Chapter 101: Horn

Opening his eyes and returning once more to the familiar living room, Li Cheng stretched lazily, unhurriedly removed the White Bone Vambraces, walked into the long corridor, and swept a Geiger counter back and forth across his body.

The wasteland world had once undergone an apocalyptic nuclear war, so even the dust clinging to his clothes carried trace amounts of radiation; Li Cheng stripped off his clothes and tossed them into the incinerator.

He then stepped into a makeshift shower stall built from plastic sheeting and washed his body, cleaning away every trace.

【Script Mission "Oh No! I'm Surrounded by Beauties!" — Complete】

【Rewards Settling】

【Player Overall Performance: S; game coins and experience gained increased to 160%】

"I love taking baths, my skin feels so good~"

Humming the tune, Li Cheng wasn't surprised by this result. Just as he'd analyzed back in the studio, this mission was full of misdirection and traps. It used the skin of a free-for-all deathmatch and a death reality show to trick players into scheming against and slaughtering one another.

"You had to make sure you yourself weren't eliminated, gather clues, use evidence to force the production team to show themselves, and finally unravel the hidden worldview to earn an S rating.

If you let yourself be led by the killing ground's misdirection, all eight players fall into mutual harm until only one man and one woman remain. Sure, you'd survive that way, but the final rating would drop sharply. Maybe only an A, or a B."

Li Cheng muttered, "And you also have to factor in the killing ground's nasty, perverted streak. The mission objective says 【Follow the game rules; survive until the game ends】.

The game rules are in the hands of the wasteland production team.

What if they have no taste and turn the romance-variety reality show into something like 'Outsourced Wife, Local Husband'? Then it'd really be over."

'Outsourced Wife, Local Husband' is a Cantonese-language sitcom series produced by Guangdong Radio and Television Station. It premiered in November 2000 and has now run for over four thousand episodes, with several full cast changes along the way — the longest-running sitcom in the world by number of episodes.

Even though the villa was spacious, fully equipped with entertainment facilities, and he never had to worry about food or drink, he couldn't exactly live out his whole life in there, could he? If he died of old age inside the script world and got transmitted back to the real Earth as a withered corpse—

"Left home young, return home old" — that would be pure hell.

【Mission Reward 1: 600 Experience Points】

【Mission Reward 2: 600 Game Coins】

Boosted by the 1.6x multiplier, Li Cheng earned 960 experience points and 960 game coins this run, leveling up twice in a row — from Lv6 to Lv8 — with his experience bar now at 200/800.

His total game coins also rose from 4,090 to 5,050.

"If I cashed it all out, it'd be almost half a small goal, huh."

Li Cheng finished his shower, walked out of the White Bone corridor, and along the way sent a friend message to Little Red Riding Hood.

Previously he'd gotten quite a bit of gold from Little Red Riding Hood, melted it down with other metals into gold ingots; then Leonardo detonated the thermobaric bomb and destroyed the villa, so those ingots couldn't be recovered.

He transferred the gold's value to Little Red Riding Hood in game-coin form. She first accepted it, thanked Li Cheng repeatedly for carrying her this time, and finally transferred the sum right back.

The Emergency Escape Card obtained from completing the mission was worth a hundred, a thousand times more than the gold.

Besides Little Red Riding Hood, Jin Huiying also sent Li Cheng a message expressing her thanks and offering to pay a fee — because Li Cheng and Little Red Riding Hood knew each other and had a basis for cooperation, he could have easily eliminated Jin Huiying first in the script mission to secure his own safety, then forced a showdown with the production team, maximizing his odds of clearing it.

It was the equivalent of Jin Huiying having picked up a free life.

"No need for a fee."

Not eliminating Jin Huiying had just been a casual favor; Li Cheng couldn't be bothered to fuss over it. He changed into his pajamas, then paused. "Although there is one small thing I'd like to ask you to help me with."

"Huh?"

A dozen or so minutes later, Jin Huiying, now dressed in idol-girl makeup and outfit, appeared in a Bilibili livestream room.

Her nose tip slightly pink, looking mildly like she had a cold (faked), she pressed her palms together apologetically toward the camera and said in Mandarin with a slight accent: "Hello, viewers, I'm Icey Jin Huiying. From today I'm officially joining Bilibili. I'm very sorry that, due to personal health reasons, I couldn't complete this Yin City concert; I hope this song-stream livestream can make it up to everyone. Here's the first song, 'Encountering an Angel.'"

Li Cheng opened WeChat on his phone and, sure enough, saw Han Letian instantly post a Moments update — a panda meme, three parts bewildered, three parts stunned, three parts ecstatic.

"Hehe."

Casually closing his phone, Li Cheng moved on to inspect his next reward.

【Mission Reward 3: Random Item ×1; quality depends on clear rating】

Once again, it was the thrilling moment of opening the chest. He focused intently, concentrating his mind on the treasure chest.

"Open!"

A flash of light, and a horn appeared in the inventory.

【Item Name: Thunder Horn】

【Type: Ritual Item (consumable)】

【Quality: Fine】

【Effect: Thunderstorm Descends. After sounding the horn, summon a thunderstorm with a 50-meter radius centered on the user. The thunderstorm lasts up to 5 minutes and attacks all targets except the user. The thunderstorm can be generated in any environment (including undersea, vacuum, cloudless desert), but its power further increases when used during a thunderstorm. Remaining uses: 3】

【Cost: One bottle of fine wine aged over ten years】

【Cooldown: 20 minutes】

【Usage Requirement: Has killed more than ten humanoid creatures in a single battle】

【Note: Zero on the left, fire on the right — Lord Thunder, aid me! Three-phase, four-wire — Lady Lightning, appear!】

"Uh"

Li Cheng scratched his head and took the horn out of his backpack. The item was made from a giant ox horn, antique in style, its surface inlaid with numerous metal ornaments; in the gaps between some of the ornaments, long-dried bloodstains were still faintly visible.

"Three uses, each one consuming a bottle of fine wine aged over ten years. Considering the usage condition of killing more than ten enemies in a single battle, this horn must come from some priest of a Norse Lei Shen."

Li Cheng muttered, then obediently put the horn back. This thing didn't consume spiritual energy, had a short cooldown, and could be used in any environment — most crucially, it had a limited number of uses — which meant its power exceeded that of non-consumable items of the same quality; it was definitely no worse than the thermobaric bomb Will had produced.

The final mission reward was the Emergency Escape Card.

Li Cheng flipped his palm and drew a rigid card the size of a bank card from the void. It was pitch-black all over, and under the light of Sun Zhaoyao it shimmered with every color — a perfect demonstration of what "a riot of black" means.

He gently tried to bend the card and found that even with his 9-point Strength stat, he couldn't make it flex a hair. "Wait a minute, this thing might be harder than a special drill bit used to bore through thousands of meters of rock. If I saved up dozens of these cards and glued them together, wouldn't I be able to forge an indestructible divine weapon?"

(End of Chapter)