Chapter 108: A Figure in the Rain

After the meeting, Chen Yu returned to his room—a small space with a bed, a desk, and a washroom, which could serve as both an office and a long-term residence.
After working for a while, a knock sounded. Wearing a simple coat, Li Mi walked in and brought him an ice-cold drink.
“Have a seat.” Chen Yu pointed to a chair by the wall.
Li Mi placed the drink on the table but stood still instead of sitting down.
Chen Yu put down his pen and looked up at him: “What’s this method you mentioned? Speak your mind boldly. You saw how no one in that meeting uttered a word. Coming up with your own proposal already puts you ahead of them all. Even if you’re wrong, it’s fine.”
“I’m sorry, Director Chen, but I can’t say. However, I do want to carry out my plan and hope you can support it.”
“Why?”
Li Mi just smiled.
Chen Yu stared at his face for a moment, then sneered, “Do you think I care about all this now? Speak. If you don’t, no one will clean up your mess later. When trouble comes knocking, you’ll be forced to the Lost Frequency Zone.”
Silence.
Yet amidst this silence, those gentle eyes brimmed with immense confidence.
“All you need to do is support me, Director Chen. Trust me.”
“Director” was the title given to those responsible for various affairs at headquarters—the high-ranking officials of the Monster Hunter faction’s central command.
Suddenly, a series of astonished shouts erupted outside the building.
“How arrogant!”
“This is inhuman, absolutely despicable—someone like him surely deserves to burn in hell.”
Just outside this building, a shift of wind and upheaval clouds was accompanied by a beam of heavenly light descending.
A flicker of change crossed Chen Yu’s face.
Fang Tian had even dared to launch a direct attack on headquarters.
He listened closely to the escalating chaos outside, his own chest burning with a surge of fury.
“How confident are you?”
Chen Yu spoke in a low, serious tone, turning his gaze to the man standing by the desk.
“While I can’t do anything about the satellites up there, I’m ninety percent sure we can stop him from acting so brazenly.”
“Alright, we’ll do it your way. Tell me what you need, and I’ll make the request on your behalf.”
A solemn look settled on Li Mi’s face.
“Thank you, Director Chen. I would like to meet a convicted criminal named Kuang Yuming.”
As dusk fell, the sky suddenly gathered thick clouds—a storm seeming imminent to brew, which somewhat eased the tension among those present.
Taking advantage of the thick clouds, many people who had been afraid to go out started searching for food and supplies. Some banded together to look for high-quality buildings not yet claimed by the Xiong Ying Group, while others simply planned to settle in the next intersecting space.
Crack! Crack!
Thunder flashed across the sky, and heavy rain poured down.
In the curtain of rain, Li Mi held a black umbrella, standing in front of the dilapidated building at the square.
Before him, a man with stubbled cheeks was wiping a glass photo frame wet by the rainwater. Inside the frame was a picture of a woman and two young girls at a fried chicken shop.
“So this is what Yingying looks like now? You actually managed to meet her and take a photo.”
Rainwater covered the man’s cheeks beneath his eye sockets.
“Lili actually didn’t remarry. She’s still here, and the second child is this grown now.”
“You should understand that if illusions appear in the same place but not over here, there’s a high probability that those illusions will continue to emerge over the next two months.”
“Her shop…”
The man’s heart ached.
He looked up at the young man under the umbrella, whose upright posture resembled a pine or cypress in the wind—secluded, aloof, and detached.
“Your plan is too simplistic. It’s almost impossible to succeed.”
Li Mi lowered his gaze slightly, landing on Kuang Yuming’s face.
“The essence of anything is very simple. Although Lü Bu has prepared for this, he might not care about one or two instances. But ten or twenty? Then he’d have to think twice.”
“Ten or twenty?”
Kuang Yuming stared wide-eyed at the man holding the umbrella before him.
Such words came so calmly from this young man’s composed face—he casually spoke of ten or twenty men.
Was he a devil?
“Can you convince ten or twenty people like me?”
The man burst into loud laughter.
“How could you possibly persuade twenty people like me to march to their deaths? No one is that selfless, least of all a murderer like me—and especially not for the sake of those gentlemen sitting inside.”
A lightning arc flashed, and Li Mi said calmly, “I don’t need to convince that many people. I only need to convince you.”
Confusion flickered in the man’s eyes.
“Once you succeed, others will naturally rush to carry out the same plan.”
Boom. The thunderclap finally reached the ground.
The man clutching the photo frame swayed and stepped back.
Then he burst into laughter, bending over until his waist ached.
“Ha ha ha.”
The man straightened up and pointed at Li Mi. “So this is your kind, huh? This is… indeed. Now that I think about it, it’s actually a plan worth trying!”
Kuang Yuming glanced at the building behind the gray curtain of rain across the way—a place he had once yearned to enter.
“I really want to see if you self-proclaimed righteous bastards will end up in the same place I’m headed, after you slowly turn into executioners yourselves.”
“Then our deal is sealed. Next year, I’ll write everything that happened this year, burn it, and deliver it to you. Invest every amount of your remaining Sequence into the one behind you—don’t keep a single moment for yourself.”
Li Mi turned sideways, revealing a guard in the square behind him. The guard, tasked with watching the prisoners, inexplicably received an investment of over forty years’ worth of Time Sequence.
“Now, please accept the investment we’ve made for you.”
The aged Kuang Yuming waited in silence, a hint of nervousness in his heart. A folded line appeared through the curtain of rain, shooting into the silver-white ring on his chest.
[An anonymous user has invested Full-Authority Time Sequence 9999N for me.]
He lifted his gaze.
There really was that much Time Sequence—the other side had truly given him so much.
“Aren’t you… afraid that I’ll run away?”
“No.”
A ring emerged on Li Mi’s chest as a corner of a triangle rapidly stretched into a sharp line, piercing toward the other side.
[Li Mi wants to initiate an active investment for me.]
“From now on, do not kill any living being.”
[Li Mi has invested 11Y for me.]
“And do not accept any more gifts.”
[Li Mi has invested 29R for me.]
“Don’t use any enhancements, don’t consume Time Sequence, don’t put up any protection for yourself.”
One instruction after another was uttered from the mouth of the man before him.
“Everything else is up to you. Go enjoy your remaining life.”
At the other end of the square, inside a building carved into the rock wall, two figures stood beside Chen Yu on the long corridor behind the glass window, looking outward.
“What’s that young man’s plan?”
“I’m not sure, but I can probably guess it.”
The other person thought for a moment, a slight tremor in their gaze as they looked at Chen Yu and the solemn-faced man to his right, and said, “Could it be… playing the victim?”
Chen Yu’s gaze fixed on the sky, piercing through the thunder and dark clouds as if he could see through to the heavens:
“At this moment, I’m afraid this is the only threat the weak can pose to Lü Bu.”
“This? He, he is daring to defy the world’s condemnation!”
This man shuddered all over, thinking with relief that he was fortunate not to be this guy’s direct supervising director.
To Chen Yu’s right, the middle-aged man with an erect back turned and left.
“Tell the First Security Team to fully coordinate with Li Mi on any and all actions.”
“Yes, Director Yu.”
……
After over a day had passed, Ning Yang and the others felt as if their bodies were about to shake apart.
“Captain Zhao, when will we finally get there?”
“Soon, very soon.”
Those beside Ning Yang grew a bit irritated: “You’ve been saying that for half a day now, and we still can’t even see the shadow of the backdrop on this side.”
“Yeah, Zhao Qi, you said it would take a day to get there, but we didn’t prepare that much food. We have a long way back.”
The marching convoy slowly came to a halt. Zhao Qi, riding on the back of a creature resembling a hippo but with bull horns, turned around and fixed his gaze on Ning Yang and the others.
Ning Yang’s heart suddenly tightened; he sensed that the entire cargo fleet was subtly surrounding them now.
The model on his chest quickly surfaced, but the next second, he heard two screams beside him, and blood splattered.
“You bastards!” Ning Yang roared in fury, drawing his sword as he rose, a golden phantom flame appearing on his body.
But immediately, over ten long knives and spears were pointed at them, among them two pitch-black musket barrels.
“Zhao Qi, what do you mean by this? Weren’t you going to invest in my shelter zone!”
Zhao Qi shook his head with a sneer and said, “Is your shelter zone now even worth as much as a single flatbed cart of mine?”
Several flatbed carts around were piled high with piles of clothes and daily necessities—in the Lost Frequency Lands, this was indeed invaluable.
“We only lost an engine; as long as we have a craftsman, we can still build another one.”
Ning Yang tried to keep his voice steady as he spoke.
One member of the cargo fleet, carrying a knife over his shoulder, wandered around them and spat at their feet: “Piss off, master craftsman’s over at Wuyou now. Don’t think we don’t know—you’re the ones who drove that Jiazi Segment out.”
“Hahahaha!”
Several members of the cargo fleet let out merciless jeers.
The four still alive beside Ning Yang were both angry and enraged but dared not strike because Zhao Qi and the two men beside him were clearly emitting red phantom flames.
They hadn’t known what that red meant before, but now they did.
“Is that really true, Ning-ge?” Niuwa, who had come along, asked the shelter master, his face pale.
Ning Yang felt his face scorching hot—unsure if it was from anger or shame—three of the four beside him were hearing this news for the first time and looked at Ning Yang in shock.
Seeing the shelter master’s expression, everyone knew Zhao Qi’s words were no lie.
“Could it be that Lyu Zhi and those guys weren’t lying after all?”
The four of them recalled the scene when they had driven out Jiazi Space.
“Everyone, don’t get worked up. Captain Zhao, let’s talk this out.”
At this moment, Shed Master Ning felt that life and death hung in the balance, hating himself for being so impulsive, unable to see the situation clearly—having lost the formula and the engine, yet foolishly hoping to turn things around based on a few words from this unfamiliar cargo fleet.
“Alright, alright, that’s what we wanted to hear. Brother Ning, have your tenants prepare the cycles for you—eight thousand per person, or they’ll become raw materials for Lost Mind engines.”
Eight thousand! The group felt their heads spin.
It was uncertain whether the entire shed area of dozens of people could scrape together eight thousand cycles, let alone eight thousand per person.
“Get to work on it. The latest is tonight; otherwise, hmph, we’ve got more road to cover.”
As he finished, the air rang with the sounds of hooves and shouting. Ning Yang saw several convoy groups marching toward them on the horizon, all bearing the same cargo flags as Zhao Qi’s fleet.
“You… you all are… the Wasteland Cargo Fleet?”
A deep sense of despair surged in Ning Yang’s eyes as he thought of that bandit organization.
“Huh, busted, are we?”