Chapter 107: Ke Mingqing VS Xia Lingxue and Ke Linye, Cinema Crisis

July 21, 10:00 AM, Wanxiang Theater.

Inside one of the IMAX screening halls, the surroundings were pitch-black. Xia Lingxue and Ke Mingqing sat in red massage chairs, the screen's faint glow spilling across their faces.

They had essentially booked the entire hall to themselves; no one else was inside.

Ke Mingqing rested his elbow on the armrest and propped his chin on his hand. Watching blood splatter across the screen, he occasionally tossed popcorn from a red plastic bucket into his mouth.

"After watching that video of you on the school bus, I've actually been thinking..." Xia Lingxue said out of the blue.

Ke Mingqing turned to look at her.

"Ah Qing, were you always the kind of person who would do something like that?" she asked a moment later.

Her words mingled with the dialogue from the movie before reaching his ears. Ke Mingqing's expression didn't change, though he thought to himself, *As expected, it still made Second Sister suspicious, huh?*

A moment later, he asked helplessly, "Don't you think you worry a bit too much? You try to control everything."

Xia Lingxue fell silent for a while. Wrapping her arms around herself, she said slowly, "I had a friend once. When I said goodbye to her after school, I thought I would see her again the next day.

"But she didn't come to school the next day. That evening, she was on the news. A popular superhero was flying through the sky and tossed an empty soda can. It plummeted toward the street. She was feeding a cat at the time, and the can hit her squarely in the head."

Ke Mingqing was stunned, a piece of popcorn still dangling from his mouth.

*No wonder Second Sister joined the Hero Control Bureau. So she harbored this much resentment toward superheroes,* he thought.

Xia Lingxue stared quietly at the large screen. "When I heard the news, my first reaction wasn't sadness. Instead, I found it absurd—even a little funny." "Why?" Ke Mingqing asked.

"Because someone so important to me was accidentally crushed to death like an ant. Isn't that funny?" Xia Lingxue asked in return.

Ke Mingqing remained silent.

"And the public outcry was quickly suppressed by the Hero Company. She came from a single-parent family, and her mother was a gambling addict. After about ten days or so, no one ever thought of her again."

At this point, Xia Lingxue took an Alpenliebe lollipop out of her trench coat pocket and unwrapped it.

"She loved these. Honestly, I never used to understand what was so appealing about candy."

She paused. "Of course, I still don't understand it now. But at least it helps me remember her."

"You'll get diabetes, you know."

Ke Mingqing spoke casually, not knowing what else to say.

Xia Lingxue stayed quiet for a moment, rolling the lollipop around in her mouth before continuing. "Truthfully, whether you're dating or showing off on a school bus, I don't want to interfere. But I worry that if I look away from you for even a second, you'll end up like her... In this day and age, things like that happen far too often."

"Relax, sis. That kind of thing is just a low-probability event."

Saying this, Ke Mingqing lowered his eyes slightly and took a sip of cola through his straw. *Once I drive the super-human species to extinction, this world will return to normal,* he thought. *It's just a pity that you probably won't live to see the next era.*

He turned his head slightly, intending to pick up the cola resting in the armrest's cup holder. At that moment, however, he caught a glimpse of a figure standing at the exit at the back of the hall from the corner of his eye.

Ke Mingqing raised an eyebrow. The person was wearing a cinema staff uniform, their hands behind their back, standing quietly in the shadows with their head bowed.

By the faint glow of the screen, Ke Mingqing saw the person's face clearly.

It was an unfamiliar face.

Staff appearing inside a screening hall was fairly common. Especially in small, poorly attended cinemas like this one, employees would often slip in to find a seat and slack off.

The next second, Ke Mingqing was about to look away, but a super-human species status panel slowly materialized above the person's head.

[super-human species Codename: Owl Judge (Danger Rating: A++ Rank)]

*Big... brother?* Ke Mingqing paused slightly, muttering inwardly.

He quickly recovered his wits and used his peripheral vision to inspect the human skin mask on Ke Linye's face again. Right now, a faint smile hung at the corners of Ke Linye's mouth.

After that, Ke Mingqing discreetly shifted his gaze back to the movie screen.

Almost the very instant he saw through the disguise, Ke Mingqing understood why Xia Lingxue had specifically invited him out for a movie today. It turned out that she and Ke Linye had planned all along to make a move on him in the cinema. Ke Linye had even put on an act in front of him this morning just for this.

A chill seized Ke Mingqing's heart. Every pore on his body seemed to snap open, and the cinema's air conditioning made his skin crawl with cold.

*Logically speaking, the two of them should have already tested me at the Hero Company entrance last time...* he thought. *Did that video on the school bus make Second Sister suspicious of me all over again?*

*This woman's mind is far too meticulous. No wonder she managed to hide within the Hero Control Bureau for so long despite being a mythic vessel.* Thinking of this, Ke Mingqing took another sip of his cola.

*What do I do... I still don't know what they're planning. But since they know I passed the player ID scan, they'll definitely use a different method to test me this time. I might not be able to bluff my way through again.*

*If I'm lucky enough to fool them, that's obviously a good thing. But if they catch me red-handed... I'm dead.*

Ke Mingqing lifted his eyes and silently stared at the movie screen, quickly formulating a countermeasure in his mind.

*I need a Theater Puppet. I have to get it into Screening Hall 4 to temporarily take my place.*

*If the puppet passes their test, then I can continue playing the role of "Ke Mingqing."*

*But if the puppet fails their test, I can use the opportunity—while Big Brother and Second Sister are distracted by it—to escape the cinema immediately.*

At that thought, the corner of Ke Mingqing's eye twitched slightly.

*The problem is... I already used Puppet Number Two to impersonate Kuroki Hitomi just now. It's still on cooldown, so I have to wait ten hours before I can summon it again.*

As for Theater Puppet Number One, it was completely out of the question.

Right at this moment, Puppet Number One was still with Death Crow playing the role of "Giovanni," and couldn't easily slip away.

Cold sweat slowly seeped from Ke Mingqing's forehead.

The light from the IMAX screen hit his face like an interrogation room lamp, flickering between light and dark.

*Can I really only sit here and wait to die?* he thought. *Big Brother is still blocking the exit. The probability of me escaping directly from under his and Second Sister's noses is practically zero. Never mind just me, even a hundred of me couldn't slip out of their grasp.*

*I can't just sit here waiting for doom... Even if Giovanni raises Death Crow's suspicions, I have to ensure my main body's safety.* As his thoughts settled on this, Ke Mingqing took a deep breath, slowly closed his eyes, and synchronized his consciousness with Giovanni in another corner of the world, inside a second-floor room of an abandoned building.

A dim bedside lamp was lit in the room, its light flickering like a firefly.

Giovanni sat cross-legged on the bed, resting. Bai Ziling sat on his lap, quietly flipping through a comic book.

The cover of the comic book featured a bald man in a yellow jumpsuit wearing a white cape. The girl read it with great relish, completely engrossed. "Let's go watch a movie," Giovanni suddenly said, opening his eyes and looking at the girl in his arms.

"A movie?"

Bai Ziling tilted her head and looked up at him, her snow-white hair swaying.

"Yeah."

"What movie?"

Giovanni thought for a moment. "The Doraemon movie. Want to see it?"

Bai Ziling nodded. "Mhm, I want to see a movie."

Giovanni unlocked his phone, looked at the pixel-art cartoon avatar of Heimeng on his home screen, and ordered, "Book tickets for me. Just use Jiang Qingzi's money. He said he was going to treat me and Bai Ziling to a meal."

"Understood."

The Heimeng AI nodded, then looked down and started flipping through a small booklet. She asked seriously, "Mr. Giovanni, which cinema would you like to book seats at?"

"Wanxiang City Cinema," Giovanni said. "Also, check how far away it is."

The Heimeng AI closed her eyes, crossed her arms, and pondered for a moment, a bunch of data continuously popping up above her head.

A moment later, she opened her eyes and hummed, "Heimeng has already booked the tickets for you. It's only a ten-minute walk from here! Screening Hall 5, two seats. Please use the QR code to collect your tickets at the ticket machine near the cinema entrance."

"Let's go."

Giovanni slipped his phone into the pocket of his attendant uniform and got out of bed first. Bai Ziling put on her sandals, hugged her small notebook, and followed behind him. The two passed through the pitch-black corridor, went downstairs, and arrived on the first floor of the abandoned building.

Giovanni looked up and saw only Bai sitting alone on an elevated stone slab, staring blankly out the window out of sheer boredom.

Seeing the two arrive, the woman glanced back at them through her veil.

"Where are you headed?"

Giovanni ignored her and walked right past, while Bai Ziling sketched a blue robotic cat in her notebook and said softly, "Doraemon."

Bai tilted her head, the corners of her mouth curling up slightly as she quietly watched the two walk out into the sunlight.

"Then don't forget to bring the time machine back," she said softly.

Bai Ziling knew the time machine was an item from *Doraemon*, so she nodded seriously, acting as if it were a real mission.

After leaving the remote, abandoned building, Giovanni picked up his pace slightly.

Bai Ziling assumed the movie was about to start. Thinking that this was her first time going to a cinema and she couldn't be late, her expression turned serious, and she walked a little faster.

Fortunately, Wanxiang City Cinema wasn't too far from their location. Before long, Giovanni arrived at the cinema complex. He quickly scanned his QR code at the ticket machine like a robot and retrieved two movie tickets.

After that, he took Bai Ziling by the hand and scanned their tickets at the self-service gate to enter.

Giovanni stopped right in front of Screening Hall 5.

Next door was Screening Hall 4, where Ke Mingqing and Xia Lingxue were located; standing here made it feel as if a lifetime has passed.

Giovanni cast a sidelong glance at the entrance of Screening Hall 4. He knew there was a person standing right on the other side of the door—Ke Linye, disguised as a staff member. However, he couldn't see the man from the main corridor.

The next moment, Giovanni led Bai Ziling inside Screening Hall 5, and they sat down in the very back row.

Then he suddenly turned his head and whispered to the white-haired girl, "Bai Ziling, could you do me a favor?"

Bai Ziling looked into his eyes, her red irises glowing faintly in the dark.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I want you to go next door to Screening Hall 4. There's a staff member at the entrance." Giovanni thought for a second. "Tell that staff member you're lost, and ask him how to get to Screening Hall 7. Let him guide you there. Once you're inside Screening Hall 7, just find a random seat and sit down. Wait for me to come find you, got it?"

Bai Ziling was silent for a moment. She didn't understand why Giovanni wanted her to do this.

But seeing his earnest eyes, the girl nodded anyway.

"Giovanni, I'm going then?"

"Mhm, I'll go to Screening Hall 7 to pick you up in a bit," Giovanni said softly. "Make sure you wait for me quietly."

Ke Mingqing's goal in doing this was, of course, to have Bai Ziling lure Ke Linye away from the exit of Screening Hall 4 temporarily.

Only by doing so would he have the chance to let his main body rendezvous with Giovanni and swap the two. Otherwise, his only path was death.

Bai Ziling stood up from her seat.

Giovanni watched the white-haired girl walk out of Screening Hall 5.

A moment later, he took a deep breath, slowly rose from his chair, and headed out of the hall. He peeked through the gap in the door at the corridor outside. He saw Bai Ziling and Ke Linye standing by the exit of Screening Hall 4, talking.

Ke Linye first raised an eyebrow, then smiled faintly.

Placing his hands behind his back, he walked ahead of Bai Ziling to lead the way, guiding her into the corridor around the corner.

Giovanni watched them leave, then slowly stepped out of Screening Hall 5 and slipped into the men's restroom located in the middle of the corridor.

The restroom was completely empty. The young man walked to the very last stall, pushed the door open, stepped inside, and sat down on the toilet lid. Then, he closed his eyes like a robot entering standby mode.

At the same time, inside Screening Hall 4.

Ke Mingqing slowly opened his eyes. The glowing light from the IMAX screen pierced his vision, causing him to squint slightly.

"Sleeping in the cinema, young master?" Xia Lingxue teased without turning her head, an Alpenliebe lollipop dangling from her mouth.

"I told you I needed to catch up on sleep at home, but you just had to drag me out to watch a movie." Ke Mingqing shot her a glare.

"What were you doing last night?" Xia Lingxue asked.

"Stayed up late playing games."

"Is that so."

"I really need to pee, I'm going to the restroom." Ke Mingqing let out a yawn.

He stood up from his seat, stepped onto the central aisle of the auditorium, and walked step by step out of the hall.

Looking up, Ke Linye was nowhere to be seen at the exit. Relieved, Ke Mingqing pushed the doors open.

The cinema corridor that met his eyes was still completely empty. Right now, Ke Linye was still leading the way for Bai Ziling in another corridor around the corner.

Ke Mingqing left the hall, his heart pounding wildly, and silently approached the restroom before slipping inside.

He then headed straight for the last stall and pushed the door open.

Sitting on top of the toilet lid was an Italian youth wearing a train attendant uniform.

It was unmistakably his puppet: "Giovanni."

In the quiet stall, the person and the puppet stared at each other from close range, each reflecting the other's face in their eyes.

*Fascinating...* This was Ke Mingqing's first time observing Giovanni from an outsider's perspective, and he marveled at the sight.

He casually closed the stall door, then ordered Giovanni to take off the "attendant uniform" and recalled it into his inventory.

Following that, Ke Mingqing stripped off his own T-shirt and shorts, took off his Nike sneakers, and tossed them all to Giovanni. Giovanni caught the clothes, pulled them over his naked body, and bent down to put on the sneakers. Finally, he used the Disguiser Talent to slowly alter his appearance.

Before long, everything from the puppet's skin tone, facial features, and skin texture, all the way down to today's outfit, had perfectly morphed into Ke Mingqing's likeness.

Looking at the guy standing in front of him who looked exactly like himself, a chill ran down Ke Mingqing's spine.

*Thank goodness the Theater Puppet and Disguiser Talent didn't fall into the hands of another player. Otherwise, if someone ever impersonated me, the sky would truly fall...*

Ke Mingqing sat on the toilet lid while turning this over in his mind. He then ordered Giovanni to walk out of the stall and step out into the cinema corridor.

At this moment, since he had given all his clothes to Giovanni, Ke Mingqing was left wearing nothing but his underwear.

He had no choice but to pull the attendant uniform out of his inventory and slip it on, just so he wouldn't look quite so pathetic.

With that, Ke Mingqing had successfully switched places with the Theater Puppet.

All that remained was to figure out exactly what Ke Linye and Xia Lingxue were plotting. Then, he would try to bluff his way through using the Theater Puppet... But if that didn't work, Ke Mingqing would simply open the restroom window and escape through the alley behind the cinema.

*Big Brother will come back after dropping Bai Ziling off at Screening Hall 7. I'll just have to take things one step at a time.*

Ke Mingqing took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and focused entirely on the Theater Puppet's perspective.

Acting as if nothing had happened, the Theater Puppet walked into Screening Hall 4, navigated the dimly lit central aisle, and returned to Xia Lingxue's side, taking a seat in the red chair.

"Whoa, the movie isn't over yet?" The puppet adjusted its vocal cords, producing a voice identical to Ke Mingqing's.

"Almost."

Xia Lingxue said expressionlessly.

A moment later, the doors to Screening Hall 4 were suddenly cracked open, spilling the corridor's light inside.

Ke Linye, wearing the staff uniform and his human skin mask, squeezed through the gap.

Holding a highly futuristic-looking helmet in both hands, he muffled his footsteps and crept slowly, silently toward the Theater Puppet sitting in the middle of the hall.

The Theater Puppet tilted its head slightly, noticing this from the corner of its eye, but remained impassive. It couldn't hear any footsteps; the only sound in the hall was the movie's audio.

Gunfire rang out from all directions, so deafening it made one feel as if they were right on the battlefield.

Soon, Ke Linye silently arrived at the aisle directly behind the Theater Puppet, looming at its back.

At that moment, with barely any movement, he lightly and slowly lowered the helmet onto the puppet's head. "Sis? Is there someone behind..."

The Theater Puppet paused for a brief second. Then, in the next moment, its vision was completely obscured by the helmet, everything going dark.

As a burst of blue light diffused across the helmet's surface, the puppet suddenly lost consciousness. Its eyes went vacant, as if its soul had traveled far away. Absolute silence fell over the hall.

"Ah Xue, is this thing really safe?" Ke Linye broke the silence a moment later.

"It's safe," Xia Lingxue replied in a low voice. "This helmet just temporarily places the subject in an unconscious, hypnotized state. Then it reads his neural information over a set period, recreating everything his eyes saw during that time."

Ke Linye thought about it. "If Ah Qing is a player, then in the images this helmet pulls, he should be seeing a bunch of weird game icons, right?"

"Right..." Xia Lingxue remained expressionless. "The world in a player's eyes is different from ordinary people's. They see all kinds of system icons. This was already confirmed during previous interrogations."

Meanwhile, the Theater Puppet appeared to be in a hypnotic state, but in reality, it was completely unaffected.

The reason was simple: it was just a puppet. All of its thoughts and actions were solely controlled by Ke Mingqing. How could it possibly be hypnotized? Listening to his brother and sister's muffled conversation through the puppet's ears, Ke Mingqing finally understood their intentions.

*So that's how it is... Well then, this is simple.* He slightly raised an eyebrow.

The Theater Puppet's eyes inherently couldn't see any super-human species panels or system icons.

Only when its vision was transmitted to Ke Mingqing's mind did those images undergo a transformation within his brain, automatically overlaying all the system-related information and icons.

Therefore, the helmet Ke Linye and Xia Lingxue were using was completely useless against the Theater Puppet.

*Big Brother and Second Sister are way too ruthless... If my real body was sitting in the cinema hall right now, my identity as a player would have been completely exposed.* Ke Mingqing breathed a sigh of relief inside the restroom stall.

*I have to say, thank god Bai Ziling was there... If she hadn't lured Big Brother away from Screening Hall 4, I never would have found the chance to swap out with the puppet.*

Thinking of this, the young man lowered his eyes slightly, staring at a cigarette butt on the floor of the stall.

An image formed in his mind: the white-haired girl sitting all alone in a theater, watching a movie she didn't like with strangers. Ke Mingqing hooked the cigarette butt with his toes and tossed it into the toilet. *Once I deal with this mess, I'll go to Screening Hall 7 to pick Bai Ziling up, and we'll go watch a full movie together.*

By now, the voices coming through the puppet's perspective were growing fainter. He could no longer hear Xia Lingxue and Ke Linye's conversation, so he could only sit quietly and wait for time to pass.

At the same time, inside Screening Hall 4, the Theater Puppet's head slumped. It sat paralyzed in the chair like a dead fish, the black helmet still strapped to its head.

Ke Linye sat down next to Xia Lingxue. Crossing his legs, he casually asked, "How long does this helmet take to extract the information?"

"The technology isn't completely mature yet. The one we got from Dr. Toy is just a trial version, so it might take five or six minutes." Xia Lingxue crossed her arms, speaking nonchalantly.

"Is that so..." Ke Linye mused.

"Mhm."

"Was that school bus video really that suspicious?" Ke Linye shrugged. "You know... when I watched that clip, the only thing on my mind was, *That's my little brother, staying so calm in a critical moment.* I was actually kind of proud."

Xia Lingxue was silent for a moment. "Even though it's common knowledge that termites are afraid of light, do you really think an ordinary student like Ah Qing could remember something like that in a situation like that?"

Ke Linye shook his head.

"Right. That's not the psychological resilience and judgment of a normal person," Xia Lingxue continued. "When faced with the Termite Monster, a normal student would be too terrified to think."

"So, you suspected that Ah Qing had already been replaced by a player," Ke Linye muttered.

Xia Lingxue said nothing. She simply stared quietly at the massive IMAX screen. The movie was nearing its end.

Ke Linye thought about it. "But when we visited the Hero Company that time, Ah Qing passed the Player Device's scan, didn't he?" "If he knew how the device worked beforehand, he would have had a chance to slip past it," Xia Lingxue said coldly.

Ke Linye rested his elbow on the armrest and propped his chin on his hand. Lowering his eyes, he stayed silent for a while before asking again, "By the way, didn't Ah Qing just go to the restroom?"

Xia Lingxue turned her head and shot him a frigid glance.

"Weren't you keeping watch at the door?"

Ke Linye shook his head. "No, a girl came up to me and asked for directions just now. Since I was cosplaying as a staff member, I had to do my job properly, didn't I? Otherwise, it would have been too suspicious."

"Ah Qing went to the restroom," Xia Lingxue said.

"What a coincidence. He just happened to use the restroom while I was away? And here I was thinking about intercepting him at the door." Ke Linye raised his brow. "I'll go check the restroom."

With that, he slowly stood up from the red chair and made his way out of the hall.

About ten seconds later, Ke Linye stepped out of the hall, crossed the cinema corridor, and appeared at the entrance to the men's restroom.

He pulled the brim of his baseball cap down slightly, lifted his clear eyes, and scanned the interior of the restroom. At this very moment, only a single stall door was shut.

And inside that very stall, Ke Mingqing sat on the toilet lid, resting his chin on his hand as he stared blankly at the filthy floor.

*When is this going to be over?* he thought.

Just then, a sudden set of footsteps broke the silence in the restroom, reaching Ke Mingqing's ears.

Ke Mingqing jerked his head up, his heart lurching in alarm.

The footsteps drew closer and closer to him, eventually stopping right in front of his stall, as if the Grim Reaper himself had arrived with scythe in hand...