As they walked into the inner room, Ren Yi noticed that Lu Zihan was acting exceptionally "dignified" today. He held his head high, eyes fixed straight ahead with a piercing gaze, and his pace was as steady as a moving statue.
Once they were out of Lu Qing's sight, Ren Yi couldn't help but nudge him with an elbow. "Old Lu, what's with you? Why so serious?"
To his surprise, despite Lu Zihan's large frame, that small nudge sent him stumbling, and then...
Thud!
A round object fell straight down and rolled a couple of times before Ren Yi's stunned eyes.
"Don't touch me! My head!" a loud cry rang out, but the source of the sound was the "ball" on the floor—it was Lu Zihan's face, now flushed with embarrassment.
"You... Pfft!" Ren Yi held it in for three seconds before completely losing it.
If you saw a talking head on the ground, you might scream in terror. But if that head belonged to your best friend, you wouldn't be able to stop yourself from laughing.
"Don't laugh! Help me pick it up, you bastard!" Lu Zihan's head let out a voice full of grief and indignation. Meanwhile, his body was fumbling around on the ground like a headless fly.
He was literally searching the floor for his head.
Ren Yi suppressed his laughter and quickly scooped up Lu Zihan's head, carefully setting it back onto his neck.
The moment they made contact, the flesh at the severed edge squirmed like a living thing, connecting and healing instantly. In the blink of an eye, it was as smooth as new.
"What's the deal with you? Are you some kind of Flying Head?" The corners of Ren Yi's mouth twitched upward again.
"You're still laughing?" Lu Zihan said fiercely, while cautiously tilting his neck left and right as if testing a newly installed part.
"Pfft, hahahahaha!" Ren Yi's laughter only grew louder.
Once he finally caught his breath and Lu Zihan had straightened his head, Ren Yi looked him over with wonder. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine," Lu Zihan said, pouting. "It's just that my head is a bit heavy. It's not very stable after I transform into a humanoid; it tends to fall off easily. My mom says it'll get better once I rank up and strengthen it."
"Oh—" Ren Yi drawled, his curiosity fully piqued. "So, what do you actually look like? Give me a hint."
Lu Zihan gave him a cold sidelong glance. "Want to see? Fine, but we transform together."
"Deal!" Ren Yi agreed immediately. "I'll count to three. Together. Three, two, one!"
Both of them simultaneously released their hold on their humanoid forms.
In Ren Yi's vision, Lu Zihan's body rapidly expanded and shifted.
His skin turned a metallic blue-black, his height surged to nearly three meters, and his limbs bulged with muscle. Two hideous, massive bone blades erupted from his elbows, gleaming with a chilling light like a grim reaper's scythes.
Most striking was his head—a sharp, fully enclosed metal mask covered it completely, leaving only a thin red horizontal visor where two points of fierce light flowed like blood.
Meanwhile, in Lu Zihan's perception, Ren Yi's position was replaced by a sudden surge of pale mist that constantly shifted its patterns.
Countless indescribable, soft, and eerie tentacles hung down from the mist, writhing silently as if they had a life of their own.
At the core of the mist, something pulsed slowly, emitting an aura that caused instinctive dizziness and unease.
Immediately after, two voices rang out in simultaneous, heart-wrenching accusation:
"Holy crap, why can you fly?"
"Damn it, you actually have hands!"
The two teenagers, seeing each other's True Forms for the first time, quickly moved from shock to a subtle sense of defeat regarding their respective "art styles."
"...Once we enter the Instance, let's not talk to each other," Ren Yi suggested sincerely after a moment of silence.
"Agreed," Lu Zihan's voice came from inside the helmet, sounding muffled.
As he spoke, Ren Yi very directly opened his status panel and turned it toward Lu Zihan.
"Alright, now that we've seen each other's True Forms, let's be honest about the rest."
【Name: Ren Yi】
【Level: E-rank (Progress: 37/100)】
【Rules and Abilities: Ammunition-type. Can perform illusions after absorbing positive emotions caused by oneself. Capacity (1/1). One successful ammunition fill counts as one feeding.】
【Family: Ren Man】
【Profession: Cub】
【Status: Energy Stable】
The Rules and Abilities section had already been registered by Dr. Lin.
As for those extra progress points, they were thanks to Ren Yi's "tireless" community service over the past few days. By chatting with and helping the elderly Anomalies in the neighborhood, he had managed to... obtain exactly thirty-six points of positive emotion.
Unfortunately, before his next rank-up, the same individual couldn't provide progress points more than once. Ren Yi had already exhausted his entire social network; otherwise, he felt he could have reached A-rank in minutes.
"Good grief, is your rule supposed to make the Participants laugh inside the Instance? Does the Alliance even have energy crystals for that category?"
Lu Zihan frowned at first, then suddenly cried out, "Wait... you animal, how is your progress so fast!"
"Even though my rule is a bit abstract, it ranks up quickly." Ren Yi shrugged with his misty Anomaly form and urged, "What about yours? Hurry up."
Lu Zihan helplessly displayed his own panel.
【Name: Lu Zihan】
【Level: E-rank (8/50)】
【Rules and Abilities: Rule-trigger type, Rebutter Dies. Within a fifty-meter radius centered on the True Form, if an individual rebuts, the user can immediately teleport behind that individual and perform a decapitation. A successful decapitation counts as one feeding.】
【Family: Lu Qing, Zhou Xun, Lu Zi, Lu Ying, Lu Hong... (Omitted 37 other family members)】
【Profession: Cub】
【Status: Energy Stable】
Ren Yi's eyes were first overwhelmed by the massive list of family members filling the screen.
The Lu family was certainly thriving.
It took him a while to find Lu Zihan's Rules and Abilities.
"So you're... a professional contrarian?" He raised a white, tentacle-like eyebrow.
At the same time, he noticed that Lu Zihan's total progress requirement (50) was lower than his own (100). Was it because the rule was more dangerous or harder to execute?
As for those 8 progress points, Lu Zihan definitely couldn't have executed that ability within the Alliance; he must have absorbed Rule Crystals.
Ren Yi had learned over the last few days that a Rule Crystal could only be condensed if Anomalies with the same rule sacrificed several feeding opportunities.
For Anomaly Cubs, besides the first feeding provided for free by the Alliance, they had to rely on their families for everything else.
Old Lu was indeed a hidden trust-fund baby.
"Look closely, it means as long as someone contradicts me, I can chop them," Lu Zihan said defiantly.
"In your current state, it doesn't seem like you can disguise yourself among the Participants, can you?" Ren Yi asked, looking at Lu Zihan's head.
"I..." Lu Zihan stammered. "If I shout a few more times, they'll probably talk back out of fear, right?"
"What if you run into someone who just says 'Yeah, sure, whatever' to everything? Won't you be screwed?"
"Then I'll just... chop him directly." Lu Zihan patted his helmet with the back of the blade on his hand, making a dull clanging sound to demonstrate his strength.
Ren Yi looked at the other's three-meter-tall steel body. It was true—even without using a rule, physical salvation was quite reliable.
Rate on N.U.
