In the center of the dim hall, a body lay quietly on the floor, its limbs slashed open and a dagger plunged into its chest. Blood slowly flowed from its wounds, and its body heat was fading bit by bit.
Suddenly, the already ice-cold fingertips twitched slightly.
"Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture" mental synchronization complete! Time: Moonless Calendar Year 427. Zhu State, Tianfeng Year 14. Lun Que Dao, Chao Zhou Prefecture, Huangshu Mountain, Dagou Village. User identity: mill craftsman at the east entrance of Dagou Village. Tofu Li, Li Shouyi. Assets: one donkey. Cultivation aptitude: low. Spiritual roots: none. "Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture": 100% realism, starting from zero, soul transmigration, an otherworldly immortal cultivation sandbox game for True Persons. This game combines body seizure and rebirth, the search for immortality and the Dao, otherworldly exploration, real-world tourism, culinary experiences, enjoying life, espionage research, wilderness survival, climbing the ranks and getting rich... all in one. Freedom level: 100%. Please explore the mysteries of the immortal Dao world on your own and promptly synchronize your data to upload it to the server. Initiating Datafied Soul protection program. Game Sprite activated: "Clear the game in one life, helping you live a brilliant second life!" Basic Mission 1: Search for an immortal opportunity as soon as possible, absorb spiritual energy resources, activate the spiritual root shaping function, and embark upon the path of cultivation. Friendly reminder: There may be ten million paths to the Dao, but safety is the most important. You only have one life. Please take care to disguise yourself. Based on intelligence feedback uploaded by multiple users before their deaths, you must never display abnormal behavior, arouse the suspicions of nearby natives, and be beaten to death as someone possessed by evil. Beep—! Beep—! Warning! Warning! Unknown Pollution Energy detected invading and cracking the Soul Firewall. The built-in energy supply is about to run dry. Please deal with it immediately!!
The incessant prompts rang in his mind, awakening the sleeping soul. Chaotic fragments of memory madly flashed back and surged forth, stirring his thoughts into a murky mess.
At a sweltering, clamorous roadside night market, passersby chatted while car horns blared in a cacophony. Red taillights flickered endlessly, and the air was thick with the scent of cumin barbecue and spicy crayfish.
Inside a dim factory filled with rising steam, decrepit old-fashioned steam machinery roared deafeningly. Poorly dressed workers, their eyes vacant, numbly pried products out of the machines.
Beyond the concepts of time and space, the cosmic starry sky stretched into dazzling abstract lines, streaking past his eyes at blinding speed. Time and space lost all meaning here, and everything became indescribable.
In an ordinary living room, a forty-inch television played a wuxia movie from more than a decade ago. A tabby cat lightly jumped onto the coffee table and lowered its head to lick its paws.
Futuristic aircraft packed the sky like swarms of bees, darting through an epic, space-age city between steel structures so tall they could reach the heavens.
A brick-lined sewer reeked with filth. A kerosene lamp swung violently, and hurried breathing sounded beside his ears. In the darkness, two figures wielded a net and a steel fork, hunting a shrieking green-skinned little monster as it fled in panic.
Fingers constantly swiped across a screen, refreshing video after video of pretty girls in tight outfits dancing provocatively. Big data, remember me.
An alluring octopus girl with a bewitching face, a seductive figure, sky-blue skin, and eight thick sucker-covered tentacles growing from her lower body passionately wrapped herself around him, binding him tighter and tighter until he was nearly suffocating.
In a dilapidated warehouse, amid fanatical shouts, a burly man with bandages wrapped around his fists, fine scales on his cheeks, and vertical pupils revealed a bloodthirsty grin and threw a hard uppercut at himself.
An ocean of chaotic memory fragments played one after another, making it impossible to distinguish truth from falsehood. Before he could understand any of it, the scenes abruptly stopped. His thoughts were suddenly drowned out by a shrill buzzing alarm.
Beep—!—! Warning! Unknown Pollution Energy detected invading and cracking the Soul Firewall. Please deal with it immediately! Otherwise, irreparable consequences will result... everything... will be... borne by...
The chaotic memories began to settle. Consciousness regained the upper hand, and Yuan Zhu woke from his coma.
Cold. Shaking.
Who am I? Where am I? And who is Yuan Zhu? Huh... is that me? But my surname shouldn't be Su... what was it? Who is Li Shouyi? Chao Zhou Prefecture, Lun Que Dao, Zhu State... what kind of places are those? Why do I have no impression of them at all?
As he recalled and questioned himself, his paralyzed ability to think was gradually sorted out again. Yuan Zhu quickly recalled the information belonging to this body:
Yuan Zhu, eighteen years old, high school dropout, orphan, with a younger half-brother from the same mother. A legal resident of Running City and a part-time employee of Fire Fang Cleaning Company. Though he did not quite understand it either, he was certain he had absolutely nothing to do with Li Shouyi from Dagou Village.
So what exactly was this Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture? Some hallucination?
As for information from before his transmigration, the harder he tried to remember, the blurrier it became. After searching laboriously for a long while, he could only recall useless information like Earth, nine years of compulsory education, graduating from university and accidentally entering a veterinary medicine company, becoming a corporate drone...
The more closely something was related to himself, the more indistinct it became.
He desperately searched his memories and only remembered that his surname seemed to be "Su"? As for his name, was it Su Shi, Su Xun, or Su Zhe? No, he had mixed up the knowledge points. Those three were people from the Song Dynasty. I am... Hiss, my head hurts! I can't keep thinking!
Warning! Warning!
The warning sounded in his mind again, rousing Yuan Zhu anew and forcing him to abandon his recollections of his previous life and focus his energy on the present.
As sensation gradually returned to his body, he felt coldness, weakness, exhaustion, agonizing pain, and suffocation.
His body felt as though he were suffering from sleep paralysis, unable to move even a fraction. Weak all over as if paralyzed, he lay on a wet, freezing floor, soaked from head to toe. His breathing was faint and labored, as if he might suffocate and die at any moment. Even making one finger tremble slightly was immensely difficult.
Because of his extreme weakness, his sense of touch had instead been amplified to an astonishing degree.
He could clearly feel a pool of icy liquid between his body and the floor, soaking through his clothes and carrying away his body heat. Waves of blood stench filled his nostrils. Combined with the faint pain in his wrists and chest, had someone slit his wrists? Stabbed him in the chest too? Then arranged him on the floor in a crucifixion-like pose with his arms spread wide?
What kind of deep-seated hatred was this?
His eyes were covered, leaving him able to hear but not see. Low, incomprehensible chanting continued all around him, dense with the voices of a great many people.
So this was not simply a murder case. It was more like some kind of dark underground Sacrifice Ritual. He had passively become the star of the event, the centerpiece at his own funeral, then come back from the dead—only to be about to die again from weakness caused by excessive blood loss...
Wasn't it supposed to be clear the game in one life and help me live a brilliant second life? Where was the system? Where was my cheat? Where was the Game Sprite? Were they dead? Get out here and do your job!
Strange sacrificial prayers kept reaching his ears. Along with the memories of this body surfacing, he easily understood those languages.
"Nameless Lord God of Corpse Moon, I have presented the sacrifice. Please bestow your grace and blessing... grant me youthful beauty."
"Northern Forest Elf... a fresh and vigorous virgin body... offered up..."
"Nameless Mist Lord... thirteen hearts... let me escape this bankruptcy crisis..."
"Wandering Dream Golden King... I will offer gemstones and gold worth one hundred thousand. Please fill my body with vitality once more."
The noisy sacrificial prayers rang without end. Yuan Zhu could not understand why these people were begging so many gods at once. Could it be that this body of his was worth a fortune, hiding some great secret worthy of several gods descending together to divide it up?
When the rich man's prayer, demanding an additional one hundred thousand, sounded out, the Unknown Pollution Energy assaulting the Soul Firewall instantly grew more than tenfold more violent. His mind was once again drowned by shrill warnings.
Warning! Warning! Soul Firewall breached. The "Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture" database has suffered unknown pollution tampering. User Security Protocol invalid... forced activation... failed... insufficient energy, please replenish spiritual energy resources as soon as possible. Restart failed...
The noise in his mind was suppressed by a mysterious force. The voice came and went, growing weaker and weaker.
That mysterious force from outside—the Pollution Energy?—used the blood on the ground as a guide and poured through his wounds into his limbs and chest, injecting vitality into his body and driving away the weakness. The pain began to fade, followed by a refreshing coolness that seeped into his soul.
Like chugging a bottle of ice-cold cola in a blazing desert. Amazing!
A mysterious smile appeared on the dead body's face. Yuan Zhu felt a long-lost comfort. Even his breathing became strong and powerful, and he could finally take deep breaths.
The feeling of breathing freely was so comfortable!
But good times never lasted. He had barely enjoyed it for a few seconds before he heard that distinctive sharp explosion in his brain again. The Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture rose from the dead for the second time and seized all his attention.
Warning! Warning! Pollution rapidly increasing. Cultivation Data severely lost... Unknown Energy detected invading the host body and mind, causing irreversible mutation! Pollution progress: 2.3%↑ User detected unable to actively initiate self-rescue. Emergency risk-avoidance mode activated. Unable to analyze or compare the properties of the Unknown Pollution Energy. Unable to acquire spiritual energy resources. Unable to load compatible spiritual roots for utilization. Soul... pollution worsening... 7.5%↑
Wave after wave of alarmist threats furiously flooded the mental channel, but what could Yuan Zhu do while lying there like a corpse? All he felt was silky coolness and steadily returning strength.
Pollution? Corrosion? Mutation?
They did not exist at all. He could not feel them in the slightest! I feel incredible right now.
And besides, hadn't the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture failed to activate and automatically shut down? Why had it popped out again? Its volume was even a notch louder than before!
Yuan Zhu's stamina continued recovering, and his body and mind felt comfortable and delighted, as if he were receiving a deep massage. It felt damn good. As for that so-called Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture, he only found it noisy and irritating and did not want to pay attention to it.
But he was not stupid. After being forced to read through that string of warning messages, he too began to grow suspicious and anxious. What if?
What if he really had suffered some kind of pollution? What if the comfortable feeling was merely its paralysis and disguise? Unfortunately, he lacked any information to use as reference and could not judge for the moment.
Although the Unknown Energy that had entered his body brought pleasure and strength, he truly was in a state of "suspected sacrifice"...
Could it be that an Evil God had really descended into this body, deceived his senses, and was frantically giving him a rescue-style massage, providing false pleasure while its true goal was to quietly marinate him until the flavor soaked in?
Unfortunately, he did not even have the right to choose. He could only let his thoughts run wild in his mind, unable to change anything, with no choice but to silently endure.
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