124: Chapter 124 Abandoned Cards! The [Undying Wild Dog] of Underground Fighting

The taillights of the military off-road vehicle disappeared at the end of the Zijin Mountain road.

Researcher Yun Zhi stood where she was, her fists clenched so tightly her knuckles turned white.

The [World] card was still spread out on the table, the dark golden beetle patterns breathing quietly in the moonlight.

The lingering aura of Wei Xiaoyu's magic power had not yet dissipated, and purple-gold threads of light hung crookedly on the edge of the card like discarded bandages.

"What right do they have."

Researcher Yun Zhi's voice was very low.

"Bidirectional mass-energy conversion. Nano-interface membranes. Twelve-axis causality framework. Venerable Qi Yuan read the experimental data and wrote a paper overnight—what right do they have to just throw it away like that."

She placed the constant-temperature experimental box on the table, her movements gentle, but the test tube at the bottom of the box gave a crisp clink.

"Just because of a 'don't understand,' and a lousy Titan Furnace heavy armor—"

"The tea is cold."

Su Bai sat on the sofa, holding a teacup.

His expression was exactly the same as when Wei Tianlong was slamming the table and cursing earlier.

Researcher Yun Zhi turned her head and glared at him: "Aren't you angry?"

"Why should I be angry?" Su Bai took a sip of the cold black tea. "A Stand Card was never meant for hothouse flowers. Wei Xiaoyu's problem is that her Mental Power foundation is too thin, and she has childhood trauma at the soul level; she collapsed first when being interrogated. This has nothing to do with the card; she would have collapsed with any Mental Power-type card."

He placed the teacup on the coffee table.

"Besides."

"[World] chose her. The Stand's will is generated by the card circuit itself; it locked onto Wei Xiaoyu's soul wavelength the moment it was activated. Those interrogation questions weren't randomly generated—they were customized for her Mental Power defects."

Researcher Yun Zhi's eyebrows furrowed.

"You mean—"

"[World] wanted to help her."

Su Bai stood up, walked to the card-making table, and tapped his fingertip on the golden beetle pattern on the card face.

"The essence of the Stand's interrogation is Mental Power density calibration. The harsher the questions it asks, the higher the soul potential it has read. The moment Wei Xiaoyu collapsed, her Mental Power conduction density was forty percent higher than theoretically estimated. She was recognized by it—she just wasn't ready to accept that answer herself, but the next time they meet... tsk tsk, I'm actually looking forward to [World] becoming her enemy."

He withdrew his finger.

"So this card needs someone who isn't afraid of being interrogated."

"What kind of person?"

"Someone who has nothing."

Su Bai leaned against the edge of the card-making table and crossed his arms.

"Not relying on family. Not relying on talent. Not relying on anyone's charity or concessions. The kind of person who has crawled up from the mud with their bare hands and has an extremely crazy desire for survival and power."

Researcher Yun Zhi was silent for a few seconds.

"...You are looking for a pure villain."

"You could say that." Su Bai tilted his head. "But the word 'villain' isn't quite accurate. I'm not looking for an antagonist; I'm looking for a wild dog."

"A wild dog?"

"Yes. The kind of wild dog that can still bite through the opponent's throat even after being trampled into the mud."

He put [World] back into the card box and put on his coat.

Kyubey jumped down from the windowsill and landed on his shoulder.

[Su Bai, your heart rate has increased.]

"Normal. We've changed targets."

[Where are we going?]

"To find a wild dog."

Lin Xiao pushed the door open just in time to hear the last two words.

She was still carrying half a bag of cream puffs in her hand, her gaze jumping back and forth between Su Bai's coat and Researcher Yun Zhi's reddened eyes twice. Then she placed the bag of cream puffs on the table and said in the tone of someone who had seen it all: "Do you need me to drive?"

"Yes."

"Where to?"

"Jiangnan, the underground arena."

Lin Xiao picked up the car keys without asking a second question.

——

Jiangnan City.

Four hundred kilometers east of Jinghai.

The magic light signs on the streets of the city were less than half of those in Jinghai, but the underground was a different story.

The entrance to the arena was located at the side door of an abandoned cannery. The sign at the entrance was half-rotted, and the remaining half had a single character written in dark red magic paint— "Live." The guard was a middle-aged man missing half an ear; upon seeing the dark patterned emblem of the Lin Family Chamber of Commerce on Lin Xiao's cuff, he moved aside to clear the path without a word.

The stairs leading down were very long.

Many of the magic lights on both sides of the walls were broken, and the remaining few emitted a half-dead, dark yellow light. The air was filled with a mixed smell of rust and disinfectant, laced with a thicker, fishy sweetness underneath—that was the smell of blood that hadn't long dried.

Lin Xiao wrinkled her nose and reached into her pocket to press down on the Ice Bow's Magic Sealing Card.

Su Bai's expression, however, remained unchanged.

Passing through the last iron gate—

The full view of the arena exploded before their eyes.

It wasn't a semi-circular arena like a formal ring, but a cage converted from an old steel smelting furnace. It was about twenty meters in diameter, with the ground paved with uneven steel plates, scarred with weld marks and uncleared bloodstains everywhere. The surrounding spectator Stands were stacked from the floor to the ceiling, and every level was packed with people; the dark purple magic lights illuminated everyone's faces with the same greedy expression.

They were fighting in the cage.

A Tier 3 strongman nearly two meters tall stepped on his opponent's chest, the sole of his heavy boot grinding against the ribs with a teeth-aching creak. The opponent was a thin, gaunt middle-aged man, spitting blood foam from his mouth; his right hand had long been broken, and the fractured bone protruded from beneath the skin, sticking out white and ghastly.

The strongman raised his arms and roared at the spectator Stands.

The spectator Stands erupted. Some were shouting "Kill him," some were shouting "Pay up," and some were throwing empty wine bottles into the cage.

A green light flickered on at the referee's Stand.

The strongman grinned. He bent down, grabbed the middle-aged man's hair, and lifted him up, preparing to let the whole arena see exactly where the next punch would land—

Su Bai did not watch any further.

His gaze fell on the fighter's passage below the ring.

That woman was crouching in the shadows at the entrance of the passage.

She had messy, short black hair, with uneven ends as if cut with a knife. Her face was covered in abrasions and bruises, and her left eye was swollen until only a slit remained. She was wearing a gray tank top that had been washed until its original color was unrecognizable, revealing arms as thin as two pieces of dry firewood, with forearms and the backs of her hands densely covered in old scars.

She was wrapping her left hand with bandages, one circle at a time.

Wrapping it very slowly.

With each circle, her knuckles gave a very faint clicking sound.

Su Bai stared at her fingers, which were wrapping the bandage, for two seconds.

"...Her bones are clicking."

[Meridian atrophy.] Kyubey's tail brushed past his earlobe. [Before she makes a fist, she needs to wrap her fractured finger bones tightly. If she doesn't, the bones will shift when she exerts force.]

"You can scan that?"

[Mental Power perception can. Her meridian capacity is less than one-third of a normal Tier 3 professional. Her magic power conduction rate is very low—very low. But her Mental Power density...]

Kyubey paused.

[Is very high. Higher than Wei Xiaoyu's.]

Su Bai's eyebrows twitched.

Lin Xiao leaned over and lowered her voice: "This woman, she seems to be Qin Ye."