Chapter 280: Three Against One

Jiang Yuan stared intently at Chen Shao, trying to find the best opportunity to strike again.

Chen Shao stood still in place, not moving.

He even had the leisure to straighten his suit cuff, which had been torn during the earlier fight.

Now!

Jiang Yuan summoned a Shadow Demon, which lunged at Chen Shao, while he himself rushed toward the Wish Bottle in his true form.

Chen Shao watched the incoming Shadow Demon; his scarlet left eye twitched slightly, showing no fear, but rather a mocking amusement as if watching a show.

Just as Jiang Yuan's finger was about to touch the bottle's body,

an extremely eerie silence descended abruptly.

Creak, creak, creak.

There were footsteps.

It wasn't the crisp sound of leather shoes splashing in water, but the sticky, muffled noise of bare feet stepping in mud. Each step sank heavily and slowly, yet landed with uncanny precision on the gaps between heartbeats.

Jiang Yuan felt his ankle tighten.

The previously soft mud suddenly changed. The ground seemed to come alive, as countless grayish concrete arms burst from the earth, gripping his legs tightly.

It was not ordinary concrete; it exuded an aged, decaying aura, with chalk dust and dried bloodstains clinging to its surface.

A powerful Rule Power crept up from his ankle.

The feeling was like being dragged back to his most oppressive school days, caught red-handed by the discipline master in the hallway.

【Correction Facility New Regulation Article 1】

【Inside the corridor, running is prohibited】

Jiang Yuan snapped his head around.

From the shadows of the ruins, a teenager stepped out.

The boy's mouth was sewn shut with coarse black thread, and he held a dark red ruler in his hand.

He was barefoot, his whole body exuding a suffocating chill; his hollow eyes locked onto Jiang Yuan, and he lightly tapped the ruler against his palm.

Xu An.

The madman who personally killed his own parents and slaughtered the entire correction center.

The surrounding ruins had, at some point, taken on the appearance of the Correction Place.

Dilapidated, streaked with rust.

"Looks like Boss Chen came prepared as well," Jiang Yuan said, trying to pull his leg free, but it wouldn't budge.

The concrete arms were absurdly hard; the more he struggled, the tighter they gripped, even beginning to embed into his flesh, as if trying to make him part of this "school."

Chen Shao smiled, his elegant grin contrasting starkly with the surrounding chaos, making it especially ironic.

"Jiang Yuan, one must mind one's manners," Chen Shao said calmly as he shattered the Shadow Demon before him, "Running and shouting in school will earn you punishment."

Before his words even faded,

Xu An swung his ruler down violently.

Smack!

Though several meters away, Jiang Yuan felt his chest as if it had been lashed by a vicious whip.

"Is this your trump card?" Jiang Yuan spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, "Hiring a minor as a enforcer, Boss Chen—your business is pretty 'criminal'."

"As long as it works," Chen Shao shrugged.

Jiang Yuan narrowed his eyes.

Rule-type weirdness is indeed troublesome, but it's nothing more than a nuisance.

"No running, right?" Jiang Yuan took a deep breath, his Shadow Ghost Power boiling over inside him, "Then I'll take the unconventional path!"

Shadow Escape!

Since my feet are locked, I'll just not use feet.

Jiang Yuan's whole body instantly liquefied, like a puddle of ink merging with the shadow beneath his feet. The concrete arms grasped at nothing, only able to stiffly flail in the air.

The next second.

In the crevice between the rubble beside the Wish Bottle, a mass of black shadow exploded.

Jiang Yuan burst out from the shadow, now less than half a meter from the Wish Bottle.

This time, nothing could stop him.

Jiang Yuan's finger had already touched the icy porcelain glaze of the bottle's rim.

He had won.

That thought had just flashed through his mind when Jiang Yuan's pupils suddenly contracted.

Something was off.

The rainstorm continued.

In the dense curtain of rain, a strange blank area appeared above the Wish Bottle.

As if something invisible stood there, rain slid along its outline, tracing a vague human silhouette.

That wasn't air.

It was a person.

An Invisible Person standing there, unseen by anyone!

"Got it."

A faint whisper came from the air, tinged with mockery.

Just as Jiang Yuan's finger was about to latch onto the bottle's neck, a hand materialized out of nowhere—more precisely, a hand-shaped outline formed by the rain—grasped the bottle a split second earlier.

Immediately after.

That milky‑white Wish Bottle was right under Jiang Yuan's eyelid, gradually fading, becoming transparent, until it completely vanished into the air.

Even the hand that held the bottle melted back into the rain curtain.

It's empty.

Jiang Yuan's grab caught a handful of wet, cold air.

"Damn!"

Even the usually calm Jiang Yuan couldn't help cursing. The Shadow Demon roared in fury, a huge black blade sweeping out, cleaving the air of that area together with the rain into two halves.

But it cut nothing.

The invisible thing was slick as an eel, and the moment it seized the item it had already slipped out of attack range.

"Invisibility System?" Jiang Yuan's face turned sour as if he had swallowed flies, "It's unbearably shady."

Not far away, Chen Shao clearly was in a good mood.

He looked at some point in the void, gave a slight nod, as if praising that unseen subordinate.

"All warfare is based on deception." Chen Shao spread his hands, in a victor's posture, "Jiang Yuan, I have a virtue: I never engage in battles without certainty."

From the start, this was a setup.

Chen Shao drew fire head‑on, Xu An handled control and restriction, while the real killing move was the Invisible Person that had been lurking in the shadows.

Three against one.

That's unfair.

But in this world, fairness is a joke.

"I'm leaving."

Chen Shao stopped the chatter. Since the item was in hand, keeping it longer was useless.

His body rose slowly, the broken stones beneath him automatically gathered into steps.

The boy Xu An, whose mouth had been sewn shut, silently slipped back into the shadows; his dead‑still eyes gave Jiang Yuan one last glance, neither hateful nor wavering, as if looking at a talking stone.

"Want to leave?"

Jiang Yuan gritted his teeth; the Shadow Demon behind him surged again, turning into countless black chains that sealed the whole sky, "Leave the item behind!"

Boom!

A terrifying psychic storm erupted from Chen Shao's body.

Those Shadow Chains shot into the sky collided with an invisible iron wall and were violently rebounded.

"Don't waste it." Chen Shao looked down from above at Jiang Yuan, his voice carrying far in the rain‑filled night, "I'll leave this Bone Knife to you as payment for your desperate effort tonight. After all… you still have to give Wei Laotou an answer, don't you?"

Having spoken, Chen Shao's figure rose and swiftly vanished into the pitch‑black clouds.

The unseen Invisible Person and the gloomy boy both disappeared together.

Only the ruined ground remained, and the Bone Knife still lodged in the mud.

The rain grew heavier.

Jiang Yuan stood where he was, letting the icy rain flow down his neck into his combat suit. He stared at the empty pile of stones, his fist clenched with a creaking sound.

Lost.

Not lost due to strength, but due to an information gap.

Who could have thought that this so‑called 'Lone Wolf' Chen Shao could, in such a short time, assemble a Deceptive Squad with this configuration?

Control System, Rule System, Stealth System.

This guy is truly building a kingdom for monsters.

"Bastard."

Jiang Yuan muttered, turned and walked toward the Bone Knife.

That was the monster that Ouyang Feng had become.

At this moment, the long blade made of human bone and resentment stood alone in the mud, its hilt bearing a skull that faced Jiang Yuan, its eye sockets still seeming to hold Ouyang Feng's lingering unwillingness and spite.

Jiang Yuan reached out and grasped the hilt.

Buzz!

A bone‑chilling cold rushed up his arm into his brain in an instant, a resolve to kill three million people, a mental shock that could drive an ordinary person mad.

But Jiang Yuan only frowned slightly; the Shadow Ghost's power barreled in, directly suppressing that agitation.

The Bone Knife trembled twice, then finally settled; the weird crimson aura on its surface receded, becoming a grim, pale yet sharp weapon.

"Captain Ouyang…"

In the distance, the ambulance's alarm grew nearer.