Yan Jiyun stood outside, anxiously wanting to save Qi Feng, but he didn’t even know how Qi Feng had gotten inside. He had thought the clones were the distinctive feature of this instance, but he hadn’t expected there to be a game within the game as well. Did entering different shops trigger different missions?
How had Qi Feng gotten in?
Yan Jiyun patted the NPC who had just been cursing and swearing. “Friend, are you still playing?”
This NPC had already run out of game tokens, so he could leave.
But unexpectedly, the NPC refused to go. “Playing, of course I’m playing! If I don’t beat this NPC today, I’m not leaving. Just wait. I’ll go buy more game tokens!”
Yan Jiyun hadn’t expected to run into such a stubborn NPC. How was he supposed to trick him into leaving?
He quickly scooped the game tokens from the box of the NPC at the neighboring machine, who was playing so enthusiastically that he had completely lost himself in the game, and brought them over. Then he took three tokens and inserted them into the arcade machine.
The game instructions said that this shooting game had three levels. Defeating the final boss would allow the player to enter the game rankings.
The NPC angrily went to the counter to buy more game tokens. Yan Jiyun quickly started the game and selected the single-player shooting mode.
He didn’t see Qi Feng in the first level. He casually shot down several NPCs. Their faces weren’t clear, so they should have been actual data NPCs rather than flesh-and-blood human players.
Yan Jiyun wasn’t moving very quickly. He cleared the level while observing the NPC characters inside, and soon reached the second level. There, he saw a clearly rendered face — but it was one he had never seen before. It belonged to a pale-faced man. When he saw Yan Jiyun’s gun pointed at him, he covered his injured arm and hid behind cover. If Yan Jiyun fired at him at that moment, the man’s other arm probably wouldn’t survive either.
He was certain that this man was a player.
There weren’t just Qi Feng’s players inside this arcade game; there were other players too. If a player skipped their mission and suddenly decided to play a game for a little excitement, they could genuinely end up shooting another player without realizing it.
Yan Jiyun didn’t know how accurate the NPC players were, but anyone capable of reaching the Top-Level instances should have decent shooting accuracy.
He didn’t know which player the man hiding behind the cover was, but he had no intention of killing other players. Clearing out the remaining data NPCs would be enough.
He memorized the man’s appearance. There was a beauty mark beneath the corner of his eye, and his hair was medium-length. A person like that would stand out wherever he went; if Yan Jiyun had seen him before, he definitely wouldn’t have forgotten him.
Yan Jiyun thought about the conversation between Chu Mo and Wen Ye. Qi Feng had chased Su Qiuming into this place. Could this man be the legendary Su Qiuming?
Qi Feng had personally taught him how to shoot. After skipping the second level, the third level arrived as expected. Yan Jiyun didn’t immediately find Qi Feng inside the game, but he knew Qi Feng had to be hiding somewhere.
He slowly cleared the surrounding NPCs whose faces were unclear. If he didn’t move, the game would immediately issue a warning.
He had been playing for more than two minutes and still hadn’t figured out how to get Qi Feng out of the game. And how had Qi Feng been put inside in the first place? Was there some special procedure he had to follow?
The NPC who had been unable to hit Qi Feng no matter how hard he tried came back carrying a huge box of game tokens. Seeing that Yan Jiyun had taken his spot while the machines beside him were all occupied, the NPC grew anxious to play and began pointing things out from the side.
“Hey, do you even know how to play? Can’t you see that tall guy right next to you? Shoot to the right, buddy.”
“Do you even know how to play? If you don’t, let me do it.”
“I see that NPC you keep missing! Shoot him, shoot him!”
After searching for ages, Yan Jiyun finally found Qi Feng. But there was no way he was going to listen to the NPC beside him. He had to find a way to get Qi Feng out of the game. Did he need to clear a path leading outside before Qi Feng could escape?
The NPC beside him continued to chatter nonstop.
Yan Jiyun was annoyed by him and suddenly exploded, clutching the gun in his hands as he snapped at the noisy NPC. “Why the hell are you making so much noise? It’s my game time now. Whether I know how to play or not has anything to do with you! What’s wrong with you? Fuck your grandpa, you’re distracting me so much that I can’t even aim properly!”
The NPC was already hot-tempered, and after Yan Jiyun suddenly blasted him, he didn’t hold back either and started arguing back. “This was my spot first! So what if I gave you a couple of pointers? What’s your problem? You’re so damn petty, you can’t even take a little advice!”
Yan Jiyun: “Bullshit! Was that advice? You were obviously looking down on me!”
NPC: “When did I look down on you? You’re practically about to die anyway. What’s wrong with me saying a couple of things? Do you have to be this petty?”
Yan Jiyun: “I lost because you kept yapping beside me! I’m telling you, if you keep yapping beside me, I’ll knock your teeth out!”
The NPC became unhappy when he heard the threat. “Fuck your grandpa! You actually dare threaten me? Don’t you know whose territory this is?”
Yan Jiyun also became furious. “I don’t give a damn whose territory it is! You’re interfering with my game! Understand? Trash!”
The NPC thought that being insulted this badly was more than even his patience could take. He angrily swung a fist at Yan Jiyun.
But Yan Jiyun had been prepared. He nimbly sidestepped to the right, and the NPC’s fist sailed past him.
What the NPC didn’t know was that Yan Jiyun had deliberately provoked him. He was buying time for Qi Feng to escape from the game.
Although Yan Jiyun didn’t know yet whether Qi Feng could actually get out, if there was even a chance, he had to try. At least now he knew what kind of predicament Qi Feng was facing.
He wondered whether a player’s ultimate fate was to become an NPC in one of the games played by the NPCs, while the player’s real identity was replaced by a clone.
The word “replace” was important. If the system were even more malicious, could it release the clones from the games and have them replace the players?
Hopefully the game hadn’t gone completely insane to that extent. If everywhere were filled with NPCs, then the game itself would become meaningless. It would also amount to deceiving the viewers in the livestream.
But this was only Yan Jiyun’s speculation.
Yan Jiyun continued provoking the NPC, who had been thoroughly enraged. The NPC was also a rather simple-minded, straightforward type, so he really did start fighting Yan Jiyun, forgetting his original purpose of continuing to play the game.
There was still a considerable difference in their builds. Yan Jiyun was on the slender side, while the enraged NPC wasn’t tall but was quite burly. The sleeves of his sweatshirt stretched tightly over the muscles in his arms, making him look intimidating. The NPCs watching from the sidelines were privately saying that there was no way someone as skinny as Yan Jiyun could beat the enraged NPC.
Of course, Yan Jiyun had never intended to actually fight the NPC. He was merely buying time.
He had already cleared away some of the monsters blocking Qi Feng’s path. From here on, Qi Feng would have to rely on his own legs to run.
It was easy for Yan Jiyun to keep the enraged burly man occupied, but Qi Feng only had a little over a minute.
Qi Feng inside the game seemed to sense something. He knew someone was helping him. Once he no longer needed to dodge the bullets, he immediately broke into a run in a certain direction!
Meanwhile, Yan Jiyun continued dealing with the enraged NPC. He didn’t fight him head-on. The two of them circled around the arcade machine, moving back and forth. Although the NPC was burly, he wasn’t as agile as Yan Jiyun. However, his stamina was better, so the two remained locked in a stalemate, disrupting the other NPC players as well.
Xiao Hei thought Yan Jiyun was playing a game with someone. It jumped onto the various arcade machines and ran around them, parkouring all over the place like some fake villain.
For a while, the players in the arcade were up in arms, complaining to the staff that there was a cat causing trouble in front of their machines and that they couldn’t catch it. This naturally made them even more furious.
The staff began organizing everyone to catch the cat. But Xiao Hei was an NPC in the first place. Whatever rules existed between NPCs and NPCs, no one could seem to catch Xiao Hei, making the scene even more chaotic.
Yan Jiyun was also being chased by the burly man, but the man kept getting blocked by the NPCs trying to catch the cat. Yan Jiyun ran directly back behind the arcade machine where Qi Feng was and pressed a button. In the final three seconds, he paused the game.
Only the game was paused. Qi Feng inside the game should still be able to move around.
He had thought of this method mainly because, while making a quick circuit around the arcade, he had seen a staff member working on a machine pause a malfunctioning machine from the back. Without another player outside working together with the people inside the game, there genuinely wouldn’t be enough time for anyone to escape. The players might end up running inside the game until they died, or be gunned down by the NPCs outside.
However, Yan Jiyun also knew that the chaos in the arcade wouldn’t last very long. Once too many people started chasing Xiao Hei, it quickly found somewhere to hide. As long as the staff ensured that it couldn’t interfere with the other players’ games, they could deal with the fight between Yan Jiyun and the enraged NPC next.
Yan Jiyun ran around the arcade for a while longer, buying Qi Feng a little more time. As long as the machine remained inactive, Qi Feng had time to escape the game.
He could only wait until Qi Feng came out to ask how he had gotten inside.
Yan Jiyun circled the entire arcade once, eventually stopping in front of the arcade machine again. Because someone had been fighting, nobody was using the machine. The staff brought the enraged NPC over and restrained Yan Jiyun as well, separating the two so they wouldn’t cause any more trouble.
At this point, Yan Jiyun found the game rather strange. Outside the arcade, there were only various NPCs and the severed limbs of players, making the scene bloody and brutal. But the arcade was completely different. There were NPCs here, while the bloody part was happening to the players inside the games.
Could this be an alternative setting within the instance? What did it have to do with the Christmas theme? And so far, Yan Jiyun still hadn’t seen any of the Christmas mutant monsters mentioned in the notification bar.
The arcade staff followed procedure and tried to mediate the dispute. The irritable burly man was still willing to reconcile, because he had been the one to start pointing fingers at Yan Jiyun in the first place. Now that he had calmed down, he realized that the problem had been his.
Yan Jiyun was still thinking of ways to stall for time when he made a demand.
“Fine, we can resolve this. But you hit me in the face just now, and it still hurts. Pay me a thousand yuan for medical expenses, or I’ll call the police. You’ll definitely get detained for a few days. There are cameras here too. They recorded you hitting me first and then chasing after me to keep beating me.”
Anyway, once Yan Jiyun opened his mouth, the outcome was already clear. The burly man’s face turned purple with rage, but it was true that he had been the one to throw the first punch.
NPC: “I only hit you because you provoked me!”
Yan Jiyun refused to let up, turning himself into a shameless troublemaker determined to get his money and insisting that otherwise the man would have to spend a few days in detention. “What do you mean I provoked you? You hit someone first and you think you’re in the right?”
The NPC was just as stubborn. “A thousand yuan? No way! You’re not even injured!”
Yan Jiyun actually liked how stubborn this guy was. “Fine. Then please have a staff member call the police for me. When they get here, I won’t settle with you. Let the police handle it however they see fit.”
The staff didn’t want to get the police involved either, so they immediately began quietly persuading the stubborn NPC. After Yan Jiyun threatened him like that, the NPC’s aggressive attitude subsided once again.
Stubborn NPC: “I can only pay you five hundred.”
Yan Jiyun looked at him disdainfully. He did his best to stall for Qi Feng. “Not a single cent less. I said one thousand, so it’s one thousand. No bargaining.”
The stubborn NPC was practically furious enough to die from Yan Jiyun’s provocation. He didn’t even know how things had escalated to this point.
In the end, the stubborn NPC gritted his teeth and cursed. “Fuck it, here! I’ll give you the whole damn thing.”
Yan Jiyun continued being shameless. “Cash. I don’t accept transfers.”
The stubborn NPC cursed and grumbled as he exchanged money for cash at the arcade’s front desk, then handed it over to Yan Jiyun.
Satisfied, Yan Jiyun flicked the ten bright-red bills in his hand. “OK, we’re even. You’re a straightforward guy, bro. Wanna be friends?”
The stubborn NPC was so angry that he turned around and left. Yan Jiyun, meanwhile, inherited the pile of game tokens the NPC had left behind.
Just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, the system — which had been unusually quiet ever since he entered this top instance — suddenly popped up.
[The clones will enter the instance in three minutes.]
Yan Jiyun: ???
Did this mean more clones were coming?
It was unexpected, but not entirely unexpected. The game wasn’t going to create just one copy, it would periodically introduce multiple clones? If every clone had the same strength as the original, what chance did the players have of surviving?
No wonder there had been 500 players at the start and only 29 remained now. The other players had probably been killed by their clones.
Yan Jiyun glanced at his Human Form Time Card. To prevent himself from losing control over the experience card, he hadn’t stacked multiple cards together, but used them one at a time. There were still a little over two minutes left on his current card.
And now that he was appearing in human form, would the person copied from him appear in his current human form or his cat form?
If it were a cat, he could still beat it into submission. But if it were human, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to completely control it. Having two more copies of himself running around would simply create trouble for both himself and everyone else.
Yan Jiyun glanced at the arcade machine that was still paused. He had bought Qi Feng quite a bit of time, so why hadn’t he come out yet?
He guessed it was probably similar to clearing an instance: after dodging the players’ attacks, Qi Feng would have to find the exit to clear the game and get out.
Yan Jiyun thought for a moment. Could it be because he had paused the game, causing everything inside the game to pause as well?
He checked the time the system had given him, then bent down and turned the machine back on.
The arcade machine started running again.
Yan Jiyun saw Qi Feng’s figure on the screen.
He still hadn’t come out.
The words “GAME OVER” appeared in huge letters on the arcade screen, meaning that his game had ended in failure.
Qi Feng had won the match, but he hadn’t appeared.
Fuck, was there not enough time?
At that moment, Xiao Hei rubbed against Yan Jiyun’s leg.
Yan Jiyun checked the countdown to the clones’ appearance once again.
[Clones will appear in: 1 min 55 sec.]
[Human Form Time Card remaining time: 1 min 20 sec.]
Yan Jiyun looked at Xiao Hei. “Wait here.”
After saying that, he inserted several game tokens into the machine so it could continuously start new rounds. Then he placed Xiao Hei in front of the arcade screen.
He still hadn’t figured out how Qi Feng had been dragged into the arcade game in the first place. But perhaps some special quest inside the arcade had been triggered, and completing it was the only way to get out of the machine.
Yan Jiyun was still struggling to figure out how to trigger the mission when he suddenly saw Xiao Hei leap straight into the screen and successfully disappear before his eyes.
Fuck, it can be just like that??
As the tip of its tail disappeared into the screen, Yan Jiyun spoke as quickly as possible.
“Bring the kitty’s owner out!”
[Clones will appear in: 1 min 20 sec.]
[Human Form Time Card remaining time: 55 sec.]
He looked around, checking whether any of the staff were watching him. Clearly, he counted as a player “outsider”, practically half an NPC, and no one had noticed what he had done.
Yan Jiyun grabbed a “Machine Under Maintenance” sign from a broken arcade machine nearby and propped it up on the machine.
From here on, it was up to Qi Feng himself!
There wasn’t much time left. Yan Jiyun slipped out of the arcade during the final thirty seconds, turned into the neighboring bubble tea shop, and changed back into his cat form. Twenty-five seconds later, the countdown to the clones’ appearance reached zero.
Yan Jiyun didn’t know how many clones there would be.
It was time to start catching cats.
Xiao Hei appeared not far from him, and Yan Jiyun spotted it immediately.
He still didn’t know how many more would appear or how strong they would be. Everything was unknown.
Based on what he had observed of Fake Qi Feng, their combat abilities probably wouldn’t be weakened.
He saw a black cat dart out from the corridor next door, looking around suspiciously.
Yan Jiyun didn’t hesitate for even a second. He pounced on the nosy black cat and sank his teeth hard into its head!
The black cat cried out in pain and struggled to escape Yan Jiyun’s grasp, but it had only just been “born,” so its movements were still slightly sluggish. Before it could even react, Yan Jiyun had already pinned it down. As it struggled, it realized that there was no way it could beat this ferocious black cat.
Black Cat No. 2 eventually submitted to Yan Jiyun’s overwhelming strength.
“Meow~” It had lost to this Dage. Damn it, it couldn’t win!
Only then did Yan Jiyun release it. He stood up, spat the fur out of his mouth, then patted the idiot’s head with one paw.
But before he could even catch his breath, he saw two black shadows approaching Yan Jiyun with an intimidating presence.
Yan Jiyun couldn’t help but curse.
Holy shit, why are there two more?
Damn this system! Did it copy him too many times?!
Seeing that the two newcomers clearly meant no good, Yan Jiyun couldn’t deal with them the way he had dealt with No. 2. He lowered his body, all four limbs tensed, assuming an attacking stance as if he could pounce at the other two at any moment.
Ever since becoming a cat, Yan Jiyun had never fought this many cats in a single day. But when trouble came knocking, he wasn’t afraid. Every cat knew how to fight; it was just a matter of who was more skilled.
Four black cats faced off in the middle of the corridor, letting out low, threatening growls.
The [Want to Be a Human] livestream exploded into an uproar!
![The Return of The Lord God[quick wear]](https://i2.wp.com/knoxt.space/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/007S8ZIlly1ghl04hyuxyj30hs0owwgu.jpg?resize=85,105 "The Return of The Lord God[quick wear]")
slappy girl On CM Chapter 22