He left the blinding white of the Audience Space and reappeared in the pitch-black void of the Settlement Space.

The drastic change in color nearly made Wu Wang think he had gone blind.

He was just about to go out and apply for a disability certificate.

Fortunately, the settlement panel popped up in the next second.

【Congratulations to player Pending Death#9527 for clearing the team Nightmare-level Instance, Anecdotes of the Pear Garden.】

【We are preparing to announce this good news with a full-screen broadcast! Rejoice! You have witnessed the birth of an unparalleled, scoundrelly Opera God!】

【Game Rating】 Alpha

【Main Quest Completed】 Save the World on the Brink of Destruction

【Side Quests 1, 2, and 3 Completed】

【Hidden Reward Condition Met】 Resolve Yu Ji’s Lingering Regret

【Instance Rewards and Hidden Reward have been distributed.】

【Please check and receive your rewards in a timely manner.】

【Instance Summary】 The moment you put on that Purple Tuxedo, you were no longer The Joker of the Pear Garden, but a mental patient straight out of Arkham. All your actions seemed reasonable amidst your madness and wanton recklessness.

【Weaving between everyone and toying with the entire stage in the guise of The Joker, you are a worthy Opera God.】

【But this system must still comment. Miners have dug their whole lives without ever unearthing a divine mineral like you. Pirates have searched their whole lives without ever finding a divine leviathan like you. Well-diggers have drilled their whole lives without ever striking a deep well like you. Immortals have cultivated their whole lives without ever entering a divine realm like you. Pregnant women have carried for ten months without ever bearing a divine spirit like you. Monks have chanted sutras their whole lives without ever encountering a divine psycho like you. Players have walked many back alleys, but never a divine path like yours.】

【Please enter the message you wish to broadcast to the entire server.】

【Choose whether to remain anonymous.】

Wu Wang stared.

“?”

It seemed like this damn system was cursing him out again.

Why are the summaries I get after clearing Instances always so strange? Are other people’s like this too?

And now, the vague Main Quest was finally clear. To think he had completed it by sheer accident.

If he hadn’t cleared out the Abyss God’s aura… this Main Quest might have trapped him in that world for who knows how long.

He then looked at the prompts that followed and subconsciously wrote the message he wanted to say in the full-server broadcast field.

【Today I didn’t ride my bike to buy food. Walking on a flat road, I saw the lotuses in the pond had been picked, with only one left. I wanted to take a picture, but my photo album was full, so I had to buy a 50-yuan water bottle for 45 yuan at the scenic spot. When I got home, I found that QQ Farm sent you all a message, saying you could go star in the movie Up.】

【You ask what I mean? It means I walked! It means there were no pebbles! It means nine lotuses were picked! It means I didn’t save the picture! It means the water bottle was ten percent off! It means your crops are dead! And it means you can all go star in Up!】

【Anonymous】

The whole process was as smooth as flowing water.

Wu Wang let out a long breath after selecting the anonymous option, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly. He had discovered this before. Even when a team successfully cleared a Nightmare-level Instance, only one person could make a full-server broadcast.

That person was always the player who played the most critical role in the Instance.

The previous Masquerade Ball was a good example. Several players had survived, but he was the only one who got to make a broadcast. The others either said nothing or didn’t even get the option during settlement.

【10,000 Calamity Coins have been deposited into your warehouse.】

【Obtained Equipment】 Little Idiot Phone Watch

【Little Idiot Phone Watch】 (Epic)

By wearing this watch, you can remotely contact any target within the same Instance, and the sound of your voice will be randomly altered for the listener. We hereby pay tribute to the technical contributions provided by the great K-science bow tie.

When used outside of an Instance world, as long as you obtain any substantive information about a person, you can also contact them remotely in a reasonable manner, ignoring distance limitations.

【Consumes 5 points of Spiritual Energy per second. A player’s Spiritual Energy Value equals their Mental Strength Points multiplied by 10.】

【Usage Condition】 While connecting to the target, the hand wearing the watch must be held up to your head in the shape of a rabbit ear.

【Remark】 No matter where you are, I can find you with just one call!

Clearly, this was not a piece of combat equipment. However, its effect was perhaps far more useful than one might imagine.

The ability to contact a target regardless of distance within an Instance was a game-changer. Imagine being in a massive Instance like the Masquerade Ball, where the map was so huge that finding someone quickly was impossible. This item would be a huge help.

Information was always the most important thing for clearing an Instance.

The most crucial part was that the description didn’t specify the target had to be a player. This meant the watch could even be used to call NPCs, even if they didn’t possess something like a phone.

To be honest, Wu Wang was quite curious to see what would happen when an NPC received a call. It was just that the gesture required for its use was a bit embarrassing. It really did make one look like an idiot.

Fortunately, Wu Wang had no sense of shame, so this was a piece of cake for him.

He was the kind of person who, if someone offered him 500,000 to run naked through the city center wearing a mask, would reply that for an extra 50,000, he could do it without the mask.

It wasn’t that he was greedy. It was just his simple, perverted, scoundrelly itch acting up.

“And a clue to a 【Legendary】 grade item.”

Wu Wang murmured to himself.

“Let’s see what this is all about…”

As Wu Wang began to search his backpack, he was stunned to find an old, yellowed photograph inside. It showed a rather dilapidated apartment building, the kind that looked like a “Tube Building.”

These buildings were a product of the strained housing allocation system for state-owned enterprise employees in the 70s and 80s. Because a long corridor was open at both ends for ventilation, like a tube, they were named Tube Buildings. They omitted standard features like private bathrooms and balconies, with each floor having only a communal toilet, making their structure similar to an old-fashioned student dormitory.

At the entrance of this Tube Building, a group of people stood smiling toward the camera. It had the feel of a graduation photo, with everyone arranged on steps, tier by tier, trying to make sure every face was visible.

However, the photo was too old. Under the yellowed blur, no one’s face could be seen clearly. He could only vaguely count a dozen or so residents in the building.

“That person on the roof is a bit out of place,” Wu Wang frowned in confusion.

While everyone else was posing for a group photo at the entrance below, a single, jarring figure stood on the rooftop terrace. It appeared to be a woman. Her multi-colored curly hair made her seem completely out of sync with the others.

It was the only spot of color in the photo besides the yellow tint of age.

She was leaning over the rooftop railing, looking down at the other residents like an outsider. It gave off a strong “the clamor of this world has nothing to do with me” vibe.

Those curls… that color… why does it feel like a circus clown?

The more he thought about it, the more the resemblance struck him. An item unconsciously came to mind. 【Clown’s Headpiece】.

Black-hearted Penguin had mentioned it when he gave him the 【Clown’s Red Nose】. If he could gather the 【Clown’s Headpiece】, 【Clown’s Red Nose】, and the 【Smiling Face Mask】, they would combine to form a 【Legendary】 grade set with a special effect.

But for that very reason, he felt a chill creep down his spine. It was too much of a coincidence. All of it was just too coincidental.

He had both the 【Clown’s Red Nose】 and the 【Smiling Face Mask】 and was indeed just one 【Clown’s Headpiece】 away from completing the set.

If this was truly a clue to the 【Clown’s Headpiece】, was this the system’s own judgment, automatically searching for clues to 【Legendary】 items related to him?

Or… was it deliberate?

Ever since coming into contact with a big boss like the 【Spirit Venerable of the Sea of Desire】, Wu Wang had stopped seeing the Spirit Calamity Game’s system as an absolutely fair entity. Especially since, just a few minutes ago, She had shoved the 【Light of Dawn】 into his spine, forcibly changing the next Instance he was supposed to enter.

Since beings like Her could influence the system’s judgment, Wu Wang couldn’t help but suspect that this clue might have been intentionally slipped into his rewards by someone.

Rustle.

As Wu Wang was pondering this, he suddenly saw something move in the corner of his eye.

He held his breath and focused on the yellowed photograph again. He was shocked to find the woman on the rooftop stealthily climbing onto the railing, moving in a jerky sequence like a laggy PowerPoint presentation.

The person in the photo was moving!

Whoosh.

She leaped down.

Because her speed in the photo was extremely slow, the lag-like stuttering allowed Wu Wang to see her falling posture more clearly. At the moment just before she hit the ground, her face turned towards the camera.

He couldn’t see her features clearly, but he could see her flash a smile so brilliant it was chilling.

Beneath that smile, the corners of her mouth were torn all the way to her ears. Her entire lower face looked like a split-open watermelon. It was not an expression a human could make.

Finally, she smashed onto the ground in front of the group taking the photo, becoming a bloody, pulpy mess.

However, not a single person in the group photo looked down at her. They just continued to face the camera, holding their poses.

Suddenly, an inconspicuous man in the corner cracked a smile, and his hair color gradually became bright and vivid. Slowly, a head of curly clown hair materialized on his head.

Then, it began to spread like a virus.

One, two, three…

Within a dozen seconds, everyone in the photo had been dyed with the clown’s hair color and that bizarre, split-mouthed smile.

The next second, the image in the photo began to tremble as if the person holding the camera was slowly moving it. Without warning, the view was instantly flipped around.

A bloody maw covered the entire photo, until the yellowed photograph was completely stained with blood, and nothing could be seen.

【You have obtained the clue. Apartment 404.】

【Condition to Proceed. Bear hope, and witness the dawn.】

If the coincidences before had only made Wu Wang feel a creeping dread, the information that now popped up made his expression turn completely grave.

Clearly, this strange apartment was a building in some Instance. And the condition for entering it made him think of what had just happened with the 【Spirit Venerable of the Sea of Desire】.

“The 【Clown’s Headpiece】 is in the Instance created by 【Hope】? The next Instance I’m going to?”

Was this all arranged by the 【Spirit Venerable of the Sea of Desire】? Did She want to show him the so-called privileges one could obtain by becoming a 【Representative】?

Honestly, if this was true, Wu Wang could fully imagine why the Representatives of Divine Envoys or Venerables could rise to prominence so quickly. She could even declare that he would be able to reach the pinnacle of humanity in a short time.

Even excluding the so-called blessings, if you wanted powerful items and equipment, a Venerable could directly arrange for you to enter the corresponding Instance to get them. It would be damn hard not to become strong.

The premise was that this was truly the 【Spirit Venerable of the Sea of Desire】’s arrangement. If so, that would be fine. At least Wu Wang knew Her intentions.

If not, then things were much more unsettling.

As the saying goes, it’s not the thief you fear, but the fact that the thief has his eyes on you. An existence completely unknown to him was pulling his strings from the shadows, guiding his path forward.

That was a terrifying thought.

Could it be that fortune-telling Old Daoist pulling the strings? Wu Wang’s mind raced.

Since the 【Spirit Venerable of the Sea of Desire】 had mentioned that the next Instance might contain information related to the fortune-telling Old Daoist, he couldn’t help but suspect. Was it possible that the old man had brought this 【Clown’s Headpiece】 in with him?

From giving Second Sister a Talisman Paper five years ago to resist the corrosion of the 【Heart Like Fire】, to predicting that Xiaoxiao would meet him in an Instance, and now, to the very equipment he needed being brought into an Instance he was bound to enter.

“Can he really predict the future?”

To be honest, Wu Wang had always been skeptical about things like fortune-telling. In his view, everything followed a pattern; it was just a matter of how large the required dataset was.

But for Xiaoxiao to be matched with him, for him to meet the 【Spirit Venerable of the Sea of Desire】 and end up doing things for Her, and for Her to have just happened to shove the 【Light of Dawn】 into his spine and change his next Instance… could these things really be predicted in advance based on data?

Or was there truly a Laplace’s demon, one that pulled every atom in the universe to a precise position and momentum, and using simple formulas, could instantly calculate the past and future of all things? Was the future a predetermined existence?

Wu Wang frowned, not daring to think too deeply. Even he found such a thing utterly absurd.

“Whatever. If I want to know how that old Daoist did it, and what his purpose is, I’ll have to catch him first.”

Wu Wang shook his head and looked at the paper doll Lou Yu had given him, which contained the memory of the 【Heart Like Fire】.

He asked, one word at a time, “Please tell me, who brought you out of your world? And how did you end up with that woman created by the 【Old Ones】’ power?”

Hearing Wu Wang’s question, the paper doll trembled, and a red glow lit up its chest. It was clearly extracting the memories of the 【Heart Like Fire】.

A moment later, its mouth, which was clearly just drawn on, began to move.

“I do not know how I left my own world.”

“When I awoke, I was before a woman in a long, black robe embroidered with roses. She cast my remnant soul into a dark Ghost Domain.”

“In a beautiful landscape that resembled a Jade Pool, I saw a human-headed, snake-bodied existence.”

“It called itself the Yin Fate Great God.”

Hearing this, Wu Wang was stunned.

Huh? How is the Yin Fate Great God involved?

Where was this 【Heart Like Fire】 taken in the beginning? A Ghost Domain? A Jade Pool? Is this damn place even in China?