# 676
Chapter 677: Yuzuri Takishiro
"Identity verification in progress... Warning, identity verification fai... Identity verification successful, please proceed."
The cold electronic voice stopped mid-sentence, and was replaced by Jiang Er's voice. The metal door in front of An Qingyu slowly lifted, and in the dark corridor, lights flickered on section by section.
An Qingyu walked in calmly.
At the end of the corridor, a massive room occupied nearly a third of the entire experimental zone. Large one-way mirrors lined the walls around the room. Standing outside the glass, An Qingyu could see the scene inside clearly.
White floor tiles, white beds, white walls, white ceiling... In this immaculately white room, a figure in a deep teal surgical robe was huddled in a single-person sofa, holding a controller in hand, connected to the television on the opposite wall.
On the TV screen, a plumber wearing red suspenders was throwing his red cap like a boomerang, skillfully collecting coins from the ground while running toward the green pipe at the end of the level.
He was a very tall, very thin teenager, with delicate and sculpted features, his appearance even more stunning than young Kyosuke-san in his prime. He looked like a beautiful prince stepped out of a fairy tale, with a head of snow-white hair almost taller than his entire body, cascading over the sofa like silk, like a waterfall cascading from the edge of the sofa to the floor.
His skin had an unhealthy pallor, but his eyes staring intently at the screen were bright and lively. If one looked carefully, one could see that his pupils were not quite like a normal person's—his eyes were like a pair of cross-shaped stars, twinkling faintly in the black of his eyes.
"Is this a thirteen-year-old?" Jiang Er's surprised voice rang out beside An Qingyu. "This height, this face... he looks like he's eighteen or nineteen!"
"The Oracle Envoy injected him with large amounts of artificial hormones during the experiment to accelerate his body's growth, so his physical age hasn't been thirteen for a long time. As for his white hair... that should be the result of prolonged drug accumulation in his body." An Qingyu explained.
"How utterly ruthless..."
After observing him through the one-way glass for a moment, An Qingyu said, "Open the door. I'll go in and talk with him."
"But we still can't confirm whether he's safe." Jiang Er said with concern. "In the past, it was always the Oracle Envoy who contacted him. If you suddenly change, he might do something unpredictable. No one knows what the Oracle Envoy has cultivated him into over these years. If he was truly being raised as an artificial god, he's an extremely terrifying existence..."
"It's fine." An Qingyu smiled gently. "Open the door."
As her voice fell, the metal door beside her slowly lifted. An Qingyu tidied her collar and walked inside.
Inside the room.
Yuzuri Takishiro stared intently at the screen, his fingers flying across the controller. Even as An Qingyu walked to his side, he didn't glance up.
An Qingyu observed him for a moment, then sat down on the floor beside him, smiling as she spoke in perfect Japanese: "Hello."
"Hello." The white-haired teenager replied politely, his gaze still not turning toward An Qingyu as he spoke calmly, "I thought you would continue standing outside, afraid to come in and see me."
An Qingyu's eyes narrowed.
She turned to look—the one-way mirror inside the room was indeed just a mirror from the inside; one couldn't see outside at all.
How did he know she was standing outside in such a tightly sealed laboratory?
"No need to look. The naked eye can't see outside from here." Yuzuri Takishiro said coolly.
"Then how did you see?" An Qingyu asked curiously.
"From the minimap."
"Minimap?"
"Mm." Yuzuri Takishiro slowly said, "You can't see it, but it's in my mental world. I can see that on the current map, there's only one red dot—yours—and then one semi-transparent red dot that has already covered every corner of this place...
This situation, I'm seeing it for the first time. Is that sister a ghost? Or like 'Hadzuka,' an artificial intelligence?"
Hearing these words, a flash of shock crossed An Qingyu's eyes. After a moment of hesitation, she continued to ask:
"You can see the minimap? Besides these, what else can you see?"
"There's a lot, like... levels."
On the TV screen, Mario successfully passed through layers of levels and entered the green pipe. The words "Level +1" appeared along with Mario's celebration.
Yuzuri Takishiro slowly set down the controller in his hand, turned his head to look at An Qingyu. Those cross-shaped eyes seemed to peer directly into the depths of her heart, profound and unfathomable...
"Levels?"
"Your level is lv68, and that sister's level is lv63." Yuzuri Takishiro glanced up at the surveillance camera in the corner. "With your abilities, you shouldn't be able to kill an Oracle Envoy at lv84, right? What means did you use to lure them away?"
An Qingyu froze on the spot.
Minimap, levels... What this child was talking about was a game?
Could it be that in his eyes, this world was just one big game?
No... that's not right. He could clearly know her position and Jiang Er's existence, and could even materialize realm divisions into levels. This wasn't simply a cognitive deviation... His ability itself was "the game"?
After pondering for a moment, An Qingyu asked:
"And you? What's your level?"
"Me?" A faint smile curved on Yuzuri Takishiro's pale lips. "My level is lv97."
97...
An Qingyu frowned in thought.
If this child's level divisions for realms were correct, her lv68 represented the "Sea" realm, the Oracle Envoy's lv84 represented "Klein," then what he called lv97 would correspond to...
Human Apex.
The way An Qingyu looked at Yuzuri Takishiro had completely changed.
These Oracle Envoys had actually managed to secretly create a Human Apex-level powerhouse through artificial experiments?
How had they possibly done this?
For the first time in a while, An Qingyu's eyes gleamed with excitement and the thirst for knowledge!
"Qingyu! I think this kid is a bit off. You're not safe in there. Get out quickly!" Jiang Er's voice transmitted through the Bluetooth earpiece into An Qingyu's ear, full of anxiety.
Before An Qingyu could respond, Yuzuri Takishiro, sitting across from her, seemed to have heard these words. Expressionless, he raised his head and looked toward the surveillance camera in the corner.
"Sister, you don't need to be so nervous." He squinted into a smile. "I'm... very safe."
In his eyes, that cross-shaped pupil flickered with a glint of light.
Ssssshhhk——!!
The entire power supply system of 【Pure Land】 was instantly cut off, plunging the surroundings into complete darkness.
Across the entire silver disc, only in this small room did the television mounted on the wall still glow with light, pixel-style text assembling together, flowing between black and red light:
—You Dead!