Cyberpunk, but urban

"Then Miss Yuli, I'll trouble you to buy a suitable house for our office. Considering the collapse of L Nest, the price of houses here should be very cheap, so don't be cheated."

"Also, after buying the house, remember to go to an association here to apply to be a closer for review. The firm you choose is my Yixiang Firm."

As Ye Lan spoke, she called out to the Queen of Hate who was looking around. It seemed that the crimes that were everywhere in the back alleys had irritated this abnormality. She was fidgeting with the staff in her hand, wanting to execute her justice.

"I understand." Yu Li seemed to regard Ye Lan's instructions as a pre-job test. She carefully remembered what Ye Lan ordered, and then asked Ye Lan about things she didn't know: "It's just... after I finish these things, how can I find you?"

"Back Alley Hotel, should be easy to find, right?"

Yuli nodded. Although she also lived a recurring lifestyle, she was aware that the Back Alley Hotel was not a single-family hotel, but a chain hotel that could be opened in every back alley.

After resolving the unclear issues, Yuli prepared to set out to the back alley to look for a house suitable for conversion into a finisher's office.

But before leaving, Ye Lan gave her one more reminder: "Don't be in a hurry to buy a house. It's better to have nothing than to have something bad. If you can't see any suitable house, go and complete your closing procedures first."

"Ok."

After Yuli left, Ye Lan also activated his ego ring. The Waw-level ego suit [Black Swan] appeared on him.

Ye Lan was wearing black feathers and dirty seaweed. In his hand appeared an umbrella with a canopy made of nettles and a handle made of the claws of an unknown creature with sharp nails.

And in the direction Ye Lan was facing, an Index Finger Ascetic walked out from the shadows. His eyes were covered with blindfolds, he was wearing a black Index Finger uniform and a short cloak that looked more like a shawl.

"It seems that I have kept you waiting for quite some time..." Ye Lan said to the unknown ascetic, "Before we start fighting, let me hear what instructions you have received, how about that?"

"…The first order is to stop here this morning and hang all the people you see on the wall of the building at the end of the street with iron hooks. The second order is to kill the first passerby you see this afternoon, or be killed by him."

The Index Finger Ascetic coldly informed Ye Lan of the instructions he had received, and then drew the long sword from the scabbard at his waist.

The Index Finger is one of the largest gangs in the city and one of the Finger. Members of the Index Finger must obey the rules called "instructions". No matter how incomprehensible the instructions they receive are, these members of the Index Finger will obey and execute them without hesitation.

Just like the Index Finger Ascetic who was standing in front of Ye Lan now, he received an order from a higher-level messenger among the Index Finger, and he followed the order and drew his sword against Ye Lan.

"That's really strange. Why would the City's Will attack me?"

Ye Lan spoke out the secret knowledge that would shock the top leaders of Index Finger without paying any attention to the people around him, and then pointed the umbrella in his hand at the ascetic opposite him.

"Forget it. No matter what the reason is, I'm in a hurry now. Killing you will complete the order, right?"

"You're right."

The Index Finger Ascetic said to Ye Lan, then he took a step across the distance between them and swung the sword in his hand at Ye Lan three times in a row.

However, Ye Lan simply opened the umbrella in his hand, allowing the attacks of the ascetic to fall on him. Then, three dark rays of light returned to him along with the ascetic's slash, and the pain of being whipped by nettles instantly erupted in the ascetic's body and mind.

In just a moment, veins bulged on the Index Finger Ascetic's body. The double pain made him fall to the ground immediately, and he couldn't even hold the sword in his hand.

"Does it feel painful to be hit by your own attack?" Ye Lan asked without expecting an answer. He raised the umbrella in his hand and stabbed it into the skull of the Index Finger Ascetic through the eye socket.

The biggest special effect of the Black Swan ego equipment is that any attack that hits the umbrella has a chance of being completely immune and returned to the source of the attack.

And when Ye Lan has this umbrella, the probability of returning damage is 100%.

"It's really weird. As soon as I came back, the people who pointed at me came to my house."

Ye Lan sighed and kicked the body to the side of the road. The ecosystem in the back alley would deal with it. The discarded parts would be collected by the scavengers passing by in the back alley late at night.

But after kicking the corpse away, Ye Lan remembered that the ascetic with the index finger said he had received two instructions in total. The first instruction was to hang all the people he met in the morning on the wall of the building at the end of the street with iron hooks.

Out of curiosity as to why there was such an order, Ye Lan took Luna and the Queen of Hate and walked to the end of the street.

On the way, Luna, who was not very familiar with the instructions, pulled Ye Lan's clothes and asked, "Ye Lan, Ye Lan, what is the instruction of the index finger?"

"Commands? To some extent, commands are the will of all the people in the city~"

Ye Lan answered vaguely.

Chapter 107. The Remnants of the Hook Office (Dead)

"Hey~ Please explain it more clearly~" The little girl shook the corner of Ye Lan's clothes and asked him relentlessly.

"Oh, I'm really impressed by you." Ye Lan sighed, and then explained to her: "In the underground ruins somewhere in the city, Index Finger discovered a textile machine that may be a Singularity Technology. The vibrations caused by the daily lives of urban residents will drive this textile machine to spin out understandable instructions. This is what Index Finger follows."

"Just the ramblings spun by the loom?"

Little Luna said a very cultured word, which made Ye Lan look at her more. Then he was kicked hard in the calf by the little girl because of this extremely rude look.

"Well, it's not nonsense actually. The content spun by the loom is indeed the subconscious thoughts of urban people, but... most people actually have dark thoughts in their minds, so the instructions woven out also tend to be darker."

Ye Lan ignored Luna's light attack and continued to tell her about the instructions. However, changing the subject doesn't always work for Luna. For example, this time she didn't forget his eyes just because Ye Lan continued to talk, and continued to attack Ye Lan's calves with her slender calves.

Now I really have to think about how to coax the child, Ye Lan thought to himself.

But our lovely little Luna is not the kind of naughty child on Earth. She will not lie on the ground and cry because of such things. She is a very sensible urban child.

Although... in Ye Lan's opinion, there are many things that a child of Luna's age should not understand.

Luna quickly calmed down and walked along the street with Ye Lan to the end. The Queen of Hate, the abnormality, also followed obediently under Ye Lan's control, like a little girl who was a little too lively.

Soon, they stopped in front of an office.

The office's sign had a logo made up of crossed meat hooks and a grin with sharp teeth. If Ye Lan's memory was correct, this logo was the logo of the Hook Office, the last reception venue in the rumor stage of "The Ruins Library".

When he looked up at the wall on the second floor of the office, he saw more than a dozen corpses that had bled to death on the hooks, swaying stiffly in the wind.

"It looks like this is the Hook Office. The person hanging on it is probably the finishing toucher in this office."

Ye Lan said to Luna, and then began to examine the appearance of these people. Most of them were wearing white masks with the same pattern of sharp teeth smile as the logo.

Although his faces could not be seen clearly, after looking at their figures and the weapons inserted into their bodies, Ye Lan could basically confirm that Tairen, Naoki, and McQuillin, the three finishers from the Hook Agency, should have entered the library.

After all, none of the corpses hanging here used the living mist used by Tae-in, the eighth-level finisher in the original work.

It was a flesh-and-blood sickle made in the workshop of the Alliance Company and grown directly on Tae-in's body. It was an obvious appearance feature that could not be more obvious.

Speaking of these three people, they actually came from a killer gang in Alley 23. This gang was brutal and often chopped up the bodies of their targets and then hung the broken bodies high up like a ham.

At one point they raided a finishing agency and tore all the finishing agents there into pieces and hung them up on the street outside the agency like scarecrows.

As a result... the representative of this firm found this killer gang through his channels and paid them a large sum of money to join his firm.

This is now the Hook Office.

Ye Lan smiled and said, "Tsk tsk, they have been attacked by the Index Finger Ascetic. It seems that their Hook Office is completely finished."

In his opinion, it would be better if the Hook Agency, an agency with no bottom line that uses the most cruel means to kill its targets and then hangs the bodies in conspicuous places, does not exist in this city.

Although for the city, the bad things done by this kind of finishing agency are not worth mentioning at all, there are many people and things that cause much worse things than this.

After hearing from Ye Lan who the closers in this firm were and what they had done, Little Luna agreed with him: "Wow, the closers in this firm are so disgusting. It's better for them to die sooner rather than later."

"Yeah, the fewer the better. If they all die, the city might become a little more harmonious."

Ye Lan said, and planned to take Luna and the Queen of Hate away from here. But just as he was about to take a step, he suddenly had a new idea.

"Speaking of which, how about we clean up this place and turn it into our office?" Ye Lan turned to Luna and asked.

"No...When I think about the kind of people who used to stay here, I feel uncomfortable all over."

Luna shook her head desperately, her resistance clearly visible on her face.

"That's fine. Yuli has gone to look for a house anyway."

Ye Lan shrugged, put the sudden idea behind him, and prepared to return to the back alley hotel.

Although I did not mention the time before, but in fact, when Ye Lan and his group returned to Lane 12, the city had already entered its night.

That was why Yuli regarded the task Ye Lan assigned to her as a test. After all, there were only four or five hours left to complete these two tasks.

If you leave it too late, all the evil spirits in the back alleys of the city will come out to act. Once you are entangled by them, it will become very difficult to reach the back alley hotel before midnight.

But Ye Lan didn't think too much about it. Even if Yuli couldn't finish it today, she could continue tomorrow. Anyway, he planned to go to L Nest alone tomorrow and put the three Abnormality Eggs in his bag and the Hateful Queen who was following him in the library.

There were four Abnormalities, three of them were He-level and one was Waw-level. He wasn't afraid to run around with them, but if someone stole his dimensional bag and let them out...

I'm afraid that Alley 12 is going to witness an even more outrageous and twisted incident than the pianist incident.

Chapter 108.L Nest (Part )

The next morning, Ye Lan began to pack up his belongings and prepare to leave the back alley hotel. The only people accompanying him were the Queen of Hate and the three Abnormality Eggs in his dimensional bag.

He will then head all the way to the L Nest Center where the library is located. On the way, he will inevitably encounter many forces that are fighting for the L Nest territory in the hope of selling it to the new L Company in the future.

In order to send the four abnormalities including the Queen of Hate back as soon as possible, and to avoid unnecessary conflicts as much as possible, Ye Lan's best choice is to set out alone.

But before leaving, he still managed to find some time to talk to Luna and Yuli.

Luna has always been very well behaved, and nothing would happen even if she stayed in the back alley hotel by herself. But Yuli, the employee of the Forebrain Corporation branch that he had just recruited, was a little worrying.

Ye Lan didn't know whether to say she was honest or stupid. This girl ran back to the alley hotel almost at the last second before the late-night party in the alley started last night, which scared both Luna and him.

You know, when she ran back to the hotel, Ye Lan was even changing into ego equipment at Luna's urging, and was about to leave the hotel to look for someone.

After she met Ye Lan at the elevator entrance, she touched her hair awkwardly and told Ye Lan what she had done in the past few hours.

Although Ye Lan told Yuli that she could continue looking for a house tomorrow, Yuli, who took it as a test, did not listen at all. She immediately found the headquarters of an association and submitted her application for the assessment of a closer. Then she rushed into the streets and alleys of Lane 12, asking around to find out where there were suitable houses for sale.

However, she obviously did not expect that given the current situation of Alley 12 and L Nest, almost every resident still living here is thinking about how to move to other back alleys.

As a result, whenever she mentioned buying a house, passers-by on the street who heard what she said would instantly surround her.

No one wanted to die with the broken Wings of the World, so when the crowd gathered, they started fighting in front of Yuli in order to compete for the first opportunity to let her see the house. It took Yuli two hours just to calm the crowd down.

It was even more dangerous when they were looking at houses later. As long as Yuli dared to say that it was not suitable, or even just said that she wanted to go back and think about it again, these residents who were desperate to let her look at their own houses first would turn into robbers on the spot and try to snatch the money from her and escape from the alley.

The result was that by the time Yuli finally escaped from the residents who had failed in their attempt to rob, the houses of the residents she had killed helplessly could have formed an entire street, and at this time it was only half an hour away from late night in the back alley.

"Anyway, don't act like you did last night when you go out house hunting today... Forget it, why don't you hire a few closers from the Second Association to follow you."

Before leaving, Ye Lan gave Yuli some instructions.

Although she was rated as a level three employee in Lobelia Corporation, in fact, without the support of ego equipment and training department equipment, Yuli's real combat power was just so-so. At best, she was only slightly higher than the security personnel of K Company that Ye Lan had met before. There was no way she could mess with the level three employees of other companies.

"Also, I really don't plan to test you. Just do this in the normal way. Take your time. There's no need to rush anything."

Ye Lan was still worried and said a few more words. It was not until Luna, who was woken up early in the morning, showed him an impatient expression that Ye Lan left their room and took the elevator to the rooftop.

In this situation, L Nest is full of monsters and gangs. No driver is willing to take him to the inside of L Nest. The only way Ye Lan can choose is to walk there.

Summoning a Teth-level ego equipment to provide additional mobility, Ye Lan took the Queen of Hate and moved quickly on the building in Lane 12.

The back alley is like the blood vessels of the city. It does not exist in the city in the form of a regular block on the city map like the nest. In fact, each back alley has a part called the inner alley in the nest, and the nest will use different forms of barriers to separate these back alleys from the nest.

Ye Lan was currently at the top of a tall tower in Alley 12, using his senses enhanced by his ego equipment to identify an alley within the nest that could lead directly to the center of Nest L.

As Ayin's tool to implement the Seed of Light Project, the Lobotomy Corporation has almost no restrictions on Lane 12 under its jurisdiction. This allows one of its inner nest lanes to develop all the way to the area centered on the L Nest Pole, which in turn makes things convenient for Ye Lan at this moment.

After Ye Lan confirmed the route, the Queen of Hate opened a teleportation magic circle. With the help of this magic circle, the two of them were teleported from the central area of ​​Alley 12 to the vicinity of the L Nest checkpoint in an instant.

Although with Ye Lan watching over her, the Queen of Hate's mental state was able to remain relatively stable, but when she used magic arrays such as teleportation, she would still subconsciously send herself to where her "justice" was needed.

Just like the checkpoint where Ye Lan is now...

Several gangs jointly control the passages here, and all L-nest residents who want to leave here must first pass their inspection.

They renovated the checkpoint and built two completely closed inspection passages. At this time, there were about a hundred residents queuing up here according to gender. It took a long time for a resident to enter the passage where they could not see the inside at all.

"I sense the presence of the bad guys!"

The Queen of Hate beside Ye Lan said to him eagerly, if Ye Lan had not said that they could attack them, she would probably have used magic bullets to submerge the checkpoint and everyone around it.

"Let's take a look first to see which one they bought."

Ye Lan said to the Queen of Hate, and then took her to the side of the street and observed the situation at the checkpoint from a distance. They came at a good time, but five minutes later, new residents entered the two passages.

Soon, the resident who had walked into the men's passage came out with a painful expression on his face. Ye Lan guessed that a lot of his savings had been taken away from him.

At the same time, the resident who walked into the women's passage on the other side did not leave the passage. Soon, the men waiting outside the passage began to show anxious expressions.

Chapter 109. L Nest (Part )

After a while, the man who walked out of the inspection channel first began to look anxious, fearing that the woman who walked into the other channel had some kind of intimate relationship with him.

Time passed by, but the woman did not come out. Soon, the man could not wait any longer, and he tried to communicate with the gang members. After failing to get any answers from them, he planned to rush directly into the inspection channel.

Afterwards, the resident who had lost his composure was knocked to the ground by a gang member holding a machete, and then his stomach was ripped open and his body was cut into pieces of meat whose origins were unidentifiable, just like slaughtering a pig.

"Oh my god, this might be the cannibalistic pervert from Alley 23..."

Hugging the Hateful Queen who was about to attack, Ye Lan silently complained. After another ten minutes, the woman who had been unable to come out was finally thrown out of the passage.

Her clothes had been torn into rags, and her body was covered with signs of violence. The gang members waiting outside laughed cruelly, tied her up, and stuffed her into a nearby car.

"Add to that the trafficking of women... Queen of Hate, go kill them all, but be careful not to hit innocent people."

Ye Lan sighed. He had originally thought that the gang in charge of this place was at least a gang under a certain finger, and that they would at least have a bottom line when doing things.

In the end, it was not known whether the gangs looked down on this place or because it was still early in the timeline and they had not made all-out efforts to fight for the L Nest, but this checkpoint was actually controlled by some small-time back-alley gangs, who were engaged in the business of taking flesh and trafficking.