Opening the Game

Suddenly, the words beneath the Bodhisattva Statue flashed through Zhou You's mind.

"The living belong to Guiyuzhou, the dead to Guiyuxiao."

Then he remembered how confidently the security captain had declared him dead...

Could it be...

Zhou You raised his arm and pinched himself.

He could feel pain, and the touch of flesh and blood.

It was just that his body felt a little cold compared to an ordinary person's.

So...

Zhou You shook his head, brushing aside that faint sense of unease, then inspected the security office once more.

First: just as he'd expected, there were more newspapers. This time, though, they only had two stories.

"The city's richest man... his condition worsens... unlikely to last a week..."

"Qinghe District... Sanhuamiao Temple... soon to be demolished..."

The first story still emphasized that the richest man was gravely ill. From the news, it looked like he didn't have long to live and was about to kick the bucket. As for Sanhuamiao Temple, he'd never heard of it before, and it wasn't marked on the patrol map, either.

"It must be a key location. It might be connected to what I'll explore later."

Zhou You quietly made a note of it, then moved on to the second point.

--Someone had tampered with the patrol log.

The thin booklet seemed to have been opened. The daytime patrol schedule on the first page was still normal, but on the second page, there was a blank spot on the patrol roster.

Only Zhou You's name had been erased.

"Everything was fine yesterday, but today my identity's disappeared. So who erased my name...?"

Zhou You picked up a pen, about to write his name back in, but after thinking it over, he put it down again.

"No. Whoever erased it, having my name missing is probably a good thing for now. If someone else breaks into the security office later, at least my information won't be exposed. It's just..."

But while Zhou You was considering the situation, the bell suddenly rang.

Damn, it was time to patrol!

Zhou You instinctively grabbed his flashlight and started to rush outside, but immediately sensed something was wrong.

--Wait. The timing's off!

He hadn't checked the clock earlier, but judging by how much time seemed to have passed, it had been no more than twenty minutes since he entered the security office. Yet the scenery around him was already beginning to mutate, and far faster than last time!

A torrent of bloody water surged up through the floor. Bloodied handprints began appearing across the white walls, one after another. The unplugged TV crackled, and the twisted figure inside had become tangible, almost crawling all the way out of the screen!

Zhou You didn't even have time to glance at the clock before he bolted out of the room.

The security office door slammed shut behind him, sealing all the mutations inside.

But Zhou You soon realized the situation outside... wasn't much better.

The nighttime streets were no longer peaceful. The faces he'd seen earlier had crowded around the stairwell entrance, and the rustling sounds had turned into laughter as sinister as the roar of a tide. Lights had come on in the residential buildings, too—but they weren't the usual white or pale yellow. They were all a deep red, like blood. Now and then, he saw figures standing in the windows, but their distorted shapes were clearly no longer human. They were something far more monstrous.

The bell on his wrist rang almost frantically. Thinking of what he'd seen the previous day, Zhou You put two and two together and reached a conclusion.

--This scenario was mutating every day, and things were getting worse and worse!

Fuck, that damn system had stopped mentioning something this important!

In the middle of everything, Zhou You flipped the system the middle finger, then grabbed the little knife he'd barely had time to warm up and slashed hard at his own hand!

Blood gushed out, but before it could hit the ground, the blade drank it all up. The effect attached to the item activated at once, and Zhou You felt his pace quicken. At last, before the ghostly faces could break through the stairwell, he reached Shan Huai Hutong.

--Luckily, nothing strange had happened here yet. But Zhou You didn't relax at all. He caught his breath and made sure the game had saved automatically before standing up and organizing his thoughts.

"First, the order of the mutations."

"On the first day, everywhere was safe and sound. On the second day, the security office mutated. On the third day, the mutation in the security office came early, and Yuan Shun Intersection mutated, too. If things keep following this pattern, tomorrow it'll be this hutong, and the day after that, the crossroads and then Chang Song Slope."

"So..."

"This scenario never intended for me to clear it by sticking to the schedule. If I hadn't cleared both side quests yesterday—the stall owner's game and the alley game—I might already have been backed into a corner here."

Having put the pieces together, Zhou You spat forcefully onto the ground.

"Fuck, I guess this is what a medium-low level of corruption looks like. The difficulty's shot straight up compared to Building Four. If it's already this bad, how insane does a high level of corruption get?"

Despite his words, Zhou You's face showed no sign of agitation. Completely at odds with his complaining tone, his expression remained calm, and he was already reorganizing his plans.

"Looks like I need to scrap the whole schedule and start over. I'd planned to dig a pit and see if I could trick that old woman out of all her property, but with things as they are, that's impossible. So..."

"Should I just take a gamble?"

Zhou You glanced toward the distant Three-Fork Road, took a deep breath of the cold air, and headed down a route he'd chosen long ago.

The streetlights swayed. Maybe it was just his imagination, but the lights seemed much dimmer than they had a few days ago. The road, already difficult to make out, had grown even blurrier. Now and then, a shadow appeared in his field of vision, only to vanish before he could get a good look. It was impossible to tell whether it was a ghost or just a trick of the eyes.

Zhou You's Sanity Value slowly declined in this environment, and it was now close to dropping below 70. Perhaps because of that, the old pain in his brain, which hadn't flared up in a long time, began to throb again and again.

No matter what happened, Zhou You's expression remained as calm and grave as ever. As mentioned earlier, he might usually goof off and slack around, but when circumstances changed, the more they pushed him into a corner, the clearer his thinking became.

The five-minute journey passed in the blink of an eye, and Zhou You soon spotted his target.

--The White-Clad Ghost at the Three-Fork Road.

But this time, he didn't run up and tap her on the shoulder. Instead, he took the bell off his wrist and walked straight behind her. Then he cut his arm with the little knife, stacking the speed buff again, and finally...

He suddenly lifted his leg and kicked the ghost hard in the back!

Her slender figure immediately toppled forward, and Zhou You spun around at the same time and took off running!