The hot sun blazed down, and sweat soaked through to my back.
By the time Huai Shi came to his senses, he was standing on the playground, with continuous "hei ha" sounds coming from behind him, as if he was performing some kind of radio calisthenics with the guy opposite him.
Before he could react, a foot kicked at him from behind, and a muscular man in a tank top pointed at him and cursed, "Chen Bo, you wimp! Didn't you eat?"
After speaking, the man pushed his opponent aside and got ready to spar, "Come on, let's practice."
Huai Shi peered over his shoulder only to see a slogan on the wall behind him.
Sweat more in peacetime, bleed less in wartime.
Before he could react again, his body seemed to have its own movements, charging straight towards the muscular man, no, the instructor in front of him.
Bang!
A punch to seal the door.
Huai Shi's vision went black, pain throbbing.
"Again!" the instructor beckoned Chen Bo with a hook of his finger.
Only now did he realize that he seemed to be in a bizarre state of possession, passively feeling this body's feedback like a ghost at his back.
It felt like he was in a daze, as if dreaming, yet the only real thing was the pain, which didn't lessen one bit.
Bang!
Another trip and joint lock, Huai Shi felt his face smash into the ground.
"Again!"
Bang!
"Again!"
Bang!
…
The scene was changing constantly, and among those fragmented dream sequences, he seemed to be repeatedly tortured by several instructors in varied ways.
It was as if they were specifically targeting the unlucky soul he had possessed – if his movements weren't precise, they'd beat him up, if his response was slow, another beating, a beating before meals, and yet another after starting training.
Eating, sleeping, and beating up Chen Bo…
Among the stench of body odor and feet, Huai Shi had completely abandoned all hope.
Not until Chen Bo could barely hold two rounds with several instructors using military boxing, evolving from being a complete noob to a slightly bigger noob, did he get expelled for fighting with idle society members during police training…
He had become the new idle society member!
It was truly a cause for celebration, Huai Shi was almost in tears - finally, he no longer had to be beaten up.
What the hell was this?
Had he accidentally acquired some kind of super getting-beaten-up system?
His ensuing experiences were indescribable, his identity constantly shifting within the shattered nightmares. From being a trainee brutalized by the instructor's military boxing to a small-time thug wielding a knife in the scorching heat, then he became a gatekeeper squatting at the door to watch for the police running anti-prostitution and illegal operation raids; following that, he turned into Dead Turtle Public, greeting guests every night to view the ladies, and in the end, became a balding middle-aged man attending meetings...
This guy really loved meetings.
Study meetings, symposiums, inspection meetings, field trips, report meetings… He seemingly devoted his limited energy to endless meetings…
All those fragmented pieces kept piling up, like a rickety tower, layer upon layer until they reached their limit, and then collapsed with a thunderous crash, fragmenting into thousands of pieces again.
Huai Shi's consciousness was pulled and torn apart along with it, countless versions of himself running parallel in countless nightmares, trapped in an endless cycle.
It was like a computer assembled for 150 yuan hubristically trying to run the workload of a galactic computer, and finally, the intensely operating brain seemed to rub flames from the inside of his skull, burning everything to ashes.
All the nightmares shattered violently.
Huai Shi opened his eyes, panting heavily, sweat dripping from his face, sliding down the armrest of the chair and falling onto the wet floor.
The wall clock continued to move slowly.
It had only been five minutes since he closed his eyes.
He had been beaten nearly ninety times, gotten into dozens of fights, been sent to the hospital several times, been on leave for hundreds of days, sent girls with scant clothing into pink rooms a thousand times... and attended countless meetings.
It was truly a one-stop social experience.
…
"Truly... hell..." Huai Shi mumbled dully, unable to support himself, he slid from the chair.
In his grogginess, he closed his eyes.
Might as well let me die...
For a moment, he seemed to see his future miserable life and wished from the bottom of his heart for it to end.
Then, it became like all the wishes he had made before.
—Improbable to be fulfilled.
.
.
When he opened his eyes, it was the morning of the next day.
He was still lying on the floor, but his body felt much more comfortable, as if he had taken some kind of miraculous elixir.
Soon he saw the IV needles stuck in his arms—a saline solution and a glucose solution...
"You awake?"
A raven's head suddenly popped out from an angle, cheerfully congratulating, "We've cured your ailment of seeing everyone as pigeons!"
"…Thank you so much."
"Doctors care for the hearts of parents; don't worry about it."
The raven flapped its wings, flew over to the table, and sat down, cocking its legs. One of its wings was holding a cigarette that came from who knows where, and it lit up with practiced ease. It smoked in a way that screamed streetwise, except the smoke dissipated from beneath its feathers, which looked incredibly odd.
"So, did you gain anything?" the raven asked.
"Does waking up alive count?"
Huai Shi grudgingly got up from the ground, and not daring to remove the IV, he carefully settled down into the chair.
It was then that he realized he was no longer the person he had been before—he had become a man with an attribute panel.
He hurriedly opened the Book of Fate to examine his data on the title page.
Ignoring the inexplicable "Stress Period" label at the front and the empty slots for Stigma and Miracle Imprint, the skills section below was straightforward and easy to understand.
His general knowledge, representing education and common sense, was still embarrassingly at Level 3—having not even graduated from high school, he'd returned some knowledge to his sports teacher.
The art category, representing his cello skills, was at Level 6, which made him somewhat proud. It had reached the professional domain, and moving further up would require ninety-nine percent perspiration and that crucial one percent of talent.
The inexplicable skill "Death Perception" remained greyed out.
It felt more and more like some strange game.
Was he expected to spend real money on it?
Huai Shi felt a vague worry within him.
After utilizing it the previous night, Huai Shi had finally come to a preliminary understanding of its classification. In the Book of Fate's rules, only abilities that were skillfully mastered and could be used at will would be recognized as skills.
For ordinary people, the limit that their skills could reach through learning and continuous practice was Level 10, the highest level.
The initial levels of most skills were relatively easy, but like the manipulative design of unscrupulous game producers, climbing higher required hundreds of times more effort even for a slight improvement.
And while Level 10 might be the end for some, for others, it might just be the beginning.
Huai Shi was acutely aware of this.
It was like comparing two equally full-scoring tests.
Levels sometimes did not mean much; they were just a convenient measure provided by the Book of Fate for him to gauge himself.
Feeling the gravity of the long road ahead, Huai Shi continued to read. To his surprise, he discovered he had gained several new skills overnight.
[Melee·Basic Military Boxing Level 4]
[Investigation Level 4]
And a somewhat comical [Illegal Group Operation Level 3]
Then...
"Holy shit?"
Raven exclaimed, "How did your Copywriting skill get to Level 6 already?"
Huai Shi couldn't help but roll his eyes, "Bullshit. Try having hundreds of meetings in a row and then writing up hundreds of meeting minutes and reflections!"
Other skills like military boxing, Huai Shi did not have a deep experience in; he could only learn by passively getting beaten up and observing.
But it was only when writing those hundreds of records and reflections that he truly shed blood and sweat over every word and felt the bitterness of each line.
This night, his greatest gain was not learning how to fight or how to look out for the police… but how to pad out his word count in documents!
Huai Shi had even surpassed his teacher, able to seamlessly blend an entire Pacific Ocean into his updates without a trace, and precisely segment it every three thousand words to avoid being shortchanged.
"You should record this segment well, and follow this format in the future when you're writing records,"
He tapped the Book of Fate in his hands and smugly crossed his legs as he spoke, "If I were to write a novel like this, I'd make a fortune."
"Not a single novelist has a good ending," Raven ominously said beside his ear, "Many of them start losing their hair before middle age, like that Hu What, that Guo What, and that wandering Army What..."
Huai Shi shuddered.
They were not to be trifled with; better leave it at that.
"But coming back to the point..."
Huai Shi flipped open the book to its last pages, where the appendices were. It seemed the records there had lost all value, with most of the writing faded away, leaving only a spartan chart.
"Why would these people's memories appear in the book?"
"Oh, don't you know?"
Raven seemed surprised, speaking calmly, "The Book of Fate is now bound to you and will only record things related to you.
The reason these fragments were collected, I guess, is that they all died because of you, right?"
"..."
Huai Shi was stunned.
"Ah, there are actually more than seventy of them,"
Raven said lightly, "Unfortunately, only four or five had active enough Source Substance to leave behind the most vivid memories from their minds. The number of people today with the potential for awakening is dwindling, you should be thankful to them."
"..."
Huai Shi inhaled sharply, feeling goosebumps all over his body. He instinctively leaned back further to distance himself from Raven and the book.
But he quickly realized that throwing the book and Raven into the seabed would likely be futile.
He finally understood why the military had abruptly taken him for relentless questioning.
Perhaps it was because the people from yesterday... were all dead?
All of them were dead.
Only he remained.
The mere thought sent shivers down his spine, as if the blood-stained Ferocious Ape was already standing behind him, sneering at him.
After a long time, Huai Shi finally calmed down and managed a dry laugh, "Is it really that exaggerated?"
"Yes, it is that exaggerated, Huai Shi, the world is just like this. It isn't as stable as you imagined. This sky, this earth, this country, this city... they hide much more than what you have seen.
—Truths that must never be known, borders that ordinary people must never enter, and a Hell that no one should ever glimpse.
If you remain forever within the confines of this narrow sanctuary of the current circumstances, you will never learn the truth."
So saying, she admired the stupefied look on the young man's face.
In a gentle voice, she asked:
"—Huai Shi, do you yearn for a soul?"