Shen Zhi gritted his teeth in fury.
“Your Highness is a person of noble and precious status. Why must you deceive yourself and play such a game with me?”
He could no longer tell if the woman before him was truly amnesiac or merely pretending.
He had thought she was simply a tyrant—extravagant and cruel—but he never expected her to enjoy such twisted amusement.
Shen Zhi regretted ever turning back to destroy the evidence.
He hadn’t exactly lied to Zhang Yang.
Shen Zhi had been looking for his elder brother.
It was just that, on his way, he happened to encounter two of the Princess’s attendants disguised as refugees.
From them, he learned of the Princess’s gruesome death in a ruined shack.
Shen Zhi didn’t know what role his brother had played in the matter.
Was he completely ignorant?
Was he aware but chose to turn a blind eye?
Or was he a participant?
The Princess’s body could not be discovered.
Shen Zhi gritted his teeth, learned the general location, and silenced the witnesses before rushing to recover the body and destroy all evidence.
Regardless of his brother’s role, the proof of the murder had to be erased.
He needed to buy time—ideally, until the old dynasty fell and the new one was established.
Once the new dynasty was established, who would care whose hands had killed the princess of the old one?
Finally, on that unusual thunderstorm night, he found the murder scene and saw a pile of dismembered body parts come back to life.
Zhang Yang asked, “Why are you angry?”
She was giving Shen Zhi the chance to assign her a quest.
She would run errands for him without even asking for a reward.
Why was he so furious at such a wonderful opportunity?
What an ungrateful NPC!
Zhang Yang stared at Shen Zhi’s neck, weighing the feasibility of killing him to force a respawn.
Tsk, human players are much easier to deal with.
They don’t make you endure Shen Zhi’s mood swings.
At Zhang Yang’s aggrieved question, Shen Zhi’s fingers trembled with rage.
The urge to kill surged within him, but his reason quickly quelled the impulse.
Ever since Her Highness had survived that brush with death, she had gained the astonishing talent of not dying even if her head, legs, or arms were severed.
She had also secretly acquired a set of martial skills.
How could he possibly kill her with just a sword or two?
Who knew who would end up eliminating whom?
Shen Zhi forced himself to suppress his emotions.
He changed the subject.
“Your Highness, you don’t know. Those rebels often kill civilians to claim credit. With so many prisoners escaping today, the rebel army will likely use another group of people to make up the numbers, just to give their superiors an account. I was worried about this very point, which is why I’m so distressed.”
“Oh, so you’re saying a group of people is going to die either way?”
Zhang Yang marveled at the sheer power of the plot.
Players who diligently completed the questlines seemed to have a choice, but in reality, they had none.
The writers had truly outdone themselves with this kind of plot, where any choice—whether you interfere or not—leads to a massacre.
They deserved to be cursed out.
“You could put it that way.”
Shen Zhi felt there was something terribly wrong with her words.
Then, Zhang Yang’s next line was: “Then why bother?”
Shen Zhi stared at her in disbelief.
“How can you even say that?”
Zhang Yang replied, “Well, that’s not something a human would say.”
Hmph, she was speaking as an NPC.
Shen Zhi’s chest heaved with fury.
“…Madness. Pure madness. You’ve gone mad, and I’ve gone mad too, for actually thinking my elder brother’s judgment might have been flawed, or that the common people had some misunderstanding about you, or that you were hiding your true self and sullying your own name for some hidden reason…”
Zhang Yang watched with keen interest as Shen Zhi exploded in rage, his face turning a mottled red, blue, and white, while beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.
She couldn’t fathom the source of his fury, nor why he was so utterly incensed.
She pulled a fan from her game inventory.
“Here, let me fan you. Don’t let your CPU overheat.”
Her observation samples had warned that extreme anger could lead to a cerebral hemorrhage.
Shen Zhi’s rage surged to a new level.
Just as he was about to lose his temper completely, Zhang Yang offered him a look of earnest consolation.
“I get it, I get it. You’re furious with those rebels, aren’t you? It’s true—being a noob is an original sin. With your current power ceiling, charging in would just be feeding them kills. But they’re the ones capturing prisoners and claiming credit for killing civilians. There’s no need to let them anger you to death.”
She knew too little about the Homestead Side Quest.
She had no idea how long it took for this kind of NPC to respawn.
Shen Zhi: “…”
Though Zhang Yang’s words were merely adding fuel to the fire, she had gotten one thing right: the rebels were the ones sowing all this chaos.
But this was a matter that couldn’t be ignored.
“If I don’t do something, my conscience won’t let me rest.”
The unspoken subtext was that the noble benefactor, the true culprit, should be the one feeling uneasy.
Zhang Yang lacked any such self-awareness.
She was simply delighted that her quest was finally making progress.
“Chase them down and kill them all? I’d love to, but my HP bar hasn’t recovered yet. If I have to act, I won’t be able to use the split-up strategy from before. Without an aerial view, it’ll be hard to distinguish friend from foe, and I might accidentally kill innocent people. If you don’t mind, and the people I accidentally kill don’t mind, then I don’t mind.”
Shen Zhi stared, speechless.
Then he gritted his teeth.
“I meant go and report the news ahead of time.”
Zhang Yang nodded.
“A messenger quest? No problem.”
She had heard the observation samples complain that when they went to do main quests, most of their work consisted of running errands, delivering letters, and relaying messages. This chapter was taken from NovelPing without permission.
These were considered the decent, easy jobs.
There were also many quests involving collecting various body parts of zombies, hunting for strange beast pelts, fetching water and chopping firewood, and even scooping up all kinds of animal dung.
Delivering a message?
How simple could that be?
“Where do I deliver the message?”
Human Players received a destination guide as soon as they accepted a quest.
As an NPC, Zhang Yang could only ask and inquire on her own.
Shen Zhi analyzed, “This place is located between Jianxing and Tianbian Commanderies. It’s sparsely populated, and the terrain is treacherous. If the rebel army wants to gather enough prisoners, the nearest place would be over a hundred li away. Judging by the situation, the probability of them heading to Tianbian is higher. Let’s report the news to Tianbian first.”
Tianbian Commandery consisted of nine counties in total.
Shen Zhi carefully reviewed the situation of these nine counties in his mind.
He chose the one with the highest probability.
However—
“Your Highness, it would be best if you wore a disguise.”
Zhang Yang pointed to herself.
“A disguise?”
“The Governor of Tianbian Commandery harbors some grudge against Your Highness. They should have received word of this rebellion long ago, yet there has been no movement from them at all. I fear someone may be deliberately obstructing the news.” In truth, if Shen Zhi were in the Governor’s position, he would also coldly watch from the sidelines as the noble person died.
“It is also possible they are colluding with the rebels.”
“That is impossible.”
Shen Zhi resolutely rejected this guess, yet did not explain why.
Zhang Yang did not press the matter.
“Alright, let me just change my face.”
Isn’t this just a matter of changing my appearance?
How simple.
Zhang Yang summarized her observation samples and discovered that everyone had the habit of preferring the new over the old.
The “old” that was despised even included their own faces.
They changed their faces as frequently as they swapped out their flashy outfits.
It was not contradictory for Zhang Yang to want to blend in with them, but she had to find a way to get a disguise prop to use for face-sculpting.
Not only that, she also copied the face-sculpting assignments of the players.
Her game inventory was stuffed with a bunch of internet-celebrity face shapes and makeup styles that the human players were obsessed with.
Although they all looked more or less the same to Zhang Yang, or even a bit eerie, those players could always excitedly recite a long list of names for each face-sculpt.
It was truly miraculous.
Besides face-sculpting, she also had a bunch of body types.
“My face is changed… Wait, this face doesn’t quite match my current body type. Give me a moment, I’ll change my body type again.”
Shen Zhi: “…”
His eyes widened more and more, as if he had seen a ghost.
Zhang Yang expressed her understanding.
The aesthetics of players were indeed a shock to NPCs.