Death Game: Starting as a Trickster, Pretending to Be a God

Listening to Fu Luo’s obvious embellishments, then stripping away the exaggerations and boasts with his own judgment, Lin Yu roughly understood what had happened in Sleepless City.

Arlan Mercury suddenly announced he was retiring and declared Eris Mercury would handle all Mercury family affairs; at the same time, the Sorenson family, the Mercury family, and the Autumn family all signed a series of cooperation agreements that were extremely favorable to the Sleepless Sky family; meanwhile, the Saint-Land family’s succession fight had erupted into white-hot conflict—not only between Sheng Lan Kui and Sheng Lan Lai, but another contender, Sheng Lan Jie, had even jumped into the fray halfway through.

Although Fu Luo didn’t understand why these things happened, Lin Yu was completely clear in his mind.

He just couldn’t explain it, so he could only sigh along with High Mountain while they ate, saying, “Sleepless City is really seething with undercurrents. What on earth is going on?”

And at this moment of major change in Sleepless City, Fu Luo’s status as Furbollo rose significantly.

Originally, Furbollo only held some position within the Sleepless Sky family because the family head doted on him; to most people he was just a dog kept by Sleepless Sky Huo Le to please the family head.

But after Fu Luo went in this time, he found... he seemed to have become a pivotal figure.

The core heirs of the five great families were all vying to curry favor with him, trying to win him over, and peripheral branches treated him with reverence as if he were a god.

More importantly... everyone seemed to think he had formidable combat strength.

In his own words, “If I used to be just an ordinary eunuch, now I’ve become Zhang Rang, Zhao Gao, and Wei Zhongxian rolled into one.”

Although Lin Yu wanted to scoff and ask why he had to compare himself to eunuchs—especially such notorious ones—that was how Fu Luo described himself, so Lin Yu kept quiet.

In short, after receiving lots of intelligence about Sleepless City from Fu Luo, Lin Yu quietly took notes so he could use them the next time he entered the Wasteland Realm.

When Fu Luo finished his boasting segment and Lin Yu once again offered his own brilliant remarks, he smoothly asked about another matter he wanted to know.

“Speaking of which, the one representing Order with me this time is someone from South China named A-Yin...”

Lin Yu paused there and continued, “Everyone says he’s the strongest Second Tier within Order. I want to know how strong he really is. Can he stand up to people from the Free Alliance?”

Although they would spar with A-Yin soon, sparring was still sparring—judging by A-Yin’s temperament, he probably wouldn’t use his full strength during a friendly match.

A-Yin himself would hold back, and it was unlikely they could force this famed Second Tier master to unleash everything.

But A-Yin was precisely the opponent Lin Yu would face under his Zhu Ming identity, so it was important to learn whether A-Yin had any trump cards.

If Lin Yu remembered correctly, the name A-Yin had appeared previously on Fluoxetine’s kill list.

In other words, this person’s rating within the Psychological Society was definitely high—because he entered this game in the same way Lin Yu did: Fluoxetine personally sent him in.

Lin Yu trusted the Psychological Society’s evaluation standards—especially after joining, when he’d read internal documents revealing that Fluoxetine had certain autonomous privileges and could freely choose mission targets.

Targets she handpicked would certainly not be simple.

Sure enough, hearing Lin Yu’s question, High Mountain slowly put down his chopsticks and the bowl of lotus root and pork rib soup in his hand, and spoke seriously.

“A-Yin... to be honest, May, although you already give people peace of mind, I honestly can’t imagine how A-Yin would lose.”

Lin Yu was a little surprised. “Could he be a Unique Class or some other very powerful Class?”

“No, his Class is Scholar.”

High Mountain said this, and Lin Yu frowned slightly.

“Scholar?”

Although it sounded like Student, Scholar’s abilities had nothing to do with Student.

Scholar’s base ability was a hybrid of Skill Type and Rule Type: at the moment of activation, it could instantly analyze a perceived ‘object’ and obtain its related data and detailed information. This ability could be used to parse ordinary items.

That was also Old Zheng’s Class... purely looking at the base ability, it wasn’t particularly strong.

After promotion to First-Tier, Class Items split into two types: books and glasses.

Books could record the information of already-perceived objects and retain it permanently; when encountering the same object again they would automatically prompt, and they would shorten the parsing ability’s cooldown.

Glasses, on the other hand, would greatly enhance perception across sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and this enhancement could be activated on demand.

Neither of these Class Items, nor the later Specialized Items, provided especially powerful boosts to direct combat ability, so Lin Yu drew a conclusion.

“Did this guy have a fortunate encounter in some world?”

“Yes,” High Mountain didn’t suspect Lin Yu at all, and A-Yin’s deeds and abilities weren’t too secret within the organization, so he answered readily, “A-Yin’s roots are in the Prison Mountain Realm—there he studied at the Hunyuan Dao Palace and the Demon-Subduing Martial School.”

Fu Luo added, “And Hunyuan Dao Palace and the Demon-Subduing Martial School could actually be considered the leading Daoist and martial schools in the Prison Mountain Realm nowadays...”

“More importantly, the Daoist techniques, heart methods, and martial arts A-Yin learned fit very well with his Scholar Class and his personality—Hunyuan Dao Palace’s Xuanji Transformation and the Demon-Subduing Martial School’s Demon-Subduing Nineteen Forms are both counterattacking, exploiting opponents’ flaws and changing moves to respond, famous for adapting to break an enemy’s rhythm. They suit a Scholar like him,” High Mountain said solemnly, “and even more crucially, he once received instruction from the Grandmaster and lasted a full fifteen moves under her.”

“Although Comrade Grandmaster certainly took it easy and didn’t go all out, she nonetheless commented that ‘a young man who cultivates both martial and Daoist arts without neglect, truly a formidable youth.’”

Hearing this, Lin Yu felt troubled.

That meant A-Yin was the kind of opponent who was hard to pin down—because he would adjust his response strategy based on his opponent.

A real headache.

Still, Lin Yu put on a look of delight.

“In that case, A-Yin should be able to win steadily.”

Seeing what appeared to be genuine joy on Lin Yu’s face, High Mountain and Fu Luo exchanged a glance.

High Mountain then took a sip of the pork rib soup and said,

“May, take this as your old bro being nosy... have you been on bad terms with that Psychological Society member called Zhu Ming?”

“I’ve heard privately that you and her used to be more than just acquaintances.”

Captain High Mountain asked cautiously.

Lin Yu looked at Fu Luo in an instant. “Did you tell Captain Shan?”

Fu Luo immediately raised his hands to show he was innocent. “I only said a little bit. I mentioned I ran into her once in a dungeon before... most of the rest was the Korean guy saying it in the group—he’s in a small group with Captain High Mountain that’s for the Central China region team leaders!”