Chapter 42: The Manifestation of World Malice
At the exchange center of the Dream Come True Entertainment City, Luxianbei once again witnessed Jiang Li’s outrageous competitive spirit.
She casually remarked, “Let’s see who dies first,” and Jiang Li actually exchanged an entire fifty years of life for it.
One hundred and fifty years?
By then, she would be one hundred and sixty-nine years old. What’s the point of living that long?
Does she just want to be an elder?
Luxianbei suspected that if it weren’t for the excessive amount of tokens required for further exchanges, this woman would probably try to exchange for another five hundred years.
As for the sudden increase in tokens needed for exchanging lifespan beyond fifty years, though Luxianbei did not inquire with the Bunny Girl, she analyzed it with some information she once obtained from Jumeng and guessed a rough idea.
According to Stinky Sister, even the small group at the top of the Urban Legend Pyramid has a lifespan limit; the same likely goes for Spiritual Ability Users.
A lifespan of over a hundred years is probably the upper limit for Spiritual Ability Users. Anything beyond that isn’t merely about extending life but pursuing immortality, so the number of tokens required for exchange is naturally not on the same level.
Thus, if we were to plot the number of tokens for exchanging lifespan as a function curve, it would likely resemble a “V” shape?
Tsk, both moments and eternity are invaluable; would a mundane, unremarkable daily life be nothing at all?
Probably…
Luxianbei thought while shrugging indifferently. She turned to Jiang Li and noticed her mood seemed somewhat low, which made her feel puzzled.
“What’s wrong? Having regrets? Not wanting to live that long? You don’t need to worry about such small matters; living long isn’t the same as making it impossible for you to d*e.”
“After all, you never know if tomorrow or an accident will come first, right?”
Facing Luxianbei’s usual trash talk, Jiang Li rolled her eyes and remained silent.
She initially intended to retrieve the portion of memories she lost to the Big Boss through the exchange center, but unfortunately, those memories didn’t appear on the exchange list.
While the knowledge and common sense she accumulated over the years didn’t disappear with the loss of memories, she often found it hard to recall their origins.
This empty-headed feeling was uncomfortable.
As she pondered, Jiang Li’s gaze swept over Luxianbei’s increasingly bulging pockets, and her brow furrowed slightly. Besides that exaggerated piece of emerald raw stone, her pocket also contained several red coral pieces and a few golden fish scales.
She couldn’t name the golden fish scales, but she recognized the corals as Dragon Eye Coral, a high-level alchemical material rich in fire attribute spiritual energy that occasionally appears near underwater volcanoes.
“What are you exchanging for alchemical materials? When did you learn this skill?”
“Uh…” Luxianbei paused, pouted her lips, and feigned ignorance, “Don’t you know me? I can’t do alchemy! I’m just buying and reselling.”
“When I was outside earlier, I saw someone buying this stuff at a high price. After comparing, I found the buying price was much higher than exchanging for tokens, so I planned to buy some back to make a bit of profit.”
Helping someone carry goods? That sounds like something Luxianbei would do… After hearing her explanation, Jiang Li thought to herself, gathered her thoughts, and continued walking.
Luxianbei lagged half a step behind Jiang Li, secretly observing her back. Seeing that she wasn’t suspicious, she secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
She couldn’t let Jiang Li know she was an alchemical genius, and she definitely couldn’t let her know she was collecting materials to complete the core of the Urban Legend entity.
Not that she didn’t trust Jiang Li; it was mainly because she was always thinking about getting people to “turn back to the right path.” Yesterday, during a break, she even enthusiastically promoted the Siye Association Headquarters’ Urban Legend Reconstruction Institute to Luxianbei!
With such tight restrictions, how could one marry in the future?
Reconstruction Institute…
That kind of hellish place sounded like it was going to throw me into a pressure cooker and recast me. I fear there would be no way out, I wouldn’t go even if you killed me!
Sorry, Ahua, even if the outside is full of furniture-carrying Jackie Chans, I can’t stop! Luxianbei thought.
————
When Luxianbei and Jiang Li arrived in front of the VIP lounge number 002, Ahua and a Bunny Girl in golden attire had already been waiting for them for quite some time.
Seeing the two return, Ahua hurried over, beaming with delight and said to Jiang Li, “Miss, that Bunny Girl was just looking for you, asking when the gambling game will reopen; now many guests have signed up to participate.”
Although Ahua was unaware of what her lady and Luxianbei were plotting, she felt very happy watching them continuously win large amounts of tokens.
“Really?” Jiang Li glanced at the Bunny Girl waiting at the door of the lounge, nodded in acknowledgment, and walked forward.
Luxianbei stood still, contemplating the Bunny Girl negotiating with Jiang Li, frowning slightly.
More guests have signed up?
Is it because I spent a lot of tokens, increasing the number of tokens in the entertainment city, causing those tokens to flow back into the hands of the guests?
Luxianbei vaguely felt that something was off, but for a moment, she couldn’t pinpoint it.
Moments later, Jiang Li finished her negotiation with the Bunny Girl and returned to Luxianbei’s side, softly asking, “The entertainment city sent someone to ask when we will reopen; what do you think?”
“What else can we do? Someone is sending money to our door, so we just accept it!” Luxianbei shrugged, “I bet those Bunny Girls are eager for their cut too, right?”
As she spoke, she lowered her voice, “Besides, do you remember the plan I told you about? We’ve just spent a wave of tokens, and we’re still far from executing the plan!”
“Yeah.” Jiang Li nodded, “Then I’ll tell her that we will reopen in two hours.”
“Why wait two hours?” Luxianbei asked, puzzled.
“Because I think you need to rest for a while,” Jiang Li replied in a tone that resembled a superior commanding a subordinate, “You probably haven’t closed your eyes while I was sleeping, right?”
“…”
Luxianbei opened her mouth to argue but seeing Jiang Li’s unquestionable gaze, she shrank her neck and mumbled, “Okay, whatever you say, anyway, I can’t do it alone.”
Moreover, I want to see if my guess is correct! Luxianbei added in her mind.
————
The gambling game did not start immediately, and Luxianbei did not obediently follow Jiang Li’s words, finding a place to sleep in.
Although she wanted to do that, she felt it would be more appropriate to test whether the frequency of hallucinations is related to the number of tokens in a busy place.
So, after finding an excuse to look for Liu Banxian, Luxianbei stepped out of Jiang Li’s line of sight.
When she returned to the lobby, she discovered that the originally desolate lobby, which had become quiet due to many guests losing their tokens with her, had unexpectedly become crowded with guests at some point.
They surrounded the various gambling tables, everyone eagerly placing bets, creating a chaotic, noisy, and frenzied environment, reminding her of supermarket sales where elderly people scramble for cabbages.
Each person was like a retired soldier in a supermarket, completely unlike the weak passengers on the bus.
Luxianbei bit into a spicy strip and, glancing around, headed toward a crowded betting table that was placing odd-even bets, attempting to squeeze in but unsurprisingly got blocked by the crowd.
Her petite and frail body, without using spirit energy, indeed couldn’t push past those seemingly addicted Spiritual Ability Users and Urban Legends.
Helpless, she asked a Bunny Girl to bring her a chair, and sitting quietly aside with her spicy strip, observed the situation.
During this time, a Bunny Girl kindly brought her drinks and snacks since guests like her, holding large amounts of tokens, are especially favored anywhere in the entertainment city.
Thus, amidst the chaotic lobby of the entertainment city, a mismatched girl sat quietly.
Guests at the Russian roulette table were excitedly pounding on the table as their eyes reddened from winning tokens while she complained to the Bunny Girl that the macarons were too sweet.
Guests at the Texas hold’em table lost everything and left dejectedly while she told the Bunny Girl to remember to half-sweeten her next milk tea.
Many guests who recognized Luxianbei thought she wanted to join in and closely observed her movements, eager to follow this “big shot” to place bets and make a killing; however, she merely kept shoving snacks into her mouth, like a ruthless snack-destroying machine.
People came and went at the betting tables; guests changed repeatedly, but she continued sitting with her feet up, watching the sky, a milk tea in her left hand and a spicy strip in her right, living peacefully.
The only time she got up was to call Ahua upstairs and indulge indiscriminately in food and drinks together.
Two hours passed in the blink of an eye. When Luxianbei finally stood up from her chair, she caught quite a few eyes.
Is she finally coming?
Is she going to bet?
However, she merely scratched her head and turned expressionlessly to walk upstairs with Ahua.
As she passed around the staircase corner, Luxianbei caught a glimpse of the guests trying to follow her to place bets, curled her lips, and then recalled the observations she made in the casino, her gaze sharpened as she fell into deep thought.
There surely was a problem, a significant one! Luxianbei thought.
Based on her observations over the past two hours, the three upper levels of the lobby seemingly had no issues at first glance; guests at each betting table appeared to be winning and losing equally, just as the plot of this entertainment city unfolds every moment.
However…
These Spiritual Ability Users and Urban Legends were not random passersby; each person’s appearance and spirit energy fluctuations had their distinct characteristics!
After leaving the lobby and stepping into the corridor of the private rooms, Luxianbei turned to Ahua, lowering her voice to ask, “Ahua, were you able to distinguish clearly? Which guests’ spirit energy fluctuations were seen in the previous gambling games, and which were new?”
Earlier, while Luxianbei and Jiang Li were engaging with the guests, Ahua had been waiting outside the private room door, which meant she had almost seen all the guests who participated in the gambling game.
Thanks to her ability to perceive spirit energy fluctuations sharpened by her spirit pattern, as long as she encountered the same spirit energy again, she had at least an eighty to ninety percent certainty of not misidentifying it.
“Well…” Ahua recalled briefly, looking at Luxianbei, and said seriously, “I’ve recognized quite a few; many of those who won heavily have appeared in our gambling games, while those who have almost always been losing have very unfamiliar spirit energy fluctuations!”
“Just as I thought!” Luxianbei replied solemnly, clenching her fists.
“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?” Ahua pushed up her glasses, arms crossed in front of her chest, looking at Luxianbei sideways, “By the way, you still haven’t told me the purpose of making me do this!”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll go tell my lady that you didn’t listen to her and didn’t rest well!”
“…”
Go ahead and tell her; do you think I would be afraid of her?
Yes, I would!
Luxianbei opened her mouth, staring directly into Ahua’s eyes, and said seriously, “Ahua, please go find your lady; I have something very important to do now, and I’ll tell you the reason later.”
After speaking, she hurriedly ran off, not giving Ahua a chance to refuse.
“Hey! Where are you going? You…” Ahua called after her a few times. Seeing Luxianbei’s lack of reaction, she stomped her foot and headed in a disgruntled manner toward the lounge.
Behind a stone pillar at the corner not far away, a pair of clear eyes watched Ahua leave, letting out a sigh of relief, before turning to observe the seemingly normal lobby below, growing increasingly serious.
“…”
Just as I suspected, those newcomers were intentionally losing tokens! Luxianbei thought fiercely.
Just now, while she was using her eyes at high intensity, randomly selecting a lucky audience member to use her predictive ability and waiting for hallucinations to appear, after about an hour, she had almost confirmed that the frequency of hallucinations was indeed related to the number of tokens one possesses.
However, during this process, she also noticed a new anomaly.
With her excellent memory that allowed her to memorize “Taihe Gentleman Sword Illustration” after reading it once, she almost recognized all the Spiritual Ability Users and Urban Legends who participated in her organization’s gambling games.
She realized that the most active guests, those who were the loudest and lost the most tokens, were all unfamiliar faces, and there were quite a few of them, making up at least thirty percent of the total guests.
Legend has it that a long time ago, Norwegian fishermen, when catching sardines, would place a few large catfish in the fish tank to prevent the sardines from dying on the return journey. The catfish would swim around, stirring things up, causing the naturally passive sardines to move, greatly increasing their survival rate.
And these additional thirty percent unfamiliar faces were the “big catfish”!
They lost a large amount of tokens, briefly left, then quickly returned with newly exchanged tokens, continuing to output tokens in a never-ending cycle.
Thus, other guests who had become despondent from losing tokens due to Luxianbei’s gambling games, under the continuous stimulation of winning, felt like they had received adrenaline, their emotions exceptionally heightened.
But…
Where did these guys come from all of a sudden?
And how could they have so many tokens to lose?
Thinking carefully, within this entertainment city, the only one capable of pulling out so many tokens at once must be that Big Boss!
Luxianbei turned to the dark vortex leading to Nowhere Land, frowning.
Could it be that…
The Big Boss finally couldn’t hold back anymore?
d*mn it, I really thought he was as fair and just as Jiang Li said!
With that thought, she quickly made her way to the arbitration room and quickly received the answer she sought from the Bunny Girl in the arbitration room.
As expected, the number of guests signing up for their gambling games had increased once again, nearly returning to peak levels!
“d*mn it!”
Standing near the floor-to-ceiling window outside the arbitration room, Luxianbei punched the nearby pillar hard.
There was something wrong with those tokens.
After I spent the tokens, the Big Boss secretly sent people to give tokens to the other guests, then have them lose them to me, thus, my tokens wouldn’t decrease too much.
This Big Boss is clearly trying to screw me!
Luxianbei thought, narrowing her eyes as she looked toward the monitoring Urban Legend, who was hovering nearby and exhibiting eye symbols, raising her middle finger.
If you’re going to mess with me, then I’ll mess with you too!
Let’s see how this goes!
When it comes to old silver coins, I’ve never been afraid of anyone. If you have the guts, don’t lay a hand, let’s both play dirty!
“Bang bang—bang bang—!”
Just as Luxianbei was stealthily stewing in her anger, a dull thud interrupted her thoughts. She looked toward the sound and saw a figure outside the glass window, bloodied and disheveled, desperately waving, seemingly in a panic.
“What the hell! May I ask who you are?!”
Luxianbei was startled and abruptly jumped back a step, instinctively conjuring a fireball the size of a basin.
Seeing this, the figure grew even more frantic and hurriedly exhaled a puff of white mist against the glass, quickly writing a line of text.
【Liu Banxian: Save me!!!】
Luxianbei’s corner of her eye twitched, “…”
What the hell? What’s going on? Are you here playing performance art?
————
Fifteen minutes later.
At the entrance of the bathing center on the upper three levels, an elderly man was weeping like a broken-hearted flower.
“Wuwuwu, they are not human!”
“They ambushed a hundred-year-old man! And tortured me; it’s too much, they lack any professional ethics in running a casino!”
Luxianbei looked at Liu Banxian, who seemed like a flower that had been thoroughly ruined multiple times, silently handing him a spicy strip.
“Half Xian, don’t cry for now. What did you do? This…”
Luxianbei looked at the wounds on Liu Banxian that appeared as though he had been dismembered with imprecise tools, each cut not deep enough to penetrate flesh, and struggled to find words.
This old guy, even after all this, is still quite resilient!
“Ah, this is a long story. I barely escaped from that hellish place; I’ll tell you more later when I have the chance. But let’s discuss business first, and after that, I need to catch the next train…”
As Liu Banxian spoke, he glanced around with a hint of terror in his eyes, instinctively shivering.
“Tsk tsk, I don’t want to stay here another moment; I advise you to leave too, don’t take a single token with you!”
Did Liu Banxian sense something too? That’s why he ended up like this? Luxianbei frowned and said seriously, “I know there’s something wrong with those tokens.”
“You know?” Liu Banxian was taken aback for a moment, then hesitated for a moment, and leaned closer to Luxianbei, speaking softly so only they could hear, “Then do you know that those tokens are the flesh and bl**d of that Big Boss? Let me tell you, two nights ago, I slept in a pile of tokens, and I dreamt…”
Luxianbei quietly listened to Liu Banxian recount his dream. When he described how the flesh of the giant turned into gold coins under thunder and scattered upon the earth, driving people into madness while the giant laughed strangely and its body gradually regrew fresh flesh, her pupils constricted violently.
Suddenly, she had a bold guess.
Those tokens might be the manifestation of the Big Boss, this ancient destroyer’s flesh, crystallized into the embodiment of world malice…
