“You found it?”
The madman’s eyes widened like brass bells, staring at Li Ran in utter disbelief.
He had just said Li Ran would have one full day. He’d been about to step out of the metal shack, even intending to lock the kid in.
But in the blink of an eye, before he could even take a proper step, that kid claimed he’d already found it?
That was one thousand glasses of water.
Even if he said one of them was different, at the end of the day, it was still just water. The real difference wasn’t something visible to the naked eye.
If you scrambled all thousand glasses, even he himself would need at least two hours to find the right one.
That kid didn’t even go up to take a closer look—he just glanced from ten meters away and said he found it? How was he supposed to believe that?
“Kid, do you know what happens to people who try to fool this old man?” The madman, Pang Lai, scowled. His face turned dark and menacing.
But Li Ran simply smiled indifferently. He walked up to the “U”-shaped table and picked up one of the glasses.
Pang Lai’s eyes followed the glass in Li Ran’s hand. Even he couldn’t tell at a glance if it was the right one—he’d need to use microscopic water discernment to verify it.
This method didn’t just test one’s meticulous observational ability. It demanded extreme precision in tracking minuscule particles with the naked eye, combined with a brain capable of perceiving color differentiation a hundred times better than the average person. Only then could one identify the odd water out.
“This is the one,” Li Ran said, holding the glass out in front of Pang Lai.
Pang Lai’s eyes were like blades as they locked onto Li Ran. “What makes this glass of water different?”
Even he couldn’t identify it on sight—he wanted to see how this kid would explain himself. Was he digging his own grave, or did he actually have skills?
Li Ran placed the glass on a clean tabletop and calmly said, “First of all, it’s a glass of water.”
Pang Lai’s face darkened. “Say one more useless word and see what happens.”
Li Ran wasn’t fazed. Instead, he shifted the focused lamp above the table to shine directly onto the glass. The light shone through the water, revealing no visible differences—it looked completely ordinary.
“There are some little creatures hiding in this water,” Li Ran said with a faint smile.
Pang Lai raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. He stood quietly to the side, waiting to see how Li Ran would spin this.
At that moment, Li Ran pulled out a six-sided, irregular-shaped object and brought it up to his right eye. “With this, you can see them.”
It was the special item dropped after killing the Murder Wang Qian—[Mirror of Truth].
Li Ran had never really figured out what this item was for until just now. He finally realized—this was made for micro-water discernment.
But it didn’t work like a microscope that observes cells, microorganisms, or bacteria.
No—
Through the irregular six-sided mirror, when he looked at the water again, he saw a fascinating sight.
Inside the glass were clusters of vibrant, firework-like microorganisms. Their surfaces sprouted countless tendrils, and they varied in size and strength. The more vivid their colors, the larger they were.
When Li Ran removed the Mirror of Truth, everything vanished. The water looked perfectly clear again.
These were microorganisms invisible even to microscopes, resembling viruses in form and showing aggressive behavior. Just moments ago, he saw several dull-colored ones get devoured by the brighter ones. After devouring them, the bright ones became even more vivid—clear evidence that these microorganisms were highly aggressive, in constant competition, and driven by survival of the fittest.
And they reproduced fast—within just that short time, a few new, dull-colored ones had already appeared.
“You say they’re in there, and I’m just supposed to believe you? Where’s the proof?”
Pang Lai finally spoke, standing with arms crossed.
In truth, the moment Li Ran took out the Mirror of Truth, Pang Lai nearly confirmed that he had indeed found the right water.
But he was annoyed. He hadn’t expected his painstaking test to be cracked by this kid so easily.
“This quest is really a chain reaction—each step building off the last,” Li Ran thought. “The moment you get to the rooftop, the test begins. For players, even the initial part about ‘agreeing with the philosophy’ could be a trap. Then the next step, stripping down to return to your ‘natural’ state—that’s still manageable if you think it through.”
“But once you hit those thousand glasses of water, most players would probably collapse on the spot. Not everyone is ‘Water Bro.’”
“Without the [Mirror of Truth], it’s literally impossible to find the right glass. And even if you find it, you still have to prove it. And that proof is the real key.”
“The difficulty of this quest is absolutely a nightmare for normal players,” Li Ran muttered inwardly.
Before he obtained the [Mirror of Truth], even with his golden finger and quest hints, he wouldn’t have dared accept this madman’s mission.
Only now did he truly realize just how twisted this quest was.
No hints at all—who could possibly complete this?
He had already glimpsed the truth hidden in the water. For Li Ran, the final step—proving it—was actually the simplest.
It was nothing more than the madman’s last bit of stubbornness.
“Simple.”
Li Ran walked to the other side of the tin lab with the glass in hand. There stood a large cage, housing over a dozen white mice.
Those were the madman’s test subjects. And Li Ran’s plan? Feed this glass of water to one of them.
He picked out a mouse and placed its cage on the rooftop, then poured the water into a dish.
All he had to do now was wait for the mouse to drink.
Back when he first saw those vivid-colored microbes, Li Ran had started wondering—were these the very viruses infecting the natives?
Invisible to the naked eye, only seen through special tools.
There had once been a clue tied to the [Mirror of Truth]—that someone had glimpsed the real world through it and gone mad.
Li Ran could now reasonably assume this very madman had witnessed those viruses and lost his mind because of it—and in doing so, uncovered the world’s dark secrets.
The mouse didn’t immediately rush to drink the water. It didn’t seem particularly thirsty.
While waiting, Li Ran kept scanning the area through the [Mirror of Truth]—and accidentally looked at the madman Pang Lai.
He froze, instantly pulling the mirror away from his eye.
A bead of cold sweat slid down his forehead. His heart pounded. “Damn, S-rank monsters really are terrifying!”
Only now did Li Ran realize the [Mirror of Truth] didn’t just show the viruses in water—it could also identify infected humans.
At that moment, the mouse finally began to drink—bit by bit, it lapped up the water.
Li Ran watched intently. He would soon know whether his theory was right.
The water dish didn’t hold much. The mouse finished drinking quickly.
After a short wait, the mouse’s eyes slowly turned blood-red. Its facial features twisted and distorted, its limbs began to twitch violently. As it mutated, its paws grew black and sharp, and colorful tendrils sprouted across its body...
Seeing this, Li Ran became visibly excited—it was just as he suspected.
Hidden in the water was the very virus that transformed humans into monsters.
Li Ran exclaimed, “If the mouse had drunk ordinary water, it wouldn’t have turned out like this—this proves I chose the right one!”
“Is what you saw in the water something like this?” the madman Pang Lai’s voice came from behind.
Li Ran turned to look—
And his expression changed drastically!
(End of Chapter)