Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, top floor of a hotel.

A short-haired, eagle-eyed man in a gray suit stood on the balcony, overlooking the brightly lit city below.

The oval room was spacious and bright.

The clean marble floor reflected the dazzling light of the crystal chandelier.

The French windows were wide open, and gusts of cold wind blew in, lifting the dark golden curtains.

It also dissipated the strong, strange smell in the room.

This short-haired, eagle-eyed man was the one players respectfully called the Ant King.

He was the last member of the Avalo family, the uncrowned king who ruled Rio, the leader and brother to whom 13mArk was loyal.

He controlled more than half of Rio's underground trading share, and the companies associated with him provided nearly one-tenth of the entire city's tax revenue.

His name appeared in the morning and evening news. During the day, he was a smiling philanthropist who told fairy tales to kindergarten students.

At night, he was a tyrant who terrified countless villains.

The Ant King's nose was high and straight.

His broad, bronze-skinned hand rested on the balcony railing.

Several blood-red fire ants crawled out of his cuff, rustling on the metal railing.

He gently brushed the fire ants from the railing and put them back into his sleeve, completely unconcerned about whether the ants would bite him.

Besides the suit-wearing man called Ant King,

there were seven other people in the room, all wearing suits.

They were all the Ant King's subordinates, the management of the gang, and also players—after the Ant King learned of the Killing Game a few months ago, he tried to get player qualifications for his confidants.

By killing other players.

These seven people all had an average level above Lv15, with strong strength and luxurious equipment.

Any one of them could stand on their own in Rio, or even Brazil, and no one would dare to provoke them.

But,

only they themselves knew that,

all their strength came from the Ant King's gift.

They could be the Ant King's subordinates, the Ant King's butlers, the Ant King's partners,

but they could never become the most trusted person by the king's side.

Or rather, the person who was once most trusted.

Pairs of eyes gathered on the corpse placed on the floor of the room.

The corpse was generally dark green, its skin swollen with water, uneven.

Large patches of skin on the head, body, and limbs were stuck together, making it difficult to distinguish the outline of the body, and impossible to see the face.

According to the rules of the Killing Game, players enter and exit scripts in an instant.

If a player dies in a script mission, their body will be teleported out and appear at the location where they entered the script.

A young woman with a neat short ponytail squatted next to the corpse.

Her index finger transformed into a miniature robotic arm, extending dozens of syringes, inserting them into different positions on the corpse, and extracting dark green body fluid.

It was then imported into a portable analyzer connected to the other end of the miniature robotic arm.

The analyzer emitted a "beep" sound.

The ponytail woman glanced at the two overlapping lines on the screen, stood up from the ground, and nodded to the Ant King, "It's him."

"..."

The Ant King didn't say anything, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

His fist clenched.

The light of the crystal chandelier flickered non-stop, the ground trembled slightly, and crimson ripples stirred in the wine glasses placed on the table.

The seven people in the room silently endured it, feeling as if they were standing in front of a tornado, forced to face the surging power of violent rage.

"Huff..."

Emotions came quickly and left quickly.

The Ant King regained his composure, released his clenched fist, slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air, and looked at his subordinates, "Can you extract the memories?"

The ponytail woman silently shook her head, "This body... has traces of being soaked in digestive juices.

It's like being swallowed by something, and then pieced back together again."

Swallowed?

The Ant King's eyes narrowed, "What about the things on him?"

The woman replied, "They're all gone, only a scrap mechanical arm is left, not worth repairing."

The Ant King nodded and looked at the tall, square-faced white man standing a little further away, "Can you find the person who killed him?"

The white man was silent for a moment, then shook his head, "The person who killed him is not in this world."

"...I see."

The Ant King lowered his eyes and opened the friend communication panel.

The ponytail woman hesitated for a moment, and said softly, "Then 13mArk, he..."

There was no emotion in the Ant King's eyes, "Take it down and bury it on a chosen day."

A short, thin figure cloaked in a black robe said in a low voice, "This subordinate heard that Prometheus Labs has a Nirvana Project, as long as you provide genes, you can clone..."

"Do you think that has any meaning?

Do you think I would want to do that?"

The Ant King's cold gaze swept over his subordinates like a steel knife, "Dead is dead.

The so-called cloning, Nirvana, rebirth,

are just forcibly retaining the afterimage of someone you cherish.

I am not that weak, and neither is 13mArk.

Cherish every second of life,

and then, turn the fear of death into a thirst for power."

————

Li Ang: [Is 5000 game coins the market price for redeeming a Perfect and an Excellent item?]

Bai Haozheng: [It should be. The market price for Perfect-level equipment is around 8000 game coins, and the price of Perfect-level logistics items is even higher. The Mercury Bloodstone's effect is quite powerful, and it has a miraculous effect when combined with a tracking chip. The two together can be sold for about that much. However, these two pieces of equipment originally belonged to the Ant King, and the Mercury Bloodstone has the risk of being linked and locked. If you want to remove the link, you have to find a professional curse breaker and spend a lot of money to cast a spell to remove the curse. After calculating all the expenses, the profit is almost the same as auctioning the equipment at the auction house.]

Bai Haozheng replied very quickly. He was originally the intermediary Li Ang didn't want to show his face to find. Even the intermediary fee was waived because of the friendship of helping each other in the script.

Whether Li Risheng was willing to return the equipment, and how much profit he would get from returning it, had nothing to do with him.

Li Ang: [Then 5000 it is, thanks for the trouble.]

He could actually stuff the Mercury Bloodstone into the universal pulverizer and pulverize it into raw materials.

However, the forging furnace can currently only create Excellent-level items at most. Even if he gets Perfect-level materials, it will be a waste.

It's better to exchange them for real gold and silver game currency, and save them up to purchase the equipment he wants.

[It's okay, if you agree, I'll go find the Ant King to deliver the goods.]

After obtaining Li Ang's consent, Bai Haozheng confirmed with the Ant King and chose the meeting place in a building on the east side of the square.

Many of the hundreds-of-story buildings in the square have been acquired by organizations formed by multinational commercial companies, renting out several connected floors to organizations that cannot afford or do not want to buy complete land.

These were used as organizational strongholds, restaurants, hotels, commercial meeting centers, media centers, and so on.

Bai Haozheng didn't know why that Li Risheng was so cautious, even returning equipment and earning fees legitimately, he had to ask someone else to do it for him.

Logically speaking, Li Risheng has strong personal strength, is intelligent and brave, good at both combat and decryption.

According to the information learned from Wanli Fengdao, he is also the shopkeeper of the Unscathed Furnace shop and is proficient in logistics skills.

The Special Affairs Bureau had long wanted to recruit him, and had sent Xing Hechou to invite him more than once, but the other party politely declined each time, which was puzzling.

"Judging from the results of the different versions of psychological profiling from the bureau, Li Risheng doesn't seem like the kind of arrogant person who would rather be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix..."

Bai Haozheng thought about the information about Li Risheng that he had seen before, and walked on the road of the game square with a indifferent expression.