Infinite Weird Game

"What did you see?" "Yuan" asked with a smile.

Dong Xiwen had a dream. The surging fog in the dream obscured all irrelevant scenery. He pushed away the fog and looked around, only to see a small stone table placed in the void, and he in pajamas and "Yuan" in a suit and tie sitting opposite each other.

The shadow of his long-dead brother floated behind him, silent as a ghost.

The line of sight moves uncontrollably, changing from a God's perspective to a first-person limited perspective, just like the soul pouring back into the body.

Dong Xiwen sat on a stone bench, staring at the calm "Yuan" with empty eyes, and asked: "Is it the effect of the jade pendant that I appeared in this ghost place?"

Yuan nodded: "Yes."

More thoughts do not need to be transmitted through language, but directly turn into consciousness and enter the body from all directions.

Dong Xiwen understood a lot of meanings from it, such as what information "Yuan" wanted to know, and that he was currently having a dream that could not be known to a third person - even if he intended to retell it, others would not be able to know it.

Dong Xiwen said "Oh" with a constipated look on his face. After a two-second pause, he said, "A white mask with hollowed-out eyes and mouth. It looks like a smiling face with golden patterns on it."

He exhaled and added, "In fact, Bai Ya doesn't avoid people. You should be able to ask the same information to anyone you ask."

Yuan did not answer, but said to himself: "It's just as I imagined. She really went to get 'that thing'. It's really hard for her to mobilize so many people just to convey an attitude."

Dong Xiwen raised his eyebrows: "Boss, can you stop being so riddle-like? Can you elaborate?"

"That was the first weirdness that the weird game released into reality, and it directly led to the demise of the most powerful resistance organization at the beginning of the establishment of the Federation." Yuan's smile was very kind, and his true emotions could not be seen. "The funny thing is that the second-in-command of that organization personally brought that mask out of the weird game, in order to put it on their leader who was believed to be a 'god' by believers."

"It sounds like an internal fight..." Dong Xiwen said sternly, "They're fighting before they even conquer the country. Is that like opening champagne at halftime?"

"No." Yuan shook his head. "It was their joint decision to curb theocracy and reorganize the forces. It was indeed urgent under the internal and external troubles. After all, in the eyes of most knowledgeable people, 'religion can be a means, but it can never be an end.'

"It's a pity that they overestimated human rationality and underestimated the malice of gods."

……

On April 4, the number of online users in the Weird Game Forum reached a peak, with various eye-catching posts appearing one after another.

A prediction post was pushed to the top of the hot list at lightning speed, but disappeared after appearing for less than five minutes.

Fortunately, many people saved the screenshots and spread them around, so the administrator could not ban everyone in a short period of time, and more and more people were able to see the content of the post.

#The major guilds are going to hold a communication meeting in Sunset Ruins again. Here are some predictions for the meeting topics#
The poster is a relatively well-known theoretical player named "Yan Zhou". He has not joined any guild and is not among the invited guests, but it seems that he has his own channels to obtain information.

He wrote in the main building:

[The Guild Exchange Conference is held once a year. I never paid attention to it in the past because I thought it was just a ceremony for some vested interests to divide the cake. But this year may be different, so I specially posted a post about it. On the one hand, I want more people to pay attention to it, and on the other hand, I hope that friends who know the inside story can share some information.

[As we all know, the strange game has been in the world for thirty-six years. Although everyone knows that clearing the final copy will end everything, according to the existing data, no one has ever opened the final copy, otherwise it would be impossible that not even a word was left. But now I feel that the final copy may be opened soon.

【The TE clearance rate in the last month has increased by 50% compared to the past, the highest in years. In addition, two copies were permanently closed in the short term, suspected to have been destroyed by players through violence.

【According to the statistics of the new player list, among the 100 new players in this batch, there are 31 potential players. (We usually think that the top 10 players are those who have cleared 10 dungeons, the top 10 to 20 players are those who have cleared 9 dungeons, and so on. Players who have cleared fewer dungeons than the usual number in the ranking range are considered "potential players.")
【The last time such a grand occasion occurred was 22 years ago, the year of "Twilight of the Gods". You should remember that it was the closest time we came to defeating the strange game. If it weren't for the falling fire, which consumed a lot of our manpower, the final instance might have been opened and cleared by us.

[Even an individual like me can notice something by observing the record stone tablet. I believe that the major guilds headed by "Jiuzhou" have also noticed those unusual data. So I predict that the theme of this meeting will be "Joint clearance of the final dungeon", and the small topics may be as follows:
[1. All major guilds strengthen cooperation, draw out the strongest forces, form a team of five to seven people, and run in advance to prepare for the final dungeon (rumor: "Jiuzhou" and "Tingfeng" have mastered the technology to manufacture team props);

[2. Each guild should step up efforts to recruit new potential members, and at the same time strengthen internal connections to form several teams of equal strength as reserve forces;

[3. Disclose some internal information as appropriate, revealing some intelligence with a low level of secrecy, which may be related to gods, guiyiruqin (homonym, anti-shielding), and identity cards.]

The most important information in the post is undoubtedly in the last three lines.

In this era, many people are trapped in information cocoons and lack the ability to actively collect information, so they can only be confused by the known information.

Even though a lot of information is public and can be obtained with just a few clicks of a finger, most people will not take the initiative to learn about it before they have established cognition and awareness of a concept.

After being inexplicably drawn into a strange game, they finally found a forum where people with the same problem gathered. As soon as they saw the pinned science post by a newcomer, they naturally regarded it as the backbone.

That post happened to be quite comprehensive and could cover most of the situations they encountered. Over time, out of inertia of thinking, they would easily regard the framework in the post as true and complete.

According to their stereotype, "team props" are things that only massacre players like Xila will use, and they are things that are used to unite acquaintances to plot and harm people; "identity cards" are abandoned projects left over from the early stages of the weird game, and are useless among useless things.

Ragnarok and mysterious invasion were terms that had never been heard of.

They were just half-believing and half-doubting, but the forum administrator deleted the post and banned the posts, which confirmed the authenticity of the information. There were so many nonsense metaphysical posts in the past, why didn't you block them? This post was blocked as soon as it was on the hot list, maybe it leaked the secret?

People have a rebellious mentality. The more they are forbidden to see something, the more they want to see it. Some people even send screenshots privately to all passers-by who show up.

After only one morning, almost all players active on the forum had saved a screenshot of the post.

New information bombarded people's minds, among which the "weird invasion" was the most eye-catching.

A post from 27 years ago was dug up:

[My girlfriend disappeared near Shuangxi Town, Pengcheng. I'm sure it's related to the weird game! But she's not a player, and I can't contact her! I called the police, but they didn't believe me and said I was spreading rumors. But I learned that many people also disappeared there, and it must be related to the weirdness! You all know about the existence of the weird game. Please, can anyone nearby help me to testify? At least let them believe me and look around...]

The long-forgotten past was blown away, and posts containing the keyword "Shuangxi Town" emerged like mushrooms after a rain.

#Who knows the poster in real life? Is the Shuangxi Town story true? #
#I live in Pengcheng. There is indeed a piece of land surrounded by a cement wall. Could it be Shuangxi Town inside? #
#After so many years, "Shuangxi Town" has not been blown up yet. Is there any big shot who can do something about it? #
As a result, a lot of important information is covered up by text garbage.

……

In a single apartment in the southern city of Ning Province, Liu Yuhan sat in front of a computer desk. She kept picking up small dried fish and stuffing them into her mouth with her left hand, while holding the mouse with her right hand, repeatedly browsing the posts in her favorites.

She didn't care about the hot topics about the strange invasion and Shuangxi Town in the forum. Those information were not secrets to theoretical players, and it was definitely not exposed because of the negligence of the forum administrator. It was just because the people above wanted the people below to know certain information.

Although it is said that the world is a huge makeshift team, people who can take charge of certain key positions and make no mistakes for ten years are definitely not stupid fools.

If you don't want others to know something, you can't publish it even if you use homophones.

In the past, there have been many posts that guessed important secrets, but forum administrators mostly turned a blind eye and allowed them to be drowned out by the vast number of spam posts and be regarded as rumors or metaphysics by the mob.

Deleting posts and banning comments is the stupidest behavior. It is so stupid and contrived that it can only be done on purpose.

Liu Yuhan blocked the @her messages that kept popping up and quietly sorted through the information about [Lin Chen] in her favorites.

"At the moment when Lin Chen TE cleared the "Ghost" dungeon, the rankings of thirteen guilds including Fengyu, Pansy, and Unnamed rose. Among them, the Unnamed guild was the most suspicious.

"Qisi and Lin Chen are teammates. The vice president of the unnamed guild, 'Siqi', is a pseudonym he used. Lin Chen is most likely the president, 'Lin Crow'.

"Being able to clear a difficult dungeon like "The Devil" by himself basically rules out the possibility that he is a puppet of Qi Si. If he dares to take over Qi Si's position as the guild leader, he must be even more difficult to deal with than Qi Si.

"Because he is strong enough, he left his name on the list so he is not afraid of being found and targeted... He seems to be an arrogant guy who wants to perform. If we keep a close eye on him, we may be able to get more clues about Qi Si.

"After the "Ghost" dungeon ended, there were no hangers or record posts. He may have an ability similar to "Contract" that can restrict the behavior of other players. The skill is unique, and the "Soul Contract" skill is definitely owned by Qi Si, so Lin Chen's ability may be similar to "Oath".

"and many more……"

When Liu Yuhan searched the keyword "Lin Chen" again, she noticed a post.

#Amazing discovery! The man named "Lin Chen" blew up two copies in a row! #
She clicked on it and saw that the host had a good reason:
[As a list lover, the author goes to Sunset Ruins once a day to record the data of the newcomer list and the overall list. After comparing the data, the author made a surprising discovery.

[Just today, a ruthless person named "Lin Chen" blew up the dreaded "Ghost" dungeon. The author carefully dug up the data of this "Lin Chen" and found that the time he entered the dungeon was very regular, every seven days, no more, no less.

[After he became an official player, he cleared five dungeons in total, which took thirty-five days. And as everyone knows, the "Meat-eating" dungeon was bombed exactly thirty-five days ago.

[Same rough method, such a coincidental time, has Big Boss Lin Chen finally revealed his hand? The author of this post is deeply curious about this man at this moment. I will give you a "+3". The author of this post will continue to track Lin Chen's movements and update the latest situation in this post——]

After reading the post, Liu Yuhan fell into deep thought and even forgot to chew the dried fish in her mouth.

“It is very likely that my thinking was wrong from the beginning, because of the preconceived stereotype, I put Qi Si in the strongest position and ignored the inconspicuous Lin Chen.

"No wonder after I submitted the evidence, Qi Si didn't care at all and instead showed a contemptuous attitude. He didn't want to break the contract, it was just because my reasoning went in the opposite direction.

“There are three people who have cleared Rose Manor. Lin Chen was able to survive the most difficult dungeon in the novice pool and was recognized by a madman like Qi Si who likes to kill teammates at will. His strength must be quite good, and he may even be far stronger than Qi Si, which made Qi Si unable to do anything to him and had to choose to cooperate.

"He also knew Chang Xu. Although he was arrogant and had a strong desire to perform, as a sinister massacre player who was still in the infancy of the "Meat Eater" dungeon, it made sense for him to choose to impersonate 'Chang Xu'.

"With Qi Si's level of caution, he would only randomly choose irrelevant pseudonyms, such as 'Cheng An' and 'Si Qi'. Only an arrogant guy like Lin Chen would impersonate a real player out of bad taste or laziness, and deliberately choose the most distinctive name.

"There is not a single star among the top thirty potential players on the newcomer list, and most of the top fifty are members of the Jiuzhou Guild who I know well. Qi Si is probably outside the top fifty, and even if he is strong, he is not strong enough. Lin Chen is the stronger of the two.

"Next, we just need to go into the game forum and find the record of the last player to clear the "Meat-eating" dungeon and compare it with the record. Then we can confirm some things." (End of this chapter)