"I hit the jackpot! I hit the jackpot!"
Late at night, on the Plague Plain, a thick fog churned.
A young man wore silver-white light armor, carrying an ancient horse lantern in his hand.
The light from the horse lantern dispersed the surrounding fog, illuminating his excited face.
"The Book of the Dead! The key wondrous item that can upgrade a Tier Three Undead Element soldier type to Tier Four! The last one sold on the trading house went for 6.24 million!"
He clutched the ancient, pitch-black tome in his hand and said excitedly, "It was worth sacrificing all my soldier types to get here. After this score, I can retire!"
"Weiwei, wait for me. I’ll have the money to marry you soon."
"Mom, hang in there. In a couple of days, I’ll schedule your surgery with Dr. Liu."
Just then, the surrounding fog suddenly began to churn without any warning.
It was as if numerous dark figures were swimming through the fog. The light from his horse lantern was being suppressed, its radius shrinking smaller and smaller.
’It couldn’t be one of *those* things, could it...’
The young man’s face turned deathly pale in an instant, and a bone-deep chill shot up his spine.
SQUELCH... SQUELCH...
A strange footstep echoed in his ears, like some behemoth was treading on rotting flesh as it slowly approached.
With every muffled thud, the fear in the young man’s heart grew.
The light from his horse lantern rapidly contracted, shrinking from ten meters to five, then to three, until finally, only a tiny, faint glow of less than half a meter remained.
The fog was like an invisible giant hand enveloping him, and the feeling of suffocation washed over him again and again.
"AHHH!!!"
The fear in his heart finally exploded, and he turned and fled backward with reckless abandon.
He had only taken two steps before he slammed into something cold and soft.
When he stiffly raised his head, his face had turned a deathly, ashen white, his pupils wide like a dead fish’s eyes.
"No... Don’t kill me... I don’t want to die..."
SPLAT!
A tearing sound came from the darkness, followed by a scalp-numbing chewing noise. The area soon fell silent.
In the dead of night in Jiang City, a young man shot up in his bed.
Extreme fear lingered on his face, his pupils trembling slightly as if he had just woken from a terrible nightmare.
"Maybe what they said on the forums is fake," he muttered to himself with a sliver of wishful thinking, curling up under his covers. "It’s just a game, how could you actually die...?"
DRIP... DRIP...
The sound of dripping water from the bathroom was exceptionally clear in the dead of night. Time ticked by, second by second.
"It’s been two hours, and I’m fine!"
The young man leaped out of bed, excitedly checking his body. "Great! Those forum posts really were fake!"
"How dare they lie to me! Just watch, I’ll expose you rumor-mongers!"
As he said this, he prepared to open his phone and log into the forum.
But just then, a piercing pain shot through every part of his body.
Through his bedroom mirror, he saw terrifying teeth marks appearing on his body out of thin air.
It was as if an invisible mouth was unhurriedly chewing on his flesh and blood.
His skin tore, and the sound of his bones snapping echoed continuously. It was as if he were being held in the jaws of a transparent beast.
SPLURT! SPLURT SPLURT!!
Blood splattered, accompanied by a blood-curdling scream.
Bursts of thick fog erupted from his body, instantly filling the entire room!
The fog spread rapidly, soon covering the entire residential building, which was over twenty stories tall.
Countless people were enveloped by the fog in their sleep.
And in the depths of this fog, a massive silhouette was slowly taking shape.
...
...
WEE-OOO—WEE-OOO—!
The piercing sound of sirens cut through the 5 a.m. night sky of Jiang City.
Shen Xing sat in his wheelchair, frowning slightly as he watched the flashing red and blue lights on the street outside his window.
’What’s been going on in Jiang City lately? Sirens from police cars and fire trucks are going off every day. It never used to be this frequent.’
He opened his phone and did a search online.
A Residential Building in Jiang City Engulfed in Thick Smoke, Suspected Pipeline Leak. Fire Department en Route.
Beast Attack Reported in Lotus Lake Park, Relevant Departments Have Resolved the Issue.
Shocking! Unidentified Fog Appears in Multiple Locations. Meteorology Experts Say It May Be Related to Recent Abnormal Temperatures.
Some of these news reports were real, some were fake, but all were just brief notices of a few lines.
Even the so-called "on-site photos" that were occasionally attached were blurry, as if they had been deliberately altered.
GRUMBLE...
A protest from his stomach interrupted his thoughts.
Shen Xing pushed his wheelchair, skillfully gliding out of his bedroom and into the kitchen. He grabbed some frozen dumplings from the fridge and tossed them into the microwave.
BUZZ~ His phone vibrated again.
He opened it to see messages popping up in a four-person group chat named [Confucian Elegance and Ease] on the Green Bubble chat app.
Loves Playing with Coriander: "Hey guys, did you all get the glasses I sent you?"
The other two people in the group chat replied that they had. Shen Xing glanced at the package on his living room table and also replied with a "Yeah."
Loves Playing with Coriander: "They’re special gaming glasses. They say you can enter a game just by putting them on. It boasts 99.999% realism."
"The game is still in closed beta right now. I had to pull a lot of strings to get four spots, so don’t let my effort go to waste."
Another person, with an avatar of a boy in a hat and the username ’Lend Alone for Ten Thousand Generations’, said: "Qin Lang, are you bullshitting? 99.999%? Why not just say the game is coming to life?"
Another user, with a pink rabbit avatar named ’I Eat and Eat’, chimed in: "Yeah, there isn’t even one stable VR game in the whole world right now. You didn’t get scammed, did you?"
Loves Playing with Coriander explained: "It’s real! I thought it was impossible at first, too, but I went in to try it out last night, and the feeling is absolutely real!"
"When players first enter the game, they spawn in a small village with a Campfire in the center."
"The outside is filled with a thick Fog. This Fog is dangerous, and there are a lot of monsters roaming around, so you can’t just step into it casually."
"We need to upgrade the Campfire to expand the village’s area and upgrade more buildings."
"Oh, right, the system also has you randomly select a Soldier Type."
"I randomly got a common 1-star Half-Elf. It looks like a Hobbit and can even talk to me."
Hearing his vivid description, the others in the group chat began to have their doubts assuaged.
Lend Alone for Ten Thousand Generations: "If there’s really a game this realistic, then I’ve gotta give it a shot."
"When it goes into open beta, it’ll definitely be a global sensation."
"I’ll start streaming to rake in the cash. Maybe I can even pay off my debts with this game."
I Eat and Eat: "Sounds interesting. I’ll give it a try too."
Loves Playing with Coriander asked: "What about you, Shen Xing? Are you going to play?"
"In a game this realistic, maybe you can experience the feeling of standing up again."
The group chat fell silent for a moment.
Shen Xing also lowered his head, looking at his atrophied legs with a bitter smile.
A few years ago, he was just a naive college grad fresh out of school. Unable to find a job, he signed up to be a food delivery driver.
But one rainy night, a Dayun N6 truck with failing brakes ran him over like he was a speed bump.
The good news was, he survived.
The bad news was, his legs were ruined.
The good news was, they found the driver responsible.
The bad news was, the driver had no insurance.
Young, with no savings and no parents, his life was basically over.
For all these years, he had been scraping by on government disability benefits, his entire world confined to this rented room of less than thirty square meters.
’But what else can I do but live? It’s not like I can just jump, right?’
Just then, Coriander sent another message: "Oh yeah, the game has extremely high freedom. The soldier types in it are just like real people."
"I heard you can also recruit some really beautiful soldier types, like Kemonomimi, Half-Elves, Succubi, and stuff."
Seeing this message, Shen Xing scoffed, then opened his phone to reply.
Starfire: "I’m in. A game with this much depth is a must-play!"
Lend Alone for Ten Thousand Generations: "!!! For real, bro?"
I Eat and Eat: "Holy shit! Are there any six-foot-three, hairy Beastmen with six-packs? Get this old lady ten of ’em!"
The three of them: "..."
"Alright, enough messing around. You guys go in and experience it for yourselves."
Coriander sent one last message: "Oh, one more thing. This game is very difficult, and it’s dangerous."
"I can’t say exactly how it’s dangerous, but when you enter the game, the intro cutscene has a line of red text as a warning."
Hearing this, the other three sent a series of speechless emoji, expressing their disbelief that a mere game could be that dangerous.
Shen Xing closed his phone and wheeled himself to the dining table.
He tore open the cardboard package, revealing a pair of black, frameless glasses. They looked unremarkable, completely lacking any feel of high technology.
’These are the gaming glasses Qin Lang was talking about? Why do they seem so sketchy?’
He picked up the glasses, wheeled himself into the bedroom, and examined them closely.
The more he looked, the more he felt like this thing was a scam and that it wasn’t worth wasting his time trying it.
But then he thought of the 99.999% realism Qin Lang mentioned, glanced down at his own legs, and a sense of longing rose in his heart.
Although he told himself every day to live optimistically—he’d only lost his legs, not his life—
the years spent in this cramped apartment, waking up only to stare blankly at the ceiling, had steeped him in a despair that felt bone-deep.
Even if... even if it was just in a game, he wanted to stand up again.
Taking a deep breath, Shen Xing slowly put on the glasses.
Instantly, a sharp pain shot through his temples, as if he’d been pricked by two extremely fine needles!
Immediately after, the scene before his eyes changed.
—The seal on an ancient, dust-covered land has loosened. A dense fog pervades the world.
Monsters run rampant, the earth decays, and countless towns and cities are submerged in the thick fog.
Pioneers, carrying horse lanterns and raising their longswords high, hack through the countless pale arms reaching from the fog and light the first campfire in the wilderness.
By this faint flame, civilization preserved its last fire seed. One by one, great cities and towns rose from within the fog.
[The celestial spheres converge, the rifts open wide, and the ancient curse descends once more.]
[The Mist Reincarnation begins anew. Two worlds are about to face the same fate.]
[Pioneer, welcome to the Land of Mist.]
When the epic opening scenes faded away, Shen Xing found himself in a dilapidated village.
There were a few low, dilapidated black wooden huts. A campfire burned in the center of the village, and thick fog churned at the edge of the firelight...
Shen Xing’s jaw dropped, stunned by the incredibly detailed scene before him. It took him a long moment to come back to his senses.
"This game... it’s too real!"
And when, with a sliver of hope, he slowly looked down...
His withered legs were still numb, and he was sitting in a simple wooden wheelchair.
"Son of a bitch!"