Chapter 72: Rectification
Lin Huai had assumed that after her previous purge, Zone 444 had finally been cleaned up.
She had not expected that there were still fools lurking around—people who lacked basic common sense, harbored sneaky motives, and had no sense of decency.
Right then, system screens popped up by force in front of every player in the district, accompanied by a sudden explosion of celebratory digital fireworks.
[Server-Wide Announcement: Congratulations to Player ‘Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice’ from District 44, Zone 444, for achieving the First Kill of an Evil Ghost! Reward: Bone-Crushing Box x3.]
Old Hei’s familiar, mocking tone rang out across the network once again:
[Hey, you useless deadweights, aren’t you going to pick up the pace and level up? Are you eager for the server to merge tomorrow and wipe you out?]
[Take a look at your number-one rank, then look at yourselves! A bunch of pathetic cowards. The sooner you die off, the fewer burdens there’ll be to drag everyone down. If you want to keep your worthless lives, you’d better hurry up!]
Inside the Elite Squad’s private chat, everyone was already numb to Old Hei’s usual verbal abuse. They brushed his snark aside and focused only on the practical details.
[Flash Delivery Yellow Knight]: Whoa, what kind of monster is an Evil Ghost? The Boss is truly built different!
[Dragon Emerging from the Sea]: It appears that central fork was indeed exceptionally dangerous. Any entity worthy of triggering a server-wide announcement is definitely not something an ordinary player could handle.
[Jiangzhehu Inheritor]: Quick, someone teach me how to curse like a sailor—I want to give someone a piece of my mind! This is utterly infuriating. The Boss was kind enough to spare her life. Failing to show gratitude is already worse than acting like a beast, but turning around to drag the Boss’s name through the mud? I’m so angry I could burst!
[Fastest Hand at SF Express]: Honestly, cussing her out in the chat won’t fix anything. Someone with a character like that will stab the Boss in the back sooner or later. Why don’t we just go ahead and ‘rectify’ her right now?
Fastest Hand’s proposal received immediate, silent support from the entire squad. However, because the friction was directly between Lin Huai and Iron Egg, they had to wait for Lin Huai’s personal decision. The private group chat fell quiet, everyone waiting for their leader to speak.
Lin Huai, however, had no time to check the group just yet. The moment Old Hei finished his public rant, he pinged her directly in a private transmission:
[Headquarters has been notified of the rift into the Hungry Ghost Path. The incident was classified as a system anomaly on our end. Therefore, beyond the standard rewards from the server-wide announcement, you are awarded an additional compensation grant: Skill Card x1.]
[Skill Card: Once activated, grants the user the unique skill inscribed on the face of the card.]
The moment Old Hei signed off, a rectangular card gleaming with deep black and gold light materialized in front of Lin Huai. She reached out, caught the card, and fed it five Yin energy crystals to unlock its seal. Four gilded characters flared into view along the surface:
—Time Rewind
A heartbeat later, the card dissolved into a radiant stream of light, shooting straight between her eyebrows and settling into her mind. The full system description of the ability unfolded automatically:
[Time Rewind (Level 1): Affects only a single designated target or living entity. Reverses time for that target by exactly one minute.]
Lin Huai’s eyes widened in genuine astonishment. “Old Hei, I take back every rude thing I ever thought about you. I can say with total certainty that you are the greatest system in the entire universe! Absolutely unrivaled!”
Old Hei gave an arrogant sniff. [Seeing as your apology sounds somewhat sincere, this system will magnanimously forgive your past insolence for exactly sixty seconds.]
With such an overpowered skill in her hands, Lin Huai felt like she could walk in and out of the Hungry Ghost Path three times over without breaking a sweat. Rifts? Evil ghosts? In her eyes now, they weren’t terrifying horrors at all—they were just adorable little delivery boys dropping off top-tier loot!
Before her excitement had even cooled, she opened the public lobby channel. As expected, the chat was a complete battlefield.
[Iron Egg]: See that?! A server-wide announcement! I told you all that Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice was rotten to the core! She deliberately steered me down a road that stripped away my resources just to get rid of me, all so she could hog the jackpot all to herself!
[Iron Egg]: That announcement is living proof! She took the middle path and got a server-wide broadcast! If I had gone down the middle instead, maybe I would have been the one to get the global glory!
[Old Wang from Building Materials]: With that brain of yours, you actually think you could survive the middle road? You wouldn’t have lasted sixty seconds before turning into monster feed!
[Jiangzhehu Inheritor]: If the Boss hadn’t shown you mercy at the crossroads, you wouldn’t have even walked away from the duel, let alone had the chance to pick a path!
[Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar]: Exactly! The Boss explicitly gave you a heads-up! You were too dumb to listen, so you lost your gear to the system penalty—and now you have the nerve to blame her?!
[Fastest Hand at SF Express]: You don’t deserve to be drawing breath. I’ve already asked the Boss to authorize a cleanup. Start counting your minutes.
[Dragon Emerging from the Sea]: Zone 444 has zero tolerance for ungrateful parasites.
Reading through the logs, Lin Huai was actually amused by the sheer audacity on display.
She had spent so much time in the peaceful, disciplined environment of Zone 444 that she had almost forgotten people like this existed outside of places like Sector 888.
Fortunately, her armored hearse was fitted with panoramic spirit cameras that covered every single angle without a blind spot. Pulling up the recording interface, she clipped the exact footage from the moment she crossed paths with Iron Egg until they parted ways, and dropped the video file straight into the main lobby chat.
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: [Video.mp4]
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: @Iron Egg, I have full video logs of our encounter. I certainly hope you keep that same loud mouth when I pull up beside you in a few seconds.
The video blew up the chat instantly.
[Flying Dog Hair]: Holy crap! What kind of legendary snake is this? Begging the Big Shot for mercy like a frightened puppy, then immediately turning around to play the victim and smear her name in public?!
[Honey Blood Ice Orange]: Who on earth gave her the courage? Slandering Boss Bone Ash of all people?
[Sounds Good Is a Good Head]: Show no mercy to someone this malicious, Boss. Wipe her out!
[Grass Don’t Float]: Here I thought Brother Fever and Snowy Mochi were the absolute peak of shamelessness, but it turns out there was a real master hiding among us. Whose lackey are you, you little clown?
[Information Office Director]: I recommend investigating if her family grew up on a tea farm. The fake, manipulative stench coming off her is suffocating!
[Barehanded Door Opener]: Meek and obedient in person, but an aggressive bully behind a keyboard? Boss Bone Ash should hand her a trophy for worst actress of the year!
[Tchaikovsky Driver]: I’m completely speechless. Playing the innocent victim, pretending to be righteous, and flipping the narrative all on her own. It’s practically a work of art!
[Red Apricot Over the Wall]: Begging on her knees one second and running a smear campaign the next? That face-changing speed would put professional stage actors to shame!
[Capybara]: I vote the Boss plays the video on a giant screen right in front of her car so she can enjoy her own pathetic performance!
[Northeast Daniel Wu]: With that much talent for making up nonsense, she ought to be plugged into a power plant to generate electricity for the whole district!
The moment her message was sent, Lin Huai crushed a teleportation talisman. In a flash of light, her heavy hearse materialized on the stretch of road where Iron Egg was driving.
Ahead on the asphalt, the pink sports car accelerated frantically the moment the massive armored beast appeared behind it.
Yet no matter how hard she slammed on the gas, the gap between vehicle tiers was an unyielding law of physics.
Lin Huai didn’t even bother activating the golden light cannon; wasting Yang energy crystals on someone like this was out of the question, especially since she had burned nearly her entire stockpile taking down the evil ghost earlier.
Instead, she simply floored the accelerator and rammed her heavy front bumper straight into the sports car’s rear quarter panel.
Crash!
The lightweight pink car spun violently out of control, rolled twice through the air, and slammed upside down onto the tarmac.
Lin Huai braked smoothly, hopped down from the cabin with a cold look in her eyes, and walked toward the wreckage with her service pistol in hand.
Trapped inside the crushed cabin, Iron Egg was pinned by the steering column, her forehead split open and blood running down her face. Staring up into Lin Huai’s icy, murderous gaze, the reality of death finally hit her.
“I… I’m so sorry, Boss Bone Ash! I know I was wrong! I lost my mind—I was ungrateful! Please… please spare my life…”
Desperate, she stammered, “A-all the veterans in Zone 444 said you’re a good person! A righteous leader! You wouldn’t kill someone over this, right?”
Lin Huai curled her lip in pure disgust. “I don’t hunt down ordinary, harmless survivors, but I make it a point to put down ungrateful dogs. You should consider it an honor that I took the time to come and handle you personally.”
She raised the pistol, pressing the cold steel muzzle firmly against the girl’s forehead. Her voice was flat, sharp, and merciless: “If there’s one thing in this world I despise above all else, it’s betrayal.”
Bang!
The gunshot was clean and final.
Lin Huai touched the ruined pink sports car, storing it into her system and transferring it straight to the pawnshop in exchange for three Yang energy crystals.
As for the dead weight left lying on the pavement, Lin Huai showed a peculiar brand of “mercy.” She dragged the corpse over to the shoulder by its ankles and tossed it straight into the dark river below.
Before the body could even splash into the current, a massive dark shape surged up from the deep. The underwater shadow worm tore through the surface, snapping its jaws shut and swallowing the corpse whole in a single gulp.
Within seconds, the road was completely spotless, leaving not a single drop of blood or scrap of metal behind.
Lin Huai brushed the dust off her palms, turned back to her armored hearse without a second glance, and drove back toward her own route.
Back in the main lobby, the chat went dead silent as hundreds of players watched the avatar belonging to [Iron Egg] turn permanently pitch-black.
