The Return of Poppy and the Game’s Rules

Let’s set these matters aside for a moment. Poppy had committed such acts on numerous occasions.

When Xiang Qi was thirteen, Poppy had already vanished from her body.

Xiang Qi had initially believed she would never encounter Poppy again in this lifetime. While she privately savored a sense of vindication, a lingering feeling of loss also persisted.

Now, there was no need for such internal conflict. That woman was back!

“This is truly… an unexpected delight,” Xiang Qi murmured, propping her head up, her face a mask of utter despair.

Heaven knew what fresh chaos this woman would unleash upon her return. Crucially, when it came to control over their shared body, Xiang Qi was vastly inferior to Poppy. One moment of carelessness, and she could find herself locked away in a ‘dark room.’

Who could possibly endure that?

All the previous inexplicable anomalies now made perfect sense. Poppy was undoubtedly behind them.

The subsequent surveillance footage clearly corroborated this. The girl displayed no intention of concealment, openly revealing all her actions on screen.

While Poppy might be eccentric, her devotion to Xiang Qi was undeniably profound.

****

“Cough, cough…”

Xiang Qi averted her gaze from the monitor, her delicate face flushed with an unnatural blush as she closed the video.

Since matters had come to this, complaining served no purpose. It was better to focus on finding a solution; the game was clearly more important than Poppy.

After all, if Poppy caused trouble, others would suffer. If the game caused trouble, she herself would be in distress. Xiang Qi was perfectly capable of calculating such simple equations. Having resolved that issue, she refocused her attention on the previously mentioned file.

[Meow Meow So Cute: Damn it, why is Meow Meow being targeted by a large-scale instance dungeon? Meow Meow is so miserable, boo hoo. Is there any big shot willing to carry Meow Meow through?]

[Hundred Winds: Hopeless, just wait for death. Farewell.]

[Hundred Winds: I suggest digging a pit and burying yourself on the spot. That way, you can die with a bit more dignity.]

[Old General: Are large-scale instance dungeons difficult? Isn’t this something anyone with hands can do?]

[Meow Meow So Cute: ???]

[Hundred Winds: Is this truly the world of the big shots? I’m in love, I’m in love.]

[Hundred Winds: People can’t be lumped together. I once almost had my head blown off by the game system in a fit of extreme rage.]

They truly were a bunch of ridiculous group members! As the conversation veered further off-topic, Miss Xiang, who had been secretly lurking, couldn’t help but massage her temples, concerned for her future life.

Was it still possible to leave the group?

Of course, she was only joking. Xiang Qi wasn’t so foolish as to draw conclusions based solely on this. Heaven knew if these ridiculous group members might just turn around and twist your head off to play soccer with it.

Discretion was key; it was always safer to maintain a low profile.

Effortlessly, she located the group files. Xiang Qi habitually clicked download, then opened a particular hard drive.

It was labeled ‘Study Materials’ and primarily contained textbooks Xiang Qi used for learning hacking, along with certain undisclosed small secrets. Secured with three layers of protection, it was exceptionally safe.

After saving the file there, Xiang Qi finally opened it and began to examine its contents.

“Let me see… I see… So that’s it… I think I understand.”

After several tens of minutes of study, Xiang Qi had a fundamental grasp of the content. The ‘big shot’ had called it basic knowledge, and indeed, these things were truly foundational.

It merely provided a simple introduction to the game, lacking any deeper, more profound information.

Nevertheless, this was sufficient. At the very least, it gave a rough understanding of the game to a complete novice player, preventing them from falling headfirst into an obvious pitfall.

Furthermore, they were strangers; their willingness to share this much was already a kindness. What right did she have to demand more?

Moreover, the information revealed that even members of the same team were in a subtle competitive relationship. If they encountered each other in the game, they might very well find themselves on opposing sides, locked in a struggle for life and death.

The intelligence contained a significant amount of useful information, proving to be a timely boon for Xiang Qi.

The game’s origins were untraceable. No one knew its true purpose; perhaps it was a playground set up by the gods, or a gambling den for devils from hell. None of that mattered.

What mattered was that the game could grant people eternal life.

The moment a player was chosen by the game, they were no longer purely human. All players’ bodies seemed to have been put on pause by the game, no longer experiencing natural aging.

Aside from unnatural deaths, they were essentially exempt from the threat of mortality. This was the immortality countless people desperately sought – provided they could survive round after round of games.

As Xiang Qi had previously speculated, death was a common occurrence in the game. Many times, the game would deliberately pit players against each other to create conflict.

Alternatively, it would directly manipulate the natural environment, striving to minimize the number of survivors in each game.

Yet, the game never created an unwinnable situation, always adhering to a strict law of balance. No matter how unsolvable a situation appeared, there was always a glimmer of hope.

Hunting, Survival, Exploration, Module, Confrontation, Reality, and Composite – these were the basic modes of the game. The first five were more common, and their difficulty typically wasn’t excessively high.

The latter two were rarer, generally more challenging, and usually ended in a team wipe. The scale of each game was also variable, roughly categorized into Small, Medium, Large, and Super Large, with a final World-Class instance dungeon, totaling five types.

Of course, this did not mean that smaller-scale games were necessarily easier. Scale represented difficulty to a certain extent; larger games were relatively more difficult, while some smaller games could be much harder than certain large-scale instance dungeons.

This was where luck played a crucial role.

Speaking of luck, one must mention how games were triggered. Aside from the first selection round, players were not forced into games but gradually encountered instance dungeons in their daily lives as time passed, becoming drawn into them.

There were many ways for game instance dungeons to be triggered. It might be that all players in a specific area at a particular time were simultaneously triggered.

It could also be that players who came into contact with a certain object were triggered at the same time, or even that a player met certain conditions while eating at home and was triggered along with others. It was full of strange and unpredictable variables.

The only certainty was that players who hadn’t participated in a game for a longer time were more likely to be selected. Players who stayed at home, avoiding external contact, not browsing strange videos, and not being curious about peculiar things, could effectively evade the triggering of the game system’s instance dungeons, extending this period as much as possible.

Perhaps this was a victory for the shut-ins?