— So, boss, who do you want to choose?
Shan Bei stood in his starter gear inside the game's eerie beginner interface—
a pitch-black room that looked like the scene of a murder.
A hole in the roof served as a skylight. Dim moonlight filtered through it, illuminating a row of towering statues and candle stands thick with cobwebs.
He was holding a candle.
Whenever he brought it close to one of the statues, that particular figure would briefly light up.
Choosing which deity to worship was simple enough. All he had to do was light the corresponding candle stand.
Unfortunately, the choice wasn't his to make.
This wasn't his account.
Shan Bei was an independent game booster. Whenever he had no classes, he picked up random jobs online to earn some pocket money.
A while ago, when he saw that Rose Island was about to launch, he'd made a post on the game's built-in forum:
[BOOSTING SERVICES — ANY GRIND, ANY JOB]
The post sat there for three days.
Views: 0.
Other boosters were drowning in orders, their schedules packed so tightly they couldn't squeeze in another client.
Shan Bei hadn't gotten a single one.
Then tonight, right before the servers opened, a customer had finally appeared.
Except there was something a little strange about this particular customer.
Every field in his profile was nothing but asterisks. His avatar was pure white. The only remotely human thing about the account was the smiling emoticon he used as his username.
And he didn't actually want any boosting done.
All he wanted was for Shan Bei to create an account for him.
Definitely Not Scallop: Boss... are you planning to use my identity information?
^ ^: Of course not. I'll send you the information.
Definitely Not Scallop: Then are you trying to grab a rare player ID number?
^ ^: Not particularly interested.
Oh, great.
Shan Bei's heart sank.
I've found a scammer.
Rose Island didn't restrict registration. Anyone could create an account and enter the game whenever they wanted.
It took practically no effort.
What sane person would pay someone else to do it for them?
After thinking for a moment, Shan Bei typed:
Boss, I'm a broke student. There's really nothing here worth scamming.
No reply came.
A moment later, his forum account made a cheerful cha-ching.
Someone had transferred him 3,000 yuan.
The sender's surname was Mi.
The note read:
Taking the job or not?
Shan Bei stared at the screen.
“...”
Taking it.
You're my dad now.
In a market where a full week of grinding usually earned eight hundred, getting three thousand just to create an account was downright absurd.
Had some spoiled rich kid wandered in with so much money he needed help getting rid of it?
Shan Bei was deeply concerned that he had stumbled into some elaborate pig-butchering scam.
His body, however, was considerably less principled.
He put on his neural headset and logged into the game immediately.
And as though the strange customer could actually see him, the registration information arrived at the exact instant he logged in.
That was when Shan Bei saw the boss's name.
Mi Xiaobai.
******
The account creation process went perfectly smoothly.
Right up until the game asked him to choose a deity.
The sensory synchronization in this full-dive game was absurdly advanced. It recreated physical sensation almost perfectly.
Rainwater dripped through the skylight.
When a cold drop slipped down Shan Bei's collar, goosebumps instantly rose across his skin.
There was practically no difference from reality.
Holding the flashy, multicolored phone the game had automatically issued him, Shan Bei sent:
Boss, who do you want to choose?
Then he found a dry corner and crouched there, quietly waiting for a response.
He hadn't officially entered the game world yet, so the phone could still connect to the built-in forum.
His signal showed full bars.
The reply should have come almost immediately.
Instead, his outgoing message spun for several seconds.
Then a red exclamation mark suddenly appeared beside it.
[Error: Contact does not exist.]
Shan Bei stared.
“?”
The atmosphere in this game was way too convincing.
The beginner room was as silent as a haunted house.
Rainwater dripped endlessly from the ceiling.
Half-seen stone statues loomed over him from the darkness in oppressive silence...
Come on, don't do this to me.
Shan Bei shrank farther into the corner.
He found that blank white avatar and started hammering out messages.
Definitely Not Scallop: Boss, you still there?
Definitely Not Scallop: Boss, who are we choosing?
Definitely Not Scallop: Boss please, say something. I'm scared over here.
All three messages spun for several seconds.
Then three red exclamation marks appeared.
Once again, the system gave him that ghost-story-worthy message:
[Error: Contact does not exist.]
Shan Bei:
“...”
After several failed attempts, the more he thought about it, the more frightened he became.
At that point, manners stopped mattering.
He tapped the white avatar and selected Voice Call.
Even the electronic static coming through the phone sounded disturbingly realistic.
The signal, however, seemed unstable.
The connection broke in and out, punctuated by strange bursts of noise.
Between them, a synthetic voice repeatedly announced:
“Transferring to 1128.”
“Transferring to 2700.”
“Transferring to 184.”
“Transferring to 03.”
“Transferring to 1019.”
...
By the time it finished bouncing him around, Shan Bei felt half-dead himself.
Just as he was about to hang up and force-quit the game, the ghostly transfer messages abruptly stopped.
Beep—
The call connected.
“Hello?”
The voice from the other end drifted into the room together with the wind outside the skylight.
“Who is this?”
If voices came in different grades of attractiveness, then Shan Bei's boss was definitely handsome.
Not subtly handsome, either.
The kind of handsome that knew exactly what it was doing.
Unfortunately, that did absolutely nothing to make the room less creepy.
After all, the boss's bizarre disappearance was considerably more frightening than any ghost.
Still huddled in the corner, Shan Bei said:
“Boss, it's me, the booster. The call interface should show my forum avatar.”
“Ah.”
The person on the other end clearly had never paid attention to anyone's avatar in his life.
Whatever.
That wasn't important.
Shan Bei didn't want to spend one second longer in this place than necessary.
He went straight to the point.
“Boss, I'm at the deity selection stage. Once I choose one, the account is finished. Who do you want?”
His gaze swept across the row of statues.
For the first time, he worked up the courage to examine them properly.
There were twelve statues in total.
Only six were intact.
The remaining six were damaged to varying degrees. Their name tablets were blank, their candle stands broken.
Whenever he approached one, the system displayed:
[Ghost Deity — Cannot Be Worshipped]
“Boss, the interface says there are two types of deities. Six Human Deities and six Ghost Deities. At the beginner stage, we can only choose from the Human Deities. There's Lady Lu, the Martial God—”
Shan Bei walked down the row with his candle, preparing to read off all six names.
The boss interrupted him.
“Yu Qing.”
Shan Bei blinked.
“Huh?”
There seemed to be a naturally irreverent smile woven into the man's voice as he repeated the name.
“Yu Qing.”
It took Shan Bei a moment to make the connection.
“Oh. Boss, you mean Painted Skin?”
“Him.”
Shan Bei had just finished inspecting all six intact statues.
Painted Skin wasn't among them.
“Uh... Boss, Painted Skin is a Ghost Deity. He can't be worshipped right now. Maybe he'll unlock once the world storyline progresses, or after you reach a higher level?”
Even as he spoke, however, his hands weren't idle.
Holding up the candle, he experimentally tried lighting each of the broken candle stands.
The very next second, he learned the price of touching things he shouldn't.
A line of pale blue text suddenly appeared before his eyes.
[Error Code: 00986716]
[Parsing...]
[Resetting...]
[Re-logging Character...]
Two beeps sounded through the voice call.
Then it disconnected.
Darkness and dead silence swallowed the room instantly.
Shan Bei:
“...”
Two seconds later, the eerie chamber reappeared around him.
Cold blue moonlight still streamed through the skylight.
Fine rain still trickled down the stone statues.
There was only one difference.
There was now one more deity available for worship.
Shan Bei slowly raised his candle.
One of the enormous statues—nearly two stories tall—had gone from broken to completely intact.
A deity sat in a high-backed armchair.
His head rested against one hand as he gazed down upon the tiny world beneath him.
A skeletal kitten stood on his shoulder.
His right hand lay across the armrest, exposed beneath the cold moonlight.
There was no flesh upon it.
Only stark white bone.
And at the tip of those long finger bones rested a blue-green butterfly, its wings thin as gauze.
A stone tablet stood before the chair.
Two characters were carved upon it.
Painted Skin.
Shan Bei stared.
“...”
Had he glitched the game?
Could he actually choose this?
He approached the candle stand again and tentatively touched his candle to it.
The wick ignited at once.
A luminous blue information panel appeared before him.
[Congratulations. You have chosen the deity you will worship and have now entered this cycle.]
Cycle Count: 1
Cycle Type: Human
Starting Assets: -470,000
Deity Worshipped: Painted Skin
Deity Type: Ghost Deity — Governs Calamity
Deity Bond: Locked
Deity Rumors: Locked
Favorability: Favorability with this deity cannot be increased
Blessing Power: None
[Penniless and drowning in debt, you encountered a divine miracle at the lowest point of your life and pledged it your devotion. The deity you chose is rarely worshipped. He has little talent for bestowing blessings and excels only at slaughter. But that is all right. Perhaps slaughter is exactly what you need. After all, fate guides every step.]
Shan Bei:
“...”
The information panel actually had several more pages.
There was plenty of detailed data farther down.
Shan Bei didn't read any of it.
His eyes kept returning to one line.
Starting Assets: -470,000
He was screwed.
He appeared to have rolled his boss the mother of all disastrous starts.
How was he supposed to explain this?
Was there still time to delete the account and make a new one?
Shan Bei pulled out his phone again, tapped the blank white avatar, and began typing.
Boss, I recommend deleting this account and starting over. Otherwise the early-game experience might be pretty awful. Don't worry, it won't take long. I already know the whole process now. Give me five min—
Before he could finish typing minutes, the white avatar suddenly flickered.
As though the other person had timed it perfectly, a message arrived.
Done? Thanks. I'll log in now.
Shan Bei:
“?”
Wait!
He deleted the half-written message in a single second and started typing at frantic speed.
Definitely Not Scallop: BOSS WAIT UNTIL I LOG OUT!!!
Definitely Not Scallop: THIS GAME IS PROBABLY HELD TOGETHER BY BUGS AND RAW CODE RIGHT NOW. IF YOU FORCE-LOGIN WHILE I'M STILL IN, SOMETHING COULD GET MESSED UP!
He immediately moved to log out.
Unfortunately, his boss was much faster.
Shan Bei's vision went black.
A line of text appeared in the darkness.
[Error Code 222999. Your account has been logged into from another location.]
[IP Address: ?????]
The instant Shan Bei was kicked offline, garbled code began streaming across the visor of his neural headset.
That really didn't reassure him.
He logged into his own game account and hurried straight to the Rose Island forum.
Sure enough, hundreds of posts filled the screen.
Half the titles had been censored into asterisks.
Every single one was cursing the technical team.
Opening any of them produced the same complaint:
forcing another player off an account by logging in tended to cause bugs.
The post pinned at the very top was from someone who had been helping a friend with the beginner quest. He had accidentally logged in while his friend was still online, only to be hit by a tidal wave of bugs.
He had ended up inside someone else's account.
Nearly a thousand people had replied.
At least a quarter of them claimed to have encountered the same thing.
Oh, no.
Shan Bei's stomach sank.
He had no idea whether his boss had run into the same problem.
And if he had...
there was no telling whose account he might have ended up logging into.
*******
One day later.
Wind lanterns had been hung throughout Wanchuan District.
Pedestrians hurried across the bridge, wrapped in raincoats as they ducked beneath the covered arcades lining the street.
On the top floor of the district's tallest luxury apartment building, Yu Qing stood before a broad office desk.
His handsome face carried the unmistakable air of a storm about to break.
Even the normally lively little skeleton had flattened itself against the edge of the desk and did not dare move.
Uncle Yuan, the housekeeper, cautiously poked his head through the doorway.
He studied the room for a moment before knocking and stepping inside.
“Sir... are you in a bad mood?”
Yu Qing didn't look up.
“You were here the entire time from last night until now? You never went out?”
“Of course, of course,” Uncle Yuan hurriedly replied. “You went out to take care of something. How could I possibly leave the place unattended?”
“No one came here?”
Uncle Yuan shook his head repeatedly.
“No, no. When you're not home, I don't open the door for anyone. Besides, no one visited last night.”
“The bedroom?”
Yu Qing finally asked.
“Other than me, who has gone inside?”
Uncle Yuan stared at him.
“?”
Good heavens. Who would dare?
His head nearly shook itself off his neck.
“No one, no one. Somewhere like your bedroom—without your permission, nobody would ever go in.”
The moment he finished speaking, he noticed that Yu Qing's expression had somehow become even darker.
Uncle Yuan swallowed.
“Wh-what happened?”
Yu Qing said:
“If no one except me has entered the bedroom since last night...”
He tapped his fingers against the tabletop.
“Then why did this appear here?”
Uncle Yuan lowered his eyes.
A sheet of paper lay on the broad desk, held in place beneath a fountain pen.
It was a pen no one else dared touch.
And paper no one else dared touch.
Yet now, written across that sheet in bold, sweeping handwriting utterly unlike Yu Qing's, was a single sentence.
It was a pleasure meeting you, even if it was only through a mirror.