After the Game Ended, Reality Felt Wrong

The instance, with its livestream interrupted, was plunged into pitch-black darkness.
The water from the kitchen faucet rushed loudly, splashing onto the dishes and soaking the counter.

The sudden darkness startled Su Lai for a couple of seconds.
“Mom?”

No response from the darkness.

“Wang Chunying?” Su Lai tried calling her name.
“Uncle Wang?”

“Little Dad? Old Wang, the watermelon cutter?”

Su Lai tried various forms of address, from formal to completely casual. Still, no one answered.
Suddenly, he felt like a kid whose home had lost power, frozen by the sink, at a loss for what to do.

Wang Chunying wouldn’t ignore his calls. They were no longer here.

Su Lai felt his way in the dark and turned off the faucet. The self-built house fell into absolute silence.
The clamor of smashing outside had vanished. The flames were gone. The bustling crowds were also gone. The entire instance had been cleared the moment the power went out.

What about the livestream?
Had the berserk residents, by destroying the cameras and circuits, successfully ruined the livestream? Or was this all just an intermission program arranged for the higher-dimensional pollutant audience, an Easter egg of the instance?

Another possibility: he was hallucinating.

An airtight silence enveloped him. Su Lai’s hearing produced a sound akin to a ringing buzz. He was briefly thrown into confusion.

Everything came to an abrupt halt.

Just then, the landline in the living room suddenly rang. Without even drying his hands, Su Lai ran over and picked it up.
“Hello?”

[Good evening, Wang Xiaosi. The 「Spring Breeze Community」 instance has been terminated due to uncontrollable factors. Please leave the instance on your own.]

Su Lai asked.
“What is my identity now?”

The system paused for two seconds before giving its answer.
[Uncontrollable factor. Non-player identity.]

Su Lai: “Oh. You played the whole game, and in the end, you won’t even give me a title?”
“That’s so trashy.”

System: […].
It paused again for two seconds before remembering to fight back.
[Insulting the system is prohibited.]

Su Lai: “Trashy isn’t an insult. It’s a unique form of flattery.”
“I’m complimenting you.”

[… We apologize for the inconvenience caused. Please forgive us.]
Unwilling, or perhaps afraid, to engage in a long conversation with him, the system hurriedly finished its business-like report and immediately hung up.

Su Lai even tried redialing, but the phone was like a toy not connected to any circuit. No sound at all.

He wondered how the other players were doing. No one had used an item to call him yet.

Su Lai simply turned on his phone’s flashlight. After stepping out of the self-built house, he breathed a sigh of relief.
His little e-bike was still quietly waiting outside, completely undamaged.

The black cat plushie was still hanging properly from the handlebars. However, one of the button eyes he had sewn on had fallen off again. The other hung crookedly on its face. Under the flashlight’s beam, its expression looked even more ruined.

And in the delivery box on the back seat was a heavy stack of cash, tens of thousands of yuan.
This was the money Su Lai had earned from other players after entering the instance. Not a single bill was missing. Not only that, there were also many crumpled coins and notes added—the profits from Wang Chunying’s newly opened wonton shop.

Everything had silently and suddenly ended, disappeared. Only the money remained.

The black cat plushie gave Su Lai a crooked look. Oh, the plushie he’d picked up was still there too.

Su Lai looked back one more time at the self-built building and the wonton shop in the darkness. But the surroundings were too dark. Thick, viscous black covered his retina. He could barely see anything.

He put his helmet back on, turned on the modified headlight of his little e-bike, started the engine, and left.

Su Lai didn’t dare go too fast. As his little e-bike left Fourteenth Lane, the thick darkness around him began to recede.

The narrow alley gradually widened. The self-built buildings on either side, like ink blocks meeting water, began to dissolve the moment they flashed past his vision.
The sky was gradually brightening, slowly illuminating the silent community. Su Lai confirmed that everyone in the instance had disappeared, both original residents and players. Only a blurred, ruined-like street remained.

It was very quiet. There wasn’t even the sound of birds at dawn.
Such silence was unsettling.

Su Lai discovered that the faster he drove, the quicker the dawn arrived.
Right now, he felt like he’d pulled an all-nighter. His body was tired, but his mind was in a state of calm and clear-headed.

Gradually, the sounds of people and vehicles came from the streets. A familiar road appeared in his vision. Su Lai remembered this was the street he had turned into following the navigation that day. From this point, his phone had lost signal.

Turning the corner, a wide street appeared before him. On both sides, sanitation workers were sweeping fallen leaves, and breakfast carts were busy preparing buns and soy milk.

The phone in his pocket started vibrating continuously. Su Lai stopped the bike and looked at the screen. Dozens of missed calls and unread messages appeared, and the date on the screen showed that only one night had passed.

Fearing that his family and friends were worried, he replied to these messages and calls one by one, busy reassuring everyone he was safe.

When he looked back, the urban village had completely disappeared from the dawn light. Where his eyes could see was now a neatly planned residential area.

After returning to his apartment, Su Lai was greeted by his cat, who charged over like a madman, wildly rubbing its face and chin against Su Lai, then scolded him incessantly. While accusing him of being out all night, it also questioned if he had been unfaithful outside.

“Meow meow!”
“Meow meow meow!”

Su Lai could always understand his little cat. He quickly scooped the kitten onto his lap and thoroughly comforted it.
“No other cats. Didn’t eat out. Be good.”

He willingly let the little cat gently bite him a few times. Only then did the scolding kitten calm down a little, its curses turning into soft, spoiled mews.

The kitten decided to forgive this useless human who had come home late from hunting.

“Chu Liu, I’m so tired.” Su Lai yawned several times in a row.
The kitten was named Chu Liu because he had found it downstairs on the sixth day of the first lunar month.

On that freezing cold day, an abandoned kitten wouldn’t have survived. Su Lai had put the shivering little cat in a shopping bag and brought it home along with a bag of instant noodles and sausages.

Su Lai yawned a few more times. His vision was already blurred with sleepiness. He couldn’t care about anything else. He picked up Chu Liu and fell asleep.

He slept for a whole day and night.

In his dream, he saw Uncle Wang holding a watermelon knife. The watermelon on the chopping board had thin skin and crisp flesh, full of juice.
With one chop, thick red juice splattered all over Uncle Wang’s face.

Uncle Wang turned around. The watermelon juice split his face in two, half yin and half yang, clearly demarcated.
But no matter which side of his face, Uncle Wang was smiling peacefully at him.

Wang Chunying’s voice sounded from the shadows of the room.
“Your Uncle Wang, back then, wanted to earn more money for the family, buy a big house sooner, move out of this damn place, the urban village. He would work like crazy, taking jobs and driving non-stop, all night long. Later, because of fatigue, his car drove off the highway and down a cliff.”

“They said when they found your Uncle Wang, his body was cut in two by the car.”

“That truck was full of watermelons. The bright red and green melons rolled and rolled. The road, the guardrails, the gully, and your Uncle Wang’s bisected body were all covered by the exploded watermelons.”

“They said the watermelons that year were very sweet. The thick red juice was like fresh, sticky blood, like newly spilled blood.”
“That year was so long. Uncle Wang was gone. My last bit of hope was gone. Nothing was left. Just this empty house.”
“Your Uncle Wang worked so hard to earn money, just to move us away from here. The people here have bad mouths, gossiping about me, calling me crazy.”
“He just wanted to take me away from this broken-down life…”

“Little Four, you freed everyone.”
“The peeping is gone. The gossip has shut up.”
“Like New Year’s fireworks, it all went bang and exploded.”
“Life has become peaceful.”

“You did very well.”

Then, Uncle Wang, split in two by watermelon juice, vanished. Wang Chunying and her self-built house vanished too.

The dream shifted abruptly. A little boy in a white silhouette, holding the black cat plushie, stopped in front of Su Lai’s e-bike.
Just like the night Su Lai first entered the urban village.

The boy had no facial features. Where his face should have been was a mirror.
The mirror reflected Su Lai’s own features.

“You be Wang Xiaosi.”
“Only you can do it well.”
“Hehe.”

The boy disappeared. The black cat plushie was left behind.

The moment Su Lai got off the bike to pick up the plushie, he woke up.
Dazedly, he got up and drank two glasses of water. Still tired, he fell back asleep.

This time, he slept very deeply. No dreams at all.

It wasn’t until breakfast on the third day that Su Lai finally woke from his long slumber. He lazed in bed for a while, hugging Chu Liu, then washed his face and felt refreshed.

His grandmother, knowing he had slept well, brought him freshly cooked pork wontons.

Su Lai paused. The steaming bone broth in the stainless steel bowl, the plump wontons.
He thought of Wang Chunying’s pot of rolling soup, the doughy things that looked like chaotic human eyes.

In reality, his grandmother had really made him wontons. His family rarely ate such wheat-based food.

“Why the sudden wontons?” Su Lai asked.

His grandmother didn’t think much of it.
“I saw freshly rolled alkaline dough wonton wrappers at the market. Suddenly craved them, so I bought some and made them.”

Su Lai remembered that on the day he entered the contaminated instance, before he left to deliver the cake, the blind woman Chen Po, sitting in the yard, had said through gritted teeth:
“Ah Lai, come back clean from this trip. Don’t get contaminated. Your grandmother chopped meat tonight, said she’ll make wontons for you!”

At the time, Chen Po’s tone was so hateful, as if Grandmother had used her wonton wrappers and filling.

Su Lai mentioned Chen Po to his grandmother. Her expression immediately soured.
“Ah Lai, what nonsense are you talking? Chen Po has passed away.”

Su Lai had just taken a bite of wonton. The savory, fragrant juice filled his mouth.
He paused slightly, showing no emotion on his face.
“When did it happen?”

His grandmother pursed her lips and shook her head with a sigh.
“The day before yesterday. The same day you didn’t come home.”
“The nurse taking care of her had asked for leave that day. Chen Po was home alone. It happened in the morning, it seems. Lay there for most of the day. Wasn’t found until evening. The funeral home car took her away directly.”

Su Lai gave a soft “Oh” and didn’t say anything more.
The weirdness had started with Chen Po’s words.

His grandmother was sharp. She sensed something was wrong and asked quietly.
“Ah Lai, when did Chen Po say that to you the day before yesterday?”

Su Lai answered truthfully.
“In the evening, when I was going out to take an order.”

Now it was Grandmother’s turn to be silent.
Chen Po had passed in the morning. The one Su Lai saw in the evening was no longer the living Chen Po.

“Amitabha.” Su Lai muttered, imitating Uncle Wang.

He was just about to scoop up a second wonton when his grandmother snatched the bowl away.
“Don’t eat it.”
The deceased Chen Po had mentioned the wontons to Su Lai. Grandmother was a bit superstitious and didn’t dare let her grandson continue eating.

Su Lai’s spoon hung in mid-air. He watched helplessly as the wontons were moved away.
“I’m hungry.”

“Have something else later.” Grandmother had already moved the wontons far away.
“What else did Chen Po say to you that evening?”

Su Lai: “Complimented my flip-flops. Said they were festive.”
Afraid his grandmother would throw away his beloved flip-flops, he immediately took a few steps away.
“Don’t worry. Chen Po said she couldn’t wear them. Don’t throw mine away.”

Su Lai knew his grandmother was very superstitious, so he didn’t intend to hide it from her.

Sure enough, his grandmother hurried out with the barely-touched wontons. After a while, she hurried back in and placed a stack of protective charms in front of Su Lai.
“Wear them. Better safe than sorry.”
“Don’t end up like your mother…”

His grandmother’s daughter—Su Lai’s mother—had been weak since childhood and could easily see unclean things.
Because of this, and because of Su Lai’s special background, his grandmother had made him wear protective charms, five-emperor coins, beads from the temple since he was little. She had also lit a lamp for him at the temple.

Su Lai found these external things troublesome. He also lacked the nerves to perceive the fear of the unknown. He was always losing them.
But luckily, since he was young, he had always been upright and had never encountered anything unclean.

This time, encountering the deceased Chen Po at the doorstep, and inexplicably entering the Spring Breeze Community, were experiences Su Lai had never had before.

Su Lai was naturally interested in the bizarre. Although he didn’t have the gift of opening his third eye, he had read many supernatural novels and watched many films.

He wondered if the world of Spring Breeze Community truly existed?
Would the system, unwilling to give him an official status, ever change its mind and grant him a formal player identity?

Regardless of whether everything he experienced in Spring Breeze Village was real, the money he had received was real and thick.
Heavy, reassuring to hold.

Tens of thousands of yuan. He couldn’t earn that much in half a year of his usual delivery work.

Su Lai’s family was short on money. Very short.
Before her death, his mother had followed a cult, completely brainwashed by those wretched followers. Under the cult’s thought control, she had “donated” her life’s savings, even borrowing a huge sum to achieve the cult’s “devotion.”

His father had foolishly acted as a guarantor for someone, ending up with a massive debt. To fill the hole, not wanting to worry the family, he secretly borrowed money from friends and relatives. In the end, he still couldn’t cover it. The whole thing blew up, causing a huge upheaval.

Later, his father disappeared and never reappeared. The debt fell on the living family members.

Su Lai also had a younger sister who was still studying. Su Yin had also been weak since childhood. Medical treatment and schooling cost money.

When Su Lai was still young, it was his grandmother who earned money and repaid the debt. An uncle far away, pitying his niece and nephew, would send 2000 yuan every month to subsidize the household. Sometimes he would send a bit more. This was almost their entire living expenses for the three of them, one old and two young.

The uncle was also an ordinary worker. Later, he lost his job. He had his own family to support, and was strapped for cash himself. Once Su Lai was able to work, he took the initiative to earn money to support the family and no longer took money from his uncle.

Su Yin was sensible. Afraid the family burden was too heavy, she worked part-time during holidays and after school.
But her health was poor. She had to study and work multiple jobs. Once, exhausted, she fell ill and passed out. The hospitalization and nutrition fee far exceeded the money she earned working day and night.

Su Yin didn’t dare push herself anymore. Grandmother was getting old too. The responsibility of earning money fell on Su Lai.

Anyone with a bit of connection to his family knew that Su Lai was not the biological child of this family. His mother had picked him up near the crematorium and brought him home.

At first, people were superstitious. An abandoned baby near a crematorium had an unknown origin. His mother was also prone to attracting unclean things. Perhaps this baby was an evil ghost reincarnated, a vengeful spirit reborn, bringing bad luck to the house.

The one who objected the most was his grandmother. She said her daughter was blinded by a ghost baby, picking up such an unclean thing and bringing it home.

She even tried several times to secretly give him away. But by some coincidence, her daughter always found him and brought him back. This “ghost baby” seemed to have completely latched onto their family. Couldn’t be given away again.

Later, his grandmother changed her strategy. Whenever she had free time, she would take the “ghost baby” to fortune tellers. She was cheated out of quite a lot of money by so-called masters. Rituals to appease vengeful spirits were performed one after another, as if this karmic debt could never be repaid.

After being cheated too many times, his grandmother became numb. Finally, she gritted her teeth. No more giving the baby away. No more rituals. No more fortune telling. Since she was stuck with him, she would accept her fate. She decided to live longer, make her own fate harder, and see who could outlast whom—her or this ghost baby.

“You little dirty thing, let’s see who outlasts who! This old bones of mine will fight on!”

But little baby Su Lai wasn’t dirty at all. He was born beautiful, with fair skin and tidy features. He was more beautiful and cuter than any baby his grandmother had ever seen.

As the baby grew, his grandmother gradually came around.
Although he was picked up from the crematorium, the child wasn’t sinister at all. On the contrary, he was very upright. Since she brought him home, her daughter was no longer troubled by unclean things.

Later, his grandmother gave him a name: Su Lai.

“Since you’re here, I’ll just raise you.” His grandmother would pull a long face but feel happy inside.

People say beautiful children easily grow up crooked. With this slacker mentality, his grandmother raised Su Lai.
But she found that life was always full of surprises. Not only did Su Lai not grow up crooked, he became even more beautiful, growing into a 1.84-meter tall young man. Wherever he went, he easily became the focus of everyone’s gaze.

But Su Lai never cared about others’ gazes. It was as if he naturally lacked the nerves to perceive the outside world. He was very insensitive to the unknown, to fear, to others’ stares.

In his grandmother’s words, their Ah Lai was naturally missing a screw. Such a child was easy to raise and easy to live. This was a compliment.

After the family’s troubles, Su Lai became the pillar.
An ordinary child might be crushed by this. But Su Lai never showed despair or fear. He never complained, never collapsed. His mental state was very stable.

This trip to the urban village “delivery” had been very rewarding.
Su Lai counted the money again. He kept a few hundred for himself and gave the rest to his grandmother, concise as always.
“Earned in the last couple of days.”

His grandmother was shocked by the heavy stack of cash.
“Did you sell a kidney?”

Su Lai: “I only have two kidneys. Couldn’t get this price.”

Grandmother hissed.
“… Then did you sell someone else’s kidney?”

Su Lai: “… I’m a good person. I don’t do human organ trafficking.”

Grandmother: “Then… what did you sell?”

If not a kidney, then his body? After all, Su Lai was famously good-looking.

Su Lai: “Grandma, I’m a decent person.”
Grandmother wanted to say more. Su Lai cut her off.
“This is also decent money.”