Diary

Diary

He refused to give up and tapped several more times. The "Exit Game" button did not appear. Instead, a line of text surfaced.

[The Novice Protection Period has ended. The System defaults to assuming the player has agreed to enter the game. Player, please work hard to complete the closed-beta mission.]

Mu Sichen: "..."

He had thought the Novice Protection Period was time for players to get familiar with the game. He had not expected it to be the window for players to quit.

Mu Sichen badly wanted to rage helplessly and pound the screen a few times, but doing that would be meaningless. It would only waste stamina.

Years of experience as a paid gaming companion had taught Mu Sichen to control his emotions. After all, getting angry not only failed to solve problems with clients, it also escalated the conflict and resulted in him not getting paid.

Mu Sichen took a deep breath and pinched the corners of his mouth, making himself look as happy as possible.

No need to throw a tantrum. Life, like this scam of a game, was unreasonable to begin with.

When Mu Sichen was a college freshman, his parents had died in an accident. He was an only child with no brothers or sisters, and he no longer had any immediate blood ties binding him. He had never dated anyone. He did have a few close friends, and his other relatives treated him well, but everyone had their own life. Even if he suddenly vanished, the impact on other people would not be too great.

He was attached to the comfort of the real world and its many entertainments, but precisely because there were too many ways to entertain himself, he had no game he absolutely had to clear and no novel, anime, movie, or TV series whose ending he absolutely had to wait for.

It could be said that Mu Sichen was someone without many attachments.

He had also fantasized before that if one day, like in novels, he transmigrated to an unfamiliar world, he would probably be able to bear the discomfort of the change quickly and find a new reason to survive just as quickly.

Mu Sichen soon accepted the reality that he had very likely been swept up by some mysterious force and brought to a strange world. He needed to understand this world's situation as soon as possible, the way back to reality, and how to stay alive.

He wondered if, as a player who had crossed over, he had the ability to respawn or use save files.

He gripped the pickaxe tightly in one hand, on guard against any danger that might appear from the darkness. With the other hand, he tapped swiftly across the screen, checking what skills he might possess.

The personal info panel and function panel contained only his stats and skills. There were no save, load, respawn, or similar functions. The map he had seen earlier had also gone completely black. Only one small glowing dot showed his current location, while the rest of the map was entirely hidden.

Looks like all that effort memorizing the map just now wasn't wasted. At least I made full use of those ten minutes and got some information, Mu Sichen thought optimistically.

Only a few minutes had passed. While he had not forgotten the map yet, he had to write it down as soon as possible.

This lousy System did not seem to intend to give him any more prompts. He would have to find a way to explore the world himself.

When the walls had still been giving off light, Mu Sichen had swept a glance around the room. The little twenty-square-meter room was small but had all the essentials. A double bed stood against the wall by the window. Beside the bed was a cabinet with a desk, and opposite the cabinet hung a small television.

On the other side were a bathroom and a simple kitchenette. It was cramped, but enough for one person to make some simple food.

Mu Sichen remembered that several books had been left casually on the desk, along with a notebook, a few pens, and a flashlight.

Although a feeling of being watched came from the darkness, Mu Sichen did not think he would die that easily. This was the starter village, after all. The difficulty would not be too high. Even if there was danger, it ought to be the sort that a pickaxe could handle.

Most importantly, the game system had gone to the trouble of making a webpage, sending him a game pod, then using mysterious power to send him to this world. It probably had not done all that just to send him here to die.

If it wanted him dead, it could have killed him when he lay down in the game pod.

The game system had gone to all this trouble to get him here and had even issued a mission. Its goal was for him to carry out the closed-beta mission. If he died the moment he entered the game, that would clearly be too much of a waste of resources.

For the reasons above, Mu Sichen inferred that at least inside this room, he was safe. Even if he encountered danger, it would fall within a solvable range.

Holding the pickaxe, he carefully moved a few steps. The feeling of being watched was still there, but he reached the desk without any risk.

Mu Sichen felt around until he found the flashlight. After pressing the switch, he discovered it was actually a high-powered flashlight, the kind that could temporarily blind someone if shone straight into their eyes.

After he touched the flashlight, a mechanical voice sounded in his mind: "Item acquired: 'Flashlight.'"

When Mu Sichen began moving, the System screen had gone dark automatically. He had not expected it could still issue prompts inside his mind.

Before his memory faded, he quickly opened the notebook to a blank page and sketched a simple map.

The largest town on the map had once glowed with white light, giving off a very safe feeling. Between the small town where Mu Sichen was and the town marked by the lit icon, there were still two other towns. He had no way to head there immediately.

Of course, that was not something he needed to consider at this stage.

Mu Sichen tore out the page with the map, stuffed it into his shirt pocket, and clipped a pen to his breast pocket.

As soon as he put them away, Mu Sichen sensed something off. He touched his pocket and found that the pen and map were both gone.

He did not panic. Instead, he calmed his mind and thought of the System panel. The screen appeared before him, and a new "inventory" button had been added to his personal profile. When he opened it, "an ordinary pen" and "a piece of paper with a map drawn on it" were lying right there in the inventory.

The inventory had ten slots. The paper and pen occupied two slots, so he could still put eight more items inside.

So he did have a bit of a cheat ability after all. Mu Sichen let out a breath.

As he felt his way through the game, his panic gradually ebbed, and a faint excitement rose in his heart.

After accepting the reality that he had been conned, he actually tasted a hint of fun in this game experience that had been moved into reality.

Mu Sichen tried stuffing the flashlight into his shirt pocket. Sure enough, the flashlight also entered the inventory without trouble. The System's description for the flashlight was: "a flashlight with considerable offensive power, unexpectedly suited to this small town."

Mu Sichen thought that he needed light to explore this dark room, and the flashlight appeared in his hand. To take an item from the inventory, he only needed to focus his mind on it for a moment. It was extremely convenient.

He had already flipped through the notebook earlier. It was just a blank notebook. Mu Sichen still had plenty of inventory space now, so he casually stuffed the notebook into the inventory as well. He could use it to record things, and if his inventory filled up later, he could throw the notebook away at any time.

He then opened the books on the desk. These books all discussed the importance of eyes, how to protect one's eyes, how one should not stay in the dark, and how one should maintain a bright environment. They looked rather like popular-science books.

But Mu Sichen had only read a few lines before he felt dizzy and nauseated. He quickly closed the book. For a while, his mind was filled entirely with words like "eyes eyes eyes." He became unable to think about anything else, and all that remained were the many ways to care for eyes.

A long while passed before Mu Sichen's ability to think gradually recovered.

By then, however, his memory of the map had been replaced by the contents of the book. He could not remember the map's appearance at all.

If he had not drawn the map right away, and had flipped through these books first instead, he would have forgotten the map forever.

There were so many traps in this game. Just casually flipping through a book could make a person lose their mind.

Mu Sichen became even more cautious. His nerves pulled taut, and his senses became abnormally sharp. Right now, even if only a single needle fell to the floor, he would hear it.

While staying alert, he continued searching the desk and found a small radio in the drawer.

With the earlier book as precedent, Mu Sichen did not rashly turn on the radio. If the moment he turned it on, it started playing "methods for protecting your eyes," that would be bad.

After finishing his search of the desk, Mu Sichen did not hurry to open the window or leave the room. He needed to gather information as quickly as possible.

There was not much dust in the room, and there were signs that someone had lived here. Even if the owner might no longer be around, it could not have been very long ago.

According to game convention, one had to search the starter village thoroughly no matter what.

Mu Sichen worked up his courage and felt around the bed beside the desk. Under the pillow, he found a diary.

He hesitated for a moment, but still opened the diary. He remained alert the entire time, intending to close the diary the instant he felt dizzy.

Fortunately, the diary did not drive Mu Sichen out of his mind, but what it recorded made his heart jolt.

"I drew the curtains and locked myself in the room. I don't dare let in even a bit of light. This has made me lose my sense of time. I don't know how many days this has gone on, or how many more days it will last.

"Even in the dark, I always feel like someone is watching me. Why? I have already smashed every mirror in the room. Why is there still a gaze?

"Food is almost gone. I am nearly going mad. Every day, people come to knock on the door and demand that I recite all kinds of required knowledge. Gradually, I have begun to think joining them would not be a bad thing.

"No one talks to me. Even the survivors I could still contact at first have gone somewhere unknown. 'Daylight' is getting longer and longer, while 'Night' is getting shorter and shorter. Will 'Night' disappear one day?

"Now, the only thing supporting me and keeping me alive is this broadcast. I cannot give up. I have to hold out here and wait for Qin Zhou to save us.

"Qin Zhou, Qin Zhou, Qin Zhou, when will you come?

"I am so hungry. I ate a book.

"The eyes are the windows to the soul. Eyes are so important. How can I stay in darkness all the time? I need to spend more time in bright places. That is good for my eyes. It is so bright outside. I want to go out..."

After seeing that line, Mu Sichen decisively closed the diary.

Although the final line of the diary was not as unbearable as the contents of the books, Mu Sichen still felt a slight discomfort. If he kept reading, his mind would definitely be affected.

From the diary, Mu Sichen obtained a great deal of information.

This place was dangerous, and the brighter it was, the more dangerous it became. The source of the danger was not light, but eyes, or perhaps gazes.

Knowledge related to eyes would throw people into mental disorder, even madness. And content written by someone who had gone mad could also make people lose their minds.

Do not meet the gaze of a certain eye, or do not fall within a certain eye's line of sight.

Mu Sichen took out the notebook and wrote down what he had inferred, emphasizing the two words "eyes" and "gaze."

It was very possible that, while unprepared, he might accidentally see related content, causing mental confusion and the loss of some key information. At that point, the contents recorded in the notebook would be crucial.

The diary also mentioned a person named Qin Zhou. Before the diary owner went mad, they seemed to have relied on the name "Qin Zhou" to maintain their rationality.

On the diary's cover was a string of numbers that looked like a broadcast frequency.

After considering it for a moment, Mu Sichen decided to trust this information.

He tuned the radio to the frequency recorded in the diary. At the same time, he did not forget to aim the pickaxe at his own head. Once his mind became abnormal, his hand would naturally loosen around the long handle of the pickaxe, and the pickaxe would strike him on the head.

Although it would hurt badly and might injure him, it would help him stay calm, keeping him from going mad like the diary owner.

With solemn gravity, Mu Sichen pressed the radio's play button.

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Author's Note:

The diary owner: I went mad, but at least I was happy!

Mu Sichen: Exactly. What decent person keeps a diary anyway!