As the waiting time stretched on, the lighthouse’s glow gradually dimmed.
Miss Qi’s smile brightened.
Zhou Qi’an knew the lighthouse couldn’t shine forever. Its usage time was limited, and the cooldown period was long. But he wasn’t worried—his birth mother and Shen Zhiyi were both out there, and there was also the college student who, though usually flustered and weak, always seemed to have an uncanny stroke of luck.
He’d already done all the prep work—if they couldn’t make it back, that would be strange.
After a while, the hum of electric scooters sliced through the silence of the night.
Miss Qi’s previously cheerful smile dropped by one pixel.
A group of elite-looking players climbed off the scooters.
In the ancient city, only electric scooters, bicycles, and motorcycles were viable transportation. Motorcycles were too noisy and would attract unwanted things, and bikes were too slow, so scooters were the best compromise.
As soon as they parked and looked up, the battered group saw Zhou Qi’an. In the faint remaining light, he leaned against the lamp post in half-dried clothes, looking dazzling—like a lotus emerging unsullied from mud.
Shen Zhiyi’s calm gaze landed on him—and didn’t move again.
The area outside the bus station was dark and eerie—not a place for conversation.
The composed man said, “Let’s head inside first.”
Zhou Qi’an took down the lighthouse and gave the group a quick glance. The composed man’s team of four was now just three. As they walked in, Zhou beckoned to the college student, who quickly came over.
The security checker couldn’t stay off-duty too long. Still covered in burn blisters, he was sluggishly swinging the scanner.
Zhou Qi’an looked toward the security gate and told the college student, “Go treat him later. As for the result, that’s on you.”
Some abilities could be leveled up through experience—like the college student’s healing. After a few rounds of instances, his original “sacrifice 800 to save” had probably improved to “sacrifice 500.”
“As for the price…” Zhou looked at his mother. “Mom, I’m counting on you.”
Mother Zhou’s haggling skills were notorious. Every time she started bargaining, Zhou would be too embarrassed to stand nearby. But when it came to money—even ghost money—she was all in.
In less than thirty seconds, the checker’s angry shout came from the gate: “He’s the one who scalded me! And now you people are here to ask for money?”
Mother Zhou gently tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. The checker’s confidence wavered; his pupils dilated.
He watched as her strand of hair transformed into a thin snake, winding around her finger and flicking its tongue at him.
Due to the angle, neither the college student nor the others noticed the strange scene at her fingertips. All they saw was the checker’s twisted expression.
Trying his best to learn the art of negotiation, the college student said, “Big bro, you’re already looking weak. Better get treated soon.”
The checker: “…”
Once the cursing stopped, the entrance went eerily quiet.
The silence wasn’t just from the NPCs—it extended to the players.
It seemed that the one they all looked down on had healing powers. And the curly-haired woman’s strength clearly surpassed expectations—at the very least, she hadn’t been scolded by the checker, which meant she had something that scared him.
The composed man felt a headache brewing. For the first time, he thought: The players have more lore than the instance itself.
Most of the scrutinizing gazes eventually landed on Zhou Qi’an.
Clearly, he was worth watching.
The fact that he’d made it back to the bus station early meant he’d found something valuable.
Realizing they were all hungry for clues, Zhou Qi’an sat leisurely, crossed his legs, and blinked innocently. “Am I dazzling you too much?”
Shen Zhiyi chuckled.
One player twitched at the mouth.
Mother Zhou’s “medical billing mission” took about fifteen minutes. In the end, she successfully wrung 15,000 out of the checker for burn treatment.
She pocketed 8,000 for herself and handed the rest to Zhou Qi’an. “Save this for finding a wife.”
Zhou Qi’an nodded solemnly.
Shen Zhiyi’s expression shifted ever so slightly at the scene.
All the travelers were gathered in the bus station for the night. A new batch of tourists from the ancient city had arrived, and their eyes were locked on the players more intently than ever.
The group edged toward the center of the waiting area and sat down.
Just as one player was about to speak, laughter interrupted him.
Zhou Qi’an looked toward the vending machines, where Miss Qi was returning with a bottle of coffee.
“She’s pulling a night shift and even bought herself coffee to stay awake. Hahaha!”
“…”
Noticing Miss Qi’s annoyed glance, everyone blinked nervously. You can laugh if you want, but leave us out of it!
Also—where was the joke?
The waiting room was cold. Seeing Miss Qi drink something warm, the twin-tail girl left briefly, then came back with several cups of hot water. “Everyone, have some hot water to warm up.”
She gave Zhou Qi’an a pointed look—hoping he’d shut up.
Just as she picked up a cup, Zhou Qi’an finally stopped laughing. “Stop. No, seriously. Stop.”
Thinking he was warning of some death rule, the twin-tail girl quickly put the cup down.
Miss Qi, ever the professional, gave a polite smile tinged with bitterness. “Someone took a bath in the hot water barrel this afternoon.”
Otherwise, why else would she go out alone to buy coffee?
Zhou Qi’an’s clothes were still damp. His discarded wig and coat sat to the side—there was no doubt who “someone” was referring to.
He calmly explained, “There’s no bathhouse at the station. I made do.”
The twin-tail girl closest to him was stunned, her lips parted for a full thirty seconds.
The others were still processing, struggling to mentally connect a hot water barrel with personal hygiene or any kind of quest logic.
Their faces all said: There are no words.
Shen Zhiyi tactfully broke the awkward moment. “Instead of staring, maybe we should think about tomorrow’s plan.”
The players all looked a bit sheepish.
They’d missed today’s opportunity to enter the play. And judging by the disappearance earlier, tomorrow’s participation was mandatory. The most straightforward method was to follow the main group—sharing the same action path should eventually trigger a script.
Miss Qi abruptly said goodnight in her usual formal tone, then walked out in high heels. “See you tomorrow.”
She didn’t want to spend the night in the waiting area—mostly because she didn’t want to look at Zhou Qi’an’s deranged smile.
As her figure faded, Zhou Qi’an’s smile vanished too.
He leaned forward slightly, fingers interlaced. “There are five acts left. I suggest we try to trigger the third act together in the morning. After that, we split into teams of three or four to finish the remaining plays.”
As long as you performed once, you’d receive the notification [Side Quest 2: Enter the Play – Completed], meaning the rest of the acts didn’t require participation from everyone.
The college student was surprised. Why is Brother Zhou being so helpful today?
Others thought something felt off, too. The proposal was exactly what they’d planned—yet somehow, when Zhou Qi’an said it, it felt like gospel.
The composed man said, “No objections.”
The foreigner and the mild-looking player also stayed quiet.
Zhou Qi’an’s expression remained unreadable—it was hard to tell what he was thinking.
At the moment, he was trying to confirm two things:
- Whether the difficulty of a play correlated directly with the number of participants.
- The diversity of role identities—how many different role cards could appear in a single play, and whether some roles were inherently more difficult.
With this many people, he had a sizable sample of “cute little data points.”
He was confident he’d soon uncover the perfect formula for acting in these plays.
——
As night fell, the players took turns keeping watch.
Zhou Qi’an was on first shift, scrolling through the updates on his phone.
Shortly after returning, Shen Zhiyi had sent him the details and clues from the second act they’d triggered in the ancient city.
The second play was titled “The Thief.”
The story centered around a female thief from the bus who had come to the city for a transaction.
Turns out, the theft of the pocket watch wasn’t spontaneous. Someone had hired her half a month earlier to steal it. But the target ended up murdered, and the thief got entangled in a detective’s investigation.
The woman was injured when she jumped off the bus and forced a doctor to treat her.
Later, she hid the pocket watch in a rice cooker—fearing a double-cross during the deal. Unfortunately, all the rice cookers in the area were sold out thanks to a matchmaking lady on the street.
“This is unhinged,” Zhou Qi’an muttered. He’d never seen a plot this ridiculous.
In this play, Shen Zhiyi had drawn the [Assassin] identity card. His role was the employer’s hired hitman tasked with retrieving the item.
The employer, not wanting to pay the thief, instructed Shen (as a magician) to kill her during the transaction using “magic.”
Shen Zhiyi’s solution? Kill the employer.
By contrast, the other two had far easier roles. The college student was the [Doctor], while Mother Zhou retained her [Matchmaker] identity.
Zhou Qi’an pressed his lips together. From this, it seemed that while the main storyline remained fixed, the details shifted depending on who triggered it. For instance, the pocket watch was destined to be lost—but how it got lost varied with the roles in play.
Because his mom had gone around selling rice cookers, that’s how the second act ended the way it did.
The reward clue from the second act was quite intriguing:
【The King of Drama is also an excellent actor—he can play any role.】
This suggested that the King of Drama was likely nearby, watching as the players struggled within the performance.
At the end of the act, the pocket watch’s whereabouts remained unknown.
To enter the next act and trigger the storyline, the search for the pocket watch would probably have to continue.
Once he figured that out, Zhou Qi’an leaned back against the chair and quietly waited for time to pass.
Out of boredom, he glanced at his supposedly sleeping mom across from him and frowned slightly.
Something felt off.
Back in the old town, when she played the matchmaker, she should’ve been enthusiastically trying to find him all kinds of potential brides.
Why was she suddenly so calm now?
“Is she really my mom?”
As Zhou Qi’an stared in suspicion, one of her hairs subtly writhed—he swallowed.
Yeah… probably still her.
It was destined to be a restless night.
When it was Zhou Qi’an’s turn to sleep, he had barely closed his eyes before he felt like he was sinking into darkness—an intense, rollercoaster-like sense of free fall made him want to force his eyes open.
Physically, it just looked like he was breathing a little heavily.
Sleep paralysis?
Zhou Qi’an had plenty of experience by now. He tried to gain control of his limbs—and quickly found he could move freely.
He lifted his eyes to scan the surroundings, but the moment he cracked them open, his breath caught.
In the darkness stood a man with his head slightly bowed, features obscured. His face was blank—but the instant he looked down, Zhou Qi’an saw a pair of eyes.
They were the most emotionally charged eyes he’d ever seen.
They held all the classic expressions—joy, anger, sorrow, and fear—but in the span of a breath, those emotions shattered and twisted into one thing: cold, ruthless malice.
In the surrounding darkness, white rose-like lines bloomed in the air, one after another.
Zhou Qi’an couldn’t see the Drama King’s mouth, but he could hear his flat, emotionless voice:
“Careful you don’t end up in the trash.”
That malicious curse echoed around him.
Just as the figure leaned closer, a patch of cool warmth spread across his arm. The darkness receded like a tide.
Zhou Qi’an forced his eyes open—and met a familiar pair of gray-white eyes.
After a moment of adjustment, he confirmed it wasn’t a dream.
Zhou Qi’an rubbed his brow. “I dreamed about the King of Drama. He gave me a warning.”
Shen Zhiyi didn’t look surprised. With a game-boosted evolution at the start, Zhou was bound to attract the system’s attention more easily.
The next second, Zhou Qi’an began to complain: “Just because I activated my ultimate in his face and called his writing garbage? Now he comes after me at night? What kind of person is this?!”
Garbage is garbage.
“…”
After hearing about what had happened in the matchmaking corner that afternoon, Shen Zhiyi fell into rare silence. Then he said, “You were just speaking the truth.”
Zhou Qi’an nodded, completely agreeing.
“You’ve got dust on you.” Shen Zhiyi reached over and gently brushed his shoulder.
Zhou Qi’an instinctively looked down, not noticing that Shen’s other hand subtly landed on his phone.
A faint trace of black mist leaked from the cold metal case and disappeared between Shen Zhiyi’s fingers.
As that bone-deep chill slowly faded, Zhou Qi’an seemed to realize something. He belatedly looked down at his phone.
That afternoon, the Drama King had called him—or more accurately, had threatened a dying player into calling him as a final curse.
Nightmares always needed a medium to activate.
Just like how stepping on that eyeball had caused problems before—could the phone be a trigger too?
Shen Zhiyi interrupted his train of thought. “You can still sleep a bit longer.”
Since Shen was on watch now, Zhou Qi’an felt safer. The second half of the night passed without further strange dreams.
·
The next morning, Miss Qi arrived early and led the group onto the 8:00 AM coach.
This time, the bus fare wasn’t free.
No one wanted to be the weirdo riding an electric scooter at dawn, so everyone followed the crowd and boarded the bus.
After getting off, Miss Qi, just like the day before, slipped into the crowd—and vanished in the blink of an eye.
Zhou Qi’an reined in his thoughts and briefly explained the content of the second act. He didn’t share the clues, only said they needed to follow the trail of the pocket watch to enter the third act.
There was only one shop in the ancient city that sold rice cookers. Not many locals actually used them—it was mostly just for props in performances.
The shop owner lit up when he saw Mother Zhou, running over with excitement.
Zhou Qi’an frowned. Why is this guy looking at my mom like he’s seeing his own mom?
To the shopkeeper, Mother Zhou really did look like salvation. Thanks to her, he’d cleared out years of overstocked inventory in a single day.
“M-Mom—I mean, dear ma’am…” The owner had even brought in a new batch of stock just for her. Grinning, he said, “Please continue supporting my business!”
Mother Zhou reached out without hesitation. “I want the receipts from all the rice cooker buyers yesterday.”
The shopkeeper, eager to please his VIP, respectfully presented them with both hands, placing them into her slim palm.
Zhou Qi’an shook his head. The economy in this ghost town was tragic—even the spirits were poor and had no dignity.
Mother Zhou deftly pulled out twelve receipts.
Based on the thief’s jump from the bus and the college student following the trail of blood through the city, they’d narrowed the timeframe down pretty well.
One of the twelve buyers must have taken home the rice cooker with the hidden pocket watch.
“Why are there so many?” Twin-tail girl groaned.
How could twelve people come buy rice cookers in such a short time? This instance is clearly trying to kill us with busywork.
Zhou Qi’an didn’t mind. After all, the bus ride had required picking a killer out of a dozen suspects too.
Not long after the receipts were pulled out, a system notification chimed:
“Congratulations, you’ve triggered ‘Clock Chime’ Act Three: [The Pocket Watch].”
“Plot summary and character roles have been assigned. Please check your information.”
A very smooth start. Zhou Qi’an waited to receive his role.
【Story Background】
A pocket watch hastily hidden inside a rice cooker by a thief draws attention from many factions. In the search for this unusual watch, a terrifying bloodbath is unleashed.【Your story: You’re dead.】
Zhou Qi’an: “?”
…
He was silent for over thirty seconds before he finally processed it.
Assigning a role like this—how polite of you, Drama King.
You write such trash and then kill off the best actor? No wonder it’s garbage.
Expression deadpan, Zhou Qi’an kept reading:
【Today, you set out specifically to find the pocket watch. Along the way, you met a group of others also searching for it. Ironically, as a fortune teller, you failed to predict your own bloody end.】
Zhou Qi’an immediately glanced around at the others—starting with Buzz Cut Guy. The latter had been injured since yesterday and hadn’t recovered even after using healing items. Anyone in a weakened state was more likely to leak emotion.
Buzz Cut looked visibly flustered.
Zhou Qi’an had his answer: He died too.
Then he looked at the pale college student. Instant conclusion: Dead.
Next, his eyes landed on Twin-tail girl, who let out a mocking laugh after reading her script. Zhou Qi’an nodded: Also dead.
Looking around, it seemed like most people had drawn the same plot route: they were all corpses.
Perfect.
At least he wasn’t being singled out this time. Zhou Qi’an’s smile returned. “Aha.”
That short, creepy laugh made everyone glance over with complicated expressions.
Yep. He’s definitely unwell.
__
Author’s note:
Zhou Qi’an: I’m not mentally ill.
Mother Zhou: Of course not.
Boss: I see nothing wrong.
Shen Zhiyi: Kind people tend to carry heavier burdens.
College Student: …
