The decaying décor of the dilapidated mental asylum faded away, and Zong Jiu was surrounded by endless, empty white.
[Chance task in progress.]
A sheet of white paper and a black pen slowly floated down from the sky, landing in front of the white-haired young man.
Zong Jiu took the paper, unscrewed the cap of the pen, and, with a vigorous flourish of calligraphy, wrote down the names Messiah and Sheng Yu.
In any case, he was absolutely certain about Sheng Yu. Messiah’s disguise was so flawless that, even with overwhelming evidence, Zong Jiu still could not say it with complete conviction.
Whatever. One of them was right anyway.
The system’s voice resounded through the empty white space.
[Please wait… System detection in progress… Your answer has been submitted.]
[Post-match evaluation will begin shortly. In 30 seconds, you will be instantly transferred to the following location: Broadcasting Studio.]
After the white paper slipped free from Zong Jiu’s fingers, it slowly floated upward and spontaneously combusted.
Zong Jiu massaged his hands, which were faintly aching from using too much force when he swung the hammer earlier, and fell into thought.
Not only had he obtained an S-rank prop, he also had not missed any dangerous challenge. On top of that, by standing on the shoulders of the giant that was Zhuge An, he had seen through the ins and outs of the instance. Based on these factors alone, his evaluation for this instance certainly would not be low. Even jumping three ranks in a single stroke was not impossible.
Thinking of this, Zong Jiu took the opportunity to fish something out of his pocket.
The black iron box was still emitting a resplendent golden brilliance in his hand.
He opened the iron box and gently brushed his fingers over the stack of cold golden playing cards inside.
[It has been detected that you are holding an S-rank prop. Do you wish to store it in your system backpack?]
Zong Jiu chose “Yes” without hesitation.
He was about to be sent to the broadcasting studio. If he did not store it now, then when the time came, everyone would see the golden radiance of the S-rank prop in his hand.
This S-rank prop could be considered something he had acquired with little effort, if any at all, and the only person who had seen him take it had been disposed of by Zong Jiu with a hammer. Since there were no living eyewitnesses, why not keep it as a hidden ace? That way, he could catch people off guard.
As he was thinking this, the space around him once again began to fragment and restructure like a jigsaw puzzle.
Pure-gold chandeliers hung from the high vaulted ceiling, their gilded tips refracting streams of iridescent light that fell across the deep red carpet, as though plating it with a thick, magnificent layer of dissonance.
At some point, white plaster statues of heavenly deities had appeared, encircling the reddish-gold hall. Their eyes were tightly closed, and they held divine swords or olive branches in their hands, their expressions solemn and grave.
Zong Jiu appeared directly on the E-rank step. When he arrived, the hall was already bustling with people, and many trainees were still being transferred in one after another.
The number of people who cleared each instance differed, as did the time they cleared it, yet everyone still managed to appear together. From this, the system had probably blurred the passage of time, allowing all trainees to gather in the broadcasting studio at this exact moment, regardless of when they had cleared their instances.
This power had long since exceeded the limits of human capability.
Zong Jiu recalled Zhuge An previously saying that the system would obscure the contestants’ memories of the real world, and a thoughtful look appeared between his brows.
The reason he was unaffected was most likely because he was a novel transmigrator. He had not gone through the normal process, and had therefore slipped through the net.
Unfortunately, Zong Jiu had read too little of the novel. He had not even gotten to the core of the infinite loop’s worldbuilding. But from an outsider’s perspective, he kept feeling that there was a sinister conspiracy behind this Thriller Trainee competition.
Alas, abandoning a book halfway really was never a good thing. If Zong Jiu had finished the novel, he would not be in such a miserable state now.
After roughly five minutes, everyone had assembled.
Zong Jiu swept his gaze around him. The trainees in the hall were all ashen-faced and pale with terror. Even from a rough estimate, their numbers had dropped by about half.
The fate of all those who had disappeared was already a foregone conclusion.
From the looks of it, this first one-man show instance had been the system’s way of sifting through the massive trainee base.
The most drastic reduction in numbers was on the lower steps of the F, E, and D-ranks. Where they had previously been packed shoulder to shoulder, there was now ample space between people on the steps. Besides the lowest three ranks, the upper three ranks had also thinned out to varying degrees, though only a dozen or so had been cut from the originally two-hundred-strong A-rank group.
As for the only step that had not changed at all…
The white-haired young man raised his eyes and looked toward the highest point of the hall.
From afar, Zhuge An and Messiah were both ranked among them. Apart from the elusive No. 1, who had yet to show his face, all nine thrones were firmly occupied.
In truth, Zong Jiu was also a little curious about the legendary No. 1, whose name was not even known.
However… someone who could make even a person like Zhuge An wary could not possibly be good news.
[Assembly of all trainees complete. Post-match evaluation will now begin.]
[At the end of each round, the lowest rank will be eliminated. According to the rules of the competition, trainees who receive an F-rank after this second round of evaluation will automatically be sent to the punishment instance.]
[The punishment instance is single-player mode. Eliminated trainees who survive the single-player punishment instance will receive one chance at revival.]
[Source text corrupted here by anti-copy protection; omitted rather than reconstructed.]
No one wanted to die, but the infinite loop held a knife over every person’s head.
And no one knew when that knife would fall.
The system turned a deaf ear to these voices.
[Evaluation will begin from the lowest rank before proceeding upward to the next rank. After all evaluations have been completed, all trainees will once again move to their corresponding ranks.]
[The evaluation will be completed in two stages. First, the system rating. Second, the instructor’s rating. The final evaluation will be the median of the two ratings.]
[Survival points will be distributed according to the final evaluation rank. Trainees may use survival points to enhance themselves and increase their odds of survival.]
[Panoramic camera turning on…]
In the trainee dormitories, live broadcasting was disabled by default. Only during specific show segments, such as the much-anticipated evaluation section, would the mass live broadcast be turned on.
The moment the system enabled the live broadcast, viewers from the infinite loop immediately poured in like a tidal wave, and a dense barrage of comments shot through the bullet chat like rain.
[Woohoo, I’m in! It’s finally time for the second evaluation. I’m so nervous!]
[Omg, there are visibly fewer people in the studio now. Those poor newcomers. /candle.jpg]
[I guess the one-man shows were split between two extremes. It was beautiful. I camped in Black-Robed Azan’s live broadcast and watched him do his thing. The newcomers safely rode his coattails all the way out without any sense of horror. Who would’ve thought this bigshot was actually such a saint?]
[Black-Robed Azan’s live broadcast was that peaceful? I guess they didn’t meet any of the Holy Templars. I think all the newcomers in the venue next door died when the Curse Team and the Night Clan went for each other’s throats.]
[Ha? Upstairs, you call that intense? You must have missed Master Zhuge and the Holy Son’s live broadcast. They actually encountered an invincible supernatural entity in their instance, and there were also moles with different identity cards in the same instance… If I remember correctly, only three people survived that instance.]
That comment was like a stone thrown into calm water, stirring up thousands of waves.
[???? Did I hear that right? Invincible? /puzzled cat.jpg]
[Wtf, nani? An invincible supernatural entity?? Damn, that should be S-rank difficulty, right? How can something like that appear in the first round? What’s going on?]
While Thriller Trainee was in full swing, the melon-seed-eating audience in the infinite loop had not been idle either.
Many data-analysis gurus had opened forum threads sorting out information, even picking apart the system’s difficulty settings for the first instance.
According to the analysis, there was a high chance that the system set the difficulty level of each one-man show instance according to the overall strength of the participating trainees. This would explain why the difficulty of an instance with no A-ranks was several times lower than that of an instance with an S-rank. The reason was that there were only ten S-rank trainees in total, and every one of them represented the cream of the crop. Naturally, the system would raise the average difficulty of the entire instance in order to create a more immersive experience.
Incidentally, one analysis guru had spent an entire thread analyzing the Mental Asylum.
The presence of two S-rankers meant that this instance would definitely not be easy. But even so, the appearance of an invincible supernatural entity at the end was a little excessive, not to mention the S-rank prop within the instance. Therefore, the analysis guru cautiously speculated that there could have been another unknown presence among the participants of that instance.
“Guys, do you think… that live broadcast room no one managed to find could have been…”
The speculation was slightly terrifying, but not entirely baseless.
Avid fans had searched through the listings in vain for No. 1’s live broadcast room. After the system made it clear that No. 1 possessed privileges beyond everyone else, people speculated that he might simply have used his authority to shut down his live broadcast. In any case, no one could verify it.
As for this speculation, everyone could not help but be convinced. Otherwise, no one could explain why an S-rank prop and an invincible supernatural entity would appear at the same time in the first round of the competition. It would not even be an exaggeration to say that such a setup was beneath him.
While the bullet chat and forums roared with intense discussion, the broadcasting studio finally got down to business.
The ornate, grotesque chandeliers began to dim one after another.
Light flared, and spotlights fell from the vaulted roof. Aside from the lowest step, the entire hall plunged into deep darkness.
[F-rank trainee evaluation in progress… System rating is being released…]
In an instant, letters of different colors appeared above the heads of the trainees with purple F-rank badges on their chests.
S, A, B, C, D, E, and F could be distinguished at a glance by their corresponding colors: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple.
On the lowest step were, without exception, newcomers cut from the same cloth. They were all people who had neglected developing themselves in the real world. Their overall strength was low, and therefore they had received the lowest rank in the preliminary evaluation.
The system had no high expectations for them. As far as the eye could see, the system ratings of the F-rank trainees were not high overall, and most of them remained purple.
After receiving F-rank again in the second evaluation, many trainees collapsed to the ground and cried. A thick cloud of gloom hung over the entire hall.
The instructor rating followed soon after.
The instructor’s ratings were similar to the system’s. When the system gave an F, the instructor gave an F. There were practically no cases of the instructor giving an F to someone the system had rated E, or an E to someone the system had rated F.
The two evaluation letters hovered in the air for several minutes before combining into a new letter. At the same time, the trainees’ badges transformed.
The letters and colors of the badges changed for those who had been promoted to the next rank, while the badges of those assigned F-rank again remained the same.
Only one out of every several dozen F-rank trainees was fortunate enough to promote to the next rank. Each of them wore delight on their faces, clashing harshly with the hysterical F-ranks around them.
[F-rank trainee evaluation complete. E-rank trainee evaluation will now proceed.]
It was difficult for low-ranking newcomers to make much progress. Just like in the completed second round of evaluation for F-ranks, the highest rating given among nearly ten thousand people was no more than D, and there were very few even of those.
Therefore, the evaluation of the bottom three ranks was not expected to hold many surprises. Whether people were watching from the live broadcast room or from the higher steps, everyone was uninterested in this opening act.
To them, this was merely an appetizer. The real feast would only begin with the C-ranks.
And amid this absent-minded watching, someone suddenly asked in disbelief:
“Hold on. Is that… a red rating?”
Red. The most striking and most prestigious of the seven colors. It was also the color representing S-rank.
Immediately, a veteran snorted. “Are you kidding me? We’re only at the E-rank evaluation. They’re all newcomers. The system giving one of them an S? Are you sure you aren’t sleepwalking?”
But in the very next second, his eyes widened in disbelief.
In the sea of intermingled purple and blue below, there truly was a blinding scarlet that split through everyone’s vision and burned itself deep into their eyes.
Fireworks exploded through the bullet chat.
[WTF! My eyes aren’t deceiving me, right?! An E-rank newcomer actually got an S from the system rating!]
[??? What kind of bullshit are you saying? How could… hold up… fuck. Sorry. I’m the one talking bullshit!!]
[Oh my god, an E-rank with an S-rank rating? Did the system bug out?]
[I checked three times, exited the live broadcast and re-entered, even zoomed in several times. I have to admit… the system really did give an S-rank rating.]
[…uhhh, am I the only one who noticed how ridiculously good-looking this E-rank is?!]
[I noticed, I noticed. He really is. But the system couldn’t have given him an S just because he’s good-looking, right? Upstairs, where did your brain go?]
Like a symphony abruptly cut off, a deafening silence fell over the broadcasting studio. Everyone stared in shock at the brilliant red letter above the man, standing amid a cluster of blue and purple like the bright moon surrounded by countless stars, and dazedly rubbed their eyes.
“An S-rank rating? How is that possible?” many people exclaimed in shock.
What did it mean for an E-rank newcomer to receive an S-rank system rating?
Although they did not know who the instructor was, nor the instructor’s evaluation criteria, the system was different. Unlike the uncertainty that came with an instructor, the system was undoubtedly a fair and impartial existence that could not possibly show favoritism.
Although the system firmly controlled their life and death, it was innately a program that had been set up: cold, heartless, and mechanically following a fixed set of rules and procedures. It had no physical body, much less the slightest human emotion.
Many contestants had once speculated that the system might be the product of a higher-dimensional being, which was why it possessed powers that appeared godlike in the eyes of humans.
For this reason, obtaining an S-rank rating was all the more terrifying.
Because it implied that this E-rank newcomer had hit almost every point the system had prepared in advance.
This included challenging danger, deductive reasoning, prop acquisition, strength evaluation, and more.
Or, to put it another way, how could the system give an S-rank rating to someone from the second-lowest rank, someone beneath almost all of them? Moreover, this person was even a newcomer!
The young man stood there casually, indifferently receiving millions of speechless, measuring gazes.
His unparalleled beauty and abnormal hair and eye color already made it easy for Zong Jiu to stand out from the crowd and become the center of attention.
Now, the red letter above his head had undoubtedly ignited an even more intense scrutiny upon him.
The row of thrones had been silent since the beginning of the evaluation process.
And now, that silence was finally broken.
On the ten thrones that symbolized the ultimate glory and status at the very top of the broadcasting studio, No. 5 suddenly tilted his head.
“Is this newcomer that fierce? Maybe he’ll end up becoming our colleague.”
No. 5 was a top-notch exorcist. Compared to those peak contestants with all kinds of eccentricities, his personality was smooth and easygoing. His strength was beyond doubt, but he did not have any fixed organization and often formed temporary teams in the wild, so he could freely talk to anyone.
No. 6 sneered. “Colleague? The number of people in the higher ranks is fixed. If a new S-rank is added, that means one of us will definitely be squeezed out. What are you trying to insinuate?”
No matter who was squeezed out, for these peak contestants, it would be the greatest disgrace.
It was one thing to be unable to defend their S-rank throne. But the other party was even a newcomer. How could they endure that?
The Exorcist shrugged. “That’s not what I meant. I just feel that this guy’s potential is a little terrifying.”
The golden-haired Holy Son also joined the conversation. “I never expected that he would actually be the third surviving contestant.”
“You were both in the same venue?” No. 6 asked.
Messiah nodded.
A sad, compassionate smile graced his face as always. “He is a very interesting child. But an invincible entity appeared at the final moments of that instance, and we were separated. Now, I am glad to see that he survived.”
Among the ten people, No. 4, who had never seen eye to eye with Messiah, let out a cold harrumph, fully expressing his attitude with that single sound.
As they chatted on this side, another powerful S-ranker was silently studying the white-haired young man.
Zhuge An, who had been meditating with his eyes closed all this time, suddenly opened his eyes and cast a sharp glance downward.
He had not expected… that this person would actually manage to obtain the S-rank prop.
Because Zhuge An had been in a hurry to return and confirm another matter, his overall completion rate for the Mental Asylum had not been as high as Zong Jiu’s, even though he had been the first to clear the instance.
Zhuge An’s gaze swept lightly over the brilliant red letter above the white-haired young man’s head, and his eyes narrowed.
The S-rank rating above the white-haired young man’s head was like a catalyst that shook the entire hall. Even three of those above, who had at first remained silent and aloof, entered an intense discussion because of him.
There was no one who was not watching him.
Everyone was watching him.
He had become the focal point of millions of gazes.
“From the looks of it, the top ten S-ranks are going to change. I wonder who it’ll be…”
“I can’t believe I’m being outdone by a newcomer. What the hell did he do in the first instance to receive such a high system rating without any special props?”
“Who knows? The Holy Son said only three people survived in that instance. But that already means he stepped over all of us.”
The A-rank trainees whispered to one another with dark expressions.
Everyone knew very well that it was impossible for newcomers to possess special props. To achieve such a rating without any special props — even calling him a demon would be an understatement.
“Don’t talk too much yet. Isn’t there still the instructor’s rating? What if it’s only A-rank? Getting straight S-ranks would be too dramatic.”
Someone said this, unconvinced. But his voice was immediately drowned out by the turbulent wave of discussion.
He was not the only one thinking this, but they were helpless before the facts.
During the F-rank evaluation, the instructor ratings had basically followed the system ratings.
But who could have expected that such a terrifying dark horse would emerge from the second-lowest rank?
Zong Jiu stood there idly.
He was indifferent to the evaluation he had obtained. Even if he jumped from E-rank to S-rank, he did not feel that it was anything worth bragging about.
After all, he had once soared to the peak, blessed by the heavens — an internationally acclaimed magician hailed as a god. But after his hands were ruined, he had also fallen from the clouds, crashed to rock bottom, and drowned his sorrow in alcohol.
After being tempered by countless cycles of hope turning into despair, he could now be described as a man with a mind so steady it would remain unmoved even if a mountain collapsed before him, his eyes never blinking even if a startled deer appeared at his side.
Rank was not Zong Jiu’s ultimate goal. His aim was clear: to heal his hands. Then he would continue pursuing his own grand vision as a magician.
Of course, the higher his rank, the better. After all, the system had also said that rating directly corresponded to the amount of survival points received, and many benefits and privileges came along with it. It would be a waste to refuse.
As the crowd discussed him, another system prompt sounded.
[E-rank trainee evaluation in progress… System rating has been issued. Instructor rating will now be issued.]
Abruptly, the entire hall quieted again.
This time, the silence was even deeper. Many people wore undisguised astonishment on their faces as they stared in disbelief at the other rank emerging above the white-haired young man’s head.
The young man frowned and lazily raised his eyes.
In the next second, the corners of his mouth tightened, and his pale pink eyes instantly sharpened.
Beside the brilliant red S-rank, an even more conspicuous purple rank slowly appeared.
F.
The instructor had given him the lowest possible rating, F-rank, for the previous instance!