# Chapter 40: Vanguard
"Cousin, what are you doing? We're relatives! Even though I admire you a lot, if you try to do something naughty to me, I won't cooperate!"
"Shut up!" Xu Huo checked her shoulders — no serial number.
He made her face him, then cut his own palm with a small knife and squeezed out a string of blood right in front of her.
Yu Qingqing stared at him in shock. "Cousin, I haven't seen you in a few days and you've picked up a self-harming hobby..."
Xu Huo breathed a slight sigh of relief. Good.
"You know I eat people. Aren't you afraid?"
Yu Qingqing said nonchalantly, "I believe you won't hurt me. Besides, there are so many people out there — you wouldn't go after your own relatives, right? As long as I'm fine, what do I care if others live or die?"
Xu Huo's head started to ache.
Yu Qingqing was his stepmother's niece. On paper they were cousins, but they had no blood relation. His relationship with his stepmother was cold, and he rarely saw her side of the family. Yu Qingqing was an exception — she'd liked clinging to him since high school. Later, when he settled in Ting City, she dropped out of college halfway through to come be an actress here, and no matter how much he tried to drive her away, she wouldn't leave.
"Don't ever say things like that again," he warned. "Unless you want to go see a psychiatrist again."
Yu Qingqing stuck out her tongue, then complained, "What's wrong with people being naturally self-interested? I don't get what Mom and Dad are thinking, making me see a doctor. I haven't committed any crimes."
"By the time you commit a crime, it'll be too late." Xu Huo said. "Watch fewer dark movies and TV dramas. If you make a mistake, I'll personally take you to the police station myself."
Yu Qingqing shrank her neck. "I'm not talking to you anymore! I'm going to sleep!"
With that, she hurriedly ducked into the bathroom.
Xu Huo sat down at the computer and logged into the website and account number Nie Xuan had given him. It was a forum called "Vanguard Players."
The forum already had quite a few popular science posts about Evolvers and players. The content was similar to what he already knew, but the official side hadn't published the dangers of stopping Evolution Agent use. Nie Xuan clearly knew about it.
Xu Huo understood the official reasoning — they were worried that Evolution Agents would become the next resource players would fight over, following the tickets. But if players knew that missing a single Instance would result in being teleported to a random Instance three months later, probably not many would think about grabbing Evolution Agents first.
Being teleported to a station without a ticket still gave you a fighting chance. But if you didn't get a ticket by the time the Instance ended, there was a high chance you'd be stranded in the Instance. And whether you'd encounter other players later and snatch a ticket was hard to say.
The Dimension Rift game couldn't be measured by current time. It claimed to shuttle between three dimensions and five dimensions — there might be other space-times, other times. The Headchopper Instance was an example. It was a closed Instance now, but it hadn't been in the past. There were two possibilities.
First, the Instance's location might actually be in real space. If the Instance wasn't closed, not only players but also non-players could enter. This meant Instance locations could appear in any country, any city in this world. Besides players, non-players could also become targets of slaughter.
Second, Instance locations had a separate, specific game space. In that case, the stations connected the game's internal venues. If these internal venues could also be open, then "non-player" would mean "non-player of this specific Instance," suggesting the game's internal world was open, and players should be able to take the train to any Instance city.
Either way, if a player was stranded in an Instance city, finding other players smoothly would be very difficult.
Xu Huo had a feeling there wouldn't be many closed Instances like the Hot Spring Mountain Villa.
If you missed even one Instance, the game would notify you to prepare for a random Instance three months later, starting at B-rank. That was basically waiting to die.
He wasn't sure if the officials knew this news, because he didn't know when Evolvers had first appeared in the world he was living in now.
But they'd find out sooner or later.
Xu Huo didn't dwell on this matter. Instead, he flipped through the officially published player rankings.
Currently, this only had ratings for players who had experienced one Instance. The highest was a player with the nickname "Golden Crow" — an official staff member. He had safely led eight players out of the game and received a B-rank rating. The officials had also announced his rewards — besides improved treatment for his family, they'd given him an item.
Most players below him were E-rank (Ordinary) and D-rank (Good), with a few C-rank (Excellent). This was very good for people who had just entered the game confused, and they had a common codename — Vanguard Players.
Dare to be vanguard, willing to be vanguard.
This post was completely blowing up. Many people who became players had unstable mindsets — worried about losing their lives and also worried about their families having no one to take care of them. But after joining the official system, as long as they did well, the country would give them resources and money. Even if they died in the end, their families could receive compensation, completely removing their worries!
It was clear many players were tempted. The post was extremely hot, completely suppressing the posts below about trading tickets and buying items and potions at high prices.
Among them were some trying to sell tickets and items, but anyone with sharp eyes could tell they were fishing.
"Cousin, what are you looking at?" Yu Qingqing, still carrying moisture, walked up behind him.
Xu Huo closed the page and glanced at her bare legs. "You should know that right now, in my eyes, you're no different from a piece of pork."
Yu Qingqing was wearing a large short-sleeved shirt she'd found in his bag. She pouted and said, "My clothes are all dirty — what am I supposed to wear?"
"By the way, why do you have a razor blade in your pocket?" She held up a small silver fragment the size of half a fingernail. "It almost cut my hand just now. You didn't really go kill someone, did you?"
That was a fragment that had broken off the Headchopper's axe. Although the game had taken the axe, the fragments hadn't disappeared.
Xu Huo reached out and took it, then opened the ticket booking interface. "If you don't have clothes, have your assistant bring them. Stop going through my things. I've booked your ticket — go back early."
"Breaking the contract isn't that easy. I might even have to go to court with the company." Yu Qingqing tried to struggle.
"You won't have to go to court. You don't even need to sign anything — I'll handle it. Go home and study. Don't run around outside if you have nothing to do." Xu Huo said coldly.
"Xu Huo! You're being unreasonable!" Yu Qingqing glared angrily. "Even my parents didn't say anything!"
"Walk back yourself tomorrow, or go back in a wheelchair — pick one." Xu Huo stood up, expressionless as he looked at her.
Yu Qingqing's angry and pitiful expression immediately vanished. Her eyes turned cold as she stared at him for a few seconds, then she jumped onto the bed, pulled the covers over herself, and said in a muffled voice, "I curse you — no girlfriend for two years!"
Xu Huo turned off the light and went to lie down on the sofa.
The next morning, an assistant brought clean clothes. When she was packing up Yu Qingqing's dirty clothes, she cut her finger on a razor blade that fell out.
"I'll handle it." Xu Huo told her to go treat the wound. He removed all three razor blades sewn into the dress's collar and corners and threw them in the trash.
After seeing Yu Qingqing off at the airport and watching her board the plane with his own eyes, he returned to the city and went to the entertainment company she had signed with.