Zuo Cheng'an

Biodata

Power Progression

History

Entry into the World Survival Game

Zuo Cheng'an disappears from ordinary life and awakens in a nearly empty room alongside seven other abducted people. His personal panel identifies their situation as the World Survival Game. After obtaining the Eye of Truth, he discovers blood-veined eyeballs filming the players and comments from an unseen audience 1.

His first instance, Screaming Night, requires seven days of survival against nocturnal Hunters. Assigned room 204, he prepares an axe and wooden shield while investigating how the monsters select their victims 1 2 3.

Screaming Night

Zuo Cheng'an and Li Yueqiu intervene when a Hunter attacks Zheng Ren. He finishes the weakened monster, earns the Good Start achievement, and retrieves Zheng Ren's healing gummy to save him 4 5.

He subsequently tests room-sharing as a way to evade attacks. Information from the audience helps him identify the two-person room limit, while a later battle confirms that Hunters track room occupants through their keys. Taking one of Zhao Chengyuan's keys splits two Hunters between separate targets 7 9.

After Liu Shuang betrays the group's battle plan, Zuo Cheng'an and Zhao Chengyuan break down his door. Zuo Cheng'an later discourages Zhao Chengyuan from rescuing him, allowing the Hunters to eliminate someone he considers a future threat. He retrieves Liu Shuang's dropped equipment and joins the survivors in killing the remaining Hunters, ending the instance early 10 11.

Safe Zone 7 and the Ladder Tower

Following settlement, Zuo Cheng'an repairs his accumulated injuries and reaches the pre-ladder physical attribute caps. He hires Yu Le as a guide, learns about Safe Zone 7, and rents a room for 30 points 12 13 14.

He chooses to pursue the Ladder Tower because he needs greater strength to confront the beings watching humanity. At its entrance, he reads a golden annotation describing the tower as the “path to godhood.” Contemplating its unreadable author's name briefly subjects him to overwhelming terror 14.

Uncle Mu Zhou's Farm

For his first ladder assessment, Zuo Cheng'an enters Red-Eye Farm, overseen by the hostile rabbit Red-Eyes. He arms himself with a pitchfork and completes a hidden task to kill 100 Steel-Toothed Rats, obtaining the Swift Rat Dagger along the way 16 18 19 20.

With Red-Eyes temporarily absent, he enters the farmhouse through its chimney. Photographs, a sheepskin rug, and a disguised black sheep lead him toward the farm's concealed history. Removing the sheep's collar and speaking the name Mo Dou restores its black sheepdog form 21 22 25.

Together, Zuo Cheng'an and Mo Dou uncover a buried ketchup tin bearing the farm's original name. Zuo Cheng'an refuses Red-Eyes' offer to trade rare items for the tin and completes the special mission by identifying Uncle Mu Zhou's Farm. He accepts Red-Eyes' hostility as a worthwhile price for the rewards 25 26.

After the surviving players depart, he discovers that the altered instance now demands ten days of survival against uprooting tomatoes. He leaves before becoming trapped in the new challenge, and Mo Dou follows him out as a player follower. The clear earns him an S+ rating and advancement to the First Heavenly Ladder 29 30.

Preparation and Sunny Village

Back in the safe zone, Zuo Cheng'an crafts healing tomato sauce from his new recipe and tests it on a self-inflicted arm wound. He also decides that reliable teammates are necessary even if he continues refusing guild membership 32.

During his preparations, he purchases a damaged weapon from a level-seven instance and names it Little Seven. After four days of rest, his Spirit recovers to 83, and he agrees to enter another instance with Li Yueqiu, Zheng Ren, and Mo Dou 37 38 39.

In their level-two instance, he anticipates Mountain Monkey attacks on a cliffside sightseeing vehicle, improvises safety tethers, and warns his companions before the ambush. He later recognizes a dangerous fragrance shared by the monkeys' air sacs and living vines inside a cave 42 44 47.

On reaching Sunny Village, he monitors audience discussions about the villagers' red spots, air sacs, and fleshy sprouts. The comments describe a cycle of sowing, latency, germination, and budding, but no player has survived to witness its flowers bloom 49.

Appearance

• Young face: A market vendor judges him inexperienced at bargaining because of his youthful appearance 36.
• Practical clothing: Buys two sets of durable long-sleeved tops and trousers, along with protective boots, for instance exploration 43.
• Night-vision eyewear: Frequently wears half-rimmed black glasses when investigating dark areas, though he removes them before the unstable vehicle battle to avoid losing them 11 19 44.

Personality

Zuo Cheng'an describes himself as a “textbook egoist.” He weighs cooperation by its survival value, protects useful allies, and refuses to expose his full capabilities casually. He disguises audience-derived information as deduction and initially presents the Eye of Truth as “Basic Knife Technique” rather than revealing his actual skill 7 9 14.

His pragmatism can be ruthless: he deliberately leaves Liu Shuang to the Hunters after the latter's betrayal. With trusted companions, however, he provides equipment, treatment, and advance warnings without demanding every reward for himself. He lends Li Yueqiu Little Flying Stone and lets her keep the Willow Branch it helps her obtain 10 11 43 45.

He rejects the spectators' claim that emotion makes humanity inferior. To him, reason and emotion are both necessary parts of a complete person. Their cruelty gives him a long-term goal: destroy the cameras and force the viewers to experience the instances they mock 29.

Abilities & Skills

Eye of Truth

A unique passive skill whose stated effect is “See the real world,” with no listed restrictions 1.

• Hidden observation: Reveals the eyeball cameras and audience comments that other players cannot see 1.
• Annotations: Exposes information on ordinary objects, monsters, items, and locations. Item inspection can reveal provenance and details without physical contact 2 4 14 36 37.
• Health bars: Tracks hostile creatures' remaining health and helps locate enemies in poor visibility 3 4 11.
• Adjustable visibility: Its lowest setting shows health bars and focused annotations; the medium setting adds comments; the highest also displays the cameras. He normally uses medium to avoid visual obstruction 42.
• Practical limitations: Audience comments may be malicious, incomplete, or too dense to read quickly. Health bars alone do not provide a clear view of an enemy's anatomy, and the skill does not make every garbled name readable 3 11 14 37 43.

Combat and Physical Conditioning

• Basic blade handling: Learned a few movements from an elderly man exercising in a park. “Basic Knife Technique” is his cover story, not a documented system-granted skill 9.
• Improvised fighting: Uses a shield to hammer an embedded axe through a Hunter's wrist and later employs Little Seven to drag and throw Mountain Monkeys from the vehicle 9 46.
• Strength-focused development: Prioritizes Strength for penetrating monster defenses, then Constitution for surviving injuries, placing Speed last because early instances offer limited room to flee 30.
• Enhanced senses: His increased Constitution sharpens his eyesight and hearing beyond ordinary human levels 33.

Rule Analysis and Exploitation

• Target manipulation: Uses room keys to redirect Hunters and divide their attacks 9.
• Quest loopholes: Writes a special-mission answer incrementally, exploiting the fact that correct but unfinished text does not disappear 22.
• First-kill hypothesis: Suspects that an instance's first monster kill guarantees an item drop. He treats this as an unconfirmed pattern rather than an established rule 19 20 44.
• Preparation: Combines audience intelligence, visible health bars, improvised restraints, and private messages to prepare his team for ambushes 42 44.

Healing Food Production

• Muchou Brand Tomato Sauce: Crafts food that restores injuries when consumed and can turn cooked dishes into healing meals 32.
• Field treatment: Carries diluted sauce in a thermos and uses it to heal Li Yueqiu's leg wound 44 45.
• Limits: Requires small, frequent portions because a weakened body cannot tolerate excessive nourishment. Its effectiveness against more extensive injuries remains untested during his initial preparations 32 33.

Sanity Management

• Documented risk: His Sanity falls from 97 to 74 after the beginner instance, then to 58 after his ladder assessment 1 12 30.
• Aberration awareness: Learns that values below 60 create a high risk of reversible bodily aberration, accompanied by clouded consciousness, violent impulses, and impaired bodily control 30.
• Recovery: Resting four days restores his Spirit to 83 before his next run 38.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Little Seven — A heavy, edgeless, ruler-shaped metal weapon from “7-015 God-Making.” Its original name is garbled; the Eye of Truth identifies 98.66% damage. Zuo Cheng'an buys it with Little Flying Stone for his Swift Rat Dagger and 100 points, then removes its rust and replaces its grip wrapping 37 38 43.
• Little Flying Stone — A white-quality throwing item that automatically returns. Its attack power and range depend on the user's arm strength; he lends it to Li Yueqiu 38 43.
• Night-vision glasses / Scumbag Glasses — Looted from Liu Shuang. Make the Hunters clearly visible in darkness and later aid his farm investigations 11 19 30.
• Tetanus Potion — A green consumable obtained from his first Hunter kill. Applied to weapons to inflict effects such as poison, slowing, and confusion; improper use can affect the user. He applies the final portion to Little Seven before the Mountain Monkey ambush 5 9 43.
• Insulated cup — Purchased for 120 points while seeking a container for healing ketchup 37.
• Swift Rat Dagger — former weapon — A white-quality weapon with Attack +1, dropped by a Steel-Toothed Rat. Used to test his sauce's healing effect, then traded away 19 32 38.
• Sheepdog Bell — returned — Obtained during the farm instance and returned to Mo Dou after their escape 30.
• Instance-provided weapons — Uses an axe and wooden shield in Screaming Night and a pitchfork at the farm. The pitchfork is not an inventory item and cannot be taken out 2 18 19.

Relationships

• Li Yueqiu — Fellow beginner-instance survivor and recurring teammate. He values her combat skill, kindness, and reliability, later lending her equipment and treating her injuries 4 32 43 45.
• Zheng Ren — Fellow survivor whom he helps save with a healing gummy. Zuo Cheng'an considers him familiar enough to trust on another instance run 5 38.
• Mo Dou — Sheepdog follower whom he frees from a black-sheep disguise. Mo Dou chooses to follow him after the farm clear; Zuo Cheng'an feeds him, returns his bell, and protects him during travel 25 30 31 42.
• Yu Le — Safe-zone guide and later friend contact. Introduces him to local facilities and guilds; he adds Yu Le so he can request help with future work 13 14 35.
• Wang Guangfei — Farm-instance companion who thanks him for enabling the clear and later transfers 20 points 29 33.
• Zhao Chengyuan — Temporary ally who passes him a key to divide the Hunters and helps break down Liu Shuang's door 9 10.
• Liu Shuang — Treacherous teammate whom Zuo Cheng'an deliberately leaves exposed to the Hunters after his betrayal 9 10 11.
• Red-Eyes — Hostile boss antagonized by his recovery of the farm's true name. Zuo Cheng'an refuses its bribe and treats its threats as motivation to become stronger 25 26.
• Zhang Zhuang — Rival during the Mountain Monkey battle. Competes for the first kill and mistakenly identifies Zuo Cheng'an's group as Dawn Moon Guild members 44 45.

Notable Quotes

“No, I'm a textbook egoist.” 7

“What's wrong with writing a little slower?” 22

“Even a god, once its health bar appeared, was reduced to a boss that was hard to beat.” 26