Chapter 245 – The Undying

After the Primordial God created the gods from his own flesh and blood, he sank into exhausted slumber beneath the World Tree. The newborn gods conspired to devour him, each seizing a fragment of his authority.

The god who commanded time and space wove dreams; the god who governed Contracts spoke lies. Trapped in illusion, the Primordial God shed a final tear of blood, and for seven days and nights crimson rain fell upon the world.

Plague and death ran rampant across the land. Believers, twisted and hideous by mutation, crawled from the piles of corpses, gathering the flesh of the dead in a mad attempt to recast the divine body.

Seven days later he set out for the gods’ dwelling with the materials for the Ritual. There, the pilgrims were told: “All followers of the old gods have fallen.”

Identity Card – Fallen Savior

…Rose Manor.

The ever-unchanging gray-purple sky pressed overhead. Torrential rain slammed into the mud, throwing up wisps of mist. Roses flailed like claws, weaving a vast net across the castle’s stone walls, adorning a solitary grave in full bloom.

Li, clad in black, appeared amid the flowers. The ashen-white curtain of rain veered aside a finger’s breadth from his skin, as though an invisible barrier kept a pocket of dryness around him.

Li walked to the castle gate; the heavy doors slowly opened, revealing an interior long hollowed out by vines.

The long table, candelabra, and mechanical clock had vanished. Everywhere the eye could see, dark-green vines—like chains—stretched from every direction to bind a crimson figure suspended in the center.

“Qi, I’ve reclaimed the Primordial God’s final remnant and, by the way, dealt with that blindly loyal Sea-God,” Li said to the man amid the vines.

Qi lowered his gaze, studied the visitor for two seconds, and sighed. “You’re no longer a child. There’s no need to report everything to me and ask my opinion, is there?”

Li continued as if unheard: “The rules allow me to kill Him, yet forbid me to seize His authority; the rules store what remains of Him in the ‘Tower,’ yet let me scatter His authority. I don’t understand.”

Qi smiled. “You understand—you just refuse to believe. Since the rules can pluck us from nothingness, they can just as easily restore the old pantheon.

“I told you long ago: to Him we’re nothing more than emergency rations that can hunt for themselves, gourmet ingredients with good flavor—you should’ve made plans early.”

“I still don’t understand. The Primordial God has been dead for eons.”

“See? After all these years you still have no sense of crisis. The apocalypse of the first pantheon was the revelation of the second; the Primordial God who survived both can naturally be reborn in the third. Nothing hard to grasp.”

The clamor of rain seeped in; a few scattered droplets slipped through cracked walls and dripped onto the castle floor, darkening small patches of stone.

Vines hanging from above swayed in wind and rain, rustling softly.

After a long silence Li changed the subject: “I can feel it—you’re truly about to die.”

Qi’s smile never wavered. “He won’t die.”

…【You Have Died】

Four blood-red characters slammed into his vision, savage and scrawled like veins torn from his own body.

Qi Si floated in lightless nothingness, directionless, limbless, as though drifting through the cosmos away from any planet.

It took him a long time to fish his mind from that blank tide, to recall the memories and existence of “Qi Si,” as if he had genuinely died once and, by coincidence, unlocked the mystery of rebirth.

He stared at the words and clicked his tongue. “If I remember right, ‘mutating into a Ghost’ isn’t the same as dying?”

The original letters rippled away; new crimson text bled across the void like pigment on soaked paper.

【Your soul was meant to be trapped forever within the game, but now you have been given a chance at new life.】

【Would you like to re-enter the game as a ‘Ghost’?】

Qi Si asked, “What’s the difference between a ‘Ghost’ identity and a ‘Human’ one?”

【After becoming a Ghost you will no longer be summoned into new dungeons; active instance matching will yield no points.】

【You will be unable to start livestreams or upload clear footage; none of your records will appear in Ruins of the Sunset rankings.】

【You will walk World No. 47 as a source of eerie contamination, spreading pollution from the uncanny wherever you go.】

Qi Si fell silent.

Not because the cost was unacceptable, but because… the terms were too generous.

He had heard bits of these three changes from Zhang Yiyu; he’d thought they’d need case-by-case analysis, yet the contradictions proved universal.

‘No more summons’ is an outright boon for anyone desperate to leave the game—freedom from its death sentence.

Even for Qi Si, ‘no point rewards’ was only a minor inconvenience.

With Soul Contract, Sea-God Scepter, and Crimson High Priest he could control other players and siphon their points for his own accumulation.

The second penalty meant nothing; Qi Si had no interest in livestreams, nor in exposing his trump cards through public footage.

Having his records erased from the rankings was exactly what he wanted.

Just as he’d begun to worry someone might trace him through those records, the Eerie Game declared they’d no longer be linked to him—an answered prayer.

As for the third… using eerie forces to invade reality was something he’d long been doing with considerable success.

The only real risk after becoming a Ghost was getting caught by the Investigation Bureau, as the unlucky Zhang Yiyu had.

But everyone knew Qi Si, wielder of the insomnia syndrome pathogen, could plunge the world into a deterrence era at any moment… “Feels like a trap. Since when is the Eerie Game so generous?”

Qi Si narrowed his eyes and reached out, grasping a tattered page that floated before him.

Ghost: The Undying

Description: A corpse cursed by the Primordial God’s blood, it bleeds continuously when wounded, cannot heal, yet cannot die. Mobility does not decrease with injury, but once all blood is lost it falls into eternal slumber.

At a thought the page dissolved into flecks of light and melted into his body.

At the same time, in the upper left of his vision, the pale-gray system interface reappeared—its layout rebooted—and a tiny line appeared at the edge—

Status: The Undying (Ghost)

A burst of festive fireworks crackled, then a cold voice intoned beside his ear:

Congratulations on returning to the Eerie Game.

The crimson letters faded, washed by invisible ripples into uniform silver.

Frog Hospital – Evaluation Rank S, 5,000 points awarded.

Frog Hospital – True End route cleared, 5,000 points awarded.

Frog Hospital – Dual world-lines unlocked, 5,000 points awarded.

Worldview crack rate 100%, 5,000 points awarded.

Medium-difficulty side quests completed x2, 10,000 points awarded.

Qi Si found himself back in the temple, lounging comfortably in a high-backed chair as the base-reward tally refreshed.

The two medium side quests he’d cleared were “cure your own illness” for Blue Frog Hospital and “make Blue Frog Hospital patients swallow a thousand tadpoles” for Green Frog Hospital.

He had personally overseen Lu Zimo’s forced tadpole feast; taking credit was only fair.

While waiting for the tally Qi Si studied his reflection in a full-length mirror.

Crimson swirled through both eyes, dyeing them completely; his hair looked ink-black, his face ghost-pale.

The pristine shirt he’d worn into the instance was now spattered with red. A crimson mist from his Identity Card draped like a sash over his shoulder.

The vivid hue came not from blood but from role effects; beneath the cloth, the bleeding cuts and scorched heart had faded to smooth pallor.

The Undying hovered in his vision, yet the core rule “injuries suffered in a instance do not carry out of the game” clearly overrode a Ghost’s own traits.

That was truly good news.

【Achievement Unlocked: “God-Profaner” (In truth, desecrate a god-tier NPC’s Ritual and become the object of its hatred). Reward: 1,000 points.】

Looking at the blood-drop-shaped icon, Qi Si raised a hand to his icy cheek. “There’s actually an achievement called God-Profaner? Does the game want players to treat every being equally and punch them all?”

“Looks like the gods aren’t very united; they won’t even pretend to share each other’s sorrows.”

Qi Si had already glimpsed the friction among gods from the contest between Qi and Li, but he hadn’t expected the Eerie Game to encourage downtrodden players to strike at those lofty deities.

This went far beyond internal strife—it was madness that spared no one, leaving a seed of rebellion that could topple their rule, digging their own grave.

It felt more like… a deliberate attempt to guide players into eroding divine authority.

【Achievement Unlocked: “Seven Deadly Sins” (commit major malicious acts against other players in seven dungeons). Reward: 1,000 points.】

【Achievement Unlocked: “Two-Face” (switch factions twice in a short time and make a major impact each time). Reward: 1,000 points.】

【Total rewards: 33,000 points, deposited into your account.】

The point bonuses ended there; the remaining two achievements were easy to grasp—business as usual, urging players to turn their blades on companions with no moral floor.

After leaving the instance, the skill Soul Contract lifted its seal and became usable; the remarks column now read:

【Usable three times per instance; exceeding the limit will erase the player instantly.】

Some loopholes work only once; Qi Si knew he could no longer abuse skills as he used to.

The consequence of turning into a Ghost had been more noise than substance, yet it still rang an alarm: future instances would shift in countless ways, and burning trump cards too early would only leave him passive.

In the later stages of Frog Hospital, when Soul Contract was briefly sealed, Qi Si felt every Soul Leaf lose contact with him.

Had he not planted enough psychological cues and deterrence in those pawns early on, some might have seized the chance to stir trouble.

Later he would control even more Soul Leaves, so a seal on the skill would hit harder; some reckless rookie might stumble onto a flaw.

“Relations held by Contract aren’t absolutely solid; you still need coercion and profit… troublesome.”

Qi Si sighed theatrically, knowing certain questions had remained unanswered for millennia and couldn’t be solved overnight.

He slouched bonelessly in the high-back chair, elbows on the armrests, one finger tapping his chin.

Above, a vault painted with crimson eyes stretched in restless frescoes; golden vines drifted half-lit beside him, while dust surged through the vast temple, swirling into shifting shapes.

In the hush, no new words scrolled across the system interface.

Qi Si straightened. “Where’s the perfect-clear reward item?”

Overhead, scarlet slowly pulsed; in the upper right of his vision the Crimson High Priest raised a crucifix.

Amid rolling gray mist, the interface froze two seconds before lines reluctantly popped up.

【Congratulations! In instance Frog Hospital you have obtained the portable item Directors Special Pass; it has been placed in your inventory.】

【Name: Directors Special Pass】

【Remarks: The handwriting looks odd, but the staff never mind. You may enter or leave Frog Hospital at any time.】

In the lower inventory grid a sheet filled with black letters appeared in the last slot; after two seconds it showed the item’s info.

Qi Si understood: the Eerie Game knew he had reaped huge benefits inside Frog Hospital and wasn’t going to hand out another reward item.

The Eerie Game was as stingy as ever, though the pass really was worth a fair bit.

An item that lets you enter and exit a instance freely is rare; on the market it would make most players drool.

Many timid players prefer earning points through investments and spending them to choose easier or familiar instances to muddle through the mandatory weekly call-up.

The pass skips the matching step, letting you enter a specific instance free of charge and avoid the weekly conscription—who wouldn’t envy that?

But for Qi Si now, its effect overlapped with his Ghost trait, so its value wasn’t as high as imagined.

Besides, he already controlled Frog Hospital in truth through the Sea-God Scepter; the pass was irrelevant.

Listing it in the mall for a million points to solve his medical bills once and for all was unrealistic.

Players trying to dodge instances couldn’t pay such a sum at once, and those rich enough… would want it for other schemes—Qi Si had no intention of letting them succeed.

“This counts as a reward item? Pretty useless…” He voiced his complaint; unsurprisingly, the Eerie Game gave no reply.

Sweeping his gaze over the jumble of icons in his inventory, he felt he’d forgotten something, as if a habitual action had been yanked out of sequence.

The odd feeling flashed by; he shook his head and took out the Sea-God Scepter, gripping it.

The scepter that once housed a sea-god’s lingering soul, eager to possess him, now lay inert, showing no ripple of power.

Fortunately, its effects were real; sinking his mind inside, he easily sensed its link to a certain place.

Qi Si drew his view closer, and Frog Hospital’s floor plan unfolded in full inside the Hall of Thought.

Including the shrunken corridor barely fifty meters long, the tomb-like rows of rooms, the green pond outside the iron gate, and… Cheng An pinned to the wall by two scalpels.

In role-play instances, after players leave, the original bodies they inhabited keep living inside the instance world, following their original routines.

Right now, the blood-soaked Cheng An struggled to lift his left arm, trying to pull out the scalpel nailed through his right hand.

Qi Si kindly borrowed the Sea-God Scepter’s power, sending a wave that swept the man into the pond and gave him release.

He then called seawater and rain to wash the gory floor clean before setting down the scepter and counting this instance’s unexpected gains.

First, the Book of the Dead from the Huang siblings—its effects overlapped with his Ghost trait, so it wouldn’t help much in the short term.

But the 【Damaged】 tag beside its name reminded him of the Pocket Watch of Fate.

Maybe, like the Pocket Watch of Fate, it could evolve?

Promising, very promising.

Next, the Team Ring—also from the Huang siblings. Qi Si slid the blood-red ring straight onto his right middle finger.

His recent instance experiences and the Puppeteer’s intel had shown him the value of a reliable pawn; recycling beat scrounging on the spot.

During the three minutes after clear, he gave Lin Chen his contact info, certain the man would soon come running to be used.

Finally, the odds and ends left by the Huang siblings: a flashlight, a lighter, and a compass.

Qi Si accepted them all.

He glanced at the balance showing 134,000 points and curved his lips. “Only sixteen thousand to go before I can buy that item…”