93: Chapter 93 Assessment Complete: S-rank! Advancement to C-rank!

"Eh?"

Liu Yang was stunned for a moment, looking at Gu Changming with some surprise.

Subsequently, the scene from just a moment ago replayed in his mind: when he had just been taken hostage, the other party hadn't cared about his life at all and had launched an attack directly...

This guy didn't care about him at all.

Liu Yang's entire body stiffened, and cold sweat instantly broke out.

"You aren't... going to silence me, are you?"

Gu Changming tilted his head, as if seriously considering the suggestion.

Liu Yang spoke up immediately, his voice rushed and fast: "I have no grievances with you, I just wanted to recruit you... We've gone through thick and thin together today, haven't we?"

"There's no need to resort to violence... If you tell me to shut up, I'll shut up, and I won't say anything to anyone."

Gu Changming looked up at him and nodded: "That's true."

Hearing this, Liu Yang breathed a sigh of relief.

"That's good, then..."

"How about this," Gu Changming interrupted him, staring at him with a probing gaze, as if trying to see right through him.

"Transfer all the points you have to me, and I'll let you go?"

Liu Yang's expression stiffened.

This sentence... was too familiar.

Not to mention having heard it before, he himself had said it many times.

He lowered his head, silent for a moment, and when he looked up again, his face was already filled with a smile.

"Fine!" He agreed readily, even taking two steps toward Gu Changming. "I only have about seven hundred points on me. How do I transfer them? Face-to-face transaction or should we add each other as friends..."

Gu Changming stood where he was, unmoving, with no expression on his face.

As expected, it was just as he had guessed.

These people had been engaged in murder and robbery all along.

Otherwise, why would they have such a reaction upon hearing that sentence from him?

Naturally, it was because they had said it too many times, and after saying it, they would silence the "unlucky ones" who had been targeted and handed over their points.

Having done such things so often, they had developed a conditioned reflex to the same words.

Watching the other party approach, Gu Changming glanced at the right hand hidden behind his back.

Through his Mental Power perception, Gu Changming could clearly see the short blade hidden behind the other party's back...

Gu Changming raised his eyes again.

The speed at which the other party was approaching him was getting faster and faster.

...

On the outskirts of the city, in a relatively open wasteland.

Gu Changming tilted his head slightly, gazing at the firmament once again stained with thick, blood-red color.

A huge white countdown number floated in the center, silently ticking down.

[10]

[9]

[...]

He watched calmly, his pupils reflecting that ominous red and blinding white.

[3]

[2]

[1]

[0]

The last second hit zero.

The blood-red color covering the sky rapidly faded away like a receding tide, revealing the real sky once again.

The feeling of oppression withdrew along with it, as if the whole world had breathed a sigh of relief.

Almost simultaneously, a cold system prompt sounded clearly in his ears:

[The fifth Civilization Advancement Assessment "Gift of Fate" has ended.]

[Calculating rating...]

[Congratulations, you have obtained an S-Rank rating: The Favored.]

Gu Changming lowered his gaze, and in the center of his field of vision, a semi-transparent reward interface automatically unfolded.

The interface looked like a screen constantly refreshing data, with the names and icons of various rewards flashing past at high speed, blurring into a colorful light.

A few seconds later, the scrolling speed began to slow down, getting slower and slower.

Finally, it came to a complete stop.

Gu Changming's gaze fell on the locked-in slot.

[Free Attribute points: 100 points]

The moment he saw the reward, Gu Changming's thoughts stirred, and his personal attribute panel unfolded before his eyes.

[Strength: 157]

[Agility: 167]

[Constitution: 141]

[Mental Power: 191]

His gaze swept across quickly, almost without pause, and the numbers immediately jumped.

The value for [Mental Power] immediately changed from 191 to 251.

Following that, the [Agility] value also began to change.

It jumped from 167 to 207.

These four values had no distinction of superiority or inferiority; it mainly depended on the career path one chose.

Gu Changming, as a "Mentalist," focused more on these two points.

The moment the point allocation was completed, a new system prompt box popped up.

[Detected that two of your basic values have broken through the critical threshold...]

[Conducting comprehensive Assessment...]

[Congratulations, you have successfully promoted to — C-Rank!]

Gu Changming sensed slightly; his Mental Power was now sharper, as if an invisible shackle had been removed.

Afterward, he raised his eyes and cast his gaze forward.

About two hundred meters away stood an abandoned residential building.

It was about twenty stories high, concrete structure, half of it had collapsed in the previous disaster, and the remaining half was covered in cracks, standing there all alone.

Gu Changming slowly extended his right hand, his palm facing the ruined building.

Psychokinesis was released from his palm.

Very quickly, dust and debris fell from the surface of the building, and immediately after, the entire building began to emit a low creaking sound.

A clear vibration came from the ground.

Where the ruined building connected to the ground, the concrete foundation and load-bearing walls began to develop spiderweb-like cracks, which rapidly expanded and spread.

Bricks shattered, and soil churned.

Then, with a loud noise so dull it sounded as if the earth itself were groaning.

That half-section of the ruined building, tens of meters high, was actually forcibly detached from the foundation, slowly but irresistibly floating upward!

It continued to rise, finally hovering in mid-air like a deformed toy lifted by an invisible giant hand gripping its base.

Immediately after, Gu Changming raised his hand and touched with his fingertips an inconspicuous dark silver pendant hanging around his neck.

The touch was slightly cool.

The next instant, a more majestic and pure Mental Power surged out from the pendant, quickly merging with and amplifying his own Mental Power.

Then, Gu Changming turned into a blurred stream of light, rapidly ascending, reaching the top of the ruined building in the blink of an eye, standing in mid-air.

He lowered his gaze, slowly pulling back his right hand, his five fingers gradually clenching tight.

Correspondingly, the huge ruined building below seemed to be gripped by an invisible giant hand covering the entire structure, emitting dense and heart-stopping cracking sounds.

The entire building was like a huge, crispy cookie, crumbling and collapsing inch by inch from the top!

Concrete walls peeled off in sheets, the internal steel bars were twisted and broken like fragile twisted dough, and the entire building was ground into pieces and powder of varying sizes by a huge inward-squeezing force, falling down with a rustling sound.

The entire process was astonishingly fast, yet it carried a strange sense of "gentleness."

There was no earth-shattering explosion, only the continuous, dull sound of shattering and the rising, sky-covering gray-white dust.

"Not bad."

Gu Changming looked down at the pendant around his neck, which he had looted from Zhou Qilin's corpse.

[Psionic Amplification Pendant: After active activation, it can consume stored Mental Power for a short time to temporarily increase one's own Mental Power intensity by 30%—50%. (Normally requires Mental Power to charge it.)]

[Characteristic 1: Daily wear can slightly increase the recovery speed and stability of Mental Power.]

Just after finishing reading.

Suddenly, Gu Changming seemed to sense something and looked up.

He saw that the sky, which had just recovered, was once again stained with blood-red.

Immediately after, in the center of that blood-red firmament, cold and huge white characters slowly emerged.