After going through the strict application processes, the two men had spent most of the day.
Zhou Qi’an pressed his temples after getting in the car.
The car window beside him was half-down. Shen Zhiyi looked out, facing the faint mist covering the city, lost in thought.
Just as Zhou Qi’an was about to speak, he suddenly noticed the driver had changed.
The driver was a young man who smiled and said, “Mr. Ying specifically instructed me to ask you for dancing tips on the way.”
Dancing?
Zhou Qi’an didn’t understand.
Shen Zhiyi calmly reminded him: “He probably means the ritual dance.”
“…” Zhou Qi’an paused, finally realizing, and looked at the driver with great sympathy: “Did you dance wildly at a company annual party?”
Were there really such bizarre people in the world?
The young man’s fingernails almost dug into the steering wheel, and he floored the gas pedal, accelerating, fully conveying the indignation in his heart.
They were all 250 dances, so no one should laugh at anyone else.
The atmosphere in the car quieted down. From leaving the instance to now, being busy, Zhou Qi’an finally had time to check his phone.
Several unread messages, all from the college student, asking daily if he had safely exited the instance.
It was 7:30 PM, and Zhou Qi’an was a bit hungry, so he decided to invite the college student out for dinner.
[Remember to bring my family’s oil.]
Zhou Qi’an looked at Shen Zhiyi again: “You…”
Before he could finish, Shen Zhiyi spoke first, the answer unsurprising: “Let’s eat together.”
Forty minutes later, the three of them sat in a private dining room at a high-end hotel.
The college student insisted on paying. Zhou Qi’an looked at the menu; judging by the prices, a meal for three could easily cost more than half a month’s salary.
“Tsk.” Rich people.
After ordering two dishes, Zhou Qi’an looked at the college student: “Alright, what happened?”
He had only been in the instance for a few days; the other party shouldn’t have been so anxious as to message him daily.
The college student typed furiously, and soon Zhou Qi’an received a long string of private messages from the forum:
[The boss wants us to go back to work early. I tried to change the subject…]
The content was all about how, due to his connections, he successfully became forum friends with his boss, and they even discussed game-related matters.
At first, Zhou Qi’an was unfazed, until he read further and his gaze shifted slightly.
[…We talked about skills, and the boss actually said he had no skills!]
[He doesn’t even have an evolution system! His panel only shows a player account.]
[I’ve already confirmed this.]
Zhou Qi’an was silent for a few seconds, then suddenly placed his phone in front of Shen Zhiyi: “What do you think?”
Shen Zhiyi’s expression remained unchanged, but his gaze was a little unnatural.
Zhou Qi’an stared intently at the man beside him.
Actually, Shen Zhiyi had never bothered to genuinely disguise himself in front of him. From the beginning, various anomalies had been apparent, but with his mother and boss setting a precedent, he hadn’t found it too strange.
But now, it was a bit inexplicable.
Based on his understanding of Shen Zhiyi, if the panel was empty, the latter would certainly say with a mysterious expression that he had no skills, that those were things only weaklings needed, like knowledge.
Why lie about skills? And even fabricate a whale species evolution path.
“Unless…”
Zhou Qi’an narrowed his eyes.
Unless he simply didn’t know the true situation of humans affected by that great fog who turned into monsters and entered the game. This was just a judgment based on some kind of experience, believing that every player would have skills and an evolution path.
Could it be that Shen Zhiyi’s strangeness had nothing to do with that great fog tragedy?
Thousands of thoughts flashed through his mind in just a few seconds.
The college student sensed the atmosphere turning serious and cautiously sent Zhou Qi’an another private message: [Brother Zhou, the boss is too pitiful. No skills, no evolution. If he continues like this, he’ll be eliminated by the game sooner or later.]
Zhou Qi’an’s finger twitched. He thought to himself, don’t worry for a second, even if you evolve to max level, you won’t be able to twist a monster’s head off.
Ignoring the college student, he scrolled back to the previous message about the boss having no skills and asked Shen Zhiyi again: “What do you think?”
It took a full half minute for Shen Zhiyi to finally say, “It is a bit strange.”
The amount of information received today was already sufficient, so Zhou Qi’an didn’t press further and focused on eating.
Shen Zhiyi sighed softly.
Concealing the truth was actually one of the agreements they had made.
Being forced to absorb a massive amount of complex information in a state of revival would have unknown effects on growth, and one could easily revert to old habits if not careful.
Of course, Shen Zhiyi had more selfish reasons.
He always kept a predator’s evolution path open for Zhou Qi’an, and several times wanted to forcefully intervene to make him take it, but then worried that if Zhou Qi’an knew everything in the future, he would definitely spit at him.
“Ptooey.”
Shen Zhiyi’s hand trembled, and the tea in his cup spilled.
Looking again, it turned out Zhou Qi’an was spitting out a stubborn fishbone.
“I’m full.” Zhou Qi’an turned to the college student, who was still sympathizing with the capitalist: “Remember to pay the bill.”
Based on the distance, the college student drove Zhou Qi’an home first.
Zhou Qi’an: “You have a car?”
The college student opened the car door, inviting them to sit in first: “I started school late.”
Realizing the logic was flawed, he added: “So I got my driver’s license relatively early.”
“…” What does that have to do with you having a car?
Zhou Qi’an looked at the car model; it had to be at least a million.
“The stuff’s in the trunk,” the college student said, referring to the gasoline. Since it was game-related, he could only mention it very carefully.
Dinner took some time, perfectly avoiding rush hour. In less than thirty minutes, the car arduously turned into an old, dilapidated residential area.
After coming to a stop, Zhou Qi’an suddenly lowered the car window and leaned out to look.
“Not good, my mom’s been let out.” There were clothes drying on the balcony.
The college student wondered, “Huh?” Isn’t it a good thing that Auntie was released?
No, when was Auntie arrested?!
No one would answer his questions. Zhou Qi’an hurriedly got out of the car, preparing to go up with the oil drum.
Shen Zhiyi suddenly appeared behind him, making no sound as he walked. When Zhou Qi’an turned around, they almost collided. The latter easily steadied Zhou Qi’an, and his voice softly spoke: “Looks quite heavy. Let me help you carry it up.”
“No need, it’s just a few steps,” Zhou Qi’an instantly refused.
Before, he didn’t have such a strong awareness, but subconsciously he just didn’t want his mother and his boss to meet.
After entering the game, he realized that monsters were very fond of devouring their own kind, and a chill of fear ran down Zhou Qi’an’s spine.
While refusing, a thought quickly flashed in his eyes.
Speaking of monsters devouring each other, in the Jinxiong Building instance, the boss showed obvious appetite towards Mu Tianbai, and he himself had to intervene to smooth things over.
Could it be that Mu Tianbai was also a monster? Otherwise, why didn’t the boss show any abnormality when he saw other players?
There was more than one strange thing.
As an accomplice in the Jinxiong Building explosion, Mu Tianbai said he wanted to do business together, but it had been almost half a month since they left the game, and the other party had never contacted him again, which made no sense at all.
The more he thought, the more thoughts spiraled, until Shen Zhiyi had to gently clap his hand to bring his attention back.
“Are you really sure you don’t need my help carrying it?”
Under Shen Zhiyi’s gaze, Zhou Qi’an shook his head and turned to go upstairs.
The unit door closed, and the ever-present gaze was cut off by the iron gate.
After climbing the last flight of stairs, Zhou Qi’an looked up and saw that his front door was open. A familiar figure stood in the hallway, casting a twisted shadow.
He took a deep breath. This hearing was definitely stronger than Miss Shen’s monkey ears.
He raised the portable oil drum high: “Your oil has arrived.”
Mother Zhou’s expression remained grim.
The first thing she did after being released was to check the household register. Her good son was indeed still unmarried. It seemed that during her absence, he hadn’t done anything proper.
Knowing what his mother was about to say, Zhou Qi’an put down the oil drum and preempted her before any催婚 (marriage-urging) remarks could emerge—
“Mom, why did you end up in the police station?!”
Mother Zhou’s pale lips moved.
Not giving her a chance to speak, Zhou Qi’an continued to wail: “From now on, my children, my children’s children, won’t be able to pass civil service exams… Three generations, three generations!”
Since that’s the case, let the lineage end with me.
The window wasn’t closed, and his voice easily drifted down. The college student, who was backing up the car, almost accidentally stepped on the accelerator.
Shen Zhiyi could already imagine Zhou Qi’an’s exaggerated facial expressions and gestures at that moment, and couldn’t help but chuckle as he looked out the window.
A crying worker won’t have too bad luck.
Zhou Qi’an’s “whale-spout” tears, coupled with his wailing and threats of self-harm, successfully diverted Mother Zhou’s attention from nagging about marriage.
“I already said I didn’t want to be DINKs, otherwise I wouldn’t have rejected my… my bao [pot, possibly a pet name for a potential partner]. Why did you have to go tomb raiding?”
The Chinese obsession with civil service exams was deeply ingrained. In the end, mother and son embraced, crying their eyes out. Due to their excellent physical condition, they cried until dinner.
The evening felt as if nothing had happened.
Zhou’an’s mother, as usual, cooked porridge and gently placed it on the table: “Come, eat quickly. You’ve lost weight recently.”
Zhou Qi’an happily ate the health-preserving porridge, thinking to himself that ever since he was bound to the holy artifact, his mother’s rationality was increasing day by day when interacting with him.
She wasn’t so easy to fool before.
After dinner, Zhou Qi’an locked himself in his room under the pretense of rushing a proposal.
He impatiently logged onto the forum. After several unsuccessful keyword searches, Zhou Qi’an suddenly wiped away a fake tear from his eye: “I really cried myself silly.”
With Ying Yu, the walking encyclopedia, why bother painstakingly flipping through posts?
Zhou Qi’an immediately sent him a private message: [Mr. Ying, excuse me. Are there any illusionary items that can change a person’s appearance, height, and other features for a long time?]
About five minutes later, he received Ying Yu’s reply: [Specific time frame.]
Zhou Qi’an thought for a moment: [Two days minimum.]
Ying Yu: [Doesn’t exist.]
After a while, he added: [Within currently known scope, illusionary items last no longer than twenty minutes.]
“Did I get it wrong…”
Putting down his phone, Zhou Qi’an frowned. Not long ago, he had a bold guess: could Mu Tianbai and Shen Zhiyi be the same person?
The priest’s words about the shadow being alive kept lingering in his mind.
Mu Tianbai could manipulate shadows, and in this instance, a similar shadow had helped him in the church.
The most likely person to do this was Shen Zhiyi.
But if there were no special illusionary items, this conjecture couldn’t hold true, as they were two completely different appearances and voices.
Zhou Qi’an pursed his lips but didn’t immediately dismiss his suspicion.
He pondered for a moment, then sent a private message to Mu Tianbai: [Didn’t we say we’d do business related to holy artifacts together? Let’s meet.]
After sending it, Zhou Qi’an smiled.
Under normal circumstances, Mu Tianbai would definitely respond. If the message fell on deaf ears, then there was still something fishy going on.
He had done what he needed to do.
After logging out of the forum, Zhou Qi’an flopped backward onto the bed, limbs splayed, eyes vacant: “Monsters… power…”
Three years ago, the game extensively opened anchor points in Anyang District, and fog covered the entire city. This should have been the fuse; the fog completely caused those hidden monsters to lose control.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember many details about that bloodbath, but he could confirm that his severe injury and subsequent hospitalization were due to those mutated traitors.
“My injury isn’t strange.” At that time, monsters were killing indiscriminately, and casualties were countless throughout the city. What was strange was what happened to his mother and his boss.
As early as the first instance, Zhou Qi’an could confirm that his own mother could smuggle into instances, which meant that she most likely had direct access to the new world. The college student’s words further confirmed this point. In a sense, his mother and his boss were already fully evolved humans.
It’s just that this evolution had a kind of incomplete, brutal beauty.
Commonly known as being brainless, very easy to lose self-control.
Thinking of this, Zhou Qi’an couldn’t help but slowly touch his own heart.
[Chef’s Heart of Affection], [Five-star Fish Eye]. The power of monsters could indeed be absorbed by humans, but mere clumsy grafting definitely wouldn’t work, and the absorbable items themselves were extremely rare.
“More important than the truth is revenge.”
A bunch of idiots who couldn’t clear instances properly, for such a illusory possibility, caused a bloody tragedy.
His unfocused gaze gradually turned cold, and Zhou Qi’an’s fingers clenched. No matter how many people survived from that time, hidden there, he would make them repay a hundredfold.
After several days of restless sleep in the instance, Zhou Qi’an peacefully fell asleep while making a solemn vow.
What one thinks about during the day, comes in dreams at night.
The entire world was shrouded in a blood mist. Outside, there were cries and desperate pleas for help everywhere.
His subconscious told him that this was the nightmare from three years ago.
For three years, Zhou Qi’an had dreamed of such scenes countless times, all without exception themed around blood and slaughter.
Zhou Qi’an was already skilled at lucid dreaming. Just as he was trying to break free from the nightmare, he suddenly found himself standing in a blood-red corridor.
This was a scene he had never encountered before.
A few meters in front of him, a disheveled woman was lying next to a black trash can.
The woman was covered in wounds, her chest barely rising and falling, clearly having reached the last moments of her life. Broken lunchboxes were scattered around her.
In the blood mist, an inexplicable sense of familiarity drew Zhou Qi’an, making him instinctively take a step towards the “corpse,” trying to make out the woman’s face.
The moment he bent down, the woman’s eyes suddenly opened.
Her pupils seemed to have melted, the murky vitreous humor staring straight at Zhou Qi’an.
He sharply recoiled, his heart pounding violently. Zhou Qi’an’s throat constricted, and he incredulously called out, “Mom?”
The woman did not react.
Soon, Zhou Qi’an saw his boss in a pool of blood to one side.
Just as he tried to get closer, the next second, the world spun, and the view changed.
His mother and his boss were furiously gnawing on something resembling a withered tree branch. It was slightly yellowish-brown, somewhat like meat, yet its texture also resembled fungi. The blood mist added a filter, making everything appear very hazy.
The hideous wounds on their bodies were slowly healing, but the woman’s smooth hair began to curl, and the veins on her neck bulged.
The mist had a faint corrosive quality, and Zhou Qi’an’s eyes soon felt uncomfortable. Despite this, he still desperately tried to see through it all.
However, even though his eyes were wide open, almost bleeding, it was still useless.
Until a strong stinging sensation came, and the dream ended abruptly.
Sunlight streamed through the curtains, illuminating only a small patch of floor tiles.
Zhou Qi’an almost shot up from the bed, startled, dizzy, and fell back down.
The sound of the morning news came from the living room.
“To celebrate the successful conclusion of the 35th Trade Conference, it has been approved that XX month XX day will be designated as a public holiday annually, starting from the 23rd of tomorrow. The arrangements for this holiday are as follows…”
Zhou Qi’an: “…”
Damn it, a dream within a dream.
It wasn’t until his mother pushed the door open, excitedly saying, “Did you hear? Holiday! You can go on a blind date this morning.”
Zhou Qi’an instantly sobered up.
Good, now he could confirm it wasn’t a dream.
What the hell was this conference? It had been held 35 times, and they finally remembered to give a holiday?
This holiday was for a total of four days, with no compensatory days off. It conveniently connected to a weekend, allowing for about a week of rest.
However, unlike typical golden holidays, highway travel was not toll-free during this period, and there were no measures to encourage travel. The news even mentioned that the weather had been unstable recently, with frequent delays for planes and trains, urging residents not to travel unless necessary.
In the work group, the boss reluctantly forwarded the holiday notice.
And coldly added a sentence: Nowadays, even a trivial matter requires a holiday.
Zhou Qi’an chuckled.
One would think this six-day holiday was for his “first seven” (a funeral custom).
Compared to the ruthless boss, the big boss was more generous, making a rare appearance in the group chat: Everyone, please come to the company next Monday.
Although there were no emojis, and the tone was cold, it felt warm in his heart.
His phone constantly popped up fog warnings, again reminding him to avoid going out if possible. This must have been the real reason for the holiday. Zhou Qi’an considered whether to use the holiday to visit an instance.
Mother Zhou was still chattering about blind dates, her hair even more vibrant than her face.
Zhou Qi’an looked at her, unable to help but recall the scene from his dream.
The architectural layout in the dream was familiar to Zhou Qi’an; it was the company. And that lunchbox—his mother occasionally brought him late-night meals when he worked overtime.
But after her mutation, it was good that his old mother wasn’t chasing him with an axe, let alone delivering warm meals.
“Was it really a dream…”
Or, a scene that had actually happened.
“Could it be that when the entire city fell three years ago, I was still working overtime at the company…”
Zhou Qi’an’s expression suddenly turned cold.
This damn world, it should just be destroyed.
Author’s Note:
Zhou Qi’an: Was I working overtime when the bloodbath happened? Was I working overtime?! Was I really working overtime?!
