Ye Jinran had no interest in guessing what those players were thinking. A faint irritation rose within him.
He had clearly seen it earlier, when Zhao Qian opened the shop interface, that guy actually skipped the monthly pass promotion entirely.
Ye Jinran wasn’t exactly experienced in running a game. When designing monetization features, he could only take inspiration from the examples he’d seen in the real world. So, he decided to test the waters by releasing a player-friendly “monthly pass.”
The results had been unexpectedly good. No wonder every major game company fought to replicate that classic success story. A monthly pass increased player activity while also breaking down their psychological defenses, making them willingly open their wallets. It started with just the price of a cup of milk tea, but slowly it awakened their desire to spend more and more.
The monthly pass was one of Ye Jinran’s major sources of income. The points he earned from players could be converted directly into real currency through the system, pure profit without cost, a money-printing machine.
And yet, such a brilliant design had failed to trap Zhao Qian into buying it… or rather, into “experiencing it.”
Ever since his appointment, Ye Jinran had struck gold with the first wave of monthly pass sales. Having tasted success, he began plotting a lineup of even more “value-packed” microtransaction bundles.
For example, there was the “newbie pack,” filled with a few genuinely useful items to catch the eye, but also stuffed with worthless junk that wouldn’t sell otherwise. Inexperienced players wouldn’t notice the trick. They’d get swept up in the excitement and make their first purchase without hesitation.
The Main God never interfered with what Ye Jinran put on the shelves of the system shop, which gave him an enormous amount of freedom to maneuver.
He had only been in charge for a month and the first batch of monthly passes hadn’t even expired yet. He didn’t want to reveal his black-hearted profiteer nature too early, so he held back from flooding the store with all his other devious ideas.
Nurturing paying players had to be a slow process, like boiling a frog in warm water. Once they got used to renewing their monthly pass and saw it as a necessity, he could introduce more bundles on top of it.
But there were always those few stubborn types who refused to spend a single cent. Ye Jinran’s eyes followed Zhao Qian’s retreating figure, silently cursing him as a freeloading scrounger.
Zhao Qian was the textbook definition of a “grind player.” He compensated for his lack of spending by investing an absurd amount of time in-game, farming resources to bridge the gap between himself and the whales. He had plenty of points stored up, enough to live comfortably without ever paying for a monthly pass.
The Main God favored such active players, but to Ye Jinran, they were bad for business.
Rather than seeing players throw themselves into dungeons, he’d much rather they spend more time browsing his store. The more they looked, the more likely they were to buy something on impulse.
Then again… Ye Jinran rubbed his chin, his thoughts turning to another matter. He was starting to question the group’s professional competence.
The remains around them were unmistakably human, flesh gnawed away, bones discarded carelessly in the corner. Even with that much evidence, the players seemed completely unfazed. What kind of creature likes to eat people? Humans were not easy prey. With the forest so vast and full of wildlife, no predator should have to resort to hunting them for food.
A man-eater, perhaps, a ghoul. The bones tossed in a cave like this all pointed to that conclusion. Any veteran player who had seen enough dungeons would’ve realized it by now. Judging by the look in Zhao Qian’s eyes, he had probably guessed it too, though the others remained oblivious.
Just as Ye Jinran expected, after a long silence, Zhao Qian spoke hesitantly. “I think I understand now… This must be a ghoul’s nest.”
“What?!” The high-schooler’s eyes went wide. “Then the people outside are, ”
“They’re fine,” Zhao Qian cut in, shaking his head. “Ghouls fear sunlight. They won’t come out during the day.”
“Wait, then why didn’t we find this cave the first time we dug here? Ah Peng definitely tried digging this spot before,” the boy added, frowning.
Zhao Qian sighed. “I don’t know. If it weren’t for that person telling us to try again, I wouldn’t have…” He suddenly froze. “Wait, who was that person?”
For a moment, his memory went blank.
“When did we first try to dig this place up?” Zhao Qian grabbed the high-schooler’s shadow in alarm.
“Uh? Before we fell asleep,” the boy stammered. “Don’t you remember? We’re still in the dream!”
“The dream…” Zhao Qian murmured. “Things you wish for come true in dreams. Maybe this cave appeared because we wanted to find something underground? No, that doesn’t explain the bodies. I never imagined there would be corpses here. Neither did you or Ah Peng…”
A sharp pain lanced through his head. Zhao Qian clutched his temples, gritting his teeth. “It’s real. All of this is real! Dreams and reality don’t have to be separate after all!”
Ye Jinran clicked his tongue twice. Too much inspiration always drives people mad.
Zhao Qian tried to grasp the fleeting thought that brushed his mind but it slipped away like sand through his fingers. He remembered someone warning him about this truth but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t recall their faces.
“Wait, what do you mean?” the high-schooler asked nervously. “You’re saying the dream is real?”
Ah Peng, who had been silent this whole time, finally spoke in a calm, detached voice. “He means that what we saw in the ‘real world’ was false. Only what we see in this dream is true.”
Originally, the ghoul’s lair had always existed. But since none of them had the concept of it in their minds when they first arrived, their initial excavation turned up nothing.
The nightmares they had afterward reflected their fears, because the players believed something would come for them, the vines that dragged them back appeared. Whatever they dreaded most, the dream manifested.
The high-schooler’s voice trembled. “I… I can’t tell anymore. Are we asleep or awake?”
“Don’t think about it,” Zhao Qian said, breathing heavily as he tried to steady himself. “Maybe in this dungeon, only the dream counts as reality.”
He couldn’t remember who had once told him not to bother distinguishing truth from illusion, but he believed it now. A strange exhilaration rose inside him, washing away his fear. He felt as though he’d finally grasped the key to the true ending, he just needed one more step.
But what was that next step?
He longed for that mysterious guide to appear again, to give him even the slightest hint. If he did, Zhao Qian was certain he could figure it all out, just like every other time inspiration had struck him before.
Yet nothing happened. There was only the cave floor littered with white bones and the two companions at his side.
The high-schooler shivered, goosebumps prickling along his arms. “If ghouls really exist, we shouldn’t stay here! What if they come back and eat us?”
“You’re right,” Zhao Qian said, forcing himself to calm down. “They’re afraid of light, but there’s none here. Let’s get out first.”
Staying would accomplish nothing. The three quickly agreed and followed Ah Peng through the tunnel they’d dug earlier.
Ye Jinran waited until their footsteps faded away before stepping out of hiding. He didn’t want to appear before Zhao Qian and risk stirring the sealed fragments of memory in his mind.
Zhao Qian’s deduction had been mostly correct, this was indeed a ghoul’s den. But he’d missed one crucial point: the den had long been abandoned.
If they had used the appraisal function earlier, they would have seen that the bones were old, long stripped clean and dry. There were no fresh corpses here.
No ghouls were lurking nearby. The place was perfectly safe. Ye Jinran stepped across the brittle bones, expressionless, the crunch echoing softly beneath his boots.
To avoid crossing paths with the players, he chose another route, retracing his steps through the mist. By the time he emerged, night had fallen completely.
The sky above was shrouded by clouds as thick as fog, blotting out the stars. What a shame, he thought. In an unpolluted place like this, the night sky would’ve been breathtaking.
From the village ahead drifted the scent of cooking, warm, savory aromas wafting from the houses, urging travelers to hurry home.
Ye Jinran walked past door after door, unsure which one he should enter.
The two female players who had stayed behind seemed to have gotten along well with a local family; he could see them now, eating and drinking merrily inside with their hosts.
He felt a flicker of hunger. This was not a pleasant dream. Bored and disinterested, he decided to move on and slip quietly into the next layer of dreaming.
Since the villagers had all “come back to life,” there were no longer any empty houses left in the village. Unable to find an unoccupied room, Ye Jinran picked a quiet corner, leaned against a wall and slowly sat down.
Sometimes, he was aware that something was missing from within himself, the price he had paid for the power and authority he’d gained from the Main God.
There was no need to dwell on it. Ye Jinran closed his eyes.
………
Night deepened.
The exploration team members each found a place to rest. They had to act daily in perilous dungeons, so they understood the importance of sleep. Whenever they had the chance, they took it.
Zhao Qian didn’t know what would happen after he fell asleep. Just as before, he lit a stick of calming incense and tried to keep his mind from wandering to ghosts or monsters.
Rosie was still unconscious, worrying everyone. She hadn’t eaten dinner but then again, maybe she had simply entered the dream first.
Zhao Qian’s eyes flew open.
“Rosie!”
Around him was only barren silence, no warm candlelight, no cozy houses. He was sitting on damp soil, his back pressed against something cold and solid. Moments ago, he’d been lying in bed.
He stood quickly and turned around. What he had leaned against was a stone stele.
All around him were gravestones, some made of stone, others crudely shaped from wood, stuck into the ground at uneven angles.
He brushed away the vines and paper talismans covering the nearest stele, peering at the inscription. The words were carved in an ancient form of Chinese he couldn’t read.
The era they’d entered did not use this writing. Whoever lay buried here must have lived long before, these people had been dead for a very long time.
Zhao Qian examined several more gravestones. They all bore the same family name. It seemed this was a family cemetery.
“This is…”
“Zhao ge! You okay?” The high-schooler had woken up next, scrambling to his feet in panic.
Zhao Qian shook his head. “I don’t know. But I think we’ve entered a deeper layer of the dream.”
According to the dungeon’s logic, the deeper the dream, the closer it came to the truth. That meant what they were seeing now was likely the real face of the village.
“A group of refugees fleeing war settled here. That background matches,” Zhao Qian murmured, deep in thought, “Generation after generation were buried, forming this family graveyard. Maybe the line eventually died out and the village disappeared.”
The villagers’ souls never left. They remained here, dreaming they were still alive, clinging to their home like earthbound spirits.
The first dream had shown them the nature of dreams.
The second displayed the villagers as they had lived.
The third revealed what the village had become.
They had passed the trials of the dream and entered the villagers’ realm of existence. Now, by the same means, they had descended even deeper, to where truth waited.
What lay at the bottom? Zhao Qian couldn’t help but think of Rosie’s question. She had once asked someone the same thing… but where was she now? He looked around. No sign of the twin-tailed girl.
“We need to find her fast. She could be in danger,” said the tall female player who’d been watching over Rosie. When she’d woken up, the girl she’d been holding had vanished without a trace, anyone would panic.
Ah Peng raised his shovel, wordlessly indicating he was ready to start digging.
“Right,” Zhao Qian agreed.
………
Deep underground.
In a place untouched by light, viscous, foul fluid seeped down the stone walls and dripped into the darkness below. The living sludge writhed and crawled as though alive, merging into larger masses.
Black pustules bulged and burst. The slime splattered against a girl’s cheek. Her eyes were shut tight, her body trembling in silent agony. Thick, heavy liquid pinned her limbs down as invisible hands dragged her deeper. Her mouth and nose were about to sink beneath the surface, hovering on the edge between life and suffocation.
Ye Jinran didn’t even need to look to know what was happening, but he still put on his night-vision goggles to admire the scene.
The girl was trapped within her nightmare. Her signature twin tails had come undone, her hair tangled and soaked, he couldn’t tell whether from sweat or from the pulsating ooze crawling over her.
He recognized this particular horror. He’d seen something similar in other dungeons before, a type of anomaly that must have left a deep psychological scar on her.
Sometimes, Ye Jinran felt like an aberration himself. Most players who encountered the incomprehensible, the things that defied logic, reacted with fear or madness. He’d seen countless people lose their minds to terror yet he felt nothing. Not the slightest ripple.
That wasn’t normal. Something inside him was missing.
In fact, he even found it… cute.
He glanced again at the thing enveloping the girl. It seemed to be blinking at him, though it had far too many eyes for that.
That, at least, made up a little for not getting to see the stars outside the village tonight.
✦ ✧ ✦
Nycreth
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
The Realm demands coffee. The Realm is not accepting complaints.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Blood Moon Town: ShhhChapter 2 · The Mist of Nanjin Village (1)Chapter 3 · The Mist of Nanjin Village (2)Chapter 4 · The Mist of Nanjin Village (3)Chapter 5 · The Mist of Nanjin Village (4)Chapter 6 · The Mist of Nanjin Village (7)Chapter 7 · The Mist of Nanjin Village (6)Chapter 8 · The mist over Nanjin Village (7)Chapter 9 · The Mystery of Nanjin Village (The End)Chapter 10 · Real WorldChapter 11 · Riding The Wind (1)Chapter 12 · Riding The Wind (2)Chapter 13 · Riding The Wind (3)Chapter 14 · Riding The Wind (4)Chapter 15 · Riding The Wind (5)Chapter 16 · Riding The Wind (6)Chapter 17 · Riding The Wind (7)Chapter 18 · Riding The Wind (8)Chapter 19 · Riding The Wind (9)Chapter 20 · Riding The Wind (10)Chapter 21 Part 1 · Riding The Wind (11)Chapter 21 Part 2 · Riding The Wind (11)Chapter 22 · Real World (1)Chapter 23 · Real World (2)Chapter 24 · Golden Sands Fade Away (1)Chapter 25 · Golden Sands Fade Away (2)Chapter 26 · Golden Sands Fade Away (3)Chapter 27 · Golden Sands Fade Away (4)Chapter 28 · Golden Sands Fade Away (5)Chapter 29 · Golden Sands Fade Away (6)Chapter 30 · Golden Sands Fade Away (7)Chapter 31 · Golden Sands Fade Away (8)Chapter 32 · Golden Sands Fade Away (9)Chapter 33 · Golden Sands Fade Away (10)Chapter 34 · Golden Sands Fade Away (11)Chapter 35 · Golden Sands Fade Away (12)Chapter 36 · Golden Sands Fade Away (13)Chapter 37 · Golden Sands Fade Away (14)Chapter 38 · Golden Sands Fade Away (15)Chapter 39 · Golden Sands Fade Away (16)Chapter 40 · Golden Sands Fade Away (17)Chapter 41 · Golden Sands Fade Away (18)Chapter 42 · Golden Sands Fade Away (19)Chapter 43 · Golden Sands Fade Away (20)Chapter 44 · Golden Sands Fade Away (21)Chapter 45 · Golden Sands Fade Away (22)Chapter 46 · Golden Sands Fade Away (23)Chapter 47 · Golden Sands Fade Away (24)Chapter 48 · Golden Sands Fade Away (25) The EndChapter 49 · Main God’s DomainChapter 50 · Anomaly Investigation Bureau (1)Chapter 51 · Anomaly Investigation Bureau (2)Chapter 52 · Item FactoryChapter 53 · Defrosted Friendship (1)Chapter 54 · Defrosted Friendship (2)Chapter 55 · Defrosted Friendship (3)Chapter 56 · Defrosted Friendship (4)Chapter 57 · Defrosted Friendship (5)Chapter 58 · Defrosted Friendship (6)Chapter 59 · Defrosted Friendship (7)Chapter 60 · Defrosted Friendship (8)Chapter 61 · Defrosted Friendship (9)Chapter 62 · Defrosted Friendship (10)Chapter 63 · Defrosted Friendship (11)Chapter 64 · Defrosted Friendship (12)Chapter 65 · Defrosted Friendship (13)Chapter 66 · Defrosted Friendship (14)Chapter 67 · Defrosted Friendship (15)Chapter 68 · Defrosted Friendship (16)Chapter 69 · Defrosted Friendship (End)Chapter 70 · The Real WorldChapter 71 · Matching TimeChapter 72 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (1)Chapter 73 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (2)Chapter 74 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (3)Chapter 75 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (4)Chapter 76 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (5)Chapter 77 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (6)Chapter 78 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (7)Chapter 79 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (8)Chapter 80 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (9)Chapter 81 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (10)Chapter 82 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (11)Chapter 83 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (12)Chapter 84 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (13)Chapter 85 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (14)Chapter 86 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (15)Chapter 87 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (16)Chapter 88 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (17)Chapter 89 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (18)Chapter 90 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (19)Chapter 91 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (20)Chapter 92 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (21)Chapter 93 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (22)Chapter 94 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (23)Chapter 95 · The Meaning of Endless Abundance (Complete)Chapter 96 · The Main God Invites You for TeaChapter 97 · The Player ForumChapter 98 · Training GroundChapter 99 · Eternal Night – The Stone-Striker (1)Chapter 100 · Eternal Night – The Stone-Striker (2)Chapter 101 · Eternal Night – The Stone-Striker (3)Chapter 102 · Eternal Night · The One Who Strikes the Stone (Finale)