Because the stage was filled with demons, the light blinded the eyes of men.
—Volume Three: Light and Evil
He brushed the dust from his suit, his gaze fixed suspiciously on the decorative patterns of the wooden door before him.
He had no idea where he was. The cramped corridor twisted and turned endlessly, the corners littered with puppet parts and garishly colored costumes. It felt just like a B-rate horror game from a decade ago.
The light was dim in most places, casting shadows so faint they seemed to defy the basic principles of optics.
Only the wooden door was brightly lit, as if every spotlight was focused here, deliberately engineered to capture the attention of any passerby.
A strange feeling crept over him. He tore his gaze from the door and tried to walk in another direction.
But he soon discovered that no matter which way he went, he always ended up back where he started—in front of this very door.
He was trapped in this bizarre building, with no choice but to open the door.
"What could be behind it? Surely they wouldn't go for a cheap jump scare, right?"
He muttered to himself and reached for the handle, turning it.
In an instant, the door vanished. He was enveloped in a blinding white light, his vision completely erased for a moment.
"Everyone's here. We were just waiting for you," an old woman's voice called out from nearby.
He struggled to squint his eyes open, and after a few attempts, his sight finally returned.
Before him was an immense stage, with countless golden threads and strings of beads hanging from the ceiling.
From the conical roof, red and blue banners drooped loosely, their edges trimmed with dark gold embroidery.
A long table stretched across the center of the stage, bathed in a chaotic mix of colored lights that nearly obscured its outline.
He could just make out five chairs placed around it, four of which were already occupied.
Indeed... they were just waiting for him.
He walked over and sat in the empty seat, covertly sizing up the others.
The one who had spoken was a thin, white woman in a stately, dark blue formal dress. She looked to be in her sixties or seventies, her face bearing a smile that was both kind and commanding.
"You can call me Cynthia. This is my seventh time," the woman said, her voice calm and steady, her diction perfectly clear, as if addressing a vast audience.
To the woman's right sat a young girl with a bob haircut. She had a delicate, serene face and was dressed in a student's short skirt, looking as though she was still in high school. Feeling his gaze, the girl gave a slightly awkward smile and said, "I'm He Hui. This is my fourth time."
"Hansen, fifth time," the man next to her grunted, shrugging by way of introduction. He was built like a bear, with powerful muscles and a thick beard, looking like someone not to be trifled with.
His mind raced, rapidly analyzing the information he'd received—the identities, backgrounds, and strengths of the people before him.
"My name is Dong Xiwen." He offered a friendly smile, carefully crafting a lie. "This is my third time."
But as soon as the words left his mouth, the expressions of the others turned mischievous. There was understanding, amusement, and even the cruel glint of a predator eyeing its prey.
His heart skipped a beat as a powerful sense of unease spread through his veins. Had he said something wrong? He had deliberately understated his experience to avoid giving too much away...
"Did you not count the tutorial instances?" a voice from the corner clicked its tongue. "There are three of them, don't forget."
'There are tutorial instances? Does that mean these people are all veterans who've cleared them? Then what does that make me? A rookie who's stumbled into a professional league match?'
He cursed inwardly before quickly correcting himself. "Ah, so you all count the tutorial missions. If we're including those, then this would be my sixth time."
Hansen let out a cold snort, clearly unconvinced. But no one else challenged him.
Maintaining a calm expression, he looked toward the person who had thrown him a lifeline.
The man was dressed in a spotless white shirt and wore a clown mask with an exaggerated grin, obscuring his face and age. Judging by his voice, however, he couldn't be very old.
So this person was a player too? From his getup, he'd assumed he was an NPC...
"What a coincidence, this is my sixth time too," the man in the clown mask said with a laugh, seeming to sense his confusion. "My name is Zhou Ke. I bought the mask in the store."
Zhou Ke, a homophone for "Joker." Clearly a fake name, wasn't it?
He scoffed internally but filed away a new piece of information: the Weird Game had a store where items could be purchased.
"By the way, just to be clear, the name I gave is fake." "Zhou Ke" suddenly turned to face the group, his voice slightly muffled by the mask. "I hope none of you will jump up and accuse me of lying about my name later on."
...
On the morning of March 31st, Qi Si was awakened by a phone call.
A staff member from the Funeral Enforcement Division informed him that the authorities in Jin City had leveled his family's ancestral grave and scattered his relatives' ashes for him.
Resolving a troublesome matter without having to lift a finger put Qi Si in a good mood. He got out of bed, pulled a cardboard box from the pile of clutter underneath, placed the Joy God Statue inside, and sealed it with tape.
He took the box, on which he'd written an address and an estimated delivery time, downstairs and slipped into a surveillance blind spot. After waiting all morning, he finally caught a child passing by.
The moment the little rascal heard Qi Si was willing to trade a piece of candy for an errand, he happily trotted off to deliver the dangerous package to the post office. When he returned to report, he even puffed out his chest and told Qi Si to call on him anytime for similar jobs.
Whether he would later praise Qi Si's taste after eating the chili-flavored mint candy or gain a new appreciation for the deviousness of adults, one could only guess.
Qi Si grabbed lunch at a random restaurant, bought some foil paper for folding joss money on his way, and then ambled back home.
He lay down on his bed and, riding the wave of post-lunch drowsiness, entered the game space. He sat in the high-backed chair and began to review his inventory of items.
[Rose Heart]. Extremely useful for lowering others' guard. Paired with the [Soul Contract] skill, it was quite convenient for tricking people into signing certain unfair agreements.
[Fate Pocket Watch]. It could tell time and rewind it. For now, it was his most powerful life-saving item, effectively lowering the cost of trial and error and providing a solid safety net.
[Poseidon's Scepter]. Hmm, it was quite heavy. Good for spearing and grilling fish.
As for using it to attack another being... Qi Si was confident that before he could even lift the fish-spear, he would be spotted and subdued.
All in all, for a player who had only cleared five instances, his item list was quite impressive—
He wasn't helpless in the face of a crisis and could even seize an opportunity or two to turn the tables and control the situation.
But it was also glaringly unbalanced.
Perhaps because he'd never wished to increase his physical strength, Qi Si had yet to encounter a single item that could effectively boost his combat prowess.
He was no different now than he had been in the Rose Manor: he'd go down with a single hit.
The only difference, perhaps, was that with the [Fate Pocket Watch], he could go down twice.
What concerned Qi Si more was that he had lost the [Evil God's Finger Bone] in Double Happiness Town, and Qi had said there was nothing he could do about it.
This meant that if he ran into the Puppet Master again, he certainly wouldn't be as lucky as he was in the Hopeless Sea. Not only did his opponent already know his weaknesses, but the [Puppet Thread] skill alone was enough to make him wary.
The only good news was that the Puppet Master didn't currently know he had lost the [Evil God's Finger Bone] and would surely not act rashly.
He could perhaps use this information gap to create a time advantage, clearing a few more instances to accumulate items and see if he could find a solution.
"If worse comes to worst, I'll just cut off my own pinky finger. The mechanics of that Puppet Thread seem pretty strict; it has to be wrapped around the little finger to work."
Qi Si stroked his chin, a malicious thought crossing his mind.
Of course, that was a last resort. As a specimen preparator, he was quite fond of his hands.
To the right of the high-backed chair, the Soul Leaf shimmered, transmitting everything that had happened during his absence into his mind as a series of images.
White Crow had prayed several more times, subtly hinting that she hoped "God" would perform a miracle in the real world, likely to test Qi's current strength.
Qi Si neither agreed nor refused. If a god answered every little request from his followers, it would be a rather undignified existence.
Meanwhile, Liu Yuhan had already cleared her sixth instance. It was a new one, and it looked like her point reserves were depleted.
This time, Qi Si transferred all ten thousand of her reward points directly to his own account, determined not to give her the chance to choose her own instance again.
After that, Qi Si spent two thousand points on a clown mask.
The thing had no special effects yet was absurdly expensive, likely a case of price gouging based on high demand.
His point balance became [60600], a particularly auspicious number.
Qi Si put the mask on his face before beginning to queue for an instance.
After the Double Happiness Town instance ended, no posts about him appeared on the forums.
It wasn't that Shang Qingbei was a forgiving person; it was most likely because it had been a Monday, and Shang Qingbei was at school, without access to his phone...
Qi Si couldn't count on everyone he met in the future being a minor without a phone, so he had no choice but to spend a small fortune on covering his face.
Although wearing a mask made him look suspicious and an easy target for distrust, it was still better than harming someone in the game and then getting tracked down in the real world.
[Randomly generating instance...]
[Loading instance... Load complete]
[Instance Name: The Grand Performance]
[Instance Type: Multiplayer Puzzle]
[Opening Hint: Every one of us is guilty]
A line of silver text scrolled past, the instance's basic information settling in the system interface at the top left of his vision.
Qi Si opened his eyes and was nearly blinded by the stage lights beating down from above.
His vision snapped from absolute darkness to high-saturation white with no transition, like a sudden slide change in a PowerPoint presentation.
The entire world was drowned in light. Though utterly silent, it created an atmosphere of deafening clamor.
Qi Si found himself standing in the center of an immense stage, with spotlights from various angles converging on him.
He looked around but saw no audience.
The room was enclosed, the entire floor a part of the stage. The alternating red and white walls were reminiscent of a pop-up circus tent, yet the various gemstones embedded in them made the place more luxurious than the most renowned opera house.
Although Qi Si had a strong flair for the dramatic, he had no desire to be pushed into the center of the stage. He much preferred finding a dark corner to perform a soliloquy to himself or grabbing some unlucky soul for a one-on-one session of intimidation or deceit.
He shielded his eyes from the glaring lights and tiptoed toward the edge of the stage.
However, this instance seemed determined to expose shadow-dwellers to the light. No matter where Qi Si went, a spotlight followed him.
In the very center of the stage sat a round table. Its surface was carved with intricate patterns, and it was divided into five equal sections marked with the numbers 1 through 5 in a chalky white paint. Next to each number was a set of paper and a pen, along with a high-backed chair.
Qi Si walked over and tried to pull the chair closest to him, number one.
The chair seemed to be fixed to the floor by some invisible force; it wouldn't budge no matter how hard he pulled.
He then tried to touch the paper and pen in front of the chair, and this time they moved. The ballpoint pen rolled with a soft clatter, coming to an abrupt halt just before it could cross into the neighboring numbered section.
Qi Si settled into the chair at position one and reached for the paper at position two, only to find his hand pass right through it, as if through a hazy illusion.
He tried touching the paper and pens at the other positions, but he couldn't make contact with any of them.
Evidently, the instance had already designated him as "Player 1," and he was unable to encroach upon the territory of other players.
"What a fair puzzle game. Looks like I can't scribble all over other people's papers. I wonder if attacking is allowed, though..."
Qi Si's eyes fell on the words "Multiplayer Puzzle" in the system interface.
It wasn't a team instance, which meant there was likely a clear competitive, or even adversarial, relationship between the players.
The game was unlikely to be a simple murder mystery where everyone sat around with clues, writing on paper to piece together the truth—what some might call "playing house."
So what would it be?
If it was a faction-based game like the Hopeless Sea, he would need to find an ally. Whether to choose someone smart or someone foolish was a matter for careful consideration...
As Qi Si was pondering this, another person appeared on the stage and walked up to him. "Hello, I'm He Hui. This is my fourth instance. Please take care of me."
The newcomer was a delicate-looking young woman. Her pale face featured exquisite features, and her timid, nervous expression suggested she was very introverted.
After her greeting, the girl sat down at position three, one seat away from Qi Si, her posture perfectly straight and extremely reserved.
"Are you scared?" Qi Si asked.
"Of course, how could I not be? So many people have died. I'll probably die soon too," the girl calling herself "He Hui" said with a pessimistic air. "Puzzles are what I'm worst at. My math is terrible, and I've spent the last two weeks forcing myself to read mystery novels, but I couldn't understand most of them..."
Qi Si responded with a faint, noncommittal smile.
Two minutes later, the muscle-bound Hansen appeared and took a seat at position two.
A minute after that, the elderly Cynthia arrived and sat at position four.
Seeing that almost everyone was present, Qi Si adjusted the clown mask on his face and began his introduction: "You can call me Zhou Ke..."