Reality (5): Enter the game

Since the robot came from a highly developed future world, Xiao Bai’s level of computer technology clearly surpassed most people in the real world.

Although it wasn’t particularly aggressive, it was still easy for it to investigate information about the new era.

Tan Xiao’s vacation spot and his home weren’t in the same city, but fortunately, after more than two months of reconstruction, the Beijing base had finally achieved network interconnectivity with other bases.

Even though some personnel were still missing due to frequent disasters, the majority of people had their nearby status recorded.

After spending two hours searching, Tan Xiao smoothly located his parents in the vast ocean of the database. They had entered their city’s base two months ago and were still living there.

Most people’s information wasn’t updated in real time—after all, government resources were limited, and it wasn’t realistic to monitor everyone constantly.

However, judging by the registration records, his relatives were lucky; they had survived the disaster.

Xiao Bai asked him, “Master, are we going to D City Base?”

D City was Tan Xiao’s former hometown, a once-thriving metropolis. But since the disaster was global, nearly every city had turned into ruins. The familiar scenes from Tan Xiao’s memory—schools, streets—had long since fallen into fog-covered zones or been destroyed by meteor showers or earthquakes.

Because of these natural disasters, public transportation had been largely destroyed. Even setting aside the enormous difficulty of crossing such a long distance, there was still the issue of drinking water and food along the way.

More importantly, Tan Xiao was still a player who had to regularly enter the game. He hadn’t settled down himself, so going to find them wouldn’t do any good.

Tan Xiao remembered searching for his parents’ names on the forum but couldn’t find any relevant posts. If they hadn’t changed their IDs, then they were likely not players in the God Game.

“No need to go to D City. But we can try contacting them online.”

Tan Xiao deleted the search data. “Let’s go sell some stuff.”

After confirming that Xiao Bai’s abilities surpassed current tech, Tan Xiao had it create a virtual account and join the real-world player forum.

There was a wealth of information there, and it also allowed for real-life trading. Although Tan Xiao held the title of Number One, he was still cautious in real life and didn’t have the strength to go up against large corporations or the big bases.

Before speaking publicly as “Tan Xiao,” he intended to build matching strength first.

Wang Zhe, president of the Black Tiger Guild and a player who had received an S-level rating once, had risen quickly thanks to his madness, dedication, and backing from a large corporation. In a short time, Black Tiger had grown into a medium-sized guild that stood out among both official and other player guilds.

It was only medium-sized because it followed an elite path and didn’t accept just any new player.

As one of the earliest veteran players, Wang Zhe had once tried to recruit Tan Xiao with generous offers. Naturally, the cold and aloof Number One ignored everyone and ruthlessly rejected him.

Later, as the official forces entered the game and became increasingly powerful, Wang Zhe gave up trying to message Tan Xiao and focused on managing the guild.

In truth, things were going well for him—until the last round of the game when the Black Tiger Guild suffered huge losses. Their vice president, Xu Xu, had died.

It was known that Xu Xu had entered the game with several resurrection items, including a card that could force a player to exit a game instance. Could it be that the game had deceived them and the resurrection card was actually useless, offering no way to escape?

Not only had Xu Xu died, but the players who entered the same instance with him had also died. Wang Zhe knew about their entry because they were using linked accounts. One generous player even spent a lot of money and resources to enter.

But now all their IDs had gone gray. These players, equipped with resurrection tools, had all died!

Fortunately, they weren’t the only ones who had entered that instance. Two players from the neighboring Rose Guild had also gone in. One of them returned alive, though the mission failed.

From that survivor, Wang Zhe learned that the instance they entered was called Heart of the Ocean. The Rose Guild player had died very early, so no one knew what happened later. But since Xu Xu also died, it meant the difficulty of the instance was extremely high.

Later, the game reported that Tan Xiao had cleared the instance with a high rating. Wang Zhe’s heart sank—could Xu Xu have died at the hands of the top player? But even Xu Xu wouldn’t be able to defeat him.

More survivors eventually came out and sold related intel, from which Wang Zhe learned more details. The instance had malfunctioned, and Xu Xu didn’t die by Tan Xiao’s hand, but from a monster.

At that point, Wang Zhe completely gave up on avenging his vice president. Seeing Black Tiger Guild greatly weakened, he was filled with frustration.

At this critical moment, he spotted a new account selling game resources. It was offering a powerful item at a surprisingly low price.

Items in the game’s official store were expensive and not always a perfect match. Custom-made ones often cost ten times more. Everyone’s game points and coins were earned through life-risking efforts—no one wanted to be overcharged.

But player-to-player private trades were different: lower prices, some of the value could be paid in real-world currency or resources—it was very cost-effective.

Although the prices offered by this new account were low, the required goods weren’t cheap either. Still, relative to the items’ value, it was a massive discount. Missing out would make Wang Zhe regret it for a lifetime.

Everyone loved cheap, powerful, rare items, and Wang Zhe wasn’t the only one who noticed. The new account sold several items quickly and turned from a no-traffic alt into a popular trading account. Bargain hunters couldn’t keep up.

Behind that account, diligent Xiao Bai was helping Tan Xiao sell items. Prices were set by Tan Xiao himself. After drawing traffic and earning enough for transaction fees, he listed a few items in the auction house—some with high fixed prices, others as time-limited auctions.

If his minimum wasn’t met, he could afford the unsold items.

But things went much better than Tan Xiao expected. The high-priced items sold easily.

Xiao Bai wagged its tail happily: “Everything sold just like you wanted, Master. Several people even bought at the set price!”

Tan Xiao was a bit surprised—he had underestimated the financial power of the big factions.

What Tan Xiao sold were mostly rewards from the system and items he had obtained. The most precious was a doll he and Wen Yi had caught in the second instance.

Those dolls acted like substitute lives—effectively similar to resurrection items. He felt a bit reluctant to sell them, since he and Wen Yi had caught them together. But they had caught an entire machine’s worth—a whole sack full—and since he did most of the work, he sold off the ones Wen Yi thought were ugly. He kept about 90% of them in the system space.

After all, he wasn’t exactly wealthy in real life, and Wen Yi could be quite picky. Tan Xiao felt he should provide better conditions for his wife.

In addition to his own gains, he also had loot dropped by other players in the previous instance.

Some of those items belonged to Xu Xu.

Wang Zhe, who was very close to Xu Xu, was shocked when he saw those items. He triple-checked and confirmed that they were indeed Xu Xu’s.

In that instance, all players other than Tan Xiao had failed the mission. It was lucky to even escape with your life—getting items from Xu Xu was almost unthinkable.

Wang Zhe knew Xu Xu’s personality well—he would never let others take advantage of him.

Which meant the person behind this new account might very well be the mysterious Number One!

Wang Zhe felt a mix of excitement and complexity—excited to have found Tan Xiao, but conflicted because Xu Xu’s items had ended up in Tan Xiao’s hands and had to be bought back at a high price.

But revenge? Out of the question. Right now, his only option was to maintain good relations. He sent a friend request to the account. This time, Xiao Bai approved it in the background.

Naturally, when Wang Zhe tried to start a conversation, Tan Xiao ignored him.

He wasn’t interested in socializing with other players for now. As for being exposed—so what if people knew he was Tan Xiao? He had Xiao Bai set up a special virtual identity. If anyone tried to extract his location or info through backend or admin privileges, not only would they fail, they’d be warned.

After making enough money and spending a fair bit, Tan Xiao stayed in the real world for a few more days, gathered plenty of intel, and was soon pulled into a new round of the God Game.

This time, the game was a very special one.

Because Tan Xiao had repeatedly caused system crashes, the God Game had taken notice of this unusual bug. His return to the real world meant his data had been re-registered by the game.

Bugs must be eliminated, but given Tan Xiao’s special circumstances, the game couldn’t simply force him to die.

Instead, they could make adjustments within the rules—such as designing a custom instance to trap him, preventing him from disrupting the game balance.

If Tan Xiao could clear even this custom-made instance, the game would have no choice but to forcibly let him clear the game early.

Tan Xiao realized this upon entering—his hard-earned memories with Wen Yi had once again been sealed away.

[Game Instance: The Eight-Tailed Cat]

[Game Mission: ??]

[Participants: Player Tan Xiao]

[Game Reward: Game Clearance (Give up player identity / Become game administrator)]

[Welcome to your exclusive customized instance from the God Game. Enjoy your play.]