The car entered the mountains.
The road was a potholed dirt track, winding through the mountain woods.
"I wonder if the other two groups' games have started yet," Shi Lianshan suddenly muttered as he drove.
Qin Manjiang seemed a little interested. "Is there a difference between Challenge Mode and Exploration Mode?"
Sorting through the tools he had brought, He Jian said, "You mean that? It's actually not complicated. Challenge Mode refers to places where people were previously assigned to play a Ghost Story Game, but were wiped out. A ghost story that no one survived is considered highly challenging. But by the same token, completing Challenge Mode comes with richer rewards."
"Rewards?" Qin Manjiang had heard an unfamiliar term.
"Of course there are rewards. It's a game!" This time, all of them looked at him. "Didn't you get a reward from your Beginner Level?"
"It's a pupil-shaped icon called a Spirit Pupil. It appears in the Personal Interface on your phone. Every time you play a game, as long as you make it out alive, you get some Spirit Pupil Rewards, more or less. The Ten Seats are ranked by how many Spirit Pupils they have, too."
Faced with their strange looks, Qin Manjiang thought back carefully. A pupil-shaped icon?
Spirit Pupils?
He was certain he had never seen anything like that.
"I've never seen one. Not even in the Beginner Level."
"No way. Could it be a game bug?" Shi Lianshan kept up with the times well enough to know even that expression.
"I... know of one possibility," Liu Jingqing suddenly said quietly.
Seeing the faint look of confusion on Qin Manjiang's face, the female novelist said, "This has happened before, but... it wasn't in someone's Beginner Level. It was a multiplayer ghost story. That time, everyone relied on