Chapter 13: A Reward with An Hourly Wage Exceeding 100N

At night, a sleeping Yang Zicang breathed evenly, clinging to his bed with the same greed as a baby.
The ring on his chest shimmered faintly. When the moon reached its zenith, it suddenly opened in his consciousness, like a small, bright moon.
[Daily summary: average hourly harvest of 123.6 N.]
[As the Great Quadrilateral, my performance in the first twelve hours was nearly perfect.]
The murmurs in the dream were fainter than drifting clouds.
[Because today’s hourly earnings exceeded 100 N, a residual mail badge has been awarded. Should I use it? Hmm, the decision-making personality is asleep.]
[As the Great Quadrilateral, I am curious what kind of consciousness training ground this badge, which can only exist for three days, can locate…]
At some point, Yang Zicang realized he had woken up—wide awake within his dream.
He glanced at his own hands with confusion.
He knew this wasn’t reality, but if it was a dream, it felt too real.
……
The place was a dim, ancient street lined with stone houses.
Figures with arms dragging and heads lolling appear indistinctly in the mist.
“Are these… zombies?”
{Welcome to the Dream Training Ground.}
{This is a reward for those earning over 100N per hour. Enjoy.}
The distant zombies notice the newcomer Yangzicang, slowly turning their bodies and breaking through the fog toward him.
“Ahhh, they really are zombies!”
The zombies let out hoarse, decaying screams as they shuffle forward, a sinister atmosphere enveloping the entire block.
“Get away, how is this called enjoyment?”
He runs backward toward a shed up ahead that seems to hold some clutter, hoping to find a weapon there.
But at the sight of the zombies’ sluggish movements, Yangzicang suppresses his inner discomfort, trying to comfort himself.
“Doesn’t seem too dangerous.”
Yet the next moment, one zombie bends its legs and leaps up.
It jumps like a grasshopper, crossing six or seven meters in an instant, lunging toward him with a swoosh!
A hint of panic flashes in Yangzicang’s eyes, and he feels his fear amplified.
Without his model to shield his psyche, he now somewhat misses that afternoon’s insane feeling—at least back then, he naturally ignored many danger signals!
“Sequence!”
He shouts, but there’s no reaction from his chest.
“Dispatch!”
Thud! The zombie lands on him.
“…Ah!”
The mental effect of the model and the amplified emotions are both gone.
“Get off me!”
[My spirit is breaking apart.]
The rotten, disgusting hands choked around his neck, and Yang Zicang felt pain, panic, and helplessness.
“This is a nightmare, this is a nightmare! This isn’t real!”
Yang Zicang kept cheering himself on, his hand groping randomly on the ground. He didn’t know what hard object he touched, but he grabbed it and swung it, smashing it against the zombie’s head.
In his hand was a bone arm that had just been broken off.
[My courage is being born.]
Fortunately, aside from their strong hopping strength, their other movements were relatively slow.
Three zombies hopped over with a slapping sound, piling up on top.
“It hurts.”
Yang Zicang felt his skin being torn by them, blood flowing, but the swinging motion in his hand became increasingly intense.
[Good, I’ve already developed the ability to generate a counterattack mentality even when my emotions are fragile.]
After a bout of fighting, Yang Zicang managed to run out of the zombie pile, his body covered in wounds.
At this point, who looked more like a demon was hard to say.
Four hours later.
Exhausted, Yang Zicang dragged his body, holding a woodcutter’s axe in his hand, and sat down at the door of a wooden warehouse on the edge of a town.
The wounds on his body were healing quickly, since this wasn’t the real world.
[Faced with grotesque creatures, my spirit has begun to gradually accept their existence and has initially overcome my fear of them.]
Yang Zicang muttered to himself.
He felt he could indeed maintain a bit of rationality when facing these suddenly spawned disgusting creatures—he wasn’t even sure if they could truly be called creatures.
From the countless zombies lying on the street, faint glimmers of light rose, converging before Yang Zicang to form three faint halos.
Upon touching them, Yang Zicang’s mind was filled with information about these items.
“Beginner’s Corpse Leap,” with 3/3 remaining uses.
Each use costs 1 unit of Y-Order principal.
“This really is a nightmare…”
……
At midnight, inside a subway somewhere, a voice angrily demanded, “Ma Chao, still not successful?”
“No, I can’t find his trail.”
“How strange. Even after coming into contact with Zhang Fei, he can still conceal himself. What capabilities does Yang Zicang’s schema actually have? Isn’t it just a wind field?”
“Has he perhaps unlocked a high-tier quadrilateral form, rendering your ability ineffective?”
A silver-uniformed man leaned against a seat inside the ochre subway car, his gaze deep and penetrating.
“No matter. Since we can’t lock on to him by his aura, we’ll use ‘seeds’ to mark him instead. He’s lucky tonight.”
……
In the early morning, Yang Zicang turned over comfortably and lay spread-eagled on the bed.
A warm beam of sunlight streamed through the gap in the curtains.
“Ah-woo~”
The young man raised an arm to shield his eyes from the dazzling light, then groggily woke up.
“Mom, what time…”
He froze as his hand touched the rough sheets and, after a few seconds, let out a soft sigh.
Getting up, the young man rubbed his eyes and looked toward the wooden chest by the bed.
Chu Qiang told him to put all the clothes he was wearing into that chest, so he could grab it and run if anything unexpected happened; he followed suit.
Feeling the quadrilateral inside the halo on his chest, the skill representing “Corpse Jump” was indeed present within it.
“This is actually real—I gained a skill in a dream.”
……
After breakfast with the three of them, Yang Zicang had a brief telepathic communication through the Mental Link with Liang Xi. That half-grown boy had already been chased by a ferocious rat into a dark, narrow passage and got lost.
The girl beside him was holding a document in her hands.
Yang Zicang picked up his cup and gulped down a few mouthfuls of water, then leaned his head over.
In his breath, he caught the faint, subtle fragrance emanating from Mu Xiaoyu; his gaze instinctively shifted away from the document for a moment and glanced at her fair, delicate face.
“What’s this?” he quickly withdrew his gaze and asked.
“These are the potential model abilities that various buildings or items might give birth to. We were thinking of seeing if we can choose a model.”
The document featured many buildings and various man-made objects, each accompanied by brief textual descriptions.
Some models were extremely underwhelming, like making no sound when smashing glass, or being able to turn water into overnight iced American coffee.
“Alas, I wonder what kind of model I’ll end up with.”
After saying this, Mu Xiaoyu turned around and playfully stuck out her pink tongue.
The three were somewhat disheartened; they looked at Yang Zicang with envy.
After chatting with the people here all night, they finally understood what this young man’s “square model” meant.
“Brother Zicang, can you take me to accommodate the model? I asked, and if it’s to find them, we have to hand in quite a bit of timing before the end of the month. This is only because we are people brought by you; otherwise, they are only responsible for the members who join.”
“To be honest, the fact that the three of us can stay here and eat and drink for free is all thanks to being friends of Yang Zicang. Let’s learn more about the model before we make a decision,” said Zhang Yang.
Zhang Yang subtly avoided the topic of potentially “joining.”
He didn’t want to put pressure on Yang Zicang.
“Everyone’s here.”
Yao Qiming walked into the small dining room, followed by Furrry Zhao.
“Zicang, getting used to it?”
Yang Zicang smiled and said, “Being able to have a peaceful place to sleep in a place like this is comparable to heaven.”
“Hahaha.” A big hand patted Yang Zicang on the shoulder: “Starting today, for the next half of the month, this city will be a little different.”
“What’s different?”
Furrry Zhao beside him said:
“After the fifteenth night of each month, many new areas and architectural phantoms will gradually appear in the city, lasting for one day. Everyone comes to this world through these overlapping phantoms. Generally, the places we appear are near the breeding evil nightmares.”
So that’s what happened to us and the others yesterday—it turns out it only happens in the middle of each month.
“That kind of ‘interlaced’ space only appears in the second half of the month too, but it’s usually hidden behind various entrances. Once you confirm joining us, we can take you to check out a low-level interlaced area, and you’ll understand then.”
The sound of engine roars and commotion came from outside the house.
“I’m Yu Fei from Right Street. Get your Captain Yao out here to speak.”
Arguing voices drifted in from outside.
“What’s going on?” Yang Zicang walked out the door and asked the people outside.
“They want to take your armor,” several of them said.
Upon seeing Yang Zicang appear, the guy in the passenger seat of the off-road vehicle in front of the station directly braced his hands on the door and jumped out.
“So you’re the new owner of the quadrilateral model? I heard about your decent performance yesterday.”
“Ah~ Thanks for the compliment.”
“But it’s a shame—just a wind field capability quadrilateral, a wind shield overlapping with force field ability.”
As the guy’s tone changed, Yang Zicang was so pissed off his nose almost twisted.
“You got into trouble and left us to clean up the mess. Do you know how much chronergy we burned through dealing with the Xiong Ying Group’s attack last night!”
“Yeah, the Xiong Ying Group is demanding we return the A-Level Instrument. What are you gonna do about that!” someone in the car shouted.
Yao Qiming sneered: “Yu Fei, do you think that’s possible! Even if I really handed it over, headquarters would come calling to punish us right away. Besides, as you said, it’s an A-Level Instrument.”