Chapter 50

“Come on, grooms! Look at the camera!”

“Three, two, one—”

“Happy newlyweds!”

This was the end of the world. A train stood halted before a tunnel, all its doors and windows flung wide. Flowers overflowed from the cars in a vomit-like eruption, exploding outward alongside confetti cannons. “Zhao Meiyou! Brother Qian!” A crowd pressed together, clinking glasses and laughing uproariously as they heckled. “Give us a hug! Plant a kiss on him!”

“Zhao Meiyou, you punk, can’t you seal the deal?” someone bellowed. “Get in there and give it to him already!”

It was the wedding everyone had eagerly anticipated after countless trials and heartaches. At last, they could all claim their happy endings. The entire team had chipped in, trading points for luxuries they’d never otherwise touch—champagne, roses, cream, fine fabrics. With all the dungeons cleared, they could finally splurge. Someone had even suggested redeeming a blimp from the armory, complete with hot-air balloons and rock music, so the pair could tie the knot in the sky.

But one of the grooms shot down the idea. “Zhao Meiyou gets motion sick,” Qian Duoduo explained. “Last time we escaped that Roller Coaster Hotel Dungeon, he was puking and bedridden for over half a month.”

“Oh, really?” The proposer sounded disappointed. “I was hoping to fly you two in with the blimp.”

“You got a pilot’s license?”

“I’ve never even had a real job.” He scratched his head with a wistful grin. “Back in college, I studied transportation. Planned to drive air buses after graduation. But I took a tumble down the stairs right before, and when I woke up, I was here.”

Zhao Meiyou, having overheard, sidled over. “You got here from a fall down the stairs? Sounds familiar—we’re kindred spirits.”

“How’d you end up here, Brother Zhao?”

“I was on my way to grab some fried chicken when a car hit me mid-stride.” Zhao Meiyou shrugged. “Woke up in the Site.”

They inhabited a world called the Site, utterly unlike the Metropolis. There were no proper social structures here—just a mad amusement park. Entrants had to clear dungeon after dungeon, racking up points until they hit the final threshold. Then they’d teleport to the end of the world, where a tunnel supposedly led back to reality.

Zhao Meiyou had entered the Site three years prior and adapted like a pro, rising from newbie to veteran in under half a year while assembling his ragtag crew. On nights without missions, they’d throw pajama parties, swapping stories. They all hailed from the Metropolis, pulled in by freak accidents. The wildest? A girl who dove headfirst into a dumpster. “I was scavenging junk in the square,” she said. “Next thing I knew, I was standing in a library hallway.”

“You mean the Playwright Dungeon?” someone chimed in. “Newbies luck out there. As long as you don’t draw a detective novel or horror, you’re golden—no deaths.”

“That’s the one where I nearly bit it.” The girl rolled her eyes. “I pulled The Shining.”

The crowd gasped. “How’d you survive?”

The Playwright Dungeon’s rules were bizarre. Players started in a massive library. Pull a book from the shelf, read it, and the world shifted to match its tale. You had to hunt down the next library inside that world, open another book, and repeat—until the dungeon deemed your chain of events a coherent story. Then you’d clear it.

Back in the original library, a new book would appear on the shelf, chronicling your entire ordeal.

Lucky players stumbled into grand adventures. Unlucky ones? Grab a ghost story or murder mystery first, and you’re doomed. “I’d never read The Shining,” the girl sighed. “Those sister ghosts had me terrified at the start.”

After hiding for days, she ran into Zhao Meiyou.

The Playwright Dungeon was Zhao Meiyou’s first after entering the Site. He’d lucked out initially, drawing Alice in Wonderland. He was sipping tea merrily when the White Queen invited him to the palace library. No sooner had he stepped in than she shoved her favorite book at him. He barely had time to blink before tumbling into hell mode.

“The White Queen’s favorite being The Shining? What kind of illiterate nonsense is that?” Zhao Meiyou griped.

The Shining unfolded in a snowbound hotel. Zhao Meiyou and the girl dodged and weaved for days, desperate to find a library inside. No dice. Desperate, they pooled every book they could scrounge, stacking them into an impromptu library.

But the dungeon rejected it—apparently, not enough books.

“So how’d you escape?”

“The fake library was missing one key book,” the girl explained.

“Which one?”

“In The Shining’s script, the husband was a frustrated writer dragging his wife to the haunted hotel to pen his masterpiece.” Zhao Meiyou took over. “He never finishes it.”

“We figured that’s what we needed,” the girl said. “That psycho husband chased us down corridors with an axe, but we overpowered him and beat the crap out of him.”

“Locked him in a room to write. No progress? More beatings. Under a week later, we had the manuscript.” She shrugged. “No problem a good thrashing can’t fix.”

Zhao Meiyou nodded. “If one doesn’t work, give him two.”

The crowd stared blankly.

Dungeons demanded different skills—physics knowledge, math wizardry, wild creativity for absurd maneuvers. “Take the dungeon where Brother Qian and I met,” Zhao Meiyou said.

“Whoa, whoa, spare us! We don’t wanna hear it!” The team bolted, hands over ears. “You’ve told it eight hundred times, Zhao Meiyou! All that lovey-dovey crap rots your teeth!”

“Huh?” Zhao Meiyou blinked, turning to his side. “Brother Qian, have I really told it that many times?”

“Not eight hundred.” Qian Duoduo glanced up from his seat. “Just four hundred sixty-seven.”

“Awesome!” Zhao Meiyou slapped his thigh gleefully. “Time for number four sixty-eight!”

Amid groans and wails, Zhao Meiyou launched into his four hundred sixty-eighth retelling of their trashy-romance saga. In the Horror Cinema Dungeon, midway through a ghost flick, the bride turned spectral and clawed out of the screen. Cocky and unarmed, he braced for defeat—

They’d heard it so often, the team recited along. Someone clapped a hand over his mouth, mocking in a sing-song falsetto: “Then you were face-to-face! One spark, and you think, ‘Damn, this ghost is hot!'”

Another jumped in: “‘Die under the peony petals, a ghost’s romance is still wind-flowing!’ Single for ages in the Site, might as well snag a kiss before croaking. So you flip the veil and smooch the ghost bride!”

Hecklers piled on: “She freezes in shock!”

“Turns out, she’s another player! Awkward, but team up to survive! United as ‘husband and wife,’ your synergy doubles! Zhao Meiyou Player and Qian Duoduo Player carve through the Horror Cinema Dungeon like butter!”

“Then first thing out, Zhao Meiyou Player drops to one knee: ‘Brother Qian, we’re this synced already—a little more won’t hurt. Marry me?'”

Everyone chorused: “And so they lived happily shameless, infamous across the Site! Done! Meeting adjourned! Bedtime!”

The group scattered like they’d been doused in acid-laced vinegar from the couple’s love story. Zhao Meiyou chuckled helplessly and turned to Qian Duoduo. “Brother Qian, was I that over-the-top?”

Qian Duoduo pondered. “You make it more vivid.”

“…Their mouths were practically flying off their faces. Any more vivid, and what would that make me?”

Qian Duoduo pecked him. “Like this.”

Fine, let it fly—to Brother Qian’s face. Zhao Meiyou brightened instantly, scheming anew. “Brother Qian, where’d you get that wedding dress when you crawled from the screen?”

“Prepped it as a prop. Had to play bride to mess with the plot—props matter.” Qian Duoduo caught on. “You like that dress?”

“Heh heh.” Zhao Meiyou scratched his cheek bashfully.

He paused, then added softly: “Brother Qian, once we’ve got enough points, let’s get married at the end of the world.”

Legend held that the end of the world was the Site’s exit: endless coastline, a waiting train, a tunnel to home. Escape was possible. Many players had succeeded, some wedding on the train after falling for partners along the way. Friendly NPCs and allies joined to witness and bid farewell.

Zhao Meiyou had even met an NPC—or Site native—in an Art Gallery Dungeon. It sat by a window sketching a back-view portrait of its lover, who had reached the point threshold, left it behind, and returned to reality.

It did not insist that the other stay. Instead, it devoted the rest of its life to building an art gallery. The structure was a safe haven, a supply depot for countless squads. Only a handful of players ever launched an instance from there. In the end, they realized that none of the gallery’s countless paintings were duplicates. Yet every utterly distinct image was layered atop another identical portrait underneath.

When Zhao Meiyou cleared the instance, he peeled away the surface layers from every single painting. Paintings lined the spiraling staircase that rose endlessly around him, stretching toward the heavens like a path to paradise. Windows dotted the ascent, and in every frame glowed the side profile of someone from his past.

The painter waited for him at the very top. The other had at last finished that painting of her back. Just as she had departed. The painter held the canvas out for Zhao Meiyou to see and fell silent for a long while.

At last, the painter said, “She never looked back.”

In the end, Zhao Meiyou never became friends with the painter. “You’re lucky,” the painter told him as they parted. “You fell in love with someone from the same world. I’m sorry I can’t attend your wedding—for me, it would be too beautiful, too painful.”

Zhao Meiyou felt lucky himself. What had begun as a death-defying ordeal had flipped into a spectacular comeback. Now, as their journey drew to a close, he had found friendship, love, and a grand wedding at the edge of the world. “Zhao Meiyou, you punk—are you telling me you can’t get it up?!” Even the team’s steadiest tactician could barely contain his excitement. “What are you waiting for? Get over there and give it to your old lady already!”

Qian Duoduo stood beside Zhao Meiyou, wearing the wedding dress from the day they first met. Zhao Meiyou paused for a moment, his grin stretching nearly to his ears. He lifted the veil from Qian Duoduo’s head, then, to the screams of the crowd, placed the white gauze atop his own.

“Brother Qian,” he said, laughing amid the sea of white. “We’ve talked this through a hundred times. How about a live performance?”

Qian Duoduo got the message at once. Just like that first encounter, he seized Zhao Meiyou’s hand, yanked him close, lifted the veil, and crushed their lips together.

They skipped the Metropolis wedding rites altogether, ignoring all the pomp and procedure. Their friends simply gathered to sing, dance, feast, and drink to excess. And what could be more perfect? At the world’s end, they burned through their hoarded points and supplies. Every dream came true right then and there. The story’s finest moment lay not in the new life after the finale, but in the finale itself—in this very instant of their grand adventure’s close. Champagne flowed freely, flowers burst in full bloom, and every ambition still soared high. The team’s eldest member produced a book. “Newlyweds, step forward and swear!”

It was not a Bible, but the volume Zhao Meiyou and Qian Duoduo had settled on—one that had cost them a fortune in points to redeem.

The Communist Manifesto.

Zhao Meiyou finally shook off his rowdy friends’ endless toasts and led Qian Duoduo forward. They laid their overlapped hands upon the cover. The vows were already prepared:

“I will love you forever lost in the depths of lust. I will love you amid the constant threat of tiring of the old and craving the new. I will use you, vent myself upon you, squander you. War will rage between us; every cruelty I visit upon you, I invite you to repay a thousandfold upon me. Together we will surrender to instinct and shatter its chains, embrace desire and conquer it, languish in morality’s prison and transcend it—until selfishness and selflessness stand as one, the public becomes the private, collective good the personal, achieving communism’s smallest cell: love and family.”

The elder snapped the book shut. “The grooms may now kiss!”

Deafening whistles and cheers erupted as Zhao Meiyou claimed Qian Duoduo’s lips for the thousand-and-first time. The grooms kissed with a fierce passion, as if they would never part. The team broke into song and fired up the train—an archaic contraption long obsolete in the Metropolis, now bridging dream and reality. The whistle shrieked. The white veil whipped away on the rush of air, vanishing into the tunnel amid a cascade of flowers. Giant tulips bloomed in the blackness. A distant glimmer appeared, and a mechanical voice droned out— the Metropolis weather report. Home was drawing near.

At the tunnel’s mouth, the dream shattered, freezing into pigments on the verge of drying. Dawn was breaking; the night melted away before their eyes. No one could devour the moon, but Zhao Meiyou had once kissed the night itself—that deep, emerald-jade darkness. The train thundered onward. In the midst of laughter, Zhao Meiyou wondered how they would return to the Metropolis. Everyone’s entry into a site was unique. Would they emerge where they had left? At the central square? The trash bin? Midair, where the floating fast-food cart had been hurled? Would this train erupt from the depths like some massive beetle? And who would foot the repair bill? Had anyone thought to buy Metropolis traffic insurance?

Then came the answer.

Butterflies spilled from the dream, swallowed by the endless dark of reality.

“Target eliminated.”

“Site A28 exploration complete. 1100th reincarnation experiment concluded. Laboratory, initiate freeze protocols. Recovery team standing by. Archaeologists, report to stations. Government observers, report to stations.”

“Citizens, welcome back to the Metropolis.”