt a bit too familiar.
Wen Jianyan jolted, abruptly taking a half-step back, and raised his voice to interrupt him: “What are you going to do!!”
A wisp of shadow twirled around Wu Zhu’s fingertip: “……New clothes?”
Wen Jianyan looked at his fingertip, then looked at the well-tailored clothes on Wu Zhu’s body that seemed to have popped out of nowhere, and couldn’t help but fall silent for a moment.
So this was how this guy’s clothes were made.
His voice sounded like it was squeezed through his teeth: “No.”
Just the thought that the clothes on his body would likely be condensed from a part of Wu Zhu, and that thing would wrap around him for the foreseeable future, constantly sticking tightly to his skin, perhaps even starting to move on its own anywhere, anytime… It made Wen Jianyan feel uncomfortable all over.
He took a deep breath:
“Keep it as a backup option. We’ll talk about it if there’s truly no other way.”
Wen Jianyan rummaged through two or three cabins in a row and finally found a shirt left behind by some unknown anchor during a previous run.
He let out a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness.
Wen Jianyan raised his hands and took off the wrinkled, bloodstained shirt he was wearing.
The marks left on his body were too many and too dense. Down in the ship’s hold earlier, there was almost no light. Now, looking at it under the light, it was simply shocking. From his throat to his shoulders, down to his chest and lower abdomen… On his smooth upper body, there was almost no untouched skin. Bite marks upon bite marks, finger indentations overlapping finger indentations. His skin looked like a canvas that had been used recklessly, appearing all the more glaring because its base color was too pale.
Wen Jianyan lowered his head, frowning as he inspected his upper body under the light.
He touched his side waist—this finger mark must have been left right at the beginning.
And here, here…
Some he could remember clearly, some he couldn’t.
The vast majority of his memories were blurred into that scorching darkness and swaying skylight.
Wen Jianyan raised his hand and rubbed a still-slightly-bleeding bite mark on the side of his chest. The moment his finger touched it, he couldn’t help but suck in a breath with a hiss. His brow uncontrollably furrowed sharply, and he couldn’t resist cursing in a low voice:
“Are you a dog?”
It really hurt when he bit.
Wu Zhu stood behind Wen Jianyan, his gaze glued to his upper body. His golden eyes were scorching hot like magma, his Adam’s apple rolling up and down irregularly, and his sharp canines seemed to be faintly itching again.
“……I’ll heal it for you.”
His voice was hoarse, suppressing some emotion ready to burst forth.
Now that he had regained his heart, Wu Zhu could do more than just “transfer” injuries.
Strictly speaking, the reason he used to “transfer” instead of “heal” was because of the lack of his heart and power. When he and Wen Jianyan first strictly met, Wu Zhu was completely capable of directly restoring his body.
He stepped forward, lowered his head, and kissed Wen Jianyan on the shoulder.
The next second, those deep and shallow shades of red faded from the young man’s pale upper body. The snow-white flesh that had been ravaged too much became soft and smooth once more, returning bit by bit to how it originally looked.
“Don’t forget, there are yours too.” Wen Jianyan glanced at him and added.
He had left just as many marks on Wu Zhu as the other had on him.
Wen Jianyan didn’t believe Wu Zhu lacked the ability to treat these superficial wounds, but the other party seemingly had no intention of doing so. Instead, as if blind to them, he left his shirt wide open, displaying them unscrupulously like wearing medals.
But this time, Wu Zhu wasn’t as obedient as he had been a moment ago.
He shook his head: “No.”
Wen Jianyan froze: “……What?”
Wu Zhu was clearly determined not to cooperate: “I like them. I want to keep them.”
He answered with perfect composure, utterly shameless.
Wen Jianyan: “……”
Damn non-human, no bottom line, no morals, shameless and thick-skinned!
Although Wu Zhu didn’t care, Wen Jianyan couldn’t just let him go see people like this…
What difference was there between this and directly telling them that he and this guy had just had a hearty, uninhibited go at it not long ago?
Wen Jianyan’s mind spun, and he seemed to think of something.
He sighed and crooked his finger: “Come here.”
Wu Zhu’s eyes flickered, his gaze fixed on Wen Jianyan’s face. He paused, but still obediently lowered his head, his cold, water-like black hair flowing down his shoulders.
Wen Jianyan’s fingers undid his collar.
“?!”
Wu Zhu clearly hadn’t expected him to do this. He was only stunned for a moment before the other’s slightly cold fingers had already slid smoothly inside along the texture of his skin.
Wen Jianyan kept his eyes lowered. His fingers quickly found the location of Wu Zhu’s left chest. Then, he leaned down and pressed his lips against it.
He opened his mouth, his teeth shallowly picking up a bit of skin. He ground his teeth lightly against it, then abruptly clamped down, biting hard!
Wen Jianyan could feel that the moment his teeth sank into Wu Zhu’s skin, the other’s muscles almost immediately tensed up, becoming so hard it nearly hurt his teeth.
“……!” A suppressed gasp came from above him. The chest pressed beneath his lips heaved rapidly, and the heart underneath beat chaotically and violently.
It wasn’t until he tasted the scorching tang of blood that Wen Jianyan let go.
He lifted his eyes from below.
The young man’s eyes curved slightly, carrying a careless smile in their depths. His tender, lingering gaze passed through his thick eyelashes, looking up with a smile, as if carrying a hook:
“Here… you can keep this one.”
He stuck out the tip of his light pink tongue, slowly licking over the tense, burning skin below, leaving a shiny wet trail on the edge of the rapidly heaving bite mark:
“Okay, baby?”
In the Live Broadcast Hall, countless screens of all sizes lit up as usual. Innumerable images spun in the dark air. Inside every single screen was a brand-new miniature world, using the flesh and blood of the living as bait, ultimately turning everything into nutrients for attention and traffic.
Suddenly, at a certain moment, all the screens uniformly went black.
Replaced by the words: [Livestream Suspended].
“What’s going on…?”
Staring at the screens that had gone black in front of them, the viewers stood in stunned silence, looking at each other in dismay.
“Is that livestream room over there open?”
“Closed… closed, they’re all closed.”
This kind of situation had never happened before.
Even if a livestream room occasionally went offline due to force majeure, it would reconnect quickly. It was even more impossible to be like this—all signals completely severed, all livestreams offline simultaneously. Looking around, there was not a single exception.
For the first time in history, the entire Anchor Square fell into a deathly silence.
An invisible panic began to spread.
“The livestreams are gone?”
“How could the livestreams be gone?”
“Then what do we do?”
Bewilderment evolved into turbulence, turbulence intensified into riots. Everything began to turn hysterical.
“Where are the livestreams, hurry up and start the livestreams!!!”
Before things could become unmanageable, suddenly, a new line of text appeared on those black screens:
[Ultra-large instance in preparation]
[Please wait patiently]
[Tentative anchor roster as follows]
Immediately after, a string of familiar anchor names began to scroll across the bottom in a list format, instantly drawing all the viewers’ attention.
“Hugo? Dan Zhu?!! No way, they’re actually entering an instance now???”
“Who else?”
“!!! Orange Candy, Chen Cheng… wait, Tarot Reader? Didn’t that guy die a long time ago? Why is his name here too?”
“Holy shit holy shit holy shit, what kind of terrifying lineup is this, a mobilization of the top ten?”
“Not just them, sweeping a glance there are so many familiar names. Almost every named and famed anchor is here, oh my god!”
The list scrolled to the very end, and a name no one expected jumped out.
Like a drop of cold water falling into hot oil, instantly, the atmosphere that was already pushed to its peak exploded.
“Pinocchio?”
“Am I seeing this right… Pinocchio?!!!”
“Didn’t his livestream room get shut down a long time ago? What’s going on, did Nightmare find a way to restore his livestream signal?”
“Ahhhhhhh!!!!”
The previous depression was swept clean. In just a fleeting moment, the atmosphere in the Anchor Square became unprecedentedly fiery. Panic and emptiness were replaced by excitement and anticipation. Even though there was nothing on any of the screens in front of them right now, not a single viewer felt bored anymore.
They waited with burning desire and keen interest.
Soon, the livestream countdown began.
[10, 9, 8…]
Every viewer selected the perspective they wanted to watch, finding the anchor they were anticipating.
Hungry, thirsty gazes locked onto the screens, as if they wanted to burn right through them.
[…3, 2, 1]
The moment the countdown ended, a brand-new instance named “???” opened. On the pitch-black screens, images lit up one after another.
A blood-red icon flashed beneath the instance name.
Instance Difficulty Level: ???
Historical Highest Completion Rate: ???
Viewing Value: ???
“For the viewing experience of yourself and others, we ask all viewers to abide by the rules within the livestream rooms. Spreading any—bzz-bzz—remarks is prohibited—prohibited—prohibited. Once discovered, immediate ban.”
Chen Mo opened his eyes and sat up.
He looked around and realized he was currently inside a very narrow, single-person cabin.
The narrow sailor’s bed, the clean porthole—everything was so familiar, almost giving people a disorienting feeling like time was flowing backward.
He flipped over and got out of bed.
At the same time, his phone began to ding continuously.
Chen Mo lowered his head and opened the group chat.
[Wen Ya lilith: Where are you all? Send locations.]
[Location]
Next, everyone who had entered this instance sent their locations one by one, Chen Mo included.
Soon, red dots appeared one after another on the blank map.
After seeing the full picture, Chen Mo felt his heart sink heavily.
The red dots were scattered all over the map. This only meant one thing:
The distances between their locations were very far.
Before entering the instance, Bai Xue’s curse-like warning seemed to echo in his ears once again: — [Going alone means death]
And this time, the moment the instance began…
The very thing they wanted to see the least had already occurred.
Nightmare had completely separated them, scattering them apart.
He took a deep breath, quickly steadying his mind:
[Chen Mo (For matters regarding the Law-Abiding Guild, please contact, online 24h): Rendezvous with teammates first, we’ll talk about everything else after that.]
On the map, the closest ones to him were Ji Guan and Blond. Aside from those two, everyone else was in completely different directions on the map.
[Wen Ya lilith: We are scattered too thinly. Everyone go find the person closest to you first, don’t fall behind]
[Don’t panic, stay alive: Understood!]
[Heartless Fiend Proud Blood Emperor: Oho, I seem to be pretty close to @Bai? @Bai, move together?]
[Bai: No.]
[Heartless Fiend Proud Blood Emperor: ?]
[Don’t fucking touch me: Hehe, nobody likes a trash talker.]
[Don’t fucking touch me: …Also, what kind of disgusting screen name is that? Can you change it?]
[Heartless Fiend Proud Blood Emperor (Chen Cheng): I like it, mind your own business.]
Before Chen Mo could say anything else in the group chat, a familiar ding-dong sound rang in his ears:
“Welcome anchors to the ???-level instance [Lucky Cruise]. This instance is an untimed bounty instance. Complete bounty tasks to obtain corresponding rewards. Once the main task is completed, the instance will automatically end. Anchors, please strive to be the first and seize the grand prize!”
“Bounty tasks being issued…”
[Pinocchio]
[Target Location: Unknown]
[Task Completion Status: Incomplete]
Even though he had long guessed the purpose of restarting this instance, when he actually saw this bounty, Chen Mo still felt his heart tighten involuntarily.
He took a deep breath and typed a line:
[Chen Mo (For matters regarding the Law-Abiding Guild, please contact, online 24h): Whoever sees the guild leader, send your location immediately, understood?]
[Wen Ya lilith: Received.]
[My hairstyle is really cool: Received.]
Before everyone could reply one by one, a ding-dong sounded, and Nightmare’s cold, emotionless metallic voice rang in his ears once again.
“Secondary tasks being issued…”
The next second, a new message popped up on everyone’s phones. This time, it was several consecutive bounty names.
They were every single one of their codenames.
Attached below were their corresponding bounty points and a list of high-value prizes.
Even—their real-time locations.
The emotionless mechanical voice continued. Every single word was so cold, carrying a chilling malice as it resounded sharply in everyone’s ears.
“Complete secondary bounties to instantly obtain relevant information about the main bounty. Limited quantity, first come, first served.”
“………………”
Staring at the glaringly red text on his phone, Chen Mo’s pupils contracted sharply. He felt a wave of coldness shoot straight up his spine, making his back freeze.
In this instance, the one turning into prey wasn’t just Wen Jianyan…
It was them too.
Nightmare had turned them into the public enemies of the entire server.
