Why is my journey to the world of anime a strange tale of rules?

Bang!

With a heavy thud, just like Wesker in Resident Evil 4 Mercenaries mode, Gao Hai slapped forward with his palm, sending several villagers flying into the air and crashing into each other, rolling on the ground and howling in pain.

whoosh-

A villager yelled and charged at Gao Hai with a pitchfork, but Gao Hai easily dodged it. With a whoosh of wind, Gao Hai slammed his shoulder into the villager, knocking him to the ground, where the villager lay sprained and howling in pain.

Boom!

Amidst the howling wind, a villager threw a kitchen knife at Gao Hai, only to have it easily deflected. Then another villager charged at him with a machete, only to be kicked to the ground by Gao Hai, followed by a high kick that knocked him unconscious with a thud.

"A demon? A monster? Is this person a demon?"

"How can he be so good at fighting? Is he even human?"

"Don't run, let's attack together! He can't take us all down!"

In just a casual exchange, some villagers realized the difference in physical strength between Gao Hai and them and began to back down. But many more villagers seemed to have their fighting spirit ignited, and they charged forward even more excitedly. In an instant, Gao Hai was completely surrounded by villagers, with blades and axes raining down on him. Not only that, several villagers circled around to Gao Hai's rear, raising sharp pitchforks and thrusting them at his waist, effectively sealing him off from all sides.

Are you planning to take advantage of numbers? If I were someone who had just cleared the first dungeon, I might actually die from this move.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap—

But before these sharp blades and forks could get close, the sound of bones cracking and Gao Hai's light footsteps could be heard first.

"Uh ah ah!"

Amidst cries of pain, all the villagers who had gathered around were trampled under Gao Hai's feet, their soles crushed and their entire feet turned into a bloody pulp.

The pitchforks that came from behind were all kicked off, and the hands of several villagers holding the pitchforks were shattered by the huge recoil, their entire palms turning into a limp mass of flesh.

"Monster—monster—!!!"

This time, the villagers really didn't dare to come forward. They all ran away as fast as they could, and within a few seconds, they were all gone.

Gao Hai simply let out a light breath, inwardly reflecting on the battle, which barely even qualify as a warm-up, and couldn't help but feel a bit bored and uninterested.

If the opponents are just ordinary humans, there's absolutely no chance of having enough fun.

Thinking this, Gao Hai glanced at the direction the villagers were fleeing in, and slightly expanded his auditory blessing. He discovered that it wasn't even the villagers who had besieged him who were running away, but rather the entire village—men, women, and children—who were retreating rapidly. These people skillfully carried away all their belongings, and in less than ten minutes, they had all escaped the village and scattered towards the surrounding woodlands.

They seem quite familiar with this situation, familiar with encountering an opponent they can't afford to offend, and the urge to scatter like birds and beasts to survive. Tsk tsk, how should I put it? Something feels off. Just what kind of extraordinary people are these villagers?

"There's absolutely no trace of any supernatural aura. The damage they sustains after being attacked is within the normal range; they don't have super-fast regeneration or any physical resistance. Hmm... killing them doesn't seem to cause any problems. I've calculated it several times, and no matter how I look at it, these people are just ordinary people. No matter what we do to them, it won't attract the attention of any supernatural beings."

The Taoist priest did not participate in the battle at all; he just frowned and kept calculating something. Even now, after Gao Hai finished fighting, he solemnly said to him.

"Your ability is quite strong. There are absolutely no side effects or limitations to its use? This is the first time I've seen a player use an ability repeatedly and continuously."

Gao Hai looked at the man with some surprise, and after thinking for a moment, asked him out of curiosity.

Gao Hai wasn't particularly surprised by the ability to predict the future; after all, he'd encountered time-related abilities before, and his team already had Yi Li, a teammate capable of subtly altering time. The problem was that such abilities usually consumed a lot of energy or had certain limitations, making them impossible to use without restraint at any time. But this "Taoist" seemed different. He was almost constantly making predictions and divinations, continuously activating his ability. This piqued Gao Hai's curiosity. Where did he get so much energy to continuously expend? Did his blessings and objects of obsession have no limitations on their use?

"...Well, about this question, I received a rather special blessing, and at the same time, I was also blessed by the object of my obsession and influenced by some kind of special curse power, so it is indeed possible to use it continuously. However, for me, this situation is actually a price to pay to some extent."

The Taoist's expression remained unchanged, clearly indicating that this wasn't the first time he had been asked this question, though a complex emotion could still be discerned in his reply.

"I cannot actively stop my ability. Whether I am eating, chatting, working, playing, or even sleeping, I will instinctively keep calculating and predicting. It can be said that this ability is basically out of my control."

At this point, the Taoist priest walked to the main door of the house and tore the wooden door apart with his bare hands. Then, screams of fear came from inside the house from Li Ziyong and the others.

"Because of this ability, I constantly see and sense all sorts of terrible futures. Sometimes I can't even tell whether I'm living in the real world or experiencing some possibility of the future I foresee. Hmm, but I'm pretty used to it now. Wait, don't rush in. If you go in now, the people inside will throw shit out. 3, 2, 1, okay, that's enough."

After the Taoist priest finished speaking to Gao Hai, a dried-up, unclean object was thrown out of the house. If Gao Hai had entered the house earlier, he might not have seen it because of the dim lighting. Of course, given Gao Hai's reaction speed, he could have easily dodged it, though he might have been somewhat disgusted.

The villagers in the courtyard were still wailing. Some of the villagers who could still move were trying to crawl out of the gate, while others could only lie there and struggle for a bit.

Gao Hai took one last look at the location of the Xiaoheishan Mountain God Shrine and found that the building was still there, but it seemed to be just an ancestral hall and was not used for worshipping gods.

What exactly is going on with this village in this space? It's really intriguing.

While pondering, Gao Hai stepped into the house. In the dimly lit hall, he saw Li Ziyong standing trembling with a kitchen knife in his hand, an old man huddled in a corner behind him, and several young men and women who looked quite young.

Speaking of which, this [Li Ziyong] seems to be quite young.

After carefully observing Li Ziyong's appearance, Gao Hai deduced from details such as the wrinkles around his eyes and his demeanor that this person seemed to be younger than the Li Ziyong he had first encountered. Could it be that this space represents a village from a slightly earlier timeline? Considering the villagers' earlier use of the term "Empress," Gao Hai felt it was premature to draw such a conclusion.

"Who are you? Do you want money? We are very poor, we don't have a single penny, we really don't have a single penny."

Upon seeing Gao Hai and the Taoist priest approach, the young Li Ziyong swallowed hard, his body trembling even more violently, but he still gritted his teeth and spoke.

"If I don't have money, then I'll have no choice but to take your lives?"

Upon hearing this, Gao Hai raised an eyebrow, grinned, and spoke.

Li Ziyong's face turned deathly pale in an instant, and he nearly dropped the knife in his hand. Among the men and women behind him, some of the children even burst into tears, their faces filled with utter terror, like innocent victims in a horror movie being attacked by evil spirits and villains.

Hmm, a few teenagers... two boys and three girls. The older boy looks a bit like Li Duosun, but I don't recognize the younger one. The two boys seem terrified and are crying, while the three girls... the three girls are mostly unresponsive. Although they are also scared, their movements and expressions are rather slow. And they are all skin and bones, severely malnourished.

Are you sure that whatever you do to them won't have any ripple effects?

Gao Hai looked at the Taoist priest one last time and asked him earnestly.

"...That's right, no matter what we do to them, it won't have any side effects, not at all."

The Taoist priest closed his eyes, calculated very seriously, and then nodded solemnly to Gao Hai in response.

"it is good."

Gao Hai nodded slightly, then looked at the group of people in front of him.

Now that I've confirmed there are no problems, I'll be a little unreasonable.

Chapter Sixty: The False Puppet That Cycles Here and the Attackers

Gao Hai doesn't actually have any interest in harming or torturing others.

For him, compared to turning people into bizarre R18G figures, he finds it much more enjoyable to be intimate with his girlfriends and wives, go on dates, chat, and talk about love. In a sense, a warm home with his wife and children is Gao Hai's current life pursuit.

However, it must be admitted that after living as a player for the past few months, Gao Hai has actually done quite a few things to torment others. And regardless of the reasons or causes behind these actions, most of the time, he enjoys doing them. For example, tormenting the [writers], or tormenting those things in [Takamagahara], he feels no resistance whatsoever when he personally inflicts cruelty on his enemies, nor does he feel any disgust, nausea, vomiting, or fear.

Is this a kind of mental distortion? Gao Hai didn't know the answer. After all, all the players he had seen so far, including Ichiri and Kita, had this tendency. In the oppressive and struggling dungeons, everyone seemed to have undergone some kind of change and no longer felt any resistance to cruel acts.

As for now, Gao Hai's goal is simple: to figure out what's going on with the strange space this well leads to, to find more clues related to the origin of the instance, and to explore the possibility of breaking the instance—that's all. He doesn't care what happens to this younger version of Li Ziyong, or the old man and the teenager behind him.

"I've never tried this trick before, so I'll have you guys give it a shot."

With a cold voice, Gao Hai slowly took a step forward, and invisible spiritual power coiled around his hands.

Since gaining the ability to directly distort reality with his mental power, Gao Hai hasn't used it much in dungeons. After all, the key to distortion is activating one's own mental power, and direct contact between mental power and strange creatures is inherently dangerous. Unless absolutely necessary, Gao Hai doesn't want to test whether anything might follow his radiating mental power to find him.

But now, I finally have a very suitable target that I can manipulate properly with my mental power.

Which one should we compare first?

Gao Hai, muttering to himself, took a step forward.

"W-What do you want to do!?"

The young Li Ziyong seemed to sense something, roared and rushed forward, but Gao Hai reached out and pressed his head down, slamming it against the wall and creating a shallow dent. He immediately rolled his eyes and fainted.

hum-

An invisible spiritual force, under Gao Hai's control, eroded Li Ziyong's brain.

You can feel your power spreading out little by little, constantly spreading and moving through every corner of your body.

This invisible spiritual force responded to Gao Hai's expectations, gradually transforming Li Ziyong's head, breaking down his mental defenses, dismantling his personality, and reading all the memories he had from birth to the present.

For Li Ziyong himself, this process was nothing short of excruciating. He was awakened almost immediately by the pain, only to fall into a coma again due to unbearable, tearing pain, then wake up, then fall into a coma again, and so on, his mind being constantly worn down and broken in the process.

To feel one's thoughts and personality gradually being destroyed, to feel the excruciating pain of severed and necrotic nerves, as if one's entire body is collapsing—this process must have been incredibly torturous. Judging from the despair on Li Ziyong's face, the torture Gao Hai inflicted on him certainly exceeded his limits.

The old man and the boy behind him were even more terrified, while the girls watched Gao Hai's actions without any reaction, completely paralyzed as if they had lost their souls.

Gao Hai didn't care about the reactions of those people; he simply silently felt the memories that his mental power touched.

It was read.

Indeed, I successfully accessed both the surface and subconscious memories.

But... is this feeling incomplete?

Through reading Li Ziyong's memories, Gao Hai discovered that this man only had about three years' worth of memories, and the rest were pieced together, almost like a form of mental suggestion.

Something's definitely not right.

Gao Hai's brows furrowed deeply.

He was now certain that this [Li Ziyong] possessed absolutely no trace of any supernatural aura; he was truly a living person, one hundred percent. However, this living person's state was far too bizarre. His memories were fragmented, his self-awareness was incomplete, and his entire personality seemed like a hastily created counterfeit, a copy of another individual. His memories were also precisely limited to a small portion that was clear, and even that content contained virtually nothing of value.

I get up at cockcrow, take care of the elderly and children at home, go to work in the fields, supervise the villagers' work, go home to eat and take care of the elderly and children, go back to work in the fields, supervise the villagers' work again, go home to eat and take care of the elderly and children, pray to the Fox Goddess, and go to sleep after dark.

This is the daily life of Li Ziyong that Gao Hai saw. He lives like this almost every day, executing a precise rhythm of life like a robot.

Of course, although his life was as regular as Yoshikage Kira's, careful observation revealed some unusual details. Gao Hai meticulously sifted through and observed these details, discovering that the young Li Ziyong would occasionally visit other villagers' homes to handle various matters for them and roughly categorize certain items.

The items that needed to be classified were often bizarre and varied. Sometimes they were coarse salt, ironware, and dried meat; sometimes they were cloth and coal; and sometimes they were even living people. Of course, they were always young women; there would never be men, children, or the elderly.

In many of the houses Li Ziyong visited, the villagers were more or less injured, and occasionally someone would be covered with a white sheet, seemingly dead. But usually, after a few days, the dead villager would silently reappear, and no one, including Li Ziyong, would think there was anything wrong with the person's resurrection; they would consider it a matter of course.

As for the items that were distributed, whether they were various supplies and tools or women, no villager would take them. They were simply categorized and placed in a few empty houses in the village square, and then no one would care about them.

The amazing thing is that no matter how many things were put into these empty rooms, when the rooms were opened again, everything was gone, and the rooms were empty once more. Neither Li Ziyong nor the villagers who moved the things showed any surprise; they considered it a perfectly normal occurrence.

Besides, the biggest difference between these people and the villagers Gao Hai initially encountered was that everyone in this village worshipped the Fox Goddess. Strangely, although they verbally expressed their faith in the Fox Goddess, there were no statues of her in the village, nor did any villager set up an altar to worship her. It seemed that their faith was merely lip service, something they would occasionally mention but never actually worship.

too weird.

The more Gao Hai read these memories, the more his brows furrowed.

This [Li Ziyong]'s memory is really too strange.

No, it's not just about memories. His personality, his cognition—while seemingly normal on the surface, reveal numerous problems upon closer examination. This person… cannot be considered a complete human being at all. He's more like a fabricated individual created by extracting memories and personality from a certain period, a clone similar to Goto Ichiri's. However, compared to clones that still retain some supernatural characteristics, this [Li Ziyong] goes a step further. There's no trace of supernatural power to be found at all; biologically, he's already a life form with a reasonable structure.

Perhaps it's not just this one person.

Just as he had seen in his memory, the other villagers also clearly had similar problems, as did their ability to resurrect after death, which was becoming increasingly suspicious.

"Ho...ho..."

Gao Hai released his grip, and Li Ziyong, who was already brain dead, collapsed to the ground, his body twitching unconsciously.

Raising his head to look at the others who were terrified, Gao Hai remained silent for a moment before trying to summon the land deed to see if this object of obsession could work here.