Chapter 550: Waist Drum

Opening his eyes, he was already back in his familiar room.

“It’s already daytime.”

Hui Yu glanced at the sunlight outside the window; unlike script missions that instantly returned him to the real world, Tremor missions occurred within the killing field’s physical reality, where time flowed at the same rate as the real world.

“I’m going to rest. Call me if anything happens.”

She skillfully pulled several liters of chilled drinks and snacks from the fridge, then screamed as she picked up her phone, “Aaaah?!”

“What’s wrong?”

Li Cheng turned to look, mid-reviewing his mission rewards, and saw Hui Yu’s hand trembling as she gripped her phone. She forced a calm voice: “Nothing.”

“If it’s nothing, why are you sweating?”

Li Cheng narrowed his eyes suspiciously and immediately used his familiar to swap positions, snatching the phone from Hui Yu’s hand.

The screen displayed multiple interfaces: virtual currency liquidated, CS skins crashed, gold temporarily parked at the mountain summit, and a bet that BLG would not be eliminated in the League of Legends S15 round of 16.

Li Cheng nearly fainted from rage: “You didn’t even learn middle school math, yet you’re investing? No—where did you even get money to invest?”

“It’s just my pocket money. After buying the computer, figurines, games, there was still some left.”

Hui Yu lowered her head, guilty, poking her index fingers together; one game coin could be exchanged for ten thousand yuan in the real world, and on the black market, the rate could be even higher.

Dozens or hundreds of game coins? That really was pocket money.

Li Cheng rolled his eyes: “You’re only one year old and you’re already investing? If you keep this up, at two you’ll be doing quantitative trading on the A-share market, at four you’ll be leveraged trading cryptocurrencies, at eight you’ll be soaring through the air and leaping like a shōnen Jump protagonist—what if you crash into flowers and grass?”

Flying through the air probably won’t kill a nanometal robot; after the Silver Wing Path enhancement, swimming in magma is nothing, and it won’t melt into molten steel like an T800.

Hui Yu stubbornly retorted: “I’ve seen it all on short videos: if you don’t manage your money, your money won’t manage you. Who ever heard of a kid crying all day, or an older brother always losing? The future you, sipping Maotai while driving a Hema Ba, will thank your brave self today.”

“Besides, this liquidation happened because of the Tremor mission—I was stuck in the killing field and had no time to exit.”

“If you believe short videos, when you’re old you’ll buy health supplements.”

Li Cheng laughed bitterly: “Thank goodness it’s just pocket money. If your position were bigger and you suddenly got liquidated, would you call me to instantly elbow the NYSE, NASDAQ, and the CME?”

Hui Yu instantly switched expressions: “111, really? I’ll short it right away.”

“??? Did I give you too much rope? Let me make you fly.”

Li Cheng knew well that young trees need pruning to grow straight, and people need discipline to behave—so he placed Hui Yu on his knees and began pounding her buttocks like beating an Ansai waist drum.

To prevent Hui Yu from disabling her pain sensors, he specifically wore an electric shock glove.

Only when Hui Yu begged for mercy did he stop, panting, and resolved never to give her pocket money again—he’d give her a fixed-consumption card for Lou Street and check her receipts himself at the end of each month.

After scolding Hui Yu and sending her off to do homework, Li Cheng finally turned to his mission log.

【Player Overall Performance: S+, Game Coins and Experience Gained Increased to 160%】

【Reward Settlement In Progress】

Although this mission was a triple combination, post-mission analysis showed the Tongguan path wasn’t as rigidly constrained.

First, the ice pick carried by the Fungus King and others: the mission granted one, and the astronaut Will from Dreamland had another—both could pierce the dome, though lacking one required more high-pressure gas redundancy. Second, the four-dimensional box carried by Wanli Fengdao and Batmos: it was known to generate an autopsy table and instantly kill the Alpha Giant Snake.

If not relying on the box, could one simply capture in Dreamland the small snake parasitizing the priest, pin it to the castle’s autopsy table, and—perhaps, maybe, possibly—kill it instantly?

Or, betray and place Will on the mechanical platform, feed him to the Alpha Giant Snake to help it evolve—this, in a sense, could also count as completing the mission by installing the “Annihilation Device.”

Annihilating residual personality counts as annihilation.

There were many ways to complete it: helping Will rebuild a mechanical civilization, fulfilling the legacy of Yu Tian Di, should be the hardest and highest-completion ending—and naturally, the most rewarding.

【Mission Reward 1: 4000 Experience Points】

【Mission Reward 2: 5000 Game Coins】

With the 1.6x multiplier, this 【Reset to Zero】 granted Li Cheng 6400 experience points and 8000 game coins.

From his original Lv24 with 72/2400 experience, he leveled up twice.

Now at Lv26, 1572/2600.

Additionally, he unlocked a new trait: 【Abandoned Divine Authority: -1 Charm, +3 Intelligence】

The matching scene showed Li Cheng standing in the town center, denying he was the prophetic god of the new mechanical civilization, refusing to let mechanical life bow and worship him.

Li Cheng didn’t play a charm build; -1 Charm meant nothing to him. He cheerfully equipped the trait: “Rejecting religion reduces charm, boosts intelligence—materialism truly doesn’t lie.”

Ignoring the fact that idealism in the killing field was, in a sense, also correct, Mission Rewards 3 and 4 were random items and random skill scrolls; given the difficulty and Tremor nature of this 【Reset to Zero】, the minimum quality was guaranteed to be Perfect or higher.

Li Cheng didn’t open the boxes immediately, but turned to the final two rewards.

【Mission Reward 5: VIP Shopping Pass ×1】

【Mission Reward 6: 5 Free Attribute Points】

The value of five free attribute points needed no explanation—the higher the transcendent’s level, the slower the leveling. One point could bring significant enhancement.

Without exception, Li Cheng would allocate all attribute points to Intelligence and Perception.

The VIP Shopping Pass was an even better item; because Li Cheng had leveled up, after using it, the shop’s twenty slots (previously fifteen) would all refresh with Perfect or higher-quality discounted items.

The discount was comparable to national subsidies, Double Eleven shopping frenzy, and Pinduoduo’s hundred-billion subsidies.

Even if he didn’t need them, he could flip them on the auction house for a huge profit—Epic items never went unsold; major guilds would pay premiums to acquire them rather than let them fall into rivals’ hands.

Besides, one Epic item was enough for a transcendent under Lv35 to build an entire power system around it.

“Let me first bathe and burn incense.”

Li Cheng walked into the bathroom, washed thoroughly, lit incense, put on a sensual Daoist robe, tied a headscarf, hung a cross over his chest, held Buddhist prayer beads in his left hand and a bundle of spaghetti in his right, chanted the Mechanical Church’s prayer, and stepped the Heavenly Gang Eight Trigram pattern.

“With sincere devotion, even metal and stone will open—OPEN!”

He roared, and the black VIP pass vanished into thin air; the shop section of his player panel refreshed completely.

Looking across, fifteen slots were Perfect, four were Epic, one was Legendary.