The Only Player in 'Child of Stardust'

Zhou Yuan suddenly turned his head and saw a lightweight space blanket coming down over his head like a giant net.

He dodged to the side, avoiding the flying blanket. Summoning his Steel Rose Revolver, he aimed it at the tall, dark figure that had followed the blanket.

Bang!

In the dark bedroom, the flash of gunfire was fleeting.

Li Xu Tian, holding a sharp knife, fell heavily to the ground as if struck by lightning. He tried to stand but found his body uncontrollable. Within a breath, he couldn't feel his limbs.

"What era do you think this is, still using knives?"

Zhou Yuan kicked the sharp knife aside and blew the smoke from the gun barrel lightly.

"Haven't you heard?

Beyond seven steps, a gun is fast; within seven steps, the gun is both fast and accurate."

Don't be misled by movies showing people dodging bullets or knives being better than guns. In reality, guns are not weak; such scenes are just for entertainment.

In the real world, people with guns are in charge.

The bedroom wasn't large. For a trained gunman, dodging human-sized targets wasn't an issue. Even if the opponent had a knife, American-style quick-draw tactics would take them down without question.

Unless Li Xu Tian was an extraordinary person with superior physical abilities to dodge bullets or withstand the effects of paralysis darts, only then could he counterattack Zhou Yuan.

But if Li Xu Tian were that, the mission reward wouldn't be so meager, and Zhou Yuan wouldn't have risked entering the bedroom directly.

Zhou Yuan rarely took risks he couldn't handle. His daring to enter directly indicated he had full confidence.

"You... you're not a policeman?" Li Xu Tian's body was paralyzed, and he struggled to speak.

Zhou Yuan ignored him. He stepped on a desk and opened the first hanging cabinet on the left, retrieving a safe from inside.

[The code is 4142.]

Click!

Zhou Yuan entered the code and opened the safe, taking out a thick journal.

The room was dark, but Li Xu Tian's eyes had already adapted. He could see Zhou Yuan skillfully locating and opening the safe. Shocked, he widened his eyes in disbelief:

"How did you know!"

"I have magical tools."

Zhou Yuan put the safe and the journal into his player's backpack and then walked over to Li Xu Tian.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions. Answer them, and I'll give you a quick death."

"Fuck you!" Li Xu Tian cursed viciously.

"Tsk."

Seeing Li Xu Tian's uncooperative attitude, Zhou Yuan didn't waste any more time. He picked up the sharp knife from the ground and slit Li Xu Tian's throat.

The cold blade cut through his throat, and suffocation followed. Li Xu Tian made painful "gurgling" sounds and soon fell silent.

"Killing people becomes easier and easier…" Zhou Yuan muttered to himself.

The death of an important figure didn't conclude the mission. Reading the journal seemed necessary. Zhou Yuan planned to examine it at home.

He was about to use Ghost Walker to phase through the walls and leave when a note popped up from the neighboring room, causing him to pause:

[A group of desperate and helpless poor souls is locked in a pitch-dark cellar, praying day and night for rescue. As the butcher, raising a few pigs seems natural, right?]

"..."

Zhou Yuan remained silent for a moment before walking over.

It was a storage room, cluttered with various items. When he looked at the ground in the corner, a note popped up again:

[There's a hidden door under the carpet. If this were a game, you might find treasure or monsters. Unfortunately, this is reality, so you'll find a bloody secret instead.]

Zhou Yuan lifted the carpet, revealing a metal cellar door seamlessly blended with the floor, seemingly operated by a remote control.

"It should be in the bedroom…"

Zhou Yuan returned to the bedroom, quickly finding a small remote control beside the pillow, along with Li Xu Tian's phone, which he unlocked using the corpse's fingerprint.

Beep.

Back in the storage room, Zhou Yuan pressed the button, and the cellar door opened with a click. He looked down.

In the dimly lit narrow cellar were three men and two women, their necks and limbs shackled with chains, restricting their movement. They were gaunt and unclothed, their bodies showing signs of severe abuse with bruises and welts.

In front of the five was a large barrel, covered inside and out with indescribable food residues, emitting a foul stench. It seemed Li Xu Tian really treated them like pigs.

They were sleeping, curled up and occasionally trembling as if haunted by nightmares.

Zhou Yuan's attention was drawn to an adjacent pile of bones, with roughly a dozen skulls among them.

A dark brown seven-pointed star formation was drawn under the bone pile, covered with eerie symbols and inscriptions—not with dark brown paint, but with dried, aged blood.

"Is this… some religious ritual?" Zhou Yuan frowned.

[You had a critical failure in religion identification! Maybe you can find answers in Li Xu Tian's journal.]

"Does he really write everything in his journal…"

Zhou Yuan stood up, took out the Bow Tie Voice Changer set to Jim's voice, and used Li Xu Tian's phone to call the police.

"A murder occurred at No. 31 Feng Nan Village, with five people illegally kidnapped. Come quickly."

·

·

Around three in the morning, Zhou Yuan dragged his weary body home, took a shower, changed into his pajamas, and began reading Li Xu Tian's journal.

[Year 101, March 24.

I killed someone.

Wang Jian Wei owed me three thousand yuan. When I went to collect the debt, he shamelessly claimed he had no money. Damn it, I saw him enter the bathhouse last night!

We argued, and he had the audacity to push me. I lost control... before I knew it, Wang Jian Wei had been strangled to death.

Damn it, damn it, damn it, Wang Jian Wei was an idiot. My life is ruined. I'm also an idiot. Why was I so impulsive?]

Zhou Yuan's expression subtly changed. There was nothing much to say about the journal content; Li Xu Tian had let his anger get the better of him and committed murder. What really caught Zhou Yuan's attention was the journal's date.

—Year 101, March 24.

That was the date his parents had died.

On the night of March 24, Year 101, his parents had been brutally bludgeoned to death and their bodies dumped in an abandoned building. Their bodies were discovered only two days later by a homeless person. The area lacked surveillance cameras, and the police, despite extensive investigations, had no leads, leaving the case unsolved to this day.

To be honest, Zhou Yuan had no feelings for his gambler parents. Even with his transcendent power, he didn't want to avenge them.

His childhood was marred by endless domestic violence, insults, and fights. Those wretched parents would vent their gambling losses on him, beating him black and blue, leaving wounds all over, even landing him once in the ICU.

The happiness other children took for granted was a luxury beyond his reach. Lacking familial warmth, his heart naturally turned cold.

So when he learned of his parents' deaths, he felt not sadness but an indescribable excitement and relief—good riddance!

Perhaps the only good thing those gamblers ever did was purchasing this house in Xinhu after winning a few million while the property prices were low. It had enormous potential for appreciation.

"March 24… a coincidence?"

Zhou Yuan pondered for a moment but didn't dwell on the date. He continued reading the next page of the journal.