Villain? No, I'll catch up with the protagonist after passing the civil service exam.

The monitoring room for major and serious cases at the Jinghai City No. 1 Detention Center.

The high-definition screen on the wall, which occupies half of the space, is currently focused on cell number seven at the end of the corridor. This small room, originally designed to house only four serious offenders, is welcoming the most bizarre group of residents in the facility's history tonight.

Eight men who looked exactly alike, even down to the single tuft of hair sticking up on their foreheads, were crammed together between two bunk beds, all wearing matching orange vests and staring at each other.

A thick, suffocating sense of awkwardness and despair filled the air.

Zhao Tiezhu stood in front of the screen with his arms crossed, his rugged, weathered face filled with disbelief. He glanced at the screen, then turned to look at Lu Jingyan, who was sitting beside him, leisurely sipping his tea.

"Captain Lu, your 'raising poison' tactic is too underhanded!"

Zhao Tiezhu pointed at the eight motionless figures in the screen, barely suppressing a laugh, "These eight guys share the same face, even their DNA is the same. If they really start fighting later, even the prison guards going in to break them up won't be able to tell who's who. Wouldn't that create chaos?"

Lu Jingyan put down the white porcelain teacup in his hand and pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose.

"It doesn't matter if you can't tell the difference, the charges are distributed equally anyway."

His gaze swept indifferently across the eight faces with different expressions on the screen, as if he were observing some extremely primitive biological sample.

"Once a person gains the ability to think independently, selfishness becomes instinct. These eight individuals, in order to swindle different women out of their money, had already developed completely different personalities and interests. When the enormous profits vanished, replaced by unbearable disaster, the so-called unity crumbled instantly."

He stretched out his long, slender fingers and tapped them lightly twice on the table.

"Just watch, with the combined eighty-year sentence looming, this drama of brothers turning against each other is about to begin."

Sure enough, as soon as Lu Jingyan finished speaking, the air pressure in cell number seven dropped to freezing point.

These eight former "playboys," once impeccably dressed in suits and frequenting top-tier clubs, have now had their glamorous facade stripped away. Without the system's protection, all they can feel is the cold wind outside the iron bars and the long prison sentence that awaits them.

The first clone, sitting on the lower bunk, was the first to break the silence.

He stood up abruptly, and because the space was too small, his head almost hit the iron railing of the upper bunk. His eyes were bloodshot.

"It's all your fault!"

Clone Number 1 pointed at Clone Number 3, who was huddled in the corner, and cursed him, his voice filled with utter despair and collapse. "If you hadn't insisted on flirting with that female CEO of some multinational corporation and tricked her into transferring 200 million yuan for a fake venture capital project, would we have been targeted by the Economic Crime Investigation Bureau? Now look what's happened! Eighty years! I won't even be able to collect my pension!"

"What utter nonsense are you spouting!"

The third clone jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, and retorted without showing any weakness, pointing at the nose of the first clone.

"I was doing that to meet the system's ultimate wealth target! But you, what were you doing pretending to be a melancholic artist to fool that movie star! She reported you for stealing her core secrets, and the police followed the trail and arrested us all! You're the real culprit!"

"What's all the fuss about! You two are equally bad!"

The eighth clone, dressed in a hospital gown, angrily joined the fray. He had been faking a terminal illness at the hospital to elicit sympathy, and was just getting into the swing of things when he was forcibly dragged into this situation, leaving him seething with rage.

"I've been eating patient meals in the hospital for a whole month, and that innocent rich girl was about to transfer her villa to me! But you guys were out partying, and I didn't even get to drink my last bowl of nourishing soup before the SWAT team pinned me to my hospital bed!"

The voices of mutual blame and accusations grew louder and louder, and the cell was filled with vulgar and offensive insults.

They attacked each other with the most vicious language, revealing all sorts of unbelievable details of "pig butchering scams." They seemed to have completely forgotten that the person being verbally abused was actually another version of themselves.

The string of emotions finally snapped.

It's unclear who started it, but clone number 1, unable to bear it any longer, swung his arm and delivered a solid slap to clone number 3's face!

"Snapped!"

The crisp sound of the slap echoed like a thunderclap in the cramped cell.

This completely ignited the powder keg.

Clone #3, clutching its rapidly swelling cheek, roared and pounced on Clone #1, pinning it to the ground and relentlessly pounding it with its fists.

"You dare hit me? I'll kill you, you good-for-nothing idiot!"

Seeing this, the other six clones not only did not try to stop the fight, but their old and new grudges surged up, and they all joined this extremely absurd melee.

In the monitoring room, Zhao Tiezhu and several prison guards on duty were so shocked their jaws almost dropped to the floor.

The scene on the screen was nothing short of a spectacle in the history of human behavior. Eight identical-looking people, using exactly the same moves and force, were rolling around on the ground. You were pulling my hair, I was picking your nose, and he was biting your thigh.

Because the physical attributes and system enhancement data were completely shared, the fight exhibited an extremely bizarre symmetry.

1号扇了3号一巴掌，3号立刻以同样的力度还以颜色。5号踹了7号一脚，7号爬起来就是一个标準的迴旋踢。

They were like people frantically fighting in front of mirrors, every punch and kick landing precisely on "themselves." Screams, groans, and the sounds of limbs colliding mingled together, more surreal than a Hollywood action blockbuster.

"My goodness, this is absolutely incredible!"

Zhao Tiezhu pointed at the screen, laughing so hard he couldn't stand up straight, and tears streamed down his face.

"What is this? Me hitting myself? These guys' brains are even more bizarre than that cultivator who got struck by a lightning rod and went mad! Captain Lu, your psychological warfare tactic has completely exposed them!"

Lu Jingyan placed his hands on his knees, his deep eyes reflecting the chaotic scene on the screen.

"The ultimate form of human greed is self-destruction."

His tone was calm, like that of a detached sociologist, ruthlessly dissecting this false prosperity built on a silver spoon in his mouth.

"When the shortcuts provided by cheating are blocked by the iron wall of the law, the only way they can vent their panic is to tear apart those who once shared the benefits with them. Even if that fellow human is themselves."

Ten minutes later, this brutal self-inflicted brawl finally came to an end.

The eight clones lay sprawled on the cold cell floor, each with bruises and torn clothes. They were panting heavily, too weak to even get up, and could only stare at each other with hatred in their eyes.

"Alright, that's the end of the farce."

Lu Jingyan stood up, straightened the hem of his police uniform, and gave a brief instruction to the prison guard on duty.

"Go in and give them some medicine. Tomorrow, transfer them to the procuratorate. Based on the surveillance video of them revealing each other's secrets, they can be convicted of gang fraud and bigamy even without any confessions."

Just as Lu Jingyan was about to leave the monitoring room and completely end this absurd case of the time management master.

The red, secure telephone on the table suddenly emitted an extremely piercing, urgent ringing.

Lu Jingyan frowned slightly. This special line was directly connected to the top leaders of the municipal party committee and the provincial department, and it would only ring in the event of an extremely important, sudden, or sensitive incident.

He answered the phone and replied in a deep voice, "This is Lu Jingyan."

The voice on the other end of the phone was extremely anxious, even tinged with tears.

"Captain Lu! We're in big trouble! You need to bring the special investigation team to the Star Mall downtown immediately!"

Lu Jingyan's eyes sharpened instantly, and his tone became serious.

"Calm down, give me the specifics. Was it a terrorist attack or an organized riot?"

"Neither! It's...it's Princess Anna of the Duchy of Slock!"

The director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau was trembling, as if he had encountered some kind of disaster that could not be explained by common sense.

"This princess has gone completely mad, leading her royal delegation to blockade an entire floor of luxury stores in the Star Trade Center! What's even stranger is that the security personnel we sent to negotiate, along with the mall's male manager, all seemed to have lost their minds the moment they saw her!"

"They're all kneeling on the ground now, shouting that they're willing to serve the Queen! The situation is completely out of control; this has seriously escalated into a diplomatic incident!"

As Lu Jingyan listened to the fantastical description on the phone, which was full of Mary Sue elements, the nerve in his mind called "absolute rationality" twitched violently.

The dimensional reduction effect brought about by the merging of world lines is truly something that can produce all sorts of bizarre things.

Everyone kneels down the moment they see her? Is she treating the commercial center of China like her private fiefdom?

He sneered, gripped the walkie-talkie tightly, and strode outside.

"Tell the people at the Foreign Affairs Bureau to stay calm and set up the cordon. I want to see if this foreign princess's knees are as hard as the laws of China."