Silence!
Absolute silence!
What met Wu Hen's eyes was a rainforest. As far as he could see, a town stretched toward a cliff, yet he couldn't hear a thing.
No insects chirped, no birds called. The rainforest behind him and the town on the cliff ahead were eerily silent, making Wu Hen feel deeply unsettled moments after entering this world.
Wu Hen looked around. He was not far outside the town, inside a ruined brick house with crumbling walls on all sides.
A bonfire burned in the middle of the house.
There were two people beside him.
They looked like vagrants, huddled by the fire to keep warm. When they saw Wu Hen wake up, they both gave him a strange look.
Wu Hen found the atmosphere unsettling and was about to step forward when the grimy little girl beside him suddenly made a gesture for him to stop and pointed at his feet.
Wu Hen looked down and saw broken glass scattered across the floor.
It was so quiet that even the slightest sound seemed like an unnatural act.
The grimy little girl and the vagrant then put their fingers to their lips, signaling for Wu Hen to stay silent.
Wu Hen was quick to catch on. Something had to be outside!
"Creak~~~"
Someone stepped on a can while walking, and it burst with a piercing clatter!
It was a drunk, not far outside the house.
The drunk stood frozen, his whole body rigid, terror written across his eyes!
He had only stepped on a can, but it felt as if he'd set off a land mine.
The alcohol seemed to leave him all at once. His face turned pale!
"Yee-waah!!"
The next second, a shriek rang throughout Rainforest Town!
Wu Hen's eyes widened, every hair on his body standing on end.
An Evil Monster with trumpet-like ears and a demon's mouth darted out, appearing before the drunk in an instant!
Its sickle-like claws hung right above the drunk's neck!
"Snap!"
In the blink of an eye, the drunk's head was snipped clean off!
Blood gushed out in a fountain, spraying everywhere.
The head rolled straight toward the ruined house where Wu Hen was hiding.
Wu Hen could still see the terror frozen in the drunk's eyes at the moment of death!
A beheading!
Wu Hen had grown up in the city and had never seen such a bloody scene. His stomach lurched.
He nearly threw up!
The sight was so horrific that Wu Hen clamped his lips shut. When stomach acid rose into his throat, he forced himself to swallow it back down.
Beside him, the girl kept making the hush gesture, warning him not to make a sound under any circumstances!
"Grr~"
The head-severing monster's fleshy, trumpet-like ears twitched, as if sensing signs of other living people nearby.
It turned around and slowly approached Wu Hen's house.
When it reached the doorway, the Head-Severing Demon suddenly stopped. But its flower-like ears extended from beneath its head, searching for something like tentacles.
The sight was like a demonic doctor with bizarre stethoscope ears, listening for any movement inside the house!
The long trumpet-flower ears slid completely into the house. It seemed to hear someone's heavy breathing, and one of them slowly reached toward the vagrant.
The vagrant's whole body tensed. Cold sweat seeped from his pores and trickled down his neck.
He didn't dare move. He even held his breath, knowing that the slightest sound would get him killed, just like the drunk who'd been beheaded!
He held his breath, making no sound, but the stethoscope-like ear didn't leave his body. It slowly moved down until it reached his chest.
"Thump~ Thump~"
"Thump~ Thump-thump~ Thump-thump~"
He had stopped breathing, but the vagrant's heart was beating faster and faster!!
The listening ear was pressed firmly against his chest, stuck right over his heart!!
"Thump-thump-thump!! Thump-thump-thump-thump!!!!"
The vagrant's heart pounded wildly, beyond his control!
Right then, the Head-Severing Demon crawled along its extended ear!
"Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!!!!!!!"
As if realizing he had been found out, the vagrant's heart beat faster and faster!
"Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum!!!!"
At last, his heart rate hit some kind of threshold, and the sound changed!
"Snap!!!"
Its sickle-like claws swung out together again, sharp and swift!
The vagrant's head was snipped off!
Like a watermelon, it burst with a spray of blood.
The vagrant's body crumpled limply to the floor. Blood spurted from his neck and spread across the ground.
He was dead. The vagrant had been killed too. Even though he hadn't made a sound, he still couldn't escape death!
The terrifying scene unfolded right before Wu Hen's eyes.
Wu Hen stood frozen, forcing every muscle in his body to stay still, but he couldn't stop the icy numbness spreading through him!
Don't make a sound! Wu Hen warned himself.
If it gets close enough, it'll hear your heart beating once it reaches a certain rate too!!
But how was anyone supposed to keep their heart from racing in a situation like this?!
No sane person could manage it!
"Grr~" The listening ear twitched again.
The Head-Severing Demon slowly turned to face Wu Hen.
Its movable ear, like an octopus tentacle, reached toward him again.
It pressed against Wu Hen's chest...
Then slowly adhered to the spot over his heart!
"Thump-thump-thump-thump!!!!!!"
Wu Hen's heart immediately began to race. He realized he would end up just like the other two.
Yes, he had been in the Wasteland less than five minutes, and he was going to die!!
Why was a virtual game so real and terrifying? Wu Hen felt as if everything happening to him were real. He couldn't fight the terror of human instinct, and it was crushing every nerve in his body!!
He wanted to scream!
He was hysterical inside!
He wanted to unleash his survival instinct and run for his life, no matter what!
More than anything, he wanted to take off the helmet and return to reality!
But how could he take it off??
How could he quit??
There was no way to quit, and that only made him feel more hopeless!
Wu Hen's mind had hit rock bottom.
But that was exactly what made his survival instinct give back a sliver of calm and reason!!
The Head-Severing Demon didn't kill the vagrant as soon as its ear touched his heart. It listened for a while...
It wasn't enough for it to hear the heart beating.
His heart rate had to reach a certain point, making the thumping of his heart loud enough to cross some threshold.
There was a line between life and death. As long as his heartbeat didn't cross it, he might survive!
He had to calm down. He had to calm down!
He had to get his damn heart rate down. He couldn't let fear take control of him!
This was a Virtual Game. None of this was real.
He couldn't die. Even if this was virtual, he couldn't die here!
Don't panic. Don't be afraid. And don't you dare lose it!
It was all fake!
It was just a game!
He was lying in his own bed, wearing a Virtual Helmet to enter this place. Everything he saw now was no different from a nightmare while he slept!
It was just a nightmare!
"Thump-thump-thump~~~~~"
Once he calmed down, Wu Hen could hear his own heartbeat clearly.
Wu Hen kept repeating calming thoughts to himself.
"Thump-thump~~ Thump-thump~~"
Wu Hen's heart rate finally began to slow.
It was working!
Then he squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself not to think about what he'd just seen. Instead, he imagined himself lying in bed...
He had to hypnotize himself.
Hypnotize himself into calming down.
"Thump~ Thump~ Thump~ Thump~"
The self-hypnosis worked. His heart rate really was stabilizing!
The oily, fleshy ear wriggled slowly against Wu Hen's heart, like a hunter waiting for its prey's heart to leap out.
But the heart inside his chest was growing steadier, and its beat quieter.
After another minute or two, the ear stuck to his chest finally went limp.
It quickly retracted toward the Head-Severing Demon's head.
"Yee-waah!!"
With a strange cry like a giant salamander's, the Head-Severing Demon turned away like a hunter that had failed to catch its prey.
It walked out of the ruined house, its hideous, repulsive body slowly blending into the ruined vegetation like a chameleon...
Soon, it vanished. Its outline could just barely be seen moving off into the distance.
Before long, even that outline was gone.
In the end, it disappeared completely into Rainforest Town—as if going to search for its next prey.
The terror was finally over.
But cold sweat had soaked Wu Hen from head to toe.
His legs wouldn't stop shaking.
The self-hypnosis had worked and helped him survive, but the aftershock of fear hit him so hard that he could barely stay on his feet!
He didn't know how long it took before he finally began to recover.
Wu Hen's gaze fell on the girl who had first warned him not to make a sound.
He had so many questions.
But he couldn't speak. How was he supposed to communicate?
After thinking for a moment, Wu Hen crouched and carefully wrote in the grime on the floor.
"Little sister, are you a player too?" Wu Hen wrote.
The girl crouched down as well. Her clear, bright eyes studied Wu Hen up close, full of curiosity.
But she didn't write anything. Instead, she said, "It's okay, big brother. You can talk now. That thing won't come back a second time."
Wu Hen had entered this place for the first time and knew nothing about it.
He felt a good deal of trust and affection for the girl, who had shown him kindness from the very start.
He nodded.
Just as he was about to speak, a thought made him wary.
Why hadn't the monster listened to this girl with its ear?
There were only three of them in this house, and there had been a drunk outside.
The drunk was dead, the vagrant was dead, and Wu Hen had just come within a hair's breadth of death. What about the girl?
"You really can talk now. If I hadn't told you not to make a sound, you'd have been the first to die." The girl seemed to notice Wu Hen's distrust. Her cheeks showed a hint of hurt.
Seeing that, Wu Hen managed an apologetic smile.
Then he wrote another line in the dust with his finger: "Sorry, I'm mute in real life."
"Mute???" The girl was clearly taken aback. She stared at Wu Hen for a long moment.
"My vocal cords have been damaged since I was little. I can't make a sound. I know sign language. See?" Wu Hen wrote.
After writing that, Wu Hen demonstrated some sign language for the girl, and he did it very skillfully.
The girl watched him sign. First, she frowned. Then she suddenly burst out laughing!!
"Cough, cough, cough~~~~"
Her laughter was unnaturally shrill, nothing like a normal person's. It sounded more like a madwoman's laugh from a psychiatric hospital!
In an instant, the girl's face turned dark and menacing!
She beckoned to the air,
He saw a silhouette slowly appear beside the girl. As it grew clearer, an evil creature with trumpet-shaped ears and scythe-blade claws emerged from the air!
It was that terrifying Head-Severing Demon!
It hadn't gone anywhere!
It had just been hiding here!
But what made Wu Hen's scalp crawl, what nearly suffocated him with terror, was this:
The Head-Severing Demon was crouched beside the girl, and she was stroking it—as if it were a pet she kept!
"How boring. A mute showed up. I thought I'd get to reap another living person!" the girl said coldly.
With that, the girl suddenly leaped up, and the lower half of her body actually stretched onto the Head-Severing Demon's back!
Wu Hen's eyes nearly popped out of his head at the sight.
The girl had been wearing a long dress, and she hadn't moved at all, so Wu Hen hadn't noticed that her lower body was actually like a root!
She wasn't human at all!
(Uncle Luan: After finishing Shadow of the Solar Eclipse, I fell seriously ill. I could clearly feel that I was getting old and my body was a mess. I'd even wondered if I might end up like Ji Yun, because at the time my heart was really racing, and I could barely keep my balance...
I knew that day would come eventually, when I'd collapse and be unable to keep creating for everyone. I just hadn't expected it to come so soon...
Fortunately, Heaven was only giving me a warning. I'd just been living too unhealthily and shutting myself away too much.
I'm truly grateful. After all, I still have so many thrilling stories in my head, and ideas keep pouring out of me. It'd probably take me twenty or thirty years to finish them all. I still damn well want to keep writing.
If I want to keep writing, I have to get my physical and mental health in order. Otherwise, next time might not be a warning.
So, for the past six months, I've been losing weight.
I went from 160 jin to 140 jin.
I exercise, play badminton to loosen up, and practice freestyle swimming to get my cardio in.
I've cut out heavily seasoned food and forced myself to eat lighter.
I won't let myself become numb to gaming, or lose interest in everything. As a man who wrote League of Legends: Who Will Compete, I have to keep my passion for esports alive, alongside everything else I love most. It's my faith!
Then I spent a month reaching Asura rank in solo queue in Naraka: Bladepoint, competing against streamers and pro players!
My family noticed I was becoming more and more withdrawn. Because of my work, I hardly spoke to anyone.
So I started streaming, talking with readers and authors every day, like chatting with old friends after work, and letting myself return to my naturally cheerful, lively self.
From all my conversations with you these days, I know that Versatile Mage is still the work you love most, and I understand that you want me to continue it.
My work has always spanned a wide range of genres. I'm like a web-novel writer with a five-element mixed spirit root. But if I hadn't challenged myself after finishing a Western fantasy, there would have been no unique Chong Mei.
If I hadn't challenged myself after finishing a beast-taming story, there would have been no youthfully passionate esports novel, League of Legends: Who Will Compete.
If I hadn't challenged myself after finishing an esports novel, there would have been no urban fantasy that you can't forget, Versatile Mage.
If you want to write something, then write it!
So I also challenged myself with the strange and unusual Eastern fantasy world of Dragon Shepherd, and with the reality-based suspense of Shadow of the Solar Eclipse, which decodes time and space.
Over the past six months, I've made all these changes because I want to keep writing, and to show you the thrilling stories that keep bursting into my mind!
Writing what I want to write—that was the original reason I set out on this path.
If you've enjoyed any of my past works, please keep supporting me. The stories you love came into being through the efforts of people like me and people like you.
During a stream, a reader once asked me which of my books I was most satisfied with.
In my heart, the work I'm most satisfied with will always be the next one.
Thank you all for continuing to support a Sky of Fish like this, and an Uncle Luan like this.
My new book, Otherworld Desolate Dust, is setting sail this time.
I hope you'll enjoy it.
And I sincerely need your support!
I recommend the new book by the great urban-fantasy author Lao Shi:
Before you continue