Ruan Mingchu glanced at the still-dripping blood on the knife tip. What could he say? He could only give Mu Yu a thumbs up.
“Let me know before the next operation,” Ruan Mingchu tried to keep his tone as friendly as possible. As a commander, he really disliked people acting without authorization, but he couldn’t possibly speak harshly to Mu Yu.
In Mu Yu's ears, this sentence was transformed into the kind of coquettish behavior seen in the Treasure App, where a wife asks her husband to "report when he goes out."
Mu Yu, of course, would not refuse; in fact, he felt secretly pleased.
After waiting for a while and seeing that no terrorists came down from the second floor, the two moved the terrorist with his throat slit to chairs in various places, pretending that he was resting.
“You’re on the east, I’m on the west,” Ruan Mingchu said.
Mu Yu nodded.
The two began searching around cabinets and corners—places where people might be hiding.
Ruan Mingchu was multitasking, searching for people while simultaneously disassembling the guns carried by the terrorists. Upon closer inspection, he discovered the material was just ordinary stainless steel, with no clever design whatsoever—something discontinued in the interstellar era.
Ruan Mingchu casually placed the parts on the table and stared at the extremely ordinary pile of things.
Has the organizing committee released information about the era in which the city hosting this competition is located?
Ruan Mingchu thought back for a moment and confirmed that there was no such thing.
After searching the west side without finding any survivors, Ruan Mingchu went to the east side to find Mu Yu, who had already met the survivors.
Ruan Minh Thu asked, "What are your feelings about the survivors?"
Mu Yu answered without hesitation: "Weak, very weak."
"Those two women were just trapped on the floating platform in the shark tank. Even a five-year-old could jump over there." Although there were terrorists forcing them to dance on the platform, he had already killed the people who threatened them, yet he just stood there paralyzed and dared not move.
"Where are the terrorists?"
“Apart from carrying a broken gun, he was no different from a survivor.”
Ruan Mingchu seemed to be deep in thought. He pulled open the collars of the terrorist corpses to look at the back of their necks, but found no glands.
"Let's go up and take a look."
He needs a few more NPCs to verify his hypothesis.
There was no one on the second floor, the third floor... until the elevator stopped on the eighteenth floor and the elevator doors opened, Ruan Mingchu and Mu Yu heard voices.
It's quite lively.
The survivor crouched on the ground, his hands covering his head, surrounded by a circle of terrorists. Outside the circle lay countless corpses, their locations unknown.
Anyway, there was blood everywhere on the ground.
The two trembling survivors, both muscular men, were shirtless and wearing skirts that looked like they were about to burst. Amid the terrorists' laughter, they were making obscene gestures that amused them.
Ruan Mingchu quietly dragged over the corpse of an NPC; there were no glands on the back of its neck.
"Mu Yu, knock them out, but don't kill them, okay?"
Mu Yu nodded, activated the [Spatial Gate], appeared behind each terrorist, and knocked them unconscious with a single chop.
The sound of the body hitting the ground startled the survivors who were covering their heads and looking down at the ground. They saw the terrorist fall down for some unknown reason and screamed.
“Don’t scream, don’t be afraid, we’re here to rescue you,” Ruan Mingchu gently reassured everyone, “Although screaming can release fear, it’s really noisy. Can you walk? I will take you safely to the rescue center.”
Their legs went numb from squatting for so long, but everyone forced themselves to stand up, supporting each other as they tried to leave this hellish shopping mall.
Ruan Minh Thu said to Mu Yu over the communication channel, "I'll take them to the center. You stay here and watch over these people."
Mu Yu hummed in agreement. Although he didn't want to be separated from Ruan Mingchu, and always felt that if he didn't keep an eye on her, his future wife might be snatched away by some other stinky Alpha, he would obediently listen to her.
Looking at the contestants lined up at the entrance of the rescue center, Ruan Mingchu began to calculate whether it was more profitable to stand guard at the entrance and snatch survivors from others' rescues, or to go and rescue people himself.
The survivors, like chicks seeking their mother's protection, huddled together behind Ruan Mingchu, a sight that impressed him greatly.
Li Yihua was the first to suggest waiting at the entrance of the rescue center. They were lucky; they found all the team members as soon as they entered. Anyone who tried to escape alone or in groups of two or three had to hand over the survivors.
Using this, they have already earned twenty-two kill points.
The only thing I didn't expect was that Nguyen Minh Thu could find so many survivors all by himself.
Li Yihua didn't know Ruan Mingchu and didn't take him, a weakling under 1.8 meters tall, seriously at all. She was only eyeing the survivors behind him.
He sighed again at his good fortune, "They can stay, you can get out of here. We'll make sure they get in properly."
At the same time, Nguyen Minh Thu also calculated that waiting passively was too passive and not worthwhile compared to taking the initiative.
Taking into account his own conjectures, and also considering that he didn't know what would happen to the eliminated contestants, Ruan Mingchu did not kill Li Yihua and the others, but only beat them until they cried and begged for their fathers.
He then tore off their blue and red medicines and hung them on his own body, saying with a smile, "Thank you all for your generosity."
Li Yihua: Waaaaaah, I'm so unlucky...
After sending the survivors to the rescue center, a system notification indicates that the rescue was successful. The survivors are then led through a door by an NPC working at the center.
Just as the last person was about to go in, Ruan Mingchu suddenly made a move and decisively snapped his neck.
The survivors in front of them acted as if they hadn't noticed anything, showing no reaction whatsoever, and the door closed in front of Ruan Mingchu.
Ruan Mingchu opened the task list, and it was just as he had expected.
The line for rescuing survivors is missing a number, while the line for killing terrorists has an extra number.
The situation is now fairly clear.
Either the organizing committee was misleading them, or they were under pressure to change the questions at the last minute before the competition started.
Do you remember the opening remarks when they entered the stadium? They were tasked with saving a city on the verge of death.
All living NPCs are both the creators of the disaster that destroyed the city and the survivors who did not die from the disaster, so they can be either terrorists or survivors.
If you kill them, they are terrorists; if you send them to a rescue center, they are survivors.
As for their role, Ruan Mingchu has not yet figured it out, but they are definitely not useless.
Don't kill any of the NPCs you encounter next.
Ruan Mingchu opened the task list again, and a new column, "Saving the City Progress (1/100)," appeared under the main task.
After returning to Baiyang Trading, he asked Mu Yu to open the task list, but his main task remained unchanged.
Ruan Mingchu thought for a moment, then told Mu Yu about her discovery. When Mu Yu opened the task list again, it became the same as Ruan Mingchu's.
Ruan Minh Thu said, "So at the moment, it is not a task that we are working together to advance."
Mu Yu nodded in agreement. Although he still didn't understand—wasn't this supposed to be a competition about saving lives and killing people? How did it get involved in saving the city?
There aren't enough wooden fish heads.
Nguyen Minh Thu decided to change the plan, "We'll prioritize the side missions."
Turning her head and seeing Mu Yu's confused look, Ruan Mingchu remained silent for a moment.
He tried to explain: "Side missions are supposed to be used to advance the city-saving mission."
Mu Yu pursed his lips and nodded as if he understood.
Okay, we should know once we finish the task.
After stripping the terrorists from Baiyang Trading Company of their skull-patterned jackets, Ruan Mingchu and Mu Yu found a tow truck and dragged them all to the rescue center.
Sure enough, the rescue center accepted them, and the number of survivors rescued increased.
Whether they would have conflicts with those they had once pointed guns at in the center was none of Ruan Mingchu and Mu Yu's business.
It would be better if conflicts arose. Ruan Mingchu wanted to know if the number of survivors they rescued would decrease if those who entered the rescue center died.
Documents and similar items exist everywhere, but in the interstellar era, documents with red stamps can only be from government agencies; stamps from other organizations are blue.
Although he didn't know the exact time of the competition, Nguyen Minh Thu still planned to go to the government building to find the documents first.
Following the signs on the first floor of the lobby, Ruan Mingchu and Mu Yu first went to the office of the top leader's secretary. There they indeed found many documents bearing official seals.
However, the content was not helpful for the mission, so Ruan Mingchu put the item back after reading it.
Mu Yu submitted the task, and the task sheet became
4. Search for documents bearing a red stamp from 2535.
Mission Reward: One percent progress in saving the city.
Looking at Mu Yu's task list, Ruan Mingchu pondered, "The documents here are all from 2545. Things from ten years ago need to be found in the archives or something."
It is reasonable to assume that what is written in the document is related to this disaster.
Ruan Mingchu and Mu Yu arrived at the archives room on the basement floor.
There are two archive rooms. Room A has a thick layer of dust in front of it, so it seems no one has been there in recent years. Room B, on the other hand, shows signs of people coming and going.
The two walked directly to Room A and stopped in front of the door in tacit agreement.
There's something behind the door; it doesn't seem to be alive.
Mu Yu looked at Ruan Mingchu, silently asking what to do. He was very obedient and wouldn't act on his own again.
Ruan Mingchu answered Mu Yu with action, forcefully opening the door and kicking away anything that tried to pounce on him.
Ruan Mingchu kicked the thing, sending it crashing into the wall and filling the room with dust.
Once the dust settled, Ruan Mingchu and Mu Yu were able to see the whole thing.
He looked like a dried-up corpse, his body so thin he was just skin and bones. He also resembled a zombie, his skin covered in eerie pustules and colonies.
Anyway, it's not a normal human NPC.
Mu Yu went over to take a look. He was leaning against the wall, seemingly using all his strength, but only his eyeballs could move.
After thinking for a moment, Ruan Mingchu gave him a bottle of blue medicine.
The person's condition was visibly improving. However, one blue potion wasn't enough, and the recovery was abruptly halted halfway through.
Ruan Mingchu then poured three more bottles into his body, which swelled up like a balloon and no longer looked like a mummified corpse.
"If you drink my medicine and can't produce anything that satisfies me, you won't want to know what will happen to you," Ruan Mingchu threatened with a smile, while Mu Yu even waved his fists twice to increase the force of his threat.
Wang Sui was not threatened at all. He moved his eyelids, making a clicking sound, and stood up while holding onto the wall.
After taking two steps, he stopped, as if he had just remembered Ruan Mingchu and Mu Yu. "Come with me."
It was a sound so unpleasant it sounded like something a human could make.
Ruan Mingchu and Mu Yu followed behind Wang Sui, one on each side, and did not urge him on, seeing that he walked unsteadily and slowly.