The game begins

Time: December 8, 11:55 p.m.

The moat, long silent, began to stir, the fierce night wind whipping its waters into surging waves.

The two leaves of the Golden Door stood open like a person's outstretched hands, welcoming the chill river wind.

The long hair behind Ji Li's head danced in the wind. Gazing at the bright moon above the river, he took out two cigarettes.

One for himself, one for the man beside him.

A metal lighter clicked crisply open, and a faint flame lit his cigarette.

Ji Li took a deep drag and exhaled a perfectly round smoke ring, which the wind promptly scattered.

"Are you ready?"

Fang Shenyan held the cigarette between his lips without lighting it and pushed his glasses up his nose.

"I've been waiting all along."

In the distance, where the river met the horizon, faint "snowflakes" slowly drifted down.

From that point onward, the world began to turn illusory, as though drawn into a mysterious dream.

The Seventh Branch's Golden Door gradually lost its solidity, as did the two men standing within it.

Ji Li slowly closed his eyes. The snowflakes the wind blew against his face felt icy cold.

The two figures vanished from the Seventh Branch.

At the same time, a beautiful woman with a graceful figure arrived at the doorway, holding an Oil-paper Umbrella.

She could not step outside, but she too closed her eyes. The wind lifted the hem of her dress, as though she also stood amid the snow in the dream.

"I will await your return."

Through the cold, the world became unreal; through the cold, it became real.

The howling wind and biting snow vanished, never to return.

A drop of water landed on Ji Li's face, its bone-deep chill no different from that of the