A Guide for Background Characters to Survive in a Manga - Chapter 322 : Chapter 322

Translator: AkazaTL

Proofreader/Editor: JWyck

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Chapter 322

Recalling what he had just said, Su Bei instantly understood. If Meng Huai was coming to Li Family Island because of Jiang Tianming and the others, the Li Family indeed couldn’t lay a hand on them.

The “Endless Ability Academy” already knew they had come to Li Family Island. If Jiang Tianming and the others really died, it would be a piece of cake to expose the Li Family. So if the Li Family didn’t want a mutually destructive outcome, they could only pray that Qi Huang and the others hadn’t discovered any secrets, or find a way to make them forget the secrets.

“Li Shu, when did you contact the ‘Endless Ability Academy’?” Before Qi Huang could mock him, ‘Big brother’ angrily questioned him first. “Are you crazy?! I knew you had ill intentions coming back this time! The Li Family gave birth to you and raised you, is this how you repay us?”

What Su Bei could think of, he, as a party involved, could naturally think of as well. The thought that the Li Family might be destroyed because of Li Shu’s actions filled him with towering rage, and he was no longer willing to even pretend by calling him “Xiao Shu.”

Anyway, he never had any familial affection for this product of an ability. Under the Family Head’s long-term teachings, he didn’t see Li Shu as his younger brother at all, only as a tool to create benefits for the Li Family.

In fact, the fact that Li Shu could awaken an ability made the ability-less ‘Big brother’ very jealous, which was why he instigated their father to make Li Shu drop out of the ability academy. A school he couldn’t get into, what right did a lowly guy like Li Shu have to attend?

Hearing his question, a flash of annoyance crossed Li Shu’s eyes, and he put on a fake smile, “What are you talking about, Big brother? It’s not like there’s no signal on the island. If they really felt they were in danger, wouldn’t they have contacted the academy long ago?”

At this point, seeing Big brother’s expression change slightly, he had clearly understood something. He deliberately looked up at Qi Huang above him and said loudly, “They still don’t feel they’re in danger, which means they need to be taught a lesson. What’s wrong with calling the teacher to deal with them?”

Being mocked by this guy, Qi Huang was furious and directly threw two fireballs down, “You bastard, if I care about you again, I’m a dog!”

Amidst Qi Huang’s one-sided assault, ‘Big brother’ gradually came to his senses. That’s right, if they had really discovered something, they would have probably told the academy already. It was useless to capture them now; it was no different from Li Shu calling Meng Huai over.

And from the current situation, Qi Huang probably really hadn’t discovered anything. So there was no danger in a teacher from the “Endless Ability Academy” coming over.

Seeing that Li Shu had resolved the crisis of trust, Su Bei withdrew his gaze and turned to look elsewhere. There were a total of three villas around the one where Big brother was. The Family Head’s villa was likely among them. Standing in the middle and sensing with his Mental Energy, he quickly locked onto the one on the left.

For no other reason than the leftmost villa had the most guards.

This was an inspiration he had just gotten from Big brother’s villa; the one with the most and tightest security must be the Family Head’s room.

He had to admit that this incident was indeed just a side quest, much easier than before. Previously, Su Bei often encountered guardians who also possessed high-level Mental Energy during his explorations, forcing him to be cautious.

But this time, there were none! The Li Family’s almost non-existent foundation was not enough to support them having a high-level Mental Energy user as a permanent guard; that would be too much of a waste.

Happily sweeping the area with his Mental Energy and confirming everyone’s position in the villa, Su Bei headed straight for the fourth floor. Unlike ‘Big brother’ who was outside, the Family Head was in his own room, which directly saved Su Bei the trouble of finding the room.

A new problem arose. Without the ability to pass through walls, and without even having the Family Head’s vision, how could he enter this closed room while someone was inside?

Su Bei stood at the door of the room and fell into deep thought. Perhaps he should change his plan and use the enhancement opportunity for this—to see the Destiny Compass without a line of sight?

Wait, he could actually do that.

Su Bei immediately turned back, entered Big brother’s room, and picked up the photograph. His ability didn’t just work on real people; it could also be effective on their photographs.

Looking at the Destiny Compass above the Family Head’s head in the photo, Su Bei adjusted the large pointer to the “Go Out” point. Then, after returning to the front of the other party’s door, he used the instant skill.

In no more than five seconds, the door opened. A middle-aged man, much older than in the photo, walked out, holding a phone in his hand, looking like he was reading a message. Su Bei, with his super vision and excellent height, stretched his neck from a distance to look and quickly saw the content.

It was a message from someone with the surname Li, asking him to go to the operating room to oversee things, as the guests were not very confident in the island’s safety due to the commotion outside.

Su Bei withdrew his gaze, watched the Family Head leave, and then slipped into the bedroom.

The overall tone of the Family Head’s bedroom was a new Chinese style, with various dark-colored solid wood furniture placed there, giving a deep and luxurious feeling. It was also because of this that there were no overly modern things like computers in the room.

Same as always, he first rummaged through the drawers, bedside table, under the mattress… He couldn’t find anything like a ledger in any of these places. The room was unbelievably clean. Su Bei temporarily stopped searching and stood there, thinking about where the Family Head would put it.

First, it must be in this room. The Family Head would definitely carry something as important as the ledger with him or place it in a place he often went to. After all, a ledger was for bookkeeping and needed to be used frequently, so it was impossible for it to be shelved away.

At first, Su Bei suspected that the other party would hide it in a storage space, which was undoubtedly the safest place.

But he soon negated this idea. A storage space might be safe, but it was also extremely fickle. It could be said that whoever’s hands it fell into, it would be used by them.

Even if individual storage rings had an ownership recognition function, ability users always had ways to break such functions.

So if the Family Head really carried the ledger in a storage space, the moment he was caught for some reason, the Li Family’s secret would be immediately exposed. In comparison, it was safer to keep the ledger on Li Family Island, in his room.

But where exactly in the room? Although his search just now wasn’t a carpet search, he had turned over all the obvious places where things could be hidden. Although he knew the ledger couldn’t be found so easily, it was still inevitably frustrating to have no clue at all.

Where in the room could the ledger be?

A secret room? There was a certain possibility. The existence of the operating room showed that the Li Family had a habit of hiding things in secret rooms. But if the operating room was already hidden in a secret room, wouldn’t it be easy to figure out if the ledger was also hidden in a secret room?

A hidden compartment? Also possible. Su Bei maxed out his luck value and began to grope around the room, hoping to accidentally touch some mechanism and find what he wanted, just like the previous times.

But luck wasn’t omnipotent. After searching for a full ten minutes, Su Bei still found nothing.

“Did I guess wrong? Is the thing really not here?” Su Bei finally gave up, stopped, and muttered to himself.

The next second, he took out a few carefully selected shonen manga from his storage space and flipped through similar scenes. Scenes like searching an enemy’s room behind their back appeared in many shonen manga. Since this world was created by the author, even if the manga inside wasn’t personally designed by him, it must have a reflection of his consciousness.

Among the three manga books, two had relevant content. In one, the treasure was in a secret room, while in the other, the secret was in a pillow.

That’s right, a pillow was also a prime spot for hiding things. Su Bei’s gaze fell on the pillow. In fact, he had checked the pillow just now, but he had only shaken it. Because there was no problem with the weight and feel, he didn’t look closely.

But now, not tearing it open to see would be a disservice to himself for having just read the manga. Su Bei decided to cause a little destruction.

Tearing open the pillow, he first poured out the fluff inside but saw nothing. Then, inspired, he turned the pillowcase inside out and actually saw a ledger—in a 2D flat image.

Su Bei: “?”

What kind of item was this, to be able to turn a 3D object into a 2D image? His head was full of question marks as he reached out and touched the ledger pattern. It had a faint papery feel, but unfortunately, the pattern didn’t turn back because of his touch.

What to do when faced with unclear information? Of course, open the notebook from the “Destiny” organization! He wasn’t fighting alone; he had tens of thousands of pieces of information to assist him!

Opening the notebook and searching for “item that turns 3D into 2D,” with a keyword search, Su Bei quickly found what he wanted—the [Planar Transformation Pen].

As long as you used this item to draw a closed outline around an object, you could transform a 3D object into a 2D one.

The restoration method was also very simple: soaking it in water would restore it.

Having found the method, Su Bei immediately took the pillowcase to the bathroom and turned the faucet to the lowest setting to avoid soaking the ledger.

As the stream of water fell on the pattern on the pillowcase, a magical scene occurred. The position of the ledger continuously absorbed water, and in a short while, it actually swelled up and became three-dimensional, soon turning into the familiar notebook.

He promptly turned off the faucet and began to flip through the ledger.

The contents were just as he expected, recording the Li Family’s organ transactions over the years. The ledger not only recorded the quantity and amount of the transactions but also even wrote down the transaction partners!

Although Su Bei wasn’t sure if the buyers’ actions were illegal, once this ledger was made public, it would definitely cause great damage to their reputations. After all, regardless of whether it was legal or not, this matter was definitely immoral.

Putting the notebook away, Su Bei’s expression instantly relaxed. Next was to appear with the notebook at a critical moment, guide the Li family members to attack him, and then find a way to dodge all the attacks. This needed to be well designed, but before that, he had one more thing he was curious about.

“Huh? There’s nothing?” After searching for information on the Li Family Head’s ability in the Destiny notebook, Su Bei surprisingly found nothing.

After a brief moment of surprise, he quickly understood. The “Destiny” organization didn’t collect information on just any random person. A family like the Li Family, who used their ability to make money in the ordinary world and had very little influence, was obviously not qualified to enter “Destiny’s” intelligence database.

Figuring this out, Su Bei couldn’t help but chuckle. He didn’t expect that sometimes the organization’s high standards could also be a disadvantage. But blessings and misfortunes come in pairs, and he had no intention of changing it.

The pillow couldn’t be restored to its original state, but fortunately, Su Bei had no intention of hiding the fact that he had obtained the ledger in the first place. What he wanted was a grand announcement, otherwise, how would the people of Li Family Island attack him?

Speaking of their attacks, Su Bei began to search through the items in the “Destiny” organization’s item library. If he remembered correctly, there was an item that could allow him to dodge all attacks for a certain period of time.

That’s right, what Su Bei needed was to dodge attacks, not to be immune to them. If he just put up a protective shield to avoid being hit, it would have little to do with his own ability, and it would be easy for people to guess it was the work of an item, not his own ability.

Only by finding a way to dodge all attacks, and doing it with ease, without any special movements, could he guide the readers to associate it with the cause-and-effect aspect of the destiny system, making it logical when he said it himself.

After flipping through for a short while, he found what he wanted—a “Dodge Max Sticker.”

This thing would max out the user’s evasion for the next five minutes, including evading enemy attacks and evading when attacking the enemy. That is, within these five minutes, the user could avoid any attack, and at the same time, no attack would harm bystanders.

It was a very magical item, but because the drawbacks were also obvious, the price was not high. However, its drawbacks were actually only for humans; if it was used on an item, it could be said to have no drawbacks at all.

Su Bei planned to stick the sticker on the ledger. No matter how they attacked, the ledger could achieve 100% evasion. And what he needed to do was to hold on to the ledger tightly, because once he let go, he wouldn’t even be able to grab it again within five minutes.

Carrying the ledger out of the room, Su Bei, relying on the Invisibility Charm, openly came to the operating room. Because his actions just now were quite fast, the surgery had just begun not long ago.

A skinny and emaciated bald man, who looked on the verge of death, was lying in a wheelchair, with several people watching over him from behind. And on the operating table lay a pink-haired young man who looked to have just reached adulthood. His eyes were tightly closed, as if he was asleep, likely already anesthetized.

The doctor was holding a scalpel, cutting open his abdomen to remove the organs from his body. It was clear they were preparing to kill and sell on the spot, installing the organs for the patient immediately after removal.

As for what would happen to this person whose organs were taken, Su Bei didn’t know. After all, many times one could live even with a missing organ, provided the missing organ wasn’t something unique like the heart, and that he would really only be missing one organ.

But since one organ could be sold, would the Li Family leave the other organs for him? It was more likely they would drain him of every last bit of value, and then discard him as a cripple.

Thinking this way, the Li Family should be considered the mainland’s Mya-O.

A bloody kidney was taken out. The sickly man outside the operating room finally showed some spirit, his eyes shining as he looked at the kidney, as if it wasn’t a human organ but a panacea that could save him. Of course, that was indeed the case.

After removing one organ from the pink-haired young man, the doctor did not stop but continued to remove other organs. Anyway, all his organs were to contribute to the Li Family. Instead of treating him once, removing one organ, treating him again, and removing another, it was better to remove them all at once. Anyway, their family had perfect preservation technology, so there was no need to worry about the removed organs losing their activity.

Seeing that they clearly had no intention of stopping the surgery, Su Bei immediately understood their purpose, but he had no intention of letting the other party live at all!

Should I intervene and save him? Su Bei pondered on the spot. It wasn’t too late to save him now; one could live a normal life even with one kidney missing. But once they removed another organ, it would be difficult to keep him alive.

But saving people itself didn’t fit his character setting. Besides, as a child raised by the Li Family since he was young, the probability of the person undergoing surgery being brainwashed was at least 90%, if not 100%.

If he saved the other party, he would likely receive complaints instead of thanks. Su Bei would only help those who asked him for help; heaven helps those who help themselves. He wouldn’t participate in such troublesome and unrewarding matters.

Su Bei stood by with his arms crossed, watching from the sidelines, just waiting for the surgery to end so he could go inside the operating room to get his camera. Seeing the calm and composed demeanor of everyone in the operating room, Su Bei estimated they probably hadn’t discovered the hidden camera. If they had discovered it, this surgery would not have proceeded so smoothly.

Compared to a single transaction, the safety of the Li Family was certainly more important. Knowing that someone suspected them, the Li family members would not continue the surgery, even at the risk of offending the client.

“Ugh… it hurts so much…” Suddenly, the young man lying on the hospital bed groggily opened his eyes. The next second, he was groaning in pain from the sharp pain in his abdomen.

The doctor obviously didn’t expect the other party to wake up, but in the past, there had been people with stronger tolerance to anesthetics, so he immediately exchanged a look with his companion next to him, signaling him to get the anesthetic needle.

Then he said kindly to the young man, “Good boy, don’t be afraid, it will stop hurting soon.”

“I… Hiss! It hurts… Is my surgery over?” The young man took a sharp breath, enduring the severe pain and stammering his question. He had just remembered what he was here for.

The doctor patiently soothed him, “Not yet, but soon. When you wake up from a nap, everything will be over.”

The young man trusted the doctor very much and closed his eyes again, waiting for them to inject him with the anesthetic.

However, at this moment, the sickly buyer suddenly spoke up, “Wait, if his kidney is removed while he’s awake, will it be more active?”

What a hellish thought. The doctor frowned slightly, guessing what he was about to do. Out of compassion for the young man, he shook his head and replied, “No, the result is the same in both states.”

“Really? You’re not lying to me, are you?” the buyer asked suspiciously. Without giving the doctor a chance to explain, he said bluntly, “Since the result is the same, I want the kidney source removed while he’s awake.”

Cursing inwardly, the doctor tried to refuse as tactfully as possible, “This is not…”

“I’ll add more money!” The buyer signaled his assistant beside him to take out a black card from his bag. “Is a hundred thousand enough? If not, two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, I have plenty of money!”

This time, the doctor no longer hesitated. Their family was doing this business to make money. Since the other party was willing to add more money, he wouldn’t hold any extra pity for this person who was already dying. If he had that kind of pity, he wouldn’t be able to do this job at all.

“No problem, we will of course satisfy the customer’s wishes.”

The doctor signaled the assistant next to him to put down the anesthetic needle, then said softly to the young man who had at some point widened his eyes, “The time has come for the family to need you. You can endure this little pain, right?”

“I… I…” Tears unknowingly flowed from the young man’s eyes, whether they were physiological tears or tears of fear.

Knowing he had no choice, he could only nod slowly and with difficulty, “I can.”

However, before the doctor could show a gratified expression, the young man couldn’t help but ask again, full of hope and uncertainty, “I’ll be able to get off the operating table safely, right? My sister is still waiting for me to come back.”

“Of course.” The doctor promised skillfully, “I promise you will leave the operating table alive. I remember your sister’s name is Qingqing? What a lovely little girl, she will definitely be proud of you.”

Apparently, his comfort was very successful. Most of the fear in the young man’s eyes disappeared, and a faint smile even appeared on his face. Just as Su Bei thought, he had been deceived and brainwashed.

“What’s the situation, why isn’t it done yet?” Just as they were preparing to continue the surgery, Li Shu walked in and then said politely to the buyer, “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Hearing this, Su Bei couldn’t help but be a little curious. What was Li Shu’s role in this surgery? Was it so important that the Family Head was willing to make him drop out of Class S at the “Endless Ability Academy” to rush back for it?

Soon, the buyer answered his question, “You, the illusion master, are really hard to invite. They said you can create a sweet dream during the surgery, and my body will fully recover after waking up. I spent a lot of money for this service, you won’t let me down, right?”

“Satisfying the customer is our purpose,” Li Shu said confidently, clearly extremely confident in his own ability.

However, Su Bei, who was eavesdropping on the side, was full of confusion. The part about having a sweet dream was understandable; it wasn’t difficult for [Illusion] to achieve that. But what the hell was the latter part?

If his memory hadn’t been tampered with, he clearly remembered that Li Shu’s ability was [Illusion]. When did this ability have a healing effect?

Let alone Li Shu, no one in their Class S had healing abilities. The only healing-type ability user Su Bei was somewhat familiar with was Ye Lin.

Wait… Ye Lin?

Su Bei’s expression suddenly became strange.

Could Li Shu have secretly collaborated with Ye Lin? Collaborating with her after dropping out couldn’t be considered a betrayal. Besides, Ye Lin herself had intentions of defecting.

First, it was certain that Li Shu’s ability had absolutely no healing effect. It couldn’t be that he wanted to use an illusion to fake the appearance of the other party’s wounds being healed, right? Firstly, this would definitely be easily exposed, and secondly, the disadvantages completely outweighed the benefits.

This healing project was just an add-on to the organ transplant, not a necessity. The Li family members weren’t fools, why would they risk damaging their reputation just to puff themselves up at their own expense?

So after thinking it over, the most reasonable explanation was that he had collaborated with Ye Lin. Ye Lin’s ability could indeed easily achieve a scar-free post-surgery recovery.