A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

Then they all vanished.

Panel prompt:

[Wish Fulfilled: Fragment x1]

[Fragments collected (3/3), Battle Pass completed]

Han Yingying then realized that she hadn't let go of the rope.

She loosened her grip and looked at her palm—a red mark had been rubbed off by the hemp rope.

"Your hand." She looked at Zhou Lang's right arm.

"It's just a minor cut, nothing serious."

Han Yingying pulled a band-aid from her pocket—she didn't know how it ended up in her pajama pocket; it was probably a random resource allocation from the system. She applied the band-aid to Zhou Lang's wound.

Zhou Lang looked down at the band-aid, which had a cartoon bear pattern printed on it.

"..."

"This is all we have." Han Yingying said without changing her expression.

Xu Kun and Fang Yuan had also fulfilled their three last wishes. The six of them met at the east gate of the town.

The east gate was a stone archway, and the entrance was pitch black. But with a pass in hand, a white light shone through the center of the archway.

"Let's go," Zhou Lang said.

The six people passed through the portal of light one by one.

The moment she transmigrated, Han Yingying triggered a skill. It wasn't perception, but a new skill she acquired in the third dungeon—a passive ability whose mechanics she still hadn't fully grasped.

Fang Yuan was behind her.

After passing through the portal of light, Fang Yuan paused for a moment.

"Han Yingying".

"Um?"

"The way you used your skill just now—" Fang Yuan's voice sounded a bit strange, "exactly the same as 'Waves in the Waves'."

Before Han Yingying could react, a burst of white light exploded in her mind.

It wasn't pain—it was the image.

—Fragmented, broken, and discontinuous images.

The room was dark, with sticky notes covering the walls, filled with writing. She sat in front of the computer, a game interface displayed on the screen. Someone was talking next to her, the voice was hard to hear, but the person's outline was familiar—

The video cut out.

Han Yingying stumbled and was caught by Zhou Lang.

"What's wrong?"

"I feel a little dizzy." She rubbed her forehead. The images in her mind were like sculptures made of sand, fragile and easily shattered. She tried to grasp the details, but the harder she tried, the more blurred they became.

"You look terrible." Zhou Lang's hand was still on her shoulder. "Is it a backlash from your skill?"

"No...it's nothing, really nothing." Han Yingying steadied herself.

Zhou Lang didn't retract his hand; he lingered for two more seconds before letting go.

Fang Yuan watched this scene from the side, almost dropping the unlit cigarette in his mouth. He exchanged a glance with Xu Kun.

The dungeon results panel pops up:

[Instance: Ghost Town]

[Rating: S]

[Rewards being distributed...]

Six people stood in the white void, waiting to be teleported.

"Next time," Lin Xiaoxi said, "I definitely won't hold you back next time."

Han Yingying smiled and said, "You didn't skip it today."

"I didn't do anything!"

"Your greatest contribution is that you didn't cause us any trouble."

Lin Xiaoxi didn't know whether to thank her or be angry.

Han Yingying turned to Xu Kun and Fang Yuan: "We got an S-rank this time, have you considered teaming up long-term?"

Fang Yuan eagerly answered, "I do!"

"No." Xu Kun said decisively.

Fang Yuan's sentence was stuck in his throat.

Han Yingying observed the two people. This was the second time she had been rejected. They clearly had S-level strength, or even S-level qualifications, but they refused to team up or participate in S-level dungeons.

There's a story behind this.

But now is not the time to ask further questions.

"Then forget it." Han Yingying didn't press the matter. "But if you change your mind, please contact me anytime."

Xu Kun did not respond. But Fang Yuan glanced at Han Yingying and nodded slightly.

The teleportation aperture lights up.

Before Han Yingying disappeared, she caught a glimpse of Zhou Lang looking down at his panel. He was very focused, his fingers moving rapidly across the panel as if he were searching for something.

She didn't say anything.

The light engulfed everyone.

The first thing Zhou Lang did after returning to reality was to open his old notebook.

The notebook was in the second drawer of the bedside table, wrapped in a waterproof bag. The cover was peeling at the edges, and the inside pages were densely covered with writing and diagrams.

He turned to the latest page and wrote a few lines:

"Ghost Town, S-rank, original difficulty unknown. Deviation status: to be confirmed."

"Han Yingying's system proactively pushed an offset notification—the third instance (Abandoned Hospital). Normally, this wouldn't be proactively pushed. Possible reasons: 1. The offset value was too large, triggering the threshold. 2. There's a problem with the system itself. 3. Han Yingying's account has a special flag."

"Further verification is needed."

He closed his notebook and leaned back in his chair.

It was already dark. The sound of music from the neighborhood aunties dancing in the square drifted in from outside the window, and children were shouting in the distance.

These everyday sounds gave him a dazed feeling. Just hours before, he had pulled a dead baby from the bottom of a dry well in a ghost town that had been dead for thirty years. Now, he was sitting in his bedroom, listening to "The Most Dazzling Ethnic Trend".

My phone vibrated.

Zhao Qiang sent a message: "Brother Lang, did you go into a dungeon today? I noticed your online time was off."

"Advanced. S-rank."

"S-rank??? Holy crap, you're alone?"

"Six people."

"How's it going? Is it working?"

"It's connected."

"Awesome." Zhao Qiang sent a series of thumbs-up emojis.

Zhou Lang didn't reply. He was thinking about something else.

Today in Ghost Town, he checked Han Yingying's player data when she wasn't paying attention.

It wasn't exactly aboveboard. He used a shady method—a vulnerability in the dungeon's party system that allowed him to briefly access some of his teammates' underlying data. He discovered this vulnerability by chance during his third dungeon run and hadn't told anyone about it.

There was a label in Han Yingying's underlying data that he couldn't understand.

The label code is a string of gibberish that cannot be translated. However, its position is special—it is right after the "difficulty coefficient" parameter.

If this label is related to the difficulty offset... then it means that the offset is not a random bug in the system, but is deliberately tied to Han Yingying.

Who linked it? Why?

Zhou Lang rubbed his temples.

He'd been investigating the strange system's bugs for days. It all started with his sister's disappearance—after the game started, she vanished suddenly one day without warning or leaving any trace. He'd searched every possible avenue, but couldn't find his sister's account in the system records; it was as if she'd never existed.

However, the system will not delete a person's data out of thin air.

Unless something with higher authority intervenes.

During his investigation, he discovered a phenomenon of dungeon difficulty deviation—not just for Han Yingying, but also for other players. But those players were either dead or… disappeared.

He disappeared just like his sister.

He had a very immature guess: the eerie game wasn't just a game. It was filtering something.

Difficulty offset is one of the screening methods.

Players marked with an offset will either be eliminated in higher difficulty levels or transform in higher difficulty levels.

And Han Yingying—