Mo Bai glanced at the time. Only ten minutes had passed, not even an hour yet, so she let Ye Pingjun briefly recount what happened.

The events were more or less what Mo Bai guessed.

The Phantom Butterfly turned into Liu Congyi and lured Ye Pingjun and Ding Xun away. It came into contact with Liu Congyi at the research institute, and she even implanted a Psychological Shadow in it, so it understood Liu Congyi well and imitated her so perfectly that it fooled all three of them.

The first time, it only tricked Ye Pingjun and Ding Xun. On their way to the Abandoned Hospital, they encountered attacks they couldn’t see.

They were beaten badly with club-like weapons. Ding Xun used Extrasensory and clearly sensed the enemy’s position, but whenever she attacked that spot, there was nothing there.

Mo Bai guessed that it was Xie Xingchen’s ability. He hid in a higher-dimensional space, came out to land a blow, and retreated into the space again by the time Ding Xun lunged at him.

This differed slightly from what Mo Bai expected. She assumed that another player openly attacked the three of them, so she never expected Xie Xingchen to do it without even showing his face.

Unable to see or touch their enemy, the three fought bitterly for several minutes. Then Liu Congyi shouted, “I’m going to get help!” and ran off without a trace. No matter how much Ye Pingjun and Ding Xun called after her, she didn’t come back.

The Phantom Butterfly returned and called Gu Tiandong over, claiming, “It’s an emergency! If you don’t go now, Ding Xun is going to be beaten to death!” Thus, Gu Tiandong only had time to write a note.

After Gu Tiandong and the other two regrouped, Xie Xingchen and the Phantom Butterfly toyed with them for a while. Then Dai Qianzhong appeared to rescue them, exposed the Phantom Butterfly’s disguise, and demonstrated Catastrophe-level strength, which earned the three players’ trust.

“You believed her just like that?” Mo Bai asked. She felt that Ye Pingjun wasn’t such a hasty person.

Ye Pingjun sighed. “You don’t know the whole story. She was a little like you. Calm, composed, intelligent, and highly analytical. Even some of the verbal tics she used were a little like yours, so we trusted her without realizing it.”

“She must have pretended to be me. The information about me definitely came from the Phantom Butterfly,” Mo Bai said.

When the Phantom Butterfly wasn’t blinded by love, it was very intelligent. It understood people well and was exceptionally skilled at disguise and deception. It knew exactly how to win the trio’s trust. Without its help, Six Paths and Avici couldn’t lure the three of them away.

Mo Bai felt like swearing, but the butterfly was dead, so cursing it wouldn’t help. Besides, it actually protected her. What a hopelessly tangled mess.

Dai Qianzhong claimed that she was Du Heng’s teammate and a member of Mending Heaven. The three of them never met Du Heng, but they believed her anyway.

Dai Qianzhong led the three of them back to the Smiling Circus to look for Mo Bai. By then, Mo Bai was already on her way to the Abandoned Hospital with the note Gu Tiandong left behind.

When the three saw this, they wanted to go to the Abandoned Hospital as well. Dai Qianzhong agreed, saying that she knew where the hospital was and would lead the way.

She brought them to the fork between the Abandoned Hospital and the Organ Trading Market. At that moment, sharp-eyed Ding Xun spotted Mo Bai’s figure running toward the Organ Trading Market.

Needless to say, the Phantom Butterfly was behind that too.

Ding Xun insisted that they change direction, since she thought something was wrong.

At first, Dai Qianzhong opposed the idea. She said Du Heng was also at the Abandoned Hospital and that she wanted to regroup with him.

But the three insisted on following Mo Bai and splitting up from Dai Qianzhong. Claiming that she was worried about them, Dai Qianzhong followed them instead.

It had to be said that Dai Qianzhong’s tactic of retreating in order to advance only made the three of them more convinced that she was a kind person.

Dai Qianzhong entered the Organ Trading Market first. She told them that she was the team captain, and only the captain could hear what the staff said. She would later relay the information to the three of them.

What happened next was simple. Dai Qianzhong sold them.

She sold Ding Xun and Ye Pingjun whole, but sold only Gu Tiandong’s skin.

She even used the money from selling Ding Xun and Ye Pingjun to arrange an operation for Gu Tiandong.

Dai Qianzhong demanded the trading house to make Gu Tiandong unconscious. For this, she was even willing to let the auction house leave needle marks in Gu Tiandong’s top-grade skin.

After removing Gu Tiandong’s skin, she wanted the trading house to replace it with skin contaminated by disease and severe burns covering most of the body.

His body could be covered in burns, but his face absolutely had to remain normal. Under no circumstances could Gu Tiandong feel pain. In short, they had to do everything possible to keep him from discovering that his body already had many more injuries.

Because Dai Qianzhong’s demands were so extensive, the trading house charged a steep service fee, so Dai Qianzhong was desperately short of trading currency.

Hearing this, Mo Bai sighed.

It was just as she suspected. They brought Gu Tiandong to the Organ Trading Market to destroy his appearance value so they could obtain the card he would turn into.

Mo Bai didn’t understand. Gu Tiandong’s ability was powerful, but defensive abilities were everywhere. Gu Tiandong might not even be the strongest. Why did Six Paths and Avici go to such lengths to obtain his card?

Six Paths and Avici’s plan was excellent, but they failed to account for Ye Pingjun’s luck and Ding Xun’s ability.

Inside the Heart-Mirror Room, Ye Pingjun used the positive effect of his ability. Since time flowed more slowly in the Heart-Mirror Room, the positive effect was nearly complete. During this period, everything he did would succeed, so he was in exceptionally good condition.

While Dai Qianzhong negotiated the conditions of Gu Tiandong’s operation with the staff, Ye Pingjun secretly got Ding Xun to use her ability.

Ye Pingjun wasn’t trying to eavesdrop on Dai Qianzhong’s conversation. He simply wanted Ding Xun to activate Synesthesia and search a wide area for Mo Bai.

To find Mo Bai, Ding Xun extended both her sight and hearing through other people, spreading them across different individuals. Through one customer, she heard Dai Qianzhong’s conversation with a staff member.

It was an accident, and it was also Ye Pingjun’s luck.

Ding Xun frantically signaled the other two with her eyes. Her teammates understood instantly, and the three began planning their escape.

But they were merchandise. How could merchandise possibly escape?

Even if Dai Qianzhong didn’t stop them, the trading house would never allow goods that were already sold to simply run away.

They were surrounded from all sides. Gu Tiandong activated his defensive ability, drawing every attack onto himself, while Ye Pingjun and Ding Xun went on a killing spree, wreaking havoc throughout the market and eliminating many customers and employees.

Gu Tiandong’s defense was simply too powerful. Dai Qianzhong used the Loss of Fighting Spirit card, but her appearance value was too low, so Gu Tiandong’s Cold-Hearted blocked it.

Dai Qianzhong attacked with gravity, but Gu Tiandong’s Keep Your Distance also blocked it.

Every attack from a Catastrophe-level player was actually stopped by Gu Tiandong.

They were just about to escape when a woman and a little girl came downstairs.

The way this mother and daughter existed together was extraordinarily bizarre.

They looked like conjoined twins. The woman carried the little girl on her back, and the girl slept soundly.

Their chests overlapped. Ding Xun heard only one heartbeat and concluded that they shared a single heart.

The visual impact of the sight was terrifying. Gu Tiandong needed only one glance to know that he lost.

His appearance value lost out to this deformed mother-and-daughter pair.

Gu Tiandong wasn’t surprised. The system never judged appearance value by how good-looking someone was, but by how much appeal value that person possessed.

In terms of appeal value, the mother and daughter pair were clearly superior.

Ding Xun heard an employee address the woman as Boss Gao. Her Extrasensory began frantically warning her, so she grabbed Gu Tiandong and Ye Pingjun and ran.

But it was too late.

Boss Gao first gently patted the girl riding on her back. “Don’t be afraid. Mommy will chase the bad people away soon.”

Then she raised her hand and lightly pressed her index finger downward. That single motion was enough to force Gu Tiandong to his knees.

He completely lost his ability and could no longer absorb attacks for his teammates.

After Boss Gao subdued Gu Tiandong, she went back upstairs. She didn’t care about anyone else and only came out to deal with the most troublesome person.

The trading house staff took Gu Tiandong away. Ding Xun rushed after them to save him, but Ye Pingjun dragged her away.

It wasn’t that Ye Pingjun didn’t want to save Gu Tiandong. He simply didn’t have the ability to do so.

Ye Pingjun didn’t know that Observation Group players could turn into cards. As far as he knew, Dai Qianzhong still had a use for Gu Tiandong.

For now, Gu Tiandong’s fate was a skin replacement, and he would at least remain alive. He and Ding Xun, on the other hand, were the ones who were sold whole, meaning that their bodies would be dismantled and distributed among different customers.

Ye Pingjun’s luck was simply too good. With him leading Ding Xun through their escape, neither Dai Qianzhong nor the trading house staff could catch them.

Inside the market, Dai Qianzhong didn’t dare to use any large-scale destructive abilities. She could only use gravity over small areas.

Every time she used gravity on an area, Ye Pingjun happened to change direction at that exact moment and slip past the attack.

After all that chaos, Dai Qianzhong completely exhausted her energy, while Ye Pingjun and Ding Xun remained unharmed.

This continued until Dai Qianzhong took out A Piece of the Story.

This time, Ye Pingjun’s luck disappeared. Against Ultra-Star Rank contamination, luck meant nothing.

He could avoid 99% of all misfortune, but Ultra-Star Rank power covered 100%, leaving Ye Pingjun no gap whatsoever.

Ye Pingjun plunged headfirst into A Piece of the Story and became a mathematics teacher inside the story. Just like in the real world, he became an ordinary teacher at a Mathematical Olympiad tutoring class.

Before losing his sense of self, he wrote a coded plea for help on the blackboard.

During the time Ye Pingjun spent in A Piece of the Story, his life was peaceful. There was no fighting, no death, and no loss.

He even met a woman through a blind date. She was 1.8 meters tall, cheerful and outgoing, with a few freckles on her face and a fondness for dyeing her hair red. Ye Pingjun liked her very much, but he was troubled that she was more than 10 centimeters taller than him, so he bought height-increasing insoles online every day.

His days were trivial but happy, and he never once thought about leaving.

Only when Mo Bai yanked him out of the story did he slowly remember what happened.

“You don’t know what happened to Ding Xun afterward?” Mo Bai asked.

“I know,” Ye Pingjun said. “While I was in the painting, I occasionally heard strange voices. The version of me inside the painting thought I was experiencing ‘auditory hallucinations,’ but those voices actually came from outside. They discussed things right in front of my painting without bothering to hide anything. I heard them, but I treated them as ‘auditory hallucinations.’”

“What happened to Ding Xun?”

Ye Pingjun covered his face in anguish. “I heard that Ding Xun used every card she had until she exhausted all her energy, but they still caught her. Dai Qianzhong sold her whole to the trading house and used the money from selling us to arrange Gu Tiandong’s operation. After the trading house bought Ding Xun, it decided to put her on the auction block to dismantle and sell her piece by piece, hoping to get a higher price.”

Mo Bai took a deep breath and tried her best to calm down before asking, “How long ago were you captured?”

Ye Pingjun thought for a moment. “About... 17 or 18 hours ago. It’s been too long.”

His expression was filled with despair.

“No, it hasn’t been too long. We may still be able to save her!” Mo Bai said firmly.

Ye Pingjun raised his head, his eyes full of hope. He desperately wanted Mo Bai to give him good news.

Mo Bai was always so calm.

Mo Bai said, “They intend to dismantle Ding Xun and sell her. She’s extremely healthy, which means every organ in her body is marketable. There are too many things to sell, so if I were running the trading house, I wouldn’t sell everything in a single auction. I’d divide it across multiple auctions.

“Precious organs like the heart and brain can only be removed once. Once they’re taken out, the person dies. So the trading house wouldn’t perform an operation every time it sold one organ. It would wait until all the merchandise was sold, then perform a single operation and transplant everything at once.

“It would auction off the organs nobody wanted first and tell the customers that only after those items were sold would popular products like the eyes, heart, and skin become available.

If the customers wanted the auction to proceed, they would buy the unpopular merchandise in the hope that the item they truly wanted would appear at the next auction.

That's how the trading house could squeeze the maximum value out of its merchandise and get more money from the customers. There’s an auction every five hours, and another one is about to begin. I guess Ding Xun will still appear on the stage completely intact.”

By the time Mo Bai finished speaking, tears covered the face of Ye Pingjun, who was normally one of the most emotionally stable players.

He wasn’t afraid of dying. He was afraid of losing his teammate.

“Then Gu Tiandong...” Ye Pingjun asked.

“I don’t know.” Mo Bai’s eyes reddened. She closed them for a moment, and when she opened them again, her expression returned to calm.

It was like the final calm before a storm.

“He’s only having his skin replaced. He should be all right, shouldn’t he?” Ye Pingjun asked cautiously, clinging to hope.

“I don’t know.” That was the only answer Mo Bai could give him.

“Player, don’t despair! Your heart rate is already up to 280! As long as we haven’t seen Gu Tiandong’s corpse or his card, there's still hope!” Xiao Qi said nervously inside Mo Bai’s consciousness.

“Turn your back,” Mo Bai told Ye Pingjun.

Ye Pingjun gave Mo Bai a worried look before turning away. He could tell that something was wrong with her too.

The moment Ye Pingjun turned his back, Mo Bai clutched her chest and leaned against the wall. All her strength was drained from her body, and she could barely remain standing with the wall supporting her.

She knew only three players from the Observation Group. Mo Xiangyou was already dead, while Qiu Xuerong set foot on a path with no return. And Gu Tiandong, the first person in Peach Blossom Land to reach out to her with genuine kindness, was he going to leave her too?

Why did it have to be Gu Tiandong?

Everyone was working desperately to defeat the quasi-Ultra-Star Rank monster, yet Six Paths and Avici used such powerful abilities against Gu Tiandong instead.

If Gu Tiandong’s ability could defend against an Ultra-Star Rank monster, then perhaps she could understand. But it couldn’t! He lost to Gao Siyun and her daughter, so why did they still have to capture him?

If they killed Gu Tiandong and obtained his card, would that let them escape the instance? Who gave them such confidence?

Mo Bai couldn’t understand it!

“Player, your heart rate is 290 now,” Xiao Qi said anxiously.

“I’m fine.” Mo Bai’s voice was utterly calm. “Even if my heart rate breaks 300, 400, or 500, I won’t lose to this heart. I’m going to find those three players. I’m going to make them give me an answer. I need to know why.”

After she finished speaking to Xiao Qi, her heart rate miraculously began to fall.

She stepped forward and handed the helmet to Ye Pingjun. “The auction is about to begin. We’re going to rescue Ding Xun. Put this helmet on and hide among the crowd and don’t expose your identity. You’re lucky, so stay in the shadows, watch for anything we miss, and act as an assassin.”

Seeing Mo Bai methodically arrange their next course of action, Ye Pingjun finally felt the weight lift from his chest.

As expected of Mo Bai, a top-tier strategist. Even in circumstances like these, she could still remain so calm.

The two left the rest area. Ye Pingjun didn’t walk beside Mo Bai. Instead, he blended into the crowd and found an inconspicuous corner where he could observe everything around him.

Mo Bai went to the eastern district to rescue Du Heng, who was being held as collateral.

“The auction is about to begin. Would you like to sell the merchandise’s skin to repay the debt?” the registrar asked.

“No rush,” Mo Bai said. “I’ll watch this auction first and decide afterward.”

“All right. I’ll be waiting for you!” the registrar replied.

Mo Bai received a seat number from the registrar and sat down beneath the central stage.

The auction began, and one piece of merchandise after another was sold.

Each auction sold only 10 items. Mo Bai patiently waited through the first nine. When the tenth item appeared, she saw Ding Xun brought out inside a glass coffin.

Ding Xun was anesthetized and was lying unconscious in the middle of the stage.

A spotlight fell across her body, displaying her skin for everyone to see.

The auctioneer announced, “This is the item everyone has been waiting for. During the previous auctions, customers purchased this item’s blood vessels, teeth, bones, liver, kidneys, brain, eyeballs, and other organs. At this auction, we will sell her heart and skin together. Starting bid: 3R!”

Mo Bai stood up.

The auctioneer asked, “Customer, if you wish to bid, simply raise your paddle with the price. There’s no need to stand.”

Mo Bai ignored him. She opened the public channel on her helmet and said to Ye Pingjun and Du Heng, “Time to destroy this instance.”

Now that she knew where all three of her teammates were, there was no reason to hold back.

Mo Bai walked toward the central stage. At some point, the shoes on her feet became a pair of Black Boots.