Chapter 22-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player

"I've noticed that you and Bai Shan seem to have a bit of a… misunderstanding about me."

Qin Zhen had sharply defined features and an intense look to her face — unapproachable when she wasn't smiling, but the moment any softness crept into her expression, the contrast made it all the more striking.

"Of course, I can't blame you for that. At the start, I did have bad intentions. Your wariness was completely justified."

Lin Huijun had fallen a few steps behind, so Qin Zhen turned around, walking backward as she spoke to her, slow and steady on the uneven mountain path, as if she had eyes in the back of her head. Lin Huijun found it vaguely unsettling.

The sun was nearly down. Qin Zhen had her back to the last fading light, her features dim and obscured — yet Lin Huijun could see her eyes with perfect clarity, rendered in a cool shade of grey-blue unlike any she had ever seen.

Had Qin Zhen's eyes always been that colour?

Lin Huijun was puzzled enough to ask directly: "Qin Zhen, is your eye colour natural?"

A flash of caught-off-guard surprise crossed the young woman's face, breaking through what had been a slightly studied air of melancholy. She clearly hadn't expected that question — but she recovered quickly, pointing at her eyes and explaining:

"Ah, these — I'm severely short-sighted, but wearing frames makes it hard to move around. These are the only contact lenses I managed to find that actually match my prescription."

"Trendy colour, right? Same shade as a Husky."

Qin Zhen said it and laughed to herself.

All at once, the wind stirred the trees into a rushing swell of sound. Qin Zhen's distinctively-coloured eyes narrowed. She reached into her scarf and tugged — a silver snake slid its head out from the checked folds and drew close to her ear.

Lin Huijun felt it too. She stopped, surveying the dense forest around them. Something deep inside her began to heat up, a faint burning sensation that sharpened her senses.

The mountain forest seemed as still as before. Qin Zhen tilted her head, her lips almost brushing the silver-glinting snake's head, and said: "Go."

The words had barely left her when a green shape launched itself from behind her with explosive speed — so fast it blurred — and a razor-edged blade-arm came slicing in like a bolt of lightning, with momentum that could not be stopped.

A speed the naked eye couldn't track, paired with the destructive force of bladed forelegs — the mantis combined velocity and aggression in one, making it nature's most perfect assassin.

Mutation had magnified its size and strength. Had a tiger stood in that very spot, it could have struck the head clean off with ease. Without any defensive ability, a living creature caught beneath its blades was no more than a dry leaf underfoot —

Clang!

The silver snake at Qin Zhen's side whipped around, its body stretching in an instant. The silver-white length intercepted the mutant mantis's blade-arm mid-swing, the impact ringing out like two blades clashing.

The fearsome blade-foreleg couldn't advance a single inch — as if it had struck a diamond rather than a living snake.

Locked in a standstill for a breath, the snake flexed its body with fluid grace, extended its head, bared its jaws, and clamped down on the mantis's triangular head.

The outcome was decided at once. A mantis head the size of a clenched fist dropped into the dirt.

Across from them, another mantis burst out of the undergrowth. Lin Huijun was ready and twisted aside, but couldn't evade completely — the mantis's blade was at her throat in an instant.

Yet the moment it drew close, it was as if the mantis had stepped into an extreme zone of heat. It ignited from the inside out. When yellow-white flames erupted into visibility, its body turned to black ash in an instant.

The stalled experience bar on her game panel for level 8 surged forward. Lin Huijun saw the panel that only she could see.

[Congratulations, player has reached Level 9!]

This mantis must have been a high level — it had clearly killed a good number of people.

Lin Huijun covered the side of her neck and stepped through the black ash, letting out a sharp breath. A cut had opened along the side of her neck.

Lucky she'd awakened the flame inside her body beforehand. Otherwise, at the speed these mantises moved, even a moment's delay would have cost her her head.

"Is the cut on your neck deep? If it's serious, we can head back early." Qin Zhen asked with concern. "There's someone with a healing talent in the town."

"It's fine."

Lin Huijun replied. She tilted her neck slightly — a flicker of flame ignited along the cut, and the bleeding stopped.

Once she adjusted to the burning sensation, Lin Huijun thought [Scorching Sun Chariot] was an extraordinarily powerful talent. Assuming she could endure the constant burning, she could sustain the flames indefinitely, leaving no opening in either offence or defence.

The only flaw was that the assumption was far too painful.

Lin Huijun glanced at the mantis head on the ground, then offered sincere praise: "Qin Zhen, your ability is formidable. I'm not as strong as you."

Qin Zhen laughed. "Your talent is clearly more powerful than mine. I've seen others use fire, but yours is the most unusual."

What made it unusual, Qin Zhen couldn't quite put into words. Other people were like someone holding a torch to start a fire — the fire itself wasn't under direct control. But Lin Huijun was different. Her flames felt like a part of her body, as responsive as her own limbs.

Lin Huijun was also studying Qin Zhen's ability. She watched the silver snake gliding across the ground — it seemed to be a different snake from the one that had guided them earlier.

The snake shrank down and crawled up Qin Zhen's arm, coiling around her hand. Qin Zhen generously extended her hand toward Lin Huijun for a closer look. The snake's eyes glowed with a faint, eerie light, like an emerald set in a darkened room.

"Five days ago, this snake was worth tens of millions. It was the centrepiece of a shop's collection."

Lin Huijun didn't know much about luxury brands or jewellery, but she studied the snake for a while, and between Bai Shan's note about Qin Zhen's ability and her own observations, she worked out what it had originally been.

"It's a… necklace?"

"Yes. A classic design from a certain brand — a spirit serpent necklace."

Qin Zhen had no issue with laying it out plainly for Lin Huijun. "My ability is: the more valuable the target I destroy, the more powerful the weapon it becomes. These weapons have a limited number of uses — this spirit serpent necklace, for instance, can still be used twice more."

"Though I have quite a few more."

On the morning the game descended, Qin Zhen had been out making client calls, driving to meet an important contact when the world suddenly went insane without warning.

She had accepted the absurd new reality quickly, deciphered what her so-called talent ability actually meant, then drove her BMW straight into the most upscale shopping mall in Rong City, sending the luxury car on display in the central atrium flying, and smashing through the frontages of several high-end boutiques.

Then Qin Zhen retrieved the chainsaw and ice axe from her car and began destroying everything around her with abandon.

She shattered display cases, swept expensive jewellery and watches into a pile — items worth hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions — gold and silver, gemstones and pearls, all of it fed through the roaring chainsaw like kitchen scraps being chopped, sliced apart and heaped together.

"I locked them in at their most valuable moment."

If she'd been even slightly slower, once the majority of people realised the apocalypse had come, these things would have lost their value instantly, and she'd never have found so many high-value objects to destroy so easily.

Thinking back to that day, Qin Zhen felt a lingering sense of satisfaction.

After so many expensive objects were destroyed in bulk, several unusual items appeared. Qin Zhen understood that her ability had activated.

With an action-oriented nature that far outpaced most people, Qin Zhen rapidly accumulated a decisive lead. The Matthew effect applied here in this real-life game just as it did everywhere else — so Qin Zhen continued her original accumulation.

"I took a man with a Rolls-Royce hostage. That's right — the car at the bridge last time wasn't mine. The owner was sitting right next to me."

The more Qin Zhen talked, the more pleased she sounded, not a trace of guilt, entirely self-satisfied.

"When I saw you use your ability back then, I was tempted. But you two weren't easy to fool, and I didn't dare force the issue."

Hearing Qin Zhen openly admit her intentions, Lin Huijun was taken aback. What exactly did this person want?

"I could insist I had no intention of harming you — or I could lie and say the man in the car made the first move, which is why I fought back and killed him."

"But instead I'm choosing to be honest with you: I did intend to use someone as a test back then. After you both left, I killed the man in the car not long after."

Lin Huijun fixed Qin Zhen with a steady, dark look. "You're telling me all this — does that mean you want to kill me right now?"

That was how villains in animated films and television dramas always played it — outlining their motivation, explaining their backstory to the victim and the audience, clearing up the victim's and audience's questions. The victim at that point would usually think of a companion, worry whether they'd be targeted too, and then die full of regret...

"Huh?" Qin Zhen, who had spent years as a high-level corporate worker, couldn't begin to follow the convoluted train of thought inside Lin Huijun's head. She found it genuinely baffling. "I'm showing goodwill. Can't you both tell?"

"I know I seem like a bad— okay, fine, I'm not a good person."

"I just want to be the smart one. That's all."

Qin Zhen said: "I'm an opportunist who's good at walking a tightrope. Sometimes I'll take on extra risk to go for a bigger payoff, but once the risk gets too high, I walk it steady again."

"Haven't you noticed? This world is dividing people into new categories. These mantises are terrifying monsters and lethal predators to most people in this town — for the two of us, they're just a warm-up exercise."

"Going forward, the gap between people will only grow wider."

"I just think we're people who could walk the same road. I'd far rather befriend you than be your enemy."

Qin Zhen delivered this with sincerity and skill. An occasional moment of vulnerability from the strong always moves people more than earnest devotion from the weak.

But Lin Huijun looked straight at her and spoke with equal directness:

"Qin Zhen — I won't be friends with someone who once wanted to kill me."

"If you want to coexist peacefully, then keep your distance. I can't bring myself to take the initiative and kill someone, but my friend can."

The curve of Qin Zhen's smile stiffened almost imperceptibly. She hadn't expected Bai Shan's companion to be just as difficult to manage as Bai Shan herself. No wonder they'd ended up together.

She started to say something to ease the tension, but Lin Huijun cut across her.

"Bai Shan is a very 'valuable' person to you, isn't she. To me, she's an important friend."

"If you do make a move, please don't start with her. My [Scorching Sun Chariot] is a very special talent."

Qin Zhen looked genuinely incredulous. Was this girl telling her that she too was valuable, trying to make her give up on targeting her friend Bai Shan?

But the next words told Qin Zhen what Lin Huijun actually meant.

"Honestly, I'm not good at retaliating when someone hurts me. But I cannot stand by and watch someone close to me get hurt. When that happens, [Scorching Sun Chariot] will run you down without a second thought."

Lin Huijun said "run you down" the way she might comment that the sun would rise in the east tomorrow morning — a matter-of-fact tone, as if stating an incontrovertible truth.

For the first time in five confident days since the game's arrival, Qin Zhen felt her heart give a nervous lurch. A faint chill crept up her spine.

The last sliver of evening light vanished into the hills. In that moment, something clicked for Qin Zhen — the game had given each person a different talent, and perhaps it wasn't random luck after all. The steadfast young figure standing there took the place of the fading sun, its outline faintly gilded in red. She had become the living embodiment of "Scorching Sun Chariot."

The easy smile faded from Qin Zhen's face. She was good at reading people, yet she couldn't quite explain what [Priceless True Love] really meant.

Perhaps when the second, third, and fourth skills of [Priceless True Love] unlocked, there would come a day she understood this talent.

"I understand. Life is precious — even in a world like this, it shouldn't be devalued."

Qin Zhen said it as if falling in with Lin Huijun's thinking.

"I was out of line. I'll keep my distance from both of you."

*

On the other side of the mountain.

Bai Shan paused on the mountain trail and glanced back. From this elevation she could look out over the entire town, tucked among rolling hills like a fertile, tranquil basin.

Fertile, yes. Tranquil only on the surface.

Cities were dangerous, but their steel and concrete structures had driven out most non-human life. In most cities after the world changed, humans remained the dominant force. This small town nestled in mountains and rivers, a place where people once came to unwind and reconnect with nature — now it was a prime target coveted by mutated creatures of every kind.

From just one section of these mountains alone, the number of mutated species was easily in the double digits. Bai Shan glanced idly at the undergrowth and spotted a centipede half the length of a person, curled into a ball, motionless as a stone, showing no aggressive intent.

Watching over these five days, Bai Shan had noticed that not all mutated creatures attacked humans. The ones that did were the highly ambitious ones — after all, human players were the most valuable targets. The natural instinct of most creatures, humans included, was to just get by; more preferred lying low to striving upward.

The ones that were too ambitious tended to be a great deal of trouble.

Bai Shan let out a quiet sigh. Three red throwing darts flew from her hand at once. The mantis lurking in the shadows, nearly indistinguishable from the trees around it, sensed the threat and instantly shifted from ambush to attack, its razor forelegs folded in against its chest in a posture resembling a human in prayer.

But that change in stance exposed the soft underbelly that had been pressed close to the ground. Three unerringly accurate darts plunged into the mantis's unarmoured abdomen, destroying its fragile organs.

The mutant mantis — as long as an adult's forearm — gave one defiant spasm, then went still.

A large insect emerged from the undergrowth and burrowed headfirst into the corpse's abdomen, beginning to feed on the mantis's body.

Mantises had strong territorial instincts, lived alone, and were known to eat their own kind — which was why they didn't cluster together. Bai Shan and the mayor moved along the mountain trail, killing as they went.

The wristband's natural energy covered a radius of one hundred metres. [Tyrannical Command]'s mental force covered a radius of fifty metres. Within its range she could even manipulate tree branches to bind a target mutant.

These mutated mantis insects required almost no effort. The mayor's ability was considerably more interesting.

[Name: Zhong Xile Level: 10 Talent: Extraterrestrial (S) Skill 1: Can expand a domain of up to 20 square kilometres; summons meteorites to strike threatening targets within the domain. The smaller the domain, the more precise the meteorite strikes. Skill 2: Unlocks at Level 20 Skill 3: Unlocks at Level 50 Skill 4: Unlocks at Level 90]

The ability to summon meteorites — quite an imperial flair to it.

Bai Shan walked behind Mayor Zhong Xile, and she could sense that the mayor had already activated her meteorite domain. It wasn't large — a radius of roughly five metres, encompassing Bai Shan's position as well.

Even now, Bai Shan hadn't seen the mayor make a move. Perhaps summoning a meteorite to deal with a mantis felt like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The ability for large-scale strikes left Bai Shan with a slight itch of envy. Unfortunately, her third skill [Admonition] wasn't yet unlocked — otherwise she might have had a way to obtain this ability.

[All who bow before the Tyrant become subjects. The Tyrant may invoke the talents of subjects without condition.]

In her time playing the computer version of Tomorrow's Dominator 1.0, Bai Shan had worked out one simple, blunt condition for "bowing" — taken literally, making someone's head fall off was one way of making them bow, wasn't it?

So she had used [Admonition] to collect the abilities of some mutated creatures, and found that not every mutant she killed could surrender an ability — the target had to possess a degree of intelligence, capable of grasping a few basic concepts.

In 1.0 she had been the only human player, so Bai Shan had never had anyone to test the skill on.

But she was confident: once the third skill [Admonition] unlocked, she would be able to kill a human directly and claim their ability.

That said, it was only one method. If killing were the only condition, the skill description wouldn't have been so vague. There had to be another way to make someone "bow."

Just as Bai Shan was wandering off into her own thoughts, the mayor ahead of her suddenly slowed her pace. She waited until Bai Shan came alongside her before abruptly speaking:

"What do you think of Qianxi Town?"

Bai Shan looked at her, puzzled. "In what sense? The scenery is lovely."

"Would it make you and your friend want to stay?" the mayor asked.

Bai Shan answered without any roundabout phrasing: "We won't be staying."

"But plenty of others probably want to. We came from Rong City — it's nowhere near as safe as this town."

At least that was how it looked on the surface.

"That's right." The mayor considered her words carefully. "I'd like to ask you to stay until the third of February — the day the game ends."

"This town looks safe, but I know how fragile that safety really is… If you and your friend are willing to stay two more days, I'll do everything in my power to cooperate with you. We have no shortage of material resources here."

Bai Shan tilted her head slightly. "Aren't you afraid that outsiders like us might become a variable in that 'safety'?"

Zhong Xile looked at Bai Shan with a complex expression, then said slowly: "I can sense that you're very strong. Even though you're still a child in my eyes, you have the ability to kill me."

"We've walked this long, and you haven't done it. I can't say whether you're a good person or a bad person, but you are someone with a sound mind — someone I can extend a measure of trust to."

Her initial reluctance to let the two of them join hadn't been about them looking small and needing protection.

In fact, on the very first day the game descended, there had been a riot in Qianxi Town. The instigators had been a group of teenagers.

They'd occasionally gotten into fights and brawls, kept the casual talk of "killing and slaughtering" from games on their lips — but who could have imagined that the day they truly gained game abilities, they would actually act on those terrifying words?

Zhong Xile's level ten had been bought, in part, by dozens of human lives.

"To maintain order here, our office has already sacrificed many people, and our manpower is genuinely limited."

Even though Zhong Xile had made arrangements and organised residents to actively join the monster-hunting teams, she knew clearly that the majority of people still wouldn't reach level five.

When that time came, who knew how many desperate people might turn on the innocent around them.

Worried the terms might not be enticing enough, she proactively added more: "Beyond material resources, I have some connections elsewhere. If communications are ever restored, I might be able to help you with certain things."

"If you're headed to the capital, I can write you a letter of introduction. I don't know what things are like there, but it should carry some weight."

At that, Bai Shan's eyes flickered.

This mayor had just, very casually, displayed some remarkable connections.

"We'll stay until the third." Bai Shan replied.

She hadn't actually planned to go to the capital. And even without the mayor's offer, she would have stayed until the third before setting out.

Because she was genuinely curious — when the seventh day arrived, what would the world become?

Receiving Bai Shan's confirmation, Zhong Xile let out a long, slow breath. Since the game descended, she had been losing things — comrades who had fought alongside her, familiar faces from the village.

Having one more source of strength now made her heart feel just a little more settled.

Zhong Xile had already come to realise it: in the age of the game, a single powerful player could genuinely tip the scales through the strength of one person alone.

Pulling in a powerful player meant pulling in one more guarantee for Qianxi Town. Zhong Xile wasn't originally from here, but she had spent so much time in Qianxi Town that every newly paved road was a project she had pushed through with her own ambition and energy. This place had become her spiritual home.

That she had managed to protect Qianxi Town into a safe base — she felt both happiness and pride in that.

The walkie-talkie crackled to life: Lin Huijun and Qin Zhen had cleared the creatures on the western side and were on their way back.

Zhong Xile replied with a brief "understood," then took a deep breath. Bai Shan felt a sudden rush of air open around her, and the treetops above began to ripple in waves — yellow-green waves that undulated all the way to the mountain's peak.

Bai Shan looked up. The darkening sky was sliced through by trail after trail of white streaks, followed immediately by a succession of heavy impacts, as something with tremendous force struck the mountain one after another, cratering several patches of forest.

She heard a blood-curdling shriek, sharp enough to pierce the ears — whatever mutated creature it was, she couldn't tell.

When it was all done, the mayor draped an arm around Bai Shan's shoulders. Her strength had ebbed somewhat, but her voice remained spirited:

"Bai Shan — shall we head back? You've worked hard today. I'll treat you all to something good when we get back."

The corner of Bai Shan's mouth twitched, barely visible. "Call me Bai Shan."

Bai Shan felt a twinge of regret. She had thought this might be a chance to get some proper training in, only to find she had underestimated herself — ordinary mutated creatures posed absolutely no challenge to her.

The only thing that could truly be called an opponent had been that mutated banyan tree, and she had dealt with it in one go using an item.

Items were powerful, but regardless of the era, the real foundation of a person was always their own abilities.

Combat talent, physical technique, fighting instinct — each one mattered enormously in a fight, especially when fighting a person.

The mayor wasn't bad, but like Lin Huijun, her ability wasn't suited to sparring.

If only she'd switched with Lin Huijun and gone to meet Qin Zhen instead — that would have been far more interesting.

She'd just heard both their voices on the walkie-talkie. Lin Huijun hadn't made a move on Qin Zhen. Bai Shan wasn't too surprised.

Night fell. One with mild regret, one with quiet satisfaction — the two of them made their way down the mountain toward the grain depot.

Bai Shan tilted her head back, searching for the North Star in the sky just beginning to show its stars — and then, in that very moment, the game panel suddenly flashed open.

[Player Charlie Anderson has accumulated 10,000 human player kills!]

[Congratulations, player Charlie Anderson has unlocked the achievement "Dance of Death"! You have received the blessing of the Death God!]

[Feature unlocked — Real-time global survivor count!]

The second worldwide broadcast.

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