002.
Languid and weary, Qiao Luan leaned against the headboard of his bed, a few buttons of his pajamas undone so that he wore them loosely. The dim lighting outlined half of his exquisitely featured face, his brow and eyelashes drooping slightly as his long fingers tapped against the screen to type out a whisper of an evil ghost: [Didn’t you guys notice? There are precisely 13 of you / cute]
Like the starting signal for a horror movie, the burst of cold sweat that emerged in an instant almost soaked through Xu Zhengye’s inner layer. He had no idea why a single comment would make his complexion turn as pale as paper clearly, it was just a very ordinary coincidence, nothing more.
Yet before he could even thoroughly comfort himself, a familiar yet deep, eerie, and grotesque voice suddenly rang beside his ear: “Are you ready?”
Xu Zhengye jerked his head around violently.
His pupils reflected Zhang Chen’s face, which was so pale it lacked a shred of color. His eyes normally distinct with black and white were completely covered by white film. This pair of eyes consisting solely of whites was currently staring straight at Xu Zhengye, like a merciless beast biting into his body with sharp teeth, dragging him toward the abyss bit by bit. A bone-chilling cold surged from Xu Zhengye’s spine; he began to tremble all over, his body uncontrollably taking two steps back.
What… was going on here?
Cosplay? Was this part of the program? Why didn’t he know about it?
Countless questions occupied his mind amidst the chaos. Xu Zhengye forced himself to calm down, but the plunging temperature around him froze his thoughts, trapping him in place. The biting cold wind pierced through his thick clothing to press against his skin, drilled into his blood vessels, and gradually engulfed his flowing blood.
His conscious awareness gradually blurred, his thoughts feeling as though they were plunging into an impenetrable white fog.
Jingle bell!
The alarms prepared by Xu Zhengye, Xu Mao, and Zhang Chen went off precisely at 3:00 AM.
The piercing sound was like a ray of light suddenly bursting through the white fog.
Following the direction of the light, Xu Zhengye began to walk forward step by step.
The camera mounted at the edge of the cliff flickered on and off, capturing a series of horrifying, bloated, peeling faces. Under the gaze of hundreds of thousands of streaming viewers, the thirteen anchors lined up in a straight line at the edge of the cliff, lifting their heads toward the camera with their mouths split open into weird, exaggerated arcs, and then—
Plunged straight down.
【Help! Who watched the stream? Can someone tell me that those thirteen of them jumping off the cliff isn’t real! Those faces aren’t real either!】
Following the official forced shutdown of Xu Zhengye and the others’ streaming room, the view count on the Bizarre Tales Forum reached an unprecedented peak. Threads with titles of this nature emerged endlessly, almost entirely discussing the cliff-jumping incident. In addition, the Gaming Guru’s post and Qiao Luan’s auditory hallucination post were dug up and reposted, doubling their comment volume.
Inside the 1st Military Base of the First Continent, a man in a silver-black uniform silently scrolled his mouse, skimming roughly through a few lines before lowering his gaze to linger for ten full seconds on a line of text in the document submitted by his subordinate [The authenticity of the cliff-jumping is 100%] before finally looking up to ask his subordinate: “Have the identities of those thirteen anchors been investigated?”
The adjutant nodded, his tone somewhat heavy: “Investigated. Just like the division of the thirteen people across the four streaming rooms, they didn’t know each other and had no connection whatsoever. Furthermore, none of them had any mental health issues; their joint cliff-jumping couldn’t have been pre-arranged.”
“The multi-vehicle collision on the Binjiang Bridge, the scheduled group cliff-jumping on Changtang Mountain, and the anomalies captured in the Yuping District last night all seem to declare a single fact,” Ling Chengsi muttered in a low voice.
At around 8:00 PM last night, violent tremors suddenly occurred within the mountain range of the Yuping District.
As an earthquake-prone region, it was completely normal for various electronic devices to predict earthquakes in advance and issue warnings. However, what no one expected was that when the mountain tremors occurred, not a single person in the entire Yuping District evacuated or fled buildings. This wasn’t because electronic devices or warning systems malfunctioned, but rather because all the citizens had fallen into a deep slumber at that exact moment, and up to this very moment, no one had woken up.
Wave after wave of doctors from surrounding areas arrived, yet they still failed to investigate what had happened to these people or what the cause of their deep sleep was.
The matter had temporarily been suppressed, known to no one outside official circles. But judging by the current situation, suppressing it didn’t seem to matter anymore. The world was undergoing terrifying, unacceptable, massive changes at a horrifying speed.
And these changes were enough to threaten human survival.
“Contact the other eleven bases; initiate a highest-level meeting in five minutes.”
“Yes.”
6:00 AM.
Someone published a new thread on the Bizarre Tales Forum.
[Someone hacked into the official servers of the Third Continent and found the bizarre incidents reported upward and downward over the past two days, increasing the probability of the game “Old Gods” descending into reality by thirty percent.]
The official documents of the Third Continent clearly and distinctly recorded that a fishing vessel named The Immortality lost contact on the sixth day of heading out to sea. When they located the drifting fishing vessel on the ocean, all crew members had vanished without a trace, and the floors were covered with blackened, hardened traces of blood. Beyond that, most terrifyingly, horrifying bite marks belonging to no known creature appeared along the gunwales and various other parts of the ship.
Aside from the bizarre phenomenon of The Immortality fishing vessel, another piece of news detailing a husband’s bizarre death was also recorded. The wife found her husband dead in the garden, and within less than two brief minutes from turning around to fetch her phone to call the police and returning to the garden, all the blood in her husband’s body had been drained.
Thus, when the police rushed to the scene, all they saw was a mummified corpse, with not a single drop of blood on the ground.
Over 5,000 milliliters of blood in an adult’s body had vanished into thin air.
Qiao Luan’s gaze fixed on this post, a few traces of a smile slowly spilling from his thin lips.
A few seconds later, relying on his years of experience reading suspense films, horror movies, and superpower-themed novels, he replied within the thread: Connecting this to the monsters escaping from the abyss mentioned in the game “Old Gods,” my personal guess is that the people on the fishing vessel might have been eaten alive by large mutated fish hidden at the bottom of the sea. As for the husband… the abyss probably grows plants too, right? Who knows, maybe some tree sucked him dry of blood.
888L: Please, anyone could think of that, right?
889L: Makes a lot of sense.
900L: Family members, I don’t know if you guys noticed a crucial point: Guru only said that on November 5th, precision equipment across all regions of the Five Continents would successively capture strange creatures. This indicates that strange creatures fully exposing their true forms happens tomorrow, but perhaps prior to this, they had already snuck out and appeared earlier these news reports are the proof. Looked at this way, the accuracy of Guru’s speculation about the game descending onto the world is close to 100%.
Qiao Luan gave a “like” to the brother at floor 900 and prepared to refresh when that crisp ding-dong sound rang in his ear once more. His finger paused slightly on the screen as he calmly looked at the Grade-D Lucky Wheel that popped up. What differed from the previous instance was that the number of draws displayed beneath the Lucky Wheel this time actually reached a staggering 263!
…Following the 13 people jumping off cliffs, the attention commanded by this Bizarre Tales Forum was indeed extraordinary. The thread’s existing floor count was only at 900, but the number of people he had successfully duped had already reached over 2,600.
As a brief moment of contemplation passed, the number 263 changed once again, pushing close to 300.
“Looked at this way, this system is actually not bad; it’s just a bit troublesome to draw individually,” Qiao Luan muttered to himself. Yet the moment those words fell, two new red buttons suddenly appeared on the wheel, labeled: Ten Consecutive Draws, Fifty Consecutive Draws.
Qiao Luan: “…”
What does this mean? Can it even understand his complaints? So user-friendly?
Amused, he immediately said: “Can you add a few more ability options? Aren’t these eight body-tailoring options a bit too single-dimensional?”
True to form, the Lucky Wheel changed once again.
However, the change that occurred was the addition of a smiling emoji.
Qiao Luan: “…”
Very well, the sarcasm was on point.
Qiao Luan curled his lips, tapped fifty consecutive draws, and watched the screen flash rapidly. Tapping it over and over again, a few minutes later, he fell into silence as he looked at his personal information dashboard.
He had performed a total of 395 draws, among which his defense stat soared straight up from the original [8] all the way to 302 meaning that out of 395 draws, the defense stat had appeared a total of 294 times. The remaining 11 times were distributed among speed and physical strength, leaving him with Speed +6 and Physical Strength +7.
“Is your probability setting for these draws not calibrated correctly?”
It was genuinely extremely unreasonable.
Silently, unmoving air responded to Qiao Luan.
Fine then.
Qiao Luan returned to the kitchen and picked up the fruit knife once more. Gripping the hilt just as before and pressing the tip into his palm, he applied only a fraction of his strength before Qiao Luan clearly felt a powerful counterforce propagate from the blade tip to the hilt and sink into his right hand. He twitched his eyebrows upward and applied more force, but at that exact second, a cracking sound abruptly rang out. Within his field of vision, the silver blade suddenly sprouted dense, web-like cracks, and a mere second later, it shattered entirely, fractured, and dropped to the floor beside Qiao Luan’s feet.
…A defense stat of 302 was indeed extraordinary; it was at a level where even knives couldn’t pierce it.
Qiao Luan grew interested, ignoring the fruit knife smashed into pieces, and pulled out a kitchen cleaver and a boning knife instead yet the fate of all the knives matched that of the fruit knife. Thus, Qiao Luan turned his attention to the marble-textured kitchen island. Raising his right hand, he slowly curled his five fingers into a fist and smashed it down toward the center of the kitchen island with a loud bang.
His fist connected with the island counter as if nothing had happened.
A moment later, with a crack, the kitchen island split apart into pieces right under Qiao Luan’s gaze.
Impressive.
Satisfied, he examined his unharmed fist, opened his five fingers to stretch them out, and temporarily ignored the Lucky Wheel, which was once again ready for draws.
Now, he needed to head out to the supermarket to stock up on some food.
Firmly believing in the descent of “Old Gods” due to the appearance of the [Disguise as a Deity System], he knew though he had never played the game that just from the reactions of “Old Gods” players alone, the days ahead wouldn’t be easy. Therefore, he had to prepare some food for himself in advance.
However, the cliff-jumping incident had caused such a massive uproar that people possessing foresight were waiting outside the large supermarket even earlier than Qiao Luan, crowding the entire entrance of the supermarket to the point of complete impassability. As Qiao Luan walked over, a few people were conversing in low voices.
“You guys aren’t also here to hoard groceries after reading that post, are you?”
“Everyone waiting at the supermarket entrance right now definitely is. I woke up at seven, saw the trending search, and knew something was wrong. I rushed over anxiously, but this crowd was already blocking the place—no telling what time they got here.”
“Anyway, whether the post is true or not, hoarding some food is never wrong.”
“That’s what I think too.”
“Bro, be careful later; don’t get squeezed out when I exert force.” The speaker was a man in his thirties whose entire physique could barely be contained by his clothes. His biceps bulged like rolling hills, looking genuinely formidable and startling at a glance.
Qiao Luan stood tall with long legs, possessing neatly sculpted, thin muscles across his arms, waist, and abdomen, yet standing beside the man, he appeared slender.
Guessing the man was likely a fitness trainer by trade, Qiao Luan merely smiled at his well-intentioned reminder: “Got it.”
At precisely 9:30 AM, the supermarket doors opened on schedule.
Bang!
The crowd poured into the doors like a panicked flock of sheep. Grandpas and grandmas, who normally had trouble walking, moved as if equipped with cheat codes. Sharp-eyed and quick-handed, they hoisted shopping baskets and rushed to the front row, charging straight and purposefully toward the noodle shelves to sweep them into their baskets.
Seeing this, the fitness trainer didn’t hold back his strength either, striding forward with long, aggressive strides. The surrounding crowd couldn’t stand their ground against his impact, one by one stumbling toward Qiao Luan’s direction while hurling ugly curses. However, the moment they made contact with Qiao Luan’s body, their bones felt as though they had slammed hard into some hard object. Their complexions instantly drained of color, and terror filled their eyes as they stared at Qiao Luan.
One yellow-haired boy stared at Qiao Luan in shock: “Bro, are you hiding some kind of hidden weapon? Or are you wearing some kind of special-material clothing? How are you harder than a corpse frozen for three days?”
Quite calmly, Qiao Luan pulled down a box of braised beef-flavored instant noodles and smiled slightly at the boy: “Great metaphor, don’t use it next time.”
The boy: “…”
Within mere minutes, a bizarre vacuum zone formed around Qiao Luan. A middle-aged man who detoured over spotted a few remaining boxes of noodles on the shelf directly opposite Qiao Luan, his eyes lighting up fiercely. Without hesitation, he rushed forward and grabbed Qiao Luan’s wrist.
Qiao Luan tilted his head, gazing at him with a rather surprised look.
As if deeply perplexed as to why someone still didn’t fear pain.
The man merely assumed Qiao Luan was shocked by his snatching behavior, chuckled, and spoke in a mocking tone: “What I grab is mine, no objections right?”
Qiao Luan raised his eyebrows slightly: “No objections.”
The moment his words fell, his right hand executed a crisp, clean twist, effortlessly breaking free from the man’s grip, and his long fingers gently tapped against the other’s hand. With a snap, the intense agony of shattered finger bones instantly engulfed the man’s entire body, causing his eyes to widen abruptly.
Cold sweat dripped from his brow. Screaming in agony, the man dropped his grocery basket which could barely hold any food anymore from his left hand. Clutching his right hand with eyes split wide in horror, he stammered: “You—”
Leisurely, Qiao Luan tossed the package of spicy shrimp noodles that had fallen to the ground into his shopping basket, the corners of his thin lips curving upward: “What I grab is mine, no objections right?”
The man: “…”
Fuck.
Qiao Luan didn’t waste time on him, carrying a basket of instant noodles in various flavors toward the checkout counter at a leisurely pace. The queue in front of the checkout counter wasn’t long at the moment perhaps realizing that apocalyptic days were imminent, everyone was eager to clear out the entire supermarket.
The young man currently checking out unexpectedly declared: “Hello, please pack up all the Okamoto and Durex for me.”
The clerk: “?”
She asked uncertainly: “All of them?”
The young man nodded: “Yes.”
Hearing this, the grandpa standing behind the young man stared at him with a profound gaze and bantered: “The young fellow’s mindset is quite positive, huh.”
As if immune to the trace of malice leaking from the other’s words, the young man simply flashed a full row of white teeth and smiled: “Well duh, what else? Grandpa, do you want some? Should I leave two for you?”
The grandpa’s expression froze.
Witnessing it all, Qiao Luan smiled soundlessly, thinking to himself that this guy had probably read quite a few apocalyptic survival novels and movies; condoms were fantastic goods in the end times, perfectly suited for trading supplies. As he thought this, his fingers dropped to grasp a section of an arm.
Lowering his gaze, an immature hand was stealthily tugging at the instant noodles in his basket.
Noticing Qiao Luan looking over, a little boy of only seven or eight years old blinked his dark, luminous eyes and asked Qiao Luan: “Big brother, I want to eat your instant noodles. Can you share a few boxes with me?”
“Share a few boxes? How many boxes do you want?”
“Four boxes, I guess. One box for grandpa, one box for grandma, one box for mom, and one for me. Big brother, can you? My grandpa and grandma are too old and can’t walk, and my mom has been lying in bed ever since she got into a car accident. I just want four boxes, is that okay?”
“The little fellow is this pitiful?” The person who spoke before Qiao Luan was a man standing behind him. Hurriedly pulling a bag of white rice out of his own basket, he handed it over with a gaze full of heartache: “Is your mom paralyzed or in a vegetative state? Looking at it this way, the only one left in the family who can walk is a little kid. Take this rice first.”
The little boy obediently thanked the man: “Thank you, uncle.”
“Don’t mention it. You’re so small and so pitiful, helping you out is only right. I’m sure big brother will agree too.” With that, he glanced intentionally or unintentionally at Qiao Luan, who stood there smiling silently.
Yet unexpectedly, the moment he looked over, Qiao Luan was staring straight at him.
Those dark-as-the-abyss eyes, even when slightly curved, evoked a bizarre sense of dread. The man’s gaze instinctively flickered away, only to abruptly hear Qiao Luan’s nonchalant voice ring out: “This big brother is truly handsome and kind-hearted.”
Following that, he half-squatted down so his line of sight leveled with the little boy, a smile on his face warm as spring night wind, yet his words were chillingly sharp to the bone.
“Little kid, here’s the thing: big brother is a man.” Qiao Luan smiled as he pinched the child’s chubby cheeks, his tone gentle, “But not a saint.”
“So trying to rely on playing the pitiful card to win sympathy and using moral blackmail to force big brother here is useless. After all, big brother has no shame either. Since I have no shame, naturally I won’t share my instant noodles with you. Am I right?”
The little boy: “…”
The man: “…”
The queue of bystanders: “…”
Never had they imagined someone could articulate being selfish and brazen with such righteous confidence. Even the young guy who was bagging condoms looked over, then gave Qiao Luan a thumbs-up.
Damn, talents like this can thrive swimmingly in the end times!
Standing back up, Qiao Luan tossed the instant noodles that the little boy was clutching tightly back into his basket, speaking as if casually: “Speaking of which, you guys actually look quite a lot alike.”
As his words fell, the man’s expression stiffened slightly. Immediately afterward, a mutter rang out nearby: “This little boy came to beg me to share some noodles with him just now too. I gave him four packs, but I didn’t see him take them where did he put them?”
“Probably in his father’s shopping basket the one who hasn’t shown up yet.”
Answering with a smile, Qiao Luan handed his basket to the cashier: “Hello, please ring this up.”