Both players?

"I shattered all his internal organs, and he can still roar at full strength... What's going on?"

Xia Yi's heart sank. Forcing another breath into his lungs, he shrouded his right fist in Saint Soul power with a hum, bent down, and hammered it toward Zhou Lizhu's forehead, only for a dense black light to stop it a foot away!

Then the black light abruptly expanded, swallowing the sunlight. Everything it passed over, whether plants or stones, turned to dust, until all that remained was a pitch-black hemisphere more than ten meters across!

Only two seconds later did Xia Yi scramble out of it, looking disheveled. He glanced back at the hemisphere, his expression shifting.

"This... isn't a remnant soul possessing a body!"

"Regeneration is one thing, but the Demon King Undying Body, which survives fatal wounds, and the Demon King Death Domain, said to devour everything-even a true demon king might not have those."

"What on earth is this thing?"

"You death-seeking player! I only just woke up, and you've already landed me with something like this?"

Cursing inwardly, Xia Yi waited for time to rewind, thinking that when he returned to three minutes earlier, he would punch the head apart. Yet a dozen or so seconds later, the pitch-black hemisphere shrank back into human form, revealing Zhou Lizhu, whose wound through his chest had half healed. Shi Lai, who had been swallowed by the black light and reduced to dust, had not reloaded his save.

...Did he log out? Or is there a time penalty for reloading and reviving too many times? Xia Yi stared at Zhou Lizhu, who stared back. He had a curse on the tip of his mental tongue.

A wisp of black light quietly rose behind him.

"I remember you. You're Xia Yi!" Just then, Zhou Lizhu's low shout sent a shock through him!

He remembers me? So he really is Kui, the chief of the Demon Ox Clan from my era. Though his lifespan was longer than a Human Race king's, it was only seven or eight hundred years. There shouldn't be a remnant of his soul left today, either.

Reincarnation? There was absolutely no reincarnation on the Saint Soul Continent!

Before falling asleep, he had already spent eighty-seven years on the Saint Soul Continent since transmigrating. He had thought he understood most of its secrets. Who could have imagined that after eight hundred years of slumber, the world would suddenly become unfamiliar again?

The player Shi Lai, and Zhou Lizhu, who seemed to be Kui.

He needed to sort through all this information.

As he drew a deep breath, the black light quietly rising behind him took on a blue hue. Amid the splashing sound of water, the scene of a little boat floating by a riverbank formed out of thin air. Someone in the boat held an earthenware jar high, about to smash it down.

Zhou Lizhu snorted. Staring at the scene behind Xia Yi, he clenched both fists tightly as well.

But just then, a clear female voice suddenly called out, "Brother Lizhu! Sir!"

"X-Xiao Xian!"

Panic instantly appeared on Zhou Lizhu's face. His large hands rapidly squeezed and pressed at the swiftly healing hole in his chest, as though trying to make it heal faster. When he failed and got his hands covered in blood, he covered his face with trembling hands. "I-I'm not Zhou Lizhu!"

Xia Yi was speechless.

"Brother Lizhu, what's wrong?" Zhou Xiaoxian stopped, then took two steps forward. Sensing something was wrong, she backed up half a step.

Through the gaps between his fingers, Zhou Lizhu saw this clearly and let out loud sobs.

"Boo-hoo-hoo..."

"How did I turn into a monster?!"

"Xiao Xian!!"

With a wild cry, he turned and ran. He was so fast that he vanished into the mountain forest in an instant!

Xia Yi knitted his white brows. The sea and little boat behind him dissolved into mist and vanished. He swept his gaze around, found the mostly ruined bamboo hat, then looked deep into the mountain forest. "His human mind has the upper hand. It looks like there's still hope, but these old arms and legs can't keep up..."

He stretched an arm across Zhou Xiaoxian's path.

"Girl, calm down!"

"He's not your Brother Lizhu. He's the one responsible for the Demonization of those two oxen!"

"Did you see his injuries just now?"

"A hole through his chest, a shattered heart, and all his internal organs smashed into a mess by me, yet he still didn't die. That's absolutely not something a normal human can do!"

"Sir, let me through!" In her urgency, Zhou Xiaoxian pushed at Xia Yi's arm.

Feeling somewhat helpless, Xia Yi actually followed her gentle push and lay down on the ground. "Ow, my old back! It hurts..."

Zhou Xiaoxian ran a few steps, then stopped. A couple of cute, distressed sounds escaped her before she gritted her teeth, came back, and bent down to help Xia Yi up. "Sir, are you all right?"

"I'm fine." Xia Yi felt somewhat gratified.

This time, he had not used his Deception Scripture Saint Soul. There was a ninety-nine percent chance the girl knew he was pretending.

But she had come back anyway.

[You have reloaded seven times in total. You may log into the game again in 12 hours.]

"That's a thing too?" Shi Lai sprang up from bed, grabbed his phone from the nightstand, and checked it. 5:37 a.m.

"I could've played another twenty minutes. This is so annoying. What's happening next in the story? That old man had better not get killed. It took me so much trouble to find a class-change NPC." He lay down again.

His real name was Shi Lai. He was sixteen and had just entered his second year of high school. About twenty days earlier, he had suddenly begun dreaming of another world in his sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes to rest, he could choose to enter a place called the Saint Soul Continent and experience another life.

His initial shock and fear had turned to ecstasy when he realized it seemed to be a real game.

Especially after he discovered that although leveling up on the Saint Soul Continent did not physically turn him into a superhuman, his mind grew sharper and sharper. Even his memory improved by leaps and bounds, and his grades rose rapidly too.

Well versed in webnovels from a certain site, he naturally regarded this as his cheat ability and kept it strictly secret.

After all, he was afraid of being dissected.

"After seven reloads in total, you can't log into the game for twelve hours." Shi Lai recalled his experiences in the game. "While chopping wood, I fell into a hunter's trap and reloaded once. The other six were all during this session. That old man alone killed me three times. Seriously..."

"Ugh, nothing I can do. I'll log in again when I go to bed tonight. It'll be another twenty minutes or so before Mom wakes me up for school. I'll sleep a little more."

He rolled over and closed his eyes.

But before long, he opened them again.

"Why do you want to kill me?!"

Zhou Lizhu's question kept echoing in his mind.

It kept him from falling asleep.

He rolled over again, propping his elbows on his pillow.

"Is that really... just a game?"

Is this world actually a game world? The thought flashed through Xia Yi's mind as Zhou Xiaoxian, whom he had thoroughly fooled, supported him.

A virtual screen appeared before his eyes.

It was the cheat ability he called the Exploration System, a free gift from his transmigration.

The system's functions were fairly limited. It had no reload function, could not resurrect him, and had no affection system or quest system.

Its only function was...

[You have explored a special Saint Soul: Detection Art. Current exploration progress: 1%.]

[You have explored a special Saint Soul: Detection Art. Current exploration progress: 2%.]

[You have explored a special Saint Soul: Detection Art. Current exploration progress: 2%. You may choose to synthesize the special Saint Soul Detection Art, or sacrifice your exploration to obtain 1,002 Saint Soul experience points.]

"Synthesize."

[You have learned a special Saint Soul: Detection Art.]

[Detection Art cannot be upgraded.]

[Excess exploration has been sacrificed and converted into 2 Saint Soul experience points.]

Xia Yi tentatively used it on the girl beside him.

[Name: Zhou Xiaoxian]

[Age: 15]

[Level: 100 (one-star)]

[Faction: Human Race]

[Saint Soul: Sword Scripture (two-star)
Mastery: one-star, level 20 (max)]

[Saint Soul: Not Inferior to Men (two-star)
Mastery: one-star, level 15, 14/20]

[Threat level: None]

The screen closed.

Xia Yi sighed softly. He had never considered this possibility before, but now... could he also be a player, only unable to log out?

"Sir, are you all right?" Zhou Xiaoxian's concerned voice reached him.

"I'm fine," Xia Yi replied. Turning his head, he saw the girl's lovely face, smelled the fragrance of her hair, and felt her long, steady breaths.

Xia Yi closed his eyes and again saw lives sacrificed for righteousness on the battlefields between humans and demons, smelled the sour rust of rivers of blood, and felt the joy and sorrow of the past.

There was absolutely nothing false about this world!

"But there's probably something wrong here..."