Chapter 107
Chapter 107: Who’s the Cruel One Now?!
Qian Qi tapped at her light-brain keyboard. “Oh.”
Then she asked, casual as breathing, “So how’d you kill him? Smacked the back of his head and then bashed him to death?”
System: “…”
“What do you mean, smacked the back of his head? Could you phrase that more… elegantly?”
“Yes. Smacked him. He died.”
“Ohhh.” Qian Qi nodded, deeply impressed. “You thought ahead. The dungeon’s been cleared. Someone might stroll in later, scoop him up, and then we’re stuck with loose ends.”
System gave a pleased little wobble. “Hmph. Obviously.”
It flopped onto the bed and rolled around like a happy idiot, secretly thrilled Qian Qi wasn’t blaming it for being nosy.
More than that, it liked what it saw in her. Her heart wasn’t spotless white—and honestly? In a world like this, being too soft just got you killed. This place was basically a devil’s den: if she didn’t have teeth, trouble and death would line up to bite.
Selective kindness. Selective cruelty. That was how you survived without becoming either a victim or a monster.
System was delighted.
Qian Qi, meanwhile, kept typing while she reeled Chen Tong in. A faint regret tugged at her.
Shame. She’d had a much prettier ending planned.
She’d wanted the injured Li Hai Sheng to bleed just enough to lure magic beasts, then get ground down bit by bit—thinking he’d escaped, only to stumble into the next nightmare. Hungry, freezing, exhausted, finally dying in despair… or watching himself get eaten piece by piece until all that remained was a lonely skeleton.
Tsk. What a beautiful picture.
No. A pitiful one.
Qian Qi sighed, shook her head, and went right back to work.
Sea King Great Sage: You know why a three-headed magic lightning lion’s lightning horn is so expensive?
Chen Tong – Not Somber: Why?
Sea King Great Sage: Because I hid every magic lightning lion in the Early Cloud Mountain dungeon. I only tore off their horns. As long as they don’t die, the Early Cloud Mountain dungeon will never spawn new ones!
Sea King Great Sage: That dungeon is nothing but dim grand canyons, thousands of meters deep. Want to find what I hid?
Dream on.
Chen Tong – Not Somber: ?
?
?
?
Li Hai Sheng… was that scheming?
Chen Tong clenched his jaw so hard it nearly cracked. He paced in place, furious and torn.
He was a Magic Beast Department student. He knew damn well no three-headed magic lightning lion had ever appeared on the market. If the Early Cloud Mountain dungeon was the only place that spawned them…
Then he had no choice.
“Fuck. Next time, I’m not hiring an awakener who’s too smart.”
Chen Tong’s brow knotted. Lesson learned. “Daring to name his price with me… tsk. The last one who scammed me was that damned Qian Qi.”
Just hearing “Qian Qi” made him both love and hate.
Love—because she held things that could change the Chen family’s standing.
Hate—because she was shameless, and she never failed to leave him humiliated.
Worse, she robbed him in broad daylight.
“Lightning horns. I’ll buy all of them!”
Sea King Great Sage: Transfer the money. I’ll pack it and ship it.
Qian Qi logged off the moment she sent it. Then she opened the property trading app, checked the prices around her—up more than a hundredfold—and smiled as she tossed all the cheap houses she’d bought earlier into the Auction section.
Fixed prices were boring.
She liked watching people fight for it.
*
The Early Cloud Mountain dungeon being cleared didn’t stay quiet for long.
Inside a meeting room at the Dungeon Association, several senior officials sat in wooden chairs, arguing over the dungeon’s true rank—and the identity of whoever cleared it first.
“The Early Cloud Mountain dungeon is absolutely above C-rank. We sent C-rank awakened soldiers in twice back then. None of them came out.”
“And it’s been over twenty years. No one knows what those magic beasts have grown into.”
“If it’s really C-rank, then what kind of awakener could clear it alone?”
“I’m guessing B-rank.”
“All domestic B-ranks are on file. We’ve contacted them. No one admits they did it.”
They all turned toward the white-robed elder at the head seat. “Chairman, what do you think?”
The old man folded his hands lightly. “A new B-rank awakener, perhaps.”
“And the surveillance footage?”
“For some reason, a chunk across those two days was deleted. We’re trying to recover it, but the odds aren’t good.”
“Deleted…” The chairman’s eyes narrowed. “Prepared. Deliberate. They don’t want their identity exposed.”
A senior official’s light-brain pinged. He shot to his feet. “Someone posted that you need a parachute to enter the Early Cloud Mountain dungeon!”
“What?”
The room snapped to attention.
“It probably means the internal entrance is in the air…”
He pulled up the Dungeon Forum and projected it onto the conference table. “It looks like people have already gone in. But they… haven’t come out.”
After a dungeon was cleared, it could be entered and exited freely before the boss respawned. If people went in and didn’t return, there were only two possibilities:
They were dead.
Or they couldn’t make it back to the entrance.
The chairman stared at the projection. “This user—‘Ex-Wife Ran Off with Money.’ Who is he?”
The officials scanned the thread. Sure enough, that account was the one warning people about parachutes.
“Chairman, are you thinking it’s him…?” someone ventured. “Only someone who’s been inside would know. That warning proves he’s the one who cleared it.”
“Not necessarily,” another scoffed. “Maybe he’s just trying to grab attention.”
Someone else frowned. “But if people can’t return to the entrance, high altitude makes sense.”
“Or something else,” the skeptic insisted. “Spatial transfer, maybe—”
“Spatial transfer is ridiculous.”
The debate heated up, but the chairman didn’t bother replying. He turned to his secretary. “Do we have an ID on that account?”
“Unregistered,” the secretary said, fingers flying. “No real-name verification. No location.”
The chairman rose. “Contact the nearby army. Send in a flight team.”
He left the room with only one line drifting behind him:
“Try it. Then we’ll know.”
*
Qian Qi returned to the orphanage and went straight into the Vegetable Garden Dungeon.
She’d noticed every dungeon out there had a proper name, so she gave her backyard one too: Vegetable Garden Dungeon.
With the mural warning gone, she killed the newly respawned Magic Lightning Lion boss with ease, earning another strength buff and another lightning horn.
This time, she didn’t smash its skull with her fists. She forced poison gas into the beast until it went woozy and collapsed.
Then she rolled up her sleeves, pulled out the D-rank retractable long knife she’d looted from Li Hai Sheng, and stabbed straight into the Magic Lightning Lion’s heart.
Clean. Efficient. Done.
She returned to the plain, checked on the tomatoes and scallions thriving in the soil, and left the dungeon to find Child A.
“Look!” she announced, practically glowing. “This time I’m clean. Not a speck of grime on me!”
Child A stared at her like she’d just discovered fire. “Isn’t that what a nineteen-year-old adult should be doing already? You only managed it now, and you’re proud?”
Qian Qi went silent.
Fine.
No pork dumplings tonight.
Tonight, she was making the Chinese toon buns he hated most.
Kowtow. Kowtow. Kowtow!