The Internet Café Sweeper Monk

"Euphoria."

Li Heng opened his eyes and looked at his palm.

He had eaten the jade booklet left behind by the Dao Venerable. What remained was a game box, its packaging printed with the image of a paper-thin anime girl.

This game was the origin of Paradise.

The name Protagonist Paradise, which he had created, did not come from the Eden in the Bible.

Its meaning was almost exactly the same as the game's title: brief yet intense joy and happiness.

Something that existed in the world solely in pursuit of pleasure—that was the entire meaning of Paradise's existence.

The food was similar to him, yet also different.

They had similar birth environments and life experiences, but because of certain subtle differences, they had ultimately taken different paths.

Steel Nail had never encountered a kindhearted friend willing to lend a hand. He had not even had anyone who could be called an acquaintance throughout his life, and from birth to death, he had been almost entirely alone.

The lack of social connections and the bland, boring life had led him onto a path of seeking pleasure through destruction.

Jiang Hongqiu had been born in an earlier era of Earth. A different social environment had given her a far more repressed upbringing.

She had likewise found life in the real world painful and boring, but unlike him, she saw herself as "an incompetent ordinary person."

She did not believe miracles would descend upon her. She did not believe she could obtain what she wanted in the vast and magnificent real world.

So she fled the painful real world, gave up on pursuing reality, and chose to embrace the happy, blissful world of the Brain in a Vat.

Whether it was Steel Nail or Jiang Hongqiu, the memories contained within the flesh