Ripper!

The biting wind blew in hard and fast. It forced the dark clouds to cover the moon in a way that made no sense, then soon blew them away again.

"Look, there's a church over there." With visibility much better now, someone pointed at a building in the distance.

In the night, they could just make out its shape.

It had a Gothic spire.

Their mission was to find Jack the Ripper.

He was a notorious serial killer who had brutally murdered at least five prostitutes. He had been "active" in London's Whitechapel district in 1888.

Jack the Ripper was his alias. As for his real identity, there were all kinds of theories.

Even Churchill's father had been suspected—by the public, that is.

There was also a theory that the culprit had eventually been identified as Aaron Kosminski, one of the people the police had considered a major suspect at the time.

Of course, no one could guarantee that the truth was known with absolute certainty.

The Ripper's true identity had become a historical mystery that could never be solved.

Since this was a story set in London in 1888,

everyone naturally assumed that the place they were in now was London.

They had emerged from a tomb, and a building with a spire stood nearby. It was most likely a church.

Churches near cemeteries were hardly unusual.

Some churches even had massive burial grounds beneath them.

"Let's go take a look."

Zhou Zhenguo spoke up.

It was the middle of the night. They should find somewhere to settle in first.

Even if they had to find Jack the Ripper, there was no need to rush into it on such a gloomy, eerie night.

Besides, they hadn't even figured out the basic situation. How were they supposed to find anyone?

The church doors were shut, but not locked.

They pushed them open and filed inside.

The church was empty, with a few candles burning.

Rows of pews for prayer stood neatly arranged.

Zhou Zhenguo looked around but saw no priests, nuns, or anyone of the sort.

"Let's rest here and start the mission tomorrow morning?"

Zhou Zhenguo asked.

Though he put it as a question, he had already made up his mind.

"Sure."

No one objected. They readily took seats on the wooden pews.

By "rest," they didn't mean going straight to sleep. They just wanted to relax their taut nerves a little and talk about themselves and the God and Demon Game.

Tang Luo had been pulled in during the afternoon.

The others had too.

Their body clocks were still working. Even though it was night here, no one felt sleepy.

They had just exchanged their "code names." Now they began to share a little about themselves.

The youngest was a high school sophomore.

He had dozed off during self-study and woken up inside a carriage.

Xiao Chu, the one with glasses, had a similar story. He was a college student, lying in his dorm and playing on his phone. He had been wide awake when his surroundings suddenly changed.

The others' experiences were much the same.

The man who called himself Xiao Li was an unemployed graduate looking for work when he was pulled into the game.

The two women were friends and college sophomores. They had been out shopping when they missed a step and landed on the carriage seats.

Zhou Zhenguo was different.

He was a player who had already gone through several missions, and he had received notice a day in advance.

He had rested well and sat waiting.

As for Tang Luo, he had simply gone from one carriage to another.

There had been no "nothing left to live for" moment, no YES-OR-NO selection box, no bringing the dead back to life or making them serve him.

The God and Demon Game dragged people in with brutal force, without giving them any choice.

They had been conscripted without the slightest warning.

After completing a mission, they didn't return to some special space.

They went back to wherever they had come from.

If they thought a mission was too dangerous and didn't want to complete it, they could choose to lie low.

They just had to wait for the mission to fail.

It might take two or three months, or as long as a year or half a year, but eventually they would return.

Time passed at different rates in the mission world and the real world.

The time they spent in a mission world amounted to little more than an instant in the real world.

But Zhou Zhenguo had heard of some exceptions.

He didn't know the details.

To Xiao Chu and the others, Zhou Zhenguo was undoubtedly a strong ally.

In truth, though, he was just a miserable middle-aged man who had gone through five missions and succeeded in only two.

He had barely made it through his rookie period.

"Uncle Zhou, what exactly is that skill?"

After chatting for a while, Xiao Chu couldn't help asking.

The others perked up their ears, looking just as curious.

"It's just a skill, like the ones in games." Zhou Zhenguo kept it brief. "It uses stamina and energy, and it has a cooldown. You can improve your proficiency by using it."

"Oh."

Everyone nodded in understanding. No one asked Zhou Zhenguo to demonstrate.

They weren't close enough for that.

Just because someone was easygoing didn't mean you could take advantage of them.

"The term 'player' sounds kind of silly..." Xiao Chu murmured.

"You can call us God and Demon Walkers, too," Zhou Zhenguo said. "Calling us players is a kind of self-deprecating joke. More people prefer to call themselves God and Demon Walkers."

"That's awesome!" The sallow-faced high school sophomore looked excited.

His expression shifted back and forth, now angry, now gleeful. Clearly, he was lost in his own fantasy world.

As a God and Demon Walker, he'd get to take on the school bully and date the prettiest girl in school.

Just thinking about it made him feel great.

"Snap out of it."

Zhou Zhenguo clapped his hands in front of the boy's face and reminded him gravely, "As players, as God and Demon Walkers, we can't do whatever we want in the real world."

"Huh?"

"That doesn't mean we can't use the benefits the God and Demon Game gives us to profit or do things for ourselves. But there's a limit. If you cross it, the consequences..." Zhou Zhenguo trailed off.

His grave expression made the others understand.

Right. If players, or God and Demon Walkers, could do whatever they wanted in the real world,

wouldn't the real world already be overrun by monsters?

There had to be restrictions.

"Still, I've heard those restrictions might be loosening. Have any of you heard about anything strange in the news lately? I feel like there've been a lot more weird incidents."

Zhou Zhenguo said.

That caught everyone's interest.

Everyone except Tang Luo began talking about strange things their "friends" had experienced.

They had treated them as jokes before, but now that they thought about it, perhaps they had really happened.

They talked for about an hour, but the sky outside showed no sign of brightening.

They had no idea what time it was, and the dim surroundings made them drowsy.

One by one, they fell into a deep sleep.

Zhou Zhenguo said nothing. He quietly took on the duty of keeping watch.

Maybe he wasn't some great ally, but he was undoubtedly a good person.

Tang Luo opened his eyes and glanced at Zhou Zhenguo, then closed them again and focused on regulating his breathing.

The energy here was richer than on Earth, which helped his injuries heal, at least to some extent.

Once his injuries healed, he could smash the heads of those demons and monsters with all his might—no, he could save people and do good deeds.

Who knew how much time had passed when some of the candles in the church burned out?

It was still dark outside.

Zhou Zhenguo seemed tired too. He closed his eyes and let his head droop slightly, as if he had fallen asleep.

Xiao Li stirred twice, then climbed off the pew and hurried out of the church.

Xiao Li's real name was Li Liang. It didn't sound like a very good name.

He felt that it had made finding a job after graduation difficult. He'd been rejected everywhere.

At least, that was what Li Liang himself believed. Everything was his name's fault.

How could a college graduate like him fail to find a job otherwise?

Besides, he'd even been a student union officer at school.

Before being pulled into the God and Demon Game, Li Liang had been thinking about changing his name.

But now, he had dropped the idea.

Looking for a job? Not a chance.

He was on his way to the pinnacle of life now.

After leaving the church, Li Liang headed for a small, square building nearby. It was the toilet.

He needed to relieve himself.

"London had electric lights and flush toilets in the nineteenth century?"

Li Liang was puzzled as he entered the toilet.

He'd returned all his history knowledge to his teachers after the college entrance exams.

He wasn't sure whether London had these things in 1888.

He had even prepared himself for something awful and was ready to finish up as quickly as possible.

But there was an electric light switch on the wall. When he turned it on, he saw a fairly clean toilet and a seated flush toilet.

This bathroom was very modern.

Still puzzled, Li Liang unzipped his fly, shivered with relief, and closed his eyes as he started to pee.

A trickling sound reached his ears.

His arms and legs began to feel weak, and his body grew inexplicably cold. Why was this shiver taking so long?

"Can peeing really feel like this?"

He was almost done, but the sound of the stream grew louder. Li Liang felt as if his body had been hollowed out, and he could barely stay upright.

He opened his eyes and looked down. His confused expression turned to boundless terror.

The liquid flowing into the toilet was red.

At some point, a terrible gash had been torn open in his chest. Bright red blood gushed out in torrents.

Yet Li Liang felt no pain at all, as if he were not the one with the horrible wound.

He only felt cold and weak.

A grating sound rang out.

It was the sound of some kind of metal scraping against bone.

An icy breath washed over Li Liang from behind, blowing against the back of his neck.

Someone was behind him?!

A bloodstained knife emerged from his chest cavity, then withdrew, only to plunge in again.

The wound widened bit by bit.

Ripping!

A disemboweling from behind, right through his body!

Terror, despair, helplessness.

Li Liang's eyes began to glaze over. He couldn't struggle, let alone make a sound.

Darkness surged over him like a tide, swallowing his every thought.

Zhou Zhenguo opened his eyes and looked around.

Everyone was sprawled in their sleep, except for the man whose dharma name was Xuanzang.

He sat cross-legged as if meditating, still giving off an air of serenity and peace.

The sky outside had begun to brighten.

"Xiao Li hasn't come back?"

Zhou Zhenguo stood and headed outside.

He had known Xiao Li was leaving and guessed he was going to the toilet.

He hadn't stopped him.

Even in the God and Demon Game, people didn't start dying the moment they arrived, with the slightest misstep proving fatal.

If that were the case, there wouldn't be an option to abandon a mission and survive by lying low.

Zhou Zhenguo didn't think a trip outside to use the toilet would put him in danger.

After all, this was a mission for a group of newcomers. He was the only one who could pass for a veteran, and even that was a stretch.

The difficulty shouldn't be too high.

But by his estimate, at least an hour had passed.

The sky had grown bright, yet Li Liang still hadn't returned.

Zhou Zhenguo felt his heart sink little by little.

A moment later, he pushed open the restroom door, as if opening the door to a sealed slaughterhouse.

The pungent stench of blood filled the room, along with the blood itself.

A pool of blood spread beneath his feet.

Li Liang's corpse lay at an awkward angle, his chest split open by a hideous wound.

The inside had been left a complete wreck, too.

It reminded Zhou Zhenguo of a scene from Alien, with something bursting out of a body.

"Jack the Ripper!"

Zhou Zhenguo's face turned terribly grim.

He turned and strode toward the church, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind him.

This mission seemed far more difficult than he'd imagined!

Please add this to your reading list and recommend it!