Wencheng, Bureau of Culture Special Office.
The night outside the window had deepened, the office was brightly lit.
"Knock knock knock~"
"Come in."
The young woman slumped over her desk lifted her head, her long black hair was tied into a high ponytail, revealing a delicate oval face.
A petite, beautiful, short-haired girl entered, shutting and locking the office door behind her.
The short-haired girl leaned in and whispered into the woman's ear:
"Team leader Li, there's a message from Zero..."
"He has gathered information on the target... additionally, after this, Zero is requesting to withdraw from undercover work."
The woman known as Team Leader Li was stunned, then she sighed in understanding: "True, Zero isn't an Apostle after all, doing this kind of undercover work, his life is in constant danger."
Li, the team leader, unraveled her ponytail, her lustrous hair fell smoothly, her delicate white fingers massaged her temples, showing signs of tiredness:
"Ah, we're a bit short-staffed... By the way, have any suitable candidates emerged from the ongoing interviews next door?"
The short-haired girl moved behind her chair, displacing Li's fingers to massage her: "There's someone called Lin Xun, he has a wealth of gaming experience, and his soul strength also meets the game requirements. After some guidance, he should be able to enter the game quickly."
"Should we recruit him directly?"
With a relishing sigh, Li closed her eyes, leaning back into the flat chest of the short-haired girl: "Observe him for a few more days..."
After massaging for a good while, the short-haired girl finally left the office.
...
Late at night, in an old rental room.
Lin Xun withdrew his hands from the keyboard, nodding with satisfaction as he looked at the screen.
"Good, the plot didn't go awry."
He clicked to publish the chapter, then he was done for the day!
He stretched lazily, his body creaking.
"4000 characters really are the human limit, the ancients did not deceive me."
After graduating, Lin Xun, like countless other workers, led a brutal 996 work schedule.
Ground down by life, he made the resolute decision to take the civil service exam, aiming for a clerical position in the Bureau of Culture.
Don't ask why, he just fancied the notion of being a deadbeat living a nine-to-five life, with weekends off.
After successfully passing the written exam, he attended an interview this morning.
Unexpectedly, the probable happened, judging from the interviewers' expressions, his interview had most definitely screwed up.
Luckily, he had a side job—writing web novels.
Though he was a failed writer, the meager manuscript fee still barely got him through life.
Lin Xun pulled out his phone and adeptly opened a game—King's Pesticide.
After finishing writing, of course, it's game time.
As for sleeping? A young man that doesn't stay up all night isn't a young man.
After a while, Lin Xun forcefully resisted the urge to throw his phone, quitting the game in bitterness.
With a succession of losses due to poor teamwork, despite getting SVP in every match he couldn't reverse the tides or single-handedly carry the game, and was continuously beaten down by the ELO mechanism.
"Let's change to a new game, if I keep playing King's Pesticide for my whole life, I'll never succeed!" Lin cursed and grumbled as he opened the app store.
The top of the game leaderboard was a new game he had never heard of— Book of Salvation.
Book of Salvation? I hadn't heard of any related promotions recently.
As a heavy gamer, Lin Xun was proficient in all types of games: mobile, PC, and console games. If any big game was about to be released, he would pre-order it in advance.
Without putting much thought to it, he clicked to download and install, then started the game.
A huge, magnificent book appeared on the phone screen.
The book cover was immensely splendid, probably made of pure gold, the dazzling golden light shimmering and rotating. Various colorful gems were embedded around it, with strange foreign letters engraved in the center.
An invisible hand flipped the book open...
The age-yellowed parchment filled with lines of inked words began to appear one by one.
[Preface]
[That place is the land called "Gaia", it's a rich homeland flowing with milk and honey, it's the Divine Kingdom that the legendary beings built.]
[In this place, the light of the gods shines everywhere.]
[However, nobody knew where or when, a book called The "Book of Salvation" subtly flowed through the world, the prophecy of the end of the world in the beautiful land began to spread widely, the natives fell into fear.]
[People tried to decipher the contents of The "Book of Salvation", attempted to find clues from it, in order to prevent the doomsday from coming.]
[Chapters recorded in the book tell of terrifying and diverse doomsdays. Ordinary people who read it, often lose their sanity, falling into madness.]
[Only those Chosen among thousands could enter the doomsday scenarios prophesied in the book, to explore the origins of the doomsdays.]
[They were regarded as saviors; they were called Apostles.]
[And you, are one of them!]
[Please create your soul mark.]
Is this a text-based game?
No impressive animated graphics, no touching background music, just lines of plain text appearing.
Lin Xun felt that this game could make it to number one on the chart must be due to legions of hired hands.
The only interesting point might be the part about "exploring various terrible and distinct doomsday scenarios".
He continued the game patiently.
[Please create your soul mark.]
An input box popped up on the screen asking for a game ID. Without thinking too much, Lin Xun entered his usual game username and pen name.
[Sword Casting Master]
[Soul mark created successfully!]
[Click to flip through to the next chapter.]
The pages rustled as they turned. The heavy book seemed to have no end...
[You have entered the Doomsday chapter.]
[Chapter 323]
[In a dilapidated church, a feeble wandering soul from another world gradually awakens.]
[The pure moonlight seeps through the broken dome of the church, vaguely revealing the oppressive thick clouds in the night sky. The chilling wind howls like the roar of a demon from the abyss.]
[Rookie apostle, feeble wandering soul, Sword Casting Master, you are awake.]
[The church seems to have recently undergone a fierce battle. The scene is a bloody mess, with tens of corpses strewn about the ground, most of them torn apart like rag dolls.]
[You look around and only find three relatively intact bodies.]
[The shell of a Guard Knight, a sturdy young knight, his cross sword and chest armor torn apart by gruesome claw marks, his guts spilled open. He clearly didn't die a peaceful death. Compatibility: 88%]
[The shell of a black-robed priest, an elderly priest stooped in stature, clutching a prayer book with a trail of crimson at the corner of his mouth. A splatter of internal organs lies in front him on the ground, suggesting his body is hollowed out. Compatibility: 79%]
[The shell of a choir nun, a young and beautiful nun, drenched in blood and grime from the waist down. Her face is contorted in despair and trails of bloody tears run down her eyes. The horrific image reminds you of the Holy Maiden you saved from the goblin's cave. Compatibility: 72%]
[Apostle, please choose the shell you wish to possess. Of course, you may also choose to refuse and use the feeble body of the wandering soul to explore and adventure.]
The descriptive texts of this game, why are they so eerie?
Lin Xun frowned slightly in thought.
"I suppose this is the stage to select my initial class." He surmised, "Using the wandering soul to possess a shell is a fairly novel beginning. But what does the mentioned compatibility signify..."
Based on the literal meaning, Lin Xun guessed it might refer to the compatibility between the wandering soul and the shell.
He always chose the Mage class when playing games. Of these three shells, a Knight, a Priest, and a Nun likely correspond to the classes of warrior, mage, and cleric respectively.
Lin Xun decisively chose the shell of the black-robed priest.
[Your soul's compatibility with this shell is less than 80, possession failed.]
Out of the three shells, only the Knight's compatibility is above 80, reaching 88.
"Only the physical class is available and yet, they set out three shells to pick from? Even zombies would sigh in disappointment upon seeing the brains of this game's designer."
With no other choice, Lin Xun had to select the Knight.
[The feeble wandering soul holds possession over the shell of the Guard Knight.]
[You have gained control over this unfamiliar shell, which holds residual fragments of the knight's memories from when he was alive.]
[These memories are scattered and fragmented, from which you can barely comprehend a fraction of this world's background.]
[God said, let there be light, and there was light. God's people thrived under the warm light, which is their faith that sustains their lives.]
[...The advent of the Blood Sun has tarnished the light of faith. The ancient and unchanging sun in the dome of the sky has been corrupted by the power of the Blood Sun, turning a bizarre blood-red, resembling a soaked bloody body. Under the Blood Sun, even the most devout followers of the Church of Divine Light would transform into deformed demons.]
[The word of God no longer exists in the world. God has abandoned His people...the Church of Divine Light, the state religion of the ancient kingdom, has thus split. As a Guardian Knight of the White Moon Church, cleansing the fallen followers of the Blood Sun Church was your primary doctrine. But unfortunately, the victory of tonight belongs to the fallen followers of the Blood Sun.]
[The fragmented memory abruptly ends there.]
"This is getting more interesting. According to the knight's memory, the apocalypse of this world came from the sun being polluted by an unknown cause. Sunlight... could it be radiation that turns people into monsters?" Lin Xun pondered while rubbing his chin.
[Unlike the feeble wandering soul, the powerful knight shell grants you a tangible physical strength.]
[You clench your fists, the surging power within the shell makes you feel invincible and unstoppable.]
[Brave apostle, are you ready to push the doors of the church open, and explore the source of the apocalypse.]
It seems that the shell he possesses is very powerful; this is a fairly good starting point.
Lin Xun, who didn't manage to select Mage, finally felt a bit relieved.
He hurriedly clicked to push the door open.
[The howling cold wind has subsided without notice, and the creepy creaking noise of opening the door is especially discordant in the silent night.]
[The loud noise has caught the attention of a certain beast...]
[Outside the church door, the monster turns around, its blood red eyes fixated on you.]
[You've been attacked by the monster with a heavy injury on your chest and abdomen leaving you defenseless.]
[In your daze, you see that the deformed monster seems to be wearing a church uniform, with a red sun unusually conspicuous on its chest.]
[You have died!]
A gigantic bright red character appears on the screen of his mobile phone - death.
???
Lin Xun looked left and right, and felt that the character clearly spelled "noob".
What happened to the promised surge of unstoppable strength?
No class choice, a storyline kill when opening the door, even the old fox Miyazaki knows to gift a relic at the start, this game sure is from the underworld.
"So it's an ultra-difficult Sadist game? You think I'll give up that easily?"
The level of difficulty, for some reason, somehow managed to excite Lin Xun.
He continued with his game while mumbling complaints.
[Your first death has received the blessing of the 'Book of Salvation'.]
[You received a 'Soul Page'.]
[You open your eyes and realize that you've reincarnated in the ruined church as the wandering soul. The interior of the church is as you saw before. The only difference is that there are only two intact shells left on the ground, the knight's shell is nowhere in sight.]
"Is this item a newbie gift package?"
Lin Xun noticed two new options in the middle of the screen.
[Item Slot]and[Shell Reshaping]
[Do you want to reshape the 'Guardian Knight's' shell?]
[Reshaping this shell requires 1 point of soul strength, the current soul strength is 2/2.]
[The apostle's soul power recovers 1 point every 12 hours. Please use it wisely.]
As an experienced player, Lin Xun instantly realized that reshaping a shell using soul strength was analogous to using a revival coin in the game.
He didn't hurry to reshape the shell, but instead, he opened the item slot where the 'Soul Page' he just acquired was kept.
Lin Xun clicked to view the item's description.
[Soul Page]
[The Book of Salvation grants its blessing to a rookie apostle, after usage, it opens the apostle's soul potential.]
"Oh? The exciting 'loot box opening' phase has arrived." Lin Xun was eager to try.
Just as he was about to use the item, suddenly it felt like something extra appeared in his hand.
Upon closer inspection, his body involuntarily shivered, goosebumps broke out all over his skin!