Matrix Survival: One random treasure chest per day

Boom!

Li Zheng crashed through two mountains before finally stopping, his entire body covered in wounds, with pale bone fragments protruding from them, a truly gruesome sight.

"Pooh!"

Spitting out the blood and foam from his mouth, Li Zheng controlled his leg muscles, maintaining a standing posture without relying on his bones for support.

"That guy wasn't bragging, he's fucking strong."

When his most prized move was broken, Li Zheng fully realized the difference in strength between himself and his opponent; that opponent was not one he could withstand.

Fortunately, he had held out long enough for Zhan Zhouzhou and the others to open the teleportation disk and return to the outer city. Now that he had nothing to worry about, since he couldn't win, he would find a way to escape!
Plop!

With his Demonic Thunder Wings unfurled behind him, the deep blue lightning wings that blotted out the sky carried Li Zheng's battered body into the sky, where he fled rapidly into the distance.

You can't escape.

The voice of clone number 1024 sounded behind Li Zheng, as if whispering in his ear.

Li Zheng was terrified and dared not look back. He gritted his teeth, gripped the Black Dragon Spear tightly, and thrust it backward from under his armpit, but missed.

puff!
A sharp pain shot through his chest as a grotesque hand pierced through his flesh, bones, and armor, reaching in from behind and out from the front, clutching a pounding heart.

The heart is also connected to blood vessels, which work hard to pump blood to every corner of the body.

"grass!"

Li Zheng only had time to think of this one word before he watched helplessly as the hand clenched and crushed his heart into a pulp.

"Humph."

Clone 1024 leisurely withdrew its arm, took out a clean handkerchief and wiped the pieces of flesh clean, treating them with disdain as if they were garbage, unwilling to look at Li Zheng's lifeless corpse even once more.

"The leader is being overly cautious; he shouldn't be the target we're looking for."

With a series of teleportations, clone number 1024 vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving only a corpse that slowly floated down from the sky and landed on the ground with a thud, kicking up a little dust.

"I'm sorry..."

A curse suddenly came from the head of the dead Li Zheng, and then an infant-sized Li Zheng jumped out from between his eyebrows, patting his chest with lingering fear: "Fortunately, my mental strength is strong enough. Although my body is dead, I accidentally discovered that I have reached the point where I can survive without a body."

"If I had known it would turn out like this, I would have given up on this body sooner."

Li Zheng felt that his current state was very strange. After being freed from the constraints of his body, he could finally use all his mental energy to attack with full force.

But he had suppressed his emotions for too long, and when he was suddenly released, he felt a little powerless.

It's like being used to restraint, and then one day someone tells him, "It's okay, just let loose."

Then he will likely turn into a jet engine, completely unable to control the surging spiritual power within him, and eventually drain his source of energy as well.

In that case, although he enjoyed it, he also lost money.

"Old Pu, help me check my current condition."

……

"Old Pu?"

……

"Old Pu, what are you doing pretending to be dead at a time like this?"

……

"What the hell?"

Li Zheng called out to the Eye of Preys several times without receiving a response. He suddenly panicked: "Old Preys told me many times before that I should gouge out my eyes before I die so as not to implicate it. I never thought that it would really only exist in my eyes?"

Suddenly, he thought of another, even more unacceptable reality: what if the treasure chest system was also unreachable?
But it's not midnight yet, so the treasure chests haven't refreshed yet, and he can't verify it.

After all, the treasure chest system never communicated with him, and countless attempts to talk to it only resulted in silence.

"Although the body modified by the pills already has the ability to regenerate severed limbs, the heart is still a fatal weakness. It is the energy source of the entire body. After being destroyed, it even lost the ability to regenerate severed limbs."

Li Zheng carefully examined his own body. It was completely unchanged, and the hole in his heart hadn't grown any new flesh as it had in previous injuries. "So... I'm dead?"

Without a physical body, he could no longer use the capsules. Without the teleportation disk, he could not return to the outer city and could only wander the wilderness in the form of a spiritual entity.

"This feels so weird."

Li Zheng looked at his own corpse: "I was still conscious, yet I knew perfectly well that my body was dead... Damn, this is unbelievable."

Since my body is beyond recovery, there seems to be no need for me to stay here any longer.

"Let's find a place to familiarize ourselves with our current mental state first."

Li Zheng rolled up the corpse and walked in a random direction, wanting to find a quiet place to stay so as not to be disturbed while getting used to his condition.

Half a day later, he discovered a cave and slowly walked inside.

"Roar!"

A beastly roar echoed from the depths of the cave, which then turned into whimpering pleas for mercy. Finally, a rhinoceros with horns and bear paws charged out and fled in panic.

"Let's just stay here. Spiritual beings won't get hungry anyway."

Li Zheng casually placed the corpse aside, sensing his own spiritual energy and attempting to gain complete control.

……

Not far from the cave, in an open space, a strange beast that had just fled from the cave suddenly split apart from the center of its body. The front half of its body continued to rush forward, while the back half crashed into a suddenly opened portal in the void.

puff!
With a soft sound, half of the body instantly vanished into nothingness, seemingly crushed by some invisible energy.

"Cough cough."

Drunken Evil Xiao, dressed in tattered armor, appeared at the edge of the void portal. He fell to the side and the void portal closed behind him, as if it had never existed.

"The flow of time in the chaotic space is abnormal. I've been inside for twenty-seven seconds, so five hours should have passed outside?"

After resting for a full half hour, Zui Xie got up and checked the time, only to find that half a day had already passed.

He opened his palm, looked at the object in his hand, and breathed a sigh of relief: "Thankfully, I found it in the end."

It was a light blue, semi-transparent panel with lines outlining it, which looked like some kind of technological product, an integrated circuit.

The skin on his palm, which had come into contact with it, was already showing signs of petrification. This was due to the evil curse of the Evil Eye Clan. If he continued to be in contact with this thing, he would eventually petrify into a fragile stone statue.

Just as Zui Xie Xiao was about to put the item into his storage space, it vanished into thin air in the blink of an eye.

"Who?"

Zui Xie Xiao became alert, focusing his attention on his surroundings. Apart from the half-dead wild beast not far away, the surroundings were calm and there was nothing unusual.

……

[The final version module has been found. Do you want to upgrade now?]

"What?"

A familiar synthesized electronic voice echoed in Li Zheng's mind, snapping him out of his daze: "Treasure Chest System? Ultimate Version Module? What the hell?"

I haven't done anything here, so how did a so-called "ultimate version module" suddenly appear?
But as long as the treasure chest system is still there, that's fine. And since it's an upgrade, there's definitely no harm in it, right?

"Lift!"

[Upgrade confirmed. Host status detected as "spirit body". Treasure chest system version updated to the corresponding system.]

[Upgrade complete. Greetings, host. The Ultimate Fantasy Treasure Chest System is at your service. You receive one free treasure chest upon your first upgrade. Would you like to open it now?]

"what?"

Li Zheng was stunned: "A mystical treasure chest?"

The world is getting stranger and stranger. I've already been exposed to science fiction and cultivation, and now fantasy has popped up?

If this were a web novel, the world-building would be way too messy!
Who's going to watch this?!