Chapter 1 Van Li Feng Dao

Wan Li Feng Dao concealed his figure. As his Ling energy rapidly depleted, his silhouette seemed to merge with the brown tree bark, indistinguishable from each other in the torrential rain and dark night.

Bang, bang, bang.

Wan Li Feng Dao's heart pounded violently. He held his breath, watching the dark figure not far ahead slowly straighten up, face the sky, and gently sniff the air.

By the occasional flash of lightning, the figure's true face flashed by.

It was an extremely emaciated humanoid figure with gray hair, disheveled, and wearing a layer of messy black rags that were unrecognizable.

The pale skin all over its body drooped downwards, having lost its elasticity, like skin sagging from excessive weight loss, looking strange and terrifying.

And around the monster's waist was tied a long iron chain.

The iron chain was as thick as an arm and very heavy, a stark contrast to the skinny humanoid monster.

The iron chain wrapped around its waist twice, splitting into eighteen slightly thinner chains—the thinner chains drooped on the ground, with their other ends also falling into the stream.

Thunder roared, and a flash of lightning flashed, vaguely revealing that the ends of the eighteen thin iron chains seemed to be tied to something tall and heavy.

Those were human bodies.

There were men and women, old people, infants, white bone corpses, and fresh corpses soaked in rainwater and swollen white, all facing the sky, staring at the torrential night with empty eye sockets.

At the end of the eighteen iron chains were tied sixteen human bodies.

Xing He Chou was tied to the sixteenth iron chain.

This iron-tower-like man had his eyes tightly closed, his body covered in wounds constantly gushing blood, sinking into the torrent of the stream, his life or death unknown.

"Human, ne..."

The humanoid monster raised its head high, sniffing the air, murmuring, "The scent of vitality, why is it gone...

Clearly, only the last two are missing."

As if venting its emotions, it waved its thin arm and slammed it heavily on the tree trunk next to it.

The tree trunk, thick enough for four people to embrace, broke in the middle under this blow, flying directly out and smashing into the forest, shaking off countless raindrops.

Wan Li Feng Dao pressed his back tightly against the tree trunk, allowing the wood chips that splashed out when the tree broke to scrape across his face, daring not to move at all.

He gripped the sword hilt firmly, his fingers were incredibly pale from the excessive force, but he could not pull the sword out of its scabbard no matter what.

This monster... was too strong. Just the aura alone made him tremble with fear, his muscles involuntarily trembling.

Should he leave here?

As long as he had a thought, he could teleport out of this ridiculously strange Sheng Nan Wang dream and return to the real world.

Safe, stable, no one would know what happened here,

No one would know that he abandoned his companion.

He could continue to be his bounty hunter, using the extra-staff employee status issued by the Special Affairs Bureau, and be respected and sought after by people from all walks of life wherever he went.

The player's identity was a gift from heaven.

...

Before becoming a player, Wan Li Feng Dao had an ordinary name.

Zhang Wei.

He lived in the city, but did not belong to the city.

His childhood memories were of small towns, villages, urban-rural fringes, dry and cracked land, sewage-filled streams, dilapidated factories, smelly poultry, wheat field dust, and thick smoke rising from factory chimneys.

His father was a farmer, taciturn and not good at expressing himself. The image he left behind was always under dim light, drinking low-quality beer, with a red face.

His mother was also a farmer, kind and timid, gentle and patient, always knitting sweaters while the whole family finished dinner and her husband silently drank, telling him that set of theories that she didn't know how many times she had said.

Study hard, only by studying hard can you leave here.

At that time, he did not understand this,

He liked the fireflies dancing in the mountains and forests, liked delivering firewood into the stove and watching the fire rise, liked chasing chickens and dogs, playing and joking with his companions, and even liked that old, unreliable broken television and his cousin's second-hand game console.

He did not understand why his parents worked so hard, hoping that he could change the fate of his ancestors and walk out of the yellow earth and mountains that stretched for who knew how far.

Until he went to middle school, left the countryside, entered the city, and came to the fortress of steel and concrete.

He realized for the first time that the world was so gorgeous and prosperous,

That his future was not just the same repetitive labor without end as his fathers.

However, mediocrity, ordinariness, and commonness,

Like the earth's gravity, tightly gripped his ankles and threw him to the ground.

After graduating from vocational college, unwilling to return to the mountains and live that long, numb life that could be seen to the end at a glance, he chose to stay in the city.

He became a builder of the city, or rather, a construction worker.

This job was no different from the farm work his father did, numb, mechanical, repetitive, day after day, like a decaying and rusty machine, burning fuel, moving forward silently, with no glory to speak of.

On the high吊塔 (diàotǎ), tied with a safety rope, he saw the prosperity of the city. He was even the creator of this prosperity,

But 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 and unfamiliar steel jungle, enjoying the internet, games, movies, mobile phones, and the bright lights, all the things that a numb countryside would not have.

He could even read two books in his spare time—absorbing knowledge was painful, not because of the obscure and profound nature of the books, but because in the process of reading, he could always slowly understand something.

Understand some cold and hard truths, like steel ice.

This world has fate, there are class barriers that cannot be crossed by human power. He acted as firewood for the prosperity of the city, but the firewood that has burned out its flame will eventually be abandoned, just like the ancestral countryside that is degenerating.

He does not belong here.

In the great era, his understanding, his pain, were worthless, no one cared,

The nameless people buried in the mine, the workers whose fingers were cut off and swallowed by machines, the old and numb farmers sitting at the bank counter with old coins waiting to send money, the bedridden old people in the countryside who have lost their ability to work and have no life security....

This is the fate of his kind.

Until he was selected by the Killing Game and promoted to a player.

Jingle clang—

The iron chains collided with each other, rubbing against the fallen leaves.

The pale humanoid monster muttered something, walking forward, the fifteen corpses were dragged up from the bottom of the river, along with the unconscious Xing He Chou, slowly dragging past Wan Li Feng Dao.

Heaven chose me,

Wan Li Feng Dao clenched the hilt of his sword, his body slowly tensing.

I refuse to accept the predetermined mediocre fate...

The ordinary man named Zhang Wei exhaled a mouthful of turbid air, the airflow clearly visible in the cold forest.

I want to change the world...

"Hmm?"

The pale monster with the iron chain coiled around its waist seemed to notice something, turned around, and looked at a certain place in the dim forest.

I want to be a hero.

Wan Li Feng Dao's face was ferocious, drew his sword out of its sheath, under the vast lightning, the frosty blade's cold light was dim.

Three feet of autumn water, should斬妖魔 (zhǎn yāo mó) [slay demons].