[Main System: Player Zheng You is muted on the forum for 30 days!]
[What?! That guy got muted?!]
[No way! At least let him finish speaking before muting him.]
[What the... What does this mean? Is the Main System feeling guilty?!]
[Main System: Real-life NPC Shen Leyu is muted on the forum for 30 days!]
[Main System: Player Dong Min is muted on the forum for 45 days!]
[Main System: Player Xu Haobo is muted on the forum for 45 days...]
[What the!! The Main System is playing dirty! Brothers, retreat!!]
[No way?! What does this mean?! Has something really happened to the Main God?!]
[What is going on?! Is there something the Main God shouldn’t be revealing?!]
[Main System: Real-life NPC Ji Jing is muted on the forum for 45 days!]
[Main System: Real-life NPC Tan Xinxin is muted on the forum...]
[Damn! The forum is now starting a no-holds-barred attack!!]
[Stop talking! Stop talking! Everyone, change positions!]
[Stop talking! Stop talking! Everyone, change positions!]
The Main System’s sudden, indiscriminate muting on the forum has caused an uproar between players and real-life NPCs!
After signing a contract with the Main God and entering the game, people collectively realized an issue. It seems the Main God has encountered some problems.
These problems are significant enough to affect the operation of the entire game world, yet they cannot be known by this group of [believers].
Thus, everything seems to have made sense since Jiang Yan’s appearance.
Jiang Yan, a real-life NPC with ordinary qualifications but outstanding spiritual power, has encountered everything because the Main God encountered some issues, leading to errors in the Main System's operation.
And these issues and errors just happen to manifest in Jiang Yan.
Since the game forum’s Main System has started the indiscriminate muting mode, the players have moved to real-world social group chat software:
[But why Jiang Yan??]
[Right! And the fact that Puppet Workshop and Valen Church are hunting down Jiang Yan must be related to the Main God’s situation!]
[Ah?? Is there a connection??]
[If there were no connection, why would Puppet Workshop and Valen Church suddenly be hunting Jiang Yan? If we say that Puppet Workshop’s "Best Actor" is doing it out of jealousy, then what about Valen Church? So Jiang Yan must be related to the problems the Main God is facing right now!]
[The analysis above is correct! But what could the connection be? Jiang Yan is just an ordinary person. Various guilds and individuals have already checked this. Now, a simple search on the forum can pull up Jiang Yan’s DNA lineage! So how could Jiang Yan have any connection to the Main God?]
[Not only that, but it’s clear that the four major guilds have completely opposite attitudes toward Jiang Yan! Puppet Workshop and Valen Church have already issued arrest warrants, while Dawn Guild is clearly set on protecting Jiang Yan.]
[I remember a member of Valen Church mentioned on the forum before that Jiang Yan is that thing. Are there any members of Valen Church in the group? Can anyone explain what that thing means?]
[It’s amazing how lively this group is after all these years!]
[By the way, do you think it’s really not a problem that we’re chatting like this? If that person sees this…]
[Don’t worry, that person will just think we’re playing a game, or that it’s some new secondary chat mode.]
[Among the four major guilds, only Yin-Yang Realm hasn’t shown their attitude toward Jiang Yan yet. But since Yin-Yang Realm has always been mysterious, well…]
[No attitude? To put it bluntly, it means they’re planning to eliminate him! Hiss… What could make these big shots have such differing attitudes toward Jiang Yan? Especially Dawn Guild and Puppet Workshop. Their leaders have that kind of intimate relationship, yet this time they’ve made completely opposite choices...]
Bang!
The man wearing a rabbit-head mask slammed the phone in his hand onto the marble table, causing small black cracks to form on the surface of the table.
"Damn it! What kind of relationship does I have with him?!" the man cursed angrily.
At the other end of the sofa, another man chuckled lightly and said, "Not necessarily! Breaking up over a Jiangyan isn't worth it."
"Damn it!"
Sang Luan adjusted his rabbit mask and pretended to be disdainful as he said, "Don't spread rumors, we never even dated!"
"Oh? Really? Even if you didn’t date, you’d still kiss?"
Sang Luan froze for a moment. The phone which had been slammed onto the marble table and shattered like a spider web rang.
Sang Luan picked up the phone, smoothly avoiding the topic.
"Hello? ... huh?" Sang Luan placed the broken phone near the edge of his mask.
Although he couldn't see the caller ID on the screen, it was good that the call could still connect.
Soon, Zhuang Dan’s voice came through the phone’s speaker:
"What’s for dinner tonight?"
Sang Luan replied coldly, "What I eat tonight has nothing to do with you."
"Got it! Sweet and sour pork ribs," Zhuang Dan replied from the other side of the line. "What time are you coming home?"
Sang Luan: "…What time I come home is none of your damn business?!"
Zhuang Dan on the other end: "Okay, good! I’ll wait for you at your place."
Sang Luan: "…"
The man on the other end of the sofa chuckled again and whistled at Sang Luan.
Zhuang Dan on the phone heard the sound and paused for a moment: "Who’s with you there?"
Sang Luan, feeling annoyed, tugged at the rabbit ears on his mask and shouted at the phone, "Damn it! It has nothing to do with you!!"
"Li Jing?" Zhuang Dan asked casually.
"None of your damn business!" Sang Luan angrily hung up the phone.
The room was completely silent.
At the other end of the sofa, Li Jing silently took out his phone and took a picture of Sang Luan.
"What are you doing?!" Sang Luan's tone was unfriendly.
While fiddling with his phone, Li Jing explained, "Sending a WeChat message to Zhuang Dan, to prove that you and I are just having a normal work relationship, and I even sat this far away from you on purpose!"
"Damn it?! Are you guys crazy?!"
{In the "Dawn Guild" meeting room.}
At this moment, the core members of the Dawn Guild were collectively watching the live broadcast of the dungeon that Jiang Yan was currently in.
Meanwhile, Zhuang Dan, sitting at the head of the table, was staring absent-mindedly at the picture Li Jing had sent on his phone—of a fluffy rabbit with messy fur.
"Boss! The players and NPCs seem to have figured out the identities of the main god and Jiang Yan. Should we suppress this?"
The assistant's voice pulled Zhuang Dan’s attention back to the meeting room.
"No need." Zhuang Dan turned off the phone screen and set it aside, saying, "When the main system made the stupid decision to mute people directly on the forum, there’s no need to suppress it anymore! Let them guess!"
Zhuang Dan stretched lazily, crossed his legs, rested his chin on his hand, and said in a relaxed tone, "Anyway, they won’t guess it right!"
"…"
The people in the meeting room fell into silence.
After a moment, a young girl with a bun and black-framed glasses asked, "Boss, after our guild's committee meeting, we all think that at this point, we should all have the right to know."
"Know what?" Zhuang Dan replied calmly.
The bun-headed girl appeared to be nervous. Sweat had already formed on her forehead, and the sweat on the bridge of her nose made her glasses slip slightly. She had to push them back up several times.
It wasn’t just her—everyone sitting at the long table in the meeting room looked tense.
Questioning the boss directly was indeed something that required a lot of courage.
To know, their boss was not an ordinary player, or rather, he could no longer be considered a player in the usual sense.
It was well-known that Zhuang Dan, the "Spade King" of the Dawn Guild, maintained close cooperation with the main god and the main system.
No one knew the exact time he entered the game, no one knew why he entered the game, and no one knew why his current score had already reached a terrifying level, yet he hadn't left.
However, everyone in the game understood that Zhuang Dan, the Spade King, was less of a player and more of a business partner of the game.
The guild he founded, the Dawn Guild, was also the largest guild in the entire game.
The boss had never made a mistake, and would never make a mistake.
The boss’s authority was unquestionable.
This was the "truth" universally accepted by everyone in the Dawn Guild, and even by players outside the guild.
And now, the Dawn Guild’s guild committee was about to publicly question the boss’s decision to "conceal Jiang Yan’s identity" during the meeting, so tension was naturally inevitable.
At the meeting table, a few people exchanged glances with the girl.
The girl took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and asked,
"Boss, who exactly is he?"
"Who?"
Zhuang Dan, still sitting with his legs crossed in his chair, looked completely relaxed, his tone so calm that it was impossible to tell his emotions.
The people at the meeting table became even more nervous.
The girl with glasses could clearly hear the sound of her own swallowing and the "thumping" of her heartbeat, but she still gathered her courage and continued asking,
"Jiang Yan?"
—
Jiang Yan looked at the terrified players, very curious about what kind of memory the main system had implanted in their minds.
Why was he blocked out?
However, Yu Jia had only spoken half of what he meant earlier, and the "stress response" triggered by the main system confirmed that his guess was correct: something had definitely happened to the main system, or rather, to the main god.
It should have become weak for some reason, but... why choose him?
Jiang Yan still couldn’t understand this point.
He quietly sat in the giant steward's embrace, looking up at his lover's handsome side profile, which was magnified several times in front of him, thinking to himself.
Was it because of Yu Xiu?
Damn! What role was this guy playing in this game?!
But, now was not the time to think about these things.
What mattered now was the vote.
The vote to determine who was most likely to have killed his husband. Before that, the players needed to first recount their timelines from last night, and it was obvious that their timelines had already been manually updated by the main system.
Yet he knew nothing about it.
In the grand banquet hall, the guests seated at the long table were silent, as if they had already passed away.
The crimson velvet tablecloth looked like flowing blood under the shimmering light of the wine.
Jiang Yan leaned back in the giant's arms and yawned, feeling tired.
However, before he could sneak a short nap, he heard his steward laughing as he addressed the guests:
"Come on! Sinners! Tell us your crimes! How did you commit the two murders?"
Jiang Yan's mind was instantly stunned!
"Two?!"
As soon as he finished speaking, green mist once again surged into the air!
Whoosh—
The mist dissipated.
At the magnificent long table, the red wine and delicious dishes had disappeared. Beneath the shimmering crystal chandelier, the crimson tablecloth was replaced by a corpse—
A corpse of a young boy with messy black hair, looking like a broken, decaying butterfly shell that had just been picked up from withered leaves and muddy ground...
Jiang Yan's pupils contracted!
This is—?!