The Pattern

Fanxing City. Beams of white light descended. Long Ming and the others materialized within the city. "Haha, our evacuation was a success!" "We won!" Johnny and the others hugged one another, cheering with tears of joy. "We truly owe our lives to Long Ming this time!" "Yeah, where's Long Ming?" "Over here!" Yun Yu and the others crowded excitedly around Long Ming. "Long Ming, you're amazing!" "Yeah, that was incredible!" "Just good luck, that's all." A faint smile appeared on Long Ming's face. Fortunately, he had made it just in the nick of time. "Brother, don't be so humble! When you took on that monster at the end, you were totally badass!" Johnny handed Long Ming's backpack back to him. "By the way, what happened to that monster?" Yun Yu and the others asked curiously. "Oh, I shook her off!" Long Ming didn't dare tell them he had slaughtered it, lest he scare them. "I see. We really have you to thank this time," Xiao Qi said to Long Ming in gratitude. "No need to thank me. It was what I was supposed to do. Here are the spoils from this run." Long Ming handed all four backpacks in his hands to Xiao Qi. "Why so many backpacks?" Xiao Qi was surprised to see Long Ming hand over so many bags. "Picked them up along the way," Long Ming explained calmly. Hearing his words, Xiao Qi opened the backpacks to inspect them. But when she checked the third one, she was instantly stunned by what was inside. "Long Ming, come with me for a second." Xiao Qi reached out and pulled Long Ming aside. Long Ming looked at her with slight confusion and asked, "What is it?" "You found a red-tier item?" Xiao Qi asked, looking at a circular alloy ring inside the backpack. "Yeah," Long Ming replied with a calm nod. In truth, he had stripped this circular alloy ring from Lula's hand. On top of that, he had gathered up all the valuable items from the other backpacks as well. Xiao Qi lowered her voice and said to Long Ming, "Why are you so honest? We were able to evacuate successfully this time entirely thanks to you. Otherwise, we would've been wiped out completely. You don't need to hand over this much—just turning in a portion is enough." "I know, but rules are rules. Without rules, there's no order," Long Ming replied nonchalantly. Hearing Long Ming's response, Xiao Qi grew even more astonished inside. She hadn't expected someone so principled to still exist in this day and age. Even so, she smiled and countered, "Fine. Since you say rules are rules, as the commander of the Rat Legion for this run, do I have the authority to decide how to distribute the spoils?" "Yes!" Long Ming nodded. "Then I hereby decide that handing over these two backpacks is enough. The rest are yours!" Xiao Qi accepted only two backpacks, returning the one containing the red-tier item to Long Ming. Seeing Xiao Qi insist, Long Ming accepted it without saying anything further. Just then, Tang Ye and the other Rat Legion members who had died earlier came running over, shouting, "Sister Qi!" Xiao Qi walked up to Tang Ye and the others as they approached and asked, "Has Sister Mila come out yet?" "Not yet, but everyone from the combat group who died is over there." Tang Ye and a few others pointed not far away. "Let's go wait over there." Xiao Qi glanced over, spotted Cao Jie and the others, and led Long Ming's group over. When Cao Jie saw Xiao Qi and the rest coming, he immediately stepped forward and asked with concern, "Xiao Qi, are you all right?" "I'm fine. We evacuated safely," Xiao Qi replied calmly. "Evacuated safely? How did you manage that?" Cao Jie and the others were dumbfounded, completely unable to fathom how Xiao Qi had escaped from those people. "That's right. It was all thanks to Mr. Long Ming, or every last one of us would've died in there," Yun Yu said excitedly. "Damn right!" "Mr. Long Ming's skills are out of this world!" Johnny and the others chimed in with excitement. Hearing this, Cao Jie cast an unnatural glance at Long Ming. Long Ming stood there impassively without a word, simply lifting his wristband to check his status. Name: Civilization Explorer No. 841221 (Rename) Race: Carbon-Based Human Gene Tier: Tier 0 Class: None Strength: 6 Agility: 7 Stamina: 6 Intelligence: 6 Looking at the status display, Long Ming was thoroughly astonished. His infected mutation status had cleared, yet his Strength, Agility, and Stamina had each increased by one point. This was truly a massive gain. Although Long Ming didn't know why turning into a corpse monster hadn't killed him and had instead made him stronger, he had finally uncovered a pattern: to grow stronger, one had to continually push past one's limits. Perhaps this was what real growth meant. More than three hours later. The remaining scattered combat personnel and Rat Legion members trickled out one after another. Then Mila, looking utterly battered, evacuated alongside thirty-odd survivors. Xiao Qi hurried forward, speaking with concern, "Sister Mila, you're finally out safe and sound." "Sigh, we evacuated, but more than half of our people were lost." Mila looked dejected. The atmosphere instantly turned heavy, and Cao Jie and the others began cursing up a storm. "Our luck was absolute garbage! First we ran into a zombie horde, and then into those idiots!" "Enough of that. Let's tally up our losses and gains first." Mila ground her teeth in frustration. "All right." Cao Jie and the others promptly set to work calculating the losses and gains. Xiao Qi called out to Johnny and the others who had successfully evacuated, "Everyone, trade all your evacuation recordings and loot over to me!" "Got it." Johnny and the others handed over their backpacks and recordings. Before long, the loot turned in by the Rat Legion was tallied up. Xiao Qi walked over to Mila. "Sister Mila, our side's totals are ready. How are things on your end?" "Ours are done too. A loss of 9.8 million Yiwei coins." "That heavy of a loss?" "Yeah. Too many died, and huge amounts of equipment and weapons were lost." "Don't worry. Our total profit came out to 11.21 million. Factoring everything in, we didn't lose out this time—we even turned a small profit." "That much profit? How many of you made it out?" "Around thirty-odd from the main group, and twenty-odd scattered members. It's a bit of a shame, though. If we hadn't run into those people, we could've made a fortune. Now it's just a modest profit." "I'm not letting this go. I'll settle scores with those bastards later! The only headache right now is that I have no idea how to explain this to Luo Xue. Looks like we'll probably have to run an extra session." Anger burned across Mila's face. "Nothing else can be done about that." Xiao Qi felt rather helpless as well. "You worked hard this time. Let's call it a day," Mila said to Xiao Qi. Xiao Qi nodded, then called out to all the waiting Rat Legion members, "Today's mission is over. Everyone can log off!" "Understood!" the crowd answered in chorus. Long Ming raised his wristband as well, preparing to log out of the game. Just then, Xiao Qi called after him, "Mr. Long Ming, wait a moment." "What is it?" Long Ming looked at Xiao Qi in confusion.