Chapter 446: Soul Assignment

Several hours later, deep night, Yin City, Hongxing Orphanage.

"I still don't quite understand—who exactly are you?"

In the office, the orphanage director stared in shock at the group of young men and women in suits and sunglasses standing behind the desk.

"You don't need to know who we are; you only need to know we fully represent the relevant authorities."

The young man in the suit—or rather, Fu Ding Hua Long—sighed, recalling the memorized information, and told the director: "Tomorrow morning, a patriotic overseas Chinese will donate one hundred million yuan in cash to various welfare institutions in Yin City, of which Hongxing Orphanage will receive sixteen million, to improve infrastructure and raise staff benefits.

An annual special subsidy of five million yuan will follow thereafter.

Later, an Asian charity foundation will establish a dedicated fund and partner with a major children's medical institution in Yin City, under the guise of 'exploring cutting-edge medical technologies,' to provide lifelong free treatment for children in orphanages nationwide suffering from congenital diseases.

Such as congenital deafness and mutism, hemophilia, spina bifida, cleft lip and palate, autism, and others.

To avoid drawing too much attention, your orphanage will be fifth on the list."

"This—"

The director hesitated; wealthy people who had amassed ill-gotten fortunes often grew uneasy, and he had previously encountered rich elites who donated to charity merely for peace of mind.

But these young people, speaking casually of hundreds of millions in cash and an Asian charity foundation, carried an uncanny resemblance to scam calls from northern Myanmar.

The director instinctively glanced at the Yin City Minzheng Bureau official behind the young man, who silently nodded, confirming the youth's words were entirely truthful.

"Alright."

The director hesitantly said, "Then what do I need to do?"

"The day after tomorrow at noon, we will send an eight-year-old girl to your orphanage. Here are her photo and records."

The young man in the suit pulled out a file folder and placed it gently on the desk. "She will live at the orphanage long-term under a normal identity.

Six months to a year or two later, we will send someone—

Ahem, I mean, arrange for—a middle-aged couple, perfectly qualified in every respect, to adopt her.

Whether she accepts adoption depends entirely on her own will."

The director opened the folder; the girl's photo carried a faint sense of unfamiliar familiarity, especially the butterfly hairpin on her head.

The director instinctively stood up. "Wait—she's wearing—"

"Don't ask what you shouldn't."

The young man in the suit placed a hand on his shoulder and gently pressed him back into his chair. "Cooperate with our work. Believe me, this plan is beneficial in the long term—to Yin City, to the nation, to all the people."

With the matter put this way, the director could only sit down in silence.

Accompanied by the Minzheng Bureau official, the mysterious suit-wearing men and women left through the door. As they departed, Fu Ding Hua Long suddenly remembered something, turned back, and placed a medicine bottle on the desk—no brand, only usage instructions printed on it.

"This is—"

"Director, you're a good man."

Fu Ding Hua Long sighed with a complex tone. "This medicine is a specialty of our department. It won't extend your lifespan, but it can slow aging and maintain health.

Consider it a small personal gift."

With that, he waved his hand and stepped out the door, catching up with his companions.

The Minzheng Bureau official boarded a government vehicle and left first; Fu Ding Hua Long and the others climbed into a discreet black SUV.

Director Xing Hechou of the Yin City Special Affairs Bureau was already waiting inside. "All taken care of?"

Xing Hechou was a burly man with a square, rugged face, one of the first 1.5 wave of transcendentals to become Players, originating from the military system.

Yet after two years as director of the Yin City Special Affairs Bureau, the heavy administrative burden had already turned his temples slightly gray.

"Yes, handled."

Fu Ding Hua Long paused, hesitating. "But Director Xing, assigning five-person mobile task forces in eight rotations, monitoring the orphanage 24/7 to protect the reincarnated Cai Anjie—isn't this overkill?"

Fu Ding Hua Long belonged to the Sichuan-Chongqing Branch, not the Yin City system. But because he knew Master Pi Fu and happened to be on-site when the incident occurred, he was pressed into service.

"Cai Anjie, reborn, has had most of her transcendent power stripped away—she's below Lv5. Shouldn't guarding her in the Yin City Special Affairs Bureau's care center be sufficient? The environment there would even be better."

Fu Ding Hua Long's doubt was also the thought of the young people in the car.

Mobile task forces normally hunted aberrant entities, captured rogue Players, and explored death zones. Now, eight fully armed teams were monitoring an orphanage—it felt more like babysitting than duty.

To outsiders, it might look like they were filming The Truman Show.

"You're still too young."

Xing Hechou sipped his lingzhi goji tea from a thermos. "First, Cai Anjie's tragic life stemmed from loopholes in the early international adoption program.

The primary responsibility lies with her abusive foreign adoptive parents and the inactive foreign judicial institutions—but to say we bear some blame is also true.

Now, of course, we must first respect her personal will.

Second, the reborn Cai Anjie is equivalent to a dormant demigod, still retaining partial access to the Hidden Realm's authority, capable of opening the Soul Divine Realm.

The Vietnamese woman and other vengeful spirits, after being exorcised by the Gao Seng and Daoists we summoned, still reside within Cai Anjie's butterfly hairpin.

If one day a major anomaly occurs, destroying a city or even a larger region, we may have to turn to Cai Anjie, asking her to open her Divine Realm to contain millions of souls."

"Oh~"

The young people in the car spoke in unison, though their faces carried varying degrees of skepticism.

As the younger generation of the Special Affairs Bureau, they knew full well how much the state had invested in preventing large-scale supernatural events.

Thus, they did not believe any terrifying supernatural incident could cause hundreds of thousands of casualties at once.

Xing Hechou shook his head helplessly, muttering, "Today's youth," and took another sip of goji tea.

————

More than ten kilometers away from the black SUV, the Side of Truth, rarely visiting the real world, stood atop a high-rise rooftop, observing Hongxing Orphanage from afar with a mirror crafted from astral matter.

Beside him stood Li Cheng and Hui Yu.

"So the Special Affairs Bureau has decided to return Cai Anjie to the very beginning—at Hongxing Orphanage."

The Side of Truth dismissed the mirror with a wave and turned to Li Cheng with a light tone. "Are you satisfied with this handling?"

"It's fine."

Li Cheng nodded. Cai Anjie had given him a Legendary-grade item, so naturally he wanted to return the favor and do everything he could to ensure she got a good ending.

"You're too kind, always. Heavy heart, soft hands.

Back in our day, when the Killing Ground first opened, lone-wolf players, in order to survive and maximize profit, would definitely have wiped Cai Anjie out completely, or tricked and brainwashed her into submission, monopolizing the Hidden Room for themselves."

Truth's Side's light chuckle carried friendliness. It was precisely because of Li Cheng and Grey Rain's goodwill back then that he had been able to use time rewind to go back to the past, saving both himself and his family.

He clapped his hands. "Alright, my job here is done. Time to head back to Slum Street."

Li Cheng joked, "Not staying for dinner?"

"Hahaha, no. I still have to get back and review my PhD students' dissertations."

"Uh, speaking of which, there's one question I've always wanted to ask."

Li Cheng scratched his head, curious: "Brother Truth's Side, weren't you a firefighter back then? How did you suddenly become a scientist?"

"Well, you see—"

Truth's Side laughed heartily. "My first mission was in a script world similar to the movie *Limitless*. I got the smart drug NZT-48 first, boosting my IQ.

My second mission was in the *Dune* world. Starting out as a slave, I used a homemade burrowing bomb to take down a sandworm and got the prescience-granting 'spice,'

My third mission was in the D&D *Dark Sun* world. I apprenticed myself to a brutal Sorcerer-King who was schizophrenic and took pleasure in torturing apprentices to death, and by leveraging the sandworm spice, I mastered psychic abilities.

From then on, multitasking, I gradually became a mad scientist."

He said it lightly, but the dangers were self-evident—by the time of a lone-wolf player's third script mission, they were at most Lv5, yet he had dared to risk the disintegration of his consciousness to come into contact with, and even master, psychic abilities.

Ruthless to others, even more ruthless to himself—that was the hallmark of the old generation of players.

With a wave of his sleeve, Truth's Side left the real world and returned to Slum Street.

Only Li Cheng and Grey Rain remained on the rooftop.

"What are you waiting for, bro?"

Grey Rain was already impatient, rubbing her hands together wildly. "What did Cai Anjie send?"

Normally Grey Rain would have been rushing back to play on her phone by now, but this time she'd actually gotten a Legendary-grade item, and she was dying to see what it was.

"Look at you, so impatient."

Li Cheng rolled his eyes, but still took out that metal glove.

The glove was a moderate size, woven from interlocking steel wire rings—somewhat like cut-resistant work gloves or the steel-wool gloves used for washing dishes.

The difference was that some green threads were woven in among them.

【Name: Compassion Soul-Fu Melody】

【Type: Divine Art Item】

【Quality: Legendary】

【Effect: Soul-Bestowal. Touch an object, causing it to spontaneously generate a soul based on its own characteristics. The more complex, complete, and self-consistent the object, the more powerful the soul generated】

【Cost: At least 100 points of Spiritual Power or Sanity, depending on the strength of the soul bestowed】

【Cooldown: 1 minute】

【Usage Requirement: None】

【Notes: "After rigorous observation, this patient's weight decreased by 21 grams at the instant of death, proving that the human soul weighs 21 grams." "Um, Dr. Wang, the deceased had a twisted bowel before death. What just happened was his fart."】

"Ugh, this—"

Grey Rain scratched her head for a while. "After all that fuss, it's a logistics-type item? And it only bestows souls—what use is that?

Don't tell me you're supposed to give souls to the robot vacuum and washing machine at home and let them do the housework themselves?"

"You don't get it."

Li Cheng, however, guessed the item's limitless potential at first glance, and said solemnly: "The effect description says it can bestow a soul upon any complex, self-consistent object.

Sword spirits, ship girls, vessel spirits, machine souls,

Including items produced by the Killing Ground."