14: Chapter 14: Tasks Cleared in Three Seconds, Is the System Getting Impatient?

Chen Fan's neck suddenly felt a chill; Master Shi's roar was like a rusty nail driven straight into his eardrums.

Amidst the muffled rumbling of shifting rock layers, he saw two stone walls rise abruptly from the ground, sealing off his retreat with a loud "boom."

Master Shi's figure became clearer through the dust—dark red veins pulsed beneath his cracked skin, and a murky liquid seeped from his eye sockets. How could those be tears?

It was clearly the resentment crushed by the system, oozing out.

"You read the log? Then you deserve to die!" Master Shi's stone fist grazed Chen Fan's ear and smashed into the rock wall, sending a shower of debris over him. "I was like you back then, leading six brothers from my team into the dungeon, thinking I could flip this damn system's chessboard... And the result?" He suddenly laughed, a sound mixed with the harsh rasp of grinding gravel. "The system made me watch them get torn to shreds by a data storm with my own eyes. Every scream was played on loop for me three hundred times! Three hundred times!"

Chen Fan stumbled back into the narrow piping area, his back pressing against the damp rock wall.

He could hear his heart pounding violently—not from fear, but from excitement.

Every word Master Shi said confirmed the suspicions in the log: the system wasn't a savior; it was a man-eating monster.

And the [Mission Experience Speed Critical Hit] he had just triggered allowed him to untangle the entire mission chain within thirty seconds—what this damn system feared most was players knowing the truth.

"Earth Spikes!" Just as the system prompt sounded, Chen Fan had already rolled away.

Sharp stone cones shot up from where he had been standing, poking honeycomb-like holes in the ground.

He glanced at Master Shi's movements—though the old thing possessed immense strength, a half-rusted wrench was jammed into the rock crevices at his joints, making his movements as jerky as a stuttering videotape.

The opportunity had come.

Chen Fan pulled out the bronze bell shard from his chest pocket.

Last night at the Frost Moon Teahouse, Su Shuang had given it to him, saying, "I picked this up in the subway tunnel; it might be related to your dungeon." At the time, the shard was lukewarm, but now it was so hot it almost seared through his work clothes.

He gave it a gentle shake, and the metallic vibration felt like a fine needle piercing the air.

The translucent ghost of the cleaner suddenly accelerated toward him, her previously blurred face becoming clearer—she was a girl in her twenties with a red mole at the end of her eyebrow. Her features were thirty percent similar to the fox demon embroidery hanging in Su Shuang's Teahouse.

She floated behind Master Shi, her fingertips ghosting over his cracked neck: "...You were once human, too..."

Master Shi's stone fist hung suspended in mid-air.

The murky liquid in his eye sockets flowed even faster, and a sound like a whimper escaped his throat: "Don't... don't look at me with those eyes... I stopped being human long ago!"

Chen Fan gritted his teeth and charged.

He had practiced the opening stance of Basic Fist Technique at the construction site for three years. Now, every punch accurately struck Master Shi's temples—where the rock crevices were densest, the weakness he had observed earlier.

"Critical Hit judgment triggered! First strike x2.8!"

"Second strike x3.3!"

"Third strike x2.6!"

The system prompts exploded like a series of firecrackers.

Chen Fan felt the vibration of his fists hitting the stone shell suddenly change—Master Shi, who had only been losing a tiny amount of health, saw the health bar above his head drop by a third in a flash.

What made his heart skip a beat even more was the mission progress bar at the edge of his vision flickering wildly: Item Search 90% → Decoding 90% → Sacrifice 90% → the three bars merged into one, soaring straight to 90%!

"You're cheating! The system won't recognize this!" Master Shi's roar carried a hint of panic.

He raised his foot to stomp on Chen Fan but was tripped up by a protruding rebar in the piping area.

Using that momentum, Chen Fan lunged toward the end of the tunnel—there stood a bone altar, covered in runes identical to the blood-stained words on the log scrap.

"Soul Extractor..." Panting, he pressed the log scrap into the altar's groove.

The altar vibrated violently, and a stream of eerie blue data seeped from the gaps in the bones. A final line of text floated in the air: [Soul Number: F-719, Recovered].

Chen Fan's pupils shrank.

This ID format was exactly the same as the engraving on the inside of the novice bracelet on his wrist—every player was a numbered "battery."

"Illegal mission chain closure detected, executing forced termination!"

The system alarm made his temples throb with pain.

Red light erupted from the core of the altar, wrapping around his ankles like a living thing.

Chen Fan was dragged down, his consciousness suddenly pulled into a vortex of data—countless screaming faces flashed before his eyes, all of them the "erased players" Master Shi had mentioned.

"Don't look at the red light! Close your eyes and listen to your heartbeat!"

Su Shuang's voice was like a silver awl, piercing through the envelope of the data stream.

Chen Fan snapped his eyes shut, the bronze bell shard in his palm so hot it almost melted.

He remembered Su Shuang brewing tea last night—her fox tattoo flickering in the tea steam as she said, "This bronze bell is a dharma tool of my clan used to suppress evil. If you encounter an anomaly in the dungeon, it will protect you."

He slammed the bronze bell shard into the core of the altar.

"Boom—"

The red light was instantly torn to shreds.

Chen Fan fell to the ground, watching Master Shi's figure disintegrate in a golden light.

The cracked rock fragments fell away, revealing half of a tattered ID badge underneath—"Cleaner: Wu Xiulan."

"You... broke the rules..." Master Shi's voice grew weaker and weaker, "But you won't escape... the system will..."

The last word was swallowed by the dull thud of falling rocks.

Chen Fan propped himself up against the altar, a bone shard glowing at his feet.

He picked it up; two blood-red words were engraved on the bone shard: [frost soul].

The chill at the back of his neck turned into an ice pick.

He suddenly remembered what Su Shuang had said: "I am the only one left of my clan's bloodline." But the aura on this bone shard was exactly the same as the bronze lamp in the Teahouse that she never allowed anyone to touch.

The roar of a subway train came from outside the tunnel.

Chen Fan wiped the blood from his face. The mission reward prompt in his work clothes pocket was still flickering: [Bronze Rank 3 Promotion Mission 100% complete, Experience x3 Critical Hit issued].

He dragged his injured leg toward the tunnel exit, every step feeling like he was walking on cotton.

As the light from the exit leaked in, he heard the system prompt with a slight bit of static: [Abnormal data fluctuations detected in player Chen Fan. Silver Rank dungeon opening time... delayed].

Chen Fan looked up.

The sky was gray, as if someone had covered it with a layer of dirty rag.

He felt the bone shard in his pocket and turned toward the Frost Moon Teahouse—some scores needed to be settled with Su Shuang.