Yu Hua sighed almost invisibly. From this conversation, he could be entirely sure that this person was a leveler, and a stupid one at that. Just because of a single mouthed word, he had revealed his ability, his nature, and his weak spot. He really wasn’t up to much. 

Faced with the dagger, Yu Hua didn’t turn his head. Instead, he calmly said, “I didn’t say anything.” 

He looked at the office’s main door. He knew he definitely couldn’t walk out that door. The Protection Organization, to avoid alerting the enemy, hadn’t installed surveillance inside the office, but there was surveillance in the corridor outside the door. If Yu Hua left right after coming in, he would be filmed. While he could later use all kinds of excuses to muddle through, it would still be better to avoid that if he could. 

While the window was wide open, the office’s blinds were drawn. There were people watching from the office building across the street. They couldn’t see what was happening inside the office, but they could use infrared signals to tell that there were three people inside the room. He couldn’t kill the new leveler in this room. 

How annoying. What a job! Yu Hua sighed. 

“Are you trying to trick me?” The man behind him pressed down on the back of Yu Hua’s neck. “Don’t play dumb. There’s nothing in this world that can hide from my eyes!” 

When the back of his neck was pressed down, a trace of murderous intent flashed through Yu Hua’s eyes. He said, “Do you have a grudge against my boss? Why would you want to catch him? He’s only an ordinary entrepreneur.” 

“Ordinary? Ha, only you natives would take him for an ordinary person,” the man behind him said with a cold laugh. “Don’t change the subject. What did you mean by ‘collaboration’? I was ready to let you go, you’re the one who exposed yourself!” 

“You know that he’s not an ordinary person?” Yu Hua’s voice had a faint tremor in it. 

“Hm? Do you know, too?” the man behind him said. “Who are you? Are you a native, or are you like Zhen Li?” 

Yu Hua said, “Of course I’m not like my boss. He has very strong powers. How did you catch him?” 

“Strong my ass! He’s just an idiot. He won’t answer any questions,” the man behind him said. “You’ve seen Zhen Li’s power first hand, and he took you in as human resources director. It looks like he trusts you. Tell me about your history with him. Tell me every detail clearly. Also, what does ‘collaboration’ mean?” 

Yu Hua lowered his eyes, avoiding the parrot’s line of sight, gradually understanding what had happened earlier. 

The man behind him was a leveler who had been sent by the System to kill Yu Hua, essentially no different from Zhen Li. According to what Zhen Li had said, not all the levelers had received this assignment. The levelers who had received the mission had organized into a Clearing League. They had kidnapped Zhen Li and made him go on ahead to test the waters as cannon fodder. 

Before the main force arrived in this world, the levelers who came here would all be the advance troops; they would all be cannon fodder. 

The man behind him thought he was a cut above Zhen Li. Last night, before Zhen Li could disfigure himself, he had stopped him and asked him whether he had clues about the boss. Zhen Li wouldn’t have said, but he had a disposition that couldn’t hide things. With this person’s parrot also monitoring, Zhen Li must have slipped up. After their talks fell through, the man behind Yu Hua would have noticed that Zhen Li had opened a studio and decided to look for clues there. That was how today’s scene had come about. 

A new leveler, quite stupid, easy to use, with a parrot that could silently monitor others; the Protection Organization’s suspicion and investigation of Yu Hua, an unknown hidden crisis test, the lack of a janitor… Countless matter that needed to be resolved flashed through Yu Hua’s brain. He linked all these things together and produced a perfect plan. 

He only needed to inconvenience himself for now, feign weakness to launch an attack. 

Yu Hua hadn’t been mighty from the beginning. He had also once been weak. He was no stranger to showing weakness, though it had been a long time, and he didn’t know whether he could get back into the swing of it. 

Yu Hua said, “My boss seems human, but he’s very powerful. He can eat a whole cow at once. To use a commonplace term for it, he has super powers. He forced me to work for him. He said he’s looking for an even more frightening person. I’m only an ordinary person who saw the job advertisement and came to respond, but I ended up boarding a pirate ship with no way to get off. If you can control my boss, you must be very powerful, right? When I was about to walk out of the office, I thought that it would be nice if I could collaborate with you to get rid of my demon of a boss.” 

“You call him powerful? Ha! Didn’t you see that I tied him up?” the man behind him said. He seemed to be relaxing his guard a little. 

“I don’t know what means you used to control him, but he definitely won’t take it lying down. He may be able to eat the ropes and the tape!” Yu Hua said, raising his voice in “fear.” 

The bathroom door was unlatched. 

Zhen Li, who had been able to hear their whole dialogue: “…” 

Was the great master instructing him on how to use his currently pitiful ability to escape? 

Zhen Li looked down at the plastic ropes binding him, thinking that eating plastic was bad for your health, and that even the alternate dimension stomach wouldn’t be able to handle this much. The great master didn’t blame him for getting captured; that was already plenty benevolent. If he couldn’t even get himself out of trouble, then he really was done for. 

Zhen Li thought that if he made a good showing, maybe he wouldn’t need to disfigure his face. 

He started up his alternate dimension stomach and swallowed the tape. Then he braced himself, raised his legs with difficulty, and bit the ropes on his legs. 

At this moment, Zhen Li’s body was bent into an unbelievable shape. An ordinary person without his flexibility may have dislocated a joint by now. 

Zhen Li took a deep breath and brought out the alternate dimension stomach’s greatest absorption power. At last he absorbed the ropes bit by bit into the alternate dimension and succeeded in getting free. 

He rolled off the toilet seat. His whole body was numb. He crawled totteringly out of the bathroom. When he’d just opened the door, he heard Yu Hua say, “If you can kill the boss and free me, I’ll tell you everything I know. The boss said that right now he can only determine his target’s general range, he…” 

Before Yu Hua had finished, the parrot discovered Zhen Li crawling out of the bathroom and loudly called, “He’s out, he’s out!” 

The man behind Yu Hua pushed him aside, striking out with the dagger in his hand, stabbing through Yu Hua’s suit jacket and pinning him to the wall. He turned his head to deal with Zhen Li. “You dared to lie to me and tell me you had no clues? How lucky that I thought of a way to get to this person. Now I’ve found out that you’ve made some progress after all.” 

Yu Hua stared at the hole in his jacket, the look in his eyes growing dangerous. 

Zhen Li noticed Yu Hua’s expression and suffered unspeakable agony, but he still had to pretend. In a tearful voice, he said, “Yes, I have found a clue, so if you kill me, you won’t get anything!” 

“What is the general range of the boss? What means are you planning to use to find him?” The man behind him no longer had the appearance of a white-haired elderly man. He was a short-haired, long-legged, handsome young fellow in an all-black form-fitting outfit. His features were stern, and he held a dagger that he was pointing at Zhen Li’s chin. This was an assassin-type leveler who was skilled at disguise and the use of short-range weapons. 

“Oh, right!” Zhen Li shot Yu Hua a wild look. “What means am I going to use? Why would I tell you?” 

How would he know? He was only a pitiful boss working for his human resources director!

“I know!” Yu Hua seized the opportunity to “sell out” his boss. “Though he doesn’t have a clear idea of the boss’s range, he opened this studio and started his popular internet livestreams to find that person! And he’s forcing me to use unfair contracts to hire more and more new people. He says this plan requires a lot of money. The studio has to make money. He wants to bring new people in, cultivate their fame, then use harsh contracts to sell them to other management companies! I don’t want to help him trick people, you have to stop him!” 

Zhen Li: “…” 

With a lifeless look in his eyes, he said to the assassin with the parrot, “Right, I need money. I need to sell off a lot of people to realize this goal.” 

“Is the boss you’ve found among the wealthy or the political leaders?” the assassin said. “I already know there’s a Protection Organization in this world. These people are hidden among the crowd, very powerful, and they have the aid of the country’s heavy weaponry. Is it because of that that you’re worried about the political big shots being protected and don’t want to alert the enemy ahead of time, so you’re using the complicated method of the studio?” 

Zhen Li glanced at Yu Hua out of the corner of his eye and saw Director Yu blink once. Taking the hint, he said, “Of course not. How could you guess my brilliant plan with your IQ?” 

The more he denied it and the more panicked his expression became, the more the assassin would trust his own guesses. 

“I understand,” said the assassin, analyzing. “There’s a powerful organization in this unopened world. They’ve prevented the System from opening the world. They’re the real culprits behind killing countless levelers. Their leader is the target of the System’s mission. But the leader’s identity is very mysterious. He must be a very important person, but you don’t know which one, so you’re making money to raise your position, getting closer to their position, so you can observe up close.” 

Zhen Li blinked, not understanding why things had taken such a dramatic turn. 

In reality, since he had gotten drunk last night, everything had been developing in a direction he absolutely hadn’t expected. 

After getting drunk, he’d gone right to sleep and only woken up after seven in the morning. When he woke up, he’d been lying on the studio’s floor all night. His whole body was sore. And there was this black-clothed young man sitting next to him. There was a birdcage next to the young man. 

Zhen Li vaguely felt that the parrot in the birdcage was familiar, but there were so many similar-looking birds in the world, and he wasn’t a bird expert. He couldn’t tell them apart. He thought that the black-clothed young man had found him drunk in the park and brought him back. After Zhen Li politely thanked him, the black-clothed young man threateningly pressed a knife to his neck. 

The black-clothed young man said that the Clearing League had sent him to support Zhen Li. The head of the league had said that Zhen Li’s powers were too weak, and it would be better if he had an assassin hidden in the shadows to help him. The black-clothed young man was a cautious person. He had secretly watched Zhen Li for several days before acting. He asked Zhen Li whether he had any clues about the boss. 

Zhen Li’s answers were evasive. He fooled the young man, but he couldn’t fool the parrot’s eyes. 

The young man concluded that there was a problem with the studio, so he tied Zhen Li up in the bathroom and waited for an opportunity. The opportunity that had shown up was Yu Hua. 

Listening to their dialogue, Yu Hua said in alarm, “What-what do you people want? What is the Protection Organization? Who do you want to kill?” 

“It’s not your turn to speak!” The assassin brandished his knife, leaving a wound on Yu Hua’s face. 

Seeing this, Zhen Li didn’t dare to look at Yu Hua. He only stared at the assassin’s face, so scared his eyes bulged. This leveler in front of him was done for. 

“The things you’ve found are very worthwhile. Why didn’t you say so sooner?” The assassin pinched Zhen Li’s chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I came to help you, not to hurt you. Don’t even think of taking the whole clearing prize for yourself, hm?” 

The final “hm” was deep and nasal. Zhen Li turned his face away in agony. 

“I want to join your studio. Get me a director’s position, too,” the assassin said, straightening up. “Why would you get a native as your human resources director? Aren’t you afraid of giving secrets away?” 

Zhen Li swallowed. “Because…he’s short on money and easy to fool, and also…the studio needs a normal person as a cover-up.” 

These were excuses that Yu Hua had told Zhen Li ahead of time. They had originally been meant to fob off the Protection Organization. Now they were being misappropriated to trick the assassin. 

“How can you guarantee he won’t blab? I saw that he was about to call the police just now,” the assassin said. 

“I…used intimidation, fear, used his family to threaten him,” Zhen Li said. 

“Ha, what low-grade tactics.” The assassin went up to Yu Hua, touching the wound on Yu Hua’s face with his fingertip. “I’ve poisoned your blood. If you think of betraying us, telling someone about our identities, you’ll die at once. Can you feel the taste of the poison flowing in your blood?” 

He’d felt it. Yu Hua stared coldly at the assassin. 

The so-called poison was actually a type of power of the System. Levelers who chose the assassin path as their primary skill could turn energy into an organic power that destroyed immune systems. This was colloquially called poison. 

They could also put restrictions on the activity of that power. That was the type that Yu Hua had been poisoned with. If he told someone about the assassin and Zhen Li’s identities, the power would immediately destroy his vocal cords, rendering him unable to speak; then it would attack his limbs, so he couldn’t write; finally, it would attack his organs, and he would die in agony, unable to speak or write. 

Of course, that would have been the outcome for an ordinary person. 

Yu Hua, on the other hand, had absorbed that energy as soon as it had entered his body, unsealing another 1% of his power. 

Getting in the way of Zhen Li disfiguring his face, tearing his clothes and putting more pressure on his already strained household finances, cutting his face and undoing his seal… If this person didn’t still have some use, Yu Hua would have absorbed the power of his System and returned the poison to him unaltered. 

“Very good. Now you’re ours,” the assassin said complacently, thinking he was in control of the situation.

The assassin lifted Zhen Li and said to Yu Hua, “Is this your so-called powerful boss? Hahaha!” 

Laughing, he took a syringe and injected the liquid inside it into Zhen Li’s artery. 

Seeing the assassin’s movements, Yu Hua’s eyes flashed faintly. Could that kind of poison disfigure his face? The studio now had a janitor with a face that could be sold. There was no more need for President Zhen to peddle his looks to make money. 

“Don’t think you have nothing to worry about just because you’re a leveler.” The assassin put away the syringe and put his hand on Zhen Li’s shoulder. His expression was sinister. “I got a special item from the System, an item that can implant a virus in a leveler’s System. You won’t be able to use your System in the near future.” 

Zhen Li: “…” 

That’s all? My System is gone, and you haven’t noticed? 

Yu Hua: “…” 

That’s all? You can’t temporarily disfigure his face? Xiao You will still be jealous, what should I do? 

The assassin, who believed he had completely seized control of the studio, said to Yu Hua, “I need a title now that I’ve joined your studio. As human resources director, why don’t you draw up a contract? You’d better behave yourself.” 

He gave the “pitiful and helpless” Yu Hua a malicious smile. 

Resisting the impulse to do away with him, Yu Hua turned on his computer and printed a contract for an “environmental services director.” The contract stipulated that the environmental services director was responsible for sanitation management and security management in the studio. At the same time, he also had to work alongside President Zhen to earn money for the studio. This was a contract with unusually harsh terms, wildly probing the edges of what was permissible under employment law. 

From his position of power, the assassin didn’t even read the contents of the contract. He signed his name—Yuan Luori. 

As the boss, Zhen Li had to sign the employment contract. He scanned the contract’s terms, gave Yuan Luori a grateful look, and mouthed “thank you.” 

“Thank you, thank you!” the parrot suddenly said. 

“Thank you?” the assassin Yuan Luori said, laughing. “I treat you like this, and you’re thanking me? Are you stupid?” 

Zhen Li looked down and applied the studio’s official seal, thinking inwardly, Thank you for raising my position from the lowest in the studio. Thank you for helping me get out of disfiguring my face.

After signing and applying the seal, he said, apparently to Yuan Luori but in reality to Yu Hua, “Now that there are two employees at the studio, the best way to attract attention and make money is to hype up a ship. If we promote a ship, the two of us will be tied together, and getting any other directors or whatever involved will be heresy.” 

“Hype what?” Yuan Luori said, frowning. 

Yu Hua understood. This was also an acceptable method. 

If Zhen Li and Yuan Luori were a ship, then he could stay above it all, not getting involved, and You Zhengping wouldn’t need to be jealous of Zhen Li. 

“It means Director Yuan and President Zhen will livestream together,” Yu Hua explained concisely. 

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Author's Note

Reporter: President Zhen, may I ask, who is the person you’re most grateful to? 

Zhen Li: It must be Director Yuan. His presence let me find the meaning of life. 

LimingLuori¹ fans: We ship it, we ship it! 

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Translator's Note

¹Yuan Luori’s given name (落日) means “setting sun”; Zhen Li’s given name is used in a word that means “dawn” (黎明, liming). Put together, you get a pretty cute ship name.