Wang Yanfei's tone had eased a little, and the man visibly relaxed. He let out a long breath and bent down to grab his clothes from the ground.
Halfway through, he glanced up at Wang Yanfei, hesitated, then asked,
"Uh… man, you're not gonna tell anyone I ran into you tonight, right?"
"Do I look that free to you?"
"Right, right, of course not. Not at all."
Wang Yanfei had already lost interest in him. He flicked the muzzle of his gun. "Get lost."
The rainbow-haired kid acted like he had just been pardoned, clutching his clothes and jogging off until he disappeared into the dark.
Alvina watched Wang Yanfei's profile and muttered, "Human, why didn't you kill him?"
Wang Yanfei ignored her. He slid the cleaver back into the sheath at his waist and kept walking.
Seeing she was being ignored, Alvina snapped her tail with a sharp slap. Her whole body tensed up like she was sulking.
...
The outer roads were as bad as ever, full of potholes. Combined with that stubborn stench of rot, it really made you wonder if anyone actually lived here.
As he walked, he suddenly stopped.
A black-cloaked figure stood not far ahead, back turned to him.
The person had one hand pressed to his left ear, speaking in an extremely respectful tone. "Yes, yes, got it… You can rest assured… Mm… yes, sir…"
Wang Yanfei raised an eyebrow, bent down slightly, and moved forward without a sound.
When he was close enough, the man just finished his call and let out a long breath.
Before he could fully relax, something cold pressed against the back of his head.
His nerves went taut in an instant. His whole body locked up like he had been struck by lightning.
He threw his hands up, his voice shaking. "D-don't shoot. My wallet is in my left pocket. Please don't kill me."
Okay, that was a new record for surrender speed.
Wang Yanfei steadied himself quickly. He deliberately lowered his voice so it sounded unfamiliar. "Cut the crap. Who were you just talking to?"
The cloaked figure jerked. It was like someone had flipped a switch inside him.
His breathing went chaotic. The whites of his eyes bulged, his pupils shrank to pinpoints, and raw terror raced across his face.
Then his head twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees to face Wang Yanfei.
His face began to melt on the spot.
His eyeballs bulged outward, his nose collapsed, and the corners of his mouth drooped like melting ice cream. All his features were mashed together, then forcibly smeared flat again.
"Guh… gurgle…!"
His voice shifted from human speech to an animalistic roar.
Then,
Bang.
Scarlet light flashed from the Bullet Ant.
Wang Yanfei fired without hesitation, cleanly blasting one of the man's arms off.
The severed limb spun twice in the air before hitting the ground with a smack and rolling a few steps away.
The grotesque distortion froze, as if someone had hit pause.
The black-robed man's features snapped back into place at high speed. His eyes cleared. His breathing smoothed out.
He stared blankly at his severed arm, then asked in a trembling voice, "You… you're not scared?"
Wang Yanfei looked at this thing with its neck and torso twisted in opposite directions, body posed like a twisted rope. He stayed quiet for two seconds.
Then he shook his head and raised the Bullet Ant, waving it in front of the man's face.
"What is this?"
The man blinked. "A… a gun."
"Can it kill you?"
"Yes."
"Then that settles it."
Wang Yanfei shrugged and summed it up in all seriousness.
"If I can kill you with a single shot, why would I be scared of you?"
The black-robed man said nothing.
He suddenly realized what exactly he had been afraid of.
Being terrified while staring down something that could kill you in an instant was, in its own way, pretty reasonable.
Wang Yanfei could not be bothered to chase that thought any further. He dragged things back to the main point. "Who were you talking to just now?"
"Uh… that…"
The man actually hesitated.
Bang.
Another flash of red, and his other arm flew off, spinning twice through the air before landing on the ground with a thud.
The black-robed man nearly burst into tears. "Come on, man. I'll talk, okay? Who's the real monster here?"
He nodded over and over, terrified that the next shot would go for his legs, and suddenly started speaking very clearly.
"We, we are with the Restart Society. We're the squad sent here to ambush the board member."
Only then did Wang Yanfei remember.
At the Restart Ceremony, someone had indeed mentioned "ambushing the board member."
And the ambush point just happened to overlap with the area he was grinding monsters in tonight.
For a moment, his feelings were complicated.
Which meant there was a good chance Horsen was also operating somewhere nearby.
Still, he was using his own face now, not "Benjamin," so he was not worried about being recognized.
A random thought crossed his mind instead, had his real body now become the "mask"?
He pulled his drifting thoughts back and asked, "What's your role in the plan?"
Hearing there was more to answer, the black-robed man caught sight of the gun shifting back toward his head and panicked.
"If I tell you, will you let me go?"
"I can," Wang Yanfei said. "This time, I won't kill you."
The man clearly relaxed and started talking all at once.
"I'm just… the last one to draw aggro. The tank. Like, when everyone else is about to charge in, I go first and take the first wave so they get a chance to move."
"..."
Alvina poked her head out from around Wang Yanfei's neck. "Hiss… this guy is basically walking to his death."
The black-robed man whispered, "Pretty much."
Wang Yanfei nodded and continued, "Do you have any kind of code phrase to confirm identities?"
The man shook his head so hard it looked like it might fly off. "No. We can… feel it. We can sense if someone is with the Restart Society."
Wang Yanfei made a thoughtful sound, then holstered the gun and turned away.
The black-robed man finally let out a huge breath, his whole body sagging.
He stared at the back of Wang Yanfei's head, his gaze slowly filling with hatred. Damn it, both my arms are gone. You just wait…
First things first, though, he had to pick up his arms. He could not just leave them lying there.
He had barely bent down when,
Click.
The familiar sound of a gun being cocked rang out behind him.
He froze.
He turned his head slowly and saw that Wang Yanfei had come back. The barrel was aimed steadily at his skull.
"You… you said you'd let me go," he exploded.
"I did," Wang Yanfei said, spreading his hands, sounding very sincere. "I let you go that time."
"Then right now—"
"But right now, we are… meeting again."
"...What?"
It took the black-robed man half a second to register the logic.
From the very beginning, this man had never planned to let him live.
"You son of a—"
Bang.
He did not even finish cursing before a crimson beam pierced clean through his head.
His body shook once, then crumpled. Slowly, it collapsed into a human skin and drifted to the ground.
Expressionless, Wang Yanfei walked over and snatched the rising gray-white mist, refining it in an instant.
Power surged through his body again, and his opinion of these "skins" rose another notch.
Top-tier leveling material like this was not something you wasted.
Alvina poked her head out from his collar again, eyes wide, as if her entire worldview had been shattered.
"Human… that move was… way too…"
She struggled for a long time before finally squeezing out a verdict. "Way too dark."
Wang Yanfei did not deny it.
There was no way he would leave a loose end alive.