Reality

Chu Qingjiu opened his eyes to the ceiling in the darkness, its white surface just barely visible.

He threw back the covers, stirring up a cloud of dust that choked him. He could only cover his mouth, clutch the blanket, and suppress the urge to cough.

He panted rapidly for a while before the weakness passed, then sat on the edge of the bed to rest.

Everything around him was dark. The heavy, dark curtains were drawn tight, preventing even a sliver of light from slipping into the room.

It was a somewhat cramped room. Aside from the large white bed Chu Qingjiu was sitting on, there was a dark wooden wardrobe against the wall to his right.

He used it to store his clothes, though he had no idea whether clothes left there for two years would still be wearable.

A pile of puppet frames stood around the wardrobe, along with several finished wooden puppets in human form, though some of them had fallen over.

A strange, damp, musty smell hung in the air. With the room left unventilated for so long, the odor was especially unpleasant.

Chu Qingjiu stepped barefoot onto the dust-covered wooden floor and pulled the curtains open with an indifferent expression, stirring up another cloud of dust.

"Cough, cough..."

He fanned a hand in front of his nose. His eyes were slightly red and shimmering with tears. Bright moonlight fell across his pale face, casting faint shadows beneath his thick lashes.

He opened the window a little. Cool air slipped through the gap and stirred his loose, long hair, making him look especially thin and fragile.

He could see lush greenery outside the window. He remembered that the trees had not been this tall two years ago; to his surprise, they had already grown enough to shelter him from wind and rain.

The wind startled a bird roosting in a tree. It immediately spread its wings and flew away, only to return a little later.

This was the home he had lived in two years ago, in a remote area. He liked peace and quiet, not the intermittent honking of cars in the city.

But living somewhere remote did not mean he had no contact with other people, nor did it mean he had no need to make a living.

Because of his unusual profession, he often dealt with ghosts and supernatural beings, so he regularly received commissions. Without exception, they involved making bodies for ghosts.

As the title suggested, a Puppeteer controlled puppets. But in reality, Chu Qingjiu could not control ghosts directly. He had to get them into wooden puppet bodies before he could control them.

His clients would usually hire Daoist priests or yin-yang practitioners who specialized in dealing with ghosts to subdue them first. Then they would have Chu Qingjiu place the ghosts inside wooden puppets for them to command.

In effect, Chu Qingjiu established a contract between the client and the ghost imprisoned in the puppet. The client controlled the ghost and supplied the yang energy it needed, while the ghost helped the client achieve their goals.

It was simply a mutually beneficial arrangement.

The fingertips of his right hand twitched, and two Puppet Threads connected to two lifeless wooden puppets. They abruptly stood up and began cleaning under Chu Qingjiu's control.

Naturally, a house that had stood unoccupied for two years needed cleaning.

He lowered his head to look at the several cuts on his wrist that had gone deep enough to expose bone. By now, however, they had healed and scabbed over.

He had inflicted them before entering the game, so leaving the game could not heal them. They were not injuries he had sustained inside it.

He had died by suicide. Years of contact with ghosts had left him with terrible luck. After all, earning money from the dead damaged one's fortune and shortened one's life.

Even before his suicide, he had stopped taking commissions. His physical condition could no longer support that kind of work.

He had late-stage lung cancer. He had not wanted to watch his hair fall out and his body waste away day by day, so he had chosen suicide.

With ghosts constantly around him, yin energy had eaten away at his body. Naturally, he could not live very long.

Still, he had been fairly indifferent to death. Entering a dungeon had been unexpected.

The person in charge had promised him a healthy body and great power. All he had to do was control the bosses in the dungeons and make trouble for the players.

He had agreed, unaware that the price was his freedom. He spent every day seated on an ornate Throne, moving his fingers to control the ghosts inside the dungeons.

So giving him a healthy body and great power seemed rather pointless, since he could not leave the Throne whenever he wished.

Chu Qingjiu's expression grew increasingly lonely. His slightly furrowed brows gave him an air of fragility. He was beautiful, but lonely and dull.

For all those years, his only companions had been his master and his wooden puppets. But his master had passed away when he was fourteen.

His master had spent his entire life making wooden puppets. His one consolation had been finding Chu Qingjiu and teaching him everything he knew, ensuring that their lineage would not die out.

Chu Qingjiu had wanted to keep his master's ghost so that his master could stay with him even after death. But his master had died smiling, without resentment, and therefore would not become a ghost.

He could only rely on himself, slowly making a living on his master's reputation. He had seen too much of the world's coldness and the ugliness of human nature, and his temperament had grown increasingly reserved and dull.

He had seen husbands murder their wives for insurance money, then, driven by guilty fear, ask him to capture their wives' ghosts so they could not take revenge.

He had seen elderly people die alone at home, their bodies only discovered once they began to stink. Afraid the house would be haunted, their children had specifically asked him to capture the elderly person's ghost and house it in a wooden puppet.

He never asked too many questions. He simply took the money and did the work. After all, the world was full of things like that. Why should he meddle?

Chu Qingjiu suddenly sighed, perhaps because he had never expected to return to this room. He had thought he would remain on the Throne forever, controlling puppets and fulfilling the demands of the person in charge.

Perhaps because he had lost his freedom, he had directed all the anger he had nowhere to vent at the poor players.

That was why he always treated the players mercilessly, using cruel methods. Over time, the players had come to regard his dungeon as the one they least wanted to enter.

As for how he knew what the players thought, that was thanks to the remarkably idle person in charge, who updated the dungeons from time to time.

After the last update, he, a boss, had gained a new source of amusement: browsing the player forums to see what they were discussing.

He could only read, though, not post.

Players would not remember a Dungeon Boss's appearance or distinguishing features, but they would retain a vague impression. For instance, every player who entered his dungeon would know that it was controlled by a Puppeteer, but nothing beyond that.

Now a Closed Beta Version had been released, and as luck would have it, he was its very first guinea pig. On top of that, he had once again become a sickly weakling who could barely lift or carry anything.

It was not that he could not accept it. He just felt that he had been inactive for a very long time, and now his peaceful life was about to be thrown into turmoil again, forcing him to witness the selfishness of human nature.

That would be far too dull.