【Spirit Calamity Plaza】

A tent stood in a bustling plaza, yet somehow, it drew no one’s gaze.

Inside sat a witch whose powerful figure was evident even beneath her purple robe. The large Witch Hat on her head swayed from time to time, appearing quite spirited.

Lying on the sofa before her was a scholar in white robes. Judging by his face, he looked to be around thirty years old.

Just as the Witch was playing with her crystal ball out of sheer boredom, planning to spy on someone…

The Witch Hat on her head suddenly spoke.

“He’s back! He’s back!”

“We welcome the Dragon King’s return to the Hall of the Gods…”

The voice came from the hat itself, not the Witch. The folds in its fabric vaguely formed a pair of eyes and a mouth, much like the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter.

Smack!

The Witch ruthlessly slapped the hat’s mouth.

“What have you been watching all day?” she said irritably. “‘Gods,’ my ass. This is my divination house.”

“Didn’t I tell you to read Harry Potter? When something good happens, you’re supposed to shout, ‘Ten points to Gryffindor’!”

The Witch Hat’s folds drooped into an aggrieved pout.

It didn’t dare to say another word.

At that moment, the white-robed scholar on the sofa slowly opened his eyes.

He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t the Dragon King that person from the Abnormal Affairs Bureau? Why did it give me that nickname?”

The Witch rolled her eyes. “Ignore it. This stupid hat has been spouting nonsense lately.”

She then looked at the scholar with curiosity.

“So, did you clear it this time, Mr. Manager?”

The white-robed scholar was silent for a moment.

So that’s where the hat learned to give everyone nicknames, he thought.

But he still nodded. “Yes, I cleared it. This time it was 【Anecdotes of the Pear Garden】.”

The Witch sized up his expression. He didn’t seem to have the usual joy that came after clearing a Nightmare-level Instance.

She couldn’t help but ask, “Why do you seem to be in a bad mood? Are you cursed? I didn’t detect anything.”

At this, the white-robed scholar sighed.

He took the 【Overlord Paper Effigy】 from his inventory and toyed with it, saying helplessly, “I cleared it, but someone else was the MVP.”

Hearing this, the Witch grew even more curious. She snatched the paper effigy from his hand.

“My, my,” she said playfully. “Even though your paper person can only retain a small part of your memory and a few junk items, someone actually managed to steal the credit from our Continental Hotel’s Store Manager Qin. So tell me, which great god managed to pull that off?”

The scholar showed no anger at the Witch’s teasing. Instead, he wore a contemplative expression.

“You might not believe me, but it was a level-10 player.”

The Witch blinked. “?”

Seriously, dude, are you listening to yourself? You entered a Nightmare-level Instance. A level-10 player was the key to clearing it?

Seeing her astonished look, the scholar’s expression was just as complicated. “Not only that, I suspect he also saw through the fact that the me who entered the Instance was not my real body.”

“That’s impossible!” the Witch immediately denied. “Your paper person has a cognitive impairment I personally applied. For someone to see through it at a glance… hmm, wait… it’s not entirely impossible…”

As she spoke, the Witch suddenly recalled a recent event. Someone had indeed seen through her Cognitive Impairment Seal at a glance.

But that guy wasn’t level 10.

“Forget it. Having a player like that to help clear a Nightmare-level Instance is good news. There’s no need for us to dig into his privacy.”

The scholar sighed, rubbing his temples.

“Hopefully, we can take down a few more Nightmare-level Instances before the Open Beta arrives.”

Just as the Witch had said, he was the true manager behind the 【Continental Hotel】 and the so-called recognized second-strongest Spirit Calamity Player.

His real player ID was 【Qin Shusheng】.

Origami Arts was just one of his many skills. He and the president of the Tarot Society, the fortune-telling Witch beside him, had developed a unique use for this skill. They used it to deceive the Spirit Calamity Game’s system by sending a paper person to clear Instances instead of his real body.

The paper person’s level was unfixed, ranging from 25 to 29.

It inherited a tiny fraction of his memory, just enough to know it was a paper person. This allowed it to make bolder attempts during a run, freed from the fear of death.

Unfortunately, there was a severe restriction on the items it could carry. It could bring at most one consumable item and two pieces of equipment into an Instance, and their quality could not exceed 【Epic】. Otherwise, the system would detect and erase the paper person.

The cognitive impairment the Witch applied to it prevented other players from seeing through its true identity and provided a fake player ID, the one Wu Wang and the others saw.

【Page Boy】.

It acted like a true game player in every sense, clearing Instances without any fear of death. Even if it failed, he could simply send another 【Page Boy】 into the same Instance later, and it would retain a portion of the experience from the last failure. This made it more likely for him to succeed with such a weak paper body and scarce items.

This was why the 【Page Boy】 Wu Wang met was so knowledgeable about opera. He was not the first one to enter 【Anecdotes of the Pear Garden】.

He had already failed in that Instance twice before.

“Is it worth it, Store Manager Qin?” the Witch suddenly asked. “No one will ever know what you’ve done. And even if they did, they wouldn’t be grateful. Some might even accuse you of hogging all the rewards from Nightmare-level Instances.”

“I must have been out of my mind to agree to help you.”

The Witch’s help wasn’t just applying the seal. She also had to check if his paper person had brought back any curses from the Instance upon its return. After all, she was the expert in that field.

At this, Qin Shusheng stood up and stretched. His brilliant smile couldn’t hide his exhaustion.

“You know how difficult Nightmare-level Instances are. Once the Open Beta begins, these are the ones most likely to manifest in the real world after three failures.”

“The disasters they bring will be beyond human imagination. Fortunately, their number is limited.”

“For every Nightmare-level Instance we clear before the Open Beta, the danger that players and ordinary people face will be that much less.”

“It’s impossible to persuade other high-level players to specialize in these. The death rate is simply too high.”

“Fortunately, you helped me improve my Origami Arts, allowing me to tackle several Nightmare-level Instances at once without harm.”

Indeed, 【Page Boy】 existed in more than one Instance. At that very moment, other 【Page Boys】 were clearing other, unknown Nightmare-level Instances.

He paused, raising his head to look at the top of the divination tent. An endless, flowing starry sky was spread out there.

Qin Shusheng slowly reached his hand toward it, murmuring to himself.

“If there truly is a god looking down upon the world, inflicting Spirit Calamities upon us and taking pleasure in humanity’s suffering, then I will show It what a magnificent hymn human courage is.”

“I don’t have Qing Long’s monstrous power, the potential to one day face the gods directly. All I can do is protect this place as much as possible until he tears away the facade of the gods’ lies.”

The starry sky seemed far more distant than the top of the tent. No matter how he reached, he couldn’t touch it.

Finally, Qin Shusheng retracted his arm. He looked at the Witch’s complicated expression, still smiling.

“You ask if it’s worth it? I don’t know, and I don’t need to know.”

“Just do good deeds, and don’t ask about what lies ahead.”

With that, he lay back down on the sofa. A sheet of white paper leaped out from behind him. In a few quick folds, it took the shape of a person. It then gradually came to life, though its eyes were still dull.

He had not yet poured his memories into it.

“That’s enough, don’t be so self-deprecating. You, the manager, are the recognized second-strongest, you know,” the Witch quipped. “If you still think you’re powerless, then how are other players supposed to live?”

“Take this paper person, for example. Even without equipment and items, it’s stronger than most players of the same level, right?”

“How much of your real combat power does it have? A tenth?”

Qin Shusheng just smiled without speaking. He held a strange, bread-like object, wrote the necessary memories on it, and stuffed it into the paper person’s mouth.

Only then did he say softly, “Not even that much.”

He then stuffed the 【Overlord Paper Effigy】 into the hands of the newly created paper 【Page Boy】. Pointing at the black-and-white paper effigy, he said, “This is about a tenth of my power, I suppose.”

If the other players from 【Anecdotes of the Pear Garden】, including Wu Wang, had heard his words, they would have been shocked speechless.

In his prime, Prince Xiang was an entity who could only be defeated by a specific game mechanic. Compared to Qin Shusheng himself, that was only a tenth of his true combat power. And he might have even been underselling it.

Thinking of this, Qin Shusheng sighed with emotion. “I wonder how many players have been deceived by the idea that level represents strength. In reality, lifting the level restriction after the Open Beta will only raise the players’ lower limit. True upper-limit strength has nothing to do with level.”

“Don’t even mention that ridiculous ‘recognized second-strongest’ nonsense.”

“Among all the level-30 players in the Spirit Calamity Game right now, I estimate that not even half of them could take a casual sword strike from Qing Long. The other half, myself included, would only last a few more serious slashes.”

“If you just look at levels, isn’t he also level 30?”

“Sometimes, the gap between people is greater than the gap between a person and a pig.”

“You have to know your own limits.”

With that, a spark of intelligence flashed in the eyes of the paper 【Page Boy】 before him. It was no longer dull.

It laughed cheerfully. “Speaking of which, I hope I can run into a player with a bounty from the 【Continental Hotel】 in the next Instance.”

“The 【Executioner】 I met in 【Anecdotes of the Pear Garden】 earned me a lot of Calamity Coins.”

Hearing his words, the Witch couldn’t help but roll her eyes. This guy’s quirk was truly baffling. He was the founder of the 【Continental Hotel】 himself. His personal stash of Calamity Coins was almost comparable to the Three Great Organizations.

Yet he still loved to personally hunt down players with bounties.

Collecting bounties from his own organization?

What a psycho.

Just as Qin Shusheng was about to look through his files for other Nightmare-level Instances, he suddenly thought of something.

He casually said to the Witch, “Oh right, find some time to buy a file on 【Wu Wang】 from Qing Long for me. I want to study it.”

The paper 【Page Boy’s】 memories of the Instance were only a very small part of Qin Shusheng’s own. His understanding of 【Wu Wang】 was still stuck on the acquisition of the Heavenly Eye, an encounter from before he was level 20.

However, Qin Shusheng’s own knowledge of 【Wu Wang】 was not limited to just that.

Inside the Opera God’s Righteous Garden, the Abyss God’s aura struggled from the bottom of the well, threatening to tear the entire instance apart. The blood moon in the sky was gradually losing its crimson hue.

The red Vertical Pupils on Lou Yu’s body began to close and seal. Her entire aura was growing weaker and weaker.

Just as Wu Wang had deduced, her life no longer belonged to her.

Whether the Abyss God’s aura eroded the world to its end, or Wu Wang cleansed and devoured it, only one fate awaited Lou Yu.

Death.

“You really don’t regret it?” Wu Wang asked.

“No regrets in this life,” Lou Yu nodded.

In the next second, however, Wu Wang sighed.

He spoke again, helplessly. “What I mean is, you gave all the others such nice treasures when they left.”

“Your buddy here is helping you save the world. Don’t I get some kind of reward?”

“Miss Lou, even Super Mario gets to bring the princess home after defeating Bowser. Saving the world isn’t a charity case.”

Hearing him, Lou Yu felt her life force draining away. She knew Wu Wang was using a bad joke to keep her from fearing death. Although she didn’t understand who Super Mario or Bowser were, she still slowly raised her hand.

“Of course, there is,” she said softly. “This is what you deserve.”

The next second, five ghostly shadows of various colors crawled out from behind Wu Wang. They unhesitatingly burrowed into his shadow.

A system notification popped up before him.

【Five Ghosts Transportation Art (Active): Five ghosts from the Yin World reside within your shadow. You can control them as flexibly as your own arms, and you can also use this to change the fortune of a certain place or person. Summoning each ghost requires 50 Spiritual Energy (Player’s Spiritual Energy Value = Mental Strength Points × 10)】

【Note: The Five Ghosts transport, serving the Five Elements. Transporting objects and fortune, do not be greedy.】

It was a skill!

Skills in the Spirit Calamity Game were far harder to obtain than equipment and items. Otherwise, after so many Instances, Wu Wang wouldn’t only have a handful of them, and that was counting 【Vision of Truth】.

“Oh right, I have one more impudent request,” Wu Wang continued. “Do you still have any memory of what your 【Heart Like Fire】 experienced out there? There’s something I want to ask it.”

He was concerned about the situation with that fortune-telling old Daoist. The Talisman Paper the Daoist had given Second Sister all those years ago was precisely what had blocked the harm from Lou Yu’s remnant soul. The face mask of that 【Heart Like Fire】 might know something.

At this, Lou Yu glanced at her own body, which was about to completely collapse.

She quickly tore a sheet of white paper from her clothes, folded it into the shape of a person, then bit her thumb and sprinkled blood onto it.

She handed it to Wu Wang and said solemnly, “My time is almost up. If you have any questions, ask it. This paper person possesses all of my memories.”

“Benefactor, we shall not meet again…”

With that, Lou Yu dragged her broken body to the side of the well. She looked at the half-open Ghost Gate Pass within, and the glimpse of the black and white Overlord’s Helmet.

She gave a faint smile. She picked up the Ruyi Crown that belonged to Yu Ji, slowly placed it on her own head, and threw herself into the well.

“Yu, in the next life, shall we perform Farewell My Concubine one more time?”

As the Ghost Gate Pass boomed shut, the singing voice of a young man could be faintly heard from within.

“My steed will not run, what can I do…”

“Yu, ah, Yu, what is to be done with you…”

“Yu… ah, Yu… what is to be done with you…”

At the same time, Wu Wang withdrew his hand. The Red Vertical Pupil on the inside of his wrist closed, seemingly digesting the aura it had just devoured. The Abyss God’s aura in this Instance was cleansed.

He collapsed onto the edge of the well and stretched.

He wondered when the one who was supposed to pick him up planned to…

Before Wu Wang could finish his thought, he looked up. The moon instantly turned pitch black.

A sea of foul, viscous liquid poured down from the sky, flooding the Opera God’s Righteous Garden and completely submerging Wu Wang.

An inexplicable provocation filled his every nerve, making his whole being unconsciously want to release its primal Desire.

Heh, speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

And so, he grinned.

“Big Boss, it’s been a while…”