You Zhengping quickly finished off two jianbing and a turnover and ran back to the Chinese restaurant. The whole process took ten minutes. 

When he came into the private room, he saw Yu Hua with his head turned, gazing fixedly out the window thinking about something, looking very focused. 

“Wow, this boiled cabbage is really exquisite,” You Zhengping praised without emotion. “The process must be very complicated. It must be delicious.” 

But Yu Hua turned his head, reached out a hand, and wiped the corner of You Zhengping’s mouth. When he was finished wiping, there was a sesame seed on his fingertip. This had been sprinkled on the jianbing. 

Smiling, Yu Hua said, “I suddenly think that jianbing is more delicious.” 

You Zhengping quickly got out a paper napkin and wiped his mouth, saying in a flurry, “How did you know I was eating jianbing? I chewed gum!” 

“Everything you took with you when we left were things I had prepared. When did you buy the gum?” Yu Hua looked down and used his chopsticks to stir the weak leaves in his teacup. 

“When did I buy it?” You Zhengping clutched his head, looking bewildered. “Weird, I don’t remember. I must have bought it before the movie.” 

“Give me two pieces of gum, too. I’ll chew them after we eat.” Yu Hua opened his hand. 

You Zhengping got out the whole bottle of gum and put in into Yu Hua’s hand. Yu Hua massaged the plastic bottle of gum with the pads of his fingers. He said, as if indifferent, “You secretly ate ahead of time again.” 

You Zhengping instantly remembered how, on their day off, he hadn’t gotten full eating the soup Yu Hua had made, had taken the opportunity of going out to buy something to eat barbecue bibimbap, then had been taken by Yu Hua to do back strength exercises until evening. The excessive activity had been a little too much even for a Protector like him. 

“I…I wanted to eat with you,” You Zhengping said falteringly. “You like the surroundings in Chinese restaurants like this.” 

Yu Hua had his life all taken care of. You Zhengping got his clothes when he reached for them and his food when he opened his mouth for it. Every day, there was even someone to hang his towels in a fixed spot. When it was for once time for You Zhengping to perform, he had hoped he would be able to do it as flawlessly as Yu Hua, but he had carelessly chosen the wrong movie, and he had been too busy in the morning and had forgotten to bring bread to pad out his stomach, forcing him to go buy jianbing, leaving Yu Hua alone in the private room, and even being discovered! 

“Have I messed it up again?” You Zhengping said bleakly, his head drooping. 

Yu Hua was sitting across from You Zhengping. The table was very large. There was a lot of distance between the two of them. The Chinese restaurant was very well decorated, with constant attention to privacy during eating and maintaining a safe distance. 

But none of that suited them. 

Yu Hua went around the dining table dividing them, sat by You Zhengping’s side, embraced him, and said, “There’s nothing to mess up. For me, the most important thing about a date is for two people to do things together. I don’t want you to make yourself uncomfortable to accompany me.” 

“But you’re always accompanying me…” You Zhengping said unhappily. 

“No,” Yu Hua said categorically. “To me, your so called mess ups and accidents are all very interesting, far better than conventional and unalterable plans.” 

“But you’re a little angry…” You Zhengping said quietly. 

“I’m not angry. I’m a little regretful. I want to have eaten the jianbing with you. I feel like I’ve lost an opportunity to experience the flavor of jianbing.” Yu Hua sighed faintly. 

Next door, Huan Zixu, who was eavesdropping by means of Feng Kui, shuddered, took out his earbud, and rubbed his arms. “I can’t take any more. Are ordinary people in love this maudlin?” 

Feng Kui looked at Huan Zixu quietly, not answering his question. 

“Forget it, you don’t understand, anyway.” Huan Zixu waved a hand. “Let them eat their meal happily for now. We’ll act when Yu Hua is alone again. After all, it’s their last date.” 

Feng Kui stuck out two fingers, squeezed those fingers with his other hand, and broke them off.

He didn’t bleed. It was all metal under his skin. He also seemed to feel no pain. After breaking off two fingers, a flame spurted out of the index finger of the other hand, reattaching the metal bones of the two fingers. The rest of the flesh wasn’t repaired yet; the bones stuck out. 

“You’re too lazy to speak, so you’re using body language? Even though you don’t feel pain, you still have to look after your body.” Huan Zixu sighed and used his System to obtain a bottle of medicine for external injuries, then personally applied it for Feng Kui. 

Apart from a human epidermis, Feng Kui’s bones, muscles, arteries, veins, nerves, energy channels…all of his organ had been changed to metal ones; only a layer of skin remained. 

In fact, if it hadn’t been for Huan Zixu’s obstruction, Feng Kui would have already chosen to upgrade in the direction of mechanization. It was because he had stopped him again and again that Feng Kui could hang on to his humanity. 

After their first world, the System had pointed out to them that if Feng Kui chose to become an artificial intelligence, he would actually walk a comparatively easy road. He would be able to clear more easily than an ordinary person. After going through a mechanical period during which he would have no emotions, he would develop in the direction of super intelligent calculation, gradually simulating human thought, at last surpassing humanity. 

“What about emotions?” Huan Zixu had asked at the time. 

The System had promised him that once the super intelligence was accomplished, Feng Kui would also simulate emotions, becoming more and more like a human. 

The System had given Huan Zixu two choices. The first had been to let Feng Kui take control himself, with an evolution mode that inclined towards preserving the human brain while transforming the other parts of the body; however, once the other body parts had been changed, the brain would inevitably have to be changed as well, though at that time they could choose a brain with more advanced calculating power that resembled a human more. The second choice had been to change the brain first; because their level was so low, the only brain they could obtain was a low-level artificial intelligence model; Huan Zixu would input orders, which Feng Kui would carry out absolutely. He would be a robot who would never betray his companion. 

Huan Zixu’s initial ability was very weak. He had almost no combat ability. The System gave Huan Zixu the power of choice over Feng Kui’s evolution; it also warned him that in the early period, his ability required a companion who would obey him absolutely to protect him. 

The System had constantly been hinting to Huan Zixu that he should replace Feng Kui’s brain, but Huan Zixu had chosen the more difficult path. 

He had preserved Feng Kui’s intelligence, but he couldn’t keep Feng Kui from being injured. Every time he was injured, he could only be healed by upgrading. To upgrade, he had to replace a body part. 

When they came to the moment where they were forced to replace his heart, Feng Kui’s memory storage decreased. 

It was a very strange thing. Human memory was clearly stored in the brain cortex, and the number of memories that the brain could remember was innumerable. But starting when Feng Kui replaced his heart with a mechanical one, his memory storage became insufficient. No matter how much external storage Huan Zixu found, it still wasn’t enough. 

The volume of information from over a hundred worlds was far too vast for them. He had no way to store so many videos, pictures, and audio recordings. Feng Kui could only rely on Huan Zixu and quietly delete a part of his memories. By the time Huan Zixu discovered that Feng Kui was losing his memories, Feng Kui had already developed a fixed habit of clearing out junk memories. 

He had exerted all of his efforts, not sparing any cost for the sake of passing levels and acquiring points, just so he could improve Feng Kui’s situation. 

But the reality was that their level was too low. Feng Kui was becoming less and less human. 

Huan Zixu didn’t believe any of the System’s hints. When he had received information about the clearing mission, he had at first ignored it. 

He knew perfectly well that their enemy had always been the System, not the worlds they passed through. It was complete nonsense to say that they could clear if they killed some final boss. There had to be something wrong with this boss, and after killing the boss, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to clear. 

What Huan Zixu really wanted was to find a flaw in the System and destroy it. The appearance of the first clearer fifteen years ago reducing the System’s power had let Huan Zixu see some hope. He had guessed that more and more people clearing would make the System collapse thoroughly. He incited his acquaintances to take advantage of the lower difficulty levels to pool their strength and clear. But the System had activated a second style of gameplay—levelers in the same world hunting and killing each other. 

While the difficulty level had decreased, levelers who had passed a hundred levels could cross worlds to hunt and kill each other. The System would randomly fuse two to five worlds together, then tell the players that when they killed the others players, they would obtain their level count. If that player only needed one more level to clear, then if you killed him, you would also be only one level from clearing. 

This mode had driven the levelers mad. The difficulty level of the worlds had decreased and the power of the bosses had weakened. With nothing else to worry about, under the stimulus of the first clearer’s appearance and the hunting mode, the levelers had begun to slaughter each other. 

Even if there were some sensible people who wouldn’t take part in this duel, they would still become others’ prey and be forced to exert themselves to resist. 

The higher a leveler’s grade, the more hunted he was. The players below one hundred levels, meanwhile, had it easy. They hadn’t received this notice. They ignorantly and happily passed through the low difficulty worlds. 

Huan Zixu and Feng Kui fled here and there. Fortunately his “false exchange” ability was already in its finished form by then. This ability’s power was insufficient, but it was excellent for making a getaway. He could erase the signs of their existence and avoid pursuit. 

He ran for his life while passing levels, and fifteen years later, Huan Zixu discovered a shocking fact. There were no more levelers in the System who had passed over three hundred levels. 

This was totally irrational. Even though they were hunting and killing each other, some more powerful people should have remained. Even when raising venomous insects, a king of insects would emerge; how could there not be a single powerful leveler? Unless the System itself was getting rid of levelers who had hunted down too many people. 

At the same time, the difficulty level of the System’s worlds was slowly increasing, gradually reverting to the previous standard. Sometimes, two levelers locked in a duel would be suddenly killed by a world’s monsters, which they had entirely disdained. When the world’s difficulty level suddenly increased, the levelers who had gotten used to looking down on the world’s natives would instantly be taken unawares. That would destroy some of the high grade levelers. 

Huan Zixu had been forced to a conclusion: the System had taken heavy losses from the first clearer fifteen years ago, and to get its own back, it had provoked internal strife among the levelers, gradually restoring itself by means of absorbing the levelers’ energy. 

So would this so-called clearing mission be a continuation of the System’s hunting mode, another means for the System to suddenly raise the difficulty and take its own back? 

Huan Zixu had been unwilling to accept the mission. Then Feng Kui had told him that the System had issued him an assignment. If Feng Kui stole Huan Zixu’s heart, then he would become a complete person, full of intelligence. 

Feng Kui was a dim-witted person. Constant upgrades had led him to lose his capacity for thought. His first reaction had been to tell Huan Zixu about this mission. Tall Feng Kui, with expression pure and innocent, had been full of trust in Huan Zixu. 

Hearing about this mission, Huan Zixu had laughed in despair. With this mission, the System wasn’t forcing Feng Kui; it was forcing him. 

The System was clearly telling Huan Zixu, If you don’t take the clearing mission, I have countless ways of hounding one of you to death. 

So Huan Zixu had joined the Clearing League with Feng Kui and found that the Clearing League contained only useless players, incapable of anything but protecting their own lives. 

Forget about Zhen Li, who had equipped a wardrobe as his initial item and had only passed four worlds in fifteen years; his outlook was fairly positive. But Yuan Luori, who had passed thirty-seven levels, had actually thought that the head of the league, who had only passed two hundred some levels, was very strong. The System really had killed off all the high level players for a mere two hundred worlds to count as strong. 

The bomb freak, however, was serious about completing his missions. Fifteen years ago, he hadn’t yet reach a hundred worlds. When the difficulty level had decreased, he had taken advantage of it and worked hard to pass levels for fifteen years, quickly rising to a hundred ninety-two levels. But the excessively low difficulty level worlds had left the bomb freak with no way to accurately know himself; he had thought that all worlds were trash. 

Huan Zixu wanted to laugh at the Clearing League. If this rabble really could accomplish the mission…then the mission target would also have to be useless. 

He hadn’t stepped in, looking on from the sidelines. Before Yuan Luori had been captured, Huan Zixu had heard the mission target’s voice and had suddenly had the idea of getting in contact with him. A person being hunted down by the whole System could still say that it was forbidden to harm ordinary people or violate the law; this had made Huan Zixu very curious about his ideas. 

When the bomb freak had been captured, Huan Zixu, through the video, had seen the tip of the iceberg when it came to the mission target. 

For many years, Huan Zixu had been looking for someone to collaborate with, someone who could get rid of the System, someone who could restore Feng Kui. The chillingly unfeeling mission target had given him hope. 

So Huan Zixu had come to this world, performed an investigation, and come up with this framing scheme. 

He wanted to frame the black-cloaked man, make the black-cloaked man fall out with the protection organization. He wanted to watch the battle from the shadows, observe the black-cloaked man’s reaction from the sidelines. If a person could maintain his reason when he had been set up, could avoid slaughtering innocents, then Huan Zixu could rest easy and work with the black-cloaked man to destroy the System; he would be willing to entrust him with his own and Feng Kui’s lives. 

“Killing” Yu Hua was only an expression of Huan Zixu’s. Yu Hua would “die”; then, at the appropriate time, he would “come back to life.” 

Enduring the sentimentality, Huan Zixu put on the earbud and listened to the husbands next door flirting. Then he heard them cancel their plans to go shopping in the afternoon and decide to go to an escape room instead. 

Yu Hua said, “Since you don’t like window shopping and trying on clothes, let’s go do something you do like instead. How does an escape room sound? The two of us in frightening surroundings, locked in, looking for clues and an opportunity to escape together.” 

“All right.” You Zhengping nodded repeatedly. “And I can practice my abilities to find clues and analyze. You’re not allowed to give me hints, let me protect you!” 

Protect? Yu Hua froze. In his whole long life, he seemed to have heard this word very rarely. 

When he had first become a leveler, Yu Hua had been a hot-blooded youth. He had been his teammates’ mainstay, taking everything on himself, carrying the responsibility of protecting everyone on his shoulders. Afterwards, many of his teammates had died, and many had changed, and Yu Hua himself had no longer been as hot-blooded as before. He had become cool and calm, protecting everyone rationally. 

Later, everyone who had needed protecting had been gone, and he had gone on ahead, facing the elements alone. 

While being relied on, while being betrayed, while being abandoned and abandoning others, Yu Hua had been powerful; all his companions had known that he didn’t need protecting. 

Protect… Xiao You wants to protect…me? Yu Hua’s eyes lit up faintly, focusing on You Zhengping. 

“What, what is it? Don’t you believe I can get you out of an escape room?” You Zhengping’s heart beat wildly under his almost fanatical gaze. Why was Yu Hua’s expression so…sexy? 

“No.” Yu Hua shook his head. “I like you ‘protecting’ me.” 

Since finding out that Xiao You was a Protector, Yu Hua had been ignoring one issue. In the eyes of an ordinary person, You Zhengping was very strong, and in the eye of the Protection Organization, he was an elite. Even facing a Destroyer, Xiao You had the ability to fight. 

You Zhengping had been born to protect. Protecting the Xuyang District’s common people, he had risked everything to protect those three children on the roof. Naturally he would also include Yu Hua among those to be protected. 

Yu Hua had used “time replay” on the roof to observe what violent battle Xiao You had experienced while he had been changing his clothes. At the time he had felt a trace of envy, envy for the people being protected by Xiao You. Though because he was so powerful, Yu Hua hadn’t notice this trace of longing. 

He had just heard the people next door say they wanted to kidnap him, and now Xiao You wanted to “protect” him. Could this be predestined? 

Yu Hua had advised You Zhengping to change their afternoon plans to an escape room in order to give the two Destroyers an opportunity to kidnap him, planning to silently take care of these two Destroyers who had yet to be discovered by the Protection Organization and save trouble later. 

But now…Yu Hua couldn’t quite stand to go through with it. 

It was an excellent opportunity to promote closeness between a couple. He could secretly raise Xiao You’s power level during the battle, make Xiao You stronger and stronger, so when he met even more powerful Destroyers later on, he would be able to defeat them easily. 

And he could enjoy the feeling of being protected. He had never experienced it and he rather wanted to try. 

Faced with Yu Hua’s expectant look, the pride of a Protector rose in You Zhengping’s heart. He beat his chest and said, “That’s right, when the time comes, take my hand and follow me. Leave everything to me!” 

Heavens, it felt so good to be saying “leave everything to me” to Yu Hua! 

You Zhengping impatiently finished off the vegetables on the plate and took Yu Hua to the escape room. He didn’t notice that when they left the restaurant, Yu Hua silently tossed the gum into the trash. 

When he threw away the gum, Yu Hua constantly kept watch over You Zhengping’s expression. When he saw no sign that he had suddenly recovered his memory, he frowned faintly. 

He had only seen the “false exchange” ability a couple of times. Normally, when the exchanged item was thrown away, the falsified “impression” would be restored to normal. Now that he had thrown away the gum, Xiao You had shown absolutely no change; did that mean that this person’s false exchange ability was irreversible? 

Seeing the two of them settling the bill, Huan Zixu also left with Feng Kui. Before leaving, he went into the private room before the servers could clear the table. He took the unfinished bottle of gum out of the trash.

While settling the bill, Huan Zixu put a piece of gum on the counter. The cashier, as though possessed, didn’t make them pay. 

Of course, the two of them hadn’t ordered any food. They had been sitting idle in the private room. The “exchange” of the gum was a high meal price. 

At the escape room, Huan Zixu saw the melancholy husbands cheerfully buy tickets, line up, and go in, but he wasn’t in a rush to charge in. He was looking at the bottle of gum. 

His “false exchange” ability had gone through many upgrades and already possessed the “unfair terms” effect—no returns, no exchanges. Even if the “exchange item” was thrown away, as long as he was unwilling to accept a return, the “exchanged” thing wouldn’t come back. 

Huan Zixu in fact did not care about the gum being thrown away. What he cared about was why Yu Hua had done it. 

“What do you think, is him throwing away the gum a symptom of his desire for control because he doesn’t want his husband to use something that hasn’t gone through his hands? Or has he discovered the ‘false exchange?’” Huan Zixu asked alertly. 

Feng Kui pointed at the exchange room’s introductory screen and pointed to his mouth. There was a bit of machine oil at the corners of his mouth. He wanted to eat that. 

“You can’t eat it!” Huan Zixu said anxiously. 

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Author's Note

Yu Hua: Xiao You wants to protect me! I’m suddenly turned on!

Huan Zixu: Why do I think the person I want to kidnap is kind of…psycho…

Feng Kui: Phone, want to eat it. 

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Translator's Note

Footnotes!!! ^{1 1}