Chapter 79-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player
Chapter 79
Phototropic mutants?
Bai Shan thought back — she had used her phone's flashlight in the residential building where Yan An lived and hadn't encountered anything unusual.
She said, half-skeptical, "How did you discover them?"
"I discovered them when I opened my Game Panel."
Jiang Yusong's answer surprised them both. Lin Huijun quickly asked, "You weren't attacked?"
Opening the Game Panel in Hai City triggered a lethal attack — this was accepted as common knowledge by everyone.
Jiang Yusong pulled off her scarf, exposing the grayish-blue splotches on her neck caused by intense light exposure. She pointed at them. "I was. But I was lucky — my ability saved me."
She shifted direction. "Everyone's Game Panel can only be seen by themselves — no one else can see it. Have you ever thought about why?"
Bai Shan furrowed her brow. It was a game setting. She had pondered why it was designed that way, but had never considered the mechanism behind it — after all, Tomorrow's Dominator itself defied all conventional logic.
Now that Jiang Yusong brought it up, Bai Shan immediately connected it to the principles of light and retinal imaging, and a theory formed in her mind.
"Bending light to bypass other people and refracting it only into the target's pupils — that would achieve it."
Bai Shan answered.
"Exactly! My Talent [Light Magic Girl] happens to be light manipulation. I discovered this secret early on. If I wanted to, I could bend light to see other people's panels, or even tamper with the panel information their eyes receive..."
Bai Shan made a mental note — she'd need to be more careful opening her Game Panel from now on, in case some Light Magic Boy popped up to peep at her data.
Jiang Yusong's [Light Magic Girl] was an S-tier Talent. Its first skill, [Light Magic], was a support-oriented ability — manipulating light to create illusions and deceive vision, extremely effective against creatures that relied on sight. She could also condense light into lasers, but the damage was mediocre, nowhere near the building-leveling destruction of high-tier offensive players.
When she first entered Hai City, Jiang Yusong hadn't known that opening the Game Panel was dangerous.
She had simply wanted to check Hai City's channel for information, so she opened her Game Panel. The pale blue glow popped up, reflecting in her eyes.
Hai City was perpetually shrouded in gloomy storms, with very little light. Jiang Yusong's abilities were severely weakened.
But precisely because light was scarce, her sensitivity to it was heightened.
She detected an abnormal fluctuation in the light refracted by the game screen. Instinctively, she activated her ability. The pink glow of [Light Magic] enveloped her hand and then the game screen. Before she could understand what was happening, something slammed into the light!
They plunged into the pink glow. Only then did Jiang Yusong sense their presence — something like a cluster of transparent algae drifting through the air, composed of countless minuscule individual organisms. Their original form was unknown.
The transparent algae were about to make contact with the Game Panel. There was no time to think. A crushing sense of mortal danger engulfed her, igniting pure instinct!
In that instant, the pink glow in her hands blazed to blinding intensity. The light was so fierce that her vision went white, blanking out entirely.
When the glare subsided, Jiang Yusong opened her eyes. The unknown organisms had vanished. The game screen still hovered before her, its edges slightly warped.
She immediately closed the panel and explained what had happened to her teammates.
The loss of control had scorched her exposed neck with intense light, leaving ugly grayish-blue patches. In the past, this would have been devastating for Jiang Yusong. But after learning that everyone else who had opened their Game Panel had died on the spot, all she felt was gratitude.
Gratitude that she was still alive. A little cosmetic damage was nothing.
By the mall's floor-to-ceiling window, Jiang Yusong held out her hand. The next moment, a gentle pink glow enveloped it.
"As long as there's light, they'll gather. And they quickly perish within the glow. That's what I found after repeated experiments."
"The human eye can't see them directly. Even if they've been swarming around you, you'd never know. And they don't attack people — they only chase light. Colonel Zeng named them Light-Seeking Algae."
"If you don't mind, I can let you see them. It'll sting your eyes a bit."
Both agreed. Jiang Yusong's slender fingers manipulated the pink glow, refracting light toward them.
A sudden stinging sensation hit Bai Shan's eyes — an urge to tear up, like being forced to stare directly at the sun. She pried her eyelids open with her fingers and finally saw what Jiang Yusong had described: the Light-Seeking Algae.
It drifted near Jiang Yusong, drawn toward the light in her hand. It resembled a frazzled ball of seaweed, its edges looking fuzzy and spiky, its outline semi-transparent — nearly indistinguishable from the overcast gray sky.
The Light-Seeking Algae floated willingly into the pink glow and was annihilated within it, like a moth to flame.
Bai Shan raised a hand to cover her eyes, suppressing the reflexive urge to cry. She lowered her hand. Though no tears had fallen, her eyes were stung red.
"The Light-Seeking Algae that attack the Game Panel, combined with the bizarre rainstorms — they're very likely the culprits behind Hai City's ability anomalies!"
Jiang Yusong withdrew her ability and tried once more to persuade them. "We need to carry this information back and hand it to specialists for research. The ability-nullification problem has to be solved before Hai City can ever see clear skies."
"Otherwise, once your abilities fade too, how long can we last in Hai City?"
"Even my teammates — one-in-a-million elites! After losing their powers, they didn't survive twenty-four hours in Hai City..."
Jiang Yusong's team had come to Hai City with a mission. They had been tracking the powerful mutant's presence, pushing forward, and when their abilities vanished, they failed to retreat from the danger zone in time. The team was nearly annihilated.
"One more thing — it might be psychological, but I feel my ability weakening. It could vanish at any moment."
Lin Huijun lowered her gaze, her resolve visibly wavering. Hai City's strangeness had exceeded what any individual could handle. Even if Bai Shan's abilities were fine for now, there was no guarantee they wouldn't suddenly fail.
The moment Bai Shan's abilities glitched, they'd be in serious danger.
Bai Shan was weighing the same concern.
The cause of the ability loss was unknown, meaning she could lose hers at any time. Bai Shan was keenly aware of what she relied on — a Level-50 game account. Without game abilities, surviving in a Hai City crawling with mutants would be nearly impossible.
But was it really just the mutants causing the power loss?
The Light-Seeking Algae appeared to be some kind of mutated planktonic organism. They weren't aggressive — otherwise, Bai Shan would have detected them when she used her phone flashlight.
They were phototropic. Their cells could even sense the faint glow of a Game Panel and swarm toward it.
The Light-Seeking Algae themselves were harmless. So why had Jiang Yusong — by blocking the algae from reaching her Game Panel — become the exception, surviving what killed everyone else?
A term surfaced in Bai Shan's mind: rejection response.
When a foreign organ is transplanted into a body, the immune system identifies it as an alien object and triggers rejection.
If Hai City were a living body, then they — the outsiders — were foreign objects. Either they'd be assimilated into part of the body — losing their Talent abilities and becoming ordinary people.
Or they'd trigger a violent rejection response and die on the spot.
For instance, opening the Game Panel — something that categorically did not belong to Hai City. Its light attracted Hai City's "immune cells," the Light-Seeking Algae. Two incompatible forces collided, and the fragile human caught between them was the first to perish.
Swap the Light-Seeking Algae for any other Hai City mutant, and a collision with the Game Panel would likely produce the same result.
In Bai Shan's assessment, Jiang Yusong's most significant distinction wasn't her Talent ability. She was the only person in Hai City who had opened the Game Panel and survived.
Opening the Game Panel could prevent assimilation by Hai City. It was just that everyone else who tried had died — and Jiang Yusong, through sheer accident, had dodged the rejection and lived.
Bai Shan looked up at Jiang Yusong. "After that, did you ever open the Game Panel again?"
Jiang Yusong shook her head. Once she learned that opening the panel meant near-certain death, she hadn't dared gamble with her life a second time.
Bai Shan said, "Maybe if you open it one more time, your abilities will return to full strength. Of course, there's still the risk of instant death."
Jiang Yusong asked, "...What do you mean?"
Facing Jiang Yusong's bewildered look, Bai Shan turned away. Their abilities were granted by Tomorrow's Dominator version 2.0. Opening the panel was essentially reconnecting to the game — re-establishing the signal for their Talents in Hai City, this offline zone. That was probably why Jiang Yusong's abilities hadn't faded yet.
She couldn't say too much about the game.
"I'm going out to take a look."
Bai Shan produced a Transparent Raincoat and draped it over herself.
This was the item Liu Chaoyun had given Shen Yuanzhi. Wearing it allowed free passage through any structure.
She found an outdoor gear store — its inventory had been picked through and left in disarray. Bai Shan was lucky enough to find a pair of swim goggles, which she strapped over her eyes.
Lin Huijun, seeing her gear up, had a bad feeling and volunteered, "Bai Shan, should we drive out and have a look around?"
"No need. I'll go alone."
Bai Shan adjusted the goggles snug against her eyes. The rain outside was too heavy — no matter how uncomfortable they were, she needed eye protection.
Jiang Yusong stared at Bai Shan with something close to exasperation. "Are you going swimming?"
"You want to leave, right? Let me scout the route for you first."
Bai Shan flicked the elastic strap by her ear. She gave them both a wave, then without leaving time for objections, leaned backward in the raincoat and passed straight through the mall's enormous floor-to-ceiling glass window like a gust of wind.
The downpour crashed over her head in an instant. Bai Shan looked up at the somber sky. Through goggles blurred by the pounding rain, she saw the clouds churning.
Her body was about to plunge into the water below when an enormous black fish — several meters long — burst from the surface, jaws gaping wide. Bai Shan flipped backward, stomped down on the fish's broad, slippery head, and vaulted upward!
The black fish was driven back into the water with a violent splash. Bai Shan landed effortlessly on the building across the way.
Her feet never paused. A tiny black silhouette darted between skyscrapers — sometimes leaping to the very top, sometimes phasing through reinforced concrete walls as if they were nothing, emerging from the other side in the blink of an eye. She moved so fast it seemed even the rain couldn't keep up with her — a ghostly, fleeting phantom.
The mall, the TV tower, office buildings, residential blocks... Bai Shan kept pushing outward.
Along the way, she passed a mutated water beast waving its tendrils and spotted someone lying on a wooden boat, missing a leg, barely clinging to life. She didn't stop. She didn't pause.
Bai Shan lost track of time, slipping into a flow state. Her eyes saw nothing but the endless storm clouds ahead.
Her breathing grew heavier. Her limbs began to ache. After who knew how long, the sole of her shoe suddenly slipped. She stumbled several steps and caught herself at the very edge of a rooftop.
She looked down. Dozens of meters below lay a stretch of gray floodwater. A mangled corpse drifted in the rain.
Bai Shan surveyed her surroundings. This was an industrial park on the outskirts of Hai City.
She was nearly out of the city.
She wasn't sure whether this strange city would simply let someone leave.
Jiang Yusong's team had taken the right strategic approach — rather than pursuing raw power, they'd aimed for versatility, assembling a toolkit of diverse abilities to tackle any puzzle. Try enough methods and you'd find the answer. Jiang Yusong herself had been the closest they'd stumbled to a correct solution.
But they shared one limitation: the assumption that the anomaly was caused by some mutant — some tangible, identifiable monster.
What if Hai City itself was the monster?
Suddenly, a flash caught Bai Shan's eye. She went on alert instantly, scanning her surroundings. It was a high-powered flashlight sitting on a windowsill of an industrial building across the way.
She glanced at the nearby corpse. It wasn't bloated or decayed — the person hadn't been dead long. He was probably the flashlight's owner, killed by a mutant or fallen while scouting.
She extended a hand. The flashlight, dozens of meters away, shot through the curtain of rain and into her grasp.
Bai Shan swept the beam casually ahead. The cone of light reached a building a hundred meters away.
She angled it upward. The beam crawled up the distant wall and pierced into the somber sky above.
Behind the goggles, Bai Shan's eyes flew wide. She transferred the flashlight to her left hand and thrust her right — the one wearing the green bracer — into the beam.
Something was there. Mutants.
Tiny. Countless. All converging.
Bai Shan suddenly ripped off the goggles. Her pupils trembled as if they could finally breathe. Through the rain, she stared at the sky ahead. In the direction the flashlight illuminated, an incongruous patch of blue had appeared.
As if a section of the gray sky had suddenly melted away.
The storm clouds above Hai City — were they composed of those Light-Seeking Algae?
Bai Shan gripped the flashlight and kept running.
*
Lin Huijun paced anxiously in front of the mall's floor-to-ceiling window. Jiang Yusong appeared unconcerned, seemingly still annoyed by Bai Shan's unilateral decision, though her eyes kept drifting to her watch.
Two hours had passed. Jiang Yusong thought: with no vehicle, no teammates, and two hours alone in Hai City — was there even a one-in-ten chance of coming back?
A draft of air brushed past from behind. Jiang Yusong spun around warily — behind her was the massive glass wall.
Nothing out of the ordinary. She turned back, and jumped — a figure stood right in front of her, soaking wet, rainwater dripping from the black windbreaker, plink-plink-plink onto the floor.
Bai Shan hadn't even taken the time to change. She asked:
"Where's Hai City's power plant?"
"What power plant?"
Jiang Yusong stared at Bai Shan blankly. She was a Hai City native, but she only knew the city's glamorous, bustling side.
Lin Huijun, relieved to see Bai Shan back in one piece, answered her question. "Hai City relies mostly on power supplied from other regions, I think. What happened?"
"Things just got complicated. Hai City isn't a place you can just walk out of."
Bai Shan swept her soaked bangs back, revealing a smooth forehead that made her gaze look even sharper.
"I need to light up Hai City."
She aimed the high-powered flashlight outward and pointed into the storm.
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