Chapter 386 – The Grand Finale (April Fool’s Special)

The shutdown of the Eerie Game felt like a grotesque dream; even the most theory-savvy players couldn’t piece together the full cause and effect of the whole affair.

The final dungeon played out in reality in a bizarre, terrifying way, then vanished overnight without a trace. Years later, players looking back dismissed it as a bout of mass hysteria.

The only certainty was that Fu Jue had struck a rule-shaking bargain with a god.

As for the details, Fu Jue—one of the parties involved—has kept silent. That same day he submitted his resignation to the top brass of the Eerie Investigation Bureau, stepping down from every post in both the Federation and the Jiuzhou Guild.

The other party, a certain deity… well, no one dared ask.

Still, the outcome was good; there’s no need to understand everything in life… Jiang City, an apartment in the Riverside Estate.

Si Qi lay in bed playing happy match while Li sat at the desk nibbling Snake—peaceful, harmonious, a scene worthy of celebration.

Ever since the Eerie Game shut down for good and its dying rules collapsed entirely, the two gods had been thoroughly homeless, left to wander reality with nothing to do.

Si Qi’s social skills were hardly stellar—half his twenty-two years spent harming others and himself, the other half holed up at home—but compared with Li, who couldn’t even scan a QR code to pay, he was a saint.

Out of the camaraderie of growing up beneath the World Tree as each other’s emergency rations, Si Qi kindly took his colleague in, dug out an old phone that could still get online, and tossed it over—problem solved.

Of course, Xu Yao wasn’t happy that Li only ever played Snake.

Recently she’d dragged Lu Li into team games, only to be driven to tears by the tactician whose hands could barely keep up with his brain. Spotting a potential recruit in this god, she found she couldn’t pull him into any decent game—tragic.

“So, Old Qi, what actually happened that day? Come on, we’ve shared the same pair of pants for six years—spill it.” Jin Yusheng sat on the floor hugging his laptop, fingers flying across the keyboard.

After that large-scale incursion right before the final dungeon, the existence of the Eerie Game was no longer secret—at least not to the citizens of Jiang City who’d come face-to-face with the eerie.

Jin Yusheng was one of those unlucky souls, chased from east Jiang to west by a monster covered in roses. After an epic marathon of survival, half-dead, he found Si Qi and stopped his own stroboscopic flirtation with the King of Hell.

Upon discovering Si Qi was the culprit behind the incursion, this thick-skinned guy got past the initial “WTF” and promptly posted on a high-traffic forum: #My Indescribable Tales with My Evil-God Buddy#.

After repeated bans he held out until the Federation declassified the information, then quickly snagged an editor from a web-novel site and began writing a book that was ninety-percent fabrication and ten-percent hearsay.

“Old Qi, leak something, will ya? The Feds have declassified—if you don’t, are we even friends…” Jin Yusheng kept wheedling, mouth and fingers both nonstop, hammering out another chapter and hitting publish.

When Si Qi saw the notification “Your followed novel ‘Infinite Eerie Game’ has updated” pop up on his phone, he sighed. “You really want to know?”

Jin Yusheng turned solemn. “Yeah, Dad, details please!”

“Mm, what happened that day—take a wild guess.”

“Damn it!”

Ding-dong—the doorbell rang, and a paper maidservant tottered over to open the door.

Lin Chen stood outside laden with bags. Seeing the paper woman with her powdered-white face and painted red cheeks, he froze for a second, then walked in as if nothing were odd and began setting dish after dish on the dining table.

“Brother Qi, Jiang City’s been under lockdown these days; my leave request only got approved today. I was worried about you, so I came to check.” Lin Chen spoke a little nervously, clearly not expecting a full house.

After the Eerie Game closed, there was no longer a guild-leader Lin Crow of the Unnamed Guild; stripped of every title, he was just an ordinary college student—or so he told himself.

Even discounting their in-game identities, the people in this apartment could only be described as ‘a motley crew from every walk of life.’ Any university kid would tense up walking into this scene, right?

Luckily, no one cared about Lin Chen’s inner monologue. Xu Yao, seeing the array of dishes, was so moved she almost cried: “Great, no more instant noodles for me!”

Yes, since returning to Riverside Estate they’d eaten instant noodles for an entire week. Back in Qijia Village they could scrounge rice, flour, and veggies from fields and villagers’ homes, but here in Jiang City you had to buy everything.

Not a single human-shaped god, ghost, or monster in the apartment wanted to go downstairs to shop, and the paper maid was too scary to send out. Thus their stock of noodles had been decaying exponentially, making another online grocery order urgent.

Lin Chen’s arrival was a godsend. Si Qi, who had spent the day in bed, yawned and crawled out; Li finally set down his phone and walked out of his room, face blank.

Though he’d heard the stories, Lin Chen still stiffened the moment he saw that familiar face. Why insist on keeping that appearance? Running into it at night felt like watching a corpse jump scare!

Li noticed Lin Chen’s reaction and asked earnestly, “What’s wrong? Do you know me?” He was generally friendly toward Si Qi’s human pals.

Lin Chen forced a laugh. “Nah, haha, my mistake.”

Lu Li emerged from another room, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses: “Classic PTSD—palpitations, sweating, headache, full-body discomfort…”

Jin Yusheng rubbed his brow. “Bro, I suggest you shut up right now before Old Qi uses you for target practice, and… I vote we eat first.”

No reminder was needed: Xu Yao had already grabbed a wrapper and started rolling roast duck, slathering chili sauce onto the crispy skin.

Watching the girl wolf down food without a care, Lin Chen relaxed a bit, took a wrapper, and began… rolling roast duck for Qi Si.

The Eerie Game indeed felt like a dream. Now the dream has ended, leaving no trace to pursue.

But at least the people once met and the things once experienced were real, still vivid as fire, bright as paint… All right, let’s skip the next five hundred words of fluff and return to the original question: what exactly was the deal between Fu Jue and Si Qi?

The author admits she doesn’t know either—hasn’t made it up yet~

Happy April Fool’s Day! Hehehe~ Pop-quiz, no prize: in the true finale, how many people in this chapter survive? A) 0; B) 1; C) 2; D) 3