Xie Chun Ye had already died once.
Come on. Anyone who could have half their body swallowed by a black hole and still survive was not an Infinite Game player. They were a cosmic superhuman.
The miniature accretion disk dragged Xie Chun Ye around like a pencil shoved into a sharpener. He felt both legs tear apart, his pelvis split into pieces, and his kidneys and intestines twist together and rupture.
By the end, only half his head remained outside. His black-framed glasses for detecting contamination had been crushed, and his eyes struggled to roll upward like the protagonist of a horror movie being forcibly drowned. He looked utterly wretched.
Before he died, he heard the museum’s public broadcast repeatedly announcing major news.
Rheingold Emperor had died suddenly. The Second Rose Princess had formally ascended the throne, brought back the young Prince Arthur who had escaped by faking his death, and overturned the Eldest Princess’s horrifying conspiracy.
His wife was seriously badass. With her husband seconds away from dying without even a whole corpse left, she still knew to grab a freshly vacant throne first.
That was exactly the kind of personality Xie Chun Ye loved. A person could not be too selfless. Only by first protecting their own interests and support could they gain the power to fight for a future beyond anyone else’s reach.
As the final thread of his consciousness was about to disappear, Xie Chun Ye finally let go of every obsession and worry. He also completely failed to notice that the hundred-meter-tall Ancient Fossil Museum had just been rammed airborne by a dazzling, glittering ship accelerating straight into it.
The entire building went flying.
The protection system and high-altitude barrier both failed. The towering structure was smashed into several enormous pieces, splitting apart grandly in midair and burning fiercely like celestial maidens scattering flowers.
When Xie Chun Ye came back to life, he was already lying in the master bedroom at Helin Estate. He was still half-paralyzed and half-dead, with a nasogastric tube and an oral tracheal tube inserted, while the heart monitor emitted irritating beeps. He could not even say, “So noisy.”
Chi Yan sat beside him, wearing gold-rimmed glasses while looking at a computer. Her usually exquisitely shaped brows were furrowed into a little mountain.
“Awake?”
Her sharp gaze suddenly landed on his face.
“Mm.”
That was the only vague sound Xie Chun Ye could produce.
“What do we do? Song Zang disappeared. He’s not in the café, and even Mr. Butler doesn’t know where he went. It’s incredibly weird.
“I just asked Yu Heng. She doesn’t know anything either, and she told me not to interfere. You think I can just ignore it? Of course I have to interfere.
“So I went to ask Zhang Ming Shen. Hey, Old Xie, did you know Zhang Ming Shen isn’t actually mute? He gave that goofy smile of his and said something completely inexplicable, then rolled his eyes and spat up three liters of blood right in front of me. His heartbeat vanished instantly! He’s fine for now, but his condition is even more dangerous than yours.
“I’m so done. I’ve been running in circles since early morning, and every big and little thing needs me personally worrying over it… Xie Chun Ye, you’ve gotten bold, huh? Not answering me?”
Chi Yan rattled off a huge string of words, then finally glared at the man in the hospital bed and demanded an answer.
Xie Chun Ye stared weakly and speechlessly back at her in silence, completely justified.
There was still a tube stuck in his trachea. He literally could not speak.
“Oh. Forgot. Sorry.”
Chi Yan silently checked Xie Chun Ye’s condition. His blood-oxygen saturation had risen, so he should be able to breathe on his own. She personally removed the tube for him.
“Cough… Zhang… Ming Shen… said… what?”
Xie Chun Ye struggled to speak and discovered that his voice now sounded like an old donkey grinding grain, halting, hoarse, and broken. His fresh, tender vocal cords had no muscle memory and did not cooperate well with his brain’s commands.
“That’s what you care about most?”
Chi Yan shot him an irritated look and helplessly repeated, “He said: Yin Chen and Song Zang are a match made in heaven, perfectly suited to one another, destined to last forever, an immortal couple who will always live happily together.
“Then he nearly died. Luckily, he collapsed at Helin Estate where I could save him. I know it’s rude, but I genuinely couldn’t help gossiping about him with you. Doesn’t that sound insane? Even if you’re going to lose it, you have to pick the right occasion.”
Zhang Ming Shen could speak, but he had been pretending to be mute?
Xie Chun Ye forced his stiff brain to work. After thinking for a moment, he coughed twice and spoke with difficulty, his eyes extremely certain. “He… definitely… has… a Word Spirit ability.”
“…Then that’s even crazier, isn’t it?”
“I… think so… too.”
If he possessed a Word Spirit ability, even saying 【Song Zang will come home safely today】 would have been far more useful than that long string of wedding blessings.
It sounded insane, but as Yin Chen’s underling, Zhang Ming Shen had to have a reason for doing it.
He had not said Song Zang would return home safely, which meant Song Zang was probably not in that much danger and would have come home safely anyway.
Chi Yan had no time to worry about Xie Chun Ye’s injuries. He had awakened and regained the ability to breathe and think on his own. That was enough. He would not die.
She was more worried about Song Zang’s situation. If the fighting became too intense and they punched through space itself… it would definitely affect the safety of the human world.
“Old Xie, look at this. These are fusion-reactor diagrams Yin Chen gave me. They can push plasma density fifty percent beyond the limit without losing magnetic confinement, while staying safe and stable. This should be the limit of what the real world can achieve. What do you think?
“I couldn’t find anything like black steel, but I used Rose Empire equipment to run material analysis. There’s stone very similar to radiant iron at the sealed base in the capital.”
“…I’m tired.”
Xie Chun Ye said those two words without expression.
Chi Yan sighed.
Fair enough. He had nearly died in the blink of an eye. If Xie Chun Ye had not always been mentally resilient, after suffering that kind of agony he might have awakened as a madman.
“All right. Lie here for now. Call Mr. Butler if you need anything. I’ll come back after I finish what I have to do.”
She pinned up her long hair with a gold hairpin and gave Xie Chun Ye’s ear a hard pinch.
Chi Yan’s mental state was equally excellent.
Yin Chen had originally ignored every other player and would have been even less likely to share cutting-edge technical information with the Future Research Institute.
But since he was willing now… then she would definitely obtain more from him in the future.
The Infinite Game system’s semi-simulated operating mechanism could absolutely be put to use by humanity.
A holographic game with ninety-percent sensory realism was only the beginning.
The future still held limitless possibilities.
As long as Song Zang stayed alive and safe.
＊
Song Zang was indeed alive and safe.
Before he was teleported away, he urgently did several things.
First, he forced Yin Chen to immediately drink that cup of high-grade healing coffee, threatening to hang himself outside Yin Chen’s door if he refused.
Second, he opened a large amount of permanent storage space and stuffed the flower seeds into separate storage slots one by one, forcibly taking them out of the instance under the attribute 【Plant Seed】.
Finally, he ate every sticky, wet fragment of heart in his hand.
Only when the sweet, hot taste of the meat bloomed across his tongue did Song Zang finally distinguish the unique texture of a human heart.
The severely lagging game system haltingly notified him that his Resistance had increased, but the value was still an Unknown Error.
He had somehow eaten Yin Chen’s heart.
And Song Zang himself had personally torn that heart from Yin Chen’s chest.
When that thought entered his mind, Song Zang’s first reaction after the shock was… forget it.
Forget it.
It was not the first time he had eaten flesh from Yin Chen’s body anyway, and Yin Chen had seemed pretty happy about it.
He would get used to it.
The instant he completely left the instance world, a faint weakness enveloped his body and slowly drew away his strength thread by thread.
The temporary blessing of the Carola rose disappeared.
The Unknown Error reward had not manifested yet.
Song Zang calmly adapted to the faint weakness, smelled the familiar aroma of coffee drifting around him, and was just about to open his eyes…
An indescribably terrifying sensation of weightlessness suddenly dragged him downward. The elegant, heavy hardwood floor split apart without warning, followed immediately by Clerk No. 1’s startled cry.
Song Zang was still blind.
His gaze remained locked firmly on the flower seeds. He could not move it at all and had no way to see what was happening outside.
Because Song Zang had deliberately separated every unfamiliar flower seed and placed each one alone in its own storage slot, his senses at that moment became extremely strange.
He was falling, with some soft, cold unknown organism wrapped around his waist. The vacuum pressure also made his lungs unable to function normally. Suffocating, twisting pain stabbed through his brain like needles, preventing him from fainting as a form of self-protection.
Even stranger, Song Zang suspected that he now had hundreds of eyeballs, as though eyes had grown all over his body: forehead, palms, soles, behind his cervical spine… The foreign-body sensation and spatially disorienting dizziness became stronger and stronger.
Each eyeball was forced to fix on one separate tiny flower seed, staring without blinking and unable to turn. As a result, the construction framework of the game system was completely exposed at the edge of his vision.
Fluorescent-blue light and shadows of power circulated endlessly alongside fixed, semitransparent deep-blue panels. Unfamiliar, yet familiar.
Maybe he was standing inside his own storage space.
Song Zang drew a deep breath and felt the near-explosive pain in his lungs, forcing himself to remain calm.
He knew what he needed to do.
Focus his attention through one eyeball. Move forward. Draw closer. Touch the flower seed.
An invisible force field pulled the seed’s details into twisted distortion. Fluorescent blue rotated around the seeds to maintain an impassable repulsive barrier. Song Zang gritted his teeth and endured, pressing the bleeding, dry eyeball closer little by little.
He heard the wet sound of iris, pupil, and blood vessels being crushed apart. Heat streamed from the eyeball embedded in his forehead, and immediately afterward a blinding light erupted from the flower seed and forcibly connected to his optic nerve.
Song Zang was pulled into another scene that was both unfamiliar and familiar.
He knelt before a small, cold, rigid wooden desk amid the strong scents of inkstone, ink stick, and xuan paper.
After the rain, damp cold seeped through his skin and slowly penetrated into his bones.
Was he taking the imperial examinations?
Song Zang remembered experiencing an examination hall where the palace examination meant death, but the surroundings here were not the same.
A glance at the questions suggested that he was probably a juren candidate sitting the metropolitan examination. Yet the examination environment was terrible: the cramped cubicle was oppressive and dim, smelled of urine, and even the mold of the rainy season could not be hidden by the scent of ink.
At midnight, everything was silent except the rhythmic snoring of the candidate next door. Song Zang was trapped inside his own body, writing uncontrollably. He could only watch the candle flicker and had no control over his actions.
Song Zang heard someone bark, “Noisy.” Not long afterward, the sleeping candidate was brutally slaughtered. His short scream stopped abruptly as a sharpened boning knife pried open the spine at the back of his neck. The killer moved with cold, rapid efficiency like a butcher at a pork stall.
Thick blood flowed beneath the floor.
Song Zang continued answering the questions calmly, writing faster and faster.
As the first faint light of dawn appeared, footsteps approached from the distance. The sinister voice of a yamen runner sounded close at hand.
“We received a report that someone from the countryside is impersonating a candidate and taking the provincial examination under his identity… Is it you? Is it you? Is it you?”
Elio’s Notes: The source mixes imperial-examination stages here. It first frames Song Zang as a juren candidate sitting the metropolitan examination, then has the runner accuse him of impersonating someone for the provincial examination. We’ve preserved that inconsistency rather than silently harmonizing it.
Song Zang’s gaze paused and shifted to the name written at the very top.
Liu Da Lang.
That was not his name.
Song Zang heard his own voice again, smiling and almost coquettish. “Baby, help me.”
The Mask moved up from his wrist like a living thing, turning into a thin layer of soft human skin that covered Song Zang’s entire face. Even his hairstyle quietly changed with it.
He became an utterly ordinary middle-aged man and calmly met the eyes of the yamen runner who kicked the wooden door open.
The runner held the soul-seizing iron chain of the Black and White Impermanence. His sticky, almost tangible gaze crawled inch by inch over Song Zang, like a cold venomous snake returning disappointed from a hunt.
Elio’s Notes: Black and White Impermanence are underworld spirit-enforcers in Chinese folk tradition, commonly depicted escorting the souls of the dead.
In the next instant, the scene changed again.
Song Zang lay inside a pitch-black nest where he could not see his hand in front of his face.
An indescribable six-headed giant beast pinned down his legs. Everywhere he looked, the beast’s fur writhed like tapeworms, leaving him almost unable to breathe normally.
Even Song Zang himself seemed wrapped inside the same kind of monster skin, with five heads, only one of which was genuine.
He crawled along the ground, imitating the bizarre beast’s young offspring. Whimpering pitifully, he nudged it with his head and pressed close beneath its hideously knotted abdomen, yearning for its rank milk.
A huge opening split across the center of the beast’s abdomen. Flesh churned, and a row of nipples emerged among the wet, sticky intestines. On either side hung rounded vertical pupils like those of a feline, one left and one right, lovingly watching the cubs fight over the milk.
Disgust chilled Song Zang’s heart as he watched himself calmly shove the little monsters beside him away and monopolize all the milk.
Most of the strange-tasting red-and-yellow milk remained inside the outer cub skin serving as his disguise and was slowly absorbed by the Mask. Song Zang only took one experimental sip.
That single mouthful nearly poisoned him to death. Corrosion caused several deformed nodules to grow along his vocal cords. The Mask, however, enjoyed it immensely, gradually becoming smoother and glossier. Even the mimicked cub fur grew lustrous and especially cute.
Song Zang and his one and only symbiotic friend relied on each other and successfully survived inside the nest of malformed monsters.
The flower-seed worlds that came next were just as spectacular.
Song Zang saw himself become an enormous insectoid mother.
A counterfeit version, of course.
He could not even tell which side was supposed to be his head. Layer after layer of luminous restraints bound him as he curled deep inside a dark palace, receiving service from every insectoid around him, all of them wary, covetous, and harboring ulterior motives.
The true enormous, horrifying, writhing insectoid mother was secretly pinned beneath Song Zang. He tore apart its protein-rich flesh little by little and stuffed it into his mouth while the insectoid was not paying attention.
“You like eating it too? Fine, then you eat more.”
Song Zang lowered his voice and argued with the Mask over which of them should get to enjoy the insectoid mother’s gestational-sac organs. They even had a small quarrel over it.
He looked like a lunatic talking to himself and having a wonderful time alone. Along the way, he had almost no companions he could trust, because every player who briefly became his friend through chance or fate died horribly.
Song Zang grew stronger and stronger step by step, yet still could not hold onto the lives slipping through his fingers. He had experienced it many times, but every time still hurt.
He did not even dare expose his vulnerability to others. He could only lie awake thinking late at night, hugging the soft puppy pillow formed by the Mask and quietly confiding in it.
“I can’t let other people get close to me. I’ll make everyone unlucky.”
“Will you die? You’re the only one who won’t. I raised you… I’m going to hide you in my pocket and carry you with me.”
“No. That’s still too dangerous. I’ll sew you into my heart. I have to die before you can die.”
The soft, fluffy, snow-white pillow faintly formed the grinning expression of a little white dog, pressing warmly and dependently against Song Zang’s skin, never separating from him.
Song Zang could not resist how deliberately cute it looked. His negative emotions vanished, and he buried himself in the soft pillow for a long time, no longer dwelling on the painful things that only drained him.
He truly was not strong enough yet. Then he would become stronger, protect the one existence he cared about, and keep looking forward.
From that night onward, Song Zang suddenly liked dogs very much. Especially white dogs.
A year later, Song Zang had long forgotten where that fondness came from. He was hiding in a remote suburb to evade some unknown pursuit and could barely protect himself… yet in a dark, lightless alley, he still stopped as though compelled by something beyond reason.
He picked up the dying puppy whose white fur was soaked in blood and used what little cash he had left to buy goat-milk formula, deworming medicine, a warm blanket, and a soft cushion stuffed with goose down.
He personally saved the puppy from the edge of death and severe cold. Later came cow bones for teething, nutrient-rich animal liver, vitamins… Money poured away like water.
Song Zang complained with his mouth, but did not begrudge the money at all. Little by little, with meticulous care, he raised a soft, fluffy, plump white dog.
He had actually been exactly the same when raising 【Mask】.
But he himself did not know it.
Perhaps Song Zang should have realized long ago that his behavior was a little strange.
Under normal circumstances, for the sake of his own safety, he would never have picked up a stray dog and raised it himself.
Even if some pointless burst of kindness had struck him, he should only have left Xiao Bai at the door of a veterinary hospital or sent him to the retired uncles and aunties who were already living comfortably.
What had he been thinking when he brought the puppy home without hesitation back then? Muscle memory?
By now, Song Zang could no longer remember clearly.
Many of the densely packed eyeballs all over his body had completely shattered. Covered in blood, he continued looking through them one by one with near-numbness. The sensation of weightlessness still had not disappeared, and even the fear of falling to his death had become numb.
The repeated 【Unknown Error】 notices in his mind were the warnings that truly demanded his attention.
The deep-blue game system was visibly lagging more and more. Loading each new flower seed kept stalling as it frantically tried to stop Song Zang from reviewing the records of his past.
【Warning: Player Song Zang. Illegal operation detected. Risk of elimination. Stop immediately.】
Illegal operation?
No wonder Yin Chen never told him anything directly.
Maybe the game system could not deal with Yin Chen, but it definitely had the ability to completely eliminate Song Zang while he was weak.
Song Zang was not particularly afraid now because… he had not broken any rules.
If he hadn’t, then he hadn’t.
He was merely browsing his own storage slots and examining items he had obtained from game instances.
Before plant seeds took root and sprouted, their attributes allowed them to be treated as inanimate objects or food and stored in large quantities inside storage space.
Those were rules the game system itself had established.
Song Zang had not forcibly stored living beings, nor had he revealed his experiences to outsiders. What right did the system have to call his actions illegal?
It was perfectly reasonable, backed by logic and evidence. He simply had not broken any rules.
Song Zang was very confident. The more righteously he believed this, the weaker the pale-blue fluorescence winding around his body became, and the restraints inside his brain gradually softened.
The game system was still trying every possible way to prove he had broken the rules, while Song Zang used every ounce of strength to shove all the remaining flower seeds into his eyeballs.
Let it hurt. He had to recover the memories of his past.
…
He saw the brilliant fireworks celebration screen marking the end of the beta test.
As the first player in the entire world to clear the beta version of the game, Song Zang was at the height of attention.
He saw himself receive the clear reward: one unconditional wish within 【reasonable limits】.
At the same time, he was also the first to learn about… the release announcement for the official version of Infinite Game, along with the data-transfer and resettlement plan for veteran beta players.
The system stipulated that skills, points, and base physical stats obtained during the beta could all be carried forward. However, the former 【Enchantment Toolbox】 would be removed and later inserted randomly as an Easter egg into certain instances with specific settings, rather than remaining available to players twenty-four hours a day.
Permanent items players had used across multiple runs, meanwhile, had to return to a factory-recall setting for refurbishment and modification. They would later be redistributed through official-version instances and obtained again through achievements or Boss drops.
To compensate players who lost items, they could choose generous compensation: for every permanent item lost, they could receive an unimaginably large sum of game points, exchange it for one powerful permanent skill, or obtain a special title capable of continual advancement.
The game system gave its explanation.
According to its calculations, the combat power of enchanted items made it too easy for players to exploit loopholes, severely affecting the balance and narrative structure of game instances. Some players even used them to farm points, wielding excessively powerful enchanted weapons to destroy entire worlds and kill every other player in an instant, completing missions with unimaginable brutality and speed.
To ensure that every player could “enjoy” the game, limiting the endlessly stackable power of enchanted items had become unavoidable.
If Song Zang had not privately become friends with the Mask, he would have found that explanation perfectly reasonable too.
But the Mask was his only friend, a friend who would never die easily, a friend who knew every secret, vulnerability, and dark corner he possessed.
Even if the recalled Mask eventually returned to Song Zang’s hands, it could never become his friend again.
Song Zang could not accept that.
Not at all.
His position was absolute. He refused every form of compensation. The special enhancement that empowered the enchantment could be removed. He only wanted the Mask’s consciousness to remain beside him. Even if it could never help him again, that would be fine.
But the thing the game system seemed most determined to destroy was precisely the independent consciousness that had spontaneously emerged within the Mask. That was what truly disrupted the balance.
Song Zang watched himself forcibly drag out the system panel. His fingers were covered in bloody electrical burns, yet he seemed unable to feel even the slightest pain.
By sheer force, he dragged out Infinite Game’s customer service and repeatedly negotiated with the 【Update Recall Program】, proposing concession after concession. Yet even after delaying all the way to the final recall deadline, nothing worked. Nothing. Even the wish did not work.
At this rate, the Mask would truly leave him.
No.
No.
Song Zang’s thoughts became somewhat chaotic. Those unfamiliar, violent emotions surged through his mind and tore at his reason. He rubbed his blood-soaked eyes and repeatedly watched the version of himself descending into obsession.
He watched himself from above through a strange third-person perspective.
He saw his face grow paler day by day. He curled inward like a silent gourd, eyes lowered in thought, not a trace of light in his pitch-black eyes. His own obsession had drawn a prison around him, leaving only the same few thoughts circling again and again in his mind: impossible, unacceptable, absolutely not.
Song Zang had never imagined that he would voluntarily place himself in opposition to Infinite Game.
But Song Zang really had hidden many deadly secrets.
The beta system framework had vulnerabilities. It had suffered connection errors and operational bugs. It was nowhere near as stable as players imagined and was riddled with weaknesses.
Some seemingly insignificant weaknesses had finally reached the moment when the curtain should be pulled aside.
He could not rely on himself alone. As an 【Item】, the Mask could not resist the power of the foundational rules by itself.
In that case, he would bring in a terrifying existence powerful enough to suppress those rules, guide the monster coveting the game system inside, and completely muddy the waters.
He was going to defect.
His conscience was clear.