Qi Yifang shakily raised the wind vane in his hand, muttering under his breath:

“...Super-grade gale. Wind force exceeding level fourteen. Clear skies turning into an extreme rainstorm. Rainfall surpassing one hundred millimeters... Tornado formation imminent. Red weather alert.”

The spinning black wind vane suddenly turned bright crimson.

Then it froze in place—

pointing directly at Tang Erda.

A brief silence followed.

Then the storm descended.

Rain and violent winds erupted simultaneously as a colossal tornado crashed down from the sky, powerful enough to rip every person present off the ground.

The first to be swept into the air were the lightest bodies—Liu Jiayi and the mentally unstable Qi Yifang.

Bai Liu, who had been stabilizing himself against the wind, was dragged upward immediately after them. Tang Erda followed closely behind as he pursued Bai Liu into the storm’s range. Finally, the remaining two Kings Guild members were pulled in as well.

The processing worker nearby nearly lost his soul from fright. Hugging his roses tightly, he scrambled back into the factory.

What shocked him even more was that this terrifying weather phenomenon, which looked large enough to swallow the entire Rose Factory, remained confined to a radius of roughly ten meters around the North Gate entrance.

Beyond that boundary—

the world remained completely normal.

Outside the storm, the sky was cloudless beneath brilliant sunlight.

Inside it, thunderclouds churned violently overhead while lightning roared through the darkness.

The tornado spun upward like a gigantic translucent gray pillar connecting earth and sky. Everything trapped inside it—objects, debris, people—was violently hurled around at terrifying speed, like clothes tumbling inside a washing machine.

The moment Tang Erda was dragged into the rotating storm, he instantly understood why Bai Liu hadn’t attacked him directly.

Instead, Bai Liu had targeted Qi Yifang.

Because attacking Tang Erda simply wasn’t cost-effective.

As long as Bai Liu lacked the ability to kill Tang Erda in a single strike, any frontal attack against him would ultimately be meaningless.

Tang Erda was a terrifying fast-attack player with overwhelming damage output. If he managed to touch a weapon—even for a moment—he could instantly reverse the situation through direct gunfire.

The probability of Bai Liu’s side being wiped out was far greater than the probability of mutual destruction.

So Bai Liu simply abandoned the idea of fighting him head-on.

Instead, he chose to weaponize Qi Yifang’s ability against him.

Inside this “washing machine drum” of violently rotating winds, even Tang Erda’s monstrous marksmanship became severely restricted.

In a tornado of this scale, the wind alone made it difficult to even open one’s eyes, let alone accurately aim at a moving target.

The artificially created weather interfered heavily with his vision.

Under these conditions, firing blindly could easily result in him shooting himself instead.

But for Bai Liu—

the situation was entirely different.

Bai Liu spread his limbs against the storm to stabilize himself in midair. The violent winds tore open the hem of his white dress shirt, and several droplets of blood that had fallen from the goggles splattered against the exposed fabric before being casually brushed aside.

Over his eyes rested a pair of oversized black goggles.

Blood still stained the straps.

They were the exact same goggles Liu Jiayi had been wearing earlier.

This was Liu Jiayi’s hidden trump card item:

[Blizzard Goggles]

[System Notification: Blizzard Goggles allow the wearer to maintain clear vision during extreme weather conditions such as blizzards. Effect will fail after the item is damaged.]

[System Notification: Activate “Extreme Weather” infrared mode to search for teammates?]

Bai Liu pushed the goggles upward slightly.

[Confirm.]

In an instant, the chaotic world before his eyes became sharply defined.

The four figures spinning violently through the storm transformed into bright infrared silhouettes, glowing vividly within the gray vortex like strips of red cloth tumbling through a washing machine.

Bai Liu smiled faintly.

The members of the Kings Guild truly had treated Liu Jiayi exceptionally well.

These Blizzard Goggles had originally been a reward item suited for Bai Liu’s own skill set. Qi Yifang had obtained them during a third-level instance after Liu Jiayi saved his life.

But after learning about Liu Jiayi’s blindness, he handed the item to her without hesitation as repayment.

Liu Jiayi initially refused it.

Qi Yifang insisted.

So she ultimately accepted the goggles and treated them as one of her hidden emergency items, leaving them stored with Qi Yifang most of the time.

If Bai Liu hadn’t needed saving earlier—if Liu Jiayi hadn’t wanted restored vision for convenience and mobility—she never would have retrieved them from Qi Yifang in the first place.

Unexpectedly, the item now fit perfectly into Bai Liu’s strategy.

Liu Jiayi herself felt deeply conflicted about the entire situation.

Bai Liu, meanwhile, had no such emotional burden.

As long as something could be useful, he would use it.

And then there was the Queen of Hearts.

Setting everything else aside, the Queen had undeniably treated Liu Jiayi with extraordinary generosity.

In the entire game world, there was probably no second player willing to painstakingly seal their personal skill inside a poker card simply to protect another person—to create a life-saving talisman for someone else to carry.

Personal skills were deeply private things tied directly to a player’s survival.

Yet the Queen of Hearts not only shared hers with Liu Jiayi willingly, she had reportedly spent enormous effort developing this specialized skill card for her use, even layering it with multiple forms of encryption.

Even if another player obtained the card, they wouldn’t understand its function.

Not even Bai Liu, who could directly inspect Liu Jiayi’s player panel, knew what the card actually did.

The Queen had protected Liu Jiayi from every possible angle.

No second player in the game received treatment like this.

Liu Jiayi’s feelings about that kindness remained complicated.

But in the end, she still explained the card’s function to Bai Liu.

Bai Liu held the vivid Ace of Hearts card between his fingers while using the goggles to track Qi Yifang’s spinning figure inside the storm.

At the same time, he recalled Liu Jiayi’s earlier explanation.

“This card stores the Queen’s skill,” Liu Jiayi had said quietly while handing it to him. “It allows you to temporarily become the person your target fears for—or longs for—the most.”

“It has a hypnotic effect,” she continued. “And it reflects detection abilities. In other words, once you transform into someone, no one except the original person themselves can distinguish you from the real one.”

Bai Liu raised an eyebrow.

“That’s an incredibly practical skill,” he commented. “Perfect for begging for mercy, counter-killing, or scamming people at the edge of life and death.”

Then he smiled slightly.

“This Queen of Hearts really is good to you.”

Liu Jiayi fell silent for a long moment.

“...She really was.”

Aside from that single incident—

the Queen of Hearts had treated her almost flawlessly.

She trained Liu Jiayi.

Protected her.

Taught her how to survive both inside the game and in reality.

During the period when Liu Jiayi’s abilities hadn’t fully matured—and while many people inside the Kings Guild still doubted or criticized her—the Queen of Hearts had overwhelmingly diverted guild resources toward her.

This lofty, untouchable woman would personally accompany Liu Jiayi into game instances, patiently teaching her by hand.

Later, despite opposition from others, she forcibly positioned Liu Jiayi as the guild’s future core tactician.

She even tolerated some of Liu Jiayi’s personal habits despite the possibility that they could negatively affect league performance—

such as Liu Jiayi’s stubborn refusal to fully restore her eyesight.

The fact that Liu Jiayi survived and grew safely until now was inseparable from the Queen’s care and protection.

If “kindness” could be measured, then before meeting Bai Liu, the Queen of Hearts was unquestionably the person who treated Liu Jiayi best.

Even Liu Huai couldn’t compare.

That was also why Liu Jiayi had once wanted to remain inside the game forever.

Because she had found a sense of belonging here.

The Queen of Hearts’ unconditional kindness had quietly rooted her inside this cold and brutal world.

To Liu Jiayi—

the Queen had once felt more like family than anyone else.

And yet—

it was also this same person who ultimately caused her to lose her only real family.

Liu Jiayi took a slow breath before handing the card to Bai Liu.

“In an extreme situation,” she said quietly, “where Qi Yifang sees me die and your mental attack pushes him over the edge...”

She looked directly at Bai Liu.

“...the person he’ll be most concerned about in that moment should be me.”

“If you approach him at that instant,” she continued, “then under the Queen’s skill effect, you can become another ‘me’ that no one can distinguish from the original.”

Inside the storm, Bai Liu drew the bone whip from behind him.

The roaring winds whipped his shirt and hair violently upward.

His body tilted sideways unnaturally as though he were stepping across an invisible platform suspended in the air. After several adjustments, he finally stabilized himself within the storm.

Then he immediately located Qi Yifang using the Blizzard Goggles.

Bai Liu swung the bone whip in a sharp Z-shaped trajectory, slicing through the wind resistance as he rapidly advanced toward Qi Yifang’s position.

The flashing white whip resembled a bolt of lightning cutting through the spiraling rainstorm.

Crack!

The whip wrapped tightly around Qi Yifang’s ankle.

Bai Liu grabbed the handle with one hand and yanked hard with the other.

The two of them rapidly converged toward the eye of the storm.

The bone whip stretched between them like a bridge of white bones suspended in the raging tornado.

Bang! Bang—!!

Two gunshots rang out.

Bullets slammed directly into the white bone bridge connecting Bai Liu and Qi Yifang.

Tang Erda had stabilized himself within the winds.

While rapidly changing magazines, he mercilessly tracked the bone whip with his aim and continued firing.

He couldn’t clearly see anyone hidden inside the storm.

But he could still kill by following the whip itself.

As long as he targeted the two endpoints connected by that line—

he could hit Bai Liu.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang—!!

Bullets struck the whipping bone segments in sharp metallic bursts.

Even inside a violent tornado, Tang Erda’s aim remained monstrously precise. He continuously tracked the brief flashes of white through the storm, experimentally calculating the movement trajectory while firing.

The silver bullets rapidly closed in on Bai Liu.

Hearing the approaching gunfire, Bai Liu merely smiled calmly.

He bit the Queen of Hearts card between his lips while taking out a bottle of antidote. Then he shifted the card between his ring and little finger before tilting his head back and drinking.

The storm roared around him.

While reloading, Tang Erda caught a brief glimpse of Bai Liu through the winds—

that composed smile he had seen countless times before.

Then he saw Bai Liu mouth several silent words toward him:

“Good luck, Captain Tang.”

The next instant, Bai Liu vanished into the storm again.

High above within the tornado, Liu Jiayi spread her limbs wide.

The moment she heard the gunshots, she pressed her hands together.

[System Notification: Activate burst skill — Poison Fountain?]

[Yes.]

A massive wave of black poisonous mist exploded outward alongside the storm winds.

The tornado itself darkened instantly, transforming into a swirling mass of thick black clouds that covered sky and earth alike.

Tang Erda’s vision was completely swallowed.

And more importantly—

the poison cloud blocked the final direction where he had last seen Bai Liu.