“Jiang Chi?”

Noticing that Jiang Chi looked off, Li Xiao called out tentatively, “What’s wrong?”

Jiang Chi stared blankly at the stone statue on the dome, completely deaf to Li Xiao’s voice. Various thoughts swirled like a whirlpool, impossible to pull away from.

It was as if something was about to burst out, only to be blocked by an invisible barrier, stuck awkwardly in between and making his entire body ache with discomfort.

“Hss!” A sharp, violent pain throbbed through his head, and Jiang Chi clutched his forehead, lurching forward and nearly falling.

“Jiang Chi!” Li Xiao reached out to catch him. “What’s wrong?”

Jiang Chi panted heavily: “Just… an old ailment.”

Seeing other audience members turning to look, Li Xiao motioned for Jiang Chi to sit down first, asking in a low voice, “Have you been here before?”

Jiang Chi wanted to say he hadn’t, but the words caught in his throat—it felt wrong.

What was with this sense of familiarity?

“Maybe I saw something like this back in the borderlands,” Jiang Chi offered, finding a somewhat reasonable explanation. “As for where exactly, I’ve forgotten.”

Li Xiao and Song Jin exchanged a glance.

Even if he really had seen something similar in the borderlands, this reaction was far too extreme, completely abnormal.

A heavily stylized melody began to play through the room’s sound system.

“This melody sounds morbid as hell,” Song Jin criticized expressionlessly. “The pieces I compose sound better than this.”

The moment he finished speaking, two fierce-looking middle-aged men in the front row glared back at him, their eyes full of warning.

Li Xiao handed the snacks he’d brought in to Song Jin. Spotting the commotion in the front row, he looked over.

The moment their eyes met, the two men felt their scalps go numb, utterly dominated by the pressure of a top-tier Alpha. Their bodies stiffened so much they could barely move.

Realizing they were completely outmatched, they pulled their necks back and turned around, pretending they hadn’t heard a thing.

Li Xiao merely cast a casual glance before looking out the floor-to-ceiling glass.

Beneath the massive dome was a circular space over a hundred meters in diameter. In the center stood a raised platform about five meters wide, surrounded by many seats.

This layout was no different from the space housing the stone pillars in the abandoned base.

After five minutes of musical accompaniment, the floor-to-ceiling glass suddenly dropped halfway down, letting the clamor and noise echo throughout the entire space.

Hearing numerous screams and whistles, Song Jin ate a mini biscuit and complained, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were at someone’s concert. Aren’t rituals supposed to be solemn?”

Li Xiao replied, “It’s about the same nature—both involve buying tickets to watch a show.”

Song Jin: “At a concert, you get to hear good songs at least. Here, you just watch a bunch of people putting on a charade.”

A middle-aged female Beta in the front row turned around and told him, “The Grand Priest possesses divine power! If he prays for your blessings, any wish can come true.”

Noticing her greyish-green irises, Song Jin smirked mockingly on purpose: “What era is this? You still believe in that divine power nonsense?”

The female Beta grew anxious: “It’s true! Every time the ritual ends, the priest picks one audience member from the scene to grant their wish. In all these years, it’s never failed once!”

Song Jin: “…”

Is it possible that the lucky audience members chosen are all played by their own plants?

“No wonder so many people came to watch, and the tickets were so ridiculously expensive,” Jiang Chi muttered under his breath.

These people living on standard residential planets aren’t any smarter than us in the borderlands.

“He’s here, he’s here!”

“Quiet! Welcome the Grand Priest!”

The two fierce-looking men were ecstatic.

The floor of the circular stage opened up, and over a hundred figures clad in black robes slowly rose up. The noisy chatter instantly vanished.

The leader wore a black cloak with a hood shading the upper half of his face. Judging by his graying beard, he was an old man. In his hand, he held a staff made of animal bones adorned with many custom-made bells, which produced a dull clatter like colliding beans every time he shook it.

These people gathered to stand around the raised platform. Suddenly, the leader raised both hands and let out a loud shout, instantly sparking fervent cheers from the crowd.

The two men in the front row howled with excitement, their voices cracking.

[09: Activating noise-balancing protocol—]

Song Jin leaned in close to Li Xiao: “What did he shout?”

Jiang Chi, sitting on the other side, also leaned over to listen.

Li Xiao: “It might be the ancient language of the Gaofeng tribe. I didn’t understand it.”

After shouting in every direction, the Grand Priest began obsessively chanting scriptures toward the center of the raised platform. The others around him danced to his rhythm, their movements and expressions fiercely wild.

Inside the room, Jiang Chi saw everyone else standing up with their hands clasped and eyes closed in prayer. Thinking they looked out of place, he wondered if he should follow suit.

Yet Song Jin and Li Xiao—one eating snacks, the other casually watching—had no intention of cooperating at all.

After half an hour of changing formations and dancing in various styles, a snore drifted through the air. Li Xiao turned his head to look: Jiang Chi had fallen asleep.

Li Xiao’s shoulder suddenly grew heavy—having finished his biscuits, Song Jin had also lulled himself off to sleep.

Li Xiao: “…”

Li Xiao relaxed his posture to let the little lion rest more comfortably. Smelling the pleasant scent on his body, he forced himself to stay awake and keep watching alone.

A burst of harsh noise suddenly erupted from the audio system. Li Xiao’s brow twitched; even under 09’s protection, he was still affected quite a bit.

Song Jin was jolted awake by the racket. Seeing Li Xiao’s pale expression, he reached out to cover Li Xiao’s ears, glaring icily toward the stage.

“Holy crap!” Jiang Chi was startled awake, nearly jumping from his seat thinking an enemy attack was underway.

“It’s here! The main event is here!” the man in the front row shouted.

On stage, the Grand Priest stepped on someone to leap to the edge of the platform, switching to the language of the Danse Empire. In a deep, weathered voice, he screamed hysterically: “Let the evil Bique tribe pay in blood!”

“Roar—!”

“Blood for blood!”

Cheers erupted continuously across the venue.

Behind the Grand Priest, the floor of the raised platform slowly opened, and a giant stone pillar two meters in diameter gradually rose up.

Numerous corpses were pinned to the stone pillar with metal rods. On the left and right sides of the pillar, the words “Evil,” “Extinction,” and “Suppression” were carved in Bique and Gaofeng scripts, respectively.

Seeing this scene, Li Xiao’s and Song Jin’s eyes narrowed sharply, all remaining sleepiness vanishing in an instant.

The military uniforms worn by those corpses were identical to the ones found in the abandoned base.

On stage, over a hundred people suddenly stripped off their robes, leaving only rags wrapped around their private areas. Their dark skin was painted with totems in red and green dye. Holding metal rods, they began to dance around the stone pillar once more.

The music’s tempo abruptly accelerated, pushing the atmosphere in the venue to its peak.

“Wipe out the Bique tribe! Kill them all!”

“Avenge the Gaofeng tribe!”

The men and others stood up and shouted.

“What’s going on…” Jiang Chi stared at that stone pillar. Images flashed rapidly before his eyes, and he seemed to hear the breathy, terrified crying of a young child in his ears.

A room filled with instruments; he was tied to a bed.

A man holding a toddler stood outside the room, looking at him through a pane of glass, holding a gun to the toddler’s head.

The toddler reached out toward him while crying. He wanted to grab the child, but couldn’t reach no matter how hard he tried.

His body hurt immensely; his head throbbed severely, as if a pair of hands were tearing him apart. His consciousness was repeatedly pulled away, fading into a blur.

Who was this man? Who was the child? Where was he?

When did this happen? Or was it just an image from his dreams?

“Hss—!” A sharp, throbbing pain struck his head again. Jiang Chi clutched his head and squatted down. Everything in his field of vision distorted and warped, making the world spin around him.

“Until the day you die, you cannot leave the borderlands. The moment you leave, you will lose your life.”

A cold voice echoed in his ears. Jiang Chi’s heart squeezed violently, and a chill surged from the soles of his feet, rapidly spreading throughout his entire body.

“Jiang Chi?” Li Xiao tried to reach out to support him, but Jiang Chi shoved his hand away.

The moment their eyes met, Li Xiao saw extreme terror in Jiang Chi’s gaze.

Jiang Chi was indeed severely off.

“Are you alright?” Li Xiao passed him the water sitting nearby.

Sweat the size of beans dripped from Jiang Chi’s face to the floor one by one. He panted heavily, yet still felt suffocated.

The thumping of the drums vibrated against his eardrums, making him increasingly agitated. He stood up and headed straight for the exit: “I’m going back!”

Li Xiao knitted his brows and turned to Song Jin: “I’ll go check on him.”

Song Jin waved a hand: “I’ve got things covered here.”

Li Xiao chased into the corridor, finding that Jiang Chi had already walked far ahead. His steps were erratic and unsteady, as if he might collapse at any moment.

“Jiang Chi!” Li Xiao strode forward to catch up, blocking his path. “What is going on with you?”

“I have to leave.”

Jiang Chi’s face was even paler than when he had arrived, his voice trembling subtly. “I can’t be here…”

With that, Jiang Chi tried to walk past Li Xiao.

Li Xiao couldn’t make sense of it at all. He turned and grabbed his arm: “Why can’t you?”

Jiang Chi broke free of his grip, taking two stumbling steps back: “Given my identity, I shouldn’t have left the borderlands in the first place. If you have work to do, assign it to someone else.”

“Only you can do this job!” Li Xiao blocked him once more.

“What job can only I do?” Already overwhelmed with anxiety, Jiang Chi exploded with anger at being blocked from leaving, shouting hysterically, “If I fucking stay here any longer, I’m going to die! I can’t die yet, do you understand?!”

Li Xiao: “Why would you die?”

Jiang Chi’s head felt as though it were splitting open. He took a step back, leaning his back against the wall to barely keep himself upright: “I don’t know! I don’t know… I’m begging you, let me go.”

Having called Jiang Chi all the way here, how could Li Xiao possibly let him leave so ambiguously?

The more Jiang Chi acted like this, the more Li Xiao felt something was wrong with him.

Noticing staff members approaching on patrol out of the corner of his eye, Li Xiao led Jiang Chi into the nearest restroom and had 09 seal off the entire space.

“Calm down first,” Li Xiao released Jiang Chi. “This is an island. Even if you want to leave, you have to wait for the shuttle to depart.”

Jiang Chi’s mind was in utter chaos. He splashed water on his face, but feeling it wasn’t enough, he stuck his entire head under the running faucet.

The ice-cold stream brought a moment of peace to his overheated brain.

Jiang Chi straightened up and shook the water from his head. Seeing his pale, bewildered reflection in the mirror, for a moment he couldn’t even tell if that person was himself.

He felt he ought to be far more resolute, far more composed.

Seeing Li Xiao standing aside watching him, Jiang Chi turned and sat on the vanity, staring at Li Xiao guardedly with a grim expression: “Why did you really bring me here this time?”

Li Xiao didn’t answer directly, asking an entirely unrelated question instead: “Before the Mecha League, Jiang Hao asked you for a ‘universal formula.’ Do you remember?”

Confused by Li Xiao’s jumpy train of thought, Jiang Chi thought for a moment before remembering: “I remember. What, did Hao-hao actually use that formula to compete?”

Seeing Li Xiao’s serious expression, Jiang Chi assumed Jiang Hao had gotten into trouble and asked anxiously, “Did he wreck his mecha using my formula?”

“No, he performed very well.”

Li Xiao looked at Jiang Chi. “It’s precisely because he performed too well that I was somewhat puzzled. Did you make up that formula?”

Relieved, Jiang Chi leaned back casually: “Yeah.”

Li Xiao: “Have you learned mecha piloting before?”

Jiang Chi didn’t think much of it: “Never learned it. Isn’t it pretty much the same as driving a car or flying a fighter jet?”

Li Xiao: “If you’ve never learned it, how do you know it’s pretty much the same?”

Jiang Chi was suddenly stumped by the question.

He had subconsciously assumed it was similar, but had never thought deeply about the matter.

Li Xiao pressed on: “You said earlier that you’ve seen a similar stage in the borderlands. Are you certain it was in the borderlands, and not somewhere else?”

Jiang Chi subconsciously tried to recall, and a headache flared up immediately. He clutched his temple and held up a hand to stop him: “Can’t talk about this. My head’s going to explode!”

Li Xiao nodded: “Then what did you mean when you said you’d die?”

“I don’t know. It feels like someone told me that.” Jiang Chi rubbed his temple. “A space pirate like me coming to a standard residential planet really could get arrested at any moment. If I get caught, what happens to Hao-hao?”

Listening to his rambling, Li Xiao held a subtle suspicion in his mind.

It was very likely that Jiang Chi had been subjected to psychological suggestion.

Jiang Chi had reacted so strongly upon seeing the stone carvings and pillars, and numbers resembling Jiang Chi’s handwriting had also been found in that abandoned underground base.

It was highly probable that Jiang Chi had been to that base before, but due to some unknown reason, something had gone wrong with his memory.

Song Jin’s urgent voice suddenly rang in his ear, cutting off Li Xiao’s thoughts.

[Something’s happening on stage!]

Li Xiao looked left and right, then walked swiftly to the inner side of the restroom, pressing down a window blind to check the stage situation.

Numerous audience members were being escorted onto the stage, sitting around the perimeter of the raised platform. The dancers performed in the aisles, while the Grand Priest stood alone at the edge of the platform, looking as though he were casting a spell over the corpses.

A group of people dressed in plain clothes rushed onto the stage with guns raised.

The audience and dancers scattered in panic, throwing the scene into total chaos.

“A robbery?” Jiang Chi cursed under his breath. “Is playing this game popular on standard residential planets, too?”

Li Xiao narrowed his eyes slightly, focusing his gaze on the guns held by those people.

They were military models, showing no visible signs of modification on the surface.

Could they be the team responsible for cracking down on the cult?

Li Xiao: “They might be military.”

Jiang Chi: “How can you tell?”

Li Xiao: “Those are military-grade guns.”

“How the hell can you see the handgun model from this far away?!” Jiang Chi exclaimed in disbelief, pressing himself against the glass to look closely. “That’s insane—they’re firing wildly at the audience.”

Li Xiao’s brow twitched.

This style of operation didn’t quite look like the military’s.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, a gunman tossed a grenade into the middle of the stage. Many nearby were injured by the blast, falling bloody to the ground.

Several openings suddenly appeared on the floor of the circular stage, revealing sloped downward passages.

The Grand Priest and the dancers took advantage of the chaos to run into the passages and slip away.

A few nearby gunmen quickly pursued them.

Li Xiao patted Jiang Chi, turned, and walked out swiftly: “Let’s leave here first.”

Inside the viewing room, all seven audience members screamed and crouched on the floor with their heads in their hands after the first gunshot.

Song Jin walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.

From here, he could see panic-stricken audience members fleeing in countless rooms above and below.

A few gunshots were followed by the booming explosion of a grenade. A armed man jumped onto the raised platform and roared in the Bique language: “Every member of the Gaofeng tribe is an enemy! Not a single Gaofeng person here gets out alive! Kill them all and avenge our kin—!”

In the room, the two men heard the voice, feeling both frightened and enraged.

“It’s the Bique tribe—they actually launched an attack!”

“Call the police, fast!”

Song Jin turned to walk out, simultaneously speaking low to Li Xiao via 07: “The gunmen might be Bique people seeking revenge.”

Li Xiao’s voice came through his ear.

[We are in the restroom fifty meters to the right of the room. We’re heading back now; you come out first.]

Song Jin: “I’m already out.”

There were many people in the corridor. Just as Song Jin stepped out, the entire floor suddenly began to sink, while the corridors on both sides rose up.

Song Jin looked around, realizing that the movement was happening in room units.

“Jin!”

Song Jin snapped his eyes over. Across the crowd, he locked eyes with Li Xiao, who was rushing over alongside Jiang Chi.

Song Jin tried to leap to the corridor of the adjacent room, but was blocked by a group of audience members. Missing that split-second window, his line of sight was blocked by the rising corridor, cutting off his view of Li Xiao and Jiang Chi.

“Ahhhh—!”

“Help!”

“Pull me up, quick!”

Some people had happened to walk over a junction just as the floor suddenly sank, leaving them dangling helpless on the edge of the corridor above.

Song Jin looked up, noticing rooms sinking from above.

Like building blocks, the original room layout was being shuffled and reorganized, seamlessly connecting with one another.

If the people hanging on the edge didn’t quickly find a foothold, they would be crushed into meat paste by the incoming rooms.

Song Jin: “Jump down!”

But those people were in too much of a panic; no one listened to him at all.

Irritated, Song Jin grabbed their ankles and dragged them straight down.

Just as the last person hit the ground, the original corridor of the seventeenth floor merged with the eighteenth floor.

The people who had fallen to the ground broke into a cold sweat at the sight.

If they hadn’t been pulled down just now, they would have been gone!

Song Jin observed his surroundings with a cold face, asking Li Xiao, “I’ve dropped to the sixteenth floor. What about you guys?”

Li Xiao: “We’re on the nineteenth floor.”

Above, Li Xiao ran through two corridors, but was still too late to reunite with Song Jin, carried up to the nineteenth floor instead.

The long corridors on each floor were like multi-car train carriages, capable of reorganizing at any moment.

Feeling slight mechanical vibrations, Li Xiao instructed Song Jin in a low voice: “The rooms are still moving. Stay put and be careful.”

Song Jin: “Now that you have your new flame, are you ditching your old love?”

Li Xiao: “…”

Li Xiao: “Wait for me to bring the new flame to find you.”

Song Jin: “…”

Listening to the screams around him, Jiang Chi muttered: “Going this big right off the bat—how is this any different from the borderlands?”

It felt intimately familiar, almost like returning home.

“It’s sliding sideways again!” Jiang Chi swayed slightly as he was carried along. “What kind of trick is this?”

Li Xiao observed the other rooms around them: “For a three-thousand-credit ticket, they have to make sure you get your money’s worth.”

Jiang Chi: “…”

After moving up, down, left, and right several times, the rooms were completely shuffled.

Li Xiao thought of the passage those dancers had fled into. Shuffling all the rooms might have been intended to cover their escape, leaving the killers unable to find their targets.

However, this meant everyone present could potentially be matched to a room right next to a killer.

Just as the thought crossed Li Xiao’s mind, the rising room leveled with the descending room next to it.

A killer holding an A-97 large-caliber mechanical handgun appeared before them, several audience corpses lying at his feet.

The moment both sides spotted each other, the killer swiftly raised his gun, aimed at them, and pulled the trigger.

Li Xiao and Jiang Chi dodged out of the way.

Being closer, Jiang Chi executed a side flip, precisely anticipating all of the killer’s defensive moves. He locked his hand around the killer’s neck and dragged him to the ground.

Crack.

In the blink of an eye, the killer’s neck was snapped.

“Ahhhhh—!”

The audience members in the corridor were scared half to death, all squeezing together and screaming.

Jiang Chi snatched the killer’s gun, only then remembering this wasn’t the borderlands. He cursed quietly: “I’m not really gonna get arrested, am I?”

“With me here, what are you afraid of?” Li Xiao walked up to the killer and opened his palm to scan his face.

On second thought, Jiang Chi realized he was right.

The Second Prince was leading the crime—what did he have to be afraid of?

If the sky fell, he’d let the Second Prince hold it up first.

[09: Terminal scanned—logging into military management system—matching target—]

A virtual window popped up in Li Xiao’s field of vision, displaying the killer’s retrieved personal profile.

The displayed race was the Yunchuan tribe; neither of his parents had any connection to the Bique tribe.

Sure enough, it was the same old trick of framing and shifting blame.

Before the room moved again, Li Xiao turned to the audience members behind him: “If you don’t want to get hurt, go hide in the room.”

Their faces pale as ash, the audience members scrambled back into the room, wishing they could hide under the seats.

[09: Hijacked the local smart system, but it uses the 384 energy architecture. I can’t fully control it.]

“That’s enough.”

Li Xiao raised his hand, projecting a holographic 3D structural diagram from his palm that 09 had stolen from the system.

Once the rooms began moving, the stage had vanished completely, leaving the entire arched space occupied by floating rooms.

Every room on the structural diagram was numbered. Cross-referencing it with the initial layout map, Li Xiao began moving the room Song Jin was in toward their position.

Jiang Chi glanced at it.

It was just like playing a sliding puzzle.

On the other end, Song Jin was driving a group of wailing audience members back into their room.

Sensing the room stabilize once more, a dark-skinned Beta killer carrying a gun passed by the window with a fierce, menacing look.

The middle-aged men hid between the seats with their mouths covered, eyes fixed tightly on the assailant, nearly crying from fright.

Song Jin leaned by the door, Li Xiao’s voice sounding in his ear.

Li Xiao: “The program is set. I’ll come pick you up in one minute.”

Song Jin: “Mm.”

Li Xiao: “Is it safe on your end?”

The killer kicked the room door open with force, preparing to fire a few shots into the room, when something was suddenly pressed against his temple.

His pupils dilated in shock. Glancing sideways guardedly, he found a young boy making a gun gesture with his fingers.

He had actually been tricked.

The killer sneered, swinging his gun around to point at Song Jin.

Song Jin flicked his wrist. Threads of 07 gathered in his palm, transforming into a silver pneumatic gun in the blink of an eye.

Before the killer could pull the trigger, a sharp gunshot echoed near his ear. He lurched violently, his wide eyes filled with utter shock.

Even in death, he didn’t know how he had died.

“Yeah, very safe.” Song Jin kicked the killer out the door.

Hearing the gunshot, Li Xiao: “…”

He should probably rush the program a bit.

The men who were already crying in fear: “…”

As expected, a ruthless kid, sob sob sob.

So cool, though.

The corridors aligned, and Li Xiao and Jiang Chi returned to the original room, reuniting with Song Jin.

Jiang Chi: “Now that everyone’s here, let’s find an exit and leave.”

“No rush.” Li Xiao waved his hand to open the spatial structural map. “Since we spent the money, we naturally have to play to our heart’s content.”

Jiang Chi: “…Speak human.”

Li Xiao: “We’re capturing that priest. I have questions for him.”

Jiang Chi: “…”

Hao-hao isn’t always following you around doing stuff like this, is he?