“As everyone knows, the continent of Nerrifa is just too, too, too— TOO BIG!”
Inside the Shirin City Museum, the tour guide spread their arms wide as they spoke.
The Sequence Resonator was displayed in the center of the museum.
It looked like a short, floating ribbon suspended in midair.
“Because it’s so massive, there are countless secrets still undiscovered. Like Mirror Night in the Manggu Mountains, the Grand Festival of Lake Kapor, the Abyss Legion in the snowy mountain valleys…
In the face of these mysterious catastrophes, sequence power can do next to nothing.
They operate by their own unique rules—sequence laws have no effect on them.”
“Until the Resonator was discovered.”
Not far away—
Wu Xiaomi and Lulutina were blending in with the crowd of tourists.
[Private Chat – Lulutina: That’s our target?]
“Yeah.”
Wu Xiaomi gave a slight nod.
[Private Chat – Lulutina: …This is our first job and it’s this intense? You sure trust me a lot.]
The Resonator was sealed inside a glass display case. The type of glass was unknown.
A clueless fly drifted by and landed on the surface of the case.
“Zzztt—”
A faint electrical current crackled across the glass.
The fly disintegrated instantly, leaving only a curl of blue smoke behind.
No cleanup needed.
But the glass wasn’t the only problem.
Activating her Spirit-Hunting Instinct, she could sense several plainclothes guards wandering through the crowd, pretending to be tourists while scanning the surroundings.
They were museum security on patrol.
“I don’t get it. This place is part of the Manggu Mountains, and tonight is Mirror Night. Why wouldn’t the organizers take the Resonator out and use it? Why just let it sit there gathering dust?”
“These collectors are always like this,” Little Radish sneered. “In their eyes, it’s not a life-saving tool—it’s a work of art. They don’t care how many people die, as long as their collection doesn’t get scratched.”
“Then why even put it on display?”
“Showing off is human nature.”
“…Fair point.”
With that in mind, “borrowing” the Resonator didn’t feel morally troubling at all.
If they could pull it off, that is.
“Let’s go,” Lulutina shot Wu Xiaomi a glance.
“?”
[Private Chat – Lulutina: Don’t tell me you were thinking of snatching it right now?]
Okay, yeah… not realistic.
The two girls left the museum.
In a secluded corner, Lulutina pulled out a small white notebook.
Her pen flew across the page, quickly sketching out the museum’s floor plan.
“So professional,” Wu Xiaomi said, impressed.
“Everyone needs their own survival strategy.”
Lulutina kept sketching, and soon, the interior of the entire museum was replicated to scale.
“If you’ve watched over a thousand movies, you’ll realize—nothing in this world is really all that bizarre,” Lulutina said proudly, hands on her hips.
“Oh?” Wu Xiaomi compared their heights with a gesture. “So you started watching movies straight out of the womb?”
“Before I smuggled myself over here, I used to work as a projectionist in a private cinema. Unfortunately, the boss got busted for hiring underage workers, and I lost my job. For the record, I’m against child labor too.”
Lulutina shrugged.
“Back to the point—plenty of the heist tricks from movies can actually be applied in real life. The problem is that real life lacks the execution… and a top-tier team.”
She spread the blueprint across her knees, her little feet in white stockings holding it in place.
Wu Xiaomi sat cross-legged across from her.
“A successful heist boils down to eight words: ‘Find the blind spot, strike when unprepared.’ If we can pinpoint the guards’ blind spots and lapses, we’ll have our opening.”
So professional.
Did she just find the right partner?
“Starting today, we’ll visit the museum every day. Learn the guards’ rotation schedules. Figure out how to open the glass case… Give it half a month, and we should be good to go.”
“……”
Wu Xiaomi glanced at the time.
“We’ve got twenty-four hours left. If we don’t get that Resonator within twenty-four hours… we’re both dead.”
“Whaaaaat—?!”
Lulutina stared blankly.
This was way too intense.
“What do you mean, ‘we’ll die if we don’t get it’?”
“There’s no time to explain. Just focus on the plan. Bottom line—we have 24 hours to get it.”
Lulutina clutched her hair in frustration.
Under the looming pressure of death, her mind was even more of a mess than usual.
“It’s currently 6 PM—dusk, the hour of sun and moon crossing. The museum just closed. There won’t be tourists or guards inside tonight.”
Wu Xiaomi tapped the terrain diagram with her finger.
“Under Spirit-Hunting observation, here, here, here, and here—these spots show more floor wear than others. But during the day, not many tourists pass through those corners. What does that suggest?”
“That…” Thinking helped Lulutina calm down. “Those are nighttime guard posts?”
“Correct,” Wu Xiaomi nodded. “Those areas have clear lines of sight and provide overlapping coverage of the central display. Ideal for sentry duty.”
“Their line of sight covers everything perfectly. There’s no way we can sneak through it.”
Dodging them was out of the question. A frontal assault? Even less realistic.
“Your 114—Wall Softening ability—can it soften floors too?” Wu Xiaomi asked.
“In theory, yes. Most construction materials are composed of calcium, aluminum, iron, and silicon compounds. Those aren’t just used in walls—they’re in the floors too.”
“How thick can you soften? If we dig through the sewer system beneath the museum and then soften just a small area under the display, letting the ribbon drop down—could you do that?”
“Uh…”
The girl scratched her head awkwardly.
Clearly, for someone who once corroded a ceiling so poorly it crashed down right on her own nose, this kind of precision operation was a tall order.
“I can give it a shot.”
If we don’t try, we’re doomed. If we fail—also doomed.
So we might as well try.
……
Sparks Encampment.
The front gates stood wide open, people streaming in nonstop.
Half of the team leaders from Zones B50 to B58 had gathered here.
The news of Mirror Night had everyone on edge.
“Where’s Han Nuo? Ark’s power is strong—we need them for this raid. Han Nuo! Han Nuo!” Kang Jie stood on tiptoe, scanning the crowd.
“Gone,” Ah Lei muttered, curling his lip. “Disaster’s coming—how could a guy like that possibly want to work with a bunch of nobodies… Hey, don’t give me that look. I’m not calling you nobodies—I’m cursing Han Nuo.”
“What can they even do if they refuse to cooperate?”
“They’ve got plenty of points and a small team. They could all cash in for 24-hour emergency descents, and sprint out of the Manggu Mountains with everything they’ve got.”
“Is 24 hours even enough?”
“I checked the explorer maps. It’s risky. Even the shortest path takes three days, and it’s full of dangers. Unless they’ve got some black-market tech that lets them run at triple speed.”
One way or another, the Ark team wasn’t going to be of any help.
Kang Jie looked at the team leaders before him.
Honestly, what Ah Lei said about them being “nobodies” wasn’t wrong.
Not all groups deserved to be called raid teams.
Some were just loosely-knit bands of friends, classmates, or coworkers—people too wary of strangers to join larger guilds, so they made their own just to get by.
They barely participated in main storyline content.
Every descent, they threw themselves into grinding side quests and manual labor.
After grinding like mad, the rewards from side quests were just enough to cancel out the penalties for failing the mainline.
That’s how they scraped by—barely.
From a purely logical standpoint, these people were dead weight.
They had no sequence powers. They weren’t even good enough to be cannon fodder.
And yet, now—because of the news spreading across PineapplePineapple—they’d all come running to Sparks Encampment.
Staring at him with hopeful eyes.