Chapter 28
Accompanied by the enchanting sound of the guqin, people in this neighborhood had finally slept well for a night. But when they woke up, more bad news arrived. The chubby auntie’s only son had secretly taken the car out last night. He was in a crash and died on the spot—no chance of saving him.
“Good thing he hit a streetlamp and not a person. Otherwise the family would’ve been paying for the rest of their lives.”
“Even so, they’ll have to pay at least ten thousand.”
The neighbors sighed with pity as they discussed it.
Even if they didn’t count the person who was crushed by the billboard a few days ago, this boy’s death made it the third sudden death in this neighborhood recently. People were so scared they didn’t even dare let their kids out to play.
Jiang Jitang delivered another condolence gift to the neighbors. He saw that the auntie’s home was once again crowded with mourners. The husband was so devastated he couldn’t even stand anymore—an older neighbor was helping take charge.
“How could this happen? His mother just died, and he still went out racing?”
The relatives and friends who were supposed to be keeping vigil over the auntie’s body couldn’t believe it. The auntie was still lying in the ice coffin… and now her son was gone too?
“There’ve been a lot of accidents this month. Is this year cursed or something?”
Well yes—cursed with “If you don’t clear the game, you die.”
Jiang Jitang kept a solemn expression, but internally, he was calculating how many “accidental deaths” had occurred nearby within the last month.
Too many. So many that even people who weren’t particularly sharp could feel something was off.
Right now, the label of “youth mental health crisis” was barely holding back suspicion. Because most of the victims were teenagers.
Even though only a faint trace had leaked onto the internet, it was enough to show the situation wasn’t limited to one province or one nation—it was a global upheaval. If handled poorly, even the current political landscape could collapse.
No one knew how the government planned to respond. Or how the World Joint Organization would respond.
Preaching and discipline probably wouldn’t work. This world had far too many rebellious “eternal teenagers.”
Imagine this whole thing being exposed publicly—others might react differently, but Jiang Jitang admitted that he would probably think: Is this real? I gotta go in and check it out.
“…”
Cough.
Anyway, this beautiful country must not fall into chaos. If that happened, even the cheap and high-quality “little deals” he relied on would be hard to get.
Returning from the neighbor’s home, Jiang Jitang still wore a pained expression. He only relaxed after seeing the mulberry tree thriving in his backyard.
The tree was doing well.
The silkworm cocoons on it were also doing well.
He watered it and infused it carefully with life energy to ensure that it could grow into top-tier life/healing materials even in this world.
Once the moths hatched, he’d have more silkworm eggs, silkworm babies, and cocoons.
Due to the Tree of Life’s seed, he had been using healing spells more frequently lately. Life-type materials helped restore power.
There should also be dark-type materials in that other world—he was actually quite good at crafting death magic and curse-type items. But there didn’t seem to be much use for them in this world. Maybe next time—
Ding!
[A new message arrived.]
It was from Ms. Jiang Xingzhou, from the Special Department of Nan Jiang Province. She didn’t beat around the bush—she told him they had found the person who targeted him. Guo Jie from the Dongying Association. His game-world usernames were “Liu Yu” and “Zhendong Qing.”
She had also sent the cause and details they’d uncovered.
“Next time… I should prepare some curse-type materials.”
He muttered as he held his phone.
According to Jiang Xingzhou’s report, the mastermind was indeed Guo Jie.
Guo Jie was one of the founders of the Dongying Association, a seventh-level Cube player. His only son had also fallen into the Cube World by accident. But even with a bunch of items and a bodyguard, the pampered young master couldn’t survive a third-level game. He died inside.
When his son died, it triggered a hidden mechanism Guo Jie had left behind—a delayed-death item. Guo Jie forcibly retrieved the body.
But retrieving the body was useless. According to the rules, once “he” died, someone else had to die in his place for the son to have a chance to revive and escape the Cube World as a non-player.
He used a powerful item—the Life-and-Death Ledger—and followed its requirements to find Jiang Jitang.
The more powerful the item, the stricter the conditions. The Life-and-Death Ledger had two modes:
1. In-game modes — Just knowing someone’s true name was enough to replace a death.
2. In real life modes — It required someone with the exact same birth year, month, day, blood type, and gender.
The only candidate was Jiang Jitang—because he had golden blood.
To Guo Jie, Jiang Jitang was just an ordinary, background-less kid.
No family around.
If he died, no one would even know.
The perfect scapegoat.
As for Mrs. Jiang, who would have been heartbroken? She was never considered a factor.
The Cube World brought danger and opportunity. Guo Jie had been a top-tier player for so long he’d forgotten he was just another mortal.
Jiang Xingzhou had sent his photo too.
This was the advantage of official power—no matter how strong you were, you still had to leave a clear, unobstructed ID photo.
A face-blurring item? Try that and see what happens.
After seeing the photo, the blurry memory of the man holding a pen suddenly became crystal clear.
It was him—the man he had run into at the school gate. He had held the pen, the paper, and with a stroke in that black fog he could take a life.
The name originally written on the paper—the one who should’ve died—was Guo Tianyu.
Although Jiang Jitang didn’t successfully replace the death, he did take the fatal blow intended for Guo Tianyu. This was a fact.
Now, the two were in a strange state of linked fate—the better Jiang Jitang’s condition became, the worse Guo Tianyu’s condition would be.
According to Jiang Xingzhou’s data, Guo Tianyu was now a half-dead husk. And as a second-level Cube player, he had to enter the game once every ten days. Entering in that condition would be a guaranteed death sentence.
Which meant Guo Jie had about four days left to act.
Jiang Xingzhou informed him that Guo Jie’s act of finding a replacement death was a severe crime. They had already issued a warrant.
Of course, these powerful individuals ignoring state authority wasn’t new—but the government still had to take a stance.
Guo Jie and his son had fled abroad, but they couldn’t guarantee he hadn’t left agents behind. So Jiang Jitang shouldn’t go out for the next few days.
As for the rest, with the government’s hard-line response, the domestic members of the Dongying Association wouldn’t dare act.
Given how limited manpower was in the official Cube Player Department, this was already the best they could do. Jiang Jitang focused on the name Guo Jie.
“He fled to the Federation? He’s a hundred thousand miles away from Ms. Jiang. And he’s not capable enough to go after my family instead.”
This was a very straightforward gesture of goodwill—open and sincere.
They saw the potential in Jiang Jitang.
And as he felt his own condition improving day by day, he also felt they had good judgment—they really knew how to invest.
“Ten slots. My condition is…”
He sent a message to Jiang Xingzhou.
No matter the patient, he had confidence.
—
Nan Jiang Province, Jin City Official Branch
“Ten slots.”
Jiang Xingzhou’s hands trembled slightly as she held her phone. She knew her goodwill would be answered, but she hadn’t expected this young man to offer ten healing slots at once.
They had plenty of low-tier healing items.
High-level ones were extremely scarce.
These ten slots could save ten lives.
“What are his requirements?” Someone asked urgently. There had to be harsh conditions, right?
“There is one requirement: He will treat only frontline personnel. No high-ranking officials, no elites.”
The room erupted.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Jiang Xingzhou confirmed—even she found it unbelievable.
The ones she’d met before—the ones holding healing items—were nothing like this. And their reusable items were low-tier; they couldn’t lift the kind of terrifying curse Han Shuo carried.
“What severity of injuries will he treat?”
“He didn’t specify.
So probably anything.”
Almost everyone stood up in excitement.
Most of them had been assigned here after being injured in the line of duty. Their daily work involved playing games or dealing with players—both dangerous enough to lose your life at any moment.
Many of them were injured, but the worst off was Old Zhang, a former narcotics officer and now a level-seven Cube player.
“Boss, aside from Old Zhang and Old Han, wouldn’t using the slots on anyone else be a waste?”
“Hey,” Han Shuo entered just then. “What are you guys saying about me?”
They explained the situation. He immediately waved his hand.
“My wounds don’t matter. Once the negative force is dispelled, healing is just a matter of time. Minister, maybe check with the other units?”
Jiang Xingzhou actually laughed. “Alright, I’ll think about it.”
—
Early that morning, after witnessing some trash behavior from certain trash individuals, Jiang Jitang cooked himself a full Chinese-Western breakfast out of irritation, then cleaned his house inside and out.
If the system notification hadn’t popped up to tell him his orders had been settled, he probably would have done a full spring cleaning.
“One-star difficulty, five-star rating, five points, and… Two—TWO wishing stars?”
This was the first time he’d seen a single order award two wishing stars—and such brilliant ones at that. If the clients were a family of four, then two of them must have been children of destiny.
He straightened himself respectfully.
He had known they were a family of four who hadn’t lived in the scavenger zone for long. But the settlement report revealed more details.
As he expected, raising kids in that environment meant the couple had some ability. But accidents came without warning—overnight, they lost everything.
The husband and wife had been low-level soldiers in a certain corps. The husband’s elderly mother watched the kids. They weren’t rich, but they had food and shelter.
But their commander had been ambushed. Their group fractured. During a clash with another corps, the husband lost a leg, the wife was injured, and both lost their positions—leaving them no choice but to move to the scavenger zone.
“…This background feels familiar. Do leaders in that world always meet terrible ends?”
He continued reading.
Life in the scavenger zone was difficult. The elderly grandmother and the former soldier wife weren’t skilled at gathering food outside. They brought home less than ordinary residents. Sometimes they had to eat moderately contaminated food.
The adults could eat it. The children couldn’t.
But they couldn’t give the kids to the base either.
There were unspoken rules—beautiful, talented girls were often treated as “resources,” assigned to wealthy men for reproduction. Their fates depended on the buyer’s conscience.
They couldn’t bear to let their child suffer that.
Then Jiang Jitang visited.
The family received a small wooden cabin good enough for survival, built connections with the administrator, and the wife—formerly a gene warrior—got a relatively stable job.
But that wasn’t the true turning point.
The true turning point was that, after gaining stability, they took in another orphaned warrior’s daughter.
That girl and their own daughter would become a special family.
The older girl would grow into a powerful gene warrior and someday establish a small base.
The younger girl would plant the seeds of “art and architecture” in her heart from childhood and eventually design one of the wasteland world’s most famous structures—the Block Fortress.
That was the origin of the two wishing stars.
“The system really knows who to pick.”
People who helped others the moment they could—and even brought indirect benefits to him—were worth helping indeed. Good deeds hurt most when they’re wasted.
Ding!
[In the original timeline without the tasker’s interference, the little girl would have become an ordinary gene warrior like her parents—mediocre due to lack of talent. The other child would have died early in a beast outbreak with no bones left.]
[Based on projections, the little girl had countless possible futures. She had a 98% chance of being ordinary and a one-in-a-million chance of becoming a genius architect.]
“The tasker changed her entire life.”
Even with his thick skin, Jiang Jitang flushed. He immediately changed the subject.
“All three orders settled. Today’s a rest day. Wonderful.”
With rare free time, he didn’t want to do anything but curl up at home and read.
He read all kinds of books—from The Holy Bread Canon of the Sun’s Hand to various national treasure tomes, from crime investigation files to monster dissection manuals.
Just not literature—that put him to sleep.
Ding!
Curled on the sofa, head poking out from a pile of books, Jiang Jitang thought he’d finally enjoy a peaceful day. But a new bubble popped up.
[Strong wish-force detected. Special task updated.]
