“……”

Zhou Yuling was honestly thinking, “Motherf—!”

If you don’t like it, you can give it back to me!!

Did I force you to look like this with long hair?!

“Cough, cough…”

Jiang Ye also noticed the plaintive look that slipped through her trembling moment.

He cleared his throat twice, casually used the Little Red Snake as a hair tie, and tied his weird long hair up high.

That immediately made him look neater and more composed.

Then, abandoning any further concern for that odd hair, he turned to Zhou Yuling with a serious expression:

“From what I can see now, your worry was unfounded—”

“I can indeed control your White Snake without any obstruction. So it’s obviously more suitable for me to handle the binding of the Formless Leaf :)”

“……”

Zhou Yuling felt like she was about to lose the ability to speak.

Her whole body went stiff and silent.

But the glare she shot at Jiang Ye still clearly contained displeasure.

Only this displeasure had to be measured, weighed, and considered…

Jiang Ye could tell she was displeased.

After thinking for a moment, he decided to play his trump card!

With a flip of his hand, he produced a humanoid leaf and placed it steadily on his open palm.

“Actually…”

“I already have one Formless Leaf :)”

???

Zhou Yuling’s eyes widened; confusion and shock nearly spilled over!

She swallowed and instinctively blurted, “You…”

“Are you kidding me?!”

The Formless Leaves grow on the Formless Tree!

Even VIP Players cannot pluck them!

But Jiang Ye said…

The humanoid leaf in his hand is a Formless Leaf?!

No one would believe that.

Jiang Ye directly handed the leaf over. “If you don’t believe me, touch it.”

Zhou Yuling hesitated, then touched the leaf’s featureless head with her fingertip.

Immediately, a notification sounded in her mind—

[ Ding! ]

[ Congratulations, you have obtained a Formless Leaf. Please bind it as soon as possible! ]

??!

What the hell?!

This thing…

actually is a Formless Leaf!!

A single Formless Leaf, not on the tree!

“No, no way??”

Zhou Yuling’s voice was hoarse and stammering as she tore her gaze from the leaf to Jiang Ye.

Her expression became even more stunned:

“You?? How did you get it??!”

“Did you go to the Formless Tree? Is there some special way to pick them??”

Jiang Ye had already prepared an explanation for how to obtain a Formless Leaf.

He wore an air of casual nonchalance—his whole face practically screamed humble brag.

“Fine, you might not believe me if I say it, so I’ll put on the Mask of Deceit to prove I’m telling the truth—”

He actually put on the Mask of Deceit, then continued slowly:

“This Formless Leaf, I actually found it on the ground…”

“It said in the announcement that when the Formless Tree revives and the waiting area becomes the Formless Domain…”

“When I looked down, I found this humanoid leaf.”

“When I picked it up, my mind prompted me that it was a Formless Leaf…”

“See? My mask didn’t fall off, right? So I’m telling the truth!”

“……”

Zhou Yuling was completely floored!!

Holy crap?

The truth??

Your truth is even more shocking than a lie!

No one could normally invent such a lie, right?!

You…

you…

Zhou Yuling really wanted to curse.

But she realized she’d been so stunned that she didn’t even have the energy to swear.

And Jiang Ye—the cause of this massive shock—kept rambling on, casually humble-bragging:

“See—”

“All Formless Leaves are supposed to grow on the Formless Tree.”

“But there happened to be one drifting loose, and, how convenient, it appeared right at my feet…”

“Isn’t that just fate?”

“You’ve seen ‘The Beginning,’ right? Don’t they have that ‘person chosen by the light’?”

“I think I’m that person chosen by the light!”

“Plus, my surname is Jiang and my given name is Ye—this Formless Leaf is called ‘Leaf’ too! Heaven and earth conspiring! Even the civil affairs office would have to admit it!”

“This Formless Leaf binding quest couldn’t have been tailor-made for me!”

“So stop struggling…”

“You go lure the strong players around the Formless Tree away; I’ll take care of transforming the nearby Formless Domain with the White Snake!”

“Done. Perfect plan!”

After finishing, he made a “perfect” hand gesture.

As for Zhou Yuling…

Honestly, she was on the verge of retreating into herself.

When she looked at Jiang Ye again, her expression was so complicated she couldn’t even explain it.

Her White Snake—the one she had raised—could fall into Jiang Ye’s arms in a second…

A coveted Formless Leaf was casually picked up from the ground…

Fate?

Chosen by heaven?

A person chosen by light?

Frankly, these shameless boasts somehow made her half-believe him.

She glanced at the humanoid leaf in Jiang Ye’s hand.

Then she looked at Jiang Ye’s high-up tied long hair.

Finally, she nodded silently.

However…

Just as Jiang Ye cheerfully took off the Mask of Deceit, Zhou Yuling suddenly spoke in a low voice:

“You can handle binding the Formless Leaf, but you must put that Formless Leaf you have in my possession as collateral.”

Anticipating Jiang Ye’s possible refusal, she added:

“In any case, I can’t possibly bind this Formless Leaf by blood-drip acknowledgment, nor would I damage it.”

“When you and I both successfully bind Formless Leaves from the Formless Tree, I’ll return this leaf to you.”

Jiang Ye thought it over. Zhou Yuling indeed could neither bind nor damage the leaf.

So keeping it with her temporarily wasn’t a big deal.

He nodded directly, but added a condition:

“Okay, but you have to give me a few vials of Blood Poison Corpse Water to play with.”

That demand wasn’t excessive; Zhou Yuling agreed without much hesitation.

She handed over five vials of Blood Poison Corpse Water in one go, then warned:

“This stuff carries radiation contamination. Injecting it into blood has a high chance of causing unknown mutation.”

“And once it’s injected into the bloodstream, you won’t be able to do blood-drip acknowledgment anymore.”

“So you can keep them for study, but never, under any circumstances, inject them into your own blood.”

Jiang Ye nodded sincerely, but he didn’t take her warning to heart.

With that, their plan of action was formally settled.

Jiang Ye swapped in a level-0 light clone nearby and handed it to Zhou Yuling.

While she inspected the light clone, he couldn’t help asking:

“By the way, are VIP Players that bad? Just for picking a Formless Leaf they die? There’s no resurrection method at all?”

He asked earnestly; Zhou Yuling looked speechless:

“Do you think the word ‘Erasure’ is a joke?”

“Generally speaking, the ‘Erasure’ effect produced by apartment authorities’ permission players, like apartment administrators or the apartment boss, can indeed be offset by items such as the Madman Mask…”

“But the ‘Erasure’ effect generated by apartment rules is incomparable—no ability or item can resist it!”

“So it’s not that VIP Players are weak, but that this kind of ‘Erasure’ is too powerful!”

“Do you know why Lightburn is so terrifying? Because the ‘Erasure’ effect brought by Lightburn is on that level—no resurrection item can save someone.”

I see…

Judging by this, Jiang Ye’s Clone Sacrifice is actually pretty strong.

More accurately, his X-rank talent is strong enough.

While he was thinking that, Zhou Yuling continued warning:

“Since you know how terrifying this ‘Erasure’ effect is, memorize the rules and avoid triggering it.”

“Best to stay away from crowds. Otherwise, if you accidentally scrape or cut and bleed… you’ll just drop dead on the spot!”

Jiang Ye nodded.

But this spawned a new, somewhat embarrassing question in his mind.

He stared at Zhou Yuling for a while.

He didn’t think she was the shy type, so he asked straightforwardly:

“To be honest, the rule that ‘anyone bleeding in the Formless Domain is erased’ seems problematic…”

“Aren’t women’s periods a source of bleeding?”

“By that rule, wouldn’t menstruating people die?”

“……”

At that sensitive topic, Zhou Yuling’s expression paused awkwardly for a moment.

But she’d seen plenty of big trouble, so she wasn’t particularly flustered by sensitive topics.

Soon she calmly explained:

“In that regard, women are indeed at a disadvantage.”

“However, the Doomsday Apartment has special medicines that can suppress menstruation.”

“The medicine I use allows me not to have my period during a single ‘day’ in Doomsday Apartment time.”

Zhou Yuling spoke openly and plainly.

Jiang Ye nodded thoughtfully.

Actually, he recalled an article he read in English reading practice.

It discussed a foreign study on menstruation.

The gist was that menstrual cycles are related to moon phases.

But in modern cities, so much artificial light and nightlife drown out moonlight as a natural cue.

So different women end up menstruating randomly across the month.

If women return to a pristine environment without artificial light—living only under sun and moonlight—their cycles tend to synchronize with moon phases.

Menstruation is a sensitive topic between men and women, but fundamentally it’s a biological phenomenon following natural rhythms.

Interestingly—

On the top floor of the Doomsday Apartment there’s a Moon Phase Clock that governs time.

Jiang Ye once thought time was an artificial definition.

Later he realized this “artificial definition” follows natural laws.

For example, a modern “day” is 24 hours.

In ancient times, a “day” was twelve two-hour segments.

The names differ, but the length of a day didn’t change because it’s based on the objective phenomenon of sunrise and sunset.

A “month” is defined by moon phases; a “year” by seasonal cycles.

However, in the Doomsday Apartment, natural sunrise and sunset do not exist.

Time here is defined by the apartment’s operational mechanisms.

A day in the Novice Apartment is defined as 24 hours, but that does not necessarily correspond to sunrise/sunset conditions.

It’s like representing the same map at different scales—they look different.

So—

Jiang Ye couldn’t help but probe Zhou Yuling:

“Does that mean in the Doomsday Apartment environment you could use women who don’t take period-suppressing medicine to define the apartment’s concept of a ‘month’?”

Hearing this, Zhou Yuling looked at him in surprise.

Girls actually living in the Doomsday Apartment rarely think of this.

And Jiang Ye—a guy who hadn’t formally entered the Doomsday Apartment yet—thought of it.

His thinking was unusually divergent.

Zhou Yuling pondered and briefly explained:

“Top-tier factions like the Defenders’ Alliance and the Duoe Organization all have their own timing standards.”

“A woman’s menstrual cycle generally corresponds reasonably to our internal timekeeping.”

“But now is not the time to discuss that… If you have no more questions, we should each go do our parts.”

“Okay.” Jiang Ye nodded. “Then act quickly. After you lure the crowd around the Formless Domain away, send me a message with the voice transmission bead.”

He put on the air of someone about to part ways with Zhou Yuling.

But just as he turned, a familiar voice called out behind him.

He spun around and managed a perfectly timed look of surprise.

He saw Zhou Yuling, disguised as him!

Of course, because of the clone link, Jiang Ye had already sensed before turning that she’d disguised herself as him.

But her acting after he turned was impressive.

He feigned puzzlement: “You mean you plan to disguise yourself as me to lure those big shots away?”

The Jiang-Ye-looking Zhou Yuling slowly shook her head.

She hesitated slightly, then fixed him with a deep, meaningful gaze and said:

“What I mean is—”

“In this situation, could you fuse that light clone into me?”

“……”

Jiang Ye’s face was expressionless.

Inside he was like, what the hell!

After a moment’s thought, with perfect acting he twitched the corner of his mouth and said helplessly:

“What are you thinking? You just disguised yourself as me; you’re not actually my clone! How could I possibly fuse a light clone into you!”

Zhou Yuling still stared at him intently:

“Think it through. If I can fuse the light clone, the speed of Light and Shadow Escape would be much faster, and the efficiency of luring those strong players away would be greatly increased—saving a lot of time.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep