【Name: Lu Xiu】
【Attributes: Click to view details】
【Current Survival Points: 23】
【Game Identity: Player】
【Current Location: Game Main World】
【Current Remaining Maximum Playtime: 23 Days】
【Detected that the player's remaining playtime is less than 30 days. To avoid death, players are advised to minimize sleep and acquire Survival Points as soon as possible.】
【Watch ads to avoid death. Watch for one hour to earn 1 Survival Point, up to three times a day. 【Click Link】.】
【Jianqu Construction Group is recruiting Dungeon testers. Pay just 30 Survival Points for a chance to earn double the amount. 【Click Link】.】
【Survival Point loans! Say goodbye to high-interest lending. Borrow now, spend now, enjoy life now. 【Click Link】.】
【System Announcement — Welcome to becoming a Dungeon Architect!】
【...】
***
Lu Xiu sat on a bench by the river, staring at the panel floating before her for three full minutes.
The river shimmered with scattered golden reflections in the evening light, and the lamps along the bridge had already begun lighting up one by one. In the distance, the glass facades of towering buildings reflected the sunset, where shades of pinkish-purple and orange-red blended together, creating a scene as beautiful as a heavily edited promotional photograph.
That was, of course, if one ignored her expression at that moment.
In fact, it was a remarkably beautiful scene.
A young girl sat quietly by the river, her soft black hair falling naturally to her shoulders in an effortlessly graceful fashion. Her naturally fair skin glowed softly in the light, and her delicate, gentle features were captivating. A few unruly strands of hair fluttered beside her pretty face in the river breeze, lending her an air of slightly disheveled yet breathtaking beauty.
The sunset, the young girl, the riverside.
Each was beautiful in its own right.
Unfortunately, the girl's current expression somewhat spoiled the picture. To put it simply—she looked like a young girl who had been abducted and sold into the remote mountains, fallen into utter despair, and then discovered that the person who had bought her was actually a woman...
Are you kidding me?
"No... Seriously?! How does this make any sense?!"
Lu Xiu stared at the floating System panel before her, watching advertisements pop up one after another, and muttered in disbelief.
Perhaps the natives of this world had long since grown accustomed to such sights.
But Lu Xiu wasn't from this world at all.
This was only her second day since her Transmigration.
As for how she had ended up here, the explanation was simple... One day, on her way home from work, she had accidentally encountered a hundred-ton truck. Despite putting up her best effort, she had failed to defeat it. And so, the world had gained one more person struggling desperately to survive, along with a rather thoroughly flattened speed bump...
When Lu Xiu regained consciousness, she found herself in a completely unfamiliar environment.
Even her body was no longer her original one...
However, that wasn't even the worst part. After sorting through the young girl's memories, she discovered something far more troubling—there was something seriously wrong with this world.
The good news was that this world shared many similarities with the one she had inhabited for more than twenty years in her previous life. Even the course of history had been roughly the same.
With a little care, she could have adapted to life here almost seamlessly.
The bad news, however, was that...
This world seemed to have been ripped straight out of certain novels...
Having inherited the young girl's memories, she remembered the events quite clearly.
One day, four years ago.
It had started as an ordinary workday. But at precisely 10:17 a.m., every electronic screen across the globe suddenly went black.
Then, from mobile phones and televisions to shopping mall billboards and even hospital monitoring terminals, the same sentence appeared on every screen—
【Initiate Survival Protocol】
And then—
It appeared.
Its appearance differed depending on who was looking.
Some claimed It was a mass of light.
Others said It was a gigantic eye.
Still others described It as a city hanging upside down in the heavens.
But one thing was beyond doubt.
It was not human.
Later, everyone came to refer to It as a deity.
At that moment.
His voice echoed directly inside everyone's mind.
There were no language barriers.
No delays caused by translation.
Everyone understood.
"Your world is about to become a battlefield."
"The outer realms are approaching."
"You cannot resist."
"Therefore—you must become players."
"Grow stronger. Grow stronger quickly. The enemy is coming."
After delivering this inexplicable message, He vanished without a trace. However, the entire world began undergoing drastic changes.
Everything started becoming digitized and gamified.
Reality itself became the main world of the game. Hideous monsters began appearing everywhere, and in the early stages, humanity could barely keep the situation under control through the use of modern weapons.
But as gamification progressed, many cutting-edge modern weapons gradually became unusable... Or, more precisely, certain conditions had to be met before they could be used.
Those conditions varied enormously. A particular attribute might need to reach a certain threshold, a specific buff might be required, or certain items might be necessary.
And the primary way to fulfill those requirements was through playing games. More accurately... by entering Dungeons.
These so-called Dungeons were separate worlds that had appeared alongside the gamification of reality.
Unlike the real world, which served as the game's main stage, these worlds came in all manner of bizarre and varied forms. Anyone could enter them simply by paying the required Survival Points.
As long as they successfully cleared a Dungeon, they could obtain certain rewards.
For example, the Dungeon currently boasting the highest clearance rate was called 【The Loner】. It was a modern-themed Dungeon with an entry fee of 150 Survival Points. Upon entering, players assumed the role of a lone soldier who had to evade enemy reconnaissance, cross the front lines alone, infiltrate enemy territory, and ultimately reach the Spy's House.
Along the way, players could choose different routes, engage in gunfights, bribe enemy soldiers, crawl forward through sheer determination, or even betray their own faction, report the Spy's House to the enemy, and become a double agent who led a squad to arrest its occupants. That, too, counted as completing the mission...
As long as a player could think of a course of action, they could attempt it.
The game System would then assign ratings and rewards based on the route the player had chosen and their performance throughout the mission.
The main reason this Dungeon had the highest clearance rate was the military's involvement... Rumor had it that the Dungeon would soon become an official testing ground for evaluating the abilities of military personnel.
At the same time, the military had also reaped considerable benefits from it.
Even players who received low ratings could still obtain attribute points and item rewards.
Rumor had it that most players could acquire a passive skill called 【Stealth】 from this Dungeon, which significantly reduced their chances of being detected by monsters. More capable players could even obtain passive skills such as 【Lone Hero】 or 【Firearm Comprehension】. The former granted attribute bonuses when fighting alone, while the latter was even more powerful, allowing players to modify firearms and make them easier to handle.
At a time when the requirements for using modern weapons were becoming increasingly restrictive, the value of such skills was obvious.
Incidentally, quite a few players had attempted the double-agent route, but according to rumors, only one had ever succeeded. After all, convincing the enemy required exceptional powers of persuasion. If the deception was discovered, there was an extremely high chance of being executed on the spot.
Currently, due to the military's involvement, ordinary people had very few opportunities to attempt this Dungeon anymore.
Most Dungeons were generated by the System.
A small portion, however, came from unofficial sources.
That's right.
After the world became digitized and gamified, ordinary people could become more than just players.
They could also become Dungeon Architects.
Unlike System-generated Dungeons, these player-created Dungeons were known as unofficial dungeons... Once a Dungeon Architect submitted a completed Dungeon, the System would automatically evaluate and grade it. The architect could then independently decide whether to make it available to the public and how many Survival Points to charge for entry.
When players cleared these unofficial dungeons, the System would likewise distribute rewards based on factors such as the Dungeon's completion level, its overall quality, and the player's performance.
Exceptionally good unofficial dungeons even had a chance of being incorporated into the System itself.
In theory... talented individuals would become Dungeon Architects and design Dungeons based on the conditions at the front lines, providing powerful items and passive skills to the soldiers protecting ordinary citizens while identifying and nurturing stronger players. They could then use the feedback from those players to create even more Dungeons.
It was a perfect cycle.
Unfortunately, what worked perfectly in theory didn't necessarily work in reality.
Remember?
This world shared many similarities with the world where Lu Xiu had spent more than twenty years of her previous life. Even their historical trajectories were roughly the same.
But "roughly the same"... meant there were still differences.
In this world, the Cold War had lasted far longer than it had in her previous life, and it had been a three-way confrontation between nations.
During that period, nearly every aspect of society had been geared toward preparing for war. Even after the Cold War ended, that mentality persisted for a long time simply through inertia.
It was only after the Cold War ended that the entertainment industry had finally begun to flourish.
And then the world was gamified.
What made matters even worse was that this world had experienced a video game industry crash similar to the Atari shock in Lu Xiu's previous life.
And it had happened immediately before the world's gamification. At the time, the market had been flooded with shoddy, nearly identical games, utterly devastating the gaming industry.
An Innate deficiency.
Compounded by unscrupulous Acquired unofficial construction groups stirring up trouble.
Under such circumstances, how could anyone expect decent unofficial dungeons to emerge?
...Ninety percent of unofficial dungeons were complete garbage, designed solely to scam players out of their Survival Points.
Take the advertisement on Lu Xiu's panel, for example. That so-called Jianqu Construction Group claiming to recruit Dungeon testers was one hundred percent a scam. The Dungeon they offered was undoubtedly the kind of trash where even clearing it would earn players only a pitifully insignificant reward and an F-grade rating.
The clearance conditions themselves might even be deliberately designed as traps.
Yet they could afford to place advertisements directly on players' System panels, which clearly meant they had already swindled quite a few people.
After all, placing advertisements there cost at least tens of thousands of Survival Points.
Tens of thousands of Survival Points.
Survival Points...
At that thought, Lu Xiu abruptly snapped back to reality. Looking at the pitiful 23 Survival Points displayed on her panel, she bit her soft, red lips and felt utterly miserable.
These so-called Survival Points were another product of the world's gamification.
To put it simply, they were essentially a form of prepaid game currency...
After becoming players, everyone could obtain Survival Points through various means. These points could be traded, used to purchase practically anything imaginable from the System shop, or spent on admission tickets to enter Dungeons.
Most importantly.
Players also needed Survival Points simply to stay alive.
One Survival Point was automatically deducted every twenty-four hours. Once a player's balance reached zero, their account would be deleted immediately.
And account deletion meant death.
At present, Lu Xiu had only 23 Survival Points remaining, which meant... she had only twenty-three days left to live.
As for why she had so few... The main reason was that the body's original owner had been extremely timid and had never dared to enter System Dungeons. Some time ago, she had also been tricked into losing a substantial number of Survival Points to an unofficial dungeon.
That experience had only made her even more frightened.
Her parents had divorced when she was seven years old. After both remarried and started new families, neither wanted her. She had grown up depending on her grandmother, developing a shy and withdrawn personality. After her grandmother passed away, she was left completely alone. She didn't dare enter System Dungeons, had no friends, and could only shut herself away at home. And then, when she finally mustered the courage to trust someone for once...
She had been scammed...
And then, then Lu Xiu arrived.
The moment she opened her eyes, she found herself facing this utterly incomprehensible world, with only twenty-three days left to live and a body completely different from the one she had possessed in her previous life.
That's right.
By comparison.
Her new body was actually the least of her problems.
Even though, when she first arrived, she had gone to the bathroom in disbelief to confirm the situation three separate times...
"You might as well just let me die."
Lu Xiu bit her glossy red lips and lowered her head in despair.
Then she caught sight of the full curves of her chest, which remained conspicuous no matter how tightly she bound them, rising and falling with every breath... She felt an even stronger urge to die.
Maybe... she should just give up?
Lu Xiu averted her gaze, sinking into a fit of despair and resignation. Perhaps she could simply treat these remaining twenty-three days as a period of end-of-life care...
Except.
The moment that thought crossed her mind, she remembered the excruciating pain she had experienced in the instant before her death in her previous life.
"..."
Lu Xiu fell silent for a moment, then lowered her head to look at her chest again. Suddenly, it didn't seem quite so unacceptable after all...
The main reason was that she really didn't want to experience death a second time.
When faced with death.
Every other problem seemed insignificant.
That left only one question—how was she supposed to survive?
Lu Xiu took a deep breath, pushed aside the terrifying memory of her previous death, furrowed her delicate brows, and began analyzing her options.
Watch advertisements?
She could watch ads for a maximum of three hours per day, and there also seemed to be a limit on how many times she could do so. At best, that would merely prolong her miserable existence without offering any real hope of survival.
Enter System Dungeons?
She wasn't confident in her abilities, didn't have enough spare Survival Points to pay the admission fees, and the risks were simply too great.
Take out a loan?
Leaving aside whether she would even qualify for one, Lu Xiu wouldn't dare borrow anything even if she could. The interest rates were outrageous, and any Survival Points earned from Dungeons would be automatically deducted to repay the debt.
Without sufficient ability to earn more, borrowing beyond one's means would only lead to an even faster death.
That left only one option.
Lu Xiu turned her attention to the final advertisement on her panel—
【System Announcement — Welcome to becoming a Dungeon Architect!】