Chapter 364: Exchange Complete

The lake now had only two giant fish left.

To be precise, only the Golden-Red Sturgeon remained. The Snow-White Koi’s body had long ceased its swelling, while the sturgeon continued to devour the endless stream of grass carp rising from the lakebed, its massive form nearly filling the entire lake.

This place could barely contain it anymore.

With just a slight movement of its body, it could stir up astonishing waves within the lake.

The waves carried immense power, crashing against the sculptures surrounding the lake shore. The sculptures shattered instantly, breaking into massive chunks of stone that plunged into the water, erupting with deafening roars.

A figure stood silently by the precariously crumbling embankment, observing everything through the eerie gaps of a mask.

Soon, the lake would breach its banks due to the ever-expanding body of the Golden-Red Sturgeon.

And the misfortune that had accompanied him for thousands of years would finally meet its end at that moment.

This was the conclusion that the “fish keeper” had written long, long ago.

Now, he was going to see his fish.

Beneath the mask, the corners of his mouth curved slightly into a smile. Then, he turned and walked toward the boundless expanse of pale sand dunes.

As he turned away, the Golden-Red Sturgeon in the water raised its head, its lively eyes seemingly watching his retreating figure…

“Splash-!”

“Screech-!”

At Dream Come True Entertainment City, in front of the restroom on the upper three floors, the washbasin mirror reflected Lu Yibei’s pale face still dripping with water, alongside the platinum-and-white decor of the Entertainment City.

At this moment, the chips in her hand had reached an astonishing total of over 68 billion. This figure far exceeded her previous estimation of the Entertainment City’s total chip supply.

As the chips in her possession accumulated, she noticed the frequency of illusions increasing. They now appeared almost every ten minutes, forcing her to leave her private room after each gambling game to splash cold water on her face and maintain her composure.

Lu Yibei estimated that when she completely succumbed to the illusions, the chips in this Entertainment City would likely be drained entirely.

However, given Lu Yibei’s less-than-ideal physical condition, she might not be able to handle the maximum limit of chips. PL girl suggested that it was about time for her to take action.

According to PL girl, at this point, the Big Boss should be able to break free. Not everything should be left to them; it was time for him to make a move himself.

“Miss, are you alright?”

While Lu Yibei was staring blankly into the mirror, someone beside her asked softly, then handed her a neatly folded handkerchief.

The handkerchief was made of silk and embroidered with two red koi holding copper coins in their mouths. The craftsmanship was exquisite, but the hand holding the handkerchief was even more refined-slender, pale fingers that resembled white jade.

Lu Yibei snapped out of her daze and turned her head to look. Only then did she realize that at some point, a young man dressed in a tailcoat and wearing a top hat had appeared beside her.

He was a handsome man with delicate features, golden curls, and skin so fair it reminded one of sunlight on snow. His blue-gray eyes seemed to hold a tranquil lake, rippling with warm waves.

“Are you alright?”

The man asked again, and Lu Yibei finally remembered to respond. She stared at the handkerchief in his hand but didn’t take it, instead replying indifferently, “I’m fine, thank you.”

As soon as she finished speaking, a sharp burning sensation and blurred vision struck her eyes. Lu Yibei’s body trembled slightly, and she began to see a scene entirely different from what others could perceive.

The illusion appeared once again.

The light around her rapidly dimmed. The once-polished mirror no longer reflected anything, plunging into darkness. The surrounding walls seemed to age rapidly, their paint peeling away. Not far off, like the gates of hell cracking open, a gust of decayed, murky wind blew through, carrying eerie, nerve-wracking screams.

“Crack-crack-!”

The faint sound of bones grinding came from the young man’s body in front of her. Within mere seconds, his figure stretched to nearly two meters tall, forcing him to hunch within the confined space.

The hand holding the handkerchief appeared to be scorched by intense heat, turning black and cracking open, golden liquid akin to molten metal seeping out.

Lu Yibei looked up and saw that his face now bore a sinister white mask, seamlessly fitted to his features as if it had grown there naturally.

Lu Yibei stood motionless, staring at the towering figure before her, holding her breath.

This man was entirely different from the others she had seen in her illusions. His presence was like an indescribable shadow, an invisible pressure akin to a giant hand extending from the darkness, gripping its target’s throat tightly.

If one attempted to probe the existence beneath the shadow, the shadow would devour all curiosity along with its owner, leaving not a trace behind.

This was a monster akin to an abyss.

“Miss, are you alright?”

The question sounded again. The illusion before Lu Yibei’s eyes dissipated like frost blown away by the spring breeze, swiftly returning to normal. Yet, at this moment, she could clearly detect a faint, irritating trace of pity in that voice.

Just like an emperor high above, bestowing mercy upon a beggar dying of hunger at the roadside.

Looking at the young man before her, she raised an eyebrow. “I’m perfectly fine! So fine I can barely breathe from the thrill! So please, keep your distance-if I suddenly die of asphyxiation, I might just pin it on you.”

The young man said nothing. He gently placed a handkerchief on the sink, smiled, and turned to walk away.

Lu Yibei watched him leave, her gaze following until he disappeared at the end of her sight. Then, like a balloon losing air, she slumped weakly against the sink, greedily drawing in air to fill her lungs.

“Was that just now the Big Boss of the Entertainment City? Scared me to death,” she muttered. “You were right, I don’t think you could take him in a fight.”

“But seriously, what was he doing, chatting me up out of the blue?”

“Maybe he came to inspect the goods?” The mirror reflected the voice of the PL girl. “Before slaughtering a fattened hog, don’t they always weigh it first?”

“You think I look like a hog for slaughter?”

“Well, I certainly don’t,” the PL girl pouted.

“Neither do I.”

“Then maybe it’s him?” The PL girl glanced in the direction the young man had left, eyes narrowing.

Lu Yibei picked up the handkerchief on the sink, wiped the water from her hands, and said matter-of-factly, “It has to be him!”

“By the way, are your hog-slaughtering skills up to scratch?”

“Of course! Where I’m from, I’m the most famous hog butcher for miles around. I’ve slaughtered more pigs than you’ve had meals.” The PL girl puffed out her chest proudly.

“Oh…” Lu Yibei replied, nonchalant, and casually tossed the handkerchief into the trash can.

Since the PL girl had handled so many “hogs,” she could rest easy.

“I’ll leave it to you, then.”

“Don’t worry!”

The PL girl responded. Suddenly, Lu Yibei felt as if some force had struck her body hard. She shuddered uncontrollably, and then everything before her plunged into darkness.

Her consciousness drifted away in the darkness, as if sinking into a pitch-black sea, deeper and deeper.

Jiang Li stood in the corridor outside the luxurious private room, gazing thoughtfully at the gradually emptying hall.

There were fewer and fewer guests in the hall. When their gambling game started in the morning, the gaming tables had been surrounded by crowds, but now, most of the tables were deserted.

A disquieting atmosphere hung over this Entertainment City, silently brewing like the clouds before a storm.

Something terrible was about to happen… Jiang Li thought.

While she pondered, a pair of golden eyes watched her from afar, rims slightly reddened, gaze trembling.

It felt like two long-separated friends, reunited after a hundred years, with silent tears choked back.

Sensing that gaze, brimming with complex emotions, Jiang Li suddenly turned toward the direction it came from-only to see an empty stone pillar.

Yet she felt as if someone had just stood there.

As she stared at the pillar, lost in thought, Ah-Hua hurried to her side and bent slightly. “Miss, that Lu Yibei has disappeared again-surely off somewhere causing trouble for some poor girl.”

“Miss, I’m telling you, don’t believe her stories about tutoring haunting-mixed girls by the roadside. Anyone can tell she’s making it up.”

“Miss? Miss?”

Seeing Jiang Li distracted, Ah-Hua waved her hand in front of her eyes. Jiang Li finally came back to herself and calmly said, “Ah-Hua, since we can’t find her, let’s go rest in the lounge and wait for her to return.”

With that, she led Ah-Hua toward the lounge.

At the same moment Jiang Li left, behind a distant stone pillar, the PL girl poked out half her head, furtively watching Jiang Li’s retreating figure and sighing silently.

So, after starting her power leveling and fulfilling this one small, unexpected wish, she steeled her gaze and strode quickly toward the exchange counter.

People change, things change-one glance was enough. If she really approached Jiang Li, it might alter Lu Yibei’s fate, right? The PL girl thought.

A short while later, in front of the exchange counter on the upper three floors of the Entertainment City.

With a dramatic flourish, the PL girl dumped over thirty fully loaded chip storage cards onto the counter, tilting her chin at the bunny girl behind it.

“I want to exchange!”

The bunny girl’s eyes widened. She looked from the storage cards on the counter to the familiar face before her, barely daring to breathe.

It was as if a corner shop owner watched a customer toss dozens of gold bars on the counter.

What the hell!

What was she up to?

Could it be she just wanted to do a little showy display of her storage cards, a kind of Versailles flex?

The bunny girl just couldn’t figure out what this Wang Buliuxing girl was thinking.

“What would you like to exchange for?” The bunny girl asked, her voice trembling with fear.

“All of it,” the PL girl blurted out, stunning the bunny girl for a hundred years.

Though the PL girl’s words sounded presumptuous, with so many chips, she could indeed clear out eighty or ninety percent of the items on the exchange list.

“Miss Wang, I’m just a regular employee, could you… please let me go?”

Letting guests “make their dreams come true” had always been the creed of this Entertainment City. To make such a promise meant that, under normal circumstances, the Entertainment City would never go back on its word.

But to exchange for eighty or ninety percent of the list-such a wish was simply outrageous.

The bunny girl, though unclear why this Miss Wang Buliuxing wanted to do such a thing, had faintly sensed something was off.

This was probably not something she could handle.

“I said, exchange all of it. Didn’t you hear me?”

The PL girl ignored the bunny girl’s plea, her expression returning to that of facial paralysis, as if she’d just been pulled out of a freezer, her gaze fixed on the bunny girl, numb to a frightening degree.

Then.

Like an illusion, a hoarse, deep voice sounded by the bunny girl’s ear.

“Make the exchange for her!”

That hallucination-like voice was akin to an unbreakable command, causing the bunny girl’s eyes to go blank, her body moving on its own as she gathered the storage cards on the table and swiftly completed the exchange.

Thus, the transaction was complete.

The PL girl clearly felt a familiar sense of oppression surging in from all sides, wrapping her tightly, as if trying to merge with her body. Large swaths of scorch marks rapidly appeared on her skin, her face contorted in agony.

Soon, as if she’d adapted to the pain that seemed capable of destroying her, her brows gradually relaxed, and the charred flesh on her body flaked off inch by inch, revealing skin as tender as a newborn’s.

In the next moment, the light before her eyes dimmed, and amid the twisting of shadows and light, her surroundings swiftly transformed into that decay and ruin Lu Yibei had seen in her hallucinations-a breath of dilapidation, collapse, and rot pervading everywhere.

With a muffled pop, the bunny girl’s body exploded, transforming into a pale cascade of drifting sand scattered across the floor.

A faint, manic laughter echoed through the Entertainment City. Amid the laughter, the entire building trembled violently, heavy dust and debris falling in a shower, as if the whole structure was collapsing.

Terrifying vitality and psychic energy fluctuation coiled atop the Entertainment City’s summit, resembling a gigantic embryo, the thunderous rhythm of a powerful heartbeat resounding ever stronger, like the war drums of the Thunder God.

In the midst of the booming, fragmented whispers arose, as if enacting a holy ritual.

“Every time the dice are cast and the round ends, the loser is always heartbroken.

He tosses the dice again and again, yet never learns from his pain.

With rebellious hands, he searches his mother’s entrails,

Slashing vast wounds, digging out ribs of gold, seizing the treasures within.

Ancient evil wolf, you ought to be cursed,

You have claimed more lives than all other beasts combined…”

The PL girl narrowed her eyes, looking toward the No Return Place, her gaze seeming to pierce layers of walls, seeing that evil wolf struggling desperately to escape the world’s malice. She murmured with deep meaning, “A haunting led by a demonized Plutos, mixed with the power of Mammon?”

“Now this is interesting!”

“Exert all your strength and struggle toward that false hope! When you’re utterly exhausted and break your chains, you’ll know what true despair is! And now…”

“Lu Yibei, Lu Yibei, log in!”

With a gentle call, Lu Yibei snapped awake, staring blankly at the collapsing building before her, a barrage of question marks popping up in her mind.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I supposed to do?

“Don’t space out! Hurry up and find Jiang Li, take her and run!” The PL girl urged in a low voice, “Get out of this cursed place now-before that thing realizes something’s wrong. If you don’t escape, you’re dead!”

“What the hell! Didn’t you say it wasn’t dangerous?” Lu Yibei exclaimed.

Though she harbored doubts, she still followed the PL girl’s instructions and ran in the direction where Jiang Li was.

“Correction: I said there was no danger during power leveling,” the PL girl said, dead serious. “But the power leveling is over now!”

Dashing madly, Lu Yibei whipped out her phone for a glance, then pointed at the screen. “What the hell! It hasn’t even been thirty minutes of power leveling and it’s already over?”

Feeling the frightening psychic energy fluctuation continuously emanating from above the Entertainment City, Lu Yibei suddenly realized that the PL girl had just charged in, taunted the boss, started the fight, and then left this deadly mess for her to deal with alone.

“What kind of black-hearted power leveling is this! You didn’t even do anything!”

“What do you know? Just watch and learn! I’m cutting off contact with you now, or this plan won’t work. That’s it.”

“Ding dong-! Your power leveling service has ended. Goodbye!”

“Huh? What does that mean?” Lu Yibei asked in confusion.

No one responded.

Lu Yibei, “…”

“Damn! With customer service and attitude like yours, even a one-star bad review is too generous!”

When Lu Yibei found Jiang Li, she and Ah-Hua had already reached the exit of the upper three floors’ main hall, Spirit Pattern fully unleashed.

The dim light flickered. Deformed, mutated bunny girls wandered everywhere like devils. Huge spikes, as if forged from molten iron, erupted from the ground, piercing through the crowds unable to dodge in time. Charred corpses were swept up by the howling wind, drifting in with bursts of foul stench.

In such chaotic scenery, Jiang Li, clad in silver-white armor and cradling the unconscious Ah-Hua, was particularly eye-catching.

She darted swiftly among the panic-stricken guests, her gaze searching for something.

The moment she caught sight of Lu Yibei, her eyes beneath the helmet narrowed slightly. Stepping onto a massive stone pillar that crashed down before her, she leapt into the air, spun gracefully, and landed firmly in front of Lu Yibei. Glancing at her from the corner of her eye, she said coolly, “Get on!”

Looking at the sudden “white steed” before her, Lu Yibei hesitated, then climbed onto Jiang Li’s back, but felt too embarrassed to wrap her arms around the slender waist so close at hand.

Once she was settled, to prevent Jiang Li from questioning where she’d gone, Lu Yibei took the initiative, “Jiang Li, what happened? I just went to the bathroom and came back, and the whole building is collapsing?”

“This is… really deadly!”

“…” Jiang Li hesitated, wanting to speak but stopping. She had thought all this chaos was Lu Yibei’s doing, but now it seemed that wasn’t the case?

“I don’t know either. It doesn’t matter now, we have to get out of this hellhole first!”

Anyway, in this situation, this Entertainment City probably won’t last much longer. My wish is as good as fulfilled, Jiang Li thought to herself.

“Exactly, exactly, let’s run!” Lu Yibei clapped in agreement. Right after, seeing Jiang Li charging straight for the nearby floor-to-ceiling window, her eyes widened in shock, and she cried out, “Eh, eh! You-“

“Hold on tight!” Jiang Li interrupted sternly.

The next moment, the sharp sound of shattering glass rang in Lu Yibei’s ears.

Broken glass fragments rained down like a storm outside the building, and that silhouette bathed in moonlight soared out through the window.

The howling wind roared as if trying to tear Lu Yibei from Jiang Li and fling her into the sky. She instinctively clung tightly to Jiang Li’s waist.

Feeling the force through the armor, Jiang Li’s cheeks flushed slightly, her body trembled, then she landed steadily on the building’s exterior wall, nearly perpendicular to the ground. After a brief pause, she charged forward with all her might…