The newspaper was dated yesterday.
It was crammed with text and crumpled up, but Xu Weizhou still spotted the key detail immediately.
Right in the middle of the page, someone had drawn a circle in mud.
As he read the circled text, Xu Weizhou's pupils shrank.
He shot up from his seat and shouted at the group.
"Stop eating!"
No one paid him any attention. Even Lin Mian didn't bother to reprimand him.
Everyone was completely engrossed in the roasted meat in front of them, treating it like the most precious treasure in the world. They had eyes for nothing else.
Grease dripped from their mouths as they ate. Even with their mouths stuffed full, they continued tearing off chunks of meat and forcing them in.
Even An Ranran had completely abandoned her usual elegance. Tearing the meat in half with her bare hands, she shoved huge mouthfuls into her mouth, veins bulging on her neck.This scene was absurd to the extreme, yet laced with a hair-raising terror.
Xu Weizhou paled. He shot a glance at the fat stall owner resting by the grill, then scrambled away from the table.
Only when he was entirely out of the stall did he snap out of his stupor, gasping for breath.
He looked back at the others inside. They were still devouring their food, completely oblivious to his departure.
Some had clearly finished their meat, yet they still strained forward, frantically licking their plates clean without any regard for their image.
The cold sunlight washed over them, freezing them like a grayish-blue photograph.
Xu Weizhou's face grew even paler.
Yan Jing's expression remained perfectly calm.
He knew a lot of people were about to die right in front of him.
But in this world, people died every second of the day.
Soon, the group finally finished every last scrap of meat on their plates, licking them until they shone.
Only then did they seem to wake from their trance. Their eyes regained clarity, and they began chatting among themselves.
"I'd heard the food at Elephant BBQ was exceptional—that once you started eating, you couldn't stop. I didn't expect it to actually be true."
"It's true, that feeling just now was too intoxicating. I simply couldn't get enough. This Dungeon is completely worth it."
Lin Mian and An Ranran were much more restrained than the rest, though their expressions showed they were just as thoroughly satisfied.
The purple-haired man patted his bulging stomach and looked across at Xu Weizhou with a laugh.
"I can't believe you actually listened to that idiot beside you."
"You probably don't know this, but his dad personally said at a dinner gathering that he doesn't have a son named Yan Jing anymore. He acts like he was never born!"
"I don't know what kind of spell he cast on you, you stupid pig."
"And you, Yan Jing—just wait until I've rested a bit. We're going to have a nice little catch-up."
Xu Weizhou said nothing. His pale face simply calmed down gradually.
He stared at the purple-haired man. His eyes held anger, hatred, and a faint, almost imperceptible trace of pity.
Lin Mian touched the single horn on his forehead, which seemed to have grown an inch, and spoke slowly to Xu Weizhou.
"Wei Zhou, when you get back, explain exactly what happened here to your dad. It's not my fault you didn't get to eat the best destiny meal."
"Also, even though you didn't eat, you still have to pay. 200,000 Eerie Coins."
Xu Weizhou slowly nodded.
"Alright. I understand."
Lin Mian hadn't expected him to agree so readily. A rare trace of mockery surfaced on his lips.
"Your dad really is unlucky, choosing a piece of trash like you to come in."
"You hit the nail on the head, Mian-ge. In case you didn't know, his whole family is cursed with bad luck."
The purple-haired man laughed loudly.
Suddenly remembering something, he turned to look at Xu Weizhou's untouched plate of meat, his eyes gleaming.
He swallowed hard, looking like he couldn't resist lunging for it.
But ultimately, he held back.
After ten seconds, this meat would be considered defective. Eating it would cause black hair to sprout all over the body, leading to a miserable death.
Pleased with his self-control, he made a habitual gesture, scratching his nose.
But as he did, he suddenly felt a tickle.
He looked down.
A tuft of black hair had sprouted on his right thumb.
Instantly, a chill gripped him, and he shuddered.
Trembling, he looked down at the rest of his body.
Long strands of hair were erupting from his pores, piercing through his clothes, choking his throat, and covering his skin.
He threw his head back to scream for help, but no sound came out.
Black hair had already clogged his windpipe, spilling out from his mouth.
He thrashed his hair-covered hands in despair. The sheer terror of death drove him to frantically signal for help to the person in front of him.
Even though that person was Xu Weizhou, whom he had just been mocking.
But soon, he couldn't even see.
Dense black hair burst from his eyeballs, cascading down his face like a waterfall.
Eventually, his entire body was engulfed in black hair. He froze in his pleading posture, looking exactly like a black woolly mammoth.
A very stylish mammoth sporting a bleached purple streak.
Among the eight of them, three others suffered the exact same fate, losing their lives instantly.
As for the remaining four, including Lin Mian and An Ranran, they didn't die. Still, patches of black hair covered their limbs and skin as they collapsed to the ground, howling in agony.
Screams filled the small stall, turning it into a living hell.
Yan Jing and Xu Weizhou just watched. Neither spoke.
The fat stall owner walked over from his grill. Grabbing two on each side, he smoothly dragged all four "mammoths" away at once.
"Aren't you closing down tomorrow?"
Yan Jing asked calmly.
"What do you still need ingredients for?"
Yesterday, he had read Old Liu's newspaper. The fourth-ranked article was a food safety report stating that Elephant BBQ was about to close down and was frantically selling off its accumulated inventory over the last two days.
Zombie meat.
Rotten Vegetable Village didn't have any newsstands.
He had run to Old Liu and spent a large amount to buy the newspaper he tossed to Xu Weizhou.
For a single newspaper, that wretched old man had demanded 1,000 Eerie Coins.
"This isn't something a human like you should be worrying about."
The fat stall owner glanced back at Yan Jing, then went back to dragging the "mammoths" away.
Yan Jing shrugged and didn't press the issue.
He had only bought the paper in the first place to explain to Xu Weizhou how he knew the news. He hadn't expected it to actually come in handy.
"...Lao Yan, how did you find this out? This paper isn't easy to get."
Xu Weizhou pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Yan Jing.
Yan Jing noticed that the hand offering the cigarette was trembling.
"Didn't you check the player forum yesterday?"
He had his excuse ready, taking the cigarette.
He had no idea how Xu Weizhou had managed to bring cigarettes into the Dungeon; presumably, there was weird energy inside them.
"I didn't."
Xu Weizhou put his own cigarette in his mouth and offered his lighter to Yan Jing.
Good thing.
Yan Jing motioned for Xu Weizhou to light his own first. "A player posted on the forum yesterday that they saw a newspaper, and that's what it said."
Even if Xu Weizhou went looking for it, Yan Jing could just claim the post had been deleted.
"Damn it. I'll have to start checking it."
Xu Weizhou lit his cigarette.
To people like them, the player forum was full of low-level information. He never expected...
The flame flared, and Yan Jing blew a smoke ring.
They squatted there on the ground, neither speaking. Only the screams of Lin Mian and the others echoed behind them.
"Heh. I didn't expect there'd be anyone who didn't fall for it."
A woman's voice spoke from beside the two smokers.
They turned their heads. It was the woman in the business suit and gold-rimmed glasses.
The team behind her looked at Lin Mian and the others groaning on the ground without the slightest hint of surprise.
It was a setup!
As Xu Weizhou realized this, his heart sank.
"I told you we should have been allowed to choose first."
A man in a dinosaur bathrobe walked over, yawning.
A combined setup!
Xu Weizhou took a half-step back.
He tried to pull Yan Jing back with him, only to find that Yan Jing had already retreated two steps.
"Relax. Making a move is too much trouble, and completely unnecessary."
The man in the bathrobe yawned again. "Let's go, everyone."
He led his team away.
The woman in the gold-rimmed glasses admired Lin Mian and An Ranran rolling on the ground in their black hair for a moment. Then, seemingly losing interest, she turned to Xu Weizhou.
"This is the Inner World. Things change at every moment, because it is a real world."
"If you just treat it as a Dungeon—as a game—and rigidly adhere to specific patterns or blindly trust the rules, you will definitely be doomed."
"You're not bad."
Her beautiful eyes sparkled behind the gold-rimmed glasses, as if she had just unearthed a treasure.
"Even if it was just luck, luck is still a part of strength."
She reached into her coat.
She pulled out a business card and handed it to Xu Weizhou.
"Qianjin Investment Bank, Mu Wan."
"If you ever want to switch investors, come find me."
With that, she briskly led her team away. From beginning to end, she had completely ignored Yan Jing.
Xu Weizhou looked at the card in his hand, flicked his cigarette ash, and held it out to Yan Jing.
"Lao Yan, you need an investor."
Investors were the primary professionals operating within merchant organizations like Qianjin Investment Bank.
Their investment targets were the promising talents from various Families or the elites of other organizations.
They rarely made enemies, always aligning themselves with profit.
Yan Jing didn't take it. It wasn't because he didn't need one—a good investor could save him a lot of trouble—but...
"She wouldn't give me the time of day."
Crushing his cigarette butt underfoot, he spoke.
"Let's talk somewhere else."
...
After first solving the issue of Xu Weizhou's destiny meal, the two found a quiet corner, and Yan Jing got straight to the point.
"Wei Zhou, what is an Inner World Pathway?"
"An Inner World Pathway?"
Xu Weizhou clearly hadn't expected Yan Jing to ask this. He looked confused. "Why are you asking? Could it be, Lao Yan, that you..."
He stared at Yan Jing, looking even more perplexed.
"No way..."
But seeing that Yan Jing's expression didn't look like a joke, he went ahead and asked.
"Lao Yan, did you get a system prompt saying you touched an Inner World Pathway?"
"Yeah."
Yan Jing nodded.
"That's incredibly bizarre."
Xu Weizhou genuinely thought it was strange.
Given the tier of the destiny meal Yan Jing had eaten, it should have been impossible for him to touch an Inner World Pathway.
He still thought Yan Jing had eaten the takoyaki.
"Inner World Pathways refer to the various power systems of the Inner World."
"As you know, Lao Yan, the Inner World is a real world."
"But compared to our Surface World, the territory here is far vaster, and the power systems are much more chaotic. Just from what I know personally, there are five or six types."
"When we run Dungeons, if we stumble upon these power systems and meet their advancement conditions, we can switch to walking the path of the Inner World."
"Take this time, for example. What you touched must be the Pathway here in Rotten Vegetable Village, which is Order, right?"
"But it's so weird. That Pathway can only be touched by eating a sufficient amount of destiny meals or high-level destiny meals. A takoyaki shouldn't be enough..."
'Order'? His own seemed to be 'Sin'...
Yan Jing listened quietly, giving appropriate confirmation.
"You're right about that, Wei Zhou."