Liming City.
To obtain a cultivation technique, Jian Lai made up his mind to commit evil.
However, he was not a truly wicked person by nature, and he hesitated the moment he stepped out of the company.
He stood at the entrance of Tulip Security Company, pacing back and forth for over half an hour. He smoked one cigarette after another, cigarette butts scattering all over the ground by his feet.
“How exactly am I supposed to do evil?”
If this were just an ordinary online game, he wouldn't have any psychological burden. The NPCs popping up on the screen would just be strings of code—if you killed them, they stayed killed; if you robbed them, they stayed robbed—and not even an extra dialogue box would pop up.
But the Deep Red Continent was different. The NPCs here were too real; they cried, laughed, felt pain, and knew fear. They had families, friends, and lives of their own.
The security guard uncle who had greeted him at the front desk yesterday—if Jian Lai beat him up for no reason, he would definitely feel guilty, and that guilt wouldn't disappear just because he logged off.
He had seen a post on the game forum before where a player, to test NPC reactions, randomly beat up an old man on the street.
The old man fell to the ground, clutching his chest and crying for help. Surrounding NPCs gathered to call the police, call an ambulance, and act as witnesses.
Afterward, that player said in the post: “When that old man fell, the way he looked at me was just like my grandfather. I never thought there would come a day when I would feel a heavy psychological burden for killing a game NPC.”
Jian Lai didn't want to hurt the innocent either. He felt he needed a smarter way, something that would let him grind out 100 bad deeds without giving himself nightmares every night.
‘Perhaps I can take a few shortcuts?’
He stubbed out his cigarette and headed toward the west of the city.
Liming City was huge, and there were always corners where the sunlight didn't reach.
In those corners hid all sorts of things that couldn't see the light of day: illegal casinos, loan sharks, underground fights, drug dealers...
Jian Lai had seen related posts on the game forum about players accidentally stumbling into those places and being threatened, beaten, or even killed by NPCs.
Fortunately, players were immortal; if they had a grudge, they could settle it right then and there.
However, this let Jian Lai know that certain NPCs were not good people. They were active in the city's grey zones, backed by backgrounds and protective umbrellas, and many were utterly villainous.
Jian Lai decided to make these people his targets for “committing evil.”
‘This isn't doing evil; this is judgment.’
‘I can max out my evil deeds while clearing out the trash of this city.’
‘It’s a win-win.’
‘I really am a genius.’
...
In the West District of Liming City, there was an old street lined with dilapidated residential buildings where the first floors had all been converted into shops.
During the day, they sold vegetables, meat, and fruit, but at night, it transformed into another world.
While scouting during the day, Jian Lai had personally witnessed a bald man in a floral shirt committing a robbery deep in an alley.
No one called the police, no one watched, and even the passing dogs took a detour.
Jian Lai felt that bald man was exactly the target he was looking for.
He crouched in front of a milk tea shop across from the old street, ordered the cheapest lemonade, and sipped it slowly through a straw.
His eyes were fixed on the entrance of that alley, wondering if the bald man would appear again.
Even if the bald man didn't show up, there would be other villains here. Jian Lai waited for his prey with great patience.
...
In the office of Tulip Security Company, Yue Shi leaned back in his chair. The computer screen in front of him was lit, displaying a surveillance feed.
The image quality wasn't very sharp, but he could clearly see the silhouette of Jian Lai crouching in front of the milk tea shop.
Ghost floated beside him, complaining, “This Little Jian-Jian... I told him to do evil, but he goes and beats up bad guys. Fighting evil with evil is basically just passive-aggressive defiance.”
Yue Shi’s fingers slowly groomed the Snow Leopard’s back. He chuckled softly and said, “It doesn’t matter. Regardless, he has already begun his gradual descent into corruption.”
“Witch Hunt,” Yue Shi uttered two words.
Ghost froze.
Yue Shi continued, “Have you heard of witch hunts? Everyone who participates in a witch hunt feels they are righteous.”
Ghost thought for a moment and quickly understood. “You’re right. Little Jian-Jian is indeed gradually falling.”
This was a behavioral alienation. Initially, Jian Lai resisted doing evil; he didn't want to hurt NPCs or turn into a bully who randomly picked on the weak.
But the moment he found the path of “combating evil with evil,” his mindset was bound to undergo a subtle change.
He shifted from ‘being forced to do evil’ to ‘actively choosing targets,’ and he could even derive a sense of moral superiority from this behavior.
When he wantonly harmed villains, he wouldn't think, ‘I’m doing something bad,’ but rather, ‘I’m enforcing justice for heaven.’
He wouldn't think he was falling; instead, he would feel he was ascending. And this shift in mindset was precisely the beginning of corruption.
When a person begins to enjoy violence in the name of justice, they are already very far from true justice.
Acting in the name of justice is the most dangerous anesthetic. Only when a person feels they are in the right will they use the most extreme means without any scruples.
Jian Lai found pleasure in ‘combating evil with evil,’ and his tolerance for ‘evil’ would gradually decrease. Right now, he thought robbers deserved to die; in the future, perhaps even a minor slight would lead to him killing someone.
Every time he ‘enforced justice for heaven,’ he was eroding his own reverence for procedure, for life, and for rights.
He thought he was punishing the wicked, but in the end, it would only develop into ‘finding a nice-sounding reason to kill for himself.’
The boy who slays the dragon eventually becomes the dragon himself, because in the process of slaying the dragon, he gradually comes to believe that ‘as long as the target is a dragon, any means used are reasonable.’
The more Ghost thought about it, the more terrifying it seemed. It felt like he had been exactly the same back then, pulled into the depths by Yue Shi bit by bit.
At first, he was just killing everywhere in the name of revenge, gradually lowering his bottom line until he eventually found pleasure in hurting others.
“You truly live up to your name, Sovereign of Absolute Evil,” Ghost couldn't help but sigh.
“Thank you for the compliment.” Although Yue Shi wasn't sure why Ghost suddenly sighed like that, he could calmly accept any praise from others.
Ghost: “Are you going to train all these players into little bad seeds?”
Yue Shi acted innocent. “It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose. Every path is one they walked themselves. I just laid the road and stood by the side, waiting for them to take the first step.”
Ghost: “What do you want to use them for?”
Yue Shi smiled. “They are all my quality believers.”
After they logged off and returned to their original world, they would continue to spread malice.
Once a person turns bad, it is very hard to change back.
Just like Jian Lai.
Yue Shi didn't care who Jian Lai hurt; all he wanted was for Jian Lai to complete the action of ‘hurting others.’
The player thought he was taking a shortcut, but he was unknowingly accepting the pollution of an evil god: he had calmly accepted the identity of a victimizer and had even found a reason to feel at peace with it.
He was no longer a forced lamb, but had become a voluntary hunter, merely draping a cloak of justice over his hunt.
Every act of punishing the wicked planted a seed in his heart: “As long as I believe the other party is guilty, my evil act is not an evil act.”
...
The Office of the Mayor of Liming City.
The skyline gradually blurred in the twilight as Long Jianguo stood by the window, listening to her subordinate's report.
She had kept people keeping a close eye on the movements of those otherworldly visitors.
The subordinate said, “Our people have been tracking the activity trajectories of the otherworldly visitors, recording their communications, and trying to piece together where they come from based on their fragmented words.”
“So far, we still haven't found the exact source of these otherworldly visitors. They often speak languages we don't understand, which might be their local dialects.”
Long Jianguo: “What about the resurrection?”
Subordinate: “There has been progress on that. Regarding the resurrection mechanism of the otherworldly visitors, they don't resurrect on the spot after dying, but reappear at a fixed location.”
“When they walk out of the respawn point, they have no wounds on them, and their clothes are perfectly intact.”
Long Jianguo turned around. “Where is the respawn point?”
The subordinate's expression became a bit strange. “We can't find it. Every time an otherworldly visitor dies, our people keep watch, trying to track where they go after disappearing.”
“But once their bodies vanish, all tracking methods fail. They seem to enter a space we cannot perceive and then re-materialize their bodies at a location we cannot observe.”
Long Jianguo's brow furrowed slightly. “Cannot be observed?”
Subordinate: “Yes.”
At that moment, a red landline on the desk suddenly rang.
Long Jianguo walked over, glanced at the caller ID, her expression changed slightly, and she quickly picked up the phone.
The voice on the other end was muffled. After listening for only a few sentences, Long Jianguo's face became unpredictable and increasingly solemn.
“I understand.” Long Jianguo said only those four words before hanging up.
She leaned back in her chair. A second later, her expression returned to calm as she instructed, “Regarding the otherworldly visitors, there’s no need to continue the investigation. Tell the people below to give them a green light all the way.”
The subordinate nodded, not being talkative enough to ask why.
...
Tulip Security Company.
Jian Lai was panting when he returned.
He had finished one hundred bad deeds in an extremely short amount of time.
Obviously, he had been padding his list.
Anyway, Ghost had said before, ‘never fail to do an evil deed just because it is small.’
Small mischief and minor evils are still evil~
From street punks to underground casino thugs, from rent-extorting landlords to violent debt-collecting loan sharks, all had been severely bullied by Jian Lai.
Jian Lai had also littered, relieved himself in public, and randomly picked flowers from the green belts...
Ghost was currently peeking at the screens, observing what the players were chatting about.
Seeing Jian Lai rush in, he immediately changed his expression.
Jian Lai respectfully handed a piece of paper to him. “One hundred bad deeds, I’ve finished them all and recorded them. Not a single one missing. Please take a look.”
Ghost looked down at the paper, which was covered in dense, scrawled handwriting.
He made a show of squinting at it, then looked up at Jian Lai’s anxious and excited face.
“I told you to do evil, and you’re playing conceptual substitution with me, aren’t you?” Ghost's voice was neither hot nor cold.
Jian Lai's expression changed, and it took him a long time to squeeze out a sentence: “Big brother, you’re not going to go back on your word, are you?”
Ghost sighed, turned around, and took out a scroll, playing with it in his hands.
Jian Lai’s gaze followed the scroll up and down, and his heart rate fluctuated along with it.
Ghost asked him, “If I want to read a dark villain novel, and you send me a pseudo-dark righteous messenger novel where only bad people are killed, do you think I’ll be satisfied?”
Jian Lai's face became even more unsightly. His brain was spinning rapidly, trying to think of something to say, wondering if he could argue a bit more.
But after thinking for a long time, he realized he had no bargaining chips. Ghost was the company's second-in-command, and he was just a small employee.
Ghost held the cultivation technique; he had nothing.
Could it be that his hard work during this time was all for nothing?
Ghost stared at Jian Lai's changing face and suddenly chuckled. “Alright, I’m done teasing you. Seeing how hard you worked, I can reluctantly make an exception.”
With that, he handed the scroll to Jian Lai.
Jian Lai froze, staring blankly at the scroll as if he had been stunned by a sudden surprise from the heavens.
Ghost impatiently nudged the scroll forward. Only then did Jian Lai snap out of it, taking it with both hands, his fingers trembling with excitement.
The scroll was dark brown, its edges sealed with gold thread. A small talisman paper was stuck to the seal, with runes drawn on it that he couldn't understand.
Jian Lai tore off the talisman and unfurled the scroll.
The inside of the scroll was filled with dense writing. On the far left was the name: 《Record of Summoning and Binding Demons and Ghosts》!
Jian Lai’s eyes lit up. This name didn't sound like a proper spell at all; with both ‘demons’ and ‘ghosts’ in it, it was evil as could be!
But he didn't care about that. In the early stages of the game, anything usable would do. He didn't care if it was a righteous or an evil technique; whatever made him stronger was a good technique.
He rolled up the scroll, tucked it into his chest, patted it to make sure it wouldn't fall out, and gave Ghost a solemn bow. “Thank you, teacher.”
“Don’t. I’m not your teacher.” Ghost waved his hand, signaling him to get lost.
Jian Lai didn't care about Ghost's attitude either. He turned and left; he needed to find a quiet place now to grind like crazy and then shock everyone when they least expected it.
Just as his hand touched the doorknob and he was about to turn it, the door flew off.
A violent force struck from the outside. The entire door, along with the frame, flew inward and smashed onto the office desk, sending documents and water cups flying everywhere.
Ghost’s body was immune to physical attacks, so he wasn't hurt, but he couldn't react for a moment. What the hell just happened?
In the office, the Snow Leopard heard the commotion and lazily stretched.
Yue Shi sat in his chair without moving, his fingers still in the same position as they had been while grooming the leopard.
Jian Lai was knocked to the floor by the shockwave, his back hitting the wall, and his head was ringing.
His vision was shaking as he struggled to stand up, propping himself against the wall and looking toward the door.
Amidst the rising dust, several blurred figures walked in, their footsteps heavy.
Jian Lai clutched the back of his aching head, his vision gradually focusing as he saw the people walking in from the doorway.
“Who are you people? Do you know what place this is!” Jian Lai tried to act tough.
The intruders didn't bother with a small fry like him at all, simply continuing to walk inside.
Ghost suddenly became interested.
Someone actually dared to come here and crash the place?!
Rate on N.U.
