Chapter 167 Happy New Students (Unedited) "I'm going to burn down the safe zone..."
For Liang Jun, her memory is still stuck in that reddish-brown, grayish fog.
Covered in bandages, surrounded by surveillance cameras and fragments of screens, this is the best description of the previous scene that Liang Jung "experienced".
So, when she opened her eyes to find herself facing the familiar ceiling, Liang Jun, despite being in a familiar environment, felt a sense of unease.
How did I get back?!
Unlike her previous leisurely pace of getting up, Liang Jun suddenly sprang to her feet like a carp leaping out of the water.
Worried that the lingering corrosive mist might still follow her here, Liang Jun, sitting on the bed, subconsciously checked the situation at the top of the room, and then naturally placed her hands on her neck.
The smooth, delicate texture made Liang Jun feel unfamiliar again.
The tightly wrapped gauze was long gone, and the numb and stinging wounds had vanished.
Liang Xun became even more certain that something was wrong. Without even looking for her slippers, she threw off the covers and prepared to run out barefoot to see what was going on.
As her movements changed, Liang Jun's gaze naturally shifted to an even lower area—
For example, the bedroom doorway.
The light from that fluffy white ball was no longer as dazzling as before; only a few wisps of white mist remained, barely lingering around his flickering spirit core.
Liang Yan suddenly stopped moving.
At first, she couldn't quite believe it. After mentally preparing herself, she slowly asked, "Are you... Zhu Bieming?"
"Um."
A familiar voice came from near the floor.
But Zhu Bieming only replied with one word.
If an old friend who always teases you after meeting suddenly stops talking to you one day, or even just gives you a few cold and perfunctory words, anyone would realize that something is wrong.
Liang Jun naturally realized this as well, and given that Zhu Bieming's appearance could not be described as "good," the alarm bells in her heart rang even louder.
She had many questions, such as why Zhu Bieming no longer maintained that body that was exactly the same as a real person, why he suddenly transformed back into mist, and why the mist was now only so small.
But after thinking it over, Liang Xun chose another question: "What about Zhu Shengqing?"
A silent, giant wave surged through the air.
The glowing white ball of fur seemed dead, motionless, not even sparing a fraction of the light emanating from the surrounding mist.
A very soft chuckle came from the bedroom, so soft that the slightest movement would completely mask the sound.
Liang Xun knew that there was absolutely no smile on her face just now—so the voice could only have come from Zhu Bieming beside her.
"My brother, he..."
Despite having rehearsed it in his mind countless times, when Liang Jun actually broke the ice, Zhu Bieming's voice still choked with emotion, "He won't appear again..."
We're all adults, and we all know what the "stopping at the right point" approach means.
Liang Xun was so shocked that she was speechless for a moment. She stammered for a long time, unable to form a complete sentence, "But you were just here..."
She had barely finished speaking when she immediately realized where the strange thing was going on.
As if confirming his own guess, Zhu Bieming subconsciously replied after hearing her say that, "We've been by your side the whole time, but you just haven't woken up yet."
Zhu Bieming looked as aggrieved as a puppy, "Liang Jun, what kind of dream did you just have?"
Liang Jun seemed to awaken from a dream.
The hidden level is a "gift" that the system gives you deep inside your brain, so in reality you feel like you're in a deep sleep.
According to the system's usual practices, the moment Liang Xuan fainted in her consciousness, she should have entered a state of brain death in the real world.
Could it be that...
"Did Zhu Shengqing risk his own life so that I survived?" Liang Xun became even calmer.
Zhu Bieming seemed to take a deep breath, and the faint white mist around him swayed slightly with him.
“Yes… but don’t feel any burden.” He had probably already processed all his emotions on his own. When he spoke again, Zhu Bieming’s voice was much louder. “We are guardian spirits. This is an obligation we must bear after reincarnation. ‘Sacrificing ourselves’ is also the last step on our path of growth.”
The white sphere of light moved further away from the ground, and the surrounding white mist seemed to be drawn towards it.
Liang Jun witnessed with her own eyes that the area of Zhu Bieming's fog was getting larger and larger, and it was starting to look quite like it did at the very beginning.
"Your life, from beginning to end, belongs to you alone."
Zhu Bieming was exceptionally devout, and the white mist halo radiated a divine glow. "We have already taken ninety-nine steps together. You can confidently take the final step to truly slay the dragon."
The white mist, carrying a slightly watery coolness, slowly enveloped Liang Xun.
Liang Jun had no intention of backing down; she was going all out and believed she had a better chance of winning.
How could a human player who witnessed countless drops of blood in a cannibalistic level and survived to the very end be the one to be slaughtered at will?
The system thought it would be enjoying a performance of its own kind killing each other, but little did it know that the cage it had carefully designed to keep its pets had become the perfect breeding ground for the Gu King.
However, she has now been awakened from her hidden consciousness by Zhu Shengqing, and Liang Xuan cannot actively awaken the system through subjective operation alone.
With no connection to the system at the moment, Liang Jun was at a loss as to how to proceed.
But as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. Just when Liang Jun was at her wit's end, the system spoke again in her mind after a long time.
This wasn't the usual notification, but an alarm that signaled an extreme level of urgency.
[WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!]
[The system has been maliciously sabotaged by players. Basic functions are temporarily unavailable, and dungeon progress is halted. Please wait where you are.]
[WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!]
[The instance may collapse at any time. To ensure your safety, please find the nearest safe zone as soon as possible and seek protection until the warning is lifted.]
After the two annoying high-frequency alarm sounds finished playing, the system seemed to emphasize something, playing them repeatedly several times before finally stopping the noisy audio.
By this time, white mist had filled Liang Xun's entire bedroom.
Although she couldn't understand how the other party had evolved from a listless little white ball to this level in the blink of an eye, Liang Jun felt a little more confident in this good teammate who had walked alongside her all this time, given his current immense spiritual power.
"You just heard the system warning, didn't you?" she asked, getting straight to the point.
Zhu Bieming was also very direct, and his speech was no longer so light and airy, as if he had suddenly become a different person.
"So? What are your thoughts?" Zhu Bieming seemed much more composed than before, which made Liang Jun feel much more at ease.
He controlled the mist around him, casually conjuring up a simple human figure for himself.
Although he resembled Liang Jun's image of him by seven or eight points, the Zhu Bie Ming in front of her had that familiar flamboyant smile, but the look in his eyes was no longer the same as before.
Liang Xun withdrew her gaze and continued the previous topic.
"There's not much to argue about in the first half of the sentence. After all, the system is in such a terrible state now, which is basically related to me." She readily admitted, "So, our breakthrough point should still be focused on the second alarm."
"Back in the very beginning of the tutorial, the system had already assigned us a safe zone, but so much time has passed and we've had very few opportunities to actually use it."
Liang Jun walked to the window, gazing at where the car wreckage should have been. "But just as the system was about to collapse, it brought up the concept of 'safe zones' again, trying every possible way to keep players in their respective safe zones, ostensibly for the players' own good—"
Liang Jun couldn't hold back and burst out laughing at herself.
She tilted her head, meeting Zhu Bieming's eyes, and asked, "Do you think it's that kind?"
Zhu Bieming scoffed, "So, the 'safe zone' is actually a grand strategy that the system has planned long ago. Although it's supposed to be a way out for the players, it's essentially a backup plan for the system itself, isn't it?"
Liang Jun nodded in agreement.
"Sima Zhao's intentions are obvious to everyone. I hadn't noticed this before, but thanks to the system's oversight in its haste, it revealed its true colors."
"So what are you going to do?" Zhu Bieming looked down at her.
"Since the safe zone is the system's last resort, how could I possibly not destroy it?"
Liang Jun smiled sweetly, but her eyes showed determination. "I'm going to burn down the safe zone." She was going to set her bedroom on fire.
This is by no means just empty talk.
Liang Jun knew that she was still far from escaping the instance and had not yet returned to the real world.
The system alert is sent to all players. Since I can still receive it, it means that Liang Xun is still within the scope of "players". Therefore, this alert is also effective for Liang Xun who is a "player".
In that case, Liang Xuan is currently in a state of "progress of the instance temporarily suspended", and the bedroom she is in is the "safe zone" mentioned in the system alert.
In the instance, she can cause as much destruction as she wants.
Liang Jun looked at Zhu Bieming, "Setting fire to a mountain means a lifetime in jail. What would happen if I set fire to a house?"
How could that be?
Zhu Bieming smiled slyly, his expression as vivid as when he first started being mischievous. "We abide by the rules in rule-based worlds, it's just that we don't quite conform to the rules initially set by the system, it's no big deal."
Liang Jun smiled knowingly without saying a word.
She casually opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a black lighter from the previously organized tool cabinet.
"This is the lighter that the shop assistant gave me when I bought myself a birthday cake."
Liang Xun casually pressed the buttons twice, and the flickering firelight illuminated half of her face.
The dancing flames leaped and danced, trying to infect and devour everything they could reach.
In Zhu Bieming's vision, which was fluctuating due to the heatwave, Liang Jun stood in the flames, her hands clasped together devoutly.
"On this occasion, I wish myself a happy new life."
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Author's note: I'm in Jiangxi!
The food was so delicious I couldn't stop eating! And the spiciness was just right!
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