I Can Hear the Players' Thoughts

The streets bustled with noise.

All sorts of people had rushed out of their homes to see what the lecher looked like. The streets were livelier than during New Year celebrations.

The constables shouted to maintain order.

A young man with a battered, swollen face stood in chains. Facing the crowd's accusations and curses, the clods of mud and rotten vegetable leaves they threw, he remained calm and composed. An occasional smile even curled his lips, as though being arrested were nothing at all.

Through a gap in the crowd.

Lin Bai looked at the arrested young man, and one glance left him rooted to the spot.

A bright, shining name hovered unmistakably above his head: [Jade Cat].

"What the hell?"

Lin Bai blinked and looked at the man again. The name was still there.

The onlookers were oblivious to the name above his head. Their attention remained on his lecherous behavior as they pointed, laughed, and cursed.

Players?

Lin Bai swallowed and instinctively looked around.

Sure enough.

Among the packed crowd, a man and a woman also had names above their heads: [Lao Mi] and [Jing Mi], respectively.

Lin Bai took a deep breath and quietly squeezed his way over to them.

"...An utterly captivating game. Every NPC is so lifelike, and every person has their own thoughts. It's hard to imagine how powerful the underlying computations must be to support such a realistic world!"

"Technology knows no limits. You can never imagine what bizarre things those scientists up top might create. That dumbass Jade Cat—people had already tested the NPCs' limits, yet he still went looking for trouble. While you're in government custody, you can't log out unless you delete your character. He's in for a rough time..."

"He didn't actually do much. They'll let him out in a couple of days. Of course, there's another possibility: he wanted to go to prison."

"Why?"

"If the game is modeled on the real world, then prison has another name: the ultimate talent market. There could easily be plenty of powerful NPCs hidden inside, and you could learn all kinds of things you can't learn outside. Don't underestimate any closed beta tester."

"He wants to join the dark side?"

"Maybe. This game is different from the old ones. You have to explore it yourself. You can't draw conclusions from past experience..."

"Lao Mi, some dumbass NPC behind us keeps sneaking looks at us?"

"He's probably drawn to your beauty!" The man called [Lao Mi] glanced at Lin Bai with a smile and said without restraint, "Don't tell me you think he can hear us talking in our private channel?"

"Maybe you're the one he's interested in. That guy hasn't looked at me properly once. I think he's gay. The game's advertising says it was modeled on the real world, so it has every kind of person..."

You're gay.

Your whole family's gay.

Lin Bai cursed inwardly and discreetly shifted his gaze away, while towering waves of shock surged through his heart.

They really were players!

Had he transmigrated into a Game World?

No wonder the city names in this world had always felt so awkward: Jiamao City, Yimu City, Binghuo City...

If this was a Game World, those names were perfectly normal.

But was this really a Game World?

The air moved. All the different foods, rocks, and trees were vividly real. When he snapped a blade of grass, sap seeped out.

The scent of powder on women, the stink of sweat on men, the foul breath of people who didn't brush their teeth...

Everyone had their own thoughts, families, professions, joys, and sorrows. They bled when injured, ate when hungry, and slept when tired...

If a game could be made to this level, how terrifying must its creators be?

How powerful a server would it take to run a game like this?

Did Earth have a game company this badass?

Most importantly!

If this was a game...

What was he?

If he was a player...

Why didn't he have a stats panel, or even an option to quit?

If he was an NPC...

He clearly didn't belong to this world. He was an outsider, and he could see the players' names!

And those players with names above their heads also treated him as an NPC.

A transmigrator caught somewhere between a player and an NPC?

What a headache!

Lin Bai was no stranger to gamers. He had spent his four years at university swimming through an ocean of games.

He had tried every kind: client-based games, browser games, single-player games, and more.

Nine times out of ten, whatever players had done in the Game World, he had done too.

Jumping off city walls, killing other people's chickens, harassing women in broad daylight...

All those strange incidents suddenly had a reasonable explanation. Such behavior was perfectly normal for players, an even more plausible explanation than system owners.

In games, players were constrained only by the game's rules, completely free of legal or moral restraints.

They could revive infinitely, grow rapidly as long as they earned experience points, and do anything in the Game World without affecting reality...

With those conditions in place, players could do whatever they pleased in a game, freely unleashing their true natures. Their behavior was even wilder than that of the cultivators in the cultivation stories Lin Bai had told Luo Congwen.

With limitless growth, if you dared show a health bar, they dared draw a blade. Their behavior was uncontrollable and unpredictable. They spent money to grow stronger, and to satisfy their urges to destroy and create, to fill their experience bars, they would do anything...

These were players.

This was the Fourth Calamity.

He looked at the two players in front of him, then at the crowd still enjoying the spectacle.

A jumble of emotions filled Lin Bai's heart. Players had entered the world he had transmigrated into. Nothing could be more absurd.

The moment he encountered players, his advantages as a transmigrator vanished without a trace.

What did it matter if he had systems? He was just one person, and who knew how many players there were...

The thought of players farming him as a Boss, wave after wave, sent prickles crawling across Lin Bai's scalp.

What the hell!

The two players continued talking, paying no mind to Lin Bai beside them.

Their private chat channel gave them all the confidence they needed.

A closed beta with no progress wipes, a high degree of freedom, a game developed using the real world as its blueprint, no tutorials or guides, its mysteries left entirely for players to uncover...

More and more details about the game spilled from the two players' mouths.

Lin Bai worked hard to collect every useful piece of information.

Three days.

The first batch of closed beta players had entered their world three days ago, a few days after he had transmigrated here.

Lin Bai didn't believe the two events were unrelated.

After all.

The whole bundle of systems he possessed was equally mysterious in origin.

When a living, breathing world suddenly became a Game World, Lin Bai instinctively questioned everything around him.

However, he had gathered too little information to work backward from it.

Whether this was a conspiracy or fate, he had no way of knowing.

In this unfamiliar world, he was still feeling his way forward, just like the players.

Right now, even survival was a problem. He had it harder than the starting players, so pondering all those possibilities was clearly premature.

Perhaps.

For now, playing the role of this special NPC properly was his only chance to uncover the truth.

At the very least.

Using his systems to become a Boss was better than muddling along as an ordinary NPC who knew nothing of the truth.

Being able to distinguish players from ordinary people and hear their private conversations was enough to keep him clear-eyed amid the world's confusion.

Players would level up. Right now, constables could capture them, and the surrounding townsfolk could pelt them with eggs.

But once their levels rose, they could probably turn around and mow down great swathes of these NPCs.

There was no guarantee that some high-level player with a twisted sense of fun wouldn't return to torment these Novice Village NPCs. He had to grow alongside the players—and make sure he ran faster than they did.

Players leveled up by grinding experience.

Naturally, Lin Bai could level up through system rewards. When the time came, he might have to practice that goddamn Nine Suns Scripture after all.

An NPC who didn't want to become a Boss wasn't a good NPC!

If he was going to be a Boss, he would be one who could never be defeated.

Boundless motivation burst from within Lin Bai, and he set a new course for his life.

Keep a low profile?

Impossible!

From the moment the systems attached themselves to him, a low profile had ceased to be an option for Lin Bai.

Once the world was no longer the world he thought he knew, Lin Bai examined his quest again with an entirely different mindset.

What better way to keep track of the players than to stay by their side?

The players blindly trusted their past experience and didn't believe any NPC could know what they were saying.

To Lin Bai, these people were transparent. They had no secrets.

Recalling how quest NPCs behaved in games and combining that with the two players' theories about this game, Lin Bai walked toward them confidently.

Players thought differently from ordinary people. He couldn't treat them like normal people.

The two players stopped talking and looked curiously at the NPC approaching them.

"What's this guy trying to do?" [Lao Mi] asked.

"Who the hell knows? I thought something was off about him earlier," [Jing Mi] said. "A quest NPC?"

"Aren't we supposed to trigger quests ourselves?" [Lao Mi] asked. "Don't the NPCs in this world dislike talking to strangers?"

"He's coming over," [Jing Mi] said.

"Could I have a few words with you two?" Lin Bai took a deep breath and asked hesitantly.

"Of course." [Lao Mi] grew attentive, shot [Jing Mi] a meaningful look, and smiled.

A flicker of delight crossed Lin Bai's eyes, and his hands unconsciously rubbed together. "This is a little embarrassing to say. My family has passed down the art of face-reading, and I've been observing you for quite a while. I noticed that your destinies are somewhat unusual. How should I put it? You have the destinies of dragons and phoenixes, fated to soar into the heavens and rise to glory. Honestly, I've never seen features like yours on anyone around me before..."

Watching the NPC ramble before them, [Lao Mi] and [Jing Mi] exchanged a glance. [Lao Mi] said, "Is this guy a scammer? Or did he really spot something?"

[Jing Mi] laughed. "Wouldn't a scammer be even more interesting? Maybe he's a special NPC. Let's hear what he has to say."

Listening to the two players' uninhibited conversation, Lin Bai kept his expression unchanged, but his tone grew increasingly awkward. "...You might think I'm a scammer, or that I'm joking with you. After all, I don't exactly look like a fortune-teller.

"But I simply couldn't help myself. Your destinies are too extraordinary. You're truly dragons and phoenixes among men, and I was afraid that if I let this chance slip away, I would never find it again. It's like being born a few decades earlier and feeling compelled to befriend the city lord before he rose to prominence. That's exactly how you make me feel now. This is my chance to change my life, and I must seize it."

Lin Bai mixed some local information into his speech to conceal his identity and give the two players a false impression.

Had they been normal people, he would have been lucky not to get beaten up for that spiel. But were players normal people?

Clearly not.

[Lao Mi] asked, "What do you plan to do?"

"I want to follow you." Lin Bai looked at [Lao Mi], his gaze burning and his voice earnest. "If possible, I'd like to call you my big brother. You look like outsiders. If there's anything inconvenient for you to do in Jiamao City, you can ask me to handle it. Of course, if anything good comes your way, don't forget me. When you soar to glory, could you give me a little helping hand?"

"Of course." Lao Mi readily agreed.

No player would turn down an NPC who came knocking with his own storyline. Even if he was a scammer, who knew whether he had follow-up quests?

Even if he didn't, wouldn't having a servant or picking up a pet during the closed beta be cool?

Besides, he might well be the first player in the East Continent region to acquire an NPC underling. Posting it on the forums later would surely turn hordes of people green with envy.

"Really?" Lin Bai looked delightedly at Lao Mi before him, unconsciously clenching his fists.

"Of course." Lao Mi smiled until his eyes narrowed into slits and nodded firmly. "From today onward, you're my brother."

"Big brother." Lin Bai looked at the player excitedly, his voice trembling slightly, his dignity lying shattered all over the ground.

"Brother." Lao Mi reached out and patted Lin Bai's shoulder, as though regretting they hadn't met sooner.

Lin Bai: Players are so much easier to fool than the locals. My quest is in the bag.

Lao Mi: I picked up an NPC underling right at the start. I'm going to make it big!