Players: All NPCs in the Sect Are Moles

In the southern district of the city, at the Tongli Money Shop.

As a tributary of Anhe City's murky underworld, this place typically engaged in high-profit businesses.

But for the past two days, Liu Yue felt like she was being driven mad.

Ever since that Miss Su started some "City Guard" recruitment and issued a city-wide bounty for reporting crimes, Liu Yue felt her money shop had stopped being a place of business and had instead become one of Anhe City's biggest tourist attractions.

At this moment, she sat behind the counter, listening to the CLACK-CLACK-CLACK of the abacus beads, yet she couldn't calm her heart in the slightest. Her gaze pierced through the window lattice, fixed on the main hall.

The hall, which should have been bustling with customers, was now mostly packed with a crowd of strange people, some wearing red armbands and others without.

These people weren't here to deposit money, take out loans, or conduct any business at all. They acted like they were on a tour, wandering around in small groups, pointing at the money shop's furnishings and occasionally sighing, "Tsk, tsk, this decor looks pretty nice. I hope it wasn't paid for by exploiting the common folk. Otherwise, I'll have some good material to report."

"This counter is so high. There must be something fishy about it!"

After all, money shops were the type of industry most likely to breed gray- or even black-market activities like illegal debt collection and usury. The players showed up hoping to uncover some dirt so they could farm money.

Liu Yue rubbed her throbbing temples, feeling her composure crumbling bit by bit. But what gave her the biggest headache was that brainless guard, the scar-faced Zhao Si.

The oaf was a trained martial artist with a foul temper. On a normal day, anyone who dared to cause trouble in the money shop would have been thrown out long ago. She had repeatedly warned him to hold back these past few days.

But just yesterday, a few scrawny-looking fellows had been loitering in front of him. They didn't say anything, just stared at him intently, their eyes filled with a kind of... anticipation?

They muttered amongst themselves about what might be wrong with the money shop, wondering if he was involved in any dirty work. 'He looks so fierce,' they said, 'he's probably killed a lot of people.'

Although they spoke quietly, the scar-faced man was a martial artist, and he heard every word clearly. He was just working a clean job as a guard. When had he ever been subjected to such humiliation?

The scar-faced man endured it as long as he could, but finally, he couldn't hold back any longer and threw a punch. But when the fist landed, the other party wasn't scared at all. Instead, looking as if he'd just won the lottery, he dropped to the ground and started rolling around, letting out a blood-curdling scream, "He's hitting me! The crooked money shop is trying to kill someone! I'm going to report this! I want compensation!"

In the end, Liu Yue had to hold her nose and pay a large sum of silver to smooth things over. Although she hadn't involved him in the shop's shadier business, she couldn't rule out that she might have slipped up somewhere. She couldn't risk it.

But paying them off was a huge mistake. It was like poking a hornet's nest full of players.

Now, a circle of people constantly surrounded the scar-faced man. They buzzed around him like flies, some pretending to fall in front of him, others making sarcastic remarks. One even pushed his face right up to him and said, "Buddy, I'm begging you, just hit me once, please? Just once! When I get the money from it, we'll split it fifty-fifty!"

Because his actions had led to the Shopkeeper being reprimanded and having to pay compensation, Zhao Si was wracked with guilt. He could only stand in the corner, not knowing what to do with his hands, terrified that if he so much as breathed too loudly, someone across from him would conveniently fall over and extort another sum from the money shop, causing more trouble for the Shopkeeper.

Watching this chaotic scene of dancing demons, Liu Yue's heart filled with a burning hatred.

It wasn't that she hadn't thought of doing something, but these people... they were just too bizarre. Never mind their shameless attitude of 'if it doesn't kill me, I'll keep provoking it to death.' Just their pervasive, all-seeing surveillance was enough to make her skin crawl.

No matter where she went, there were always a few tails behind her.

She went to buy rouge, and someone immediately sidled up next to her. "Yo, Shopkeeper, that's some nice rouge. Does it symbolize something?"

She tried to return to her residence, but they shamelessly kept following. She couldn't help but turn and question them, only to be met with a cheeky grin and the reply, "I'm just heading the same way. Don't overthink it. Why are you so sure I'm following you? It's just a coincidence, you get it?"

'Heading the same way? Heading the same way my ass! I'm about to walk through my own front door and you're still 'heading the same way'?! Are you guys going to follow me to the latrine and hand me paper too?!'

What terrified Liu Yue the most was that the behavior of some of them was simply not human!

Yesterday, in an attempt to shake her trackers, she had deliberately turned into a narrow, complex alley, hoping to use her familiarity with the terrain to lose them.

But after a few turns, she looked back and saw a sight that would be seared into her memory for life:

The people following her reached a corner of the alley. Because the path was narrow and crowded, the whole bunch of "coincidentally heading the same way" people got stuck together. But without even pausing, they twisted their bodies and started running in place—straight into the wall they hadn't yet turned around!

Not only were they running in place, but they were also repeatedly slamming their heads against the wall!

"BANG, BANG, BANG..."

The sound of the impacts wasn't loud, but in the quiet alley, it was particularly unnerving.

They didn't cry out in pain or retreat. They just kept ramming the wall for a while until the person blocking the way "slid" smoothly into the alley. Only then did the ones behind them seem to snap out of it, instantly turning around the corner without the slightest hesitation and continuing to stare in her direction with those vacant, dilated pupils.

"..."

'These aren't people! Have you all been possessed by wild ghosts? Are your eyes just for decoration? It's bad enough that a whole crowd of you is tailing me under the guise of 'heading the same way,' but can't you just line up and go one by one? Why do you all turn in unison like you're possessed?'

Even now, the memory made her forehead break out in sweat. She had to force herself to calm down.

'Retreat?'

Of course she wanted to retreat! The secret passage out of the city was right beneath the money shop's vault. All she had to do was turn the mechanisms in the correct sequence, activate the subsequent corresponding devices, and she'd be free as a bird.

But the problem was... she didn't dare!

Although she presented herself as a weak and helpless woman, she had knocked around the underworld for many years and had at least developed a keen sense of hearing. The moment she got near the vault, she could clearly hear the faint but dense patter of footsteps on the roof tiles above.

That noise wasn't just one or two "gentlemen on the rafters" casing the joint. It sounded like a whole group of people was pacing back and forth up there!

'Seriously... what is wrong with you people? Don't you have your own business to attend to? Did you come to my money shop's roof for a team-building exercise?!'

What drove her even closer to a breakdown was the more horrifying sound she heard as she forced herself to walk out of the vault.

In the shadows of a tree not far from the door, someone seemed to be hiding. This person was doing nothing but repeating a single action: the sound of a longsword being drawn and instantly sheathed again.

Over and over, without end.

The sound made Liu Yue's scalp tingle, and her heart began to tremble in time with the rhythm of the blade being drawn and sheathed.

'What kind of killing intent is this? Are you building up power for something? Are you just waiting for me to make the slightest unusual move or reveal the tiniest flaw, and that sword will instantly cut off my head?'

'Am I really that suspicious? Is it worth sending not only a whole crowd to watch me, but a lunatic as well?!'

All this invisible yet omnipresent pressure tormented Liu Yue, making her feel as if ants were crawling all over her skin. And yet, as a "weak and ordinary" woman, she couldn't show it. She could only pretend that everything was normal, not even daring to take larger steps when she walked, terrified of being seen as anything out of the ordinary.

Let alone trying to open the secret passage—that would be tantamount to blowing herself up on the spot, getting caught red-handed. Then, she'd truly never be able to clear her name, not even if she jumped into the Yellow River!

"Huuu..." Liu Yue took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down and analyze the situation.

'Thankfully... thankfully, when this whole "Great Reporting" trend started, I exchanged a subtle look with Mrs. Zhang the accountant at the intersection. She's an old hand who's been with me for years. She should have understood my meaning.'

'I hope that old woman was quick about it. She should have taken advantage of the lax supervision that day to burn all the illicit ledgers outside the secret passage, or at least hidden them where not even a rat could find them.'

'But that still leaves the displaced people who were driven to ruin...'

'Those worthless peasants... it would be best if they've already starved to death in the wilderness. Or better yet, if those rich young masters in the city who enjoy hunting living people for sport have already shot them down. After all, the Daqian Law doesn't protect displaced people who no longer have household registration. With no one left to testify, what can anyone do to me?'

But her current predicament still left her trapped between a rock and a hard place.

Run? She couldn't. The roof was covered with human surveillance. Move? She daren't. The "ghosts" above could charge down at any moment.

'But... as long as they can't find any concrete evidence, as long as they don't catch me in the act, I am still the Shopkeeper of the Tongli Money Shop, an innocent citizen of Anhe City!'

She glanced at the sky outside. The sun was sinking in the west; dusk was approaching.

'By my calculations... Qinyao... it should be time for her burial...'

Liu Yue stood up and adjusted the plain white mourning clothes she wore, which she had specially prepared for today's funeral.

"As Qinyao's best friend, I should go see her off at her burial... Sigh, life is so unpredictable. Oh, you... tsk, tsk..."

Her gaze fell unconsciously to her left wrist, where a smooth, green jade bracelet used to be.

She had bought it specially for their "deep friendship," a matching one to the bracelet on An Qinyao's wrist. Unfortunately, it was already broken...

Sigh... Liu Yue faced the bronze mirror, tidied her appearance, and forced a sorrowful yet dignified expression onto her face. Then, she strode outside...

...

Meanwhile, outside the city, "Tomb Raider," having switched to a new character model, finally glitched into that crack in the ground... This seemed to be a secret passage, leading who knows where?