Mo-ge had no intention of sticking around. He dropped off the stuff and the kid, spun on his heel, and started walking off.
But Fu Changxun called out behind him, “Hold up!”
He gave Dong Zi a meaningful glance. The latter caught on immediately and added, “Our teammate was injured because of your ability. He might not recover even after the instance ends.”
Mo-ge frowned. “What more do you want? I already returned everything. Even brought the kid back. Hell, I’m skipping the sparring! What else do you want?”
“We want compensation, of course,” Dong Zi said smoothly, having already moved behind him.
Mo-ge’s face darkened. “What compensation? I’m warning you—if you’re gonna try to use Dagong-ge’s name to squeeze me—”
Fu Changxun cut him off. “My friend’s injured. He needs protective gear.”
He took a few steps to the side, revealing Song Zhenpeng seated in a wheelchair behind him. “Because of you.”
Song Zhenpeng let out a few deliberately stiff groans of pain.
Mo-ge glared at them in frustration, but when Fu Changxun repeated, calm and firm, “Protective gear—”
He finally exploded, yanking a few items from his inventory and flinging them onto the ground before storming off without another word.
This time, nothing would stop him. No matter who called out, he didn’t even turn around. He left with the sheer determination of a man fleeing the scene.
Once they heard the sound of him descending the stairs, Song Zhenpeng flipped back the coat draped over his knees and stood up.
His legs had already been healed by Lulu’s ability. The whole performance had been an act.
Seeing that the other two were still playing their parts and had chased after Mo-ge, Song simply picked up the discarded gear, gave them a little blow to knock off the dust, and cleaned them up before the other two returned.
“Not bad, not bad, Song-ge really played along,” Fu Changxun said with a grin. “Squeezing him for anything we can is worth it—we’re still short on gear at the Special Affairs Office.”
Dong Zi laughed too. “Seriously, I didn’t think Song-ge would be that cooperative.”
“What’d he leave behind?”
As soon as Fu Changxun asked, Song Zhenpeng replied, “Two basic defense barriers and one mid-grade one. Oh, and this thing—it fell out of his sleeve. Not sure what kind of item it is.”
Seeing him getting ready to hand everything over in one go, Fu Changxun quickly said, “Keep the shields—I don’t need them. Just let me take a look at the other item.”
“Me? Keep them? No way,” Song Zhenpeng said, waving his hands. “You’re the one who extorted them.”
Fu Changxun shook his head. “I’ve got enough. You keep them or pass them to Director Qiu.”
Before Song could respond, Qiu Yi pushed the door open and walked in clapping.
“Brilliant. That was truly a show. But the part that made me happiest wasn’t the loot—it was when you said ‘our team.’ Doctor Fu, does that mean you’ve finally accepted that you’re one of us?”
Fu Changxun’s smile faded a little, but he quickly covered it up with a deflective grin. “That’s not it. I never said I wasn’t with you guys. That’s just what you assumed.”
Qiu Yi raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Is that so?”
Then he turned to Dong Zi. “And what does Xiao Dong think?”
Dong Zi hesitated, glancing at Fu Changxun. Sensing his gaze, he immediately replied, “I think Ah Xun’s right.”
“What do you mean, ‘Ah Xun’s right’…” Fu Changxun groaned, covering his face. “You didn’t even listen to what we were saying, did you?”
Dong Zi: Ah Xun’s bragging has been exposed.
Qiu Yi switched topics on his own: “I’ve already passed Lu Tiangan off to Lulu, but that kid’s not exactly helping us. He almost turned us completely against Mo-ge…”
His tone dropped. “From now on, keep him out of the loop. Lock him up.”
They weren’t his parents, his teachers, or the cops—they were just Special Affairs operatives. There was no need to save someone who couldn’t be saved. As long as he stayed alive, that was enough. Everything else wasn’t their responsibility.
After returning from City S, they’d traded a small tank of gasoline for a few more rooms.
This time they finally had enough space for a dozen people. No more twisting themselves like pretzels on the floor just to sleep.
Qiu Yi shifted the conversation again: “Alright, tell me in detail—how did the negotiations go?”
“No problem.”
Dong Zi was about to answer when someone gently tugged his sleeve.
“Director Qiu, do you know who he is?” Fu Changxun asked with a slight smile.
Qiu Yi was mid-chew on a compressed biscuit, mumbling through his food. “Nope, who?”
“It’s Dagong.”
“Oh.” Qiu Yi chomped a few more bites before he froze mid-bite, suddenly leaping to his feet. “—What?! Dagong? You mean that Dagong? The one ranked first on the Points Leaderboard?!”
Fu Changxun gave him a small nod. “Mhm.”
“Cough cough cough! Cough—” Qiu Yi nearly choked to death on crumbs, unleashing a cough so violent it sounded like heaven and earth were wailing. The entire second floor stirred from the noise.
Dong Zi rushed forward to pat his back—only for Qiu Yi to choke harder, unable to stop.
“My apologies, sorry, my gege choked,” Song Zhenpeng rushed out to apologize door to door, conveniently buying them some quiet space.
It took a long while, but Qiu Yi finally gulped down some water and recovered. The first thing out of his mouth was to verify the intel: “Are you sure? Could someone be impersonating him? I mean—why the hell would Dagong be in a survival-style death match instance?!”
Fu Changxun was confused. “Why wouldn’t he be? Hasn’t there been any investigation?”
He looked to Dong Zi, who was just as puzzled. Neither had a clue.
Qiu Yi took another sip of water. “Dagong’s all about efficiency. He clears instances fast—lightning fast. Instances like this, where you have to survive for a long period? Totally not his thing.”
“Wait a second.”
This time it was Dong Zi who spoke up. “Are you saying… players can choose what kind of instance they enter?”
Qiu Yi blinked. “Huh? You guys didn’t know?”
The three stared at each other in stunned silence.
“Of course you can choose,” Director Qiu said, finally having a moment where he knew something that Doctor Fu didn’t. His spirits lifted instantly. He explained enthusiastically:
“The shop sells certain tools—really cheap ones—that let you enter a specific type of instance. There are two main categories: puzzle-solving and survival. Buy the right item, and you can queue into the kind you’re good at. Lots of players are happy to spend a few points to make sure they’re playing to their strengths. Dagong, from what we’ve seen, always chooses puzzle-type instances. Only once did he pick a small-scale survival game.” He added confidently, “That’s not just rumor. We’ve got a hardcore Dagong fan in the Special Affairs Office—hasn’t missed a single one of his livestreams.”
But no matter how much he rambled, the two people in front of him had completely stopped listening.
Fu Changxun stared at the bottom row of items in the shop panel, then slowly buried his face in his hands again.
He’d totally missed it.
Dong Zi murmured in self-blame, “My fault. I didn’t notice those items either…”
The two of them slipped into a deep depression spiral at the same time.
Qiu Yi: “…You don’t have to beat yourselves up over it. Didn’t you still clear every instance so far?”
Fu Changxun’s voice leaked out from between his fingers: “But still… I shouldn’t have made such a stupid, rookie mistake. It’s been a month since the game started and I’m just now noticing? That means my attention span is slipping.”
A doctor can’t operate on themselves. Same principle—a psychologist can’t fix his own emotional breakdown.
Qiu Yi had no way to help. All he could do was say tactfully, “Alright, take some time to reset. I’ll go tell the others. Let’s figure out our next steps for the alliance.”
He stepped out and even closed the door behind him.
Fu Changxun wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for his thoughtfulness or to chase Dong Zi out too.
But Dong Zi was depressed as well… so forget it. They could be depressed together.
“I saw a forum post once and thought it was strange…” Dong Zi muttered, lightly bonking the back of his head against the chair.
The two sat there, heads hanging in identical postures, for a long time before Fu Changxun finally stood up and raised a hand to stop him from hitting his head again.
“Alright, that’s enough. Let’s just chalk it up to experience,” he said. “Besides, no one knows except Director Qiu. Wait… was our livestream still on?”
Their faces froze simultaneously. They slowly pulled up their personal panels.
The barrage of bullet comments hit like a tsunami the moment they opened the feed.
[Nope, not just Director Qiu. Now the whole world knows!]
[LMAOOO just realized they were still live??]
[HELP this is too funny. The Doctor didn’t know you could choose your instance type—and he’s already cleared, what, four or five of them?!]
[I can’t breathe from laughing!]
[This is comedy gold. Doctor and his poor dumb “brother” have carried my laugh quota for the whole year!]
[Someone tell them—thank you, Doctor and his pitiful disaster bro!]
[THANK YOU, Doctor and his pitiful disaster bro!]
[Thank you +1]
[Thank you +10086]
“This is not my brother.” Maybe it was the barrage of laughter that pushed him over the edge, but Fu Changxun snapped a little. In a glorious act of mutual destruction, he declared, “This is my boyfriend. Next time, don’t get it wrong.”
Immediately, the bullet comments exploded into:
[???]
[!!!]
And with that, Fu Changxun calmly shut off the stream.
Perfect. Now they had the upper hand, keeping everyone guessing. Fu Changxun was the type to hold a grudge—but most of his grudges were settled on the spot.
Before Dong Zi could even ask anything, he opened the door in one swift motion, immediately switching to mission mode.
“We need to update them on the cooperation details. Qiu Yi doesn’t know much—let’s tell the team first, then work out the next stage of the plan.”
And with that, the same man who had just said, “This is my boyfriend,” promptly ditched his self-declared boyfriend to go meet with the rest of the team.
Dong Zi: “…Hngh.”
He could cry. He could literally cry.
***
On the twelfth day of the instance, the players gathered again for a meeting in the hotel room.
“We spoke with Dagong earlier. He agreed to cooperate on the condition that we go with them whenever they leave the city to scavenge supplies.”
Fu Changxun explained, “Specifically, that means Xiao Pu has to go with them. I didn’t tell them the truth—Dagong thinks Xiao Pu is just an item I picked up in another instance.”
He had mentioned both the dandelion and the black cat at the time, but only let the black cat appear in Dagong’s line of sight. As expected, Dagong had fixed his gaze on it for several seconds.
Which confirmed it—his ability required direct visual contact.
And since it had worked on the black cat too…
It was likely a scanning-type ability, maybe one that could detect whether a being had powers.
A player with tons of points, tons of underlings, and a blazing-fast clearance rate—yet his ability was support-type.
How fascinating.
