“Director, this monster is beyond what a few mercenary squads can handle. I’ll notify Armed Group headquarters and have them send more advanced weapons.”

“You cowards are deserting! If you don’t want three cuts and six holes in you, get your asses back here!”

“We’re just taking a more cautious approach to preserve as many of our forces as possible,” the warlord replied.

“You worthless rabble! Get back here right now, guard the compound, and wait for Armed Group reinforcements!” Bolong roared into the phone.

The call ended.

Bolong trembled with rage. These private mercenaries were so undisciplined, so utterly unreliable. He couldn’t count on a pack of useless idiots like them.

“Linu'an, has Boss Yinya replied? We can’t hold out much longer.”

“I got through. The boss wants us to move the management and the women to the YG Industrial Park. He’ll send people to deal with things here.”

“Tell the Big Boss to bring anti-tank weapons. Ordinary firearms can’t do a thing against the supernatural!”

“Yes, sir!”

Bolong looked toward the shadow beside him. “Glain, I need you to get me out of here. That thing’s definitely got its eye on me.”

At some point, a pale-skinned man had appeared on the balcony. His hair was curly, and his loose clothes hid a muscular build. A huge bag hung across his shoulder, and a pair of narrow eyes gleamed beneath the shadows cast by his brow. He leaned against the railing, idly rubbing a cuff link between his fingers. Hearing Bolong’s request, he lowered his eyelids and drawled, “My rates are pretty steep.”

“Ten million. Protect me for twenty-four hours.”

Glain snorted. “You think I’m some beggar?”

“I work for Boss Yinya. You want to stand by and watch me die? You don’t listen to Boss Yinya?” Bolong slammed a fist against the bed, his face turning ashen.

“I want half your assets. You’ve skimmed plenty over the years, haven’t you?”

Bolong gritted his teeth and grunted, “Get me safely to the YG Industrial Park, and I’ll give you your share afterward. But you have to guarantee I won’t get hurt. Not even a little.”

“Heh. It’s a deal.” Glain grinned, baring his sharp fangs. He patted the bag at his side, and metal clinked inside. “I’m good at killing people. I’m even better at killing monsters.”

Bolong’s heart bled.

But compared to money, his life mattered more. The supernatural had left him deeply traumatized.

The only one who could deal with the supernatural was the killer standing right in front of him.

…

Bolong sat in a wheelchair as Linu'an pushed him out of the hospital elevator. His trusted men flanked him on both sides.

“Get me to the car!” Bolong pointed at the black sedan parked outside the hospital.

They lifted Bolong into the back of the car, and it pulled away slowly. Once his backside sank into the leather seat, he watched the compound’s exit draw closer and leaned against the window, letting out a long breath—

But before he could finish exhaling, the window beside him shattered without warning. A long, slender hand reached through and clamped around Bolong’s throat. Then came a tremendous yank, and the two-hundred-plus-pound man was dragged out as easily as a chick.

“Hahaha! I’ve been waiting ages for you!”

The voice was clear and sweet, but to Bolong, it sounded utterly terrifying.

That damn supernatural thing had come for him!

“You bastard! Somebody, fucking help me—!!!”

The black sedan screeched to a stop. Five of Bolong’s trusted men, including the driver, jumped out with guns in hand and looked around. They all froze.

Where was Brother Long? How had he vanished in just a few seconds?

…

Gussy carried Bolong as it hurried through the nearby trees. It needed to find somewhere quiet to properly interrogate the compound director.

Suddenly, it sensed something approaching at high speed—too fast to be human.

Gussy stopped in confusion and turned to face the newcomer.

A blue point of light?

Blue points of light were extremely rare. Its true form had only encountered one once before.

An attack from the blue point of light arrived in an instant. An iron chain came whistling toward it from an incredibly tricky angle.

Gussy dodged aside, but the chain seemed to have a mind of its own. It suddenly defied inertia, bending in midair before whipping back at it.

The chain struck Gussy solidly. Its energy shield rang against the metal with a sharp clang.

Gussy rolled twice across the ground. An AK-12 rifle appeared in its hands, and it worked the bolt before opening fire on the owner of the blue light.

Glain hadn’t expected his successful strike to be followed by an instant counterattack. Caught off guard, he took more than a dozen bullets.

The chain snapped back with a whoosh, forming a shield in front of Glain and blocking the rest of the attack. Bullets sparked against its surface with a shrill metallic clang. Glain kicked off and charged at his enemy like a raging bull. Every step left a deep crater in the ground, sending dust flying.

The two were already close. Glain reached Gussy in a few strides, and the shield in his hand transformed into an iron hammer. It came crashing down with the force of its momentum and his own immense strength.

Gussy lunged forward and caught Glain’s elbow. With a sharp crack, his arm bent backward at a ninety-degree angle, and the hammer smashed into the ground.

“Aaaagh!!!” he screamed in pain.

“Bye-bye.” Gussy’s voice announced the end of the fight. With the barrel almost pressed against Glain’s face, it pulled the trigger.

Flames spat from the muzzle. The remaining half-magazine tore into Glain’s body, blowing apart his head and limbs.

Glain’s blood sprayed everywhere. Terror completely consumed him. What the fuck was this thing?

Glain had incredible vitality. Ordinary physical attacks couldn’t easily kill him, but he couldn’t keep fighting either.

Run!

Glain’s body shattered into pieces, then turned into a cloud of tiny black specks that flew toward the sky. They looked like a swarm of mosquitoes.

Blue energy spiraled around them, linking every “mosquito” together.

“Whoa… Is he a vampire?” Gussy exclaimed. It loaded a fresh magazine and fired controlled bursts at the swarm.

But the bullets did little damage. Even when some of the mosquitoes were shot down, the rest still managed to escape.

A second form? And it can fly? That’s perfect for running away.

Gussy showed no mercy to its enemies. It didn’t want this powerful, inexplicable foe to escape, recover, and come back for revenge.

“Explosion!” At the thought, a beam of energy arced through the air and exploded amid the black swarm. The heat swallowed every last mosquito.

The black mass became a rain of scarlet blood, falling from the sky. The blue point of light vanished completely.

After confirming the enemy was dead, Gussy picked up Glain’s weapon.

The chain was a full thirty meters long. Several of its links had devices resembling electromagnetic coils embedded in them, all connected by a steel wire running through the chain’s center. The wielder could steer and reshape the chain by pulling the wire, making it extremely flexible.

“Not bad. It’s mine now!”

Bolong lay on his side on the ground, having watched the battle between the two monsters. Whether from paralysis or fear, a large patch of his pants was already wet.

He’d thought Glain could handle everything, but he’d underestimated the supernatural creature’s fighting strength.

Bolong was dragged into an empty corner. A bright flashlight shone on him, revealing his tense, desperate expression.

“Now that the nuisance is gone, let’s have a nice little chat.” Its voice echoed beside his ear.

“This is the Big Boss’s territory! I work for him. If you touch me, they won’t let you get away with it!”

“Heehee, I’m so scared! Listen up. From now on, you answer whatever I ask. If you lie or refuse to answer, I’ll—” Gussy stabbed through Bolong’s thumb, and he let out a brief scream. “—make sure you feel pain. Got it?”

Cold sweat streamed down Bolong’s cheeks.

…

After interrogating Bolong for an hour, Gussy couldn’t get anything else of value out of him.

This land of sin had more than one compound. The “Boss Yinya” Bolong had mentioned was a hidden shareholder.

Besides Yinya, the compound had many other major shareholders. Every one of them was powerful enough to control everything around them. Bolong had only clawed his way up to become a director by sheer luck, and he had no access to them. He believed there was nothing the Big Bosses couldn’t handle—not even the government dared oppose them.

The “vampire” Gussy had encountered yesterday was a “special operative” sent by the Big Boss. His standing was even higher than Bolong’s. Glain had nothing to do with running the compound; his only job was to deal with anything abnormal that appeared there.

Bolong said Glain was a genetically modified subject, created by the higher-ups—a monster unlike any human. He moved like a beast, and his skin healed faster than bullets could pierce flesh. He could punch through five-millimeter-thick steel plates. Both his speed and strength had surpassed human limits. Glain also loved drinking human blood, and the compound kept a group of “blood pigs” just to feed him.

Bolong didn’t know where the invisibility cloak was, or where the “Ranch” he’d traded with would go.

Gussy did find out what had happened to Feng Cai’s younger sister. In the early hours of yesterday morning, Bolong and his men had ** her to death. Her body was sold to the “Ranch” along with the others.

After that, there was nothing else of value.

…

It was a chaotic night. Without the mercenaries, order at the compound had fallen apart.

With no one organizing a response, the fire at the gas station still raged.

Without anyone keeping them in line, the employees huddled helplessly in the work area, forcing their tired eyes open as they waited for instructions from management.

Most of them didn’t dare run away or leave their posts. They were afraid they’d be caught and subjected to inhuman punishment.

Gussy found a phone with a signal. It searched its memories and recalled the contact information for Xiao Zhe, head of the Huaguo Protectors. Then it made a call.

The line rang just once before someone picked up.

“Hello. Go ahead,” a slightly hoarse male voice said.

Gussy was puzzled. That wasn’t Xiao Zhe’s voice. “Who is this? Isn’t this Xiao Zhe’s number?”

“Xiao Zhe can’t take your call right now. I’m acting on his behalf. You can tell me what you need.”

“Oh, well…” Gussy explained what had happened at the compound.

“Please wait. This situation is a little complicated. We need to discuss it. Don’t hang up.” After hearing Gussy out, the person on the other end fell silent for a long while, as if discussing something with others.

Gussy waited five minutes. Just as it was starting to lose patience, the representative replied, “Please bring the compound’s employees to somewhere near the embassy in Thailand. We’ll meet them there and help them get home. As for you… please go to this location. We’ll meet with you privately tomorrow at noon.” Then the representative gave Gussy an address.

“Hey, hey! Why don’t you send someone to the compound yourselves? Who asks other people to do all the work?”

“I’m very sorry. We can’t intervene directly in a situation like this.”

“…”

After hanging up, Gussy sighed. It might as well see this through to the end. This place wasn’t safe.

The Big Boss’s armed forces could take control of the place again at any moment.

Gussy hung Bolong, beaten half to death, on a cross, then drove a three-wheeler into the work area and picked up a megaphone.

“I hereby announce that the compound has been liberated! Everyone, evacuate in an orderly manner!”

“The compound’s armed forces have been disarmed. Anyone uninvolved, leave as soon as possible. Head for the embassy!”

…………

Gussy drove around the work area shouting. The employees came out of the small buildings and gathered in the open space below, but then they just stood there.

Seeing this, Gussy drove the three-wheeler over and stopped in front of the crowd.

“Are you all deaf? Why aren’t you leaving?”

Gussy had expected to be met with gratitude and admiration. Instead, it faced a sea of complicated looks, some full of anger and hatred.

Following their angry gazes, Gussy realized they weren’t looking at the director. They were looking at it.

“You—why are you looking at your savior like that?” Gussy pointed at the man nearest to it.

The man answered by throwing a rock.

Gussy caught the rock with a smack, narrowed its eyes, and took another look at the man.

Judging by his appearance and clothes, he really was one of the compound’s lowest-ranking employees.

“If you were trying to hit the director standing beside you, I could forgive that disrespect,” Gussy said in a low voice.

“I was aiming at you! Why’d you have to ruin this place?!” The man looked furious. “I’ve been working here for half a year! The year’s almost over, and that means payday! I was promised a million in year-end bonus by the team leader! I’m not leaving! Pay me back! You owe me… Agh!”

“Then stay here, you dumbass!” Gussy ended the man’s nonstop rant with an uppercut. Then it pointed at everyone and shouted, “If you idiots still want to work yourselves to the bone for the park, I won’t stop you. But get out of my sight—or don’t blame me for what happens!”

Under Gussy’s threat, a third of the employees left. When it looked at those who remained, Gussy found them much easier on the eyes.

It scanned the crowd and spotted Bai Yong. Bai Yong was lying on the ground, a bandage still wrapped around their leg, a satisfied smile on their face.

Gussy remembered what Bai Yong had wished for earlier.

“I’m sure you all know the park’s director—Bolong, a complete scumbag. He’s yours to deal with now.” Gussy pointed at the man on the cross.

Bolong was covered in blood and barely breathing, but his powerful muscles and fierce tattoos still made for an intimidating sight. He could just barely keep himself conscious. Looking down at the employees, he sneered. “You trash…”

A stone struck Bolong on the bridge of the nose. Then more and more stones came flying at him.

By the time everyone ran out of stones of a suitable size, Bolong had stopped breathing.

In the end, the director died at the hands of the very people he’d looked down on most.

Gussy poked its head out from behind the trike. “Aha! The fun execution segment is over. Time to get out of here!”

Several buses and other vehicles were parked at the entrance to the park. Gussy had the newly freed employees organize themselves and leave in order, giving the injured first dibs on a ride.

Gussy went to the park’s armory and gathered some bullets and grenades. It also found a Benelli M4 semi-automatic shotgun.

In most situations, guns were far more useful than energy beams, so Gussy took the shotgun with it too.

There weren’t any more powerful weapons. These weapons were only meant for the mercenaries to shoot fleeing employees, not for combat, so they didn’t need anti-tank weapons like cannons or rocket launchers.

Gussy went to Bolong’s mansion as well, hoping to see what good stuff Bolong had stashed away. Instead, it ran into one of Bolong’s underlings, Li Nu’an.

“Hey there. Your boss is dead now. You looking to avenge him?” Gussy greeted Li Nu’an with a cheeky grin.

Li Nu’an fought back the urge to run and held out a phone. “Someone wants to talk to you.”

The phone was on a video call. Gussy took it and saw a horrifically brutal scene.

Dozens of women were hanging naked from a clothesline. Many showed signs of sexual assault. Some had their throats cut; others had been split open, their pale pink fat encasing purplish-blue intestines that spilled onto the ground. Dark red blood pooled around the clothesline, forming little streams. Those who were still alive were barely clinging to life.

Even through the screen, Gussy could sense the bloodshed at the scene.

“Hello there, champion of justice.” A gloomy-looking middle-aged man with graying temples leaned close to the camera and spoke in a mocking tone. “Thanks to you, these people ended up like this after being shipped out of the park you’re in. You broke the rules. We’ll make you pay for our losses. Just you wait!”

The video call ended.

“Who was that? Is he the ‘big boss’ you were talking about?”

Li Nu’an shook their head, looking terrified. “I don’t know him.”

“Where was that video filmed?”

“YG Industrial Park.”

Gussy spread its wings and shot into the sky.

Before meeting up with the people from the Protectors, Gussy decided to take out the “big boss” first. It would make that bastard who’d taunted it in the video pay.

Gussy knew where the place was. It was only fifty kilometers away.

On the way, it noticed that something about the surrounding scenery seemed off.

“Huh? What’s that?” Gussy spotted a device that looked like a signal tower. Twelve phased arrays spread out like black bone spines, and a huge loudspeaker pointed straight at Gussy. Ghostly blue arcs of electricity flickered inside it.

Gussy got a bad feeling. It slowed down and tried to descend, but a blue storm burst from the tower toward it in an instant, moving too fast to dodge.

In that moment, Gussy felt countless emotions explode inside its consciousness. Violent emotional pulses stabbed into its mind like steel needles, while shards of memory churned through its head like broken glass.

Elation, rage, sorrow, madness… All kinds of emotions flooded its consciousness. Clutching its head, Gussy fell from the sky.

Artillery roared in the distance. The moment Gussy hit the ground, several shells landed nearby.

It had walked into an ambush.

Gussy was rattled. It had assumed YG Industrial Park’s armed forces were about the same as those at the first park. It hadn’t expected them to have a weapon that could attack the mind.

M-my head hurts so much!! I don’t have a brain, so why does my head hurt!!

It raised its head and looked ahead.

Blue and white lights flickered. One figure after another—people armed with guns and artillery—were firing in its direction.

You want to ambush me? You want to kill me?

An intense emotion surged up from deep inside Gussy. For the first time, it felt such a powerful urge to kill its enemies.

Before the shells could fall a second time, Gussy abruptly became a streak of black and plunged into the crowd through the crisscrossing hail of bullets.

Shouts of shock and fury rang out around it.

Twenty “humanoid creatures” marked by blue lights shouted as they rushed in to surround Gussy at incredible speed.

Even more ordinary people followed behind those humanoid creatures, each carrying a firearm.

“Monster!”

“Kill it!”

“Aaaah!!”

“#￥@&%*@￥”

By the end, Gussy couldn’t make out what they were saying. Its head was full of buzzing, along with all kinds of emotions that made its mind ache as if it were being torn apart.

Since Gussy’s birth, it had never experienced emotions this intense. The peculiarity of its body kept it calm at all times. The only emotions it had ever felt came from its original self’s memories.

Ah, what is this feeling…?

I’m so sad, so dejected, so miserable, so excited!

Gussy had only one thought now: kill every last one of them.

The shriek of a chain tearing through the air ripped open a curtain of blood. A frenzied, chaotic, blood-soaked battle erupted in the crowd.

Gunfire, explosions, curses, screams…

At the start of the battle, the enemies managed to hurt Gussy badly. A machine gun even blew its head off. But Gussy’s counterattack was just as fierce, and each strike claimed several lives. When it ran out of the bullets it had brought, it used the enemies’ guns and artillery instead. Once their ammunition was gone, Gussy fought them hand to hand with chains and bayonets. After ten of the humanoid creatures marked with blue lights were killed, the remaining ten fled. The enemy’s morale collapsed, and the others started running for their lives. Gussy pursued them relentlessly.

Even when the enemy started begging for mercy, Gussy didn’t spare them.

When Gussy came to its senses, there wasn’t a single living person left nearby.

Severed limbs and wreckage lay everywhere. The ground was carpeted with intestines and chunks of flesh, and flames consumed several vehicles.

Gussy was covered in blood. It stiffly lowered its head and realized it was clutching a head, torn clean off its owner’s neck. The head belonged to the middle-aged man who’d taunted Gussy in the video.

That was the end of The Real World’s latest update—five chapters in all. After reading the newest chapter, Xu Fang fell into thought.

The Gussy in the narrator’s writing felt familiar yet strange to Xu Fang. Its personality was mostly in line with the Gussy in his memories, but would the real Gussy really be so reckless?

…No, wait. The earlier chapters had already mentioned that Gussy had lost ten percent of its memories.

Most of Gussy’s memories came from Xu Fang’s original self. Although Xu Fang had only a few months of “real-world memories,” he’d later read tens of thousands of books at an intense pace, filling himself with all kinds of “virtual memories.” Ten percent was a lot.

Memories could have some effect on how someone thought.

The narrator’s writing style was fairly calm. It neither promoted anti-human ideas nor showed any particularly twisted values. Still, Xu Fang wasn’t about to judge the narrator’s personality too quickly. You couldn’t accurately determine an author’s character from their work. Trying to dissect an author’s soul through their writing was like guessing a chef’s childhood from a cookbook. A mystery writer who loved describing brutal murders might put out milk for stray cats every night. A young woman who wrote nothing but pure romance might be drafting divorce papers at a law firm.

Was the narrator’s story fiction, or was it real? If it was real, had it already happened, or was it about to happen?

Xu Fang floated at the heart of the moon, watching the sharp-edged wreckage slowly spin and drift. In zero gravity, every fragment remained frozen in the position it had held at the moment disaster struck.

It was time to figure out how to get out of here.