Peerless Bodyguard of a Stunning Beauty

Yu Lan, trembling with fear, took out her phone, handed it to Zhao Rong, and said, ”Brother Zhao Rong, quickly open the Paradise Shopping Cart app! Search for a weapon that can counter a nuclear bomb and buy it immediately! Otherwise, it won’t just be the five of us—the entire Xijing City, all tens of millions of people, will be dragged down with this old beggar...”

Xuelian was also extremely nervous. ”Brother, buy a space launcher from the Paradise Shopping Cart right now and send that nuclear weapon in the old beggar’s hands into orbit! That way, when it detonates in space, it won’t threaten anyone on Earth...”

Hearing his assistant and the three women panicking, the old beggar holding the so-called nuclear weapon stepped forward and said smugly, ”Zhao Rong, do you see? Your team is already so scared they don’t know what to do. You should listen to them. Take your team and leave this place. Otherwise, I’ll detonate this nuclear weapon right now, and we’ll all go down together.”

Seeing the old beggar threaten to detonate the device, the assistant and the three women tugged at Zhao Rong’s clothes, pleading, ”Brother Zhao Rong, let’s just be cowards this once! We have to go now, we can’t wait! If we delay, a single mistake will mean eternal regret, and it will cost tens of millions of lives!”

Although his assistant and the three women were terrified, and although the old beggar brandishing the nuclear weapon was incredibly arrogant, Zhao Rong simply picked up a brick from the ground. He started walking toward the old beggar with a smile. ”Old beggar, if you keep up this act, you’d better believe I’ll smash your head in with this brick.”

When his assistant and the three women saw Zhao Rong, far from retreating, charge toward the armed beggar with a brick as if he had a death wish, they asked in utter confusion, ”Brother Zhao Rong, are you really going to sacrifice all of us just to die with this old beggar?”

Zhao Rong switched the brick from his left hand to his right, then glanced back at them. ”Don’t be afraid. While the weapons the old beggar showed us before were real and incredibly powerful, this time, the device in his hand is just a mosquito repellent. It’s not a nuclear weapon. So please, don’t worry. I’m going to take this old beggar down and grab the repellent to show all of you exactly what it is.”

When the old beggar realized Zhao Rong had seen through his lie, his hands and lips began to tremble. With a look of helpless despair, he watched Zhao Rong approach with the brick and stammered in terror, ”Young man, do you... do you really possess the Eyes of Golden Flame like Sun Wukong? How else could you have known that this is just a simple mosquito repellent and not a nuclear weapon?”

Zhao Rong, now holding a brick in his left hand after picking up a second one with his right, glared fiercely at the old beggar. ”Do you take me for an idiot? You’re holding a mosquito repellent filled with electrolyte and trying to pass it off as a nuclear bomb? Only a moron would fall for that.”

The old beggar argued his case desperately. ”But the shoe I showed you earlier really was a Desert Eagle pistol! And the hairdryer was a Flamethrower! The power bank was a genetic weapon! Since everything I brought out before was real, why can’t this mosquito repellent be a nuclear weapon?”

Zhao Rong cursed angrily, ”Damn it, you old beggar, you’re one hell of an actor! The truth is, that stinky shoe was just a stinky shoe, not a Desert Eagle. That hairdryer was just a hairdryer, not a Flamethrower. And that power bank you brought out last? It’s the cheap kind they sell at the train station, filled with cement and a single battery cell. It’s definitely not a genetic weapon.”

Hearing Zhao Rong’s words, the old beggar was so shocked he spat out a mouthful of blood. He stared at him in terror. ”No... how could you have seen through my entire act?”

The assistant and the three women, however, were completely bewildered. They looked at Zhao Rong and asked, ”Brother, are you saying everything we just experienced—the gunfire, the exploding rockets, the threat of a genetic weapon—was all something we imagined? That none of it was real?”

Zhao Rong nodded at them. ”The moment we entered the seventh level, we were exposed to a poison gas this old beggar released into the air. It impaired our central nervous systems, which is why our judgment immediately failed.”

The assistant exclaimed in astonishment, ”Brother Zhao Rong, so you mean that raggedy old shoe the beggar was holding was just... a shoe? And the reason we saw it firing bullets over our heads was because the gas we breathed in stimulated our nerves and caused us to hallucinate?”

Zhao Rong nodded again, his expression firm. ”That’s exactly right, Assistant. Everything that just happened was a hallucination. None of it was real.”

Lili, still unable to process it, looked at Zhao Rong in horror. ”Brother Zhao Rong, if you’re saying it was all an illusion, and you knew it was an illusion... then why did you play along with this old man’s act?”

Yu Lan also stepped forward, just as confused. ”Brother Zhao Rong, were you playing along just to beat him at his own game? To lure him into his own trap and then take him down?”

Xuelian’s eyes widened with a sudden theory. ”Brother Zhao Rong, I’m guessing you knew the air was filled with a nerve agent the moment we entered the seventh level. Is that why you bought an invisible mask from the Paradise Shopping Cart? So you were never affected by the gas, but you played along with the illusions to make the old beggar think we had all been poisoned? You let him lower his guard so he wouldn’t try something even more vicious, didn’t you?”

Listening to Xuelian’s words, Zhao Rong proceeded to explain everything that had truly transpired.

When he finished, everyone was so astonished they simply collapsed onto the ground, utterly dumbfounded.