Under the night sky, a small house stood on the wasteland, brightly lit.
Inside the house, a tall young man stood by the window, holding a watering can, watering the potted flowers on the windowsill, humming a song lazily, with a comfortable posture.
The golden retriever with smooth fur had nothing to do, walked slowly to his feet, sat down properly, rubbed his head against his calf to act like a baby, and the tail behind him slapped the ground.
The young man’s eyelashes drooped slightly, he glanced down at it, his thin lips curled up, and his narrow phoenix eyes showed a hint of a smile.
That picturesque face also added a bit of warmth, making it look very approachable.
“What, are you bored?” the young man said, his voice warm and pleasant.
He put down the watering can, and his slender and beautiful hand covered the golden retriever’s head and rubbed it.
The young man faced the inky night outside the window.
The light from the room projected out of the window, drawing a small bright space on the grass outside the window.
And in the night in the distance, something seemed to be shaking, approaching rapidly.
The young man didn’t raise his head, as if he didn’t notice anything, he just rubbed the dog’s head while muttering to himself: “I seem to be a little bored recently.”
As soon as the voice fell, something that jumped out of the night finally entered the light outside the window.
“Bang” a loud bang——
A human face was plastered heavily on the window, and the whole window trembled!
The young man paused, raised his head, and looked.
The human face stuck to the window was close at hand.
The man’s eyes were wide open, and bloodshot eyes filled the whites of his eyes.
Sweat made his hair stick to his forehead, and the panic and crazy escape made his face almost bloodless.
He opened his mouth wide, panting desperately, his pupils trembling slightly as he stared at the young man in the room.
It was a very strange thing to meet such a calm and clean young man in such a place and at such a time. The man’s eyes even seemed to think that he was hallucinating.
But immediately afterwards, his eyeballs rolled again, and he glanced at the door of the house next to him dully, as if he had finally found a life-saving rope, and his face suddenly burst into light.
But just as he stretched out his arm towards the door.
A huge beast claw, big enough to cover an entire adult’s body, came silently from behind!
Thick blood splattered on the window.
The living person a second ago has been completely deformed by the squeeze at this moment, like a piece of skin stuck to the window, with unwillingness and despair still on his face at the last moment, slowly sliding down.
And the young man, Xia Jing, put away his smile and looked at the dirty human-shaped bloodstain on the window with a blank expression.
In the night, the giant beast outside the house stood quietly.
The golden retriever seemed to have sensed something, stood up restlessly, tilted its head, thought for a while, and then cautiously took a step back.
——A pair of huge animal pupils quietly appeared outside the small window, peeping in.
One eye of the behemoth was half the size of an adult.
It lay down outside the window, staring straight at Xia Jing in the room.
The sharp, one-meter-long beast teeth were almost close to the window, and it seemed that with a little force, the fragile glass could be bitten to pieces instantly, and the young man in the room could easily be bitten in half.
Appetite seems to have given it countless fantasies, and saliva dripped down the corner of its mouth.
Its beast claws impatiently grabbed the ground under its feet, but just as it opened its mouth, exhaled a puff of hot air, and wanted to put its imagination into practice.
The young man in the room raised his eyes slightly, moved his gaze away from the bloodstain, and looked directly at it.
The behemoth froze in place.
In the young man’s beautiful phoenix eyes*, there was no trace of emotion anymore.
*(They present a noble air and is a symbol of beauty. Mono-lidded with long and narrow tails. An interesting thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/gj869y/how_to_describe_asians_specifically_their_eyes/)
The rest is only coldness, as cold as a glacier for thousands of years, so cold that it seems to freeze the entire wasteland.
…
…
The giant beast’s pupils disappeared from the window.
With heavy footsteps, the behemoth turned and walked slowly back into the darkness…
The golden retriever swallowed, and looked at Xia Jing.
The scenery outside the window began to change.
The wasteland disappeared, replaced by the summer rainforest, and the screams from afar could be faintly heard.
Immediately afterwards, the rainforest also disappeared, and what appeared outside the window was a stone wall close to it, and I don’t know if it came to some mysterious cave.
Then the stone wall also disappeared, replaced by deserts, snowfields, the surface of the moon, and green wall mazes…
This house began its daily drifting in this treacherous world.
When it stopped again, Xia Jing picked up a rag, opened the door with a blank expression, walked outside, and began to wipe the glass displeasedly.
Obviously in a very bad mood.
The golden retriever was lying on the spot, watching Xia Jing cleaning unhappy, its tail flicked again, as if it was laughing secretly.
This time, they stayed in an indoor corridor, and the door of the house was directly embedded in the wall of the corridor.
Xia Jing didn’t wipe it for a while, when there was a rush of footsteps not far away, and a man and a woman appeared at the corner of the corridor.
They ran forward desperately while looking back frequently.
When they turned their heads and suddenly saw Xia Jing, they screamed out in fright and stopped abruptly.
The man was about 1.9 meters tall, very big, like a hill, while the woman was hiding behind him, both of them were panting, and they were terrified.
The woman said to Xia Jing in a daze: “Ah, you…you…were you with us?”
The man immediately took a step back vigilantly: “No, I don’t remember this guy being among the group of people who entered this place with us at the beginning!”
The woman was sluggish for a moment, her face turned pale: “Then it’s, it’s a monster again?”
The man cursed, and just as the two were in a dilemma, not knowing where to escape, they noticed lines of words appearing on the snow-white wall beside them.
“There are still four double rooms left today!”
“Pay 200g of monster body blocks with an energy density of 100 or more per person, and you can stay in a safe house for 24 hours!”
“The scan is complete, both of you have monster body blocks that meet the standards, if you decide to stay, please meditate on the items you intend to pay!”
The couple were stunned, not knowing what was going on now.
And Xia Jing finally finished wiping all the blood.
He turned sideways, his eyebrows slightly raised.
The arrival of the new guest made him feel better because of the dirty blood stains.
“Welcome to the safe house. This is a chaotic realm between dungeons. Monsters cannot enter here without permission. It is an absolutely safe place.”
“If you want to enter the safe house,” Xia Jing smiled gracefully, “please pay accordingly.”
Li Jianqiang and Zhang Xue are a couple.
When the two followed Xia Jing into the safe house, they were still dubious.
They have two dragon horns in their pockets. This is what they picked up with the “old players” after they broke into this terrifying place and escaped from death several times – it is also the only monster body block they carry with them – they didn’t expect it to come in handy at this time.
Xia Jing took the two to the front desk.
There is a small electronic scale on the front desk.
The dragon horns that disappeared from the pockets of the two just now through meditation are now lying quietly on the front desk.
Xia Jing was in a good mood at the moment, picked up a dragon horn and put it on the scale, and said in a gentle voice: “A dragon horn has an energy density of just 100, 202g, one dragon horn per person, and you two can have a rest in the safe house for 24 hours.”
Li Jianqiang and Zhang Xue stared at the electronic scale, which was obviously not a product of the human world, and they didn’t know what to ask for a while.
It was Li Jianqiang who spoke first, he looked out the window vigilantly: “Can monsters really not come in here?”
As soon as he finished speaking, the corridor outside the window disappeared, and they seemed to have come to the bottom of the sea in an instant, and a school of fish swam past the window… swam by?
Li Jianqiang was taken aback.
“Once the door of the safe house is closed, it will start to drift irregularly, but don’t worry, when you go out, it will automatically send you back to your instance.” Xia Jing put away the two dragon horns with satisfaction.
Changing the subject, he said with a smile: “If you still have extra monster body blocks that meet the standards, you can upgrade the room type or extend the rest time. Here is the menu, you can consider it.”
Slender fingers opened a menu and tapped on it.
Zhang Xue subconsciously glanced at it.
Li Jianqiang frowned.
The menu lists what kind of room type they can stay in, what kind of package they can enjoy, and how many hours they can stay in total by paying how much energy density and how many grams of monster body blocks…
However, the fact is that this is the first time he and Zhang Xue have entered this terrifying world, and they haven’t even figured out many rules, let alone extra monster body blocks.
If it wasn’t for Zhang Xue’s flash of inspiration just now, and she followed the “old players” to pick up the dragon horns that fell off after the two monsters died, they wouldn’t even be able to enter this so-called safe house at this time…
Li Jianqiang actually didn’t care about any upgrade packages at all.
He watched with his own eyes as the strangely shaped monster stuck to the window, and before his heart could be lifted, the scenery outside the window changed again, obviously the house had drifted to other instances.
He swallowed, and finally recovered from the sixteen hours of escape.
Then, he erupted with anger.
He asked Xia Jing coldly: “What is this place, are you a human or a monster?”
Xia Jing finished registering the account, heard this question, smiled lightly, raised her eyes and asked:
“What do you think I am?”
The young man is really good-looking, this smile makes people feel a little distracted, and also makes Li Jianqiang and Zhang Xue’s hearts skip a beat.
Li Jianqiang came back to his senses, waved his arm, swept the menu down, grabbed Xia Jing’s collar across the front desk, and said through gritted teeth, “Don’t play tricks on me, are you human? ! Think carefully, monsters can’t grow like you, are you a staff member here?”
Zhang Xue was startled and hurried to stop Li Jianqiang.
However, her eyes were also full of fear when she looked at Xia Jing.
It’s all so weird.
They were just hanging out on an ordinary holiday when they encountered a car accident. They didn’t expect to enter this place called “Dungeon Game” in a daze, surrounded by a group of monsters.
Is this some unknown human experiment?
Or a space created by aliens?
They were completely confused, and they didn’t want to “rest” at all, they just wanted to leave this place immediately!
This young man is the only one they have met so far who seems harmless and willing to communicate with them…
Zhang Xue’s voice trembled: “Please, if you are an employee here, please ask your boss to let us go, okay? We will never call the police, just let us go…”
Xia Jing was wearing a white shirt, and looked like a gentle and refined young man.
Being grabbed by the collar by Li Jianqiang and shaking him, there was no disturbance on his face.
He raised his hand and clasped Li Jianqiang’s wrist.
Those slender and beautiful five fingers looked fragile and powerless, and Li Jianqiang didn’t take it seriously at all.
But the next second, he cried out in pain, quickly let go of his hand, covered his wrist, took two steps back, his heart beat wildly, and his face was astonished.
…This young man is too strong, just now he even felt that his wrist was about to be twisted off!
Xia Jing stood still, straightened his collar calmly, not feeling angry at Li Jianqiang’s behavior, of course he was not afraid, and he was not even impatient.
He just raised his eyelids and said with a half-smile, “Boss? There is no such thing in this place.”
Li Jianqiang and Zhang Xue were taken aback.
Zhang Xue said anxiously: “But, but your safe house…”
Xia Jing said in a gentle tone: “The moment I woke up, I was here, and the safe house was already here.”
Xia Jing has a good temper most of the time, and it is not easy to get angry.
He said almost gently: “So I’m very sorry, your question is also my question. I can’t answer you.”
Li Jianqiang and Zhang Xue wanted to ask something else, but Xia Jing continued.
He said in a brisk tone: “By the way, please remember the rules of the safe house.”
He pointed to a clock hanging on the wall behind him.
“First, please pay attention to the time yourself. If you don’t plan to renew, please remember not to delay until the 24 hours are full, because at that time the safe house will forcibly expel you, and you may face many unexpected situations.”
“If you want to leave the safe house early, you can approach the door. The safe house will return to your respective instance, allowing you to observe the situation outside and decide when to leave.”
“Second, the small supermarket inside the safe house provides several small props. If you need them, you can buy them yourself. The exchange items are still monster body parts.”
“Third,” Xia Jing said with a smile, “violence and filth are prohibited in the safe house, because I don’t like it.”
Li Jianqiang and Zhang Xue were dumbfounded.
Xia Jing had already walked out from behind the front desk, rolled up his sleeves, and asked naturally, “Are you hungry? What do you want to eat? Each person can enjoy three meals within twenty-four hours. Your room is the first one on the left after walking forward. You can just open the door and go in. If you don’t want to eat, you can also go back to your room to rest.”
Li Jianqiang opened his mouth, but Xia Jing’s attitude made him not know how to continue asking.
Finally, he said gloomily, “I have no appetite.”
Zhang Xue was silent for a moment, then compromised and said wearily, “…I, I want to eat noodles, any kind will do.”
Xia Jing glanced at her and smiled, “Okay, please wait a moment.”
…
When Xia Jing disappeared at the entrance of the kitchen, Li Jianqiang sneered, “You still have the appetite to eat?”
Zhang Xue sat down on the sofa dejectedly and mumbled, “…Who knows if it’s our last meal.”
Li Jianqiang’s expression changed, and he cursed, “Stop saying such unlucky things!”
He looked around the safe house vigilantly. This safe house was roughly estimated to be more than two hundred square meters. The place at the door was a small living room. On the left side of the aisle ahead was the kitchen, and on the right seemed to be the so-called small supermarket. Further ahead were four rooms. The entire safe house was tidy and clean. The flowers and plants placed by the window, the two goldfish in the small goldfish tank, and the golden retriever sitting in the corner wagging its tail and looking at them innocently… everything was full of life. A sense of security, a sense of life.
Li Jianqiang turned around again and looked out the window. He didn’t know which instance was outside the window. A group of players saw the safe house. Several of them were obviously veteran players who knew about the existence of the “safe house”, so they took the lead and rushed over ecstatically. But in the next second, cracks appeared in the ground beneath their feet, and in the terrifyingly open cracks, there were rows of fine teeth. It was actually a monster’s mouth… The players all fell into the mouth of the ground fissure, and the scenery outside the window changed again. Li Jianqiang was already covered in cold sweat. The warmth inside the safe house formed a sharp and ironic contrast with the hell outside.
Li Jianqiang couldn’t sit still for a moment when he thought about returning to that instance after 24 hours.
He went to the small supermarket to have a look. Rows of display shelves were arranged in the small supermarket, filled with a dazzling array of goods. All kinds of strange monster body parts and props were hung and placed on the shelves. There were teeth, sickles, eyeballs, and even bloody monster hearts… Li Jianqiang resisted the discomfort and took a closer look. Each prop had a small price tag underneath it, stating how many grams of monster body parts with how much energy density were needed to exchange it. His eyes flickered, and he tried to reach out and directly take the props from the shelf, but he couldn’t take them down at all. Without the exchange items, the small props seemed to be glued to the shelves with 502. Li Jianqiang’s heart was beating fast. He tried to use violence to forcibly take the items, but he heard a chuckle behind him, which almost made him jump up. Turning around abruptly, he saw Xia Jing’s slender figure flash past outside the small supermarket. Li Jianqiang swallowed, clenched his fists, gritted his teeth secretly, and walked out of the small supermarket.
…
Zhang Xue seemed to have given up asking Xia Jing anything. Her mind had been drained by fear and exhaustion, and she went back to her room to rest after eating the noodles. Li Jianqiang tiptoed around outside for a while, then came back and said, “That guy is definitely an employee of the boss behind this place! I just went to the kitchen to have a look, there are no ingredients there at all, the food you ate must have been teleported from somewhere else!”
Zhang Xue got up and listened to him. After sixteen hours of high-pressure escape, Li Jianqiang’s mental state was like a broken string. He paced back and forth in the room, speaking quickly, “This is definitely a man-made factory, all of this is man-made! As long as it is man-made, there must be a solution!”
Zhang Xue asked hesitantly, “What are you going to do?”
Li Jianqiang’s eyes were bloodshot, “…I’m going to tie that guy up! Even if we can’t leave this instance, at least we can always hide in this safe house!”
Zhang Xue opened her mouth and whispered, “But you also heard him say that when the time is up, this house will automatically drive us out.”
Li Jianqiang: “As long as we control him in our hands, his life will be in danger. Do you think this house will dare to drive us away?! Ha, and those props, damn it, they can’t be taken down at all. As long as that pretty boy is in our hands, what can’t we use here?!”
Zhang Xue felt that Li Jianqiang had completely gone crazy. She was almost going crazy too, but Xia Jing’s calmness gave her a chance to breathe and think. Zhang Xue tried to persuade him, “I always feel that the rules in this house are not that simple… And can’t you deal with him?”
Li Jianqiang said angrily, “Of course I can’t do it alone, what do you think I’m discussing with you?!”
Zhang Xue stepped back, “I think we’d better not fight against the store manager…”
Li Jianqiang stared straight at her, “He’s not a monster, what are you afraid of him? He’s just a little stronger!”
Zhang Xue shook her head and said dumbly, “This place is not a normal world at all, it can’t be inferred with common sense. I thought about it carefully just now, that store manager, he may not be a monster, but he may not be human either…”
Li Jianqiang had lost the ability to think. He only felt that every word he said was being refuted by Zhang Xue, and every idea was being denied by Zhang Xue. The mixture of irritability, anger, and fear made him lose his mind.
He grabbed Zhang Xue’s arm and said fiercely, “You hide behind me when you encounter anything, and ask me to protect you. Now I want you to help me, and this is how you treat me?!”
Li Jianqiang’s brute force shocked Zhang Xue. She said in disbelief, “How can you say that? I’m indeed not as strong as you, but I’ve also done a lot along the way. If it weren’t for me, you would have died with those people at the beginning… Without me, we wouldn’t be able to enter here now!”
Li Jianqiang laughed in anger, “So you’re saying I owe my survival to you?!”
“I, I didn’t mean that, I just meant that we both made it this far, it wasn’t just you alone,” Zhang Xue began to feel scared, “Let me go, are you crazy?”
“I am crazy! You still have the mood to eat noodles, but I can’t eat anything!” Li Jianqiang suddenly lifted her up and questioned coldly, “Do you think that pretty boy is a good person just because he looks good?”
“I didn’t think that!” Zhang Xue struggled and screamed, “Don’t forget, violence is not allowed in this place!”
These words completely provoked Li Jianqiang. He slapped her across the face, knocking Zhang Xue directly onto the bed, and said ferociously, “You’re using that pretty boy’s rules to threaten me—”
Before he could finish his words, an invisible force suddenly sucked Li Jianqiang out of the door of the double room.
Zhang Xue was dizzy from the slap, and only heard Li Jianqiang’s terrified howls amidst the ringing in her ears.
She was startled, shook her head, got out of bed and staggered out.
At some point, the safe house had returned to the instance they belonged to, the corridor they were familiar with.
The door was wide open, Li Jianqiang was facing outwards, and was thrown out like a piece of garbage.
—Flying straight towards the two-meter-tall humanoid monster with a huge dragon head, standing outside the safe house searching for prey, the same kind they had narrowly escaped from several times.
Zhang Xue froze in place, her pupils suddenly constricting.
Hearing the commotion, the humanoid monster outside turned its head and stared at Li Jianqiang who was flying towards it.
It seemed to ponder for a second, somewhat surprised that the prey would fall from the sky.
Then—
Its eyes lit up with a smile, and it suddenly opened its mouth wide, the corners of its mouth splitting to its temples.
With a crisp “crack”, accompanied by the clear sound of bones being bitten off, Li Jianqiang’s terrified expression froze on his face.
His feet left the ground, a row of teeth biting on his neck, his head limply tilted to one side.
Scarlet blood dripped onto the ground.
Zhang Xue’s legs went weak and she knelt on the ground.
She covered her mouth and widened her eyes.
The monster outside the safe house spat Li Jianqiang out of its mouth, its cold gaze passing over the living room and corridor of the safe house, greedily fixed on her.
Zhang Xue couldn’t make a sound, her whole body trembling, tears constantly pouring out, as if she had been immobilized, unable to move at all.
The lights in the living room of the safe house had long been turned off.
Slow footsteps came from the corner on the right.
The slender and handsome young man came to the living room and stood in the shadows.
Zhang Xue couldn’t see his face.
She could only feel that he seemed to have glanced outside.
Then, the young man’s gentle voice sounded in the darkness.
“Do you want to leave with him?”
An ordinary question.
But Zhang Xue trembled all over, as if falling into an ice cellar.
She shook her head vigorously.
She covered her mouth, sat on the ground, desperately moved back, shaking her head constantly.
“Then, Tuanzi*,” the young man seemed to have no other thoughts, just said gently, “close the door.”
*(dumpling)
The golden retriever got up in response, walked to the door, looked up at the blood-splattered monster outside the door, and raised its paw.
With a “bang”.
The door cut off Zhang Xue’s line of sight from the monster.
The safe house returned to darkness and tranquility.
___
The author has something to say:
Let Xia Xia make an appearance for everyone first~
Because it is an infinite stream novel, it is still mainly about going through instances. In the next chapter, Xia Xia will go into the instance to play.
Love you guys, chumi!
T/N: Author really just offed a cannon fodder in the first chapter, no mercy.
Support the translator: here
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