Wanli Fengdao concealed his form. As his Spirit Power Value rapidly depleted, his figure seemed to merge with the brown bark, becoming indistinguishable in the pitch-black, rain-lashed night.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.

Wanli Fengdao's heart beat violently. He held his breath and watched as, not far ahead, a dark silhouette slowly straightened, faced the sky, and lightly sniffed the air.

With the occasional flash of lightning, the shadow's true appearance flickered momentarily.

It was an emaciated humanoid figure with unkempt, disheveled grey-white hair. It wore a layer of black rags so tattered that its original form was unrecognizable. Its pallid skin hung down limply, having lost all elasticity, like the slack skin after excessive weight loss—eerie and terrifying to behold.

Around the creature's waist was a long iron chain. The chain was as thick as an arm and extremely heavy, contrasting starkly with the skeletal humanoid creature. Wrapped twice around its waist, the chain branched into eighteen thinner strands. These thinner chains dragged on the ground, their other ends still lying in the stream.

Thunder roared, and lightning flashed briefly. One could faintly make out that something large and heavy was attached to the ends of the eighteen thin chains.

Those were human bodies.

There were men and women, old people and babies, skeletal remains, and fresh corpses soaked by the rain, swollen and pallid. All faced upwards, staring at the stormy night sky with hollow eye sockets.

At the ends of the eighteen chains were sixteen human bodies.

Xing Hechou was tied to the sixteenth chain.

This towering man, his eyes tightly shut, lay in the torrential stream, blood oozing continuously from his scar-covered body. His life hung in the balance.

"Where... are the people?"

The humanoid creature tilted its head back, gently sniffing the air, murmuring, "The scent of the living... Why has it disappeared? There are clearly only two left."

It seemed to be venting as it waved its thin arms violently, slamming one onto a nearby tree trunk. The tree, so thick it would take four men to encircle it, snapped in two under the blow, flying sideways and crashing into the woods, scattering countless raindrops.

Wanli Fengdao pressed his back tightly against another trunk, daring not to move even as wood chips from the breaking tree scraped across his face. He gripped the hilt of his sword tightly, his fingers pale from the excessive force, yet no matter how he tried, he couldn't draw the blade from its sheath.

This monster... it's too strong. Its presence alone fills me with terror, making my muscles quiver uncontrollably. Should I leave this place? With just a thought, I could teleport out of this bizarre and outrageous Shengnan King's Dream and return to the real world. Safe, stable. No one would know what happened here; no one would know that I had abandoned my companions. I could continue being a bounty hunter, using the Special Affairs Bureau-issued non-staff employee identity, respected and sought after wherever I went. The identity of a player is a gift from the heavens.

「...」

Before becoming a player, Wanli Fengdao had an ordinary name: Zhang Wei.

He lived in a city but did not belong to it. His childhood memories were of a small town, the countryside, the urban-rural fringe: cracked dry earth, filthy streams, dilapidated factories, the stench of poultry, dust from straw drifting over wheat fields, and thick smoke rising from factory chimneys.

His father was a farmer, inarticulate and poor at expressing himself. The image Wanli Fengdao retained of him was always under dim lights, drinking cheap beer, his face flushed.

His mother was also a farmer—kind yet timid, gentle and enduring. After the family finished dinner and her husband silently drank, she would always knit sweaters and repeat to her son the same principle she had voiced countless times: "Study hard. Only with diligent study can you leave this place."

At that time, he didn't understand. He liked the fireflies dancing in the mountains and forests, liked feeding firewood into the stove and watching the flames rise, liked chasing chickens and dogs, and playing with his peers. He even liked the always-malfunctioning TV and his cousin's second-hand game console.

He didn't understand why his parents worked so hard, hoping he could change the fate of his ancestors and escape the vast expanse of yellow earth and mountains.

It wasn't until he went to high school, left the countryside, and entered the city—that fortress of reinforced concrete. It was then, for the first time, that he discovered how dazzling and bustling the world was. He realized his future was not confined to the single path of endless, repetitive labor, like that of his forefathers.

However, mediocrity, ordinariness, and commonness, like the force of gravity, clamped tightly onto his ankles, pulling him to the ground.

After graduating from vocational college, unwilling to return to the mountains and live that numb life whose end seemed visible from the start, he chose to stay in the city.

He became a city Builder—or, to be more precise, a construction worker.

This job was no different from the farming his parents did: numb, Mechanical, repetitive, day after day. He was like a decaying, rusting machine, consuming fuel and moving forward silently, without any glory.

High up on the crane, safely tethered, he saw the city's prosperity. He was even a creator of this prosperity. Unfortunately, that prosperity had nothing to do with him; he was just a tool.

But even as a tool, he still wanted to stay in this cold, unfamiliar Steel Jungle, enjoying the internet, games, movies, mobile phones, and the nightlife—everything he couldn't have in the numbing countryside.

He could even read a couple of books in his spare time. Gaining knowledge was painful, not because the books were abstruse, but because, while reading, he always gradually came to understand something. He came to understand certain cold, hard truths, as unyielding as steel and ice.

This world had destiny and insurmountable class barriers that no human effort could overcome. He served as fuelwood for the city's prosperity, but fuelwood, once consumed by fire, is eventually discarded, just like the degenerating rural homes of his forebears.

I don't belong here.

In the grand scheme of things, his insights and his pain were worthless, ignored by all. The nameless buried in mines, workers whose fingers were mangled by machinery, old, numb farmers clutching worn-out banknotes at the bank to send money home, the sick elderly in the countryside, bedridden, unable to work and with no means of support... This was the destiny of his kind.

Until he was chosen by the game of slaughter and elevated to a player.

CLANG—

The chains jangled against each other, scraping against the fallen leaves.

The pallid humanoid monster, muttering something, walked forward, dragging fifteen bodies from the riverbed, along with Xing Hechou, whose fate was unknown. It slowly pulled them past Wanli Fengdao.

The heavens chose me.

Wanli Fengdao clenched the hilt of his sword, his body tensing slowly.

I refuse to accept this predestined mediocrity...

The ordinary man named Zhang Wei exhaled a cloud of breath, clearly visible in the cold forest air.

I want to change the world...

"Hm?"

The pallid creature with chains around its waist seemed to sense something. It turned, looking towards a dark area in the forest.

I want to be a Hero.

Wanli Fengdao's face contorted with ferocity as he drew his sword from its sheath. Beneath the vast flashes of lightning, its frosty edge glinted dimly with a cold light.

A three-foot sword, clear as autumn water—meant to slay fiends and demons!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.