Chapter 106 – Black Dog

“Feed you once and you come begging every single time…”

It was almost noon, yet the sky remained as dim as dawn; any sense of the hour blurred, and anyone caught in the murk felt listless, drowsy, half-alive.

Qi Si had just woken. For once he actually went downstairs and, in a snack-bar about to close for the morning, bought breakfast.

He hadn’t planned to eat—waiting until evening and solving all three meals with one packet of instant noodles was clearly more economical.

But the seaweed in the Hopeless Sea instance had been too nauseating; the mere memory turned his stomach, and he urgently needed something normal to reset his taste buds… In short, he’d ended up going downstairs after all.

It was a workday; the park held only four or five white-haired grandparents and the preschoolers they were minding.

Qi Si, in the prime of youth, stood out like a sore thumb—so leisurely it looked suspicious.

He sat on a bench, wrapped a handkerchief round his fingers, and tore off a piece of sausage from his egg-filled crepe.

A scrawny black dog had been waiting beside him for ages, head tilted, eyes locked on the scrap of meat between the young man’s fingers, tail thrashing wildly.

Greed shone in its eyes; its begging was unmistakable.

Qi Si tossed the scrap to the ground; the dog gulped it down in one swallow, then lifted its head again, tail spinning like a windmill.

Amused, Qi Si condensed the black-and-red Identity Card between his fingers and flicked it to the pavement.

The dog licked twice, found it inedible, and looked up once more.

It lifted a forepaw and, clumsily and with obvious effort, performed the gesture of supplication—who knows where it had learned that.

“You really are a dog, aren’t you?” In a good mood, Qi Si sent the whole sausage skidding across the ground.

The dog couldn’t understand human speech, but it knew lunch was secured; it bounded after the sausage and vanished into the bushes, tail wagging furiously.

Jiangcheng’s smog was notorious. Beneath the ashen sky, dilapidated buildings leaned every which way, and the spindly landscape trees stood hunched like crooked old men.

Qi Si chewed the now meatless crepe. After only a few minutes he felt an itch in his nose, his throat itching to cough.

He rose from the bench, stuffed the remaining half of the crepe back into its paper bag, and, plastic carry-bag in hand, headed for his apartment complex.

A few steps on, the discarded Identity Card re-materialized as a faint icon in the upper right of his vision, clinging like a ghost.

The phone in his pocket vibrated; it was Jin Yusheng calling.

Qi Si answered: “What’s up?”

Jin Yusheng’s voice came through, theatrically cryptic: “This old man calculates with a snap of the fingers: great calamity looms in your fate. If help is needed, press 1…”

Knowing the man’s nonsense, Qi Si cut in: “You ring at this hour—spit it out.”

“Come on, Lao Qi, can’t I call just to chat?”

“Say what you want.” Qi Si clamped the phone between shoulder and ear, keyed the code, and opened the building’s entrance door.

The caller grew sheepish: “Didn’t I tell you? I’ve got my eye on a girl—seems I’ve won her over… Why ‘seems’? I’m not sure how she feels. I want to ask her out, and I’d like you there too, help me gauge things.”

Qi Si stepped into the lift and chuckled: “Your date, and you want me tagging along?”

“Well, it’s not really a date, just friends hanging out. We booked a script-murder session, but we’re short of players, so each of us is dragging someone along to fill seats.”

Qi Si listened quietly. When the elevator reached the eleventh floor he keyed his door code, entered, and set the plastic bag with the crepe on the dining table.

“You know script-murder, right? Role-play plus deduction. She says she’s a veteran; I’m a total newbie. Can’t look a fool in front of her. Figured you’re good at this stuff—back me up?”

Qi Si gave a non-committal “Mm.” “Send me time and place. What exactly do you need me to do?”

Jin Yusheng rattled off details, then burbled endless thanks.

Qi Si filtered the noise, switched to speaker, opened his browser and searched for “script-murder”.

It turned out to be… something like the puzzle-solving instances of the Eerie Game, only far less interesting.

—No crisis, no death, just a bunch of people sitting in a circle reading scripts and chatting. Boring.

So… should he kill a few more people and send out a few game slots as gifts?

Chin in hand, Qi Si lapsed into thought… 24 March, rain all day in Jiangcheng; Qi Si slept until noon.

The rain seemed to react with some prop; briny damp crept from the baseboards until the whole room smelled of low tide. White walls blossomed with water stains and algae, as if a flood had surged through.

Qi Si held the culprit—the Sea-God Scepter—at arm’s length and resolved not to bring it into reality again; otherwise the house his parents left him wouldn’t survive another month of soaking.

On the Forum, the muddy waters stirred by the Jiuzhou Guild’s crisis PR had settled; new posts flooded players’ feeds.

#New instance “Animal World” cleared on first run by God Fu—true ending achieved. God Fu forever!#

#Full-survival clear of new instance; our chief keeps us safe as always#

#I used to doubt Fu Jue—until he severed his own arm to save me and nearly died in that instance#

#Fu Jue must be the perfect player for the Eerie Game; calling him the Protagonist of our world feels right#

#MBTI analysis of God Fu vs. classic savior-hero archetypes#

After skimming the idol-fan-level drivel—including brain-dead cries of “I want to have God Fu’s babies”—Qi Si nearly lost last night’s dinner.

Maliciously he thought: “So fond of playing savior on high—wait till the day you tumble; the gallows won’t be far behind…”

Yet amid the barrage of bad news, one bright spot remained: the briny air inside the house left Qi Si flush with inspiration.

He bought a basket of fish, spent an afternoon flaying off the skins, then a whole night grafting those skins onto a human corpse, recreating the fish-monsters of Hopeless Sea.

The only flaw: to avoid trouble, such artwork could never see daylight, forced to hide in his studio for private enjoyment—its thrill inevitably dulled.

Morning of 25 March: Qi Si tidied the room and uncovered a dust-covered photograph.

Two teenage boys grinned at the camera, and Qi Si remembered he had once—back in middle school—had a friend.

At fourteen, his odd manners had isolated him; he would cradle grotesque, bloody books and sit alone in corners, quietly reading.

One day a spectacled boy hugged a book and sat beside him.

The boy said: “You like mysteries? So do I. Let’s be friends.”

Qi Si didn’t actually enjoy mystery novels; the book in his hands—The Devil of Dartmoor—just happened to be a mystery.

He asked the boy, “They say they’ll beat up anyone who talks to me. Aren’t you afraid?”

The boy smiled gently. “I’m an upper-classman and the class president. They wouldn’t dare touch me.”

Reality proved optimism fatal: after that day, the number of outcasts rose from one to two.

Qi Si had stopped believing in real friendship back in primary school, yet the boy’s self-sacrificial devotion still moved him.

After catching sight of the bruises on the boy’s body, he said, “I can help you kill them. We won’t leave many traces.”

The boy shook his head. “Some things can’t be done. People aren’t born to act like beasts.”

Qi Si tilted his head. “Then I’ll let you kill me. All our troubles end there.”

The boy laughed softly and gave no answer.

Later, Qi Si was suddenly transferred to a rural junior-high; at their parting he could only press a book into the boy’s arms—

The Devil of Dartmoor… Now twenty-two, Qi Si scoured the internet for the long-out-of-print title and found nowhere to buy it.

With little interest left, he abandoned the search and aimlessly browsed until a headline caught his eye:

# Lu Li, lecturer in history at Yanjing University, dies of a heart attack at only twenty-four #

The report said Lu Li was still revising students’ papers the moment he died, prompting another wave of sighs.

The comment section either mourned the nation’s loss or recalled his kindness as a colleague or classmate.

Post after post sketched the image of a gentle, refined Scholar, utterly at odds with the backstage mastermind who had nearly wiped out every player in the instance.

Almost every player wears two faces: one in-game, one in reality. No one knows whether the Eerie Game sets their nature free or simply twists their personality.

Qi Si laughed at the thought until tears came. “You spent seven sunny years in bliss, then killed me again—dying without regret indeed.”

He idly wondered what he himself would do with the last half-hour if he died in-game and returned to reality.

Disappointingly, he realized he wanted to do… nothing.

Making specimens would take too long, and a suicide note felt pointless; he’d probably lie in bed playing match-three while waiting for the end… Still, the news about Lu Li did remind him of something.

He examined the ring taken from Liu Ajiu, confirmed the thread was ordinary and unrelated to Puppet Threads, and relaxed.

After that, Qi Si visited the Eerie Game’s Forum to gather information on guilds.

The more established guilds had strict rules and hefty dues; smaller ones were freer, but joining made no difference.

The only reputable guild that let members come and go freely was “Tingfeng,” whose business was gathering intel and stirring trouble—vulgar in appearance and, frankly, in reality.

With nothing better to do, Qi Si entered the Game Space at noon and opened his eyes in the tall-backed chair.

The full-length mirror showed his blurred reflection: a white shirt haloed by a cloak-like mist of blood, pupils swirling with clear scarlet.

It was him, yet not quite him.

His once merely pleasant features now carried a demonic cast; walking at night in the wilds of old, he would surely be recorded as a humanoid evil spirit.

Because his Identity Card had activated so many times, his appearance was converging on the card’s illustration of a “humanoid evil spirit.”

This was the so-called “role-playing.” He didn’t mind being a ghost, but he disliked being forced into monstrosity without reason.

Qi Si yawned languidly, stowed the Sea-God Scepter into his inventory, and opened the in-game shop.

The second page held only everyday items; after a fruitless search he reluctantly flipped to the third.

A moment later he locked onto his target.

【Name: Water-Mirror Mask】

【Type: Item】

【Effect: Anyone seeing you for the first time cannot perceive your true face】

【Note: Whose face do you see in the mirror?】

If official organizations posed the main threat in reality, inside the Eerie Game it was the Sera Guild.

At first he had planned to fish from them secrets about team-up items and thus figure out what his own bracelet was.

Now he thought it better to keep his distance.

The Puppeteer loomed like thick storm clouds overhead, ready to burst into downpour at any moment.

The enemy could have countless puppets; Qi Si had only one life—the balance of power was obvious.

After a single clash he had exposed his core thinking pattern and revealed the trump card that Puppet Threads could not parasitize him.

If he met another Sera member soon, the scales would tip even further against him.

Qi Si never underestimated an opponent’s strength, never overestimated their mercy, and had no wish to stake his life on fickle luck.

—He needed to prepare, even if an ant trying to shake a tree.

The Water-Mirror Mask could block Sera or any other random force from tracking him.

Most who had seen him in-game were dead anyway; anyone he met now would be a stranger unable to see his true face.

Qi Si lowered his gaze to the price tag.

【Price: 200,000 points】

Two hundred thousand—one-fifth of the points needed to grant a wish… Great. He couldn’t afford it, not in the least.

He closed the shop and touched the golden leaf representing Liu Yuhan.

Over the past few days the girl had cleared three more instances, all with guides she had already posted, earning zero points.

Clearly she had spent points to specify those instances just to reach the hundred-instance total.

Qi Si had expected it and had no intention of interfering.

Her points would run out eventually; when they did, Liu Yuhan would have to tackle new instances, and Qi Si vowed not to leave her a single point.

It was getting late; dallying served no purpose.

Qi Si returned to the shop’s second page and bought a pile of eyebrow pencils, foundation, and the like, smearing them across his face.

The leftover change he tossed, as usual, into some lucky player’s livestream.

When everything was done, he slung on his hiking pack and stepped into the full-length mirror.

【Randomly generating instance…】

【instance loading… loading complete…】