The house and the land were destroyed.
The lake, which had grown in size to become a vast expanse of dark water, had overflowed completely and had become part of the Kraken's body as if it were a cloak.
Feng Rui was calm because if the Gu ritual had begun, it meant that his deduction about who the possible players could be was correct. It was only a matter of time before the illusion disintegrated.
The Kraken, now without any more enemies to devour after swallowing the remains of the demon and any other being that had crossed its path, began to slowly retract its dark water tentacles. Its gigantic body, made of a fluid and shadowy mass, seemed to relax after the battle.
Everything fell into an ominous silence.
Feng Rui, watching the scene with a faint smile on his lips, approached the monster, unsure of what to do next. He didn't know if he should congratulate them or just carry on with his role as if nothing had happened. With a forced grimace, he tried to imitate the attitude of the old NPCs he had seen in his past life.
"Congratulations…" he began, but his voice trailed off in an instant. Before he could continue, the smile froze on his face as he felt a shift in the air. A fast and furious tentacle shot directly towards him.
'What??' he thought, his eyes wide open. His body had no time to react.
The Kraken opened its bottomless mouth as Feng Rui's body was drawn directly toward it.
"Nooo! This wasn't the mission! Are you crazy??"
He tried to grab his body, but his hands passed through it. And if he grabbed the Kraken, he felt as though he was being absorbed by the current, draining his little energy.
A horrible possibility appeared in his heart…
"What if the Kraken is an NPC? What if the grandfather was the only player? Could that be possible???? Shit, that would make a lot of sense too!"
His mind clouded for a moment due to the nervousness; the gears in his mind could almost be heard spinning at full speed as he searched for possible solutions.
If the Kraken was really part of the game, then it had been playing with him from the start.
With no more ideas or time to waste, Feng Rui gritted his teeth, and with the last bit of energy he had left, he inverted the matrix he had created. His intention was to break the space that had kept him trapped in this isolated zone. If it wasn't the demon's doing, then it must have been the original matrix's fault. And if he was going to die, he would take everyone with him.
He no longer cared about anything else.
BOOM!
The world within the matrix seemed to collapse. It was as if the space itself was collapsing, the sky breaking into a thousand shattered crystals that disintegrated as the structure of the illusion faded. The fragments of the illusory space floated in the air like dust, while, outside of it, the first rays of sunlight began to illuminate the intact battlefield.
Only the Kraken, holding Feng Rui's body in the middle of the lake, could be seen.
At that moment, several attacks from different directions struck the Kraken, and a spiritual prison surrounded it, trapping it in a bubble of ethereal energy and isolating it from the water.
"Quick! Get Young Master Feng to safety!" shouted an authoritative voice amidst the chaos.
The guards quickly deployed, cutting the Kraken's tentacles with spiritual energy, while others hurried to rescue Feng Rui's body, pulling it away from the monster and bringing it to a safe area.
"Where's the doctor? Young Master Feng isn't breathing!"
The guards ran with his body deciding to find a doctor themselves after trying to give him first aid in vain, while another team began to clean the scene, chaining the monster and purifying it.
Feng Rui watched as his seal let the demon escape, however, no one noticed, which in a way confirmed his suspicion.
With a vengeful look, his grandfather vanished into the air like a thick mist, leaving a bad premonition in his heart.
"Damn…" murmured Feng Rui. "It was my fault."
Before, as a player, he could easily differentiate NPCs from players; he even had tutorials to perform attacks, matrices, sealing, rune writing, healing, and even alchemy. Moreover, if you didn't want to wait and wished to skip the process, all you needed was a credit card with a high limit. He had rarely used that option, so he was more like an NPC than an average player, but that didn't stop him from becoming lazy and arrogant here.
"Damn it!" he yelled at himself. "One mistake and I die. Wake up already, Yun Chen! Take this as if it were reality. Even if it's a game for everyone else, this is your last chance!"
With a quick motion, he slapped his cheeks with both hands, searching within himself for the strength to shake off his self-loathing and regret.
"I'll be more careful and stronger in the future," he promised himself. "I won't let this happen again."
Feng Rui turned around and followed his body.
He walked through the familiar halls and grimaced as he re-entered the room he had tried to escape from not long ago.
He regretted the decisions he had made, but in these strange, uncertain, and dangerous circumstances, he had to keep moving forward, even blindly, overcoming the fear of making mistakes and with the agility and caution to create countermeasures for any problem that might arise.
After all, he had been just an actor and gamer, someone who, although he stood out, owed his awards 99% to hard work and discipline, and 1% to talent.
If he was going to start from scratch here, he would build strong foundations and be more careful.
With his panoramic vision, he quickly noticed his body, lying on the bed. It was motionless, with pale skin, torn clothes, and traces of blood revealing new and old scars. Beside it, the doctor who had attended to him before was kneeling, his head lowered and his face full of desperation.
Several servants, dressed entirely in black with a white mask, were writing something in blood on the floor. Divine energy condensed more and more with each stroke, and at the joining points, a scroll resembling the seal of the soul transformed it into more artificial ghost energy.
'Crazy, if they wanted, they could summon a high-ranking demon with all this pure, dirty, and malevolent energy.'
"Young Master Feng... he... I'm sorry... I couldn't stop him... he ran..." The doctor could barely articulate his words, visibly nervous and worried for his own life.
Before he could say anything else, a deep voice interrupted him.
"Shut up!" The authoritative tone was unmistakable.
The General entered the room with long, heavy steps, observing the pattern on the floor.
"Move the child when he is ready."
"Yes," the masked men spoke in unison with a head bow and one knee down, accepting the order and quickly carrying it out.
Then, the general turned to the doctor.
"Do you think this is the time for excuses? I don't need useless people like you, take him away!"
"Yes..."
The doctor howled, cried, and begged, but the guards were firm and merciless.
Feng Rui couldn't help but tense up at the scene. For one, in his memories, his father had always been someone with a firm and distant character, but this time, he seemed... worried.
And while he didn't like the doctor, witnessing a life fading away so easily conflicted with all his previous beliefs and his behavior regulated by rights and duties.
Before, it was just a game, so he didn't think much about it. But if this was going to be his reality from now on...
Feng Rui swallowed.
He would also have to learn to be ruthless. Kindness toward his enemies only meant cruelty toward himself.
Now, he lived by the law of the jungle, where the strong made the rules and decided your fate.
He clenched his fist. This time, he was going to take control of his own life.
"Servant, bring the crystal!" The General ordered in a deep voice, his eyes fixed on his son.
The servant quickly appeared with a small crystal in a black box. Feng Rui recognized it as the crystal he was going to give as a reward for his mission, but what happened next sent a chill down his soul.
The General took the crystal and placed it directly on his son's heart, before ordering, "Bring the elixirs!"
The servant returned with three bottles, each with a different liquid: yellow, green, and blue, along with a pair of blood-red pills on a tray. Without hesitation, the doctor began administering the elixirs one by one. The first, the yellow one, made Feng Rui feel a penetrating burn as if a wave of fire was coursing through his chest and spreading through his entire being. The sensation was so real that, for a moment, he thought his soul might burn too.
Then, the green elixir, brought an unexpected freshness, like a stream of icy water entering his throat, filling him with revitalizing energy. And finally, the blue elixir, which provided such profound mental clarity that he almost recalled things long forgotten.
In the end, the doctor gave him the black pills. Feng Rui saw how he ingested them, but he couldn't feel anything in his soul, he could only watch the changes unfold. It was then that something strange happened.
A layer of black filth began to emerge from his skin as if it were expelling something dark, something malevolent that had been corroding him from within. The thick, sticky substance started sliding down his body, dissolving and evaporating into the air like poison, while the wounds that had not healed before slowly closed, restoring his skin to an immaculate, smooth, and radiant state, as if it had never been harmed.
Even in his incorporeal state, Feng Rui felt a pull, a strange attraction coming from the circle beneath his body. The sensation was so intense that, for a moment, he thought he might be sucked in and disappear.
A tingling spread throughout his being and the pull grew stronger.
The circle beneath his body glowed with a golden light, and at that moment, Feng Rui heard a faint whisper: distant voices, like echoes filtering through a thick fog. The sound gradually cleared, until he could make out familiar voices: his father, the doctor, the servants... They were all speaking hurriedly to each other, trying to understand what had happened.
Finally, the pull became unbearable. Feng Rui, unable to resist, felt his soul align with his body as if it had been separated from it for far too long. The connection, which had been broken, began to restore itself.
His senses flooded back. He felt the pressure of his muscles, the temperature of his skin, the beat of his heart. The body he had observed from a distance no longer seemed alien. It was his, and a wave of energy coursed through his veins. The voices became clearer, the hum of the room more defined, as if he had emerged from a cloud.
Feng Rui finally opened his eyes, this time once again within his own body. But something had changed. He felt stronger and more energetic, revitalized... but with horror, he realized that the Pure Phantom Energy Crystal had fused with him, just as the rest of the energy in the room had.
'Does that mean my resurrection is as powerful as a high-ranking demon? It was a forbidden technique, wasn't it? I'm illegal now, right? Doesn't this make me like a refined ghoul o something like that?!'