An Unexpected Surprise

Everyone secretly admired them beyond measure. That group of big shots playing dead had screamed so realistically.

Had they secretly taken acting lessons or something?

Elsewhere, after one player died and logged out, he sweated profusely and took quite a while to recover from his convulsions before weakly logging onto the forum.

"You won't believe this, but I nearly played myself to death in a game. This game is too realistic! I just died, and it was honestly like an ancient torture method. I wouldn't go through that a second time even if you beat me to death."

"Are you a masochist? Didn't you adjust the pain settings? Didn't they say you could adjust them in this game?"

"The game has a bug. Tech support, please fix it. I clearly lowered the pain setting when I fought the boss."

As soon as that post appeared, it quickly sparked an intense discussion.

This was the first bug report. No one had expected that such a realistic game would finally have a flaw. Soon, other players who had died and logged out said the same thing had happened to them. They had clearly lowered their pain settings, but it had been completely useless.

"What? You too?"

"Me too. Same thing happened to me."

After talking it over, everyone finally realized what was going on.

Since everyone had experienced it, it clearly wasn't a system bug. Could it be that whenever the boss killed someone in this game, it forcibly raised their pain level to 50%? As they reached that conclusion, everyone sucked in a cold breath. It was too hardcore!

The game designers were simply inhuman! Everyone voiced their opinions. "It's probably an in-game setting. It doesn't let people provoke the BOSS so easily. It's a kind of death penalty mechanism."

Meanwhile, the spectators found it fascinating. This game was truly realistic enough! It wasn't an ordinary Online Game; it was a fully simulated virtual second reality. In other Online Games, if a party wiped in a dungeon, then it wiped. But this was different. If you were killed by a boss, you would experience violent death spasms and convulsions in real life after dying.

This death penalty was insane.

It truly was a second world.

"The game has way too much freedom. We have to discover everything ourselves. Hurry and tell the people inside! Dying hurts so badly it makes you cramp up!"

"We can't tell them! You can't view the forum in the game!"

"Then what do we do?"

"We can only... let them experience the pain we endured."

Countless people's expressions shifted slightly. They seemed to foresee that the first day of the Second Beta Test would not herald the joyous call to defeat the boss. Instead, it would bring an extremely tragic disaster for the players: a massive party wipe, spasms and convulsions, a taste of death, with old and new players alike becoming spores and returning to the starting line.

Xu Zhi, sitting in his chair, remained quite calm.

He usually had no interest in scheming against these players. He simply let them develop on their own. But now, sitting at the entrance to the courtyard eating while swatting bugs, was actually a rather relaxing pastime.

It felt like eating while watching television.

Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Everyone charged forward one after another.

"Brothers, let me show you what a real tough guy is!"

"Ahhhhhh!" Miserable screams erupted one after another, so frenzied they were practically inhumane.

Xu Zhi patiently swatted the little ants to death one by one.

To him, this was a perfectly ordinary part of rural life. In a countryside courtyard, especially when sitting beneath a tree to enjoy the cool air, bugs and ants often crawled onto your body. You just slapped them dead.

While everyone was drawing Xu Zhi's attention, Funeral Chicken had already quietly crawled into Xu Zhi's lunchbox.

"Hehehe, it's finally come to this. Let's see how I poison you to death."

Chen Wenshan gave a rakish grin. Sneaking around with the dozen or so populations he had bred, he frolicked through the ocean of white rice grains, rolling around and trying to bury himself as deeply as possible.

When the players who had been desperately throwing their lives away saw this, they stopped advancing.

"After countless sacrifices, we've finally reached this point in our boss raid!"

"He made it into the lunchbox!"

Countless people burst into tears.

Even though they knew the pioneers' wails were fake, every one of them was an award-winning actor. They had acted so convincingly! Hearing those heartrending screams before death, everyone could not help feeling a sense of tragic solemnity.

There was no helping it. They had screamed too miserably.

Even slaughtered pigs did not scream that miserably.

"You finally made it into my lunchbox? You've sacrificed quite a lot." Xu Zhi sat in his chair, slightly surprised, but he did not care much. He picked up his lunchbox again and resumed eating as usual.

Since he wanted me to eat him, then I would reluctantly eat him. Bite after bite.

The bugs hiding in the cracks of the chair stared eagerly. "Yes, just like that. Eat it, hurry and eat! You're about to eat Mount Akina Speed. You're about to eat Funeral Chicken. Poison that bastard to death."

Crunch. Crunch.

Xu Zhi continued holding the lunchbox, eating bite after bite.

"Almost there."

They grew more and more excited.

But the very next second, just as Xu Zhi was about to eat Funeral Chicken, he suddenly stopped. Muttering to himself, he said, "I don't know why, but so many bugs bit me today that the food's gone cold. I'll put it in the oven and heat it up."

Xu Zhi stood from his chair and went back inside.

The players: ???? What was with suddenly heating up the food? Everyone wore expressions as though they had eaten shit. Was the boss really this fussy? Was the NPC mechanism really so humanized? The food had not even been sitting for long, yet he insisted on reheating it before eating? "Having me eat this Sand Sculpture Player raw is still kind of disgusting."

Xu Zhi ignored their words and muttered quietly.

Although he knew it was no big deal and did not count as eating a person, it was basically like eating tiny bugs that tasted like chicken. Didn't people often eat sashimi and raw steak?

But Xu Zhi was not very fond of that sort of thing. He preferred cooked food.

He had even asked the Insect Nest Sub-Brain whether he could cook it before eating it, and the answer had been yes. This player was utterly deranged, and his toxins were extremely unusual and powerful. Cooking would not render them ineffective.

Eating it raw or cooked made no difference when testing the poison.

Naturally, he chose cooked food. With stomach cancer, he had to be kinder to his stomach.

"I... he's actually going to cook me?"

Chen Wenshan, the tiny bug hiding in the lunchbox, heard those words and felt utterly screwed. He was immediately miserable beyond belief, but he did not dare poke his head out for fear of being discovered. He could only silently await his fate of suffering.

"It's okay! Even after I die, my corpse can still poison him. Besides, I lowered my pain setting. So what if I'm roasted to death?" Trembling inwardly, he desperately comforted himself, though a vague unease kept spreading through him.

Bang! Xu Zhi put the lunchbox into the oven, shut its door, and turned the temperature up to a full 280 degrees.

Clearly, he still remembered his deep hatred for this fellow. Everyone else died instantly; a short pain was better than a long one. But this one would face the terrifying fate of being roasted alive, dying slowly. Whoosh! The oven's red heating light suddenly lit up.

Inside the enormous oven, it was like a furnace that could destroy the world, gradually heating up. The entire rectangular world turned red-hot. Chen Wenshan, the tiny bug hiding in the giant lunchbox, began trembling uncontrollably. Beads of sweat emerged beneath his scarlet feathers, and his entire body gradually grew uncomfortable.

"It's fine."

"This game dungeon is pretty awesome. It even has an oven. I ran into the lunchbox, and the boss is actually going to roast me. But I lowered my pain setting, so I won't feel the heat." He kept reassuring himself, yet sweat poured madly from his entire body. He felt more and more agonized, more and more uncomfortable, as if his whole body had been cooked. "Waaahhh!" He suddenly screamed. "I won't feel heat, my ass! It's burning me alive! This is even more terrifying than Taishang Laojun's alchemy furnace!" Soon, even more miserable screams than before came from the oven, so tragic they were impossible to describe.

Xu Zhi sat on a chair inside the house, scratched his head, and smiled brightly with utter kindness. "Brother, let's settle our old and new debts together. Let society give you a good beating, so you'll stop trying to mess with me all day."

In his view, Funeral Chicken was undoubtedly going to die.

They needed a little lesson. After the pain, they would not lose a piece of flesh anyway. Otherwise, they would keep trying to mess with him, the Creator, all day. They even wanted to shit on his head and poison his food. They had to pay a terrible price, understand? He could not be bothered to keep playing around with these people. After beating them up, he felt it was time to end this boring farce. Then, while eating his boxed meal, he could test this new creature's poison.

To them, they were enthusiastically fighting a boss. But to him, he was merely eating dinner and casually playing along with them, raising the enthusiasm of these workers evolving species for him while testing the traits of a new species.

Who would have thought that, inside the scorching oven, a crisp, melodious, resounding phoenix cry would suddenly erupt.

A phoenix cry?

"After being roasted for almost seven or eight minutes, that Sand Sculpture Player inside still hasn't died? He's still screaming?" Xu Zhi frowned slightly. "Could it be survival of the fittest? Did he endure the oven environment and evolve?"

At that moment, the Insect Nest Sub-Brain spoke in surprise for the first time. "The First Zerg Hero has actually been born."