A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

"You called me just to say this?"

"Not entirely." Shen Zheng returned to his chair. "Your completion record is quite interesting. First dungeon, D rank, S rating. Second, C rank, S rating. Third, B rank, S rating. All perfect scores."

Zhou Lang remained silent.

Do you know how many players nationwide can achieve a perfect rating for three consecutive dungeons?

"have no idea."

"Seven. You're the eighth." Shen Zheng crossed his legs. "The Bureau of Demon Suppression wants to recruit you."

Zhou Lang was silent for a few seconds. "What are the conditions?"

"Salary and benefits will be based on civil servant standards, with additional subsidies calculated separately according to the difficulty of the dungeon. The equipment and items will be provided by the department, and will be much better than what you find in the dungeon. Most importantly—" Shen Zheng paused, "we have clues about your sister."

The room was silent for three seconds.

Zhou Lang's expression remained unchanged, but he sat up straight.

Where is she?

"Not sure. But we tracked her to the last known location—near the entrance to an A-level dungeon. She disappeared three months ago."

Why are you tracking her?

Shen Zheng glanced at Zhou Lang. "Because she entered the instance on the very first day the bizarre game began, and she survived. The first person to enter and the first to complete it—there are only twelve in the entire world. Your sister is one of them."

Zhou Lang slowly processed this information.

He had been investigating his sister's disappearance, but the information available to ordinary players was far too limited. He knew his sister was no ordinary person—from childhood, her intuition for danger had been ridiculously accurate, and she had evacuated him several times before disaster struck. But he hadn't expected his sister's background to be so deeply involved.

"I can join," Zhou Lang said, "but I have one condition."

"explain."

"Zhao Qiang is coming too."

Shen Zheng frowned. "Zhao Qiang's combat strength—"

"His skill is substitution, which allows him to replace NPCs in dungeons. The potential of this ability is far greater than you estimated," Zhou Lang said. "And I need someone I can trust to check his back."

Shen Zheng thought for a moment, "Okay. But he needs to pass the onboarding assessment."

"no problem."

"There's one more thing." Shen Zheng flipped to the last page of the folder and pushed it in front of Zhou Lang. "Do you know this person?"

The photo shows a woman.

Twenty-five or twenty-six years old, short hair, average-looking, wearing a gray hoodie. His eyes were vacant, like an insect that had been stepped on many times and learned to play dead.

Zhou Lang shook his head.

"Her name is Lin Ran," Shen Zheng said. "She survived a B-level dungeon two days ago. But after coming out, her mental state became extremely unstable. She refused to speak to anyone and showed extreme defensiveness towards anyone who approached her."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"She only said one sentence after she came out," Shen Zheng said, looking into Zhou Lang's eyes, "'Hua Ling Shuang will come.'"

Hua Ling Shuang.

These three words made Zhou Lang pause slightly—not because he recognized the name, but because Han Yingying had mentioned it once in her sleep during the dungeon.

At the time, he thought it was someone Han Yingying knew.

But what if a complete stranger mentions the same name...?

"Who is Hua Ling Shuang?" Zhou Lang asked.

Shen Zheng's expression changed.

It wasn't surprise, nor was it seriousness, but rather a very complex expression—as if he was weighing how much to say.

"A legend." He only said these four words in the end. "There's a saying circulating among the most mysterious players that among the earliest players, one person reached the finish line—a hidden level above the S-rank dungeon. That person won, but the price was being targeted by the mysterious itself."

"and then?"

"Then she disappeared. Just like your sister."

Zhou Lang caught the key phrase. "Her?"

"Yes. Hua Ling Shuang is a woman." Shen Zheng stood up. "I'll show you the full file after you officially start working here. Now—go next door and see your friend."

As Zhou Lang reached the door, Shen Zheng called him back again.

"Zhou Lang".

This time I used my real name.

Zhou Lang stopped, but did not turn around.

"The Bureau of Suppressing Ghosts has investigated your background." Shen Zheng's voice was unhurried. "The official cause of your parents' deaths—it's said to be a car accident—but we have reason to believe it wasn't an accident."

Only the hum of the fluorescent lights remained in the corridor.

Zhou Lang stood there for two seconds.

"I know it wasn't an accident," he said, then pushed open the door and left.

At the end of the corridor, the door to the next room was open. Zhao Qiang sat on the bed, munching on an energy bar, and waved to Zhou Lang when he saw him: "This stuff is awful—what's wrong? You don't look well."

"It's nothing." Zhou Lang sat down beside him. "Zhao Qiang, do you want to be a civil servant?"

Zhao Qiang choked on the energy bar. "What?"

"A secure job with five social insurances and one housing fund, plus equipment provided."

"Are you serious?"

"Hmm. The Bureau of Demon Suppression."

Zhao Qiang's eyes widened, he chewed the energy bar in his mouth twice, and swallowed it.

"Damn, this energy bar suddenly doesn't taste so bad."

Zhou Lang's lips twitched, but he didn't laugh out loud. However, Zhao Qiang could tell that the meaning was there.

On the other side, Han Yingying's room door was closed.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her phone screen lit up, scrolling through her contacts to a name called "Sister Hua".

The number is not in service. It has been inactive for three months.

Han Yingying stared at the screen for a long time before finally turning off her phone and tucking it under her pillow.

Outside the window, the crack in the sky widened another inch. #Chapter Seventeen: A New Dungeon

On the third day after leaving the haunted manor, Zhou Lang received a message.

It wasn't a notification from the game system, but rather from the "Underground Exchange"—an intelligence network spontaneously established by players. The message was brief: near the town of Deer Town, a C-rank dungeon had already swallowed up three groups of players in a row.

Logically speaking, the survival rate in a C-rank dungeon isn't low. The fact that all three groups were wiped out suggests either the players were too incompetent or there was a problem with the dungeon itself.

That's not what Zhou Lang cares about.

What caught his attention was a screenshot attached to the message—a photo taken by a player before their death. The photo was blurry, but there was a figure in the corner, wearing a white dress, with long hair covering her face, and a slender figure.

The resemblance between the two is about 70% similar, as seen in the last surveillance footage before the sister's disappearance.

70% is enough.

Zhou Lang spent 200 yuan to buy an entry ticket to this dungeon. That's right, besides the system's random matching, players can also actively purchase entry tickets to specific dungeons, provided they have the channels and can afford the price.

Before setting off, Zhao Qiang made a phone call.

"Brother Lang, when are you going to the next dungeon? I want to go with you."

"Need not."

"No way, didn't I do a pretty good job last time?"

"You were so scared in the basement that you peed your pants."

There was a three-second silence on the other end of the phone. "...That was water splashed up from a leaking pipe."

Zhou Lang ignored his excuse. "A C-rank dungeon? At your current level, you'd just be feeding the enemy. Stay home and keep an eye on things at the manor."

Zhao Qiang wanted to say something, but Zhou Lang hung up on him.