Yu Da truly looked like he would eat anything… It wouldn’t be strange if he ate people too.
Mu Shan warily retreated half a step.
The binoculars lens shifted downward.
When she clearly saw the name and profession of the person lying on the ground, she froze for a moment, then took a step forward before rapidly dashing toward the hillside.
The person on the ground was He Yuncong.
No player would choose to sleep in the wild… especially since he lay completely motionless, which didn’t look good at all.
Mu Shan rushed to him, panting heavily and stumbling along the way.
The man lay sprawled in a “big” character shape with his limbs spread out, his face covered by that black beast-head mask. The exposed skin on his hands and feet showed no visible wounds, but since he was all in black, bloodstains wouldn’t be obvious either.
Mu Shan quickly scanned him once, her heart jolting. Could it be that he was missing some internal organs…
She crouched down and first tentatively touched his arm to reduce any stress response.
“Yuncong Bro, are you okay? It’s Mu Shan.”
However, he showed no response at all. His skin was scorching hot, far beyond 37 degrees.
Mu Shan grew anxious and grabbed his wrist to check his pulse.
She didn’t know how to diagnose by pulse, but she could count heartbeats.
A normal person’s heart rate was 60-100 beats per minute, averaging 1.6 per second. But after counting his wrist several times… He Yuncong’s heartbeat was once every two seconds.
This was nowhere near normal!!
Mu Shan yanked off his mask and tossed it aside.
The bandages over his eyes were still there, covering most of his face, making it impossible to tell if he was dead or alive. She placed her hand under his nose; his breathing was faint.
While pinching the center of his upper lip, she slapped his face: “Yuncong Bro, can you hear my voice?”
“Wake up!”
The man showed no reaction, lying there just like a corpse.
Mu Shan’s heart sank. Could he really be seriously injured…
She looked up at the nearby Safe House at position seven. Yu Da’s friend-or-foe status was unknown; she couldn’t rashly seek help.
She quickly rummaged through the first-aid medicine in her virtual backpack: hemostatic agents, heatstroke remedies, mosquito bite treatments… None worked on coma.
Mu Shan was at a loss, planning to fetch some water from the river to cool him down first.
Suddenly, a large hand reached from behind and fiercely grabbed her arm. Mu Shan had no time to react before a tremendous force yanked her down onto the grass.
The world spun, and blinding sunlight stabbed her face.
She instinctively squinted.
The grass cushioning her head was very soft, and the rain-scented smell of damp soil assaulted her nose.
He Yuncong, who had been half-dead moments ago, now sat up. His broad shoulders blocked half the sky. Due to the backlighting, she couldn’t see his face clearly.
The two maintained this one-above-the-other position in a standoff for a few seconds.
Mu Shan calmed her racing heart and examined the familiar yet unfamiliar person before her. Suddenly, she reached out to tug at the bandages covering his face.
He Yuncong offered no resistance at all.
The bandages fell to the ground, revealing a pair of blue eyes that didn’t belong to a yellow race. Additionally, there was a scar across his left eyelid, as if it had just healed, making him look like a convict who had just escaped prison…
Mu Shan blurted out: “You can see now?”
What responded was He Yuncong’s unblinking, intense stare.
He looked full of energy, with no sign of being on the brink of death.
Only then did Mu Shan belatedly realize: “You were pretending to be dead just now?”
“You!” Her cheeks flushed with anger, and she punched his chest hard.
There was a muffled thud… It was so hard it hurt her hand.
He Yuncong showed no normal human reaction to Mu Shan’s anger. Even after being hit, he seemed devoid of pain, rigid like a wooden log that wouldn’t cry.
After a long stare-down, he finally seemed to confirm who was before him. His hands suddenly gripped her shoulders, and he leaned forward.
The aggressive aura hit her face. Mu Shan wanted to push him away and stand up, but she was pinned immobile.
Those unfamiliar blue eyes drew closer and closer. Mu Shan instinctively assumed a defensive posture: “What are you doing…?”
Even as her hands pressed against his chest, He Yuncong didn’t hesitate for a moment.
The next second, his feverishly hot forehead touched hers.
The man was like a large dog that had wandered for ages and finally found home. His arms tightly embraced her without loosening, and with eyes closed, he gently rubbed his forehead against hers: “Shanshan.”
Mu Shan felt his trembling body and intense emotions. In that moment, her heart felt softly struck, and her eyes suddenly stung a bit.
She also raised her arms to hug his back and patted it lightly.
What she touched was hot and hard—a body tempered from day after day of slaughter.
“Yuncong Bro, persisting in the instance for so long must have been tough.”
Their foreheads touched, breaths mingled.
How many people could find relatives or friends in the instance’s bizarre killing world, and how many could reunite with familiar faces?
Probably not even one in ten thousand.
This long-awaited reunion embrace was something He Yuncong had waited for over five hundred and forty days, twelve thousand nine hundred hours…
The rainy Humid Heat Forest finally saw a sunny day.
The two found a safe spot and sat shoulder to shoulder on the grass.
Mu Shan turned her head to observe him. He Yuncong used to have fair skin, always wearing a clean shirt, never showing a disheveled side to others—he was the model student in the eyes of teachers and classmates.
Now, his wheat-colored skin was covered in scars, old wounds layered over new ones. His black clothes were filthy and tattered, who knew where he had dug them up from.
His demeanor was mechanical and stiff, his temperament vastly different from before. Mu Shan didn’t dare imagine what horrific man-eating instances he had endured.
“It’s been a year and a half since the first ‘disappearance.’ No one from the real world returned alive; everyone thought you were dead. How… did you survive?”
He Yuncong didn’t answer her question. His eyes never left her for a second.
After a long pause, he asked word by word: “Shanshan, how long have you been in here?”
Mu Shan thought for a moment: “25 days.”
He clearly froze: “25 days…”
Mu Shan noticed his surprise: “What’s wrong, you didn’t know? Xia Xueqin said you’ve been searching for me across instances… You actually didn’t know when I entered the instance, right?”
He Yuncong shook his head: “I didn’t know.”
“The system only allowed me one question.” He held her left hand in his palm and rubbed it, his rough fingertips careful not to touch the blisters and small cuts on her hand. “Every day in the instances is identical; I can’t remember how long I’ve been here.”
“I could only ask: Are you still alive? The system’s answer was yes.”
“As long as you’re alive, I can definitely find you.”
Mu Shan knew how many hardships and near-death crises those plain words glossed over from his year and a half.
The two leaned tightly against each other, shoulder to shoulder.
She didn’t know how much time passed before Mu Shan snapped out of it and realized that holding hands was too intimate—they hadn’t been this close since elementary school.
She tentatively tried to pull her hand back.
He Yuncong quickly gripped it in return, his fingers stubbornly opening to envelop her fist in his palm.
Mu Shan: …
He was still the childhood friend, but not the same one as before.
The old He Yuncong was especially good at reading people. As they grew up, he knew to keep a safe distance, rarely touching her— at most supporting her arm or patting her shoulder.
He usually played the reliable big brother role, never holding hands so dominantly like this.
Mu Shan keenly sensed the change in his mental state and tried to change the subject: “Your eyes and skin color—did you directly change races? Or did you get some strange bloodline?”
She knew instances often had bizarre things; it wasn’t surprising.
He Yuncong lowered his eyes: “Not a bloodline, it’s Assimilation.”
“What is Assimilation?”
“A transformation process, with two possible outcomes.”
She wanted to ask what the different outcomes were when a “rustling” sound suddenly reached her ears. Mu Shan first thought it was an illusion, but when a hot wind carrying a desert scent brushed her cheek, she realized it was real.
Quicksand, stone bricks.
A pyramid was appearing in the forest…
Mu Shan stared in shock at the small pyramid that had “grown” out of thin air, feeling an itch in her palm.
He Yuncong flipped her hand over. Mu Shan saw golden fine sand trickling through her fingers, vanishing into the grass.
One second, two seconds.
Only after she shook off the remaining sand grains did she notice that all the wounds from over twenty days of survival and combat in the instance—the blisters, abrasions, swelling, breaks—had vanished.
Her skin was flawless, without a single scar.
She jerked her head up to meet the eyes of the man who had been silently watching her.
“What did you do?”
He Yuncong wore a gentle smile and said nothing.
Mu Shan suddenly realized this might be what he meant by [Assimilation].
A transformation, two outcomes.
No matter the outcome, he was no longer purely human.
After a long separation, the two re-added each other as friends (a rather novel experience). Mu Shan finally saw his stats.
【Elite Player 7771】
ID: He Yuncong
Age: 23
Profession: Dream Faller
Skills: Descent, Dream Making [No permission to view details]
Status: Assimilation [No permission to view details]
HP: 50+992
Defense: 35+1024
Strength: 45+1281
Mental: 2
Agility: 47+768
Gold Coins: 500000
Instance Count: 27
Mu Shan: …
Terrifying numbers assaulted her one after another, nearly blinding her.
“Wait, is that Mental 2 for real?”
Mu Shan thought of her own series of mental items: “My mental strength is 69 now. If I wanted, I could mind-control you to death…”
He Yuncong’s eyes widened, full of expectation.
“Really?”
Mu Shan blinked: “What really?”
“Control me to death.”
“…”
The pyramid deep in the forest had fully “grown,” its tip reflecting sunlight. He Yuncong seemed like a sand mountain blown over by wind, collapsing backward onto the grass. His tall frame lay with his head thrown back, staring blankly at the sky, gaze unfocused.
Mu Shan sensed the breathing beside her gradually weakening again and nudged his arm with her shoe tip: “I’m serious, what’s the deal with your Mental stat?”
“Don’t remember.” He Yuncong.
“Don’t remember…” Mu Shan was speechless. “The system shop sells Attribute Point Cards. Why not buy a few to add points? Mental 2 is too dangerous; what happens if it hits 0?”
“Useless.” He closed his eyes. “Even if added, it diminishes, eventually returning to the same number. It’s an irreversible process.”
Mu Shan suddenly had a bad premonition.
She coaxed patiently, hoping to guide him toward normalcy: “Yuncong Bro, a year and a half ago you were studying abroad—surely you remember that? When you came home for New Year, you used your scholarship to buy me a gift.”
He Yuncong lay beside her, inhaling the only familiar scent in his mind, drifting into a half-dreaming state. He struggled through his chaotic memories to dredge up clues.
“Studying abroad, scholarship…”
He could barely recall his first instance anymore.
A year and a half ago.
Teleported directly from the university classroom into the instance space, his predetermined life was utterly shattered. Ordinary humans were weaker than ants before an alien advanced civilization.
A group of humans in varied attire and skin colors were trapped in the same place, fearful, suspicious, hysterical.
【Welcome to the Main God Space
Scan complete: Player physical quality: Good
Sports proficiencies: Basketball, Badminton, Soccer
Health status: Healthy
Player initial rating: Elite】
【Elite Player 7771, welcome as one of the first Main God game players
You have entered the newbie instance [The Shining]
Main Quest: Survive 20 days in the current instance
Please strive to survive】
The world of The Shining was a haunted mountaintop hotel.
When the first human died, everyone knew this was no entertaining television show.
Men wielding axes everywhere, bursting through doors to kill madly at any moment; hallways, corridors, and mazes with eerie color schemes; staircases soaked in blood, impossible to escape.
Everyone felt despair.
But He Yuncong held onto his reason and hope at the beginning. He dodged dangers as best he could, gathered supplies, and rescued others.
When alone, he used his mobile phone to contact everyone in his address book. The most frequent was Mu Shan, who was studying at university back in their homeland at the time.
Nine times, ninety times, nine hundred times.
No matter how many calls he made, the receiver always blared a shrill tone.
“Bzzz—”
The phone shut down due to low battery, the screen filled with a row of missed outgoing calls.
【Warm Reminder: Whether inside or outside instances, players cannot contact humans in the real world.
You exist in two different spaces and times.】
He clutched his head with both hands and knelt on the ground, eyes wide open, his whole body trembling uncontrollably.
Forever, forever…?
After starting university, he only saw her twice a year. They had not met for a long time. Would he never see her again?
Day after day, the ghostly girl who appeared and vanished in the mountaintop hotel, the endless chases and escapes—everything ground down people’s wills.
The Shining instance did not have many traps with over 70% death rates, but out of the fourteen players inside, eight were killed by monsters, and five died by suicide.
He Yuncong was the only one who survived to the end.
“Aaah—!” The man’s shrill scream echoed in the bathroom. Due to the hotel’s vast emptiness, the horrific wail lingered for a long time.
In the narrow room, the bathtub, sink, walls, and mirrors.
All were bright red.
He Yuncong was drenched, staring fixedly at the ceiling with his head tilted back. His dulled weapon clattered from his hand into the bathtub.
Blood traced winding lines across his face, dripping along his hair “drip drip” into the pool of blood.
【Congratulations, player, for clearing the world’s first newbie instance [The Shining]
Congratulations, player, for killing the instance boss.
Please check your rewards.】
【Player unlocks profession: Dream Faller
Dreams fulfill wishes; all your thoughts, desires, and pursuits in reality will appear in the dream realm.
The left bank is the dream, the right bank is reality.
When you can no longer distinguish dream from reality, fantasy becomes truth.】
The moment he killed the instance boss, his mind began to break down as well.
In the Humid Heat Forest, sunlight warmed everything before his eyes, and the familiar scent soothed his nerves.
He Yuncong gazed intently at the girl beside him. “I don’t remember.”
After repeated “interrogation,” Mu Shan finally learned that He Yuncong had killed all the giant insect monsters in that pile, and he had deliberately let the two stragglers escape.
It was that inexplicable protective urge from her daddy-type childhood friend again.
“Shouldn’t you be guarding Position 1? What are you doing here?”
“Want to help you.” He was concise. “Too many bugs reached Position 7 this wave. It’s strange.”
Mu Shan had not yet figured out exactly what was strange when a red floating prompt appeared before her eyes, indicating a message from a friend.
[Xia Xueqin (Meteorologist)]: Something happened. Come to the town quickly. David is dead.
[Mu Shan (Collector)]: Finally eaten by bugs, that beast?
[Xia Xueqin (Meteorologist)]: If only. David hasn’t returned to the safe house for two days. He died in the town!
In other words, he was killed by a human.
Mu Shan’s mind turned to chaos.
She suddenly turned her head and pointed a finger at He Yuncong.
“You didn’t kill David, did you?”
The man stared at her fingertip. “Who’s David? Male or female?”
Mu Shan: “…Got it. Definitely not you.”