Chapter 54: The Game That Changes Reality (Please Keep Reading!!!)
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No!
Something was wrong.
Nine times out of ten, something was seriously wrong.
Seated in a genuine leather chair, Qian Gu rested both hands beneath his chin and pondered in silence.
The flow of time had almost come to a halt. There was no way he would believe this was an ordinary world.
Compared with the Main God Space, time here passed at a ratio of virtually infinity to one. Qian Gu had spent nearly a month adventuring in the Main God Space, yet in the real world, not even a second had passed.
Such a difference in the flow of time was enough to prove that the real world was far from ordinary.
“Just my luck…”
What a nuisance!
Qian Gu drew a deep breath.
He raised a hand and altered the target’s memories, erasing all trace of his own existence. Then he left the government facility with Arno and departed the area.
Information.
The problem was still a lack of information.
For the past eighteen years, he had lived a thoroughly unremarkable life, idling away his days. He knew almost nothing about this world, only that it was more or less the same as the one from his previous life.
Had he never entered the Main God Space, he would probably have continued living that way until he died of old age.
But now, everything was different.
“One thing is certain: I was selected by the Main God from the countless worlds of the infinite multiverse to become a Reincarnator. This is the selection system of the Third Generation.”
During the Third Generation—in other words, the era of Infinite Dawn—the Reincarnators were not drawn solely from the Origin Reality where Zheng Zha lived. They could come from the entire infinite multiverse, from an enormous number of fictional worlds.
Chu Hao, for example, had been selected from the world of Final Destination.
Once that was established, what Qian Gu needed to determine was exactly what kind of horror film this world represented.
“A modern horror film?”
The environment had not changed significantly, and the era was still the twenty-first century. That meant the horror film he had entered was set in the modern age.
As for the location…
With a soft rustle, a laptop tumbled out of the Magic Rope Space.
Qian Gu tapped lightly at the keyboard. The high-end, next-generation laptop he had saved up for in the Main God Space immediately demonstrated its capabilities. It linked to the entire internet with virtually no delay, while its built-in artificial intelligence analyzed and collated the data, extracting every piece of information he wanted.
It was not Final Destination.
It was not A Nightmare on Elm Street.
It was not The Avengers.
It was not Mr. Vampire.
Across the entire internet, most of the plots Qian Gu knew simply did not exist. Those classic films had never taken place, and many fantastical and supernatural stories had never circulated either. The entire age seemed to be advancing in a flourishing wave of technology.
“A horror film I don’t know? Something obscure?”
Qian Gu clicked his tongue.
What a nuisance.
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Obscurity meant that he had probably never seen it. Or perhaps he had, but remembered little of it.
That meant his information was insufficient.
Without enough information, analysis and planning became extremely difficult.
Unless—
He forced the situation forward through sheer power and crushed everything in his path!
“Hm?”
Qian Gu narrowed his eyes slightly. He had suddenly discovered an interesting piece of information online.
This was getting interesting…
…
“This is the place.”
Qian Gu stopped before a two-story house.
The area was somewhat remote, neither prosperous nor bustling. There were few people about, and not many residents.
Moreover, a murder had taken place here just the previous night.
The victim was a single woman. Her body bore numerous bite wounds, and her left hand had been bitten off and vanished. On her phone, however, there remained a single photograph—one more than capable of becoming the basis for an urban legend.
It showed a little monster.
That was not merely a childish term for a small child. It was an exact description.
Its skin was blackish gray, and it stood only about as high as a human knee. Its hands and feet were thin and spindly. It had a pair of eyes that were nothing but black, a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth, and lips split wide as if it might gnaw on something at any moment.
That was why Qian Gu had come here.
The photograph was not a composite.
It was a final message left behind by the victim before her death: a picture of the killer, a monster that should not theoretically exist in reality.
And this monster had not appeared from nothing.
“Dead Spirit. Hungry Eater. Level Three.”
Dead Spirit.
A mobile game that had never truly entered public testing—there had only been a single closed beta.
If Qian Gu had not used the laptop from the Main God Space as a web crawler, dredging up information from who knew how long ago, he probably would have overlooked the game entirely.
The photograph taken by the victim the previous night showed a monster that existed within Dead Spirit.
Level Three: Hungry Eater.
Another remarkable coincidence was that the designer of Dead Spirit lived nearby, in the vicinity of the murder scene.
“Ye Yinyi?”
A Chinese national.
Qian Gu began piecing the information together.
Clearly, there was a very high probability that the events here constituted the plot of this world.
The only problem was…
It could now be more or less confirmed that this was probably a domestic film.
Obscure. Domestic. A game affecting reality.
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Once these clues were combined, the setting resembled a type of Chinese web-fiction fantasy that had only begun to emerge long after the completion of Infinite Terror. It was also a minor genre in anime and film.
As for anime, Qian Gu remembered one called The Silver Guardian, which likewise involved reality and a game becoming intertwined.
However, he had not watched much of it, and had never been particularly fond of either the plot or its protagonist.
“This really is an absurdly small amount of information.”
He pushed open the gate.
Arno went ahead and entered the two-story house.
The corridor did not appear particularly clean.
Qian Gu observed the surrounding layout and scattered objects, recording them all in his mind and conducting the simplest possible comprehensive analysis. He confirmed that he could seal off the designer of Dead Spirit with absolute certainty once the time came.
Naturally, he would also prevent anyone else from disturbing them.
They went upstairs.
A line of slender little footprints appeared on the floor. They did not look human.
“Hm?”
Qian Gu frowned.
Had it already found him?
An anti-materiel pistol appeared in his hand. He chambered a round and raised his vigilance to the highest level. He also prepared a Foresight Against Enemies in advance, ensuring that he could respond in time to any crisis that might arise.
Then—
Bang!
He kicked the door open.
Bright sunlight streamed through the window and spilled across the room. It was a standard single bedroom, containing a computer and a bed, along with a somewhat disheveled young man—and…
A little monster!
Yes.
The little monster named Hungry Eater was in the room, curled up beside the young man’s feet like a puppy.
“Who are you?”
“Uh—”
The two voices rang out almost simultaneously.
In the blink of an eye, the Hungry Eater switched from husky mode back into the form of a vicious demon. Its eyes twisted with ferocity as it lunged at Qian Gu.
But—
Bang!
The gunshot rang out.
The bullet, carrying tremendous kinetic force, punched straight through the creature. It blew apart the Hungry Eater’s head and tore through the wall behind it, blasting out a massive crater.
“You’re Ye Yinyi, right? We need to have a talk.”
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