“He arrived on the first day of this instance and knocked on everyone’s safe house. My god, I thought he was there to rob me. I was wondering if players had gotten that brazen these days? To just fight head-on?”
The tall, aloof man stood right outside the door. The safe house walls were like mere decorations to him.
A sand sea that shouldn’t exist in the forest surged and churned like a tsunami, on the verge of burying the entire safe house. Under the pitch-black sky, the man wearing the beast-ear mask lifted his head, revealing a pair of emotionless eyes.
Xia Xueqin recalled that moment with He Yuncong and grimaced. “I thought my life was over right there. But the first thing this guy said was: Have you seen his childhood sweetheart?”
The nearly scared-to-death Xia Xueqin cautiously asked, “What’s your childhood sweetheart’s name?”
The beast-eared masked man just kept repeating, “Shanshan, where is Shanshan? I want Shanshan…”
Xia Xueqin realized then that she had encountered the legendary top player who searched the world for his childhood sweetheart—the four-digit elite survivor, the Dream Faller.
He clearly wasn’t on the same path as the other four-digit elite players. He didn’t develop his safe house, didn’t rob supplies, and couldn’t care less about quest rewards.
Many players said it was a miracle that the Dream Faller had survived this long.
There were many rumors about him, but the most famous one was about his dreams: When the Dream Faller’s mental state was off, his dreams turned into reality.
90% of the dreams were extremely dangerous, filled with all sorts of symbols that shouldn’t exist.
10% of the dreams were safe, featuring only the silhouette of a girl—nothing else visible to other players. He immersed himself in everyday life with the girl and couldn’t pull himself out.
One eyewitness claimed to have seen the Dream Faller sitting with a girl’s silhouette, their shadows doing homework together for an entire day.
It wasn’t until the Dream Faller knocked on Xia Xueqin’s safe house door that she got a clear impression of him.
He trekked alone through the rainforest, found one safe house after another, knocked, came up empty, then moved on to the next place—as if he didn’t know what disappointment was.
She sighed. “Was the Dream Faller always this crazy before?”
Mu Shan looked down. “Of course not. He was an academic genius from a young age, with a limitless future.”
Both fell silent.
A bird’s cry broke the quiet. Xia Xueqin tapped her system screen twice. “Add me as a friend. If you want to team up, find me—I’ll support.”
Mu Shan kept a straight face. “That’s what the old hand said back then too.”
Xia Xueqin grinned, exchanging a knowing look. “Support jobs aren’t easy these days.”
【Player Xia Xueqin (Weather Forecaster) requests to add you as a friend】
They exchanged contact info. She waved goodbye to Mu Shan with her back turned, then nimbly slipped into the underbrush and ran off like a pink rabbit.
Mu Shan opened her friend list. Xia Xueqin’s profile pic was a close-up of her rolling her eyes and flipping the bird. Her feed showed a very healthy mental state.
[Damn, dumping your mom in this godforsaken shithole. Might as well go eat cockroach paste on the Snow Country Train!]
[There really are giant cockroaches, you endless system bastard!]
[Fucking tropical rainforest—the weather’s impossible to predict, more fickle than a man’s heart.]
[Fuck, I don’t want to be support anymore!]
Mu Shan grinned. She shouldered her hoe and walked to the riverbank where she’d set the fish trap earlier. She hauled in the soggy rope and dragged back the plastic bucket. Opening it, she found several actual fish inside.
Six or seven small black fish and over a dozen transparent shrimp—enough for a meal.
Mu Shan dumped the catch into a water bucket and happily carried it back to the safe house.
“Guard the night properly.” She patted the zombie worker’s shoulder at the door.
The thing staggered from the pat, its rotten mouth opening to emit a “geh geh” growl as it watched Mu Shan enter the sunroom walls.
After a hard day’s labor, Mu Shan bathed early and rested, conserving energy for tomorrow’s big battle.
That night, under dim lighting, she simmered the caught fish into a pot of soup. The shrimp boiled simply were delicious.
The fish soup was milky white. The small black fish had lots of bones and little meat, but the flesh was tender and fresh. Adding bitter bamboo shoots and wild greens from the forest made it a perfect meat-and-veggie nutritional combo.
The black bread bought from the village was rock-hard, needing a saw to cut a piece. Mu Shan soaked the bread in the fish soup and ate every bit of meat and broth without waste.
She didn’t even discard the fish bones—rolled up and piled in a pit, they could serve as a small animal trap.
Every instance had different environmental advantages. Mu Shan planned to use up freshly gathered ingredients as much as possible. Fresh veggies, meat, and eggs didn’t store well; the cured meats and dried seafood from the zombie instance were her bottom-line reserves, deciding how long she could survive without resupply.
Main Quest (Day 5)
She slept soundly through the night. The morning sky was overcast.
About two hours remained until the second wave of giant insect monster attack.
Mu Shan racked her brains and prepared several plans to deal with the insect monsters.
She had made full preparations with her limited conditions. Since her personal combat power fell short, she could only rely on the surrounding environment, existing tools, and predictions of the insect monsters’ movements to delay the swarm as long as possible.
She did a final inspection of the traps she’d set.
She ensured every pit was well-covered with leaves, the tripwires would trigger smoothly, and the wooden spikes would launch quickly. Meanwhile, all her offensive weapons and items were primed and ready.
Countdown: 1 hour left.
Mu Shan couldn’t sit still. She crouched in the sunroom on alert, frequently glancing outside, her heart pounding wildly.
Unknown, powerful, uncontrollable variables were heading her way.
But before the swarm arrived, dark clouds blanketed the gray sky, and a thunderclap jolted the forest awake.
Mu Shan received terrible news: It was raining!
One oversight in a hundred precautions.
In an instant, the entire forest was engulfed in downpour, raindrops like beads smashing the ground and splashing fine water and mud.
She hadn’t planned for rainy combat back then.
The rain meant she could only use half her traps. The fire oil she designed wouldn’t burn in the rain. Pits and wooden spikes alone would have greatly reduced effect against the giant insects.
Mu Shan gritted her teeth. In the worst case, she’d have to hold off just one enemy herself this time.
Time ticked by, but the rain curtain showed no sign of letting up.
The rain finally weakened, but the pine resin in the traps had mostly leaked out.
No time to reset. Mu Shan gripped her weapons for a hard fight. Wearing a raincoat, she crouched in the bushes while leaving the zombie worker to guard the safe house.
The sixty-second countdown flew by in a blink.
But even after the attack time arrived, no movement came from upstream on the river.
Mu Shan froze as if paused. Realizing something was off, she waited another minute patiently.
No scraping limbs on gravel, no insect chirps—the forest was deathly quiet, as if nothing had happened.
Mu Shan looked up suspiciously. Overtime? Delayed? Traffic jam?
No way the upstream had wiped them all out, right?
If she didn’t know what kind of players David and Huang Hongbo were, she might have believed it. They wouldn’t generously clear for those downstream.
After waiting another ten minutes or so, the zombie worker let out its familiar, gut-wrenching alarm cry again.
“Aaahhh—” It shrieked in terror, flailing wildly, just like the zombie worker on day one.
Mu Shan jolted. It was here!
She raised her gun and aimed, eyes locked on the upstream riverbank. Faint sounds of insect limbs scraping earth came, but they weren’t loud or dense.
A few seconds later, when the first bug entered attack range, she was utterly dumbfounded.
Because there were only two.
And both were “frail, elderly, sick, and disabled.”
The giant insect monsters resembling moths advanced with difficulty, one after the other. They seemed to have just survived a major battle—the sole survivors.
Their massive rear wings were tattered, antennae severed, one pair of limbs missing, and eyes blinded.
Rather than “frail,” they were barely clinging to life.
One less breath, and neither would have reached position 5.
It looked like all downstream players in the first four spots would score zero kills today.
Mu Shan stood from the woods, watching complexly as the two giant moths reached her traps—then one by one, precisely stepped into the pit traps.
“Hiss—”
Sharpened wooden spikes in the pits pierced their limbs. The two moths were pinned in place. Then the tripwires triggered, launching a dozen sharp branches.
“Swoosh swoosh swoosh.” The branches pierced the moths’ bodies, splashing pale green juices.
It went too smoothly—almost heartbreaking to watch.
Mu Shan hadn’t even lifted a finger when the system kill notice arrived.
【Player successfully killed Giant Insect Monster x2 (Rockwing Order)
Coins +100
Perfect Kill: Vitality +1
Silent Kill: Coins +20】
She stood with a complicated expression beside the two thoroughly dead rock moths, gazing upriver.
Something must have happened upstream.
After killing the two giant insects, the zombie worker went quiet and obedient again. That meant this batch of insect monsters was truly wiped out—no stragglers.
Mu Shan resolved to get to the bottom of it.
She drew her machete to clear the path and followed the river upstream to uncharted territory.
The nearest was position 6—Huang Hongbo had timed his monster-snatching visit before, so their safe houses weren’t far apart.
Sure enough, after seven or eight minutes, Mu Shan spotted the marked ⑥ safe house from afar. It was entirely stone-brick structure with an arched hollow roof, sealed airtight.
The ground from ⑥ house to the riverbank was spotless—no battle traces.
No anomaly was the biggest anomaly.
It meant the two bugs had bypassed Huang Hongbo straight to her. Position 6 hadn’t even fought!
Mu Shan eyed the tightly shut stone-brick house with complex emotions. She seemed to see a shadow moving inside, but Huang Hongbo never appeared.
He even robbed monsters—there was no way he’d pass up these near-free coins.
Mu Shan skipped position 6 and headed to the farther position 7 safe house.
After she passed, a man inside glared resentfully at her back.
“Crash—”
Farther upstream, the river rapids grew fiercer, with a steep waterfall section to climb.
Years of wind and rain had coated the rocks in slick moss. Mu Shan treaded carefully every step but still slipped twice.
She brushed off the dirt, parted dense bushes, and finally saw the marked ⑦ safe house.
A large swath of battle traces covered the riverbank ahead of position 7. Over a dozen rock moth corpses piled up into a small hill, pale green blood soaking the grass.
Beside the insect pile was a grassy knoll where a tall, burly figure sat, head down eating something.
Mu Shan pulled out the binoculars.
【Elite Player 420187
ID: Yu Da
Profession: Mushroom Power】
So Yu Da was position 7.
He’d been eating intently but suddenly sensed her approach. He whipped around, stood, and bolted into his safe house.
Mu Shan was baffled.
Without Yu Da’s body blocking, she spotted a man lying stark on the grass, blending into the shadows, motionless like a corpse.
Yu Da… hadn’t been eating a person just now, had he?