Chapter 101: Expulsion Card
Flipping Face Artist was trembling from head to toe. At the same time, he felt secretly lucky. Fortunately, he hadn’t truly started a fight with anyone earlier; he had only questioned why Old Hei was cursing at them instead of insulting the assistant directly.
He patted his chest, desperately trying to steady his pounding heart. “Thank goodness… Thank goodness I usually don’t make enemies.”
Even so, reading Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice’s cold public warning filled him with creeping dread. He knew he had to find a Zone Transfer Card as fast as humanly possible. Staying in Zone 444 was clearly no longer an option.
Meanwhile, inside the armored hearse, Old Hei’s synthesized voice sounded irritable yet thoroughly entertained: “A bunch of brainless idiots—they had it coming!”
Then he added, “Oh, right. I just came up with a special reward for you. Hold on a second while I craft one myself.”
Lin Huai blinked in surprise. “Wait, system rewards can be custom-made?”
Old Hei let out a cold snort. “Of course! Where do you think Chen Feng and his crew got those targeted instance cards last time?”
As he spoke, a sleek, jet-black card materialized out of thin air in front of her. Lin Huai caught it and read the three bold, gold-embossed words across the surface: Expulsion Card!
Old Hei’s mechanical voice chimed in right on cue: [This is an Expulsion Card. It allows you to kick players straight out of our sub-zone. Well? Pretty neat, isn’t it?]
Lin Huai turned the card over, impressed despite her confusion. “Isn’t banishing players an exclusive privilege reserved for system assistants?”
[Sure, we assistants have the authority to remove individual players,] Old Hei grumbled, his voice thick with annoyance. [But we have to file an application first, write a three-thousand-word incident report, attach proof, and wait through endless layers of internal office review…]
He sighed heavily. [By the time the paperwork clears, I could have hunted them down and killed them a hundred times over!]
[So, I’m delegating this power directly to you. Expel anyone who annoys you. Those pests who aren’t worth killing, but buzz around like flies? Just kick them out and make them vanish from your sight.]
Lin Huai accepted the card, though she still wasn’t ready to let the main prize go. “Is there really no other reward? What about your monthly performance bonus?”
Old Hei’s tone fell dead flat. [This month’s bonus is gone. Cleared out the moment it hit my account. Forget about extra perks—we’ll talk about it next month.]
Lin Huai gave a wry smile. “You’re an artificial system. Where on earth do you even spend your money?”
Old Hei flared up instantly: [Isn’t it because of you picking fights with everyone?! Do you think I don’t need to take colleagues out for dinner? Do you think I don’t need to send gifts to the higher-ups? You think maintaining administrative connections is free? It takes hard cash to keep the heat off you!]
Lin Huai fell silent.
Did I really pick all those fights?
Old Hei, can you honestly say that with a clear conscience?
Either way, this month’s special bonus turned out to be an Expulsion Card with unlimited uses.
Lin Huai quietly activated the card’s binding, then messaged Peace and Violence for an updated list of troublemakers. Reading through the names one by one, she systematically clicked the expel prompt for each target.
Across the district, Flipping Face Artist was still frantically asking around in private chats to buy a Zone Transfer Card. Suddenly, a blinding flash of white light enveloped his cabin. When his vision cleared, the highway looked completely different. The players he had been talking to were gone, and the public chat lobby was filled with thousands of unfamiliar names.
He checked the top of his screen: District 71, Zone 709!
Joy washed over him—he had actually transferred to another zone! That spared him from having to pay for an expensive transfer card.
Before he could celebrate for more than a minute, however, he opened his inventory and gasped. Half his slots were empty!
“Where are my crates?! Why is half of my gear gone?!”
“Old Hei! You kicked me out of Zone 444 and robbed half my supplies! I’m not letting this go!”
Back in her vehicle, Lin Huai hadn’t expected Old Hei’s custom card to be so ruthless. The Expulsion Card didn’t just exile players—it confiscated half of their inventory upon departure.
Combined with the loot recovered from the recent purge, the squad warehouse inside her Space Jade Bangle was once again overflowing with supplies.
True to her generous nature, Lin Huai distributed another large batch of care packages across both the Elite Squad and the wider guild channels.
To her delight, several of the purged players had actually been carrying a rare material she desperately needed: Memory Crystal Orbs.
Upgrading both her vehicle and the jade coffin to Level 6 required a massive stockpile of resources. She had already gathered enough basic building supplies, but the special requirements were steep: one hundred Blood Jades, fifty Memory Crystal Orbs, and one Immortal Bone.
Back at the Mass Grave, Little Bone had gifted her a Golden Immortal Bone, which satisfied the third requirement.
Currently, she held only twenty Blood Jades, leaving a deficit of eighty. Since Blood Jades were specialized components primarily used for coffin enhancements, nobody else had encountered them, and none were available on the open market.
As for the Memory Crystal Orbs, she originally had eight. Adding the drops recovered from the purged players, her count was now up to twelve.
Although she wasn’t entirely sure why an armored vehicle upgrade required crystal orbs tied to memories, the system blueprint demanded them, so she had to track down the rest.
Jiangzhehu Inheritor was already putting out high-bounty buy orders, but so far, no sellers had stepped forward. After all, special materials were precious; even if players didn’t know what they were for, they preferred to hoard them, only selling if they were facing literal starvation.
Once internal zone business was settled, Lin Huai steered her hearse toward the arena grounds. The moment the monthly rankings finalized, the competitive trial grounds had officially unlocked.
Mount Duoshu Trial Grounds.
Lin Huai had taken her time, so several arenas were already occupied by players who had activated the King’s Domain.
Checking the leaderboard hovering over the central square, she saw Master Cloud Cliff and Old Demon of Xiangxi defending their titles, currently holding the first and second positions.
It was obvious the two elders had launched their defense runs the second the doors opened, deliberately trying to avoid crossing paths with her.
Lin Huai strolled over to Arena 1 and engaged the King’s Domain mode without hesitation.
Last time, she had claimed the top spot by ending another player’s nine-game winning streak. This time, there might not be such an easy shortcut.
Still, she wasn’t worried. If ten matches weren’t enough to secure first place, she would fight twenty, or thirty.
[Notice to all contenders: Arena 1 has activated King’s Domain. Reigning King: Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice.]
To ensure her score was untouchable, Lin Huai swept through twenty consecutive challengers before stepping out of the combat ring. By then, both Master Cloud Cliff and Old Demon of Xiangxi had already logged out—they were truly steering clear of her.
On the grand screen above the plaza, the four golden characters for Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice gleamed at the very top, leading second-place Old Demon of Xiangxi by a commanding thirteen-point margin.
Satisfied with the result, Lin Huai found a quiet stone bench in the square and sat down to rest.
With time to spare, she wanted to observe the other fighters in the server’s top ten. During her last arena visit, she had only run into Master Cloud Cliff, Old Demon of Xiangxi, and Dragon Crossing the River; she hadn’t seen the others in action.
She was particularly curious about the newly risen contenders: Eastern Divine Sword and Lan Mingyue.
After waiting quietly for a while, her patience was rewarded. Looking up at the leaderboard display, she watched a new name surge upward with a rapid, unbroken winning streak—Eastern Divine Sword.
