Chapter 105 – Aftermath

On the night of March 21, the moderately famous strategy blogger 【Yuhan】 posted a new thread on the game Forum.

#Hopeless Sea instance Summary & The Puppeteer Incident from Start to Finish#

【1st floor (OP): I’m Liu Yuhan; by chance I experienced the latter half of the Hopeless Sea instance together with Chang Xu and Si Qi. Seeing a lot of people asking what happened after Chang Xu turned off his stream, I’ll start from there.】

【2nd floor: How’s Chang Xu? If you’re OK, he should be too, right?】

【3rd floor (OP) replying to 2nd floor: I’m sorry; Chang Xu was killed by the Puppeteer, and I couldn’t save him. Next I’ll tell everyone exactly how it happened.】

【4th floor (OP): At the start there were three puppets in the instance—Lu Li, Ye Linsheng, and Hans; Si Qi was taken over midway. Everyone already understands the Puppeteer’s skill effects and watched the stream, so I won’t repeat it.】

【After Lu Li left the island with the other players, the Puppeteer relaxed control over Si Qi. Thinking the influence had gone, Si Qi found me and Chang Xu and proposed heading to the altar to clear the instance via the True Ending. He forced Chang Xu to shut down his stream because he suspected Chang was in league with Sera and might use the broadcast to pass information.】

【5th floor: How could Chang Xu have anything to do with Sera? He cut off his own finger to prove innocence!】

【6th floor (OP): That was Si Qi’s suspicion, and at the time I felt it made sense. A time trick existed on the island: anyone leaving at the wrong moment would die; the Puppeteer couldn’t be unaware. Lu Li leaving Chang Xu on the island looked like deliberate help to keep him alive.】

【But what followed proved we’d been misled by the Puppeteer. Beside the altar, the Puppeteer took control of Si Qi again, held me hostage, and forced Chang Xu to fetch an item called the Sea-God Scepter.】

【Chang Xu agreed; after handing the Sea-God Scepter to the Puppeteer, he was killed. The Puppeteer then tried to kill me, but fortunately Si Qi finally reclaimed control of his body with a prop, letting me escape.】

【7th floor: So that asterisked player really was Si Qi?】

【8th floor: How could anyone break free from the Puppeteer’s control? OP, don’t tell me you were fooled.】

【9th floor (OP) replying to 8th floor: I’m certain Si Qi broke free—he severed his right little finger, proving himself the same way Chang Xu did. He carries a major trump card whose effect is unknown, but it must have helped him escape.】

【10th floor (OP): Another noteworthy point: puppet Lu Li wore the Jiuzhou Guild badge, and investigation confirms he really was a member. The Puppeteer also knows Chang Xu’s personality well, as if they’d met before. I suspect many guilds have been infiltrated by Sera; all guilds please check yourselves.】

Under Qi Si’s control, Liu Yuhan distorted the latter half of the Hopeless Sea instance in her post, partly clearing Qi Si of suspicion.

At the same time she dragged Jiuzhou Guild into the mire, making every guild feel threatened, muddying the waters and shifting conflict.

Liu Yuhan’s account had a solid reputation, and her coherent narrative kept anyone from questioning it; people either offered comfort or mourned Chang Xu.

With deliberate guidance, players turned their spears toward Jiuzhou Guild, furiously demanding an explanation.

As if, without Jiuzhou’s badge, players wouldn’t have trusted Lu Li and the tragedy could have been averted… all of it within Qi Si’s expectations. He chose to harvest Liu Yuhan’s soul precisely because of the girl’s good name.

Though he cared little for gossip, he knew the power of public opinion: in modern society, control of discourse can avert much trouble.

Of course, some deduced Qi Si was the anonymous MVP.

Qi Si ignored it—neither admitting nor denying, letting people guess; there was no proof anyway.

Amid the uproar, new voices surfaced.

Some complained Chang Xu had shut off his stream midway, causing their invested points to evaporate; others called him brainless for squandering a winning start; still others boosted a malicious thread:

#Suddenly I Find Chang Xu a Bit Suspicious#

【1st floor (OP): Could we have been misled by stereotypes? Who says someone streaming can’t belong to Sera Guild or be a Slaughter-path player?】

The moment Chang Xu entered the instance he followed Si Qi, and then Si Qi got parasitized by Puppet Threads—how could it be such a coincidence?

And did Chang Xu really die? Yuhan said the Hopeless Sea instance is essentially a dream; dying in a dream doesn’t necessarily mean true death—could be a trick.】

Qi Si kept tabs on the discourse and spotted the thread at once.

He laughed again, genuinely delighted.

Chuckling, he scribbled frantically in a notebook titled Died a Miserable Death, his face twisting into an eerie grin, as if joy had tipped into sorrow.

“Chang Xu, you’re miserable, really… Look, you died just like that, and who will speak a word for you now?”

…In pitch-black space, Chang Xu sat cross-legged, watching light rise before him like a theater curtain lifting, revealing a long corridor of mottled stone walls and broken pillars.

On the left was a tiny courtyard—open-air yet forever sunless; on the right, rows of small rooms with doors tightly shut, each with only a palm-sized window high up.

This was an orphanage on the outskirts of River City, buried deep in his memory; whenever death loomed, his consciousness would appear here, and he had long since grown used to it.

He had awakened from the Hopeless Sea dream at the brink of death, finding himself soaked in seawater, no wound on his chest yet the lingering pain vivid.

Struggling, he kept himself afloat, tilting his head to gasp for breath, and forced himself to watch the finale; only after the three-minute countdown ended and he was teleported out did he finally pass out.

Whispers reached his ears, secretive in tone, crisp as children, theatrical in cadence.

“Stay away from him—he’s a monster! Anyone near him suffers!”

“He’s nuts, talks to the air all day; the aunties say Ghosts swarm around him!”

“That big dummy looks scary but never talks back—go try if you don’t believe me!”

“New kid, go curse at him to prove you’re no coward; only then will we treat you as one of us.”

The clamor merged into a chorus, every malicious word distinct.

At the time, Chang Xu couldn’t yet grasp hostility or isolation—mechanisms too complex; anything not threatening his life seemed unworthy of attention.

So he simply stayed silent, found an empty corner, and quietly fiddled with a Rubik’s cube or some other trinket, or chatted with the Ghosts pressing in around him.

But the children grew bolder, treating him as a mandatory end-stage boss—snatching his food, rallying crowds to beat him… until one day he killed a person.

Chang Xu lowered his head, saw his bony hands, stood up; his forehead only reached the low-set door handle.

He realized that right now he was still a child.

A grayish, yellowing steamed bun appeared in his hand, hard and dry, yet he instinctively lifted it to his mouth and bit.

Countless black shadows spilled through the crack of the door, stretching into long arms toward him; instinctively he remembered everything that had led to this: they wanted to snatch the bun, and he was starving—he couldn’t hand it over.

So he started to run. Wind whipped up by his stride tore the mist-light buildings aside, and blazing white sunlight poured like rain.

But the darkness behind kept chasing, nearly catching his hem again and again; he had to run without stopping, while the sunlight hung always a few steps ahead, just out of reach.

A heavy stone door barred his way, intricate eye-patterns blooming across its surface, blocking every path forward, back, left, or right.

Chang Xu skidded to a halt before it and glanced back: the shadows had caught up.

They laughed wildly, guests at a gluttonous feast; black tentacles coiled like vipers around the fugitive’s arms, dragging him toward the dark tide.

“Can’t run…” “Kill them…” “Survive…”

Jumbled whispers surged layer upon layer; the true Ghosts offered advice all at once. Chang Xu stood rock-still and swung his fist into the nearest shadow.

Black blood flung out in long ribbons, splashing across his pale face, dyeing him pitch-black; every shadow shrieked in shrill terror.

“He killed someone!” “The big dummy killed someone!”

Deaf to the cries, Chang Xu kept punching like a machine under orders, each blow raising screams and blood higher than the last.

Suddenly he remembered: he was twenty-five now, no longer the five-year-old who could be bullied at will.

The Eerie Investigation Bureau had taken him in; since then he’d had food and clothes, no longer fighting other orphans for scraps.

The Bureau people treated him well; his power that balanced Ghosts found its use, and he was no longer shunned… The shadows retreated, sunlight stabbed through the haze and poured over him. His shadow stretched to the ceiling, his arms grew strong again.

He turned around; the stone door still stood, taller and heavier than it had looked.

He remembered that back in the orphanage, whenever the other children chased him, he would run to this door.

Something behind it seemed dreadful; no one dared approach—only him.

At five he had tried to push it open and failed; the headmaster warned him never to enter the room beyond.

He wasn’t curious by nature; after that single attempt he never tried again. Even at fifteen, when his strength became terrifying, he left without testing it once more.

Now everything in heaven and earth had vanished; only he and the stone door remained.

For no reason he knew: a light push would open it.

For no reason he wondered: what lay behind it?

The twenty-five-year-old Chang Xu laid his hand on the door’s eye-pattern and pushed.

A golden river twisted into a Möbius ring in a higher dimension; in memory the skinny five-year-old figure pushed the door open.

Grotesque fog churned into shifting shapes; at the room’s center bloomed a blazing gold light. The intruder’s eyes stung as if floating in space and staring at the sun.

A distant, mist-thin voice sounded, both from beyond the sky and from the depths of his mind: “Chang Xu, I granted you the Sea-God Scepter, symbol of power; you were meant to sweep all before you with supreme might, yet through vain fear you surrendered it to another. I am deeply disappointed.

“Fortunately, the rule detected the hand secretly reaching for the gaming table; as referee I could still maintain fairness, erase the cheat’s error, and restore every piece to where the game began.”

Cryptic phrasing, like every oracle through the ages, pointed nowhere clear.

A sharp pain pulsed at Chang Xu’s temple; the sensation of the Sea-God Scepter piercing his chest seemed to spread through his entire body.

He jerked his gaze upward. “Who are you?”

“I am God.”

In that solemn proclamation a golden beam descended; a colossal Idol of marble rose, pale from head to toe, its only color the molten-gold gems of its eyes, blazing with fire.

Stone door and walls cracked into spider webs; from the rubble rose a new structure—an ancient Roman Colosseum. Its stands brimmed with Ghosts, and Chang Xu stood at the center, the black-robed, golden-eyed God before him.

The God’s voice coaxed: “You keep company with devils, yet insist on being human. You are an eerie I cast into the world, a monster destined to be feared and rejected by mankind; born to be a Ghost…”

Chang Xu saw the God’s dazzling golden eyes; within the hollow pupils a giant tree of vines grew, each branch holding a world. In them he saw himself, the children who had chased him, and the Ghosts offering counsel.

All was scarlet and dripping, yet a voice light as a butterfly spoke: “Humans aren’t born to be beasts; live with me as a true human.”

Chang Xu knew deities were the Investigation Bureau’s mortal foes, knew the evil gods of the Eerie Game cast eeriness into reality to corrupt the world; he knew he was different, perhaps not human—but this world was good and should not be destroyed… “I’m human, not a Ghost,” he said, word by word. His soul reconnected to his skill; the Fate Cards condensed in the void.

Surrounded by ravenous Ghosts in the Colosseum, he charged the God; black cards rained down.

The God sighed, its form vanished, light faded into darkness, and cold voices spoke.

“If we raise him well, he’ll be our ace in the hole; if something goes wrong—no trouble, just an orphan…”

“He seems easy to control; the psychologist will step in early, nothing major will happen…”

“The theoretical basis for thought-steeling… Pavlovian experiments…”

A scene slowly wove itself before his eyes, as though a brush were painting the picture from bottom to top.

Silver-white alloy walls, blazing white lights, a room with only a small window… unmistakably the interior of the Eerie Investigation Bureau.

Chang Xu’s pupils contracted.