Fu Songcheng was staring absently at the three characters “Yu Huaiting” on the rankings when his system panel let out a crisp “beep,” interrupting his thoughts.
[System Notification: Player “Chen Muhuai” requests to add you as a friend.]
Fu Songcheng was slightly taken aback.
Chen Muhuai?
A former colleague from the real world—a junior engineer on the same project team.
In Fu Songcheng’s memory, Chen Muhuai was a mild-mannered, good-natured man who always wore thick black-framed glasses. Just last week, he’d taken a long leave from the supervisor due to a “bad cold.”
How had he ended up here?
Fu Songcheng was wary, but still clicked [Accept].
Someone he knew from reality couldn’t be fully trusted, but at least meant a free source of information. He’d only just entered the game and needed more intel to help him make decisions.
Almost the instant the friend request was accepted, the other party’s call came through.
“Engineer Fu? It’s really you?!”
From the other end came Chen Muhuai’s voice, trembling with excitement—so much so that it was clearly distorted.
“It’s me.”
Fu Songcheng’s voice was steady. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the ‘Nightingale Tavern’ in the loading zone—come over quick! I’m so glad you made it out of the novice instance alive!”
Fu Songcheng ended the call and, following the system map’s guidance, made his way through the bustling crowds of players with their varied expressions to the Nightingale Tavern.
The tavern’s lighting was dim, the air thick with the mingled smell of cheap alcohol and some unidentifiable spice.
The moment he stepped inside, a man in a gray protective suit in the corner shot to his feet and waved frantically at him.
If not for those signature black-framed glasses, Fu Songcheng almost wouldn’t have recognized the person before him.
Chen Muhuai had grown gaunt—his originally round cheeks were now deeply sunken—but the mild gentleness in his eyes remained.
“Old Fu, sit, sit down!”
Chen Muhuai hurriedly pushed a brimming mug of draft beer toward Fu Songcheng. “Running into an acquaintance in a hellhole like this—I just, I just don’t know what to say.”
Fu Songcheng pulled out a chair and sat down, not touching the beer, only studying the other man unobtrusively. “How did you end up here? You only asked the supervisor for sick leave last Monday.”
“Last Monday?”
Hearing those words, Chen Muhuai froze, his hand holding the mug suspended mid-air.
He downed a huge gulp of beer, the harsh liquid making him cough violently until tears were forced from his eyes. “Last Monday—Old Fu, you don’t know. I’ve been in this game for a full three months!”
Fu Songcheng’s heart skipped a beat.
“Three months?”
The time flow inside the game was this much slower than the outside world?
Fu Songcheng fell silent.
His mind began racing.
If the time flows were different, then this Death Party was even vaster and more terrifying than he’d imagined. It didn’t just pull people into the game—it could even interfere with time in the real world.
No wonder that madman Yu Huaiting could clear 18 instances.
By real-world time, that would be impossible—but inside the game, he might have been fighting here for a very long time.
“Stop thinking about it, Old Fu. This isn’t something us bottom-tier players can control.”
Fu Songcheng cooperatively drank a few more cups with Chen Muhuai, then patted his shoulder and asked, “How did you get in touch with me?”
At that, Chen Muhuai looked a little proud.
“I could have gone to your novice instance and carried you through it.”
Fu Songcheng leaned back in his chair, fingertips tapping lightly on the table, showing curiosity and admiration at the right moments.
“Really? That impressive.”
Chen Muhuai leaned in closer, his tone turning serious. “The rules of Death Party—every player must forcibly enter a formal instance once a week. Those formal instances have death rates as high as sixty or seventy percent! I watched hundreds of people who came in the same batch as me—now there’s not even a scrap of them left.”
Fu Songcheng played along. “Then you must have found a way to dodge them these past three months.”
“Exactly.”
Chen Muhuai took a deep breath and patted his former supervisor on the shoulder.
“Novice instances!”
“The game gives newcomers a certain leniency. Novice instances don’t have the mandatory death quotas that formal ones do. In a novice instance, if the players cooperate well, you can even get an ‘all players advance’ outcome. Of course, if they’re all idiots, you can also get an ‘all players wiped out.’”
Chen Muhuai poured himself and Fu Songcheng another cup each and finished in one breath. “In the system shop, there’s a special mission commission called ‘Veteran Leads Newbie.’ Spend points to buy the commission token, and before your weekly mandatory formal instance, you can voluntarily enter a novice instance and play the role of guide.”
“As long as you successfully lead the newcomers to clear it, the system will count your instance mission for the week as complete.”
Fu Songcheng’s eyes flickered. “Is it really that easy?”
He didn’t believe the system would be so kind as to leave such a huge loophole.
“The downside is the payout is extremely low.”
Chen Muhuai smiled bitterly. “Novice instances drop pitifully few points, and on top of that, ‘Veteran Leads Newbie’ players have a portion of their rewards deducted at settlement.”
“But if you’re dead, what good are points?”
Chen Muhuai clinked his cup against Fu Songcheng’s and downed the slightly bitter, pungent beer in one gulp. “I’ve been leading newcomers for three months straight. The payout isn’t much, but I’m still alive! As long as you’re alive, there’s still hope of waiting for the day this game ends!”
He shook his slightly foggy head. “Engineer Fu, I actually saw your novice instance. But that instance’s rules kill people—the lowest value gets eliminated each round—so I didn’t go.”
“Don’t hold it against me…”
Fu Songcheng unobtrusively withdrew his wrist.
Looking at this former colleague, now thoroughly worn down to the point where he only sought survival, he sighed inwardly.
“How could I? I understand.”
Fu Songcheng’s tone was beyond reproach. “Survival is definitely the most important thing. Thank you for telling me the way to survive here.”
“Hahaha, what’s that? You promoted me plenty back in the day!”
Chen Muhuai nodded repeatedly, seemingly very gratified by Fu Songcheng’s attitude. “Come, let’s drink until we drop, you and I!”
Finally having someone to confide in, Chen Muhuai drank cup after cup, talking at length between drinks about his experiences leading newcomers through instances.
After parting ways with Chen Muhuai, Fu Songcheng walked the road back to his rest room alone.
The loading zone’s corridor was long and cold, the incandescent lights overhead occasionally flickering with a buzzing crackle of current.
“Camping out in the novice village?”
Fu Songcheng sneered inwardly.
Chen Muhuai had indeed provided an extremely valuable piece of intel. For the vast majority of shell-shocked players, this was absolutely a perfect safe harbor.
But for him, Fu Songcheng, it wasn’t enough.
He recalled the novice instance he’d just been through, Silent Library.
That instance’s core mechanics were absolute silence and rule-based puzzle-solving. As long as you could restrain your fear and avoid triggering the obvious death taboos, clearing it actually wasn’t hard.
Even without relying on special methods to boost the books, he had absolute confidence he could survive in this game—and he’d never be the one at the bottom.
But his subconscious craved stimulation; extreme rationality was merely the packaging.
If he stayed in the novice village playing “Veteran Leads Newbie,” the points he earned would probably not be enough to cover the damage Yu Huaiting dragged him into.
As long as that madman Yu Huaiting still sat at number one on the Power Ranking, as long as he still entered and exited the highest-difficulty instances, as long as they were still bound by the [Lover] identity—
If Yu Huaiting took a serious wound in a high-level instance, the proportionally shared damage alone would drag him—with no healing potions—to his death!
Most importantly, he had entered the game too late.
“I can’t stay in the novice village. I need to climb the rankings as fast as possible.”
Fu Songcheng pushed open the door to his rest room, a cold resolve in his eyes. “I need enough capital to protect myself.”
The rest room was simple: a bed, a washstand, and a terminal display connected to the system.
Fu Songcheng took off his jacket and collapsed onto the bed, exhausted.
The alcohol and his overstretched nerves finally brought him a trace of drowsiness.
He closed his eyes, deciding to sleep first and study the mechanics of formal instances after recovering his strength.
However, he didn’t even have the right to a peaceful sleep.
Late at night.
Fu Songcheng was jolted awake by a bout of excruciating pain.
“Ungh—!”
He shot up from the bed, both hands gripping the sheets for dear life, an uncontrollable groan escaping his throat.
Burning!
An extreme, searing burn!
An indescribable, terrifying heat spread without warning from his legs.
He looked down in horror. There wasn’t a single flame on his legs—not even the newly changed standard combat suit was damaged in the slightest.
But that agony—flesh and skin being roasted alive by fire, fat melting and boiling at high temperatures—surged wildly up his nerve centers with absolute realism!
[System Warning: Your bound target “Yu Huaiting” is suffering high-intensity flame burn damage!]
[Damage Synchronization triggered! You are sharing 30% of the pain and true damage!]
“Yu! Huai! Ting!”
Fu Songcheng ground his teeth so hard he nearly cracked them, squeezing those three characters out through the gaps.
He could almost smell the charred flesh radiating from his legs.
Under the excruciating pain, the muscles in his legs convulsed uncontrollably. He tried to stand, but his legs had completely lost their strength, and he crashed heavily onto the cold floor.
What the hell was that madman doing now?!
Taking a bath in a sea of fire?!
If your skin itches, wash it with water!
The pain continued to intensify. Fu Songcheng’s forehead was instantly covered in bean-sized beads of cold sweat, and his vision began to blur.
If Yu Huaiting couldn’t escape the fire source soon, then even outside the instance, the true damage synchronized through the “Damage Synchronization” would burn him alive right here in the rest room.
“I curse your ancestors, Yu Huaiting…”
Fu Songcheng’s prized composure was completely shattered at this moment.
Enduring the agony that threatened to tear him apart, he braced himself against the floor with both arms and, like a fish out of water, desperately crawled toward the system terminal in the corner of the room.
Finally, his hand touched the cold terminal screen.
“O… open the shop!”
Fu Songcheng’s voice was terrifyingly hoarse.
The screen lit up, and the three-dimensional list popped out.
At this moment, he still had the five thousand-plus points he’d extorted from Yu Huaiting—his only life-saving talisman right now.
“Consumables—Recovery Potion!”
Fu Songcheng, eyes bloodshot, frantically tapped the screen.
[Purchase successful: Recovery Potion (Intermediate) x1, 500 points deducted.]
The moment the test tube appeared, he bit off the stopper and poured the entire blue liquid down his throat.
The cool medicine instantly neutralized part of the burning sensation. The searing pain in his legs finally eased a little, letting him find his rhythm of breathing again.
But it wasn’t over.
As the medicine took effect, the warning on the system panel didn’t disappear—which meant Yu Huaiting was still being burned.
“You don’t want to live, so you’re dragging me down to die with you!”
Fu Songcheng maxed out the purchase quantity.
[Purchase successful: Recovery Potion (Basic) x10, 1,500 points deducted.]
[Purchase successful: Recovery Potion (Intermediate) x2, 1,000 points deducted.]
He bought an entire crate of recovery potions in one go and stuffed them straight into his system backpack.
If Yu Huaiting kept burning over there, he’d just drink potions like water.
After drinking the potions, sensation finally slowly returned to his legs.
Fu Songcheng steadied himself against the terminal and stood up, his whole body drenched in cold sweat.
Looking at the two thousand-plus points left in his account, he opened the [Curios] category.
His gaze locked precisely onto [Love Letter].
“Ten points per letter, is it.”
A curve utterly devoid of warmth tugged at the corner of Fu Songcheng’s lips.
[Purchase successful: Love Letter x50, 500 points deducted.]
Gritting his teeth, Fu Songcheng took out a letter and wrote:
“Yu Huaiting, what are you doing?!”
The red light shot off like a homing missile, vanishing into the void with a whoosh.
Still not appeased, Fu Songcheng took a deep breath and poured the remaining thousand-plus points into the [Weapon Enhancement] interface.
He removed the 100-point basic long-handled dagger from his waist and placed it into the enhancement slot.
[Weapon detected: Basic Dagger.]
[Consume 1,000 points to apply a one-time ‘Armor Break’ enchantment?]
“Yes.”
A piercing red light enveloped the dagger.
Seconds later, the light dispersed.
On the thin blade that had once gleamed with a faint blue luster, a dark red blood groove had now appeared.
Held in the hand, its sharpness was several times greater than before.
[Enhancement successful.]
[Weapon: Dagger (Intermediate).]
[Attributes: Attack +45, Agility bonus +10, with a 15% armor penetration effect.]
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