Chapter 173| Chapter 174| Chapter 175
Chapter 173: Falling
Lu Yunxi sprinted along the path for a short distance, quickly calculating that the tiger’s velocity parameters would allow it to close the gap within seconds. She reached out, firmly snagged Zhou Yu’s sleeve, and commanded, “Abort the flight sequence. My combat rating is high enough to neutralize it. Scale that tree immediately and hold your position!”
Before Zhou Yu could voice a single word of protest, Lu Yunxi executed a fluid upward thrust, hoisting the girl’s vessel straight into the canopy.
The entire animation took barely a second.
Zhou Yu landed flat against a thick oak branch with a dull thud.
“Sister Lu!” she shrieked, instantly breaking into a frantic sweat as she peered down from the leaves.
Lu Yunxi let out a quiet sigh of relief, pivoting smoothly to face the massive apex predator.
Granted, the tiger boasted an impressive physical frame, but within the server’s database, it only registered as a standard high-level wilderness mob. For an elite player who routinely dismantled grandmaster-tier human opponents as if she were slicing through soft melons, executing a beast of this caliber was child’s play.
She could easily wipe its health bar in less than sixty seconds.
Humming a casual tune under her breath, she calmly monitored the tiger’s vital gauges. Once its HP dropped to the absolute brink, she braced her footing to deliver the final execution strike.
Swoosh!
A sharp, high-velocity arrow suddenly sliced through the airspace, embedding itself into the dirt beside the mob.
A dangerous chill flared in Lu Yunxi’s eyes, her expression instantly darkening.
An unauthorized kill-steal!
She spun her head around, her sensors locking onto a small hunting party standing a short distance away. The group was adorned in ridiculous tribal garb, sporting heavy crowns of multicolored chicken feathers that made them look exactly like primitive savages.
Standing firmly at the vanguard, the man with the tallest cluster of chicken feathers held a drawn recurve bow, his aiming reticle fixed squarely on the bleeding tiger.
“State your registry,” she demanded, her tone dropping into a freezing register.
“Haha! Rest easy, little sister, there’s no need for formal pleasantries!” the leading savage barked, stowing his bow and sauntering forward with a smug, patronizing grin. “Our party simply happened to intercept your coordinates mid-transit. Recognizing your avatar was facing a lethal hazard code, we graciously intervened to salvage your health bar!”
Lu Yunxi let out a cold, silent snort.
Her advanced sensors had mapped their tracking markers long ago; they had been lurking in the brush throughout her entire engagement with the beast. She had initially archived them as harmless local commoners idling by to watch a premium combat showcase, which was why she hadn’t bothered to deploy an area-of-effect crowd control spell. Who could have foreseen they would wait until the tiger’s HP was thoroughly depleted before leaping out to claim the bounty?
Did they honestly compute that because she could overpower an apex predator, she would somehow lack the parameters to delete a few low-level bandits? How profoundly dense.
“Eldest Brother… that woman just sustained a prolonged melee engagement against an apex tiger,” a bandit in the rear whispered, his voice trembling as he tugged at the leader’s cloak. “Look at her stance… shouldn’t our units execute a rapid retreat before she logs our names?”
“Are you completely out of your mind?!” the leader hissed back, glaring at his subordinate. “If we abort the raid now, the Guild Leader will personally clear our profiles! Maintain your ground! No matter how broken her raw attributes are, a marathon combat sequence like that has undoubtedly drained her stamina pool to zero. She doesn’t have a single active frame left!”
Reassured by the logic, the craven bandits managed to recover their courage. Lining up behind the man with the tallest feathers, they began slowly, menacingly closing the distance.
Lu Yunxi lowered her chin, a calculating glint flaring across her pupils. The exact microsecond her face returned to their line of sight, her posture underwent a dramatic shift—she staggered backward two paces, casting her arms wide as she simulated absolute exhaustion and frantic terror.
Seeing her project such a vulnerable status debuff, the savages grew immensely excited, their movements turning incredibly aggressive as they prepared to execute a capture script.
However, right at that tactical junction—
“Get away from her, you absolute trash!” a fierce, shrill voice boomed from the rafters, instantly followed by a barrage of heavy, hard-shelled mountain fruits.
The projectiles rained down upon the bandits’ heads like a localized meteor strike.
“Ouch! Argh! Watch the structural damage!” The savages frantically threw their arms over their crowns, scattering in all directions to evade the heavy pelting.
Lu Yunxi blinked, briefly thrown off the script before she remembered she had stashed Zhou Yu in the branches directly above.
The transmigrator’s anxiety metrics had completely peaked. Moving her limbs in a frantic, alternating blur of motion, her left hand aggressively harvested the heavy fruits from the branches while her right hand continuously spammed the throw animation.
Unfortunately, because she was facing a multi-unit crowd solo, her localized damage output was quickly overwhelmed by their numbers.
“Miserable wench! How dare a low-level maid inflict physical damage on our vanguard?!” the leader roared, wiping fruit pulp from his feathers as his strong legs exploded into a charge toward her tree trunk. “Form up! Scale the rafters and drag her down!”
The rest of the bandits roared in approval. Completely bypassing Lu Yunxi’s “exhausted” avatar, they unifyed their pathing and swarmed Zhou Yu’s coordinates without a shred of hesitation.
Zhou Yu panicked completely, her throwing animations turning wildly uncoordinated as the hostiles closed the distance.
Lu Yunxi’s eye twitched. Recognizing it was no longer logistically viable to maintain her fragile maiden disguise, her hand shot toward her inventory to draw her recurve bow.
But before her arrow could even clear the quiver, a sharp scream pierced the canopy.
Overwhelmed by sheer panic, Zhou Yu’s hand placement glitched, her fingers slipping entirely from the bark as her physical vessel plunged straight out of the rafters.
The unexpected physics calculation startled the advancing bandits as well; they broke into frantic shouting, scattering wildly to avoid the falling collision box. But because their pathing lines were tightly compressed, their retreat devolved into a chaotic mess. Multiple units collided head-on, crashing heavily into the dirt and howling in agony as their health meters ticked down.
Completely abandoning their aggressive scripts, the bruised bandits scrambled onto all fours, desperately crawling through the mud to escape the impact zone.
On the opposite side of the clearing, Lu Yunxi’s heart violently leaped into her throat. Snapping her bow back into her inventory, her light footwork activated in a flash as she blurred across the distance to intercept the falling girl.
It wasn’t until her arms successfully locked around Zhou Yu’s plummeting torso—absorbing the full kinetic impact of the drop—that her processing units finally registered she could have simply cast her transparent protective barrier to neutralize the fall.
She stared down at the transmigrator huddled securely in her embrace, who was actively shaking from the residual psychological shock, and let her eye twitch in silence.
Carefully setting Zhou Yu down onto the grass, Lu Yunxi gently rotated her own shoulder, testing her numb, bruised forearms. “Report status. Are your vital signs secure? Did your vessel sustain any structural damage?”
Zhou Yu sat frozen in the dirt for several long seconds, her processing units gradually clearing the shock before her eyes welled with tears. She frantically scrambled upward, grasping Lu Yunxi’s arms. “My health bar is untouched! Sister Lu… please, let me verify your parameters! Are your forearms completely broken?!”
“Rest easy. It is merely a minor kinetic bruise,” Lu Yunxi replied with a calming smile.
While the strike hadn’t triggered a critical vital failure—meaning her high-tier self-healing arts wouldn’t even register the damage—the sheer weight of a fully grown human falling from that height had completely numbed the nerve channels in both her hands.
For at least a full calendar week, her manual dexterity parameters would remain at absolute zero. She would be completely incapable of gripping a weapon or executing physical combat animations.
A severe headache throbbed behind her temples.
Stripped of my primary armaments and entirely unable to deploy my fists… how am I supposed to clear the map if we trigger a secondary hostile encounter?
Zhou Yu dusted off her trousers and scrambled to her feet, leaning over with intense anxiety to examine the limbs. Even though Sister Lu insisted her parameters were stable, her modern logic refused to process the claim. Back in her original world, catching an object of that weight falling from a high tier would permanently shatter a person’s skeletal structure, let alone an avatar of Lu Yunxi’s size.
Across the lane, the scattered bandits finally recovered from their panic, their localized pathing loops stabilizing as they observed the targets.
“Advance the line!” the leader sneered, a wave of profound, oily malice burning in his pupils as he tracked their movements. “That wench just absorbed a full-velocity human impact with her bare limbs; her arm parameters are completely bricked! Move in and secure the assets!”
The massive group re-formed their perimeter, plastering disgusting, mocking grins across their faces as they closed the loop.
Zhou Yu’s expression turned incredibly fierce. Stepping forward, she completely blocked Lu Yunxi behind her own fragile frame, her voice cracking as she barked: “Maintain your distance! What do you think you’re doing?!”
Deep within a remote, uncharted mountain sector of the Flower Continent.
A primitive, fortified bandit settlement occupied the ravine.
Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu had been systematically bound with heavy utility rope until they resembled tight dumplings, before being carelessly dumped onto the dirt floor of a secluded thatched hut.
“I am so deeply sorry, Sister Lu… I wish my baseline attributes were high enough to assist your unit,” Zhou Yu whispered, her voice thick with profound guilt. Had Sister Lu been navigating the map solo, her broken stats would have allowed her to effortlessly clear the sector. It was her own faulty pathing that had dragged her companion’s parameters into the mud…
“Do not let your morale drop,” Lu Yunxi replied softly, closing her eyes to expand her acoustic sensors across the perimeter. The environmental audio filtering through the mud walls was a chaotic mix of clinking clay cups, rowdy shouting, and boisterous laughter. “My sensors indicate a high-volume celebratory banquet is currently initializing across the main settlement. The hostiles are far too occupied with their internal event to allocate resources to our containment.”
She offered a light, confident smile to soothe her companion’s anxiety. “Give my system a few days. The micro-paralysis across my forearms will automatically clear, and these low-level commoners won’t stand a chance against my build.”
Sure enough, just as her analysis projected, the bandits outside were completely wrapped up in their festive metrics, totally erasing the two captives from their immediate checklist.
Midnight initialized.
The rowdy racket across the central plaza gradually bottomed out, leaving nothing behind but the rhythmic, ambient chirping of the local cicadas.
Thoroughly drained by the day’s stress, Zhou Yu’s system entered a deep sleep state.
Suddenly, Lu Yunxi’s eyes snapped wide open within the darkness.
A succession of heavy, highly erratic footsteps was rapidly approaching the threshold of their hut, accompanied by a slurred, lisping voice script.
“I… I demand another jar of the premium brew! Do not attempt to restrict my consumption meters!”
“Peerless wine! Peerless wine, I tell you! To command a vintage this pristine, with a high-tier beauty waiting in my quarters… even a god from the upper realms wouldn’t dare trade places with my profile!”
“Hold the loop… a premium beauty? Did the Guild Leader not import two fresh maiden assets into the inventory logs this morning?”
The rest of his sub-party had already suffered a total stamina failure from the alcohol, their bodies collapsing flat onto the cobblestones outside. However, this single bandit’s lecherous parameters remained active; he staggered blindly toward their coordinates, his pathing entirely unstable.
Lu Yunxi tracked his trajectory with absolute clarity. With a subtle, precise flick of her numb wrist, she manipulated her spatial inventory, unscrewing a premium medicine vial.
The exact millisecond she finished dispersing a cloud of specialized knockout powder into the localized airspace, the thatched door was violently kicked open.
“My sweet little beauties… hehehe…”
The man lunged forward blindly. But before his boots could even clear two paces, his system suffered an absolute crash, and he collapsed face-first into the dirt with a massive bang, throwing up a dense cloud of dust.
Lu Yunxi swept a freezing, detached glance across his unconscious form before closing her eyes to resume her rest cycle.
The following morning initialized.
A piercing, high-decibel shriek suddenly erupted right beside her ear, violently shaking the rafters.
“Heaven protect us! What tier of nightmare script is this?!”
Zhou Yu’s brow furrowed into a deep knot as her eyes fluttered open, thoroughly irritated to have her sleep cycle broken by such an aggressive audio output at this hour. She was honestly…
“Ahhhh—!”
The exact microsecond her visual sensors booted up, the horrific imagery rendered on her interface caused her survival instincts to flare. She desperately attempted to execute a rapid back-dash, but her wrists and ankles remained tightly bound by the slaver’s rope, restricting her movement entirely to her feet.
Her body began violently twisting and thrashing against the floorboards like a giant maggot, her pupils shaking wildly with unadulterated terror.
Lu Yunxi let her eyes roll back briefly before furrowing her brow, masterfully mimicking a baseline NPC who had just sluggishly cleared a sleep state. “What is the meaning of this commotion? My audio tracking is picking up a massive volume of screaming… is it possible the hostiles—”
Before she could finish delivering her dialogue tree, Zhou Yu whirled her torso around, locking her eyes directly onto her companion’s form. The moment she parsed Lu Yunxi’s facial variables, an even more heartbreaking, agonizing shriek tore from her throat.
“Ahhh! Sister Lu! Your… your vessel… what happened to your stats?!”
Zhou Yu stared at her, her eyes dilating with pure, unmitigated horror.
At this moment, Lu Yunxi’s entire visible skin surface was completely covered in deep, terrifying purple-and-blue contusions, looking exactly as though her avatar had just endured a prolonged, horrific bout of physical torture.
Within the entire room, the only entity whose vessel appeared pristine was the unconscious bandit sprawling in the dirt, who merely sported a few minor, ordinary bruises from his fall.
Chapter 174: Chicken Soup
Zhou Yu looked at the horrific purple bruises covering Sister Lu’s body, then at the unconscious man sprawling in the dirt, and instinctively slapped both hands over her mouth.
She didn’t need anyone to explain the data. She knew exactly what kind of horrific script had initialized in this room while her own system was offline.
That vile, sub-human bandit must have breached the perimeter in the dead of night, and Sister Lu had thrown her own physical vessel forward to absorb the aggression, enduring an absolute nightmare to shield her companion…
The realization completely shattered Zhou Yu’s morale.
“Sister Lu… those animals… they deserve to be permanently deleted from the server!” she wailed, tears and snot mixing in a frantic blur as she desperately thrashed against her ropes, attempting to drag her bound body over to Lu Yunxi’s side.
Lu Yunxi monitored Zhou Yu’s frantic writhing, noting the heavy friction parameters were already causing her skin to blister and bleed against the floorboards. She let out a sharp, controlled breath.
“Halt your movement! Maintain your current coordinates—I am perfectly fine!” she commanded, her voice dropping into a freezing register to forcibly arrest the girl’s hysterical panic loop.
Unfortunately, Zhou Yu was far too deeply immersed in a localized feedback loop of intense sorrow, hatred, and agonizing self-blame to parse the audio file. She completely failed to process the clarification.
Lu Yunxi issued a silent, heavy sigh. Thank the heavens my inventory is stocked with highly specific knock-out powders engineered to neutralize volatile demographics. Otherwise, managing this emotional chaos would be a total logistical disaster.
With a subtle, invisible flex of her wrist, she seamlessly dispersed another micro-cloud of the specialized alchemical compound into the air.
Absolutely no one detected the faint, earthy aroma of fresh moss and local flora that suddenly saturated the room’s atmospheric metrics.
Zhou Yu managed to drag her frame forward a few more inches before her visual interface abruptly blacked out, and her consciousness dropped straight to zero.
Concurrently, a massive wave of residual exhaustion pulled at Lu Yunxi’s own system parameters. She fought aggressively to force her heavy eyelids open, desperate to maintain surveillance, but the sheer weight of the chemical draft overrode her endurance, forcing her avatar into an uncontrollable sleep state.
Bare minutes later, the bandit lookouts guarding the exterior unbarred the door, their faces twisting into absolute shock as they surveyed the scene.
“Disaster! Are these two premium female assets going to suffer a permanent system wipe before we can even process their contracts?!”
“Fucking hell, I haven’t even had a single turn to run a basic interaction script with them! This is entirely that idiot’s fault—secretly altering his pathing to hunt for women in the dead of night!” one bandit snarled, spitting a torrent of curses into the dirt before aggressively delivering a heavy boot straight into the ribs of the unconscious intruder.
The remaining lookouts instantly synchronized their aggro, thoroughly enraged by the logistical mess, and began taking turns kicking the paralyzed man over and over again.
The Bandit Chief stood at the back of the room, deliberately looking the other way to ignore the physical discipline.
In truth, his own anger parameters were peaking. He was the undisputed apex boss of this entire mountain stronghold! Yet he hadn’t even been granted a single baseline encounter with the new captives before some low-level underling glitched the system!
“Chief, what is our secondary protocol regarding these two damaged assets?” a lieutenant asked, his brow furrowed in deep frustration.
The Bandit Chief narrowed his eyes. His initial tactical impulse was to command his units to carelessly dump the two sickly, high-maintenance women over the ravine cliffs. But recalling the stark demographic crisis facing their stronghold—not a single fresh female entity had spawned into their territory for months—he forcibly checked his irritation.
“Deploy a scout to the nearest settlement and capture a local physician to run a diagnostic on their vitals,” the Chief commanded flatly. “If their systems command enough structural integrity to survive the patch, transition them to a rest cycle. If their health bars are irreversibly bricked, discard them.”
Inside the thatched medical bay, a white-haired old physician sat with his brow knit into a severe, intensely solemn knot.
The bandit henchman anchoring the perimeter was rapidly losing his patience, stepping forward to aggressively bark, “Has your processing concluded yet, you ancient fossil?! Your fingers have been locked onto her pulse monitors for an eternity! What exact data have you extracted from the system? Do not dare claim your diagnostics are empty… If you play games with our syndicate, we will permanently delete your profile! You are courting death!”
The old physician violently shuddered, his internal thoughts frantic with panic. The absolute second I clear this security perimeter, I need to evacuate this mountain sector immediately!
He had always found it highly anomalous that this particular ridge spawned such a high density of premium alchemical herbs, yet the regional merchant guilds consistently refused to send foraging teams up the trails. Now the map data was perfectly clear: this mountain was an active bandit stronghold. Had he not been mindlessly tracking a rare botanical node, his pathing would never have collided with their scouts, preventing his forced abduction up the peak.
He swallowed hard, desperate to stabilize his stress meter as he meticulously evaluated the targets’ physical variables.
However, the deeper his diagnostics ran, the more profoundly horrified his processor became.
“The metrics are catastrophic!” the old man declared, forcing his voice into a stern register as he turned to face the captors, desperately suppressing his intense terror. “These two maidens have sustained profound structural trauma; their baseline vitality pools are completely drained, leaving them in an exceptionally fragile state. They require absolute stasis.”
The more he tracked their physical indicators, the more his internal moral alignment blazed with righteous fury, but commanding zero combat parameters, he could only choke down his anger. “Their profiles must remain entirely exempt from any sexual interaction loops or physical labor scripts for the foreseeable future. If you enforce any heavy activity parameters under their current condition, their health bars will instantly bottom out, resulting in a total lifecycle termination.”
“What is the operational workaround then? Are they hard-coded to die? Is there absolutely zero medical patch we can apply to salvage the assets?” The lieutenant stared down at the two beautiful girls resting on the cot, his lecherous eyes filled with intense fascination before he reluctantly tore his gaze away.
It wasn’t as if their stronghold hadn’t successfully kidnapped female entities from passing caravans before, but not a single historical asset had ever commanded aesthetic parameters anywhere near this high! It would be an absolute tragedy if their avatars were wiped from the server like this.
The physician lowered his eyes, lapsing into a brief, calculated silence to manipulate the data. “Provided their characters are granted premium, high-tier care, they can bypass a permanent vital failure even without the intervention of expensive alchemical draughts. But the core restriction stands: can your organization afford to let them idle in total luxury without generating a single shred of labor value?”
“If we bypass the medicine, what is the exact duration counter on their recuperation cycle before they can resume their assigned chores?” the bandit pressed, his brow furrowing.
The Bandit Chief had explicitly hard-coded a zero-tolerance policy for idle units; if an asset failed to generate operational utility, it possessed zero justification to occupy real estate within the stronghold.
The physician’s eyes flashed with a sharp, guarded light, his navigation lines intentionally shifting to avoid direct eye contact with the hostile. “The structural alignment will require a minimum of half a year to fully nurse back to baseline.”
In reality, given Lu Yunxi’s actual parameters, a brief fortnight would have more than sufficed to patch her system completely.
But running a basic moral analysis on the targets, it was blindingly obvious these two girls hadn’t voluntarily spawned into this bandit lair. While his low-level attributes prevented him from executing a combat breakout to rescue them, he could at least deploy his medical authority to buy them an extended operational delay.
The bandit’s brow knit into a tight knot. “Freeze your position here,” he grunted, before rapidly sprinting out of the medical bay to relay the diagnostic data to the leadership tier.
The high-ranking bandits held a swift administrative meeting, ultimately deciding to authorize the extended stay for the two girls.
Back in the historical server cycles, their syndicate could easily track regional trade routes, snatching up young maidens at will and running whatever horrific degradation scripts they desired without a single second thought. But in recent years, the metropolitan merchants had completely abandoned this route, leaving the local traffic entirely dry. Every single female asset was now a highly scarce commodity; they had to maximize the preservation metrics of every woman they held.
Once the bandits verified that the girls’ recovery didn’t require drawing down their expensive medicinal stockpiles, they carelessly chased the old physician down the mountain.
Absolutely no one within the room noticed that beneath her unconscious facade, Lu Yunxi’s lips slowly, elegantly curved into a sharp, triumphal smile against the pillows.
“What is the meaning of this garbage layout today? What exact trash did your kitchen staff dump into this bowl? It tastes completely like tap water! I refuse to ingest this!” Lu Yunxi snapped. She scooped up a primitive wooden spoon, carelessly stirring the thin broth before her expression violently darkened. With a theatrical flourish, she slammed the utensil back into the basin and aggressively shoved the entire tray away.
The heavy ceramic bowl slid violently across the wooden table, the kinetic velocity causing the thin soup to slosh over the rim, spilling two large drops onto the raw wood.
The bandit assigned to her service detail tightly clenched his teeth, desperately fighting to force his rage metrics down while his core processor flooded with pure, unmitigated regret.
Had I possessed the data to anticipate this nightmare, I would have personally thrown these two high-maintenance psycho-witches over the cliff face the exact day they spawned! Instead of keeping them anchored to our real estate! Now my daily schedule is completely ruined because I am hard-coded to act as their personal butler!
“You…” The bandit’s knuckles turned white as he clenched his fists, thick veins bulging violently along his forehead as he glared at the captives with deep, venomous resentment.
Over the past few days, the exact microsecond the two girls cleared their sleep cycles, they began executing a non-stop loop of high-volume screaming and structural demands, completely bricking his mental stability! He was truly at his absolute breaking point.
Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu simultaneously unleashed a pair of sharp, terrified shrieks, folding their hands tightly across their chests as they put on a masterclass performance of absolute, cowering terror.
“Are you planning to launch a physical assault against our defenseless vessels? Oh, my system is completely paralyzed with fear!” Lu Yunxi whimpered, executing a series of soft, pathetic sniffling audio cues.
Zhou Yu’s baseline acting parameters weren’t anywhere near as optimized; she could only lock her chin to her chest, desperately biting her lip to suppress the hysterical laughter threatening to break her disguise.
Initially, when she had first parsed the horrific contusions covering Sister Lu’s avatar, she had genuinely believed a catastrophic assault script had initialized, leaving her in a state of profound, hollow despair. Who could have guessed that the entire visual nightmare was merely a high-tier cosmetic illusion generated by the alchemical powder Sister Lu had casually dispersed? The sheer brilliance of her strategic manipulation was mind-blowing!
These days, watching Sister Lu systematically break the psychological parameters of these terrifying bandits had transformed into her absolute favorite daily content.
The low-level bandit underling was practically vibrating with pure, unbridled fury, but his programming strictly prevented him from executing a physical strike, terrified that triggering their stress meters would cause the Bandit Chief to permanently delete his profile. “Fine… what exact adjustments do your profiles require?!”
“My system requires a high-density, premium-steeped chicken broth immediately,” Lu Yunxi commanded without a second thought.
“And my profile requires an order of high-spice, slow-braised rabbit heads,” Zhou Yu chimed in, keeping her head low to hide her smirk.
“…” The bandit butler’s eyes rolled back so hard he nearly suffered a visual error from sheer frustration.
These two women were an absolute, game-breaking nuisance! If the Bandit Chief hadn’t explicitly mandated that the entire workforce must prioritize and fulfill their absolute every whim, he would have logged off this chore days ago. Premium poultry and wild game were high-tier luxury drops that even the core combat units barely got to consume a handful of times across an entire fiscal year!
He violently slammed the heavy wooden door behind him, stomping down the corridor.
However, this initial conflict was merely the baseline introduction to their torment.
Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu systematically optimized their behavioral loops to mimic the most demanding, toxic, high-maintenance troublemakers the server had ever rendered, constantly firing off chaotic demands to clutter the bandits’ logistics.
“Why exactly is the temperature parameter of this bathwater flashing blue? It is freezing! Fire up the wood reserves and boil a fresh batch immediately, and ensure your gatherers forage a sufficient volume of fresh flower petals to coat the surface. My vessel requires a premium, aromatic cleansing cycle tonight.”
“The thermal radiance from the noon sun is actively inflicting structural damage on my skin parameters… You useless parasites! Scale the mountain peak immediately and harvest a crate of cooling, high-grade medicinal flora. I need to formulate a soothing facial mask to restore my aesthetic variables. Make absolutely sure your units only pluck the youngest, softest leaf sprouts and discard the mature foliage… What do you mean those specific plants only spawn on the absolute highest crags of the peak? It is a simple terrain navigation, are you seriously claiming your physical builds lack the agility to clear a basic mountain climb?!”
“My character requires a fresh set of premium silk garments—woven from the absolute softest, most high-value fabric available in the metropolitan databases… Did your raiding parties not successfully execute a high-yield ambush against a wealthy merchant caravan just last week? How is it mathematically possible that your base inventory contains zero luxury textiles?!”
“…”
The calendar pages turned day by day.
The two unfortunate low-level underlings assigned to manage Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu’s daily maintenance tickets eventually suffered a total psychological collapse. They ran out of the residential courtyard with tears literally streaming down their faces, their morale bars completely shattered.
Observing the baseline systemic failure, the Third-in-Command of the stronghold ran a quick diagnostic and decided to rotate a fresh set of guards into the sector to handle the assignment.
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last long for the management. The replacement butler units possessed zero baseline resistance against their high-intensity psychological warfare; the entire second wave collapsed and abandoned the shift within a single 24-hour cycle.
Once the administrative script had systematically rotated through every single low-level minion in the entire bandit database, the Third-in-Command finally realized the stronghold was facing an absolute structural emergency.
His database had never encountered a pair of captive assets who possessed the raw, unadulterated capability to psychologically dismantle an entire military stronghold!
He flatly refused to believe that if he personally stepped into the arena to manage the containment, his own high-tier authority parameters wouldn’t be enough to stabilize the situation.
Fueled by immense skepticism and burning irritation, the Third-in-Command of the mountain fortress marched aggressively toward the residential pavilion where Lu Yunxi and her companion were garrisoned.
However, what his analytical units failed to compute was that Lu Yunxi’s manual dexterity parameters had already achieved a perfect, one hundred percent recovery—and Zhou Yu was fully synced with the data.
The two girls harbored absolutely zero fear regarding his arrival, entirely prepared to order the elite boss around exactly as they pleased.
Chapter 175: Warning
The Third Master was ordered around in circles. After a frantic day of being at their beck and call, he finally came to his senses.
Wait a minute, this was completely wrong! He had marched over here specifically to teach these two a lesson. How on earth had he ended up becoming their personal servant?!
“Are you two completely unconcerned about my wrath?!” The Third Master wiped a thick sheen of sweat from his forehead, locking a freezing glare onto them. “You clearly lack the database to know who I am. I am the absolute authority in charge of the personnel, rations, and logistics for this entire stronghold. If you persist in testing my patience, I will ensure your food supply drops to absolute zero.”
Naturally, Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu were already fully aware of his role. They had systematically mapped out the stronghold’s leadership hierarchy days ago.
The First Master commanded the highest combat rating and regularly led the raiding parties outside alongside the Second Master. The Third Master, conversely, had apparently been a scholar before somehow drifting to this mountain ridge and joining the bandit faction. He now ran the administrative side of the camp, managing the logistics and underlings.
“You—”
Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu opened their mouths to counter his speech, but before they could even finish their dialogue tree, the Third Master waved his hand with supreme impatience, cutting them off.
“Cease your complaints! I have already processed the directives for the guards below. Your sole objective is to sit here obediently and consume whatever baseline scraps are provided to your quarters. Stop harboring delusions of luxury drops like fresh meat and premium fish every single day,” the Third Master barked irritably. He then turned to cast a stern look at the minion anchoring the door.
“There is absolutely no need to optimize their treatment. They are merely random assets we salvaged from the trail, not official members of our syndicate. Enforce some discipline so they learn to respect our command parameters,” he instructed.
Watching the Third Master’s silhouette disappear down the corridor, Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu turned to look at each other, surprise flickering across their features.
“Sister Lu, our logistical parameters are about to take a hit. What is the counter-strategy?” Zhou Yu asked, a trace of anxiety touching her eyes.
“The counter-strategy? Naturally, our operational blueprint remains completely unchanged!” Lu Yunxi replied, her lips curling into a sharp, ice-cold smile as she observed the guard detail outside suddenly smirking as if they had successfully turned the tables. A dangerous glint flared across her pupils.
“Here, behold your premium lunch package for today.” A bandit underling marched into the room later that afternoon, violently slamming a wooden bowl filled with a murky vegetable extract onto the table.
The kinetic force of the impact caused the yellow-green liquid to slosh violently over the rim, spilling several drops onto the wood.
Zhou Yu flinched slightly at the sudden racket.
Lu Yunxi cast her eyes downward, scanning the unappealing green sludge before a soft, delicate smile touched her lips.
“My system rejects this asset,” she noted, hoisting her chin to meet the guard’s gaze. “There is zero rice grain present, and the vegetable parameters are practically non-existent. This is nothing but hot pot-washing water. I demand my chicken soup.”
“Bah! What tier of entitlement is this?! Chicken soup?!” the minion sneered, his lip curling with profound disdain. “Ingest the rations or leave them to rot—it matters nothing to me!”
Lu Yunxi’s smile remained perfectly placid. She lightly, elegantly clapped her palms together once.
CRASH!
The heavy wooden table instantly suffered a total structural collapse, disintegrating into a fine cloud of gray dust that drifted harmlessly into the localized airspace.
“Oh?” Lu Yunxi chuckled softly. Completely ignoring the pile of ash that had just been a solid piece of furniture, she kept her freezing gaze anchored squarely onto the trembling guard. “My auditory sensors experienced a minor latency spike just now. Could you repeat your previous statement? I failed to process it clearly.”
The underling stared blankly at the vacant space where the table had stood a microsecond prior. He swallowed hard, his survival instincts violently triggering as he took an uncoordinated step backward.
“Well… that is to say… these parameters were strictly hard-coded by the Third Master!” the guard stammered, his dry voice cracking with raw panic as he scrambled to distance himself from her hit box. “He explicitly ordered that our unit must only distribute the lowest tier of common rations to your profile… Please, do not assign the blame to our ledger! We are simply following the script!”
He continued to execute a hasty retreat, a cold sweat breaking across his skin.
Holy heaven! Why did the intelligence files completely omit the data that this woman was an absolute monster?! The Third Master actually commanded us to make life a living hell for these two targets! Who exactly is the one enduring the living hell here?!
“The Third Master?” Lu Yunxi arched a delicate eyebrow, thoroughly unbothered. “I pay zero mind to whose administrative authority issued the ticket. If your kitchen staff fails to yield a high-tier meal for our quarters by the next interval, do not blame my unit for executing a physical intervention. You are free to escalate this query to the Third Master or the First Master. The sole objective that concerns you is retrieving a delicious menu as rapidly as possible.”
“Understood… fully understood!” The minion cautiously monitored the cold, serene smile written across her features, goosebumps violently erupting along his arms. He nodded his head in a frantic, submissive loop. “Rest easy, I shall relay the data to the leadership tier immediately and ensure the kitchen processes our absolute premier luxury drops for your table!”
Having delivered his compliance line, the guard bolted out of the residential sector without a single pause, sprinting wildly toward the Third Master’s administrative pavilion.
Lu Yunxi watched his frantic retreat, nodding with profound satisfaction. “Zhou Yu, our nutritional parameters are secure. A premium feast will spawn in our inventory shortly.”
Zhou Yu nodded, her features unlocking as a wave of bright anticipation returned to her eyes.
Meanwhile, the panting underling finally managed to navigate the base camp layout, stumbling headfirst into the Third Master’s private study.
“Third… Third Master! A critical error has initialized across the security sector!”
“How dare you breach my private study with such chaotic movement parameters? Where is your discipline?” the Third Master scolded, slamming his ledger shut with deep irritation. “Calm your processor and deliver the data slowly.”
However, the exact microsecond the guard finished delivering the battlefield report, the entire study plunged into an absolute, dead silence.
The Third Master leaned back in his chair, his mind entering a heavy analytical loop.
According to the underling’s firsthand report, the woman had simply tapped the surface of the wood, and the entire asset instantly dissolved into digital ash. Was that a legitimate kinetic calculation? Or had the table simply suffered a latent durability failure over the winter cycles, allowing her to trigger a collapse with a basic structural touch?
He lowered his chin, reviewing the variables for several minutes before his scholar’s brain synthesized a plausible theory.
He flatly refused to believe the data! How could a captive maiden possibly command that tier of raw offensive capability? If her gear score was truly that broken, why had she allowed herself to be effortlessly secured by the First Master’s raiding party on the trail without firing a single shot? It was a mathematical impossibility! She must have deployed a specialized alchemical corrosive powder to dissolve the wood fibers and stage the performance!
That clever witch could easily deceive the low-level intellect of a common bandit, but her tricks stood zero chance against his advanced deductive modules!
The Third Master let out a mocking sneer, fixing a thoroughly condescending gaze onto the trembling guard. “You brainless simpletons are entirely incapable of reading a basic gaslighting script! Use your processors for a single second. Is there a single recorded class in the entire world database capable of turning solid oak to ash with a bare palm strike? Even if such a build existed, how could she have faced a flawless capture by the First Master’s vanguard?! You have swallowed her disinformation hook, line, and sinker!”
The realization instantly cleared the guard’s panic. The underlings erupted into collective murmurs of praise, marveling at the Third Master’s supreme intelligence, before a wave of sharp irritation flushed their features. They had actually allowed that captive woman to glitch their compliance meters a second time!
The Third Master fluidly adjusted his long sleeves, rising from his desk with absolute authority. He resolved to march down to her residential quarters and personally deliver a formal system warning, permanently cutting off her capability to torment his faction’s underlings!
Lu Yunxi was thoroughly perplexed.
She had been sitting patiently for over an hour, anticipating the arrival of a premium culinary drop. Instead, the entry gate swung open to reveal the exact same depressing bowl of pot-washing soup—flanked by a thoroughly enraged Third Master whose eyes were flashing with dangerous intent.
She hoisted her chin, slanting a mildly confused glance toward the administrative boss.
“Is there an issue with our positioning?”
“Behold your mandatory lunch allocation for the day. I presume the courier already communicated the base parameters to your account,” the Third Master sneered, his lips curling into a cold glaze as his piercing stare pinned her down like a silver needle. “However, my alerts indicate your profile has registered a severe dissatisfaction ticket regarding the menu. Is that data accurate?”
Lu Yunxi directed a faint, dismissive look toward the green sludge resting on the floorboards. “Correct. My system is profoundly dissatisfied.”
“I—” The Third Master’s pre-recorded speech pattern suddenly hit an error, forcing a heavy pause. He hadn’t calculated that she would validate the claim so aggressively, displaying absolutely zero respect for his administrative tier!
The blunt response completely choked the words in his throat.
It took him several long seconds to reboot his logic and remember his core purpose for executing this breach. He violently slammed his fist against the doorframe, screaming with raw irritation, “Cease this supreme arrogance! Your behavior pattern continuously disrupts the morale of our workforce! I am the official Third-in-Command of this entire base! Do your parameters honestly register zero respect for my rank?!”
Lu Yunxi offered a small, blindingly sweet smile. “Correct. My parameters register zero respect for your rank.”
The Third Master choked a second time, his vocal chords completely seizing.
The two entities locked eyes across the room, the silence stretching out for a prolonged, tense duration.
Lu Yunxi was secretly channeling her internal energy, operating under the assumption that the boss was preparing to initialize a high-tier combat art. But after waiting for several seconds, the man simply unleashed another verbal warning.
This repetitive dialogue… she was thoroughly sick of processing it.
She casually brushed a microscopic speck of dust from her silk sleeve, her light-footwork mechanics activating as she began taking slow, measured steps toward his position.
Sensing her closing radius, the Third Master instinctively executed a micro-dash backward, his features contorted with a mixture of rage and alarm. Adjusting his heavy sleeves, he barked fiercely, “I am fully aware your profile is hunting for an escape vector! But with my logistics array securing the borders, you can completely erase that objective from your map!”
“My account is not tracking an escape route. I harbor zero desire to vacate these coordinates; the baseline infrastructure here is remarkably pleasant,” Lu Yunxi replied, her large eyes blinking with a perfect imitation of innocent, bewildered candor. “My sole objective is simply to consume a high-quality meal.”
The Third Master scrutinized her facial micro-expressions with absolute focus, his scanners searching for a single macro-glitch or a trace of insincerity. The data returned completely clean; her expression was completely genuine.
His cognitive engine stalled.
What tier of logic is this? Was she delivering accurate data? Did she truly harbor no intention of executing a breakout? How could a captive asset possibly choose to permanently anchor her vessel to a bandit lair?!
“Regardless of what hidden questline your profile is running, my surveillance arrays will be locked onto your tracking coordinates twenty-four hours a day! Do not attempt to execute a covert sabotage script in my shadows! The exact microsecond I intercept an unauthorized pathing anomaly, don’t blame my administration for placing your avatar in absolute, high-security containment!” the Third Master warned, his narrow eyes flashing.
Having finalized his regulatory warnings, a wave of profound satisfaction washed over his system. He fluidly turned his torso around, preparing to march back to his study.
However—
BOOM!
An apocalyptic explosion shattered the silence behind his back, the kinetic shockwave causing the very earth beneath his boots to violently shudder.
The Third Master spun around in complete, paralyzed confusion.
The woman he had just finished reprimand stood a few meters away amidst the settling debris. She offered him a kind, exceptionally pleasant smile, her vocal output perfectly level as she asked, “Where exactly does your pathing lead next?”
The question itself wasn’t the variable that shattered his sanity.
The variable that completely bricked his processing unit was the absolute reality that directly behind her silhouette, a solid hardwood residential building had been completely reduced to a pulverized mountain of shattered timber and dust.
Granted, while that specific pavilion didn’t command the absolute highest structural durability rating in the stronghold, it was a fully functional, heavily reinforced piece of camp infrastructure. It wasn’t supposed to collapse like a block of soft tofu at a single touch!
The Third Master subconsciously swallowed a massive lump of dry saliva.
“Your administrative monologue has reached its conclusion,” the woman noted, her smile turning incredibly serene as she began advancing toward his coordinates with absolute, breathtaking elegance. “But my database has not.”
To an outside observer lacking the context, watching such a visually stunning maiden glide gracefully across the plaza would have been registered as a magnificent, poetic encounter. But within the Third Master’s visual interface, it felt exactly as though a colossal, world-ending beast from the deep abyss was slowly, methodically closing the distance to devour his avatar, step by step.
