Chapter 146-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World

Chapter 146 Kill the VIP (I)

So cold.

Zhu Ning felt herself floating in water. The biting seawater seemed to seep into every pore. She was drifting in an endless ocean, so impossibly small compared to its vastness—like an ant.

The ocean of consciousness.

Big Orange had described this to her before. She would see an ocean of consciousness—this was the outermost layer of a person's Consciousness Body.

Zhu Ning floated, feeling herself gently swaying, her entire body supremely relaxed, as if she could fall asleep at any moment.

She looked up at the sky. There were no blue skies or white clouds, not a single bird. Above her flowed liquid water. It was as if Zhu Ning were lying on the ocean floor, yet also floating in midair.

Was she right-side up or upside down?

Zhu Ning's body began to sink. The icy water crept over her face, then swallowed her whole.

She smelled the damp scent of the ocean, and something else... gunpowder.

Gunpowder? Why gunpowder?

Suddenly—bang bang bang—!

Zhu Ning's eyes snapped open. Gone was the earlier calm. She heard gunfire—dense, relentless gunfire. This was no ordinary shootout. It was a war.

Zhu Ning looked up. It was nighttime. She was on some beach, corpses all around her, bullets raining down like a storm.

In the distance, a bomb detonated, sending up a miniature mushroom cloud.

Gun barrels jutted from the opposite fortress, spraying bullets in sweeping arcs.

The bodies littering the beach must have been intruders who tried to force their way in. One wrong move, and Zhu Ning would share their fate.

"Find cover!" Big Orange's voice came through.

Damn—thrown straight into this the moment she arrived. No transition, no warm-up. What kind of beach-storming battle was this?

Zhu Ning had survived the Zombie World long enough to sharpen her instincts for danger. She adapted instantly, rolling her body sideways as several bullets thudded into the spot where she'd just been.

Zhu Ning ducked behind a pile of corpses. The bodies here were stacked like mountains, and bullets striking them made a dull, muffled sound.

Her first instinct was to use Metal Manipulation. The moment she raised her hand, a wave of powerlessness washed over her. She still remembered the first time she'd awakened Metal Manipulation—it had felt like unlocking the meridians in a cultivation novel.

Now she was quite certain those meridians were completely blocked.

She opened the System Interface. Sure enough, every item slot was blacked out.

Abilities were useless too. Everything on a Consciousness Body was illusory—there was no real metal to manipulate. Liquid Manipulation could only control actual water, not water inside your brain.

The good news was that God's Eye View still worked. Whether the passive skill Danger Sense had gone offline remained to be seen.

She was basically an ordinary person right now. Wonderful—back to square one the moment she arrived.

Then again, she hadn't had any Abilities in the Zombie World either, and had gotten by with just this much gear. Now she even had God's Eye View.

Zhu Ning was wearing the same clothes she'd had on before entering the bathtub—a black hoodie and jeans. Absolutely zero bulletproofing.

She flexed her fingers. The sensation was identical to reality. Her agility and speed should still be intact.

Which meant her marksmanship was still there.

All she could rely on was her shooting skills, plus the hand-to-hand combat training she'd done with the Demon Hunters. She wasn't great at it, but getting beaten up every day had improved her somewhat.

In other words, she'd have to survive on raw skill alone.

Zhu Ning felt like she'd just entered a game and was getting used to her character.

After quickly assessing her situation, Big Orange spoke: "This is the Consciousness Cloud's automated defense system. In simple terms, you're viruses, and they're the antivirus software. But I have to say, the rich really spare no expense—the defense level here is insane."

Big Orange's voice was actually tinged with admiration—the pure appreciation of a tech geek for high-level technology.

In the underground room, Big Orange wore a pair of glasses. Zhu Ning's situation was being relayed in real time.

Zhu Ning was remarkably calm. She froze for two seconds at first, then rapidly adapted to the situation.

If Zhu Ning weren't a Cleaner, she'd have the makings of a consciousness-space thief with that composure—she could steal anything from inside a Consciousness Body.

Too bad Zhu Ning's ambitions clearly lay elsewhere.

Zhu Ning quickly scavenged weapons and ammunition from the corpses. One submachine gun, two daggers, thirty rounds in the magazine, and one grenade.

Not bad. Under normal circumstances, this would count as a decent supply of ammo—but thinking she could bypass the fortress with this was pure fantasy.

The other side had heavy weapons. Charging in would be nothing but feeding them kills.

Zhu Ning stripped a bulletproof vest from a corpse and put it on while asking, "How are the others?"

Big Orange: "All still alive."

Big Orange: "You need to find Liu Niannian now. She has the key to get inside. I'm sending you her position."

Zhu Ning was about to ask—I don't have a helmet or any kind of system, how are you sending me a position?

Before she could get the words out, she heard a noise. Someone had launched a red smoke signal from the right rear. It stood out vividly amid the hail of bullets.

Zhu Ning: "..."

How charmingly low-tech.

Big Orange: "She sent a signal flare. That's where she is. Did you see it?"

Zhu Ning: "Got it."

The signal flare dissipated quickly, but within Zhu Ning's thirty-meter range, activating God's Eye View immediately locked onto the precise location.

Though her other abilities were all unusable, Zhu Ning's Hyperbody Datafication proved its worth here. Her mind snapped into gear, marking a precise red dot.

So this was why she'd been made to awaken that ability—it was all for today.

No wonder she'd had to enter The Ant Nest first to find Gao Zijian's father's notebook and awaken the experimental subject's base skill. It raised her survival odds in the Consciousness Cloud.

Everything had to proceed in order.

Big Orange: "I can't help you from here. Good luck—and just a reminder, getting hit by a bullet really will kill you."

Big Orange's voice was incredibly gentle, delivering the cruelest truth in the softest tone.

Zhu Ning took a deep breath. She listened to the gunfire behind her—bullets rat-tat-tatting everywhere. A round struck the ground to her left, leaving a crater.

This was a real battlefield.

Everything before had been child's play. This was a full-scale war.

Many people who returned from battlefields developed PTSD—flinching at the sound of fireworks.

War truly was terrifying. You could easily be hit by a stray bullet or a piece of shrapnel. Surviving was mostly down to luck.

Zhu Ning focused her attention, trying to filter out the noise. Her brain seemed to kick into gear at this moment, automatically screening out irrelevant information.

Like the mangled corpses on the ground, the dense curtain of bullets, the sound of seawater lapping against bodies.

Only useful information remained: a piece of cover five meters away, three corpses on the ground that probably still had ammo, enough for a resupply.

Zhu Ning opened God's Eye View in her mind. The thirty-meter range was working at maximum efficiency. She waited, perfectly still.

Then suddenly, she opened her eyes, stood up, and fired a shot to the front left—without even turning around—then broke into a full sprint.

Boom!

A bomb exploded behind her. Shrapnel tore through the air mercilessly, like a volley of bullets. Zhu Ning immediately dropped to the ground.

She couldn't make a straight run to the target. She'd need to switch between at least four or five pieces of cover along the way.

This was the first one.

Liu Niannian was still twenty-six meters away. Zhu Ning had never felt that a mere twenty-something meters could be so long. She reached the corpses here and found another gun—now she had two.

Zhu Ning was about to move to the second piece of cover.

Ding—

[Intermediate Ability Danger Sense triggered. Two-minute advance danger warning has been sent. Please stay alert.]

Zhu Ning froze. In the Danger Sense vision, she'd been killed by a bomb from behind.

She stopped and began planning a new way through.

In front of the screen in the underground room.

Big Orange kept her eyes on the monitor. She had to follow through from start to finish, so she'd stopped talking to avoid being a distraction.

From her end, she could see how everyone was doing. Xu Meng didn't need much commentary—Big Orange had followed her captain for years and knew her capabilities inside out.

Xu Meng was an agility type. Even without Abilities, her body was agile enough. Back in the day, whether it was marksmanship or combat exams, she'd ranked first in everything. Otherwise she wouldn't have qualified to lead the Cheetah Squad.

Combined with her experience, she moved across the beach with something like an agility buff—fast and fluid.

But Zhu Ning was different. She clearly wasn't adapted at first. Her aim was dead-on, but she'd never fought in a large-scale war and was still a bit rough around the edges.

And her fighting style was bizarre.

She seemed to know where danger lurked before it struck. From Big Orange's perspective, Zhu Ning looked like she was using cheats—she didn't even need to see where the enemies were. Fire, find cover, blow up the enemy, reach cover, resupply ammo, then repeat. The entire sequence was seamless.

By the time Zhu Ning reached her destination, Big Orange was still reeling in disbelief. All she could say was: "Caracal, you're amazing."

Amazing? It had cost her two deaths to pull off.

Zhu Ning found Liu Niannian. She was behind a crumbling wall, wearing some kind of protective gear that Zhu Ning didn't recognize, with blue points of light glowing across her body.

Liu Niannian held a phone-like device and was typing away. When she saw Zhu Ning, her eyes lit up. "Boss!"

Zhu Ning was momentarily speechless.

She had fought tooth and nail to reach Liu Niannian, only to find her looking perfectly calm, as if she'd activated some kind of max-luck Ability.

Bullets literally curved around her, forming a circle on the ground. They couldn't touch a single hair on her head.

Zhu Ning asked: "Do you have some kind of cheat code?"

Liu Niannian: "Oh, I've got the key on me, so the system can identify me. A bit harder to kill than everyone else."

Zhu Ning: "..."

Pay-to-win players really were something else.

This was truly a case of clawing your way to the mountaintop, only to find someone born there sipping tea. Too real—so real it physically hurt.

Because of her "cheating," Zhu Ning had arrived before Xu Meng, but she'd taken some light injuries. She slung the gun around her neck and used the wait time to bandage her left hand behind cover.

Zhu Ning: "Who's your guardian?"

Liu Niannian: "You've met her. The Mechanical Butler."

Zhu Ning frowned. Was Liu Niannian even more alone than she was? The only one she could trust with her life was a Mechanical Butler?

Zhu Ning: "Your family won't find out, right?"

Liu Niannian: "They'll definitely find out. It's just a matter of at what stage."

If they were discovered after killing Bao Ruiming, it would at least have been worth it. If they got caught before finishing the job, Liu Niannian would probably be fine, but Zhu Ning and Xu Meng would be as good as dead.

Big Orange had been optimistic—they wouldn't even have three hours. Liu Niannian said: "I estimate we'll be discovered within two hours. We need to make this quick."

Time flowed differently inside the Cloud too. Liu Niannian had an old-fashioned mechanical watch that could track real-world time.

Three minutes had passed.

Zhu Ning: "Could you actually die in here?"

She wanted to know if Liu Niannian was one hundred percent safe.

Liu Niannian's fingers paused on the phone-like device. She thought for a moment. "Yes. If a bullet hits my heart, I'll die too. Once the defense protocol activates, I could be killed as well."

The Consciousness Cloud was more dangerous than Contamination Zones. The things in here were more brutal and merciless.

The way they'd entered the Consciousness Cloud wasn't a full consciousness upload—it was more like going online in a multiplayer game, except dying in the game meant dying for real.

Liu Niannian was "luckier" than most and had protection, but she couldn't escape the most fundamental rules.

If someone took a precise shot at Liu Niannian—say, the master of this place, Bao Ruiming—she would die all the same.

Zhu Ning was silent for a moment. Xu Meng had come in to find the truth behind Cheng Mofei's death. Zhu Ning was here to help avenge Lin Xiaofeng's enemy and interrogate Bao Ruiming. But Liu Niannian didn't have such a strong motive—and this could cost her her life.

Was the risk worth it?

Liu Niannian: "It's cool, though."

Zhu Ning couldn't relate to that intense craving for adventure at all, but she said: "Absolutely."

Liu Niannian smiled. "Besides, I'm your insurance policy. If you two get caught, my family might not dare kill you because of me. You can use me as a hostage."

Zhu Ning finished wrapping her left hand: "Wow, how selfless of you."

Boom—!

A bomb exploded in the distance, its light illuminating their position. Zhu Ning saw a dark figure lunging toward them, and in the next instant, Xu Meng had appeared behind the cover.

As expected of the captain—that was genuine, hard-earned skill.

Xu Meng was injured too. Nothing critical—a gash on her rear shoulder, a cut on her cheek, a wound on her calf. All vital organs were fine.

Xu Meng noticed the bloodstains on Zhu Ning's arm, then looked at Liu Niannian—completely unscathed. "Where did you find this pro?"

It had been that harrowing. Even Zhu Ning was wounded, yet this friend of hers was totally fine.

Zhu Ning: "Allow me to introduce our pay-to-win player. Her superpower is being rich."

Liu Niannian actually nodded with a straight face: "That's right. My codename is Niangao."

Xu Meng: "..."

Why did she have a feeling this mission wasn't going to go well?

Zhu Ning found a first-aid kit and patched up Xu Meng's wounds.

Liu Niannian bantered with Zhu Ning while never putting down her work, still operating the device. She pressed a button.

"Done."

A perfect square suddenly appeared on the ground, its edges razor-sharp and smooth, as though some higher-dimensional energy had opened a data block. A staircase unfolded downward, step by step.

The stairs were ancient, descending into darkness—like an underground bunker from wartime.

Zhu Ning really hadn't seen much of the world. A staircase materializing out of thin air was way too sci-fi. The gunfight hadn't even stopped, and Liu Niannian had just opened a back door out of nowhere?

Liu Niannian closed the device. "Let's go."

Zhu Ning was still marveling at the wonders of technology. Liu Niannian, thinking Zhu Ning didn't trust her, led by example and went down first. Xu Meng followed. Zhu Ning brought up the rear.

After Zhu Ning descended the stairs, the square entrance vanished without a trace.

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