99th floor……

Jiang Ye’s main body was still lying on the 20th floor.

But his replica had already swaggered up to the 99th!

This was really……

Thri—lling!

He looked at this group of big shots. They didn’t seem like the type to scam him into a trap and then suddenly turn around and try to kill him.

Plus, he really had no money to escape with, so he could only grit his teeth and go all in.

So, when someone hiding in the shadows at the top floor suddenly revealed themselves and waved at him, saying, “Alright, whether you're just bluffing or really confident, if you’re going for the ten-win streak, follow me!”

Jiang Ye didn’t hesitate much. He walked calmly from the console over to the outer area.

He even casually asked, “You’re Wan Xin?”

That name stuck in his mind—

Last place on the Ranking Board, just above himself.

Also the first person in the group to reveal that he was the bald guy who beat Zhao Yudie.

Sure enough, the guy nodded.

He was also wearing a black tactical jacket, similar to Yang Wenchao’s.

Dark skin, strong features, looked pretty young, like someone who’d served in the military.

Wan Xin was also sizing Jiang Ye up, and his expression clearly showed some surprise.

At first, Jiang Ye didn’t know what he was surprised about.

Then he glanced at the chat group—

This guy had directly posted his Data Panel in the group!

What the h*ll? Does privacy not exist anymore?!

And now in the chat group, all kinds of big shots were shocked by his panel—

【Dmn, really is level 1, with just over 50 Combat Power!】

【And only an S-tier ability! This panel? Looks weak as hll!】

【And it doesn’t even look like he maxed out on Attribute Fruits. With that, he’s saying he beat ten matches in ten minutes? Forget ten minutes—getting ten wins at all would be a miracle!】

【No, no! You guys didn’t spot the real highlight?】

【——This guy clearly used Ice-type abilities in the fight against Zhao Yudie! It even looked like an Ice-type Domain Skill!】

【If he used an Ice-type Domain Skill, why doesn’t his panel show any Ice Element Affinity or Ice skills?】

【I suspect this guy’s hiding his real strength. That “Hard Work Pays Off” ability might just be a front! He probably has an Ice-type ability too!】

【Dual abilities? Honestly, “Hard Work Pays Off” paired with any other ability is a 1+12 combo! If it’s that and an Ice-type ability, then yeah—this guy’s pretty damn strong! Totally has the right to be arrogant!】

【But even that doesn’t add up! Even if he’s hiding a second ability, how do you explain the Combat Power?】

【When he matched with Zhao Yudie, his Combat Power was only in the fifties!】

【And as we all know, there’s no way to hide strength from the Duel Room’s matchmaking system!】

【Yeah, so that means... his panel really is as bad as it looks?】

【So what if that Ice-type Domain Skill was just a one-time forbidden spell scroll?】

【??? No way, right? How much could he possibly earn from beating Zhao Yudie? Even if she’s filthy rich, he nets five million tops... but a one-time forbidden scroll? Five mil? He’d still be losing out even if it cost ten times that!】

【Maybe someone hired him to break Zhao Yudie’s nine-win streak? So it wasn’t about the money?】

【Hired by who? Who the h*ll hates Zhao Yudie enough to pull that off when she’s that rich??】

Bottom line—

Jiang Ye’s Data Panel and his performance against Zhao Yudie didn’t match up at all!

And none of the explanations made sense.

These people discussed it openly in the chat like Jiang Ye didn’t even exist.

Wan Xin, while reading the chat, used a poster-shaped teleport item to bring Jiang Ye to the 99th floor.

The entire 99th floor looked similar to the top floor—massive in size!

And there were no hallways or apartment rooms here.

Just like the rooftop, it was one enormous space.

Though this space had a ceiling.

Inside, rows upon rows of Duel Machines were lined up.

It looked like a super-luxury internet café.

Or rather… a deluxe professional esports room?

The rows of Duel Machines looked even fancier than the twenty on the apartment’s first floor.

Taller, sleeker, with a more premium look.

Besides that, there were about seven or eight people spectating around Duel Machine No. 1.

A few other machines had scattered onlookers too.

All of them wore black tactical jackets.

Looking at it now, Jiang Ye suddenly felt like these jackets were standard-issue esports uniforms.

As soon as the elite players outside the machines saw Wan Xin return with Jiang Ye, they all turned to look.

At that moment, Jiang Ye felt like he’d just been hit with a dozen Detection spells.

Then, from beside Duel Machine No. 1, a burly dude walked up and went straight in with:

“How about you explain this? How did someone with your Data Panel one-shot Zhao Yudie?”

Jiang Ye stayed on guard inside, but outwardly maintained his “I’m strong so I’m cold and cool” look.

Calm and composed, with a bit of flair, he said slowly:

“I’m here for the ten-win streak.”

Subtext: I’m not here to answer your damn questions.

The burly guy paused, then smirked, “Heh, alright!”

“Then go get your ten wins.”

“Ten minutes later, I want to see how you’re gonna keep acting tough with that kind of strength!”

Jiang Ye looked calm on the outside, but inside, he was panicking like crazy!

He was confident about the ten wins.

But ten minutes? Yeah… not so much.

That would mean he’d have to one-shot every opponent!

And each time he created a new Replica, it took him 30 seconds!

Plus, if the match had spectators, the pre-fight prep time would jump from 3 seconds to 2 minutes, to let more people join in to spectate.

If he got unlucky and ended up with six matches with spectators…

That’s already 12 minutes just in wait time!

But maybe not.

Matches against veteran players blocking win streaks were supposedly defaulted to no spectators.

So the five-win and ten-win streak match types didn’t rely on luck—they’d start instantly with no spectators.

But… he had already pissed off those veteran players who blocked win streaks.

Can Jiang Ye still easily one-shot his opponents in the upcoming five-win streak?

To be honest, he really wasn’t that confident.

Right at that moment, his main body generated the fourth replica.

But…

Even though the luck effect was still active this time,

The fourth replica’s panel was completely ordinary.

【Jiang Ye】

【Level: 0】

【Stamina: 2.4】

【Energy: 8.8】

【Combat Power: 18.2】

【Survival Points: 0】

【Ability: Energy Enhancement (B)】

Just an attribute-enhancing ability, and it didn’t even come with an initial skill.

Completely useless in this situation!

By now, it had been quite a while since Xing Man’s last message.

Logically, he should’ve already broken into Bai Ruowan’s apartment.

But in the group chat, there was no text stream of him slaughtering her.

And Bai Ruowan’s name hadn’t disappeared either.

The despairing classmates couldn’t help but feel a flicker of hope again.

Could it be that Yang Wenchao, unable to stand by any longer, had finally gone to save Bai Ruowan?

But Jiang Ye thought…

Xing Man’s rampage so far had clearly shown he had the strength to forcibly invade someone else’s apartment.

So for those classmates whose room numbers were exposed in the registry, instead of sitting there waiting to die, it was better to hide elsewhere.

He guessed Bai Ruowan had already left her apartment before Xing Man arrived.

Same likely went for Lu Shen—he probably wasn’t in his room anymore either.

Which meant… Xing Man might soon show up at Jiang Ye’s place next.

And for Jiang Ye to ensure his main body’s safety and keep the replica situation under wraps while killing Xing Man,

He’d definitely need to use Replica Fusion.

Just to be safe, he should probably fuse Replica No. 4 and the Mirror Replica into No. 3.

That way, his main body would be fully secured.

But if he did that, Replica No. 2 would be left without any fusion backup for a while.

So…

99th floor of Apartment 9999.

Jiang Ye decided to delay the ten-win streak a bit.

And conveniently, he had something on hand that could buy some time.

So...

When the burly young man and Wan Xin tried to take him to a Duel Machine,

Jiang Ye deliberately pulled out the little test tube containing the white-robed woman’s hair.

He was just trying to think of a good story to spin with it.

But unexpectedly, Wan Xin, who saw what he was doing, blurted out, “Holy sh*t? That’s… an NPC item?”

“You’ve taken an NPC quest?”

The burly guy—Wang Chengjin—also glanced at Jiang Ye in surprise.

But quickly, he scoffed and said,

“Don’t tell me you think just because you’ve taken an NPC quest, we’ll see you as something special?”

“If you can’t finish your ten-win streak in ten minutes, I don’t care if your quest came from the King of Heaven himself, you’re still f***ing dead!”

“……”

Jiang Ye paused to think, then held the little test tube up to eye level, staring at it as he asked,

“How did you guys recognize this as an NPC item at a glance?”

Meanwhile.

Bai Ruowan, trembling all over, was watching the chat group closely as she weakly walked deeper into the hallway.

The farther she went, the darker it got.

And at any moment, a monster could pop out.

The darkness and uncertainty were terrifying.

But Xing Man’s presence was even more terrifying—absolutely suffocating.

Her face was pale as a sheet, but finally, when she spotted a familiar figure at the far end of the hallway...

The tears she had been holding in gushed out all at once.

Like raindrops falling off an old roof in a storm—clear, steady, and unending.

Choking back her fear, her voice trembled through her sobs:

“Sister Ling, Wanwan…”

“And Gao Chang, Lu Shen…”

Hic—a crying hiccup.

“You… you really were hiding here, wuwuwu…”

Finding the members of the Mutual Aid Group felt like finding family to Bai Ruowan.

She couldn’t help it—Xing Man’s presence was just too overwhelming!

She didn’t have the power to fight back, and now that she was being targeted, of course she was scared.

Wang Lingling and the others had been huddled together, quietly discussing something.

When they suddenly saw Bai Ruowan, Xu Yuewan’s eyes lit up with joy, “Wanwan, you really didn’t stay in your room like a dummy!”

“But how did you know we were here?”

Bai Ruowan hiccuped again, sniffled, and tried to steady her emotions as she replied:

“I didn’t dare go to the 1st floor. It felt like that would definitely get me caught.”

“And I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Then I remembered you all were once fighting monsters with Yang Wenchao deep in the 3rd floor hallway…”

“So this is the only place besides the 1st floor where our group ever gathered together.”

“I had nowhere else to go, so I came here on a whim… and I actually found you guys QAQ!”

Yeah, the chat group couldn’t be used to send messages anymore.

But Bai Ruowan believed the Mutual Aid Group wouldn’t just sit by and watch Xing Man rampage without doing anything.

So she found her way here.

And sure enough…

“You’re all discussing how to deal with Xing Man, right?”

As Bai Ruowan spoke, her eyes lit up again. “Yang Xiaoman’s here too!”

Yang Xiaoman nodded slightly and said with pursed lips,

“Xing Man really is too arrogant. If we don’t stop him soon, he might end up killing all of us.”

Bai Ruowan shrank back a bit and quickly asked, “So do you guys have a plan?”

You Ziyu let out a breath. “We were just in the middle of planning when you suddenly showed up and gave me a scare.”

With that, they were about to continue their discussion.

Lu Shen took the opportunity to give Wang Lingling a meaningful glance.

Then he said,

“To be honest, even with all of us teaming up to ambush Xing Man, our chances of success are still pretty low.”

“Unless…”

“Sister Ling, you’ve been hiding your strength!”

“Come to think of it, all of us in the Mutual Aid Group have openly shown our Data Panels.”

“But Sister Ling, yours was only shared through text in the chat group.”

“I suspected back then, the panel you posted might not have been real.”

“And later, when you said you used 【Shadow Replica】 but didn’t have the replica’s perspective, and then it died, and you couldn’t use it again for 24 hours…”

“That’s when I really started to doubt.”

“Shadow Replica is an A-tier skill! No perspective sharing? And even if it really died in the hallway, 24-hour cooldown? That’s a stretch.”

“So Sister Ling, you’ve probably been hiding your true strength!”

“Even teaming up with Yang Wenchao later to level up—there must’ve been some confidence in your abilities for you to agree, right?”

Lu Shen sounded quite confident with all this.

He made it clear he’d suspected Wang Lingling for a while.

But Wang Lingling just gave him a look and didn’t respond.

Then the group continued their discussion on ambushing Xing Man:

“For our ambush location, we definitely can’t pick the 20th floor—there’s no way we can get up there.”

“Also, we need a place that’s dimly lit for easier sneak attacks, and accessible to all of us for the joint strike.”

Yes, they had just been discussing where to ambush Xing Man and how to lure him there.

As for whether they’d succeed…

They had the numbers, plus experts like Wang Lingling, Gao Chang, and Yang Xiaoman.

Add the element of surprise, and maybe—just maybe—they had a chance.

Lu Shen was about to take over the conversation and analyze further.

But then…

Wang Lingling suddenly paused mid-sentence.

Then she adjusted her glasses and said with a solemn tone,

“But before that, there’s something even more important.”

More important?

What could that be?

The Mutual Aid Group members all looked puzzled.

Then, in the next second—

A cold glint flashed from the shadows!

A figure's eyes widened as they slowly collapsed to the ground…