Making this decision naturally involved many considerations.

The most crucial point was—

There were several usable identities in Wu Ying’s 【Phantasm Parasitism】.

And the fact that he happened to be using the “Jiang Ye” identity was Wu Ying’s own choice, not something under Jiang Ye’s control.

Jiang Ye had thought about waiting until everything was ready to deal with Wu Ying.

But what if, by the time everything was ready, Wu Ying had already switched identities again?

So dealing with him now, while he was still using the “Jiang Ye” identity, was a way to avoid any unforeseen complications.

Besides—

It’s like how someone who owes a lot of money stops caring.

When Jiang Ye had just arrived at the Apartment, he was indeed very cautious, only wanting to live low-key and honestly.

But after experiencing the disappearance of his Main Body, being targeted by a Kill-on-Sight Order as a Light-type Player, and his Replica becoming the 4444 Administrator…

He came to deeply understand the kind of fearless mindset that comes with owing the bank billions.

At this point, he’d already mastered the art of turning his back on everyone—all by himself.

Still, just because he’d grown bolder didn’t mean he was reckless.

Jiang Ye…

To be precise, Jiang Ye in the identity of the 4444 Administrator—

Right after the PK Battle during the Apartment Fusion ended, he appeared directly at the front desk workstation in the 1st floor lobby.

And from that lobby vantage point, one could clearly see—

Zhang Jintian, who was still looking a bit dazed.

Jiang Ye pointed at him and said calmly:

“You. Come here.”

The moment Zhang Jintian felt that gaze on him, his whole body stiffened.

But after receiving the little metal piece—the Administrator Substitution Badge—he already knew:

Administrators weren’t allowed to kill players at will.

So he forced himself to walk over.

Before Jiang Ye even spoke,

He took the initiative and handed over the badge.

However, Jiang Ye didn’t reach for it. Instead, he raised his brows.

Suddenly, his entire face changed from that of the middle-aged Administrator to that of “Jiang Ye.”

Zhang Jintian saw this transformation with his own eyes and instantly widened them in disbelief!

“You—you—you??”

Jiang Ye gave him an eerie smile and turned back into the Administrator’s middle-aged face, saying meaningfully:

“I was the one who gave it to you, so naturally I won’t take it back.”

“Now, I need to step out for a bit. Help me manage this Administrator job temporarily.”

“I—I…” Zhang Jintian was still too shocked to react, and the Administrator’s figure had already vanished.

He stood there in shock for a while, still unable to process it—

Did that mean the Jiang Ye he interacted with not long ago was fake?

Was the Jiang Ye who killed Fake Ling-jie the fake one?

Or was it the one he met earlier in the hallway on the 20th floor?

He couldn’t tell at all!

He didn’t understand why the Administrator would impersonate Jiang Ye…

But he vaguely realized—

When it came to the competition between real bigshots, players like him who weren’t on the same level might never truly comprehend it.

Just like how he still couldn’t figure out—

Was there some deeper reason behind the sudden fusion of Apartments 1010 and 4444?

And was this deeper reason related to Jiang Ye or the Administrator?

Besides, this newly merged Apartment 4444 was clearly not normal!

So many bigshots. So many grayed-out names…

There was even the “resurrected” Yang Wenchao!

Zhang Jintian still couldn’t make sense of it.

Did Yang Wenchao actually resurrect after dying?

Or had he simply used some other method to move from 1010 to Apartment 4444?

At this point, he didn’t even dare be sure…

Could this Apartment Fusion have something to do with Yang Wenchao?

Once, he’d been a young man with lofty ambitions, swearing to become the top in the world.

But now, Zhang Jintian just felt wave after wave of helplessness.

It was like a boy raised in the safe ivory tower had finally stepped into society and, for the first time, felt—

The real world was far beyond his imagination…

No wonder the youthful arrogance of boys often got ground down over time.

This world was just too profound and too cruel.

Zhang Jintian held the little metal badge and sat down at the Administrator’s workstation.

But the joy of gaining Administrator privileges had already faded from his eyes.

And now, looking again at the apartment group chat, where his classmates were still excitedly chatting—

He couldn’t tell whether he should feel sorry for their ignorance… or maybe… envy them?

Sigh…

Zhang Jintian sighed for no clear reason, not even in the mood to mock Wang Lingling anymore.

As for Jiang Ye, the Administrator who had disappeared—

He wasn’t elsewhere.

He had gone straight into that Secret Graveyard!

Yes!

No need to wait until midnight.

Not even any teleportation item required.

Just with a single thought, he entered directly!

It felt like the entire Secret Graveyard was part of his own Pocket Space!

Thinking back on it…

That time the 4444 Administrator disappeared after seeing Light, he probably didn’t go to the visible Underground Graveyard at all.

He had likely gone straight into this Secret Graveyard instead.

Now that Jiang Ye had entered it himself, he realized it was somewhat different from what Yang Wenchao had described.

According to Yang Wenchao, the Secret Graveyard was similar to the visible Underground Graveyard.

The difference was that the plants in the green zone of the Underground Graveyard were black, while those in the Secret Graveyard were red.

But what Jiang Ye saw in the Secret Graveyard—

First of all, space-wise, it looked boundless, as if it had no limits at all.

Secondly, the red plants Yang Wenchao mentioned? He didn’t see any.

The green zone plants were still black.

However, the Tombstone Zone had a clear difference—

The tombstones in the Underground Graveyard looked like normal upright rectangles.

But in the Secret Graveyard, the tombstone was shaped like a pure black cross.

And there was only that one cross-shaped tombstone, tightly bound with eerie blood-red chains.

The red color on those chains looked like some kind of flowing red energy.

The other end of the chain was buried deep in the soil beneath the tombstone.

At first glance, it resembled a slender human figure being tightly restrained by chains.

The whole scene gave off an inexplicable eerie feeling.

And as soon as Jiang Ye entered this environment,

His state automatically shifted into Death-State.

He had experienced this before at the Administrator’s workstation.

In Death-State, he had no heartbeat.

Even his entire body felt cold.

But now, even in Death-State, when his eyes fell on that eerie cross tombstone—

He inexplicably felt a heavy, suppressed heartbeat.

In fact, that heartbeat… felt a little familiar.

This felt exactly like before…

That heavy, oppressive heartbeat that appeared out of nowhere after the Comprehension Replica grabbed the Dice of Fate!

Back then, after grabbing the Dice of Fate, Jiang Ye had directly died twice from the pain.

More precisely, it should have been heart failure due to the overload that led to his death.

So that sensation had practically become a psychological trauma for him.

Now, just seeing the eerie heartbeat triggered by that strange tombstone gave him a PTSD-like flashback to that pain.

He even had the illusion—

That if he stared at that eerie tombstone any longer, he’d die again just like when he grabbed the Dice of Fate.

Of course, that had to be an illusion!

He was in Death-State right now; it shouldn’t be that easy to die.

But the problem was—he was in Death-State. There shouldn’t be any heartbeat at all!

This indescribable sense of eeriness finally made Jiang Ye look away quickly, no longer staring at the creepy black cross tombstone.

Only when the Death-State heartbeat calmed and he returned to a heartbeat-less, cold state did he take a deep breath and shift his gaze to the Grave Mound Zone.

He had speculated before that the Raven Egg was likely in the Grave Mound Zone of the Secret Graveyard.

At the time, he thought the Administrator must have moved the Raven Egg from the Underground Graveyard to this Secret Graveyard.

In his view, the Raven Egg had been stolen by the Administrator.

But after becoming the 4444 Administrator and gaining more intel…

He suddenly felt—

Maybe the Raven Egg had been in the Secret Graveyard from the start.

It wasn’t something Zhou Qiming had placed here as a bargaining chip to request the White-Clad Woman’s help.

In other words, the Raven Egg wasn’t compensation from the Duoe Organization at all.

Instead, it was something meant to be acquired by whoever killed the 4444 Administrator and obtained the Black Cross.

Using something others could have gotten anyway as a bargaining chip…

That technically didn’t violate any contract clauses.

Thinking about it this way…

Maybe the Duoe Organization and the Apartment Bosses had also wanted to kill the 4444 Administrator because they were after the Raven Egg?

But this Secret Graveyard was just too big.

Not only was it endless at a glance, the dim lighting also hindered vision.

Since this was his territory, Jiang Ye wasn’t in a rush to find the Raven Egg.

Instead, he planned to use this space—which belonged to him—to fully turn Wu Ying into one of his Replicas!

After all, this Secret Graveyard had an extremely unique spatial structure.

Normal Spatial Items couldn’t break in or escape.

So in here, Wu Ying wouldn’t be able to use any tricks to run.

However, because of this space’s uniqueness, Jiang Ye had a concern—

According to Yang Wenchao, he only entered the Secret Graveyard accidentally through Mecha Undead Mode.

And Jiang Ye himself had automatically shifted into Death-State the moment he entered.

He worried that a living being might die instantly upon entry.

So he decided to test by sending in another Replica.

To see if a non–Death-State Replica would instantly die upon entering.

For this, Replica No. 2 used the Threaded Blood Puppet item

And first created ten Thread Puppets.

These puppets had no life and, when killed, didn’t yield Energy Points or Survival Points.

So using them for the experiment wouldn’t be representative.

But they could serve as material for Replica Substitution in the future.

Jiang Ye planned to swap in a living waste Replica.

But the Administrator Replica itself wasn’t going to leave.

So he used the Replica Reflection Mirror to create a Mirror Replica of the Administrator.

Then, he swapped this Mirror Replica with a waste Replica in Apartment 9669.

That’s when Jiang Ye discovered something unexpected—

The waste Replica that entered the Secret Graveyard didn’t die;

But the swapped-out Mirror Replica died instantly…

What?? What was that about??

It couldn’t be that the waste Replica was originally supposed to die and the Mirror Replica died in its place, right?

That didn’t make sense! In Replica Substitution, the lowest-attribute Replica is supposed to die by default!

But very quickly, Jiang Ye realized—

Could it be that the Mirror Replica’s death was due to Administrator authority–based erasure?

In other words, Administrator restrictions have extremely high priority.

Even Replicas created by an Administrator couldn’t leave their jurisdiction?

Or maybe the Replica Reflection Mirror was just so OP, it even copied the Administrator authority,

Which meant the Mirror Replica also inherited the Administrator restrictions?

Thinking along those lines, Jiang Ye then pulled out the Phantom Lantern,

Planning to use it to create a Phantom Replica of the Administrator and see the difference.

But upon attempting it, the result shocked him again—

The Phantom Lantern couldn’t reflect the Administrator’s shadow at all in Death-State!

Meaning, it couldn’t be used on the Death-State Administrator!

Jiang Ye tried testing with several other items.

Eventually, he discovered—

While in Death-State, not only could he not be targeted by items like the Entropy Scythe or the Dice of Fate,

No other items could lock onto him either—none could affect him!

That meant, commonly used tools for making Replicas also didn’t work on him in this state.

And yet…

The Replica Reflection Mirror actually could!

What did this mean?

It meant the Replica Reflection Mirror was even more insane than the Entropy Scythe and the Dice of Fate?!

A Concept-Level Weapon, an S-tier Fate-type Ultimate,

Couldn’t lock onto him…

But the Replica Reflection Mirror could!

D*mn! This thing was seriously broken OP!

At that moment, Jiang Ye couldn’t help but think of the previous owner of the Replica Reflection Mirror—Huang Qi.

He started to suspect—

How come Huang Qi just happened to “deliver his head” across Apartments, bringing the Replica Reflection Mirror to him?

Did he choose Jiang Ye’s Apartment randomly?

Or was he somehow influenced to pick it?

With that thought, Jiang Ye even had the urge to resurrect Huang Qi and interrogate him again.

But right now, the main focus was still dealing with Wu Ying.

Since the waste Replica didn’t die upon entering the Secret Graveyard,

Then Wu Ying probably wouldn’t die either.

Even if the waste Replica survived only because of a Replica connection—like how a Dark-type Replica isn’t harmed by a Light-type Replica,

Wu Ying, who was currently using his identity, was technically also his Replica.

So Wu Ying should receive the same treatment and not die immediately.

But then…

Thinking of that, Jiang Ye suddenly realized—

If just impersonating him made someone his Replica and let them share the same privileges—

Like how his Dark Replicas weren’t afraid of his Light Replicas—

Then…

Would that mean any Dark-type Being who disguised themselves as him would also become immune to Light?!

Oh h*ll no!

That idea was kinda nuts!

Originally, Light-type Replicas were unbeatable, targeting enemies with precision…

But now, if Dark-type Beings could just shapeshift into his form to ignore Light’s threat…

On the surface, it looked like he was getting scammed!

But to ignore Light’s threat, they had to turn into him…

And the moment they became him, they became his Replica!

So in the end, it wasn’t really a loss!

It was just that, for now, there were too few players and Eerie Beings disguising as him…

Currently, only Wu Ying had his Phantasm Parasitism;

And the 1010 Administrator, when staging his fake-death act, had also used his identity.

Back when he killed the 1010 Administrator, Jiang Ye had used the Entropy Scythe.

So this theory hadn’t been tested then.

Perfect chance to test it now—with Wu Ying!

With that, Jiang Ye brought in a Light-type Sub-Replica into the Secret Graveyard.

Then, with all preparations complete,

He had the waste Replica and Wu Ying perform a Replica Swap…

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep