Chapter 25: The System Is Not Necessarily Right

The mist shrouding the mountain village gradually dissipated. The ink-black canopy of the distant horizon had vanished entirely, replaced by the brilliant, dazzling light of dawn. In the eastern sky, the rising sun climbed slowly from the horizon, casting its glow upon the earth.

Ji Chenling’s eyes crinkled into curves as he smiled. "No one taught me. I’m self-taught."

Having said that, he puffed out his chest, looking incredibly proud and smug.

"You big baby," Lu Xi said, the corners of her mouth turning up as she looked at him with undisguised disdain.

"Speaking of which, how old are you, really? No lying." Lu Xi always felt he was full of nonsense, with every word he uttered being half-truth and half-fabrication.

Not that she particularly cared.

"Seventeen," Ji Chenling replied.

Lu Xi clearly didn't believe him. "Stop spouting nonsense."

He didn't look like a teenager at all.

"I'm not," the young man said, blinking his eyes at her with an innocent expression.

When he died in the real world, he had just turned seventeen, not yet an adult. When he opened his eyes again to find himself in the game world, he initially thought he had arrived in the afterlife.

Back then, he was the only one in the entire game world; there were no companions, and he would never accidentally encounter other players. The world was vast, empty, and lonely, and he felt completely out of place.

He had always been a madman. Even his own father was afraid of this little lunatic, and the board members of his corporation feared him while simultaneously needing his existence. After all, without Ji Chenling, the Ji family would never have attained such a high status, nor would they have successfully squeezed into the ranks of the top elite.

He died at seventeen, but the flow of time in the game world differed from the real world, so he had no idea how old he actually was now. He was, in the truest sense, unaware of what year it was.

"The villain you mentioned earlier—I think I might know who it is," Ji Chenling said out of the blue, instantly piquing Lu Xi’s curiosity.

"Oh?" Lu Xi leaned in. "Tell me more."

"Have you ever heard of the Lord of Death?"

Lu Xi shook her head honestly. She hadn't finished reading the novel; she had only read up to the point where the cannon-fodder character who shared her name died, and then she herself had passed away from illness.

While receiving treatment in the hospital, she would pass the time by reading various romance novels. In essence, this world was also a novel serving the romance of the leads, draped in various eerie, horrific, and thrilling plotlines to deepen the emotional connection between Ji Yunxuan and Jiang Yanyan.

In any case, the protagonists possessed heaven-defying luck; even when they deliberately courted death, they wouldn't die.

As the saying goes, those who are blessed need not toil, while those who are not toil until their hearts break. When Lu Xi read the synopsis, she remembered that the male and female leads basically just cleared levels and fought monsters, safely navigating various horror instances, only to encounter a powerful villain in the finale.

That’s right—the big villain usually only appeared at the very end. Whether in terms of strength or other aspects, they completely crushed the protagonists, though the leads would inevitably emerge victorious.

Lu Xi gazed at him expectantly, sitting cross-legged and upright with her ears pricked, ready to listen to the story. Perhaps her rigorous, attentive attitude was somewhat amusing, as Ji Chenling couldn't help but smile whenever he saw it.

"Stop laughing. Why are you so happy all the time?" Lu Xi practically suspected that Ji Chenling was afflicted with a curse or poison that would kill him if he didn't smile. He laughed endlessly, and his threshold for amusement was incredibly low.

Ji Chenling leaned down, rubbing his cheek against her shoulder in a gesture that was both intimate and ambiguous.

What to do? He was finding it increasingly difficult to bring himself to kill her. The little toy was too cute; he didn't know when it started, but he felt inexplicably good whenever he saw her.

Ji Chenling had loved to smile before he died, too, but most of those smiles were the kind that made people tremble—sinister grins, cold smirks while plotting against others, or the manic laughter of losing control. The last kind was the most chilling; he suffered from mental illness, and no one ever knew what terrible thing he might do the next second.

Genuine, heartfelt joy seemed to have only begun to flow continuously since he met Lu Xi.

Ji Chenling spoke with a half-smile. "The Escape World is composed of countless terrifying instances. The Lord of Death is the master of this place; he waits for players at the end of every story."

"You mean the final level?" Lu Xi mused.

He gave a soft, affirmative hum.

"Do you know how many instances there are here?"

"I don't." Although he had been to all of them, he had never bothered to count them.

"I wonder what the Lord of Death even looks like," Lu Xi murmured, feeling curious.

Ji Chenling lowered his eyes, pondering for a few seconds. Honestly, he didn't remember. After all, he was the Lord of Death now, and he had killed the original Lord of Death so quickly—and so much time had passed—that he naturally didn't recall the specific appearance.

He vaguely remembered... an old man with seven heads?

In the real world, there were the seven Gourd Brothers and their grandfather; in this world, there was a grandfather with seven heads.

Ji Chenling also suffered from his illness in the game world; he had long forgotten exactly how he had annihilated the previous Lord of Death and replaced him.

"Why are you two here?" Jiang Chen’s voice cut through their idle chat.

Jiang Chen looked at the two of them sitting side by side, his anger flaring up. *Lu Xi, hasn't your game of playing hard to get ended yet?!*

He had already used Chen Yiyi to provoke her, even going as far as to feign pursuing Chen Yiyi and becoming a couple with her, all to teach Lu Xi a lesson. He wanted her to understand that some temper tantrums shouldn't be thrown, and she shouldn't be so dramatic.

Yet, several days had passed, and even though he deliberately flaunted his affection in front of Lu Xi, he still couldn't get her to soften her stance.

Jiang Chen was so angry he laughed. Instead of thinking about how to win his heart back, she was here flirting with another man.

This was the first time Jiang Chen had really looked at Ji Chenling. After scanning him up and down, he immediately looked away in disinterest. He didn't look like much; he was the type of person some girls would describe as "edible only after