Chapter 40: The Vanguard

"Cousin, what are you doing? We're family! Even though I admire you, I am definitely not cooperating if you try any funny business with me!"

"Shut up." Xu Huo checked her shoulders; there was no serial number.

Making her face him, he used a small blade to slice open his palm, squeezing out a stream of blood right before her eyes.

Yu Qingqing looked at him in shock. "Cousin, you've been gone for a few days and suddenly you've picked up a self-harm hobby..."

Xu Huo breathed a slight sigh of relief. Good.

"Knowing that I eat people, aren't you afraid?"

Yu Qingqing said dismissively, "I trust that you wouldn't hurt me. Besides, there are so many people outside, you wouldn't have to pick on your own relatives to wreak havoc. As long as I'm fine, what does it matter to me if other people die?"

Xu Huo felt a slight headache coming on.

Yu Qingqing was his stepmother's niece. Nominally they were cousins, but in reality, they were not blood-related. His relationship with his stepmother was distant, and he rarely saw her side of the family. Yu Qingqing was the exception; ever since high school, she loved pestering him. Later, when he settled down in Tingcheng, this girl suspended her studies halfway through college to come over and be an actress, refusing to leave no matter how he chased her off.

"Don't let me hear you say things like that again," he warned. "Unless you want to go see a psychologist again."

Yu Qingqing stuck out her tongue and complained, "What's wrong with being naturally selfish? I don't get what's wrong with my parents, always forcing me to go see a doctor. I haven't even committed a crime."

"By the time you commit a crime, it'll be too late," Xu Huo said. "Watch fewer dark movies and TV shows. If you dare to do anything wrong, I'll personally send you to the police station."

Yu Qingqing shrank her neck. "I'm not talking to you anymore, I'm going to sleep!"

With that, she hurriedly bolted into the bathroom.

Xu Huo sat down in front of the computer, logging in with the URL and number provided by Nie Xuan. It was a forum named "Vanguard Players."

There were already quite a few popular science posts on the forum regarding Evolvers and players, and the content mentioned was similar to what he already knew. However, the official authorities had not publicized the hazards of discontinuing evolution agents—something Nie Xuan obviously knew about.

Xu Huo understood the authorities' motive: they were undoubtedly worried that evolution agents would become the next resource frantically fought over by players, following train tickets. But if players knew that failing to attend a dungeon would result in being teleported to a random dungeon after three months, probably not many people would still be thinking about rushing to grab evolution agents first.

Failing to get a ticket and being teleported to the station still left a sliver of hope for a fight. If one failed to obtain a ticket by the end of a dungeon, the possibility of being stranded in the dungeon was very high, and whether one could encounter players later and fight for another ticket was hard to say.

The start time of the game known as Dimensional Rift could not be measured by current time. It claimed to shuttle between the third and fifth dimensions; perhaps there were other space-times and other time periods. The Beheading Demon dungeon was an example. It was a closed dungeon now, but it hadn't been in the past. There are two possibilities for this.

First, the location of the dungeon is actually within real space. If the dungeon is not closed, then not only players, but non-players can also enter. This means that dungeon locations could appear in any country and any city in this world, and besides players, non-players might also become targets of slaughter.

Second, the dungeon locations exist within a separate, specific gaming space, meaning the stations connect to the internal venues of the game. If these internal venues can also be open, then "non-players" takes on the meaning of "players not belonging to this particular dungeon." This indicates that the game's internal world is open, and players should be able to travel to any dungeon city via the train.

Regardless of the scenario, if a player is stranded in a dungeon city, finding other players smoothly will be extremely difficult.

Xu Huo had a premonition that closed dungeons like the Hot Spring Resort would not be very common.

As long as one misses a single dungeon, the game will notify the player to prepare for a random dungeon three months later, starting at Class B difficulty—definitely waiting for death.

He was unsure whether the authorities knew about this news, because he was not clear about when Evolvers actually began to appear in the world he currently lived in.

However, they would find out sooner or later.

Xu Huo didn't dwell on this matter for long, instead flipping through the player rankings published by the authorities.

Currently, this list only featured ratings for those who had experienced a single dungeon. The highest-ranking was a player with the online nickname "Golden Crow," an official personnel. He had safely brought eight players out of the game and received a Class B rating. The authorities had also publicized his reward: aside from various benefits and treatments for his family, he was also granted a prop.

Most of the players ranked below him were Class E (Ordinary) and Class D (Good), with a very small number at Class C (Excellent). This was exceptionally good given they had gone into the game completely clueless at the start, and they also shared a collective code name—Vanguard Players.

Daring to be the vanguard, willing to be the vanguard.

The comments beneath this post were completely boiling. Many people suffered from unstable mental states after becoming players, worrying both about losing their little lives and about their families having no one to look after them. But after joining the official establishment, as long as they worked hard, the state would provide resources and money. Even if they ultimately died, their families would receive compensation, completely eliminating any worries about the future!

It was clear that many players were tempted. The post was extremely heated, completely suppressing the threads below offering to trade train tickets or buy props and potions at high prices.

Among those, there were also some attempting to sell tickets and props, but anyone with a discerning eye could tell at a glance that they were fishing scams.

"Cousin, what are you looking at?" Yu Qingqing walked up behind him, still radiating moisture from her shower.

Xu Huo closed the page and glanced at her bare legs. "You should know that right now, in my eyes, you are no different from a slab of pork."

Yu Qingqing was wearing a large oversized short-sleeve shirt she had rummaged out of his bag, pouting as she said, "My clothes are all dirty, how am I supposed to wear them?"

"Right, why is there a razor blade in your pocket?" She held up a silver little fragment about the size of half a fingernail. "It almost cut my hand just now. You didn't actually go out and murder someone, did you?"

That was a fragment chipped off the Beheading Demon's axe. Although the game had confiscated the axe, the fragments hadn't vanished.

Xu Huo reached out and took it back, then opened the ticket-booking interface. "I'll have your assistant send clothes over; stop rummaging through my things. I've booked your ticket back, head home early."

"Canceling my contract isn't that easy, I might even end up in a lawsuit with the company," Yu Qingqing tried to put up a struggle.

"There won't be a lawsuit, you won't even need to sign anything. I'll handle it. You go home and study, and stop running around making trouble when you have nothing to do," Xu Huo said coldly.

"Xu Huo! You're being unreasonable!" Yu Qingqing glared in anger. "Even my mom and dad didn't say anything!"

"Tomorrow, either walk back yourself, or go back in a wheelchair. Pick one." Xu Huo stood up and looked at her expressionlessly.

Yu Qingqing's angry and pitiful expression instantly vanished. Her pupils stared at him coldly for a few seconds before she hopped onto the bed, pulled the blanket over herself, and muffled, "I curse you to go two years without a girlfriend!"

Xu Huo turned off the lights and went to lie down on the sofa.

Early the next morning, the assistant delivered clean clothes. While packing up Yu Qingqing's dirty clothes, her finger was cut by a razor blade that shook out from inside.

"I'll do it," Xu Huo told her to go tend to her wound, removing all three blades sewn into the collar and hems of the dress and tossing them into the trash can.

After sending Yu Qingqing to the airport and watching her board the plane with his own eyes, he returned to the city and headed straight to the entertainment company she was signed with.