Xing Ye came up with yet another initial skill.

Xing Ye swaggered over from Carriage No. 12, still using the trendy-young-man appearance.

After realizing that Shao Lin might have reached the front carriages via the platform, Xing Ye immediately asked Cao Qian when the position information had last refreshed. Cao Qian told him it was two minutes ago.

There were still eight minutes until the next refresh. During this time, Xing Ye could move freely.

He stood up directly and headed toward Carriage No. 8. During this interval, position information could not refresh. People occasionally moved around inside the carriage, and even if someone noticed him leaving, they would wait until the next refresh to confirm whether he was the trendy young man.

After arriving at Carriage No. 8, Xing Ye bought a cup of instant noodles. With Lu Mingze keeping watch, he drew a “paper substitute” in the restroom, letting the substitute trendy young man hold a bowl of noodles filled with hot water and eat in Carriage No. 8, while he himself headed toward Carriage No. 1.

“Why use your real body?” Lu Mingze asked.

“Shao Lin has already guessed that I would change my disguise, and he also thinks I used a smokescreen,” Xing Ye said. “At this point, the trendy-young-man identity is somewhat dangerous. But if I really did keep using that identity, he would become suspicious again.”

“People who are too smart—even when the truth is placed right in front of them—will only believe their own analysis and refuse to believe a truth that is too simple.”

Lu Mingze felt it was very complicated.

Xing Ye said, “I go to Carriage No. 1 to look for Shao Lin. The paper substitute eats noodles in Carriage No. 8. During this time, neither I nor the substitute is seated in Carriage No. 12, so many people will suspect that I am the trendy young man. But Shao Lin won’t believe it easily. He’ll think this is my trap. In order to prove that I am not the trendy young man, he will actively look for evidence that, at the same time, the trendy young man was eating noodles in Carriage No. 8, thereby exposing my trap of disguising myself as the trendy young man to lure them into attacking him and getting caught by the railway police.”

Lu Mingze: “...That’s way too convoluted.”

“Exactly,” Xing Ye said. “Some people like to doubt others and believe themselves—an inherent flaw of smart people.”

“Are you like that too?” Lu Mingze asked.

“No,” Xing Ye replied. “I trust your judgment more. When reason and analysis can’t distinguish the truth, intuition and luck are often more useful than those things.”

Lu Mingze felt a little happy. After settling the plan with Xing Ye, the two went straight to Carriage No. 1.

Pushing open the carriage door, what came into view was a calm and peaceful Carriage No. 1. The passengers sat drowsily in their seats, with nothing apparently out of the ordinary.

Xing Ye felt something was off. He always felt that this kind of calm was problematic. Wearing sunglasses, expressionless, he walked forward.

At that moment, Lu Mingze asked in his mind, “What are you doing? You’re about to step on someone.”

At this time, Lu Mingze was on a button on Xing Ye’s clothes. The outfit Xing Ye was wearing was so flashy it was hard to look at directly. In the very centre of the gem-studded clothing was a button as large as the cap of a Nutrient Express bottle, its surface made of mirror-like material.

This was clothing prepared so that he could naturally carry Lu Mingze around. When Xing Ye provided the system with his character settings, the text length was comparable to an undergraduate thesis; he had thought through every aspect.

He had considered how to carry Lu Mingze into battle if his real body were exposed, and so he installed such a button on the glittering outfit. The button was unusual, but compared to the trendy young man’s purple hair, full-body piercings, and sequins, it hardly stood out.

Lu Mingze, staying on Xing Ye’s chest, immediately saw that something was wrong with this carriage.

He saw a burly man standing in front of a female attendant who was tightly bound hand and foot, while the passengers in the carriage seemed to see nothing at all—including Xing Ye.

At first, Lu Mingze thought Xing Ye was pretending and didn’t remind him. But when Xing Ye continued walking forward, clearly about to bump into the burly man—and only avoided it because the man stepped aside—Lu Mingze realized that what Xing Ye was seeing was different from what he himself was seeing.

He was the “True Magic Mirror”, capable of seeing through all visual-type disguises.

Lu Mingze immediately transmitted the scene he saw to Xing Ye. “Hearts connected as one” was truly a great ability—it could transmit information one hundred percent directly in the mind, far more powerful than words. He didn’t need to say a single word; Xing Ye understood everything. Very convenient.

After seeing the true state of the carriage, Xing Ye’s expression remained unchanged. With firm strides, he headed straight toward the driver’s cab and lifted his leg, stepping down on Shao Lin.

He wanted to test whether this was a visual-type skill or a spatial-type one.

If it was visual-type, he simply wouldn’t be able to see Shao Lin, but could still touch his body. If it was spatial-type, then he would be stepping on the floor of the carriage.

The burly man had no intention of saving Shao Lin at all. Xing Ye’s foot landed solidly on Shao Lin’s chest.

The trendy young man wearing the magic mirror tilted his head, as if encountering something strange, then stomped hard twice more to confirm whether he had stepped on something.

Lu Mingze simultaneously transmitted the image of Shao Lin baring his teeth in pain yet daring not to make a sound to Xing Ye.

Xing Ye burst out laughing inwardly, but outwardly remained calm. He took off his glasses and, speaking in a northeastern Chinese accent, said, “What the heck is this thing?”

Hearing the accent, Lu Mingze burst into laughter in Xing Ye’s mind. If he had a body, he would probably be rolling on the ground laughing.

Hearing this sentence, even Shao Lin’s face showed a look of confusion. He simply could not associate the… living creature in front of him with the calm, terrifying, overwhelmingly imposing Xing Ye from the casino world.

While wildly stomping on Shao Lin, Xing Ye’s mind was also rapidly thinking about why such a situation had appeared in Carriage No. 1.

Shao Lin should originally have come to ambush Yan Hebi, but instead suffered an unknown attack in Carriage No. 1. For someone as clever as Shao Lin to still be attacked indicated three things.

First, Shao Lin’s trump cards were extremely limited in number, and he didn’t want to waste them on a suddenly appearing opponent, focusing solely on dealing with Xing Ye.

Second, Shao Lin believed the opponent could be recruited and was trying to use his “sweet talk” to persuade them.

Third, the person attacking Shao Lin had a relatively steady and mild temperament and would not kill someone outright at the first opportunity.

The player attacking Shao Lin should be this burly man with tattoos on his arm and a knife scar at the corner of his eye. He possessed at least two abilities: one that obscured an enemy’s vision, and another that could bind Shao Lin.

In the image transmitted by Lu Mingze, Shao Lin was holding a cup in his hand. This was unreasonable—how could someone still be holding a cup while being tightly bound hand and foot? He should have let go of it.

There was only one conclusion: Shao Lin was forced to hold onto the cup. It was not an ordinary cup, but a fate-following item that was restraining him.

In a split second, Xing Ye considered this point and made a bold decision.

He stomped downward, stepping squarely on the cup in Shao Lin’s hand, even grinding it slightly with the sole of his foot, while saying, “Round and rolly? Why can’t I see anything at all?”

Seeing him madly stomping on the cup, the burly man’s facial expression twisted violently. He immediately dropped to his knees, trying to pick up the cup from beneath Xing Ye’s foot.

But the one who found it even more unbearable than him was the cup itself. Before the burly man could grab it, the cup screamed angrily, “How dare you step on my face?! Ahhh! I’m so mad I could die!”

Xing Ye heard this sentence.

What surprised Xing Ye was that this turned out to be a fate-following item with consciousness and independent thought.

With a flick of his toe, Xing Ye actually kicked the cup out of Shao Lin’s hand. Logically speaking, the thermos cup was binding Shao Lin with hot water and should not have been easily kicked away. If the cup flew up, it should have been seizing the opportunity to attack Xing Ye.

“Wife!” the burly man shouted nervously as he rushed forward, trying to catch the flying thermos cup.

Who knew that the thermos cup would instead rage in midair, “Get lost, useless man! Relying on men is worse than relying on yourself!”

She flew into Xing Ye’s hand, intending to turn the water into a whip and lash this trendy young man who dared to trample her. Unexpectedly, the trendy young man’s hand was positioned right in front of his chest, and at the instant the thermos cup landed in his hand, it was facing the button on his chest.

This position was extremely ingenious; Xing Ye happened to use the thermos cup to block the button on his chest. Only the thermos cup could see the young boy inside the button.

The thermos cup saw only a beautiful young boy who looked as though he had stepped out of a dream. She froze on the spot. The boy waved at her, smiled at her, revealed cute little tiger teeth, and placed his index finger against his lips, softly making a “shh” sound.

The thermos cup immediately covered her mouth psychologically, not daring to make a sound, only wanting to stare blankly at the boy.

“Wife! Well done! Grab him and we’ll have thirty million!” the completely unaware burly man was still cheering and urging the thermos cup on.

Xing Ye still could not see the true state of the carriage and could only rely on the images synchronously transmitted by Lu Mingze, but that did not prevent him from pretending that he could see everything.

The trendy young man, wearing sunglasses, said, “Well done? Don’t you know that this thermos cup already belongs to me?”

“What?” the burly man said in disbelief.

“My initial skill, “Seizing what another loves”, can seize the thing another person loves the most. Looks like you really love this fate-follwoing item,” Xing Ye said with a slight smile. “But now she belongs to me.”

“What! I’ll kill you!” the burly man roared as he took out his phone, preparing to attack Xing Ye.

Xing Ye patted the thermos cup and said, “I want his phone.”

Because the thermos cup was overly infatuated with Lu Mingze’s appearance, it triggered “Beacon Fires to Amuse the Lords”. The water drifting out of the cup lashed the burly man’s face without mercy, then seized the phone and handed it to Xing Ye.

Shao Lin stared at this unbelievable scene while struggling desperately to break free from the water bindings, planning to change his strategy and use the camera to directly capture Xing Ye and take him before Tan Feng. Once the “recording” duration expired, Tan Feng could then kill Xing Ye.

Unexpectedly, at this moment Xing Ye said to the burly man, “Want your thermos cup back? I only used my initial skill to temporarily control her consciousness; I haven’t erased it yet. I have a QR code on my phone that can erase consciousness. If you want to save your wife’s life, then kill her.”

“She” naturally referred to Shao Lin lying on the ground. The duration of the “Unparalleled Beauty ” skill was only three minutes and could not be used consecutively on the same person, as it would cause an aesthetic-fatigue cooldown. Xing Ye intended to make full use of these three minutes.

Under Lu Mingze’s control, the thermos cup said in a coquettish voice, “Husband, please save me, please… wuwuwu…”

How could the burly man endure this? His eyes turned red as he turned toward Shao Lin, took a deep breath, and puffed up his cheeks, apparently preparing to use some kind of initial skill.

Bound by water threads, Shao Lin was temporarily unable to use the camera. “Sweet Talk” would definitely not work anymore, so he decisively activated his initial skill “Watching the fire from across the river .”

“Watching the fire from across the river”, Shao Lin’s initial skill, could only be activated when there were three or more combat participants. It allowed him to instantly place himself in a detached, uninvolved state, escape danger, and shift the conflict from himself onto others.

This ability to instantly escape danger did not have strong offensive power, but its defensive capability could absolutely save his life. It was comparable to Guan Ling’s “Absolute Defence,” and thus could also only be used once every 24 hours.

“Watching the fire from across the river” also had the effect of sowing discord, transferring attacks aimed at him onto another party.

He activated “Watching the fire from across the river” just as the burly man’s skill was about to hit him. The burly man’s head immediately shifted uncontrollably, and the breath gathered in his chest was redirected toward Xing Ye.

Seeing that his attack was about to injure the wife in the trendy young man’s hand, the burly man slapped his own belly and forcibly swallowed the breath back.

With a loud “bang,” the breath exploded inside the burly man’s mouth, blowing his face apart.

If this attack had landed on Shao Lin, he would probably have died on the spot.

The burly man instantly became miserable. Xing Ye, however, paid him no attention and instead looked at Shao Lin and said, “That kind of initial skill that shifts attacks and removes you from danger must have very few uses. You don’t have any trump cards left now, do you?”

With that, he raised his hand, as if about to attack.

Shao Lin glared fiercely at Xing Ye and said through clenched teeth, “Don’t get proud too early. I’ll be back.”

With that, his figure vanished instantly. Lu Mingze said, “That wasn’t an illusion—he really disappeared!”

Xing Ye said, “It should be a teleportation-type ability. I remember that his fate-following item, the “Celestial Shift”, has an ability related to transferring fortune. The abilities of fate-following items are usually complementary, so the other ability should be teleportation.”

When the burly man collapsed heavily to the ground, the three-minute duration of “Unparalleled Beauty” had already ended. The thermos cup let out a cry of pain, “Husband!”

“He’s not dead yet,” Xing Ye said. “The abilities of the two of you are very special and useful to me. I want you to become my subordinates in this world. If you agree, I’ll help treat him.”

The thermos cup immediately said, “I agree, but how are you going to restrain us?”

At this moment, a voice came from the carriage door: “We naturally have a way.”

As soon as the words fell, a girl about 1.5 meters tall, wearing black-rimmed glasses, walked into Carriage No. 1.

 

Translator : DarNan