"Alright, I'll tell you," Liu Mo said quietly, sidling up next to the black-haired boy and leaning close to his ear. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "This happened 140 years ago when Huo Li led our team against the Zerg army. Despite the boss's orders to hold our position, Lewis, one of our team members, took matters into his own hands and led a star fleet to ambush the Zerg army's flank."

The black-haired boy, "..." (Seeking death ah.)

"Can you guess the boss's reaction?" Liu Mo continued in a hushed tone, "Even though the ambush inflicted significant damage on the Zerg at a very small cost, instead of rewarding Lewis, the boss was furious at him for disobeying orders. I'll never forget that day when the boss gathered us with a grim face. Lewis loudly defended his actions, insisting his preemptive attack wasn’t wrong but the boss gave him a cold glance, causing his mouth to shut involuntarily. What happened next was horrifying. Lewis pulled a dagger from his waist and began slicing off his own left thumb, then his index finger... Lewis’s body convulsed from the pain, but he couldn’t scream or stop his hand under the boss’ control. He passed out several times from the pain, only to be forcibly awakened by the boss to continue. The few of us who watched from the sidelines were so scared that we didn't even dare to breathe. We could only stare as Lewis cut off his entire left hand"

The black-haired boy listened intently, his curiosity piqued about what happened to the rest of Lewis's limbs. His eyes sparkled as he asked, "And then? What happened next?"

"And then? What else?" Liu Mo, who had just finished his harrowing tale, was momentarily confused, "The boss punished him by making him slice off his own hand while fully conscious...?"

The black-haired boy frowned in disappointment, "Tch, I thought..."

"You mean the aftermath?" Liu Mo quickly grasped the situation. "Lewis was kicked out of the squad by the boss. He couldn't afford a limb regeneration potion and hasn't fared well in the Salvation Alliance, so he's still just a crippled A-rank savior. They say he’s been saving up points to buy a new hand. On the other hand, the boss was penalized a million points by the main system for 'deliberately harming another savior,' but that’s insignificant to him. After that incident, none of us dared to disobey the boss—not even by showing up a minute earlier than the scheduled 9:15 assembly."

Black-haired youth, “Oh.”

Seeing that the young man was silent, Liu Mo assumed his sister-in-law was frightened by the cold-blooded and ruthless boss in his story. He quickly tried to alleviate the tension, "Sister-in-law, it really was Lewis' fault. Although his surprise attack achieved a temporary victory, it likely disrupted the boss's plans for a greater victory. The boss has every right to respond this way. Think about it: if you were in the boss's position, plotting an intricate strategy, and someone under your command openly disobeyed orders and showed no remorse, wouldn’t you have to take action for the sake of maintaining discipline?"

The black-haired youth interrupted, “I wouldn't.”

"Huh?" Liu Mo was stunned for a moment and then reacted, "Xiao Yi, you are still too kind. Sometimes, many things in the world are not as simple as you think......"

"If it were me," the black-haired boy said firmly, "I wouldn’t just waste one hand but manipulate him to cut off three of his four limbs. The fine is only 3 million anyway!"

Liu Mo imagined the picture, and suddenly shuddered, (Worthy of being their sister-in-law!)

After Liu Mo retreated to his original position, the member at the rear raised another proposal, "We can’t protest against the Alliance, but we can investigate secretly, right? We can’t just sit idly by while the boss is hunted across the galaxy."

Britney chimed in, "And how do we investigate? We’ve been exiled to this remote planet by the main system. Are we supposed to sneak to Happy Planet in a tiny spacecraft from Aliena’s space pocket? That planet is already a wasteland after nuclear bombardments—there’s nothing left to find. Moreover, even the Boss, with his immense psychic ability to control hundreds of people simultaneously, couldn't prove his innocence. So what could we even do?"

The black-haired boy chimed in, "You know, Huo Li might have some proof that he’s innocent and he could just be waiting for the right time to show it. Your boss might be up to something bigger. Just be careful—none of you don’t want to end up like Lewis, right?"

"Sister-in-law is right! Can we really speculate what the boss is thinking? Everything we do is currently under the surveillance of the main system, so we can't act privately anyway!" Liu Mo said as he turned to look at the person who had suggested helping Huo Li. "By the way... who are the people behind you?"

"Liu Mo, don't joke with me! I'm last in line, how can there be anyone behind me?" The savior thought Liu Mo was trying to scare him and casually glanced back—only to scream, "AHHH!"

The savior was startled by the scene he saw under the light of the dim flashlight—four or five figures walking eerily in a straight line and no one knew how long these figures had been following their group.

The black-haired boy cursed, (Not these translucent creatures again!)

"Who are you? Why are you following us?" The savior shouted as he walked towards the group of 'people'.

"Don’t go near them!" the black-haired boy warned, "They aren’t human!"

In mere moments, the figures swayed closer. Panicking, the level 8 savior punched at the nearest figure with enough force to destroy a tank—but his fist passed through its head, accompanied by a sickening squelch.

"Ahhhhhhh!" The strength-based savior recoiled in pain, his arm now covered in the translucent creatures that clung like leeches.

The black-haired boy was just about to help the savior when he felt an overwhelming sense of danger radiating from the front of the group. In the next instant, the translucent creatures turned brittle and crumbled to the ground like dried leaves. Their remains floated softly to the ground in lifeless heaps. The savior, trembling in fear, shook his arm to remove the remnants clinging to his skin and pulled a small vial of healing potion spray from his storage space. He sprayed it liberally over his arm, the solution hissing as it came into contact with his wounds.

“DaLi, don’t be so reckless next time,” Aliena, the acting leader of the team, scolded him as the rest of the team carefully moved forward to inspect the scene.

DaLi didn’t care and spoke with a grin on his face, “What’s the big deal? We’ve got you in the group, don’t we? Little Droplet can turn everything into a dried corpse! Hahaha!”

The team stepped over the remains of the translucent creatures, three of which were half-dried yet still twitching in the air as Aliena deliberately controlled them. She levitated them for closer inspection, carefully recording the features of this mutated species into her smart brain device.

 

“So many cilia,” Britney commented. “How about we call them Floating Paramecia*?"

*Single-celled protists living in water that are covered with numerous short, hairy structures called cilia

 

“That’s a disgusting name,” Aliena replied, “but whatever.”

While the others seemed relaxed, the black-haired boy stood frozen. He hadn’t yet shaken off the oppressive feeling of danger emanating from Aliena earlier. He had initially thought her ability to kill swarms of bats was due to some knowledge of the species’ weaknesses. But now it seemed her power was far stronger than he had imagined.

Testing his theory, the black-haired boy hesitantly asked, “You call Aliena ‘Little Droplet’ because she can control water, right? Even the water inside living organisms?”

“Of course!” Britney answered enthusiastically. “If we ever run out of water, Aliena can extract it directly from the air. We even bathed in the water she had pulled from the atmosphere yesterday! Bugs, bats, zombies—she can drain the water from all of them. She could probably add water back, too. That’s why Little Droplet is the most versatile among us!”

“But,” Liu Mo added, “our Little Droplet is a princess. She can’t control the water in sentient beings. Once, a group of drunks tried to harass her during a mission, and we had to rescue her ourselves.”

The black-haired boy remained silent and thought to himself, (Oh, another master of pretending to be a pig to eat a tiger. If they knew she could reduce any of them into a dehydrated carbon-based corpse powder in a second or rupture their red blood cells by manipulating osmotic pressure, would they still dare laugh so casually around her?)

Aliena, who seemed uneasy about the topic, quickly shifted the conversation, “Xiao Yi, you mentioned encountering these floating creatures earlier when you were alone. How did you get away?”

The black-haired boy paused for 0.3 seconds before answering with a straight face, “I bought a level-7 speed ability from the system mall and ran.”

“Hahaha!” Liu Mo burst out laughing. “Big Sis-in-law is truly a tycoon!”

Britney elbowed Liu Mo and whispered, “Are you an idiot? Bringing up how the boss earned points for Xiao Yi, aren't you just rubbing salt into his wounds? Everyone knows from the Alliance forums that Xiao Yi got 930,000 points from the boss in his first mission world and probably spent most of it by now. How can you still mention the word ‘tycoon’ in a heartless manner?”

Liu Mo shrunk his neck and closed his mouth.

But their whispered conversation was still heard by the black-haired boy and he couldn't help but whisper to the system “System zz2d14, check how many points I have left.”

zz2d14, who had been silent since the confrontation last night, finally said with a sobbing voice, “Master Host, are you finally forgiving me? I swear I didn’t know binding you to the polluted world was a trap! I didn’t mean to hurt you! Sob, sob...”

The black-haired boy replied calmly, “This wasn’t your fault. If anything, I should be apologizing to you.”

zz2d14 burst into tears and laughed: "Really! Master Host? Why?"

Black-haired boy, “If it weren't for me, you wouldn’t have been nerfed to such an idiotic state.”

The system sniffled. “I— am I really stupid?”

While the group was still surrounding Aliena to discuss the living habits of the floating paramecia, the youth continued to whisper to the system, “You're not stupid, okay? Hurry up and check the points for me.”

System zz2d14, “Ding! You have approximately 9,656,260,000 points, 340 million points away from reaching SSS-rank savior.”

The black-haired boy grinned, “Well, I really am a tycoon, I’ll buy 1,000 teleportation talismans.”

System zz2d14, “Ding! Purchase successful! An additional 200 teleportation talismans have been gifted. You now have 1,249 talismans in total.”

Just as the youth was about to browse the system mall, Aliena’s smart brain sounded a blaring alarm. “Beep! Survivor Base is under attack! Beep! A biological invasion was detected five minutes ago! Over a hundred lives are in critical condition! The Survivor Alliance requests Saviors to return for immediate assistance!” The panicked voice of the dispatcher crackled through, barely coherent with fear.

Aliena immediately regained her composure, “Don’t panic! What kind of biological invader?”

The black-haired boy gave up online shopping and held his breath while waiting for the answer.

The dispatcher’s trembling shout came through: “Dandelions!”

The black-haired boy, “…” (Are you kidding me?)

But the faces of his companions turned grim.

“We’re over 1,400 kilometers away from the survivor base,” one of the team members said. “Even if we rush back at full speed, we won’t make it in time.”

Aliena furrowed her brows, “I have a helicopter in my storage space, but it’ll still take us a few hours to get there.”

Britney’s face turned pale, “That's a dandelion! In half an hour, there may be no survivors left at the base!”

Aliena, “The system mall sells long-distance teleportation talisman, but it costs 80 million points and has each person is limited to 3 purchases per month.”

“I have 100 million points. I can buy one,” Liu Mo offered.

“Hurry up,” Aliena instructed. “I’ve already purchased mine. We’ll select four people to return immediately. The rest will head to Manhole Base...”

“Wait,” the black-haired boy interrupted Aliena's flustered arrangements, “zz2d14, buy three long-distance teleportation talismans.”

Three talismans materialized out of thin air on his hands. Without hesitation, he handed two to the team members who had no talisman.

“How do we use these?” he asked.

Alina blinked in surprise but quickly snapped back to focus. “Hold the talisman with both hands and recite the coordinates with me: 98654689…”

In five seconds, the group disappeared from their current location and reappeared in a city over 1,400 kilometers away.

“Slight deviation in long-distance teleportation can’t be avoided,” Alina explained. “The survivor base is now seven kilometers away. Everyone, let's move at full speed. We need to get there in fifteen minutes!”

“Wait!” the black-haired boy interrupted again. This time, he pulled out a stack of ordinary teleportation talisman, shoving them into the hands of the others at lightning speed.

Everyone, “…”

The black-haired boy urged them, “Don’t worry about the cost right now—just teleport back as quickly as we can!”

Although confused, the team subconsciously followed his instructions. Within seconds, they experienced the extravagant sensation of burning through teleportation talisman as if they were confetti. 100,000 points, 100,000 points, and then 100,000 points...... DaLi, an S-rank Savior with a meager 1.6 million total points, burned through over twenty talsimans just to reach the survivor base. By the time his boots hit the cracked concrete floor of the underground base, he was dazed, his legs feeling like jelly. Despite their fatigue, the team quickly rallied to aid the panicked survivors.

The underground base was a chaotic scene filled with screams and cries for help. The black-haired boy, however, remained rooted in place. As he glanced around, realization struck him like a bolt of lightning. His expression twisted in horror as he reached into his now-empty coat pockets.

“Damn it!”

---

On the street 1,400 kilometers away…

The mini Huo Li, who fell to a knee-deep ash of the transparent creatures, got up in a daze and walked out of the pile with his short legs. At the same time, he pondered with his jujube seed-sized brain in a daze, (What happened just now? Where is Xiao Yi? Where should I look for him now?)

He took another uncertain step forward, his tiny figure disappearing into the lifeless wasteland.