The method of defecting was very simple.
Exploit a weakness in the system’s construction, forcibly tear open the boundary of Infinite Game, and let those otherworldly gazes that should never be investigated or looked back upon reach their tendrils out of the abyss.
Song Zang went to the old player café.
Back then, the café’s facilities were far less complete than they were now. There were only two booths, several soft sofas, a points slot machine for gambling, an old-fashioned record player, and a self-service coffee machine.
Clerk No. 1, who now handled beginner guidance, did not exist. The café existed only for players to socialize, hold team meetings, and dream about gambling their way back to fortune… like a break room packed with exhausted office workers.
Almost no one noticed that beneath the automatic coffee machine was a residual program vulnerability that could not yet be repaired.
Song Zang had learned about it from other players. Everyone was curious about how Infinite Game actually operated, so they quietly searched for clues and discussed their findings in secret.
The player who had been close to Song Zang had died long ago. The others who knew about it gradually died too, leaving not even bones behind.
Only Song Zang remained, still remembering everyone’s stories and secrets.
At the time, Song Zang was still half a newbie. He could not suppress his restless curiosity and had secretly investigated it in the café once.
A single glance nearly made him cry blood. He sat trembling on the sofa and drank a large cup of healing coffee.
It was the exit of a wormhole that had not yet fully formed, still in an extremely unstable newborn state. But what had nearly blinded Song Zang was not the wormhole itself. It was what lay at the other end…
He had not seen it clearly and had not dared to. It was some indescribable otherworldly existence, an extraordinarily powerful species predator wandering through unfamiliar spacetime in a bizarre form he could not understand, calmly watching the energy of the world on the opposite side of the wormhole.
The game system repeatedly tried to oppose it. It could hold back the other side’s advance, but could not completely repair the vulnerability, so it had no choice but to conceal the opening with a gigantic virtual coffee machine.
A normal person would not move a massive coffee machine aside to investigate. Even if they saw a hole, they would not casually stick a hand inside to explore it.
The life-or-death nature of Infinite Game had long taught players to know better. Faced with anything unknown, they needed two hundred percent caution and vigilance. They had to value their lives.
Except Song Zang.
He kicked the enormous coffee machine over. Amid the system’s shrill warning tones, he crouched down and reached his hand into the wormhole.
The tearing force of spatial turbulence and the gravitational field could not stop Song Zang at his peak.
He calmly endured the pain of skin and flesh splitting open and pulled the opening wider.
On the opposite side of the spacetime bridge forming the passage lay vast, magnificent cosmic light. Because the wormhole happened to sit where two spacetimes overlapped, the distance was shorter than expected. He could even see the brilliant light with his naked eyes.
The sight was breathtakingly magnificent, but it contained unimaginable danger.
Song Zang reached toward that almost imperceptible dim “star,” ignoring the painful 【Elimination Warning】 and the burning sensation that nearly melted his temples. He curved his lips and spoke softly. “Follow me. I’m your transmission medium. I’m your guide.”
That strange particle, heavy as a mountain yet light as a feather, burned away a layer of skin from Song Zang’s palm. His blood vaporized rapidly under the intense heat, leaving stark white bone wrapped in exposed tissue.
Song Zang pretended not to notice and withdrew his arm with a smile.
In the next instant, the cold, merciless elimination program formally activated. Song Zang was already badly injured and had no strength left to resist. He watched his own heart stop pumping, his lungs compress, and his trachea block. Like a living corpse, he fell rigidly to the floor and sank into darkness.
He was not dead. He knew very clearly that he was not dead. Before personally seeing his friend gain freedom, Song Zang would crawl out of his grave if he had to.
Song Zang calmly accumulated strength and waited for the chance to regain control of his body. He even found a trace of enjoyment in such an extreme, danger-filled experience.
Throwing oneself into danger for someone one cared about turned out to be such a happy, exhilarating thing. The neurotransmitters pouring from Song Zang’s brain were telling him the same thing: he was genuinely happy.
Song Zang was secretly enjoying himself when, not long afterward, that indescribable strange particle barged into his nearly dormant consciousness in an extremely forceful manner.
In that instant, countless strange, complicated, terrifying pieces of knowledge surged into Song Zang’s mind. Things he did not want, things he did want, all of it flooded his brain at once and rampaged through it.
He was dragged into a dark world from which there was no escape. Dense, omnipresent gazes watched and coveted him, while invisible warm tongues licked the side of his face, triggering waves of suffocating palpitations.
Before the vast amount of incomprehensible information crushed his sanity completely, Song Zang suddenly learned many things.
The particle called itself the Collective and was composed of hundreds of millions of microscopic consciousnesses.
The Collective wanted to devour not only the game world, but Song Zang as well.
Because Song Zang contained enormous amounts of energy taken from game instances.
The Collective and the game system were locked in a stalemate, fighting over the energy inside Song Zang.
There was nothing to be done. In the blink of an eye, he had wagered his own life too. That was the price of making a deal with a tiger.
Song Zang himself did not clearly remember what happened afterward. His brain could command only one thing: find every possible way to set the Mask free.
And the present Song Zang, watching through a chaotic third-person perspective, saw that crazed version of himself as his smile became brighter and stranger little by little.
He finally knew how to keep the Mask. Knowledge he could not understand would destroy his sanity, but it would also give him an entirely new solution, like God’s fingertip touching his forehead with a spark of inspiration at the edge of despair.
When the Collective transmitted its demand to “consume energy,” the brightly smiling Song Zang did not resist.
After all, he was the loyal guide who had brought the Collective here.
He compressed the instance power inside his body to its absolute limit and voluntarily “offered tribute” to the Collective in the form of a willing transaction.
During the brief exchange of compressed energy, the distance between Song Zang and the Collective narrowed further and further until they formed an inseparable, mutually entangled channel.
He patiently waited until the final instant, when the energy was almost beyond his control, before suddenly counterattacking and staking his life against its life. Using the explosive force of the compressed energy, he scattered the Collective’s particle form for one second.
Perhaps it had not even been a full second, but it was enough for Song Zang to do what he wanted.
He opened his eyes from his numb, dying body and blindly grabbed several 【Damaged Severed Limbs】 from the Collective, clutching them with all his strength and refusing to let them return to the main body.
At the same time, Song Zang brutally tore off the skin of his own face. In an almost euphoric rush, he pressed the skin against the 【Severed Limbs】 and forcibly fused them together.
That had never actually been his own facial skin.
It was the Mask that had always obediently listened to him, quietly clinging to Song Zang’s face, refusing to separate from him even if it meant death.
Song Zang could only tear it away by force, because it truly did not want to leave.
The Collective possessed an extremely unusual instinct for absorption. When powerful energy approached, it would instantly devour it, record all unknown information, and turn it into something it could use.
Song Zang exploited that instinct, as well as the weakness the Collective suffered when forced to split apart.
The instant the absorption instinct activated, the Mask would immediately lose the attribute of 【Game Item】 and could never again be recalled, controlled, or restrained by the game system.
From that moment onward, the Mask was free.
It might face a mortal crisis and be forced to fight the Collective’s separated limb for control until one side won, or until the two fused together…
No matter what happened, it would become a unique individual, its belly packed full of the energy Song Zang had voluntarily offered, forever entangled with him.
It would permanently preserve every memory of its time with Song Zang. It would remember its colorful past in the game world and know very clearly who it had once been and who it was now.
This was the ending Song Zang found most satisfying. He had preserved the Mask’s memories.
Even if it had all been one-sided on his part, even if he had been too selfish, even if he had destroyed the game system’s future… Song Zang would never regret it.
His wish had already come true. Whatever happened to Infinite Game afterward, whatever happened to him, he did not care.
People lived for a single obsession.
Utterly exhausted, Song Zang hugged that strangely textured nonfluid substance tightly and gently stroked the blood-covered facial skin. Unable to hold on any longer, he fell into a much longer sleep.
When he woke again, he had lost his memories. He sat beside a road washed in mellow sunset while a sniper rifle’s laser sight targeted the center of his forehead.
The bullet fired in an instant, carrying terrifying heat and impact as it spiraled into its target.
Song Zang fell after being shot and instinctively played dead for three minutes. Then he cautiously touched his slightly reddened forehead.
It didn’t seem to hurt much?
…Was he some kind of modified human?
Song Zang knew nothing, yet became strangely excited. His beautiful pitch-black eyes curved.
A life of chase and escape officially began from that moment, dragging the bewildered Song Zang onward.
Until one day he stopped beside the road and, as if compelled by some mysterious impulse, picked up a stray dog.
＊
Lying in the familiar dark world, Song Zang opened his eyes again.
Of course, this place had long since ceased to be as lightless as it had been last time. Dense honeycomb-like cavities were coated and wrapped in another deep-blue substance, their fusion giving off an eerily strange glow.
It looked like a disco hall hidden on the other side of reality.
Song Zang stared for a few moments and discovered that the blue light was also the power of the invisible game system.
Docile and compliant, it clung tightly to the walls without resistance, shielding the known radiation and prying gazes of the otherworldly universe.
Elio’s Notes: The supplied Chinese source reads 知名辐射 here, literally “known/well-known radiation,” which is unusual in context. We’ve preserved that wording rather than guessing at a silent correction.
Yin Chen had kidnapped the system’s power just to… plaster the walls?
Of course he had. Song Zang almost wanted to laugh, though the subtle atmosphere right now did not seem suitable for laughing out loud.
He was extremely weak, like a patient just waking from general anesthesia, or a strip of cloth riddled with holes and torn to shreds. He could not lift even one finger.
“Baby, why can’t I move?” Song Zang was not particularly panicked. He worked his vocal cords and asked softly.
“Do you remember now?”
Yin Chen’s gentle voice sounded beside his ear, accompanied by a series of wet, sticky noises.
Song Zang did not know what Yin Chen was doing to his body because he could not even turn his head. His exhausted, dry eyes produced tearing pain with the slightest movement.
But he did not care at all and immediately began acting pitiful and spoiled, adding an affected sob to his voice. “I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. I want kisses…”
Yin Chen did not answer. He seemed to let out a helpless laugh.
Immediately afterward, a semitransparent tentacle curled around a cup of iced cola and brought it over wetly, pressing it somewhat roughly to Song Zang’s lips.
“No straw? Baby, you’re so inconsiderate.”
A suffocating silence lasted several seconds. The tentacle wrapped tightly around the cup trembled, then its soft jelly-like tip plunged even more roughly into the cola. A thin channel split open through the center of the fleshy limb, connecting perfectly to one of the suckers.
Song Zang: …
He silently opened his mouth, bit down, and took a sip. The icy freshness of the cola mixed with slick mucus, unexpectedly carrying a trace of clean lemon freshness.
【You consumed Unknown Error. Error + Error…】
The trembling game system was still struggling to report new notifications. Garbled code wrapped around the floating panel like chains and flashed continuously.
That large cup of perfectly chilled cola cleared Song Zang’s dizzy, muddled head considerably.
He knew what Yin Chen was doing now.
He was repairing the hundreds of holes across Song Zang’s body, digging out the shriveled dead flower seeds and slowly filling the damage with semitransparent strange mucus and scraps of flesh covered in fine soft fuzz.
Yin Chen seemed to enjoy the process immensely. Taking his time over meticulous work, he pinched the hideous open wound at Song Zang’s wrist and slowly stitched the capillaries together. His warm fingertips stroked and kneaded skin as cold as a corpse, finding his own pleasure in it.
Song Zang secretly glanced at him and discovered that Yin Chen had become even more powerful. He could now exist in the current space in two forms at once.
The high-grade healing coffee had worked astonishingly well and completely repaired this outer shell that perfectly matched Song Zang’s tastes.
Yet Yin Chen still wore that blood-soaked military shirt. The fabric over his chest had already been torn to pieces, hanging limply against pale skin and revealing faint outlines of lean muscle.
Song Zang wanted to bury his face in it. Unfortunately, he was too badly injured right now and could barely move any part of his body.
The only places he could move were the few areas Yin Chen had already repaired. And because Yin Chen was enjoying the process far too much, the repairs were progressing especially slowly.
Song Zang could only lie like a battered human doll on the crowded, slippery bed of tentacles and let Yin Chen handle him however he pleased.
So lewd.
Song Zang hurriedly steadied himself and pushed away the inappropriate strange thought.
There were still serious matters to deal with.
“Yin Chen, I remembered a lot of things, but I still don’t really understand… a lot of things.” Song Zang struggled to turn his head and asked softly, “Why don’t you explain them to me?”
Yin Chen raised his phoenix eyes. The dark gleam within them seemed almost tangible as it clung stickily to Song Zang’s face.
He toyed with Song Zang’s limp, pale fingers. His tone was lazy and pleased, yet still carried a faint chill. “Why don’t you explain first who exactly you love?”
A fatal question.
Song Zang tensed and answered seriously, “I loved you already. Now I love you even more.”
“So you care about it more.”
Song Zang’s eyes widened. He nearly fainted from anger. “Nonsense. That’s alarmist…”
“Isn’t it?” Yin Chen interrupted him. His languid, faintly smiling tone suddenly turned cold, hot breath washing over the side of Song Zang’s face again and again. “I actually hate you quite a lot, Song Zang. You’ve never done anything for me. But you’re also the one who gave me emotions.
“Emotions that don’t belong to me. Emotions I don’t need.”
It sounded a little juvenile and melodramatic, but it also seemed genuinely true.
Compared with Xu Qing and Xu Ming’s bizarre ways of professing love, Yin Chen might be fierce, unreasonable at times, and perverted, but he happened to strike Song Zang directly in the heart.
Song Zang had originally planned to keep his distance from Yin Chen, yet without realizing it, he had been half-pushed and half-willingly drawn forward, closer and closer, until they had rolled directly into the same bed.
Perhaps Yin Chen’s ability to strike him so perfectly in the heart was not entirely an inborn part of his personality. It might also be quietly mixed with complicated causes that could never again be disentangled.
With a hint of guilt, Song Zang realized that he had played an indispensable role in all of it.
So what?
Even after seeing from a god’s-eye view just how wretched he had looked on the verge of death several times, and the reckless, crazed things he had done without regard for anything else… Song Zang did not regret any of it.
Suppressing the chaotic thoughts in his heart, he still asked Yin Chen seriously, sounding a little aggrieved. “Yin Chen, are you sure you don’t need emotions?”
Yin Chen heard him, curved his lips into a dark smile, and said nothing. He placed a hand between Song Zang’s blood-covered thighs and kneaded hard.
Song Zang did not feel much pain. He froze in confusion and watched Yin Chen bend his pale, sharply jointed fingers, smear the hot blood squeezed out onto a tentacle sucker, and leisurely suck it completely clean.
Drinking a little of Song Zang’s blood always seemed to help Yin Chen control his temper.
From one perspective, it was extremely perverted. From another… Yin Chen was actually rather easy to soothe.
Once his mood settled, Yin Chen wrapped Song Zang up with his tentacles. While lowering his head to continue filling the hideous holes across Song Zang’s body, he slowed his speech and continued answering in the tone of an interrogation.
“Do I need the memories of you and it depending on each other for survival inside the instances? I don’t. But they’re already rooted too deeply to erase.
“And the psychological dependence I developed on you without realizing it, the skin hunger that kept accumulating day after day, the inexplicable longing and concern I feel for you… Song Zang, do you think I need any of that?
“I can’t understand the changes in my own thinking, and I can’t control the instinctive reactions that have merged into my flesh and bones. I’m irritated. Extremely irritated. But you’ve already changed me, and I can’t change back.
“I can’t adapt to the way I used to function anymore, because I always think of you. My companions won’t accept me either, because they’ve decided that I’ll always think of you.
“Every branch consciousness of the Collective is my enemy, Song Zang. You created those enemies for me. Do you think I need any of this?”
Yin Chen said a great deal in one breath. His tone was not particularly intense, yet every sentence struck Song Zang directly in the heart.
He truly had endured it for a very long time, only speaking now.
For someone with Yin Chen’s personality, enduring for so long… could be considered a kind of torture. He had managed to hold back until now because Song Zang’s mental state had been at the absolute bottom of a low point.
Learning the truth too suddenly would overwhelm fragile brain nerves, leaving Song Zang unable to withstand the shock or resist the elimination that would descend in an instant.
Song Zang had lost his memories not only because his mind had suffered severe damage from the Collective, but also because it was punishment from the game system.
When Song Zang’s wish had been fulfilled and he had happily fallen into a sleep from which he would not wake, 【Mask】, whose self-awareness had gained the upper hand, made a deal with the game system.
【Mask】 would stand against the Collective. It would never use the power Song Zang had contributed to join forces with the Collective and attack Infinite Game, and it was willing to provide free guest appearances as an instance NPC.
The condition was that Song Zang had to leave safely and return to the real world, no matter in what form.
Once the deal was made, Song Zang became a living corpse without memories.
Yes. He was a living corpse.
The beta-version elimination program was still implanted inside Song Zang’s brain, trapped in a deadlocked 【Half-Execution Stage】.
Because the game system could not be one hundred percent certain whether the party proposing the deal might someday choose to break the agreement.
The elimination program that had never been withdrawn was one of the system’s clauses for restraining the Mask.
Song Zang’s Life and Resistance values had become two question marks precisely because the elimination program kept wavering back and forth, repeatedly itching to activate again and reclaim every remaining trace of energy.
But Song Zang was already a living corpse. He could not be killed, yet could not truly live. The elimination program restarted again and again, and failed again and again.
After all, once every key memory had been erased, Song Zang could no longer threaten the vulnerabilities in the game system’s construction. He no longer knew who he had once been and had lost his social identity.
That certainly counted as a form of death, and it also left him incapable of violating the game rules.
If cracks had not appeared in the real world as well, allowing the Collective’s power and intent to seep through in secret, creating vast numbers of fanatically devoted followers, a swarm of madmen willing to die to hunt Song Zang, and one bullet that killed Xiao Bai…
Then it would have been difficult to predict how Song Zang’s life would have unfolded afterward.
By the time Yin Chen reached this point, one-third of Song Zang’s body had already been repaired. His upper body had softened from numbness and could make small movements.
He raised his arms around Yin Chen’s neck, dragged himself upright with difficulty, and threw himself into Yin Chen’s arms, overwhelmed with emotion.
The fact that 【Mask】 had been able to make a deal with the system meant that Yin Chen had not opposed that decision at the time either.
Otherwise, given the game system’s operating logic, it would never have let Song Zang leave so easily. Even if it truly intended to fight the Collective head-on, it would certainly have forcibly reclaimed Song Zang’s energy first.
Song Zang had been able to regain a new life because the two consciousnesses he had forcibly fused together without permission had made that decision jointly.
Yin Chen had already saved him once long ago, even if the reasons behind his decision might have involved more layers and more complicated calculations about their circumstances.
Yet Song Zang remembered none of it.
“Baby, you have every right to be harsher with me.” Song Zang’s eyes reddened at the corners, his heart aching terribly. “I couldn’t remember any of it before. Were you very sad?”
“I was very sad.”
Yin Chen stared fixedly at Song Zang. Threads of undisguised grievance moved through his phoenix eyes as he calmly repeated, “I was very sad because you disappeared.”
Song Zang’s breathing caught beneath his gaze. The gentle sorrow in Yin Chen’s eyes wrapped around him layer after layer like a soft spiderweb, inexplicably making him feel suffocated.
Yin Chen was in such a good mood today.
Recently, Yin Chen’s ability to regulate his emotions really did seem to be improving step by step. He rarely became as violently irritable as before or tried to kill a few people for fun without discussion. Song Zang could even bully him in return now, completely at ease.
If his wrist had not been aching from being gripped too hard, if he had not been tightly imprisoned in a cage formed by transparent tentacles, if every wound across his body were not stuffed with fragments of tissue that did not belong to him, and if one careless movement could not get him strangled to death… Song Zang might actually have believed it.
But dealing with an immature lover had certain things in common with raising a child.
When a child who was usually noisy and troublesome suddenly became extremely quiet, it meant the brat had done something bad behind your back, or had already caused an even bigger disaster.