After AFK for five years, I returned to be number one in the entire server.

Wu Ying's plan was very detailed: whether to enter Changshan Park from the east or west gate, what to do first, and finally sit on a bench by the lake for a while.

Lin Yao leaned against the balcony door frame, listening to their discussion with a gentle smile on her face.

"What about you, Yao-ge? What are your thoughts?" Wu Ying turned her head.

"No rush, let's chat for a bit before you go."

"Brother Yao, it's been so long since I left. Is there anything you want to know? I'm quite aware of the changes in Linhai over the years."

"Then let's talk about family matters," he said casually.

"Brother Yao, why didn't your uncle and aunt come back with you?" Song Shouyi interjected.

Lin Yao's smile remained unchanged: "They won't be coming."

"Busy out of town?"

"They are dead."

Matsumori and the others froze, as they had never heard of this before.

"I killed him."

Before anyone could react, the voice struck like thunder.

"Brother Yao, you must be joking..." Wu Ying's face was a little pale, and she managed a weak smile.

"Yeah, Yao-ge, we're all timid, don't scare us," Zhang Bai chuckled.

The next second, Zhang Bai, Song Shouyi, Wu Ying, and Su Nian felt something was wrong; an invisible force was pressing down on them.

The four of them, who were originally standing, suddenly collapsed onto the floor with a "thud".

Biomagnetic field.

Something that only players can have.

Lin Yao glanced at the four people in front of her, then looked at Lin Ye, who had been sitting on the sofa the whole time. Perhaps that was why he wasn't pressed to the ground like the others.

"My ability is called Blood Sacrifice. It grants me immense power, but it has a side effect: I must kill those within five generations of my bloodline, or I will be killed by the backlash of the power."

"My parents were the first. The ritual required them to be filled with fear, the more fear the better. I didn't kill them immediately, but tortured them slowly."

"Now it's your turn. Guess what I'll do to you?"

Lin Yao picked up a fruit knife from the side and fiddled with it in her hand.

"Brother Yao, no...don't..."

Wu Ying curled up in a ball, Song Shouyi's eyes were red, Zhang Bai's shoulders were shaking violently, and Su Nian was biting her lower lip.

Lin Yao turned to Lin Ye: "I almost forgot about you. You've always been so unremarkable since we were little, always just following behind me. Otherwise, nobody would play with you. I didn't expect you to still be like this after all these years. It wouldn't be a pity if you died, would it?"

"Alright, now you can be scared." Lin Yao approached the four people in front of him.

Just when they were in despair, they suddenly heard the sound of the sofa leather rebounding after being squeezed.

Lin Yao looked at Lin Ye, who had already stood up. His magnetic field covered the entire living room, and no ordinary person could stand up under such pressure.

"Are you a player?"

Lin Yao didn't remain stunned for long. After a brief moment of thought, he pointed to the most likely outcome.

Immediately afterwards, an enormous force pressed down on him, more terrifying than all the magnetic fields he had ever encountered before combined, and he immediately lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground.

……

……

Five days later, Lin Yao was taken away by the police.

Lin also remembered the way the four people looked at him after Lin Yao collapsed—they were unfamiliar, afraid, shocked, and perhaps even a little bit happy to have survived.

This incident made the news. Linhai is a small city, so the news spread very quickly. Within a few days, everyone who needed to know knew that Lin was also a player.

The assessment of Hengjian Institute's capabilities was also completed in the past few days. The result given by Xiwangmu was that it was at the monthly level, and Lin also obtained the special recruitment qualification.

When Lin Ye's mother received the call, she was stunned for a while and confirmed it several times. Lin Ye's father drank a few more glasses of wine that night.

The atmosphere at home has changed a lot in the past few days. His mother adds a few more dishes when she cooks, stops urging him to study, and no longer mentions Su Nian in his ear.

One morning after breakfast, he got up to go back to his room when his mother suddenly called him back.

"Is there anything you need regarding that player of yours?"

"no."

"Are you short of money?"

"We don't lack anything."

"oh."

Lin wasn't quite used to these changes either; perhaps after a while, his parents would get used to his player identity and things would return to normal.

the other side.

With ten days left until the college entrance examination, Su Nian still gets up at six o'clock every day to do practice questions, organize her wrong answers, and memorize vocabulary in a routine that is no different from before.

However, she has been having the same dream for the past few days. Lin Yao says, "I killed him." The moment the magnetic field comes down, she feels the pain of her knee hitting the floor and her chest feeling like it's being pressed down, making it hard to breathe.

She lay on the floor, her fingers gripping the carpet, her mind blank.

She wasn't a coward, but that feeling had nothing to do with courage; it was the overwhelming power itself. People are so fragile in the face of absolute power; intelligence, composure, and self-control are all meaningless.

Until a figure stood up in front of her, the dream was clearer than reality.

His expression was calm, without tension or anger, just like the previous times I had seen him.

He just stood there naturally, and all the pressure and discomfort he felt disappeared.

And then it all ended, and she always woke up in this same place.

After waking up, she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, piecing together images of Lin Ye in her mind.

At the dining table in Tianhelou, he sat quietly across from her, picking at his food. In her living room, she was engrossed in her English test. At the far end of the sofa in Platinum Mansion, he sat alone in the corner while everyone else chatted.

She used to think he was mediocre. Compared to her classmates who had excellent grades and clear goals, he seemed to have nothing.

Looking back now, that tranquility seems a little different.

In the afternoon, Fang Cheng came to visit.

She pushed open Su Nian's bedroom door, placed two cups of milk tea on the table, and plopped down on the bed, swinging her legs back and forth on the edge of the bed.

Still doing coding problems?

Su Nianbi sat at her desk, her pen never stopping: "Ten more days."

"You can get into the top five even without studying."

Su Nian didn't reply.

"Hey, what happened to Lin Ye's situation?"

"Lin Yao was taken away by the people from Tian Shu."

"I know this, I saw it on the news. I'm talking about Lin Ye." Fang Cheng's eyes lit up as he asked, "The one who did his homework at your house last time, right? The one in the gray T-shirt, sitting in the living room, not saying much?"

"Um."

"My God." Fang Cheng's expression was as if he had seen something incredible. "He's actually a player? I almost didn't notice him when I walked in that day."

"Don't judge a book by its cover."

"It's not just appearances that are deceiving. I heard he went to the Hengjian Institute for a test and got a monthly level. Do you know what a monthly level means? I checked, and the highest-ranking player stationed at Tian Shu in Linhai City is only a monthly level. There are only two in the entire city." Fang Cheng took a sip of his milk tea.

She continued, "He was also admitted to a university through a special program, but I don't know which school it is."

Su Nian took a sip of milk tea and didn't say anything.

"Niannian, you told me last time that you wanted to find a player in the future. Isn't this a coincidence? The person is right here," Fang Cheng joked.

"Can't you be normal for once?" Su Nian turned around and continued working on her problems.

Fang Cheng looked at her profile; there was a faint blush running from her ear to her neck.

"Su Nian".

"what?"

"You're blushing."