Chapter 42 Great God Cheng Fei

"So, can I actually still use this body or not?" Zheng Fan asked the crucial question.

Though it was ridiculously weak and Zheng Fan had no idea what even needed strengthening, just keeping the body propped up to a usable state had already burned through several singularity points he had saved up from "foraging" alongside Lin Yilin a while back.

Still, a body was a body, after all.

Was there any other way around this?

"If you can possess it, you can use it, but I can't guarantee anything else. I'm not a hallucination, you know." Lin Yilin's store of knowledge stopped right there.

"Turns out there are things you don't know after all."

"I only know what I know."

The rest of the testing would be up to Zheng Fan himself.

Thinking back, when he had briefly snatched that uniformed man's body to use on the fly, the original owner's hallucination was probably squeezed to death before it even realized what was happening. By the time the body finally died, Zheng Fan still understood nothing about himself and hadn't managed to save it before life slipped away.

Tch, what a hassle.

Being a hallucination came with so many fine print rules; honestly, it felt worse than being a ghost.

Ghosts could probably pull off borrowing a corpse to return from the dead, but hallucinations didn't even deserve that.

For now, this matter was wrapped up, and Lin Yilin moved on to deal with the four frozen corpses over there.

"Cheng Fei" instantly crawled up from the bed. "Let me help."

Lin Yilin cast a strange look at the scene.

Watching the person who, just a short while ago, was clamoring about knocking her teeth out, now overlapping with the closest interpersonal relationship she had formed so far—even for her, it felt a bit surreal.

"Can't Mr. Hallucination change this body to look like his own appearance?"

"Can't do it. Aside from the earliest uniformed man, none of them—whether it's your body, Jiang Si's, or this one—can channel my own transformation abilities. The compatibility seems a bit lacking each time."

The more Zheng Fan thought about it, the more annoyed he became.

His very first draw upon arriving in this world had been a legendary golden drop, only for him to fail to cherish it properly, turning it into a mere trial card. Regret.

"Well, we'll just have to make do." Lin Yilin ultimately didn't dwell on it too much.

Working together, the two of them made short work of the cleanup. If anything, Lin Yilin was slightly disappointed by how utterly useless Zheng Fan was while operating Cheng Fei's body.

His physical strength was even lower than her current self, making him fit only to act as a "scrub nurse" handing over tools.

However, just as Lin Yilin had said, she was quite practiced at this sort of work. With Zheng Fan playing assistant, the bodies were disposed of in no time.

"We'll find a chance to dump the bodies later; no one asks questions in the Gray District. After that, we'll need to deal with the Banmu situation. Mr. Hallucination, you let quite a few of them run away back then."

"Only a few. You can't blame me; I can't do much in a hallucination state. What, did you expect me to carry a coffee machine up there and shoot all of them?... Wait, come to think of it, that actually might have worked."

"So you're saying there really is something suspicious about that seventy-thousand-credit coffee machine."

"Ah, slipped my tongue."

"I figured as much."

Lin Yilin shook her head helplessly and steered the conversation back: "We might leave a trail of evidence behind, but we're in the right. In the Gray District, reducing people to ashes in self-defense is a common enough occurrence. Once the bodies are disposed of and we leave no evidence elsewhere, they won't find any reason to cause trouble. But continuing like this in the future is genuinely troublesome, so we need to think of something."

Seeing this, Zheng Fan tilted his head and said, "Leave it to me to try?"

"Hmm?"

Zheng Fan pointed at his current self and smiled. "Isn't 'me' a member of the Banmu Agency right now?"

Cheng Fei dressed quite ridiculously, sporting a head of faded, un-touch-up-able golden perm curls, exaggerated metal piercings on his ears and lips. Add in the tear-stain markings from Zheng Fan's possession and the natural vine tattoos on his arms, and anyone would frown at the sight. Still, his baseline looks weren't terrible; he had the foundation of a decent-looking guy.

The guy had good bones; if he didn't go looking for trouble, he'd definitely look good. Now that he was dead, others would just have to help him look cool.

"It seems like a method, then. I'll leave it to you, Mr. Hallucination." Lin Yilin approved.

The binary girl had a remarkably high threshold for acceptance.

"Though..." Zheng Fan suddenly wobbled, and in the blink of an eye, went limp and collapsed to the floor with a soft thud. "I need to rest for a bit first."

This body was simply too pathetic.

"We should probably take the time to test the performance and limitations of possessing this body first," Lin Yilin suggested. Only by doing that could they act with more confidence.

And so, Lin Yilin and Zheng Fan spent the entire day testing the condition of Cheng Fei's body.

Lin Yilin deliberately worked "overtime" for Zheng Fan's sake.

Finally, as night fell, they more or less figured out the situation. Mostly it was because Cheng Fei's body required frequent intervals of possessing for a while and resting for a while, with the rest periods taking up a large chunk of time.

She had Toast drag Cheng Fei off to the side, while she casually jotted down notes with paper and pen, with Zheng Fan watching from the side.

"Frail to an appalling degree. Initially, it might even struggle against a 'chicken'. It's the first time I've seen a 'zero' tier violence index in an adult. The consumption required to resist the rules of death is so massive; it's certainly an eye-opener." Lin Yilin gently tapped the tip of her pen against the paper.

"I've gotten too used to how you and Jiang Si manage, so I really can't just casually make do with this junk..." Zheng Fan muttered from the side. Today had been utterly exhausting.

He himself wasn't tired, but he had experienced far too much fatigue through Cheng Fei's body.

Was this Cheng Fei's revenge?

Too strong. In the end, Zheng Fan hadn't managed to satisfy Lord Cheng Fei fully. Cheng Fei was teaching him how to run a super-hallucination ragged with a single body, leaving him utterly helpless.

"The normal usage time limit is around one hour. Consuming Mr. Hallucination's singularity points can extend the duration, though no upper limit has been observed for the extension yet."

"But my singularity points aren't infinite. This body is a total furnace."

"Please refrain from making out-of-context dirty jokes, Mr. Hallucination."

"Did I?"

Lin Yilin glanced sideways at Zheng Fan, who just grinned.

"Body performance-wise: superpowers aren't available at the moment, but it can be reinforced with Red Elixir. It's just a pity that while the Red Elixir can strengthen the physique, it doesn't extend the usage time."

Zheng Fan had directly used all his remaining Red Elixir stock on Cheng Fei's body. Lin Yilin's progress wasn't rushed enough to make a difference in this brief span, and Toast was currently sufficient. As a home-guarding watchdog, Toast had fully proven its worth last night.

Thanks to that, Cheng Fei's body had indeed been strengthened. According to Lin Yilin's tests, under Zheng Fan's operation, the violence index could reach the average level of a 'armed brawl' tier, and when combined with his abilities of the Black Earthworm and Red Thread, it could reach the level of a heavy armed brawl.

It was still some distance away from the cluster level.

As far as Zheng Fan was concerned, he could only make do with it.

Someone whose starting point was already at the "gang" tier had never suffered this kind of grievance before.

Still, at the very least, within the level of interpersonal interactions typical of Cheng Fei's circle, it was barely sufficient.

So far, Zheng Fan hadn't encountered any purely human individuals in the civilian sphere capable of reaching the cluster level. Jiang Si, Jiang Hui, and the few he had seen at the Divine Coming Agency were all at the armed brawl tier. The uniformed officers at the Bureau of Investigation might have stronger ones, but Zheng Fan hadn't paid much attention at the time.

"My current stock of singularity points is still somewhat adequate. If I just use this body to scout out Banmu and show my face around, as long as I play it safe, it should be fine," Zheng Fan calculated in the end.

"It seems to meet the implementation requirements of the plan then. In that case, I'll really be handing this over to you, Mr. Hallucination."

"Mmhmm."

"If Mr. Hallucination manages to become a spy all the way to the top and becomes the leader of the Banmu Agency, would you be able to merge Banmu Agency under the Zero-One Agency?"

"The operation hasn't even started yet, and you're already hallucinating, kid," Zheng Fan teased with a laugh.

The binary girl truly had a very rich imagination.

However, even if he couldn't become the leader, there was still a vast amount of room for maneuver.

Under Banmu Agency's organizational model, its gang-style management of the middle and lower ranks had far too many loopholes.

"Then, I wish you a good time." Lin Yilin rested her chin on her hand and offered a faint smile.

"I'll take your word for it."