Chapter 32.3 ?

Shortly after her departure, the remaining burntmen left with Qiu Yufei began climbing in through the window, one by one.

Like black dumplings.

Xu Ming had prepared in advance. As soon as they entered, she grabbed a pen and started drawing badged. With previous experience, she worked faster this time, completing all the badges in less than forty minutes.

With this, all burntmen could be housed in the rulebook, and the room became much emptier. Xu Ming felt a great weight lifted off her chest, finally relaxing on the bed. She casually flipped through the rulebook, letting out a low “eh”.

The blubberman, busy building a nighttime nest from tissues on the bedside table, jumped over immediately:

“What’s wrong? Is it an upgrade—”

Xu Ming glanced at it disdainfully, pushing it away and handing over the rulebook: “Yes, almost.”

Indeed, it was an upgrade, and in two aspects.

Firstly, the “Urban Legend Demolition Office.” Xu Ming had been too busy to notice earlier, but now she saw—

The entry for “Urban Legend Demolition Office” under “Paper Robe Authority” had made a qualitative leap. It had upgraded from a third-level rule basis to a “second-level rule basis”—

This meant it now had the same authority as common sense, allowing Xu Ming to establish or modify non-core rules in the current urban legend area based on it.

…Of course, there was still a cost.

Moreover, there was a small bracket after the “second-level rule basis” mark, stating “only for the current urban legend area.” Xu Ming suspected this upgrade was temporary and that in the next urban legend area, it would likely drop back to third-level …

But no matter, she wasn’t someone who always ended up in urban legend areas. At least now she understood the upgrade method, which was good enough.

More surprising was that this temporary upgrade seemed to count towards the overall unlocking progress of the rulebook—

The second skill under “Rotten Fruit Substitution,” those lines of faintly visible text, were now completely clear.

Xu Ming hadn’t said anything yet when the blubberman, realizing this, got excited first, couldn’t wait to pounce on it, and began to read the newly unlocked skill with great interest:

“‘Double Replacement: After you enter the urban legend area, you can obtain the last text you read within five days before using the skill from the last page of the rulebook and extract keywords from it to replace the text provided by the current urban legend area for modification.”

“‘If the replacement is successful and the sentences remain smooth and logical, it is considered a successful modification, and the rule remains effective with unchanged efficacy. Moreover, you can change the target of the rule constraint.”

“‘Please note that this operation requires a cost. The smaller the difference between the replacement word and the original word, the smaller the cost.”

“‘Extractable texts do not include any content related to the urban legend area, chat records, rule-related content, address-related content, text within videos or images, content that the reader cannot understand, content that the reader has completely forgotten, standalone names of stores, people, or places… The extraction limit is 500 words.”

“‘If there are other entities in this urban legend area bound to the rulebook, their reading texts will also be automatically captured when the skill is activated. The capture sequence is unordered, and you can switch the visible text by tearing pages. The torn-off page will not lose its skill effect, applicable only to the current urban legend area’…”

The blubberman’s voice grew smaller as it read to the end. By the time it finished, it was almost fainting.

Xu Ming also felt dizzy listening, understanding only a little — this skill, in essence, was keyword replacement. However, the keywords must come from the reading records of the rulebook binder themselves.

And there were so many requirements… It seemed that practical experience would reveal the truth, so she directly flipped to the last page of the rulebook, finding indeed several hundred words of unfamiliar records.

The text was small. Xu Ming strained to recognize it and unconsciously read aloud: “‘How to Instantly Improve Cranial Top Appearance? Ten Easy Tips to Shape a High Cranial Top Effortlessly…'”

…Confirmed, this was definitely not her reading record.

Xu Ming instinctively looked aside. The blubberman instinctively dodged but still tried to appear justified:

“Why are you looking at me? If there’s something you don’t understand, of course, you have to search online!”

It had taken advantage of Xu Ming being out to secretly use her browser… and had carefully deleted the search history afterward.

Who would have thought the browser didn’t betray it, but the rulebook did.

Xu Ming: “…”

Understood, she’d add a password to the laptop when she got back.

With a complicated expression, she looked away and tried to follow the skill instructions, tearing off that page. As she tore it off, a new page indeed appeared out of nowhere, also filled with dense writing.

But there was only one line.

Just one line, with very few words. The blubberman curiously leaned in to look, reading as it looked: “‘Hilariously Shocking, Ten Dumb Moments of Bichon Frise’… Huh? That’s it?”

The blubberman was dumbfounded: “What is this?”

Xu Ming: “…”

Xu Ming: “…The title of a short video I watched on the car ride over.”

She pretended to be calm as she tore off that page as well, placing it together with the blubberman’s reading record. After thinking about it, she felt her record was too dumb, so she deliberately covered it with the blubberman’s.

The blubberman watched her actions, hesitating to speak. Looking back at the rulebook, after Xu Ming tore off that page, no new content appeared.

No wonder. Besides the two of them, the only other connections to the rulebook here were probably Qiu Yufei, Gu Yunshu, and those burntmen.

Qiu Yufei probably didn’t carry her badge with her all the time, Gu Yunshu didn’t have a habit of reading texts, preferring to watch TV, as for those burntmen, needless to say.

They were clueless.

“This means this is a skill that depends on luck.” The blubberman pondered for a moment before finally understanding, “Who knows when one will enter the urban legend area!”

So the text obtained ultimately depended on luck, and whether the text could be used to modify the rules was even more uncertain.

Of course, another way to improve the actual use of this skill was to carry a batch of readers bound to the rulebook, or develop a batch of readers within the urban legend… but in the blubberman’s view, this seemed even harder than relying on luck.

“Eh… Boring.”

It muttered, flopping backward: “I thought it was some emergency-saving new skill.”

“Emergency?” Xu Ming raised her eyebrows slightly, moving it aside and picking up the rulebook again.

The blubberman sat up abruptly: “Of course. According to your words, we are getting closer to the core area of the urban legend. Yet there’s still no clue how to get out… If we don’t rely on new skills, do we rely on those two Anxin gardeners?”

“Don’t say that, they’ve been very helpful.” Xu Ming replied, speaking as she picked up the rulebook again, taking out a pen from somewhere and began writing and drawing, though not sure what she was writing.

The blubberman, feeling bored, turned to climb onto the bedside table. Halfway there, Xu Ming’s voice suddenly came faintly:

“Besides, if it’s just for us to leave…”

“I already have an idea.”