Chapter 7: Lifespan Financing and Admonishment

“Thank you all for your help earlier,” Yang Zicang said, looking at the two.
“We didn’t really help much. By the way, what was that ability you just used? Throwing pebbles? That was incredibly powerful!”
“Hey, don’t just casually pry into others’ abilities, alright? Aren’t you revealing their trump card?” Zhang Yang nudged Liu Ming with his elbow.
Liu Ming scratched his head and laughed heartily:
“Sorry, I’m a bit off my game today.”
After the three introduced themselves to each other, they all looked enviously at the chest of the young man beside them, fantasizing about what abilities they might gain.
Yang Zicang calculated silently. Excluding his own natural lifespan, he had nearly 589 and a half years of additional support known as “chronological time.”
Multiplied by four times, that came to over two thousand three hundred years!
He wondered if his strength ranked anywhere in this world. But for the so-called Alliance, they could probably easily create a powerful being through investment.
The Monster Hunter Alliance, and the Ruined Capital…
Suddenly, a faint line bent in.
{Someone help me.}
[I can feel the craving for lifespan, for chronological time.]
In the image of his perception, there was a medium-built boy, about fourteen or fifteen years old. One of his eyes was half-closed, and he held an iron rod in his hand. He stumbled forward with a limp in a place resembling an underground subway tunnel.
How could such a place exist? Yang Zicang was a bit puzzled.
Behind that boy, a mass of dim gray fog surged forth, and something was slowly approaching. Suddenly, something like a black whip lashed across the boy’s body.
Outside the boy, there were only two ever-changing lines, and the model was just an “angle symbol.”
“Did you see that?” Yang Zicang looked at those beside him.
“A bit blurry.”
“It seems very far from us.”
{Someone, just give me a hundred years, and I could defeat this monster; it’s nothing but a rat. I’m begging you, someone…}
Smack! Another whip mark tore across the boy’s back, drawing blood. From the gray mist behind him, sounds resembling human laughter emerged, but extremely shrill and eerie.
{If anyone invests in me, I’ll give you eighty percent of all the temporal profit I earn!}
After a few seconds of waiting, only two dim specks of light gathered around the child, indicating that only two people had invested in him, and the amounts were meager.
Smack! The child stumbled and fell to the ground. He turned his head in terror, gazing at the looming, human-sized gray silhouette within the mist.
{No one is going to invest in you, Aliang.}
A thought reached him. Yang Zicang listened with curiosity, surprised that someone could speak within this space.
The boy named Aliang’s expression shifted as he spoke hopefully: {Is that you, Captain Luo Xin?}
{It’s me.}
The boy gritted his teeth and continued:
{Captain Luo Xin, if you can help me kill this thing, I’ll give you all the temporal profit I earn.}
{You will never make it out. After killing this rat, there will be another; after killing that one, even more—hundreds, thousands of monsters. Why do you even want to go there? You’re just a greedy fool misled by legends of treasure. That place is nowhere a person like you should be going!}
Pouf!
Another whip-like mark lashed across the boy’s back, and this time, the rat’s tail twisted around, looping around his ankle with a violent flick.
Bang! Liang Xi slammed against the ground, dizzy and disoriented from the immense force, while the iron rod in his hand was shaken loose and fell away.
{The reason I’m wasting time units to hold this open mental conversation is to tell some of the fresh survivors: don’t let people like this fool you. Don’t think you can make investments—lifespan is nothing more than the voucher currency of the former world.}
For dozens of miles around, the newcomers still alive who heard this message—many of them, whose minds were burning with excitement—felt a sudden jolt, and the heat of their fervor cooled by quite a bit.
{Danger is everywhere in this world. Any investment you make might lead to a total loss of your stake. In the future, sometimes, you might be just one year short, and the one who could have turned the tables and won will instead be devoured by monsters, ending up as their excrement. Here, the first thing to learn is not how to invest—it’s clarity, it’s keeping your wits about you.}
Many people silently etched that name into their hearts, thinking to themselves that he might indeed be a good person.
{Ah! Why!}
Liang Xi ground his teeth in fury, consumed by hatred for this man, who not only refused to invest in him but also went public with his remarks.
When Yang Zicang heard the boy mention just a hundred years, he’d already been drawn to the idea of investing. But after hearing Luo Xin’s words, he realized his thinking had been far too simplistic.
It seemed that the place this boy was in was extremely dangerous. A hundred-year investment wouldn’t even begin to be enough for him to leave that place—it might only cover the cost of a single strike.
{Why are all of you triangles? Even the double-line type has someone to protect them. Only I… only I…}
Hearing the child’s aggrieved, tearful voice, Yang Zicang took a deep breath.
Damn it, I’ve already been a man who’s died once.
Feeling his own 589-year timeline, he steeled his heart and allocated 150 years from it.
Consider it compensation for Bai Yuan’s settlement that has gone down the drain—a windfall has to be spent; that’s just how it is.
[I want to invest in him.]
Yang Zicang made his decision inwardly.
“Invest! But only for the crisis posed by this monster.”
……
In the dim underground tunnel, the monster hidden within the smoke seemed to have grown tired of playing. It let out a series of squeaks that resembled laughter, emerging from the mist. The rat stood as tall as a human being.
The monster’s claws were like iron, gleaming with cold light as it swung one down at the boy.
The boy had already fallen into despair. In that instant, countless thoughts flashed through his mind. Just a month ago, he was on a holiday learning to paint in color—who would have imagined that only thirty days later, he would meet his end under the claws of a rat monster?
[N received a temporary investment of 150 N3 from Yang Zicang, who hopes this timeline will be used solely to handle the current crisis.] Bang! The boy was sent flying by the sharp claws. [Timeline reduced by 20 N3.]
Pain… It hurts so much… It felt like his entire body was about to fall apart. But soon, the pain began to subside rapidly.
The boy reacted quickly; even under attack, he skillfully grabbed the dislodged iron bar mid-roll, spun around, and swung it backward, colliding with the massive rat that leaped toward him.
Who knew how long this kid had been in this godforsaken place; he seemed to have already grown accustomed to these fighting stances.
[I received 30N investment from Yang Zicang, reinvested to Mu Xiaoyu.]
[I received 1N investment from Yang Zicang, reinvested to Zhang Yang.]
[I received 3Y investment from Yang Zicang, reinvested to Liu Ming.]
Liang Xi’s spirits soared; in that instant, tears nearly streamed from his eyes. There were still good people in this world!
Bang! The steel claws met the iron bar with a clang.
The whip-like tail lashed around, cutting through the air with a buzzing whistle.
“Ah!”
Liang Xi swung the iron bar with near-maddened fury, bracing his small body for the next strike, funneling most of his temporal sequence into his hands as he thrust the bar upward.
But this attack was dodged by the massive rat with a nimble sidestep, as its tail whipped around and coiled around him like a rope.
Thud! The steel claws left a huge gash across his body, blood splattered everywhere, and Liang Xi was swept upward, tangled in the tail.
……
The three people beside Yang Zicang, linked through the fine threads he actively distributed, watched the scene unfold through the boy’s perspective.
The four of them hurried their way to Zuo Ming Avenue No. 42, while tracking the half-grown boy through their sensory view. He was being tossed around like a ragdoll by the monster, thudding dully against the ground, his face streaming with blood.
Yang Zicang felt a hint of regret.
Do you know how to skip stones? Luo Xin’s warning still echoed in his ears.
At this moment, the boy had stopped moving, but he still gripped the iron rod in his hand tightly.
{Don’t worry… I still have… some capital left…}
He hadn’t blacked out. This inner voice was both a message to the investors and a way to encourage himself.
What a brutal world this is… A suffocating frustration weighed on Yang Zicang’s heart.
Liang Xi was dragged by the monster’s tail toward the other side of a massive iron pipe, where the silhouette of another slightly smaller monster emerged.
{I can live… for at least another seventy or eighty years…}
The rat, standing upright at about one meter thirty-four, squeaked, a gleam of joy flashing in its eyes.
With a flick of its tail, the monster tossed Liang Xi toward the smaller creature.
Liu Ming let out a sigh:
“So it was catching food for that guy. No wonder it didn’t just devour the kid outright.”
Mu Xiaoyu grew tense again. This investment of hers might once again drop to zero, and she would lose the most valuable thirty years of her life.
Yang Zicang watched the scene nervously. This was a good opportunity—he just wondered if Liang Xi, pretending to be dead, could seize it!
Suddenly, Liang Xi’s skin aged rapidly. His still young body now showed age spots, and his hair quickly turned white.
The rat that had thrown him shot a glance of confusion, then suddenly burst into furious rage as it charged!
“Ugh-ah!” Liang Xi’s eyes bulged with anger as he stared wildly at the smaller monster about to catch him.
The iron rod pierced straight through the little monster’s chest. He tumbled down with the creature, and the massive rat crashed like a black cloud.
One monster was dead.
The boy felt a thought in his mind.
[I have gained 45.2N because I am a dual-linear type…]
There was a dull thud as tremendous force slammed him onto the ground from behind!
This time, he had utilized temporal defense. The aged boy yanked the filth-stained iron rod and swung it like a baseball bat, twisting his body on the ground.
“All!”
All the monsters, and his own life—along with that of others—converged into this single strike.