No… When Ethan Brooks is online, he’s online. When Ethan Brooks goes offline, he’s still there, because every time he logs in, he sees the chat records left by Logan Carter.

It’s as if the guy never needs to sleep, truly a Saint Seiya of the internet.

Ethan Brooks couldn’t help but worry. So many people die suddenly from staying up all night these days—if Logan Carter keeps this up, will he suddenly drop dead one day?

Better make a note of this too… When I’m about to leave the group, I should really try to talk some sense into him.

Ethan kept dragging the chat window down.

After Adam Foster finished speaking, he said goodbye and went offline.

Next, around five in the morning, Pharmacist came online, posted a picture, and added a question mark after it.

It was a picture of a plant that Ethan had never seen before.

The plant grew in a twisted shape, like a coiled dragon. At the tip, there was a row of barbs, and the root was a dark purple-black. It was a very unusual plant, quite ornamental.

“Poison Dragon Grass, huh? Pharmacist, you need it again? Didn’t you cultivate some not long ago?” Logan Carter was, as always, the first to reply.

“Experiment failed, all dead.” Pharmacist sent a frustrated emoji. Also, the last batch of Poison Dragon Grass wasn’t of good quality.

“Alright, if I get any, I’ll contact you. If anyone else sees some, they’ll definitely let you know too.” Logan Carter replied.

“Needs to be alive.” Pharmacist added.

Poison Dragon Grass… Just from the name, it doesn’t sound like a nice plant. Is it for alchemy? Could it kill someone? Ethan Brooks was a bit worried. He always felt like the people in the group were really good at tempting fate.

Wait, something feels off.

Ethan Brooks’s hand froze for a moment. He scrolled back up to Adam Foster’s reply and read it again.

‘There were a few… well, dozens of ordinary people who didn’t know their place and got knocked out by Little Ashley, but no one died.’

This sentence gave Ethan a strange feeling. Because it naturally reminded him of those delinquents who got wiped out by a crowd…

Is this really just a coincidence? If all of this is just coincidence, then there have been way too many coincidences lately!

“Maybe I should look at it from another angle. Maybe it’s not a coincidence, maybe I’m just overthinking it.”

“People are always like this—when you start to suspect something, you force a bunch of unrelated things together. Like when you think someone stole your money, you start pinning everything on them, and the more you look, the more they seem like the culprit.”

He felt like his current mindset was exactly that—suspecting someone of being a thief.

I can’t keep overthinking this. If I do, I’ll end up as obsessed as the people in the group. Ethan Brooks stretched and got ready to go for a run.

The morning is the best time of the day, after all. Plus, he felt his health had declined, and the Little Cough left over from his cold more than ten days ago still hadn’t fully cleared up—he’d cough a couple of times now and then, which was uncomfortable!

So, feeling motivated, he decided to go for a 1,500-meter morning run to get some exercise.

The goal: stick to morning runs for a month!

……

At this moment, at an airport in the Jiangnan region.

A long-haired woman, hair down to her waist, walked out of the airport dragging a huge suitcase. She had fair skin, was tall, and had long legs. She wore a white T-shirt and denim shorts, her slender legs in sneakers—youthful and vibrant.

But right now, the long-haired woman looked troubled as she gazed at the massive airport and muttered to herself, “I really don’t like big places like this. It’s so easy to get lost.”

Then, she took out her phone and started fiddling with it.

……

After his morning run, drenched in sweat, Ethan Brooks felt refreshed for the first time in ages.

He bought some buns and soy milk for breakfast on his way past the cafeteria, and after his breathing calmed down, he returned to his dorm.

It was Sunday, with a whole day ahead—what should he do?

“Should I go mooch some more books?” Ethan thought to himself as he munched on a bun.

He casually opened his computer and logged onto the campus network—he was still curious about the incident where the delinquents were attacked and knocked out, so he kept checking for updates.

But there were still no follow-up reports about the group beatdown on the campus network, because the poor delinquents were still lying in the hospital, none of them showing any signs of waking up.

So there was no way to find out who or what had beaten them up so badly.

According to classmates who’d visited them, even in their comas, the delinquents would occasionally let out pained groans. Since there were so many of them, the hospital had put them all in a giant ward. The screams and groans of seventy or eighty people together—what a scene, truly tragic.

“If they were just knocked out, they shouldn’t be unconscious for a whole day and night, right? Could they have been beaten into a vegetative state?” Ethan wondered.

While his mind wandered, he clicked open the group chat again.

During his run and breakfast, a few more new messages had popped up in the group.

Olivia Bennett of Bennett Island (online via mobile): “Senior Logan, I’ve arrived at Jiangnan airport. Does Senior Adam need any help?”

Sure enough, Logan Carter was online and quickly replied: “Olivia Bennett is online, huh. Adam already found Little Ashley in the early morning and left H City. You don’t need to worry about them—just head straight to J City and take care of your own business.”