The Players' Arrival

"So cold..."

That was the first thing Lin Ruoyu felt when he opened his eyes. He instinctively curled up, only then realizing that he was naked.

"Get up, brother. The floor's cold. There are clothes in this box. Put them on!"

Lin Ruoyu stood up. Shivering too hard to take in his surroundings, he hurried over, opened the box, and pulled out the clothes inside.

Once he had boots on his feet and a thick black padded coat wrapped around him, Lin Ruoyu finally felt the bone-deep chill recede for the moment. He let out a relieved breath.

Looking up, Lin Ruoyu found himself in a dark, enclosed room lit by a single kerosene lamp. Besides a handsome young man in a green military greatcoat, roughly five foot nine, there were nine other people lying naked on the floor.

Thinking back to what had happened to him, Lin Ruoyu knew that these nine naked men were players just like him.

"Stop looking around. Come have some hot porridge and warm yourself up!"

The man in the green military greatcoat urged him over. Lin Ruoyu stopped surveying his surroundings and walked toward him. The man immediately picked up a ladle from the stainless-steel soup pail at his feet, stirred its contents, then scooped a generous helping of plain rice porridge into a wooden bowl.

"Drink up. Warm yourself up."

His body really did need something hot to warm it, so Lin Ruoyu accepted the wooden bowl without refusing.

After the first sip, Lin Ruoyu, who had grown up in luxury and never gone hungry, noticed something wrong. He frowned. The porridge was bland, but that wasn't really the problem. The problem was that porridge wasn't supposed to taste bitter!

Besides that bitterness, when Lin Ruoyu took a hard sniff of the steam rising from the wooden bowl, even his cold-numbed nose picked up a faint, musty odor.

Was this porridge safe to drink?

"Was the rice you used for this past its expiration date?"

"Probably."

The handsome young man in the military greatcoat actually admitted it without the slightest hesitation!

"But I'm poor, and it's winter now. Buying clothes cost me a lot of money, so food is the only thing I can cut back on. This rice may be past its expiration date, but it's cheap.

"Hello, I'm Chris."

"My name's Lin Ruoyu."

Lin Ruoyu quickly freed his right hand and reached out to shake Chris's. Looking at his rough clothing, a style that had long since vanished by the twenty-fifth century, he couldn't help nodding.

That made sense. One look at Chris's outfit told him that the man was unlikely to be rich. Preparing ten sets of clothes for the players must have used up a lot of his money.

If he was out of money, buying cheap food was simply a matter of necessity. He could hardly blame Chris for making porridge out of moldy rice.

Having filled in the blanks himself, and with the introductions out of the way, Lin Ruoyu no longer felt any hostility toward Chris. He quickly drank the plain porridge in his bowl.

Though the porridge smelled musty and drinking too much could make him sick, at a time like this, it was best not to waste even a little food.

Lin Ruoyu remembered the history books he had read in school, their accounts of the miserable lives people led during famines, and the illustrations that accompanied them.

"In a year of great famine, people ate one another."

That brief sentence, just six Chinese characters, described such a horrific scene.

The rice was only a little expired and moldy. Did that really make it inedible?

At that thought, Lin Ruoyu lost the last of his reluctance.

The other nine players began getting up one after another. As they shivered in the cold, Lin Ruoyu, now warmer after a bowl of porridge, stepped forward to help them.

He opened the box and handed clothes to the nine players so they could get dressed faster. He also hurried back and forth, taking wooden bowls from Chris and passing them to the others.

When the other players noticed something wrong with the porridge and began complaining about its taste, Lin Ruoyu volunteered the explanation he had come up with.

The first group of players to enter the game were all Chinese men. Even in the twenty-fifth century, traditional family upbringing had taught them the value of food and instilled the good habit of not wasting it.

So, after Lin Ruoyu explained, the other nine stopped complaining. They endured the unpleasant taste and finished every last bit of food in their bowls.

Seeing this, Chris broke into a bright, welcoming smile, as though he wasn't the one who had deliberately bought expired rice to save money. He raised the large ladle and called to the players.

"There's still food in the pail. Would you like some more? Guys, whatever you want to do, you'll only have the strength for it if you eat your fill."

"Then I'll have another bowl. I'm still not quite full."

"Half a bowl's enough for me."

"One bowl."

With Chris's warm invitation, the players came forward to refill their bowls. A full bowl here, half a bowl there, and the ten of them soon finished all the thick rice porridge in the pail.

Chris's smile grew even brighter.

Wonderful. None of the food went to waste.

Now that everyone had eaten their fill, it was time to get down to business.

Chris tapped the ladle against the pail, drawing everyone's attention with the clang. He cleared his throat and spoke in a grave voice.

"Brave warriors from another world, I am Chris Lin, your summoner, resurrection specialist, and beginner's guide. Hundred House Game Studio has commissioned me to provide you with assistance and information.

"So that you can live more freely in this world."

After hearing Chris's introduction, the players couldn't help whispering among themselves.

"Wow, the game designers came up with a new twist..."

"It's not really new. Other games have used similar approaches. It's just an NPC breaking the fourth wall to communicate more directly with players, so some idiot doesn't make a fool of himself and end up unable to even leave the starting village."

"But I like this way of talking. I can tell what this NPC does right away."

Chris waited a few minutes. Once the players had finished talking, he continued.

"Before you head out to explore, I must tell you several extremely important things.

"First, never reveal your unusual ability to resurrect in front of any non-player. This is a low-magic world. Though Mages struggle to cast even a fireball spell, the gods do exist.

"And their lackeys are especially eager to capture souls from other worlds... Trust me, you absolutely do not want to be caught. That's bad news-it means your account gets deleted.

"Second, I am a very important person. Your resurrection depends on me. If I die, Hundred House Game Studio will lose its anchor to this world. It won't merely mean you can't resurrect. The game will shut down.

"So, at all times, make sure to keep me safe."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. If I die, the game is over.

"Third, don't get yourselves killed casually. Every resurrection randomizes your physique and appearance. In other words, if you die, the connections and personal wealth you've built up will basically reset to zero. Resurrecting you also costs me something.

"Your first three resurrections are free. After that, I'll charge a thousand yuan per resurrection.

"Fourth..."

"Wait, is Chinese currency any use to you?"

"Yes. It's the compensation Hundred House Game Studio promised me for my work. I can use the money to shop online across worlds."

"Haha, this game's setting is pretty fun."

"Fourth, you can exchange money for in-game currency here. A thousand yuan gets you a hundred silver coins.

"Fifth..."

PS: Guys, I don't want to complain, but the reality is that I'm at the end of my rope. My bank account has been frozen, and I don't know when it'll be unfrozen. I asked at the bank counter, and they said I'd have to wait six months. I only have two thousand yuan on hand right now, and the New Year is almost here.

Unfortunately, I just got married last year, so this year it's my turn to hand out red envelopes...

So, after my last book flopped at light speed, I had no time to let things settle or work out an outline. All I could do was turn on my computer that very night and get to work!

As for updates, on top of a baseline of four thousand Chinese characters, I'll try to post an extra chapter each day whenever possible. But much of the time, wanting to do something and actually being able to do it are two different things.

So I won't make grand claims about how much I can update every day. All I can promise is that I'll update as much as I can.