Chapter 195: 426 Doesn't Keep Idle People

The matter of the Management Bureau severing its connection with the Abyss Second Layer — Director Gao had never mentioned it before. Bringing it up now immediately startled the surrounding Management Bureau members.

Several people looked at Director Gao, hesitating to speak. In the end, it was Wu Chang, who had spoken up first, who voiced the question on everyone's mind.

"Director Gao, does this timing have something to do with what happened the day before yesterday?"

The connection between the Management Bureau and the Abyss Second Layer had always been stable. Just recently, during the erosion instance, there were even players from the Abyss Second Layer preparing to come help. Such a sudden severance of connection, combined with the sensitive timing, made it hard not to connect it to the attack two days ago.

Director Gao gave a wry smile, pointed at himself, and said, "You're asking me, but I don't even know who to ask. Although I'm the bureau director, to be honest, I'm just an investigator. How would a secret of this level ever reach my ears?"

"Professor Shi would know, but the day the attack happened, he rushed back to headquarters on an emergency. Otherwise, we could have gone to him for answers."

Director Gao's standing within the Management Bureau wasn't even as good as Yu Na's standing within the Revelation. Matters concerning the Pillars of the Present World were indeed beyond his reach.

However, Director Gao not knowing the specific intelligence didn't mean they couldn't extract information based on him.

Wu Chang put on a flustered look and asked, "Then what should we do? Is there anything you need us to do?"

Director Gao spread his hands and said, "What else can we do? Carry on as usual. You make it sound like the Management Bureau would fall apart without the Abyss Second Layer guys."

"I reported to the province. The word from above is that each region should continue its own work and maintain the status quo. A dedicated department will follow up and handle it — no need for us to worry blindly. If the sky falls, the tall ones hold it up. If those above aren't worried, why are you?"

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. True enough — if something really happened, headquarters would bear the brunt. It wasn't their turn to worry.

After finishing the wrap-up work, Wu Chang watched Director Gao leaving, his gaze thoughtful.

Judging from the attitude of the Management Bureau's upper echelons, they were even more composed than imagined — not only was there no panic, they hadn't put the regional branches on alert either.

The only response they made was to catch the moles, taking the opportunity to purge suspicious members from the ranks.

This kind of reaction didn't look like they were unprepared for the attack.

Moreover, judging from mid-level managers like Director Gao, they didn't rely on players from the Abyss Second Layer, nor did they care whether those players lived or died.

All these signs stacked together made the whole thing look more like a scheme staged by the four major organizations themselves.

Watching Director Gao and the others leave, Wu Chang started the car, pulled up in front of Meng Yawen who was waiting for a ride-hailing car, lowered the window, and asked:

"I heard your car blew up again. Want a lift?"

Meng Yawen seemed born to clash with vehicles. When the Revelation was constructing an earthly divine kingdom in Wanghai City, her newly replaced car of just a few days was smashed into scrap by Tang Renquan fleeing the scene.

She had just picked up a new car yesterday. Before she'd driven a hundred kilometers, today she ran into the pursuit of Yu Na. When Yu Na fled, she chose Meng Yawen's car. To stop Yu Na from seizing the car and escaping, Lei Huo used a skill and blew her new car into scrap iron again.

The two of them were on decent terms, so Meng Yawen didn't refuse and got into the passenger seat.

On the way, Meng Yawen asked, "You haven't been back to the dorm lately, right? Fang Hui said he couldn't reach you these past few days. Is the bachelor apartment really that nice?"

Wu Chang shrugged and said, "Whenever I have time recently, I go to the training room at Crimson Court. It's not convenient to go back to the dorm."

Meng Yawen reminded him, "Training rooms aren't cheap. You're not a combat-style player — no need to burn too many Decayed Silver Coins in there."

"At noon today, Fang Hui was telling me about you. He said he called for a dorm group dinner and you never replied, and you weren't back at the dorm either. He was afraid you'd fallen into some illegal pyramid scheme and asked me to help check on you."

Upon hearing this, Wu Chang scoffed and said with certainty, "That bastard's exact words definitely weren't that polite."

Meng Yawen laughed along, "You really do know him. He suspected you'd been holding it in too long, went out for a massage, ran into an anti-vice crackdown, and got detained."

Wu Chang shook his head, "I knew it. That guy can't spit ivory out of a dog's mouth. Wait till I get home and I'll send him a message — I'll definitely be there on dinner day."

Come to think of it, since moving to Golden View Garden, he hadn't been back to the dorm for a while.

Who in their right mind would leave the Golden View Garden where Aileen is, and go back to listen to those beasts in 426 grinding their teeth, burping, and talking in their sleep at midnight?

Going back to the dorm at night — impossible. Going back during the day for the group dinner — absolutely must. After all, he's still the boss of Room 426.

The eldest brother is like a father. Based on this alone, it wouldn't be excessive at all for Fang Hui and the others to call him daddy.

With the Wanghai branch having purged its moles, just as Director Gao said, the Management Bureau members returned to their daily routine.

When nothing was going on, they'd practice boxing at the fight club, chat with newly joined Abyss Game players, and take the chance to take down a few killers affected by erosion instances.

Life was pretty easygoing.

But beneath the calm surface, undercurrents churned beneath Wanghai City.

On the third day after the failed capture of Yu Na, Yu Na returned to Wanghai City under a new identity and dialed Wu Chang's number through a contact method left behind earlier.

The two met up at the commercial street in the Peace District. Seeing each other again, Yu Na had already transformed completely — into a young rich second-generation returnee from studying abroad. She had leased the most prime location on the commercial street, preparing to open a high-end restaurant on the level of a Tire Person.

Wu Chang looked at the woman before him — apart from her figure, her appearance and bearing had undergone earth-shattering changes — and said, "You've got some nerve. The heat hasn't even died down, and you dare come back to Wanghai City."

Yu Na glanced at Wu Chang and smiled, "What's there to fear? If I get caught, I'll just run again."

She sized Wu Chang up, frowned slightly, and placed something that looked like a face mask in front of him.

"With your strength, how are you still using the lowest-grade Transformation Pills? The changes from low-grade Transformation Pills are completely random. Are you afraid people won't know you're using a disguise?"

Wu Chang shook his head, thinking to himself, what do you know — this is called thrift and household management. Transformation Pills can be claimed for free during missions. If you're not taking advantage of the big organizations' wool, are you supposed to spend your own money on disguise props?

When they were capturing her the day before yesterday, he took the chance to claim a few extra.

He picked up the face mask, and its panel popped up before his eyes.

"Item Name: Disguise Mask"

"Item Grade: D"

"Item Skill: Shape and Appearance Shift"

"Item Effect: The Disguise Mask can store three virtual appearances. After putting on the mask, you can switch freely. Virtual appearance switch cooldown: five minutes."

"Note: This item is extremely fragile. Do not imitate film and television works by casually tearing it."

Wu Chang said in surprise, "For me? This generous?"

Yu Na said, "Last time, that item of yours was counted as my achievement. Before long, I'll be promoted to Archbishop. And you also saved my life. I was fretting over how to repay you, and just happened to notice you were short a suitable disguise prop."

"The reason I'm looking for you this time is to tell you where I'll be staying in Wanghai City. If you have business, or need anything, you can come find me there."

Wu Chang sipped his coffee and asked, "What made you think of opening a restaurant?"

Yu Na pointed at the gallery at the entrance of the commercial street, "Influenced by him, I realized the market for spiritual needs and high-end consumption is actually quite large."

The gallery Yu Na mentioned was precisely the Emotion Gallery, whose owner had once done a sketch of Aileen.

Spending big money on a gallery in this day and age — Wu Chang had initially thought the owner had lost his mind, but unexpectedly, the gallery had really taken off.

The Emotion Gallery had gone viral on Scarf, Tremor Video, and Sweet Potato platforms, to the point that people were already saying that visiting Wanghai City without checking out the Emotion Gallery meant your trip was wasted.

After the gallery opened, Wu Chang went in to take a look as well. Setting aside the actual painting skill — after all, he really didn't know much about art — if you covered the painter's name, he could easily mistake a Picasso for toilet paper.

But when it came to emotional expression, the paintings in the gallery didn't disgrace the gallery's name; the emotions the works tried to convey came through crystal clear, even to a complete outsider like him.

To paint pictures like these, the gallery owner's Inspiration stat must be quite high. If their Will couldn't keep up, an Inspiration rampage would only be a matter of time.

The gallery owner, who was crouching by the notice board at the door and writing today's theme by hand, noticed the two of them looking, turned her head to exchange a glance with them, and then gave a little smile.

See? Told you her Inspiration was high.

Yu Na said, "Want to stop by the shop? It hasn't officially opened yet, but the head chef is inside testing the opening menu. My treat."

Wu Chang shook his head and said, "Another day. Not today — I already have plans to eat with someone."

Yu Na laughed when she heard that and said, "Sure, my place is nearby anyway."

Faced with the doer-type Yu Na, Wu Chang found her hard to handle and could only tuck tail and run.

Once out of the commercial street, Wu Chang used his social anxiety and elite stealth to drop his disguise, then headed straight for the agreed dinner spot.

Today's meal was on Fang Hui — it counted as a farewell banquet. The third roommate in the dorm, Gao Xuezong, nicknamed "Physics Newton," a muscular guy with glasses, had been admitted to Yanda for grad school. He didn't know a soul over there, so he planned to head to a relative's place in Yanjing first to scope things out.

The fourth, He Wei, was also leaving Wanghai. He'd found a job — supposedly something like a pornography censor — based in Wanming City, not far away, but frequent back-and-forth wasn't realistic.

Besides, it was already mid-May, only a handful of days from graduation. Apart from this final breakup dinner, it was probably the last get-together for Dorm 426 during their college years.

That left the few of them a little wistful.

But compared to Gao Xuezong and He Wei's departures, at this meeting Wu Chang's attention was more focused on Fang Hui. Not because this meal was on his dime — today it was his turn in the rotation to play godfather.

Rather, after entering the Origin Space, when Wu Chang looked at Fang Hui again, he actually saw a faint trace of Origin Light on him.

This Origin Light was extremely faint — so faint that even when Wu Chang's Inspiration had broken a hundred before, he couldn't detect anything unusual inside Fang Hui — yet it truly existed.

The Origin Light on Fang Hui was a pale pink. Fang Hui had always had rotten-peach-blossom luck, with every girlfriend he attracted coming with some wild skill attached. Wu Chang had originally assumed it was a fate-pattern issue, but it turned out to be a constitution issue.

Those yandere and bad-woman types you only see in anime and movies — including Meng Yawen — should all have been influenced by this wisp of Origin Light to gather around Fang Hui.

Luckily this Origin Light was straightforward — it hooked women, not men. If it charmed indiscriminately, attracting yandere men and bad men, Fang Hui would really be in for a world of suffering.

The Origin Light on Fang Hui could draw rotten peach blossoms, but it could do more than just that.

Origin Light represents the ability to connect directly to the Wasteland Realm's origin. Keep in mind how much effort Wu Chang spent — even going beyond the standard to class-change into a Root Knight — just to obtain Origin Light, and Fang Hui was born with it.

In a novel, that would be the equivalent of being born connected to the Great Dao. If not the protagonist, he'd at least be a major supporting character who dominated an era.

If this ability were developed, to say nothing of anything else, his potential would absolutely be no worse than Jian Xing's, who had class-changed into a sword cultivator.

!

Over dinner, the group chatted about recent events. Wu Chang had to spit a lot of saliva before he could convince the others that he'd actually found a regular job lately, and hadn't been picked up in an anti-vice sweep.

He Wei's life was extremely formulaic — besides finding resources, he taught others to find resources.

But lately, even finding resources had become difficult — all because some scumbags kept uploading fake ones.

A "100+ GB resource mega-collection" that turned out to be Calabash Brothers when you downloaded it was one thing, but now people were even renaming things like the Pencil Game and summoning rituals, splicing on a new intro, and uploading them.

Have they no conscience? What if someone gets scared limp halfway through, or even scared into the hospital?!

This isn't a metaphor — it's a real thing. The club He Wei was in recently organized an offline screening. It was supposed to be a classic Japanese film, but after a hot and explosive opening, it suddenly cut to a real campus summoning recording.

At first everyone thought it was some new kind of play, until a piercing shriek of a female ghost appeared and made them realize the video's source had been swapped by some dog.

That night, many people had nightmares — except He Wei, who was thick-skinned enough to have a wet dream.

When He Wei went back to the club the next day, he found that of the four bros who'd watched with him, three were in the hospital and one had taken sick leave, refusing to leave the house.

It was also after this incident that He Wei got the interview invitation for his current job and was successfully hired.

Fang Hui and Gao Xuezong listened and cursed the source-swapping dogs for having no conscience. Only Wu Chang winced and sucked his teeth.

Unless something unexpected happened, what He Wei and the others had seen was a real paranormal recording. Someone had deliberately made these things, spread them online to lure people into clicking, and then got them hunted by what was in the footage.

It's just that the other party's ability wasn't strong — the summoned ghosts couldn't directly cause harm, and could only wound people by shattering their victim's willpower through fear.

Too bad that bastard ran into He Wei. What kind of figure is He Wei? His collection could make Leymann himself curse. The breadth of his tastes needs the whole universe to measure — his standout trait is that nothing is too raw or taboo for him.

What female ghost, what not — in front of He Wei, it's not just "with the lights off they all look the same," but with the lights on he's actually more excited.

Wu Chang didn't dare imagine how desperate the female ghost who had actively invaded He Wei's dream must have been that night — she'd have to @ the local underworld precinct.

Midway through the meal, he slipped out under the pretense of a bathroom break to check, and sure enough, found He Wei's incident in the Bureau's files. It was precisely because of that incident that He Wei had been noticed by the Wanming City Bureau branch and became a member of the Online Hazard Screening Division.

When it was Gao Xuezong's turn, his side didn't involve any danger, but it was still worth mentioning.

According to Gao Xuezong, many top academies in Xia Country had recently opened a new discipline called Special Energy Analysis and Application.

The discipline had great prospects, heavy state subsidies, full scholarships from enrollment, plus special allowances, and direct job placement upon graduation.

In short, the treatment summed up in one word: badass.

The word "cunt" would get censored, so it's one word.

Gao Xuezong had originally wanted to study quantum mechanics, but after the school's pitch, he switched to this emerging major.

At the interview, Yanda was very satisfied with his abilities. Hearing he was willing to switch directions, they essentially locked in his admission that very day.

This trip to Yanjing, he also planned to visit his new advisor. The advisor's surname was Shi, very famous in academic circles.

The surname Shi wasn't common, so Wu Chang asked one more question — and Gao Xuezong's advisor turned out to really be Shi Ning.

No need to ask — Gao Xuezong's Special Energy Analysis and Application was almost certainly studying extraordinary energy.

Being able to do research alongside a Patrol-level figure like Shi Ning, Gao Xuezong's future treatment would absolutely not be bad.

After He Wei and Gao Xuezong, Fang Hui didn't stay idle either and started talking about recent events.

Fang Hui had mentioned before that he was going to become a video content creator, filming the special zones that had recently been popping up — the special spaces that merged with reality after erosion instances were cleared.

A great lover who falls in love at first sight in the first second, dares to ask for contact info the next, and can be sleeping together a few days later — Fang Hui had extreme execution power. When he said he'd do it, he did it, never affected by procrastination.

During this period, he'd already been to four so-called special mystical realms in succession and filmed over a dozen short videos.

Thanks to his lavish gear, outstanding looks, and that wisp of Origin Light that couldn't be blocked even through a screen, he'd gained over four hundred thousand followers in half a month, breaking a million across all platforms — enough to say he'd crossed the big-influencer threshold.

The DouSheng platform had already contacted him to discuss livestream selling from a newly discovered special mystical realm three days later. He heard that mystical realm was amazing for growing sweet potatoes — naturally suited for selling sweet potato noodles.

Only Fang Hui turned them down.

He said that line — the kind that easily earns a beating — right in front of Wu Chang and the others.

"I make videos not for the money. Money to me is just a number — I don't even like money."

"I'm doing it to fulfill my own worth, to take those people who can't pull themselves out of reality, who are trapped in work and life, and let them go adventuring around the world with me, to see more of those breathtaking sights."

After a round of talking, the topic landed on Wu Chang.

The three dorm brothers looked at Wu Chang, wanting to hear what the dorm's big brother had been up to lately.

Wu Chang looked at the three brothers and sighed. Dorm 426 really was a place where tigers and dragons lay hidden — including He Wei, the lot of them perfectly embodying the motto: you can go without living, but you can't go without content.

If he told them about his recent experiences in the instances, he could surely crush their arrogance and defend his position as big brother.

Too bad he couldn't say a word of it.

He hemmed and hawed a few times, then could only say in a small voice: "I passed the civil service exam, got an official establishment. The unit assigned me a car and even allocated me a housing unit."

The others were shocked, shouting "Awesome!" and marveling that the big brother was indeed the big brother.

In the eyes of the other three, Wu Chang's experience seemed the most ordinary on the surface, but was actually the most fantastical — even a Trisolaran would have to give a thumbs-up and say, "Now that's real sci-fi."

After the meal, Wu Chang gave Meng Yawen a call, asking if she had any thoughts about letting Fang Hui become a player in the Abyss Game.

Meng Yawen said, surprised: "Why are you suddenly asking this?"

Wu Chang certainly couldn't say he could see the Light of Origin, so he could only make up an excuse:

"The situation in the Wasteland Realm has been very chaotic lately, and with the world instance coming up, I'm worried the real world will soon be affected by the Abyss Game and start to destabilize. Huizi is my brother — being able to give him some power to protect himself in a crisis is, in the end, a good thing."

Meng Yawen said: "I've thought about it too, but I'm also worried that if we rashly let Fang Hui into the Abyss Game, what if he runs into a dangerous instance and something happens to him in there?"

"I want to wait a bit longer — wait until he feels the urgency, or until he wants to gain power, then help him. You don't need to worry; I've already secured a player slot for him and set it aside. Whenever he wants to become a player, he can do it anytime."

"You're just spoiling him."

After hanging up, Wu Chang couldn't help sighing — Fang Hui's constitution was practically a born freeloader saint-body: didn't have to do a thing, and skipped decades of detours.

That same evening, the group saw Gao Xuezhong off onto the high-speed train to Yanjing, then Wu Chang drove He Wei to Wanming City. It wasn't until they actually saw Wu Chang's car that the others finally believed he hadn't been bluffing — the unit really had assigned him a vehicle.

After dropping He Wei off in Wanming City, he told He Wei before leaving that he had people in Wanming City, and if he got bullied, just let him know.

The next day, Fang Hui also left Wanghai City, ready to begin his new project — a series touring the mystical realms of Xia Country.

Of Dorm 426, only Wu Chang remained holding down the fort in Wanghai. With this parting, no one knew when they'd next gather.

He didn't expect his reunion with Fang Hui to come even sooner than he'd thought.

Two days later, in the small hours of the morning, the Unlimited Portable Livestream Room — currently doubling as his phone — rang. Half-asleep, he picked up the call and said:

"Hello, who's this?"

Fang Hui's voice came from the other end: "Holy shit! Big bro! It actually went through?! Big bro, help me, I'm trapped in a special mystical realm, and a group of strangers have got their eyes on me, insisting I be some kind of Holy Son — hurry up and call the cops!"

Thanks to big-shot Ice and Snow Xiaoxue'er for the tip — didn't expect this book to actually have a Guardian now, qaq

(End of chapter)