Infinite Weird Game

"Let me tell you, our Shuangxi Town is a big town in the world..."

A long and narrow raft floated on a narrow river, with towering and steep cliffs standing on both sides, blocking out the sunlight.

The skinny boatman, wearing a straw raincoat and a bamboo hat, stood at the bow in the cold, rowing with a wooden oar.

As he rowed, he chatted: "Let me tell you again, our Feng Shui is extremely good. We rely on water to gather wealth, and our wealth is not exposed..."

Chen Hao squatted near the boatman, listening intently to the NPC's chatter, knowing that the clues were probably hidden in these inconspicuous words.

He was 25 years old and was a horror game planner in real life. Perhaps because he often did nothing and was cursed too many times by players, he stayed up late to work overtime one day and died suddenly before he could even catch his breath.

Before he could react, a strange game invitation popped up, telling him that he could either become a player and enter the horrific copy, or die for real.

——Of course he chose the former.

Because of his work, Chen Hao has a good acceptance of various horror plots and is familiar with many puzzle-solving routines. He is very comfortable in dungeons and has easily passed the novice pool. He even has spare time to collect materials and add them to his own game to scare players.

He thought that he was one of the people who were more adaptable to weird games. Facts proved that this was not an exaggeration. After completing only four copies, he ranked 91st on the newcomer list. It seemed that as long as he didn't die, he would definitely achieve something in the future.

Unexpectedly, before he could stay on the list for long, the list was shattered into pieces, and the reorganized stone tablet showed no such person, and only displayed the holders of twenty-two identity cards.

Chen Hao is not very vain and has no interest in being in the spotlight. Although he is curious about the identity card and the final copy, he has just entered the game not long ago and has never joined a guild. Therefore, he is like a newborn calf who is not afraid of a tiger and is not as nervous as other players.

What's more, objective facts are not subject to personal will. Since it is an inevitable disaster, why not complete a few more copies and accumulate some trump cards before the situation becomes more serious?

With this idea in mind, Chen Hao quickly matched a new copy without waiting for the seven-day countdown to end. He also planned to play a few more copies if things went well and his energy permitted.

[Instance name: "Shuangxi Town"]

[Copy Type: Team Survival]

[Main Mission: Find Xu Wen and take her away]

[Preliminary reminder: The living may not necessarily live, and the dead may not necessarily die]

The silver-white text information was refreshed, and Chen Hao knew that this was a rescue copy, which was exactly the type he was good at.

He picked up the name tag hanging on his chest and took a look. He saw the words "Folklore Investigator" written on the front, and a stack of photos on the back, with a group photo on the top.

A young girl in her early twenties was holding his arm, smiling brightly. She looked pretty. She must be the rescue target, "Xu Wen".

"Let's get to know each other. Rescue-type dungeon missions are generally more complicated, so we should try to divide the work in advance." Chen Hao put away the photo and looked back at the four players behind him. "My name is Chen Hao. Including the novice pool, this is my fifth dungeon. I'm ranked 91st on the rookie list."

The yellow-haired young man closest to him rubbed his hands and said, "Brother, you are awesome. I was wondering who is so awesome that he was on the list right after becoming an official player. My name is Liu Jun, and this is my fifth time..."

The self-introduction went on like this. The tall woman sitting at the stern was wearing a black tights and looked aloof. She said indifferently at the end: "Li Yao, the fifth time. I mainly write supernatural novels and know more about folk customs."

The few people had just arrived and met by chance. After introducing themselves, they had nothing more to say. The atmosphere on the raft was silent for a while. The boatman talked to himself for a while and then fell silent.

"Wow... Wow..."

The sound of the wooden oars stirring the water flowed gently and shallowly, and the mountain walls on both sides retreated, leaving behind a wide, mirror-like lake.

A small town with white walls and black tiles emerged from the mist, with bright red ribbons hanging down and big red "囍" characters pasted on every corner. The ground was covered with red crumbs like petals, which reflected the entire sky red from far and near.

No, the sky is red.

The scarlet light painted the entire dome and then fell from the sky, covering every brick and tile of the town. The fluttering blood light danced into red snakes around the beam of light that fell on the west of the town, reminiscent of the bloody sacrifices held by the ancient tribes to welcome the arrival of the gods.

Vines that look exactly like the branches of the World Tree grow wildly between heaven and earth, and their twisted veins weave into a dense spider web, just like the cracks on weathered rocks.

Unreadable symbols flew before my eyes, incomprehensible whispers rose and fell beside my ears, exploding into the sound of a surging tide...

[Warning! God-level NPC (data deleted) appears, the direction of the copy has changed unknownly... Data error...]

[The authority of the God-level NPC is second only to the world rules. They can appear in multiple copies at the same time and share memories. Please be careful and make careful choices! ]

Bloody error messages filled the field of vision, mixed with the shouts of players.

"What the hell is going on? This is only my sixth dungeon, how come a god-level NPC appears?"

"I'm a designated copy. I checked the process before coming in. It's obviously not supposed to develop like this..."

"What should we do? We won't die here, right? I don't want to die..."

The golden-red vines grew denser and denser, as if they were the loud cries of ghosts in an ancient ballad from the ancient times, gradually drowning out all the voices of panic, confusion, and fear, becoming all that could be heard and felt.

Chen Hao stared at the strange scene in front of him and in the distance, and saw the golden river connected from beginning to end twisted into a long snake. He realized that this might not be the mechanism of the "Shuangxi Town" copy itself, and might be related to the final copy.

He began to regret why he had nothing better to do than to enter the dungeon without waiting for the countdown to end.

If I had been a little later, even just a little bit, I could have avoided this unfortunate situation...

But soon, he even lost the ability to think, like an animal captured and tamed by higher beings, following his instincts to be fearful, obedient, and crawl.

He heard the condescending verdict -

[The most cruel and terrifying evil god in the world has come here, and will eventually bring destruction, death and disaster. ]

[If you pray and cry, He will not have mercy; if you do nothing, you will die miserably.]

[Main quest has been changed] [Main quest: Kill the evil god]

……

When Qis came back from the Ruins of Sunset, he saw his mutilated body in the bronze mirror of the temple. The entire left hand and the little finger of his right hand had disappeared, and only the shadow of a skeleton flashed from time to time, which was probably what was meant by "incompleteness".

It is still unknown where his left hand is now, but he clearly remembers that Qi once gave him his little finger as a prop. He left his little finger there once when he escaped in the "Shuangxi Town" copy.

Now that he possessed the status and authority of God, he could freely travel between most copies. It would not be difficult for him to go to Shuangxi Town and retrieve his finger bones.

Qis held the scepter of Poseidon and walked under the well in Shuangxi Town, where the Temple of the God of Funeral was located. Layers of water vapor surrounded him, but did not dare to touch his body. They spontaneously gathered one step away from him, forming a vacuum zone.

Gray figures shuttled through the fog, white paper coins fluttered in the air, and some people were crying and singing shrill tunes at the top of their lungs.

An old man in a green gown stumbled out of the fog and murmured, "Young man, have you seen a girl?"

Everything was no different from the previous Shuangxi Town. Although Xu Yao turned into the statue of the God of Joy and left the copy, all other NPCs remained intact. It was just a replacement of a group of players, repeating the same scenario.

The strange game was built by the gods, and the copies were fragments intercepted by the gods in the long time and space. Even though his impression was vague, Qis still knew that the "Shuangxi Town" copy was his own work, or in other words - half of the existing copies were inseparable from him.

The process of concocting the copy is interesting, but replaying it over and over again is boring. As a god, he wrote the copy, and as a player, he experienced the copy. Now that the two parts of memory have merged, the old man recited the lines for the third time without changing a word, and Qis no longer had any interest in paying attention to him.

Scarlet leaves spread in all directions from under his feet, and infiltrated every corner of the copy in just a few seconds. The old man's body was shattered into powder, scattered on the ground as pale as ashes.

All the noises stopped abruptly as if being strangled. The fog that filled the air seemed to sense the danger and swept away all the ghosts, leaving only an empty town in black and white.

His five senses suddenly became much clearer. Qis half-closed his eyes and continued moving forward, passing through the densely packed houses and stopping in front of the Temple of the God of Funeral with white paper lanterns hanging on it.

The Li who was once enshrined here has been excluded by him, leaving only an empty shell of a stone and clay statue, which will no longer be able to exert influence on the weird game for a while.

The rules have long lost their rationality and turned into stupid robots running according to established procedures. As long as you don't do anything too extreme, you will not provoke His response and sanctions.

Qi Si vaguely recalled that when he was still an ignorant human player, he had made a contract in the "Shuangxi Town" copy to "not be affected by the gods", which attracted the attention of the rules and achieved the effect of "forbidden by the gods".

But now he came here easily as a god, without feeling any restrictions or constraints. It can be imagined that the power of rules has declined and the control over the world has loosened.

Qi Si stepped over the threshold and walked straight into the depths of the temple.

In front of the shrine with an incense table, Xu Wen, whose face was as pale as a ghost, was kneeling down and worshiping. When he saw him, he was stunned, as if he saw a dead ghost crawling out from the bottom of a well when he was drawing water. His body was as stiff as a sculpture.

Qi Si ignored it and walked leisurely towards a row of coffins parked in the corner.

There were six coffins in total, five of which were carved with traditional lotus and gold coin patterns, and only one had golden vine patterns painted on its surface. These were the dark patterns commonly seen on narrative murals in temples, as well as the text used for communication between gods, and also... a kind of curse.

All the meanings and curses, when translated into the language commonly used by humans, are actually just one word - [ban].

This was the coffin that Li had used to restrain him as a player and attempt to usurp the authority of the contract. Thinking about it now, Li's behavior at the time was really unwise, and it was more out of the instinct to gather power before doomsday.

In the past and in the future, he never believed in any existence other than himself, and naturally he had never told other gods about his plan to fight against the rules. Li didn't know the relationship between him, "Qi" and "Qisi", so he dared to reach out to the gambling table.

The scene at that time was as faint as smoke under the wash of millions of years of memory, and now it failed to stir up the slightest ripple in my heart.

Qis' lips trembled, and he whispered the spell engraved on the coffin. The shadow of the vine stretched out in the void, slowly lifting the black coffin lid.

There was nothing inside, no corpse, no finger bones, nothing left, not even a trace of existence.

Zeiss narrowed his eyes.

He suddenly realized that even if the rules fell into madness, the iron laws that had been established would not disappear silently.

In the "Shuangxi Town" copy he had entered before, the rule of "Gods Forbidden to Enter" had become an established fact. How could he not be subject to any restrictions when he set foot there again?

Unless... the Shuangxi Town where he is now and the Shuangxi Town at that time are in different time and space.

Qi Si turned his head to look at Xu Wen beside him, with a friendly smile on his face, which is common when gods deceive believers: "I know you are suffering because you are trapped in Shuangxi Town, and you want to end this endless reincarnation. I just lost something I care about. If you can provide useful clues, I may be able to fulfill your wish."

The result was no surprise. The moment Xu Wen gave an affirmative answer, Qi Si gained all her memories and saw everything that had happened in the Temple of the Dead God in the past month.

After he was locked in the coffin, the lid was never opened again. Players one after another entered the copy and basically stayed in the Wellhead world to eat and wait for death, so naturally they had no way of finding the whereabouts of the finger bones.

Things are becoming troublesome. Perhaps the only way to go back in time and space is to return to Shuangxi Town at that time and place and retrieve the finger bone.

It would be a bit boring to go through so much trouble just to open a temple that has been abandoned for many years.

Qi Si left the Funeral Temple with little interest, threw Xu Wen, who had followed him out subconsciously and wanted to ask more questions, into the coffin, and closed the coffin lid.

The bloody tentacles that took root in the dungeon world brought him the news snatched from the players: the rules finally responded mechanically to his illegal invasion and issued a task to kill him to the players in the dungeon.

——This is undoubtedly an impossible and unfair task, but it is wrongly proposed by the rules, just like a shocking bug before a machine crashes.

Qi Si raised his eyes slightly, looked at the five men and women who were surrounding the wellhead like zombies in the world above the well, and suddenly laughed.

Trying to kill the evil god with a human body? It's courageous and interesting.

It’s more interesting when the people who make the rules no longer follow them.

Unfortunately, although the rules of the weird game are supreme, they were indeed created by the gods.

At least in the "Double Happiness Town" instance, Qi Si is confident of winning a game under the rules. (End of this chapter)