Thought You'd Never Guess It, but I've Got a Guide!

Zhang Anzai couldn't understand what was happening before his eyes. The Ancient Shadow Records app was genuinely sitting on his phone's home screen, which meant he had become one of the chosen reincarnators—a player who tackled instances.

"How is that possible?" Zhang Anzai had never heard of anything like this.

After hesitating for a moment, he decided to open the app first.

What popped up afterward was the introductory page they had already watched countless times through other players' perspectives, yet it still stirred an inexplicable excitement in him.

"Have you grown weary of the mundane routine, day after day? Or perhaps doubted the authenticity of so-called reality?

This is another ordinary moment. Yet you have already glimpsed what lies behind reality.

Fox spirits and ghosts speaking at night, immortals seeking titles, occult arts and elixirs, witchcraft and curses, spirit collisions and Daoist soldiers, folk taboos, corpses rising and tomb raiding, flying swords slaying demons, flesh-like creatures and ancient fungal deities, old lands and forgotten gods.

The bizarre things that once existed upon this land have not vanished. They have merely sunk into a hidden river.

By chance, you have stepped into that river and trodden upon a shadow. Those capable of doing this are known as Boundary Walkers.

Explore the shadows of the past, and you may glimpse the truth and dredge it back into the ordinary world."

"Boundary Walker, you are about to enter a reflection of the past."

"That's right... I'm a player now!" Zhang Anzai confirmed it. After waiting through the loading process, he had finally calmed down a little.

When he looked up, the prompt on the computer screen had changed to waiting for the player to enter the instance.

This indicated that the Matching Token had likely summoned him into the game, and that he himself was his own administrator.

Zhang Anzai thought, Setting everything else aside, I bought an Advanced Player Token. That means...

He looked at his phone, where his character page had finished generating.

"Player: Zhang Anzai"

"Talent: [Two-World Walker] (A) You are a special existence situated in the gap between two worlds, able to operate in both reality and the Old Shadow World at once."

"[Literati] (D) You possess information-processing, language organization, and expressive abilities beyond those of ordinary people."

"[Indefatigable] (D) You can endure exploitation better than most. Your body may not be healthy, but your energy far exceeds that of ordinary people."

An ordinary player might have been baffled, but Zhang Anzai was extremely familiar with this process.

Talents were generated from a player's personal abilities before entering the game. All his strengths combined had only produced three talents, but that was already quite good.

The game's standards for judging talent levels were extremely strict. Even the lowest D-rank represented the level of a professional who could make a living from it. Casual hobbies and skills that were not good enough would not be marked as talents at all.

That was precisely why players who started with a C-rank talent or higher were considered advanced players. Whether in knowledge or physical ability, they always surpassed ordinary people in at least one aspect.

"I actually have three talents... And this first A-rank one—could it be the source of my dual identity?

Walking between both worlds at once means I don't need to be like ordinary players, sleeping in reality while acting in instances. I can be an administrator while exploring at the same time!"

This further confirmed the value of his identity. He was so excited that he could not even be bothered to complain that, aside from the Literati talent he had developed from working as a planner, his only other talent was resistance to pressure cultivated through being consecutively exploited by two heartless companies.

"Whatever. Being able to handle pressure is a good thing too..."

Zhang Anzai comforted himself this way because he knew that the beginner introduction ended here. Before becoming official players and receiving newbie benefits and game classes, every player had to force their way through their first instance using only their base abilities.

"You have entered the Old Shadow [Folk Taboo: Midnight Mountain Peddler] (Fierce)."

Looking at the instance name that had appeared on both his phone and computer, Zhang Anzai slowly typed out a single: "?"

"Phew..." A strange dizzying sensation washed over him. Zhang Anzai suddenly gained another perspective in his mind, as though he had acquired another body in another space.

He had clearly entered the instance already. It was only because of his special talent that the body at the company could still move.

The feeling was strange, as though he had an extra body that required control. Zhang Anzai had more energy than ordinary people, but he could still only operate one side at a time. The other side temporarily crashed.

"No choice. I'll figure out a solution later. For now, I can only switch back when I need to." Zhang Anzai focused most of his attention on the instance.

He was dressed casually and lying in a bedroom with wooden flooring and whitewashed walls, perfectly matching his coworkers' descriptions of this instance.

That was right. This was the most basic benefit of being an administrator. Not only did he understand the game, he also knew a little about all kinds of instances.

Of course, that was precisely why matching with this instance made him feel especially miserable.

Zhang Anzai stood up against his will.

"Bzz..." The video intercom monitor beside the room door flickered with static, displaying the scene outside the front gate.

The visitor looked strange. He was pressed tightly against the intercom doorbell, and Zhang Anzai could only see a particularly round face with grayish-green skin.

He wore an ancient-style square cloth cap. His eyes were wrapped in thick bandages, yet the corners of his split-open mouth and the wrinkles on his face still revealed a broad smile.

No voice came from the intercom, only the strange sound of a drum: "Thump-thump... thump-thump..." Like the pellet drum he had played with as a child.

One beat after another, rather loud, yet deeply unsettling.

"Bzz..." The screen flickered. Zhang Anzai saw that the man had turned around. On his back was an enormous bamboo-and-cloth pack, hung with scissors and needlework, medicinal plasters and brushes and ink, fans and little flags, along with a whole heap of strange odds and ends.

On one of the flags was written a single large character: "Goods."

At that moment, Zhang Anzai abruptly caught sight of enormous, chilling blood-red characters emerging one by one on the white wall beside him:

"You are the owner of this small convenience store.

In a rural township, it is only a modest business, but you have seen all sorts of suppliers. Even so, you have never encountered such a strange person coming to your door at midnight..."

Of course not. Where else would I find monsters like these after leaving the Old Shadow World? Zhang Anzai thought.

Including the ones he had watched before, this was already the fourth mission he had experienced. He understood that the Old Shadow World was a blend of past and present, often placing ancient tales of strange phenomena, monsters, ghosts, and demons into modern settings.

What he faced now was one such case.

Zhang Anzai's body froze in place and waited for a moment, until the intercom doorbell before him turned to static once again. "Bzz..."

When the image reappeared, no one was outside the door anymore.

"Click!" Zhang Anzai reached out against his will and unlocked the room door.

The blood-red writing appeared again on the wall beside him: "This strange peddler seems to have broken into your little shop. Go out and assess the situation. Drive him away, or go seek help."

After that, Zhang Anzai regained normal control of his body. This meant the instance had officially begun.

Without hesitation, he kicked off his shoes, then opened the door and silently walked outside.

The space outside was not large. A storage room door stood at one end of the hallway, while stairs leading downstairs were at the other. Zhang Anzai decisively turned, gripped the storage room's doorknob, gently pressed it down, and pushed the door open without making a sound.

Only after closing the door behind him did Zhang Anzai finally let out a breath of relief.

Before him was a storeroom filled with boxes of miscellaneous goods, but his attention immediately returned to the company.

The screen was displaying the perspective seen through his player body's eyes—a spectator feed, essentially.

However, Zhang Anzai had no time to worry about that. He immediately entered the purchase page and found an item.

"[Third-Person Perspective Talisman] (Allows you to observe the instance from a third-person perspective.)"

"Price: Five Employee Points."

"Purchased and automatically used."

In an instant, the image on the screen switched to a freely adjustable third-person perspective.

Though it was still limited to Zhang Anzai's vicinity, he was currently pressed against the storage room door. As a result, the third-person view clipped outside, and the screen displayed the hallway.