The Black Bamboo Forest received him with damp air and the rot-sweet stench of wild mushrooms decomposing into the earth below. Behind the shadow of a moss-covered river boulder, Li Wei hid. Curled up like a sewer rat that had just barely outrun the hunting dogs. His breathing was still ragged, but his hands were busy doing something that would make any ordinary person gag.
In his left palm lay a severed human finger, already turning blue. On that stiff digit, Zhao's Spatial Ring still sat with an air of entitlement, its sapphire gem pulsing faintly — defiant against the dark.
"Come on... open..." Li Wei hissed.
He pressed the tip of his trembling index finger to the ring's surface, mimicking exactly the gesture he'd watched arrogant Swordsmen perform a hundred times at the tavern.
BZZT!
A blue static discharge bit into his hand hard. A red UI blinked in the air with casual contempt.
[ACCESS DENIED: VITAL SIGNS NOT DETECTED.]
[ERROR: Qi Pattern Mismatch.]
"Damn it!"
Li Wei hurled the severed finger at the gravel. Even as a corpse, this "God" was still finding ways to inconvenience him. Without a pulse or the clean Qi flow of its original owner, this divine ring was nothing but a dead lump of locked metal.
Li Wei pressed his aching back against the cold stone. His stomach was twisting hard — a miserable cocktail of hunger, blood-nausea, and the lingering bruises from Zhao's beating. His ring finger had blistered badly from the electric shock. He needed medicine. He needed food.
His eyes fixed on the ring sitting in the dirt.
"It's just a physical object," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Can't open it with a key... I'll open it with force."
Li Wei crawled along the dry riverbank, running his hands across the ground until he found a chunk of river stone roughly the size of an infant's head. Heavy. Dense. Rough. He set the sapphire ring on a flat stone as his execution block.
He raised the stone high.
CLANG!
The crack of metal on rock rang out sharp through the silent forest. The ring didn't dent so much as a fraction. The sapphire only glowed brighter — as if furious at having its dignity insulted by a low-level NPC.
[WARNING: DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE UNSTABLE!]
Li Wei didn't care. He raised the stone again.
CLANG!
A hairline fracture appeared across the gem's face. A strange wind began tearing out of the gap — sucking dust, pebbles, and dry bamboo leaves into the ring like a leaking supernatural vacuum.
[WARNING: SPATIAL BREACH DETECTED! DETONATION IN 3... 2...]
"Spit out what's inside, you piece of—!"
Li Wei brought the stone down a third time with everything he had left.
CRACK — BOOM!
Not a fire explosion. Pure concussive pressure. Like a massive invisible balloon detonating directly in front of his face. Li Wei was thrown through the air. THUD! His back cracked against a bamboo stalk. His ears rang a long, hopeless note.
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Tink! Clang! Crash!
A rain of foreign objects fell from the night sky.
The ring's dimensional storage had ruptured completely. Its contents were violently expelled, showering down across a five-meter radius around Li Wei.
Coughing, Li Wei wiped the dust from his eyes and crawled forward. The scene in front of him was a masterclass in Player economic tragedy.
[High-Grade Health Potion (Shattered)]
Thick glowing red liquid pooled in the mud, hissing quietly as it seeped into the earth. At the auction house, this might have fetched enough to buy a village and everyone in it. Now it was just expensive mud.
[Steel Sword +1 (Broken)]
Snapped clean in two. Blade warped. Useless.
[Love Letter to NPC "Xiao Hua"]
A pink perfumed sheet of paper drifted down and landed directly in Li Wei's lap. Inside, a verse of embarrassingly flowery poetry in Zhao's handwriting. Li Wei crumpled it without hesitation and flicked it into the dry riverbed. "Garbage."
[Luxury Silk Robe (Torn)]
Fine fabric shredded apart by the dimensional blast, scattered sadly across the wet ground.
"What kind of lottery is this..." Li Wei let out a dry, bitter laugh, staring at his filthy hands. "It's all junk."
But he didn't stop. The scavenger instincts honed into him over years took over. He sifted through the wreckage with bare hands, separating the lethal glass shards from the bent scrap metal.
And buried inside that graveyard of ruined luxury, he found exactly what he needed most.
First: a wax-paper parcel, badly dented, but its contents still sealed tight.
[Dried Beef Jerky]
Li Wei tore it open and shoved the hard jerky into his mouth. He chewed frantically. Salty, spicy, and profoundly good. His eyes nearly welled up — purely from the relief of having something in his stomach at last.
Second: a small round tin canister.
[Basic Healing Salve]
Intact. Li Wei pried off the lid — a sharp herbal smell hit his nose immediately. He spread the green paste thick over his blistered fingers and the gash along his cheek. The searing pain vanished on contact, replaced by a cool, settling calm.
Third: an unsheathed dagger with no scabbard.
[Hunter's Dagger (Durability: 80/100)]
Plain. No grinning dragon engravings, no gaudy gemstone inlays on the handle. But the steel was ground to a clean edge and its balance point was exactly right — many times more lethal than a shard of broken pottery. Li Wei tucked it behind the cloth of his belt.
He was just about to stand when his foot kicked two small black spheres that had been rolling quietly under a banyan root. Heavy. Ice cold.
[ITEM: SMOKE BOMB]
[DESCRIPTION: Creates a dense fog with a 10-meter radius for 30 seconds. Useful for breaking monster aggro.]
A coward's weapon. A tool built purely for running, not for winning.
Perfect.
Li Wei tucked both spheres carefully into his deepest pocket.
He turned to leave. Then the corner of his eye caught a torn scrap of paper that had slipped from Zhao's notebook — wet with mud, but the ink hadn't run. It wasn't Zhao's messy handwriting. It was clean printed type, like a page ripped from a Beginner's Guide.
[BEGINNER'S TIP: AGGRO MECHANICS & NPCs]
"Remember, Player! In this world, all native inhabitants (NPCs) are color-coded in your System."
RED: Active Enemy.
YELLOW: Neutral. (Will not attack unless provoked.)
GREEN: Ally / Quest Giver.
"PRO TIP: Don't waste your time and stamina watching out for Yellow NPCs. Your Danger Sense will not detect them until they actually land a hit that deals damage to you. Think of them like walking trees or furniture."
Li Wei's breath stilled in the air. His eyes locked onto that last paragraph.
The question that had been gnawing at him finally had an answer.
Why hadn't Zhao reacted until the very last second back at the tavern? Why hadn't a Level 25 Player's instincts triggered when Li Wei — silently gripping a weapon — was already crouched beneath his feet?
Not because Li Wei moved without sound. Not because Li Wei was stronger.
But because in Zhao's System, the name "Li Wei" glowed yellow — a harmless environmental prop. As static and ignorable as a wooden table or a worn-out chair.
A slow, crooked smile spread across Li Wei's mud-and-dried-blood-caked face. Utterly cold. Deeply calculated.
This wasn't just useful information. This was his weapon of mass destruction.
As long as he kept his true killing intent sealed off and unreadable — as long as he kept performing the role of the stupid, trembling, obediently bowing NPC — he was, quite literally, invisible to their gods' radar.
'Think of them like walking trees or furniture, huh?' Li Wei thought with quiet contempt.
"Fine," he murmured, folding the scrap hard and pressing it flat against his chest, over the beat of his heart. "Then I'll be a very sharp rock."
He scooped up a handful of wet mud from the ground and spread it evenly across his face and throat. This was no longer just physical camouflage for hiding in the forest. This was a costume he was putting on with full, deliberate intention.
He wasn't a bloodthirsty killer. He was just an unfortunate NPC who happened to be passing by.
And that was exactly how he was going to kill every last one of them.
