In Asimi Village, there was a beautiful NPC named Wusu.
For every player, Wusu was the one and only signpost on the way to Asimi Village.
His features were exquisite beyond the mortal plane: eyes black as ink, skin whiter than snow, lips redder than blood. A small figure draped in a white robe, he stood at the crossroads before the swamp that led to Asimi Village, and no amount of stench from the mire could wash away the faint fragrance of flowers that clung to him.
He was the salvation of every Traveler who came to Asimi Village. After all, who could fail to be intoxicated by the scent of flowers after stewing in that reek?
Wusu always stood there quietly.
He had stood at that crossroads since the day he came into being, existing like a living signpost, answering whenever Travelers from other worlds asked their questions.
He had stood there so long that the Traveler players all came to see him as no different from the flowers and grass of this world: eternal, unchanging.
Then one day, the game Continent of Divine Silence silently froze for three seconds.
Wusu disappeared.
“Wait, what’s with this stream of consciousness?”
“Isn’t that the data that the otherworld game ‘The Unnamed One’ built?”
“Are you insane? Why did you bring it out?”
“You’re the one who brought it out!”
“Purge it?”
“Such a waste…”
“Wait, I remember the Central Divine Temple said that somewhere deep in the Secluded Forest there was…”
“Let’s use that one, then. It’s just a god that got abandoned… doesn’t matter anyway…”
Wusu blinked. Vast stretches of wreckage filled his eyes with an air of abandonment; the shattered pillar before him alone was enough to swallow his entire field of vision.
Time had drained the pillar of its luster, mottled stone now crawling with half-withered vines, and here and there, between the crisscrossing branches and leaves, one could still glimpse traces of the delicate carvings it once bore.
What should I do?
Wusu stood quietly.
This is clearly not Asimi Village, Wusu “thought”.
What does “think” mean?
Something seemed to be stirring in his head.
So this is what “thinking” is?
Wusu turned his head and looked around. This bizarre, surreal ruin looked nothing like anything familiar.
He tilted his head and “thought” about it for a bit.
Then he rubbed his palms together and started climbing the crack-riddled pillar.
The pillar was big. Hard to climb. And dark, so dark he couldn’t see a thing.
These were obvious difficulties.
But they weren’t the sort of thing Wusu would ever ponder.
He had spent his whole existence as a game NPC, made to point players in the right direction. Since being abruptly pulled out of that role, this was the first time Wusu had ever “thought” of doing something all on his own.
This brief little moment was something else entirely.
“Hngh…” Wusu pushed hard with both hands. Blood from his scraped palms seeped into the pillar’s crevices, and feeling that strange sting, he pulled himself to the top.
From up here, Wusu could surely take in the whole terrain at a glance…
Or not.
As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but black, with points of light flickering here and there among the smashed wreckage.
Faint, but the only light there was.
It took Wusu a long time to adjust before he could make out where he was from those sparse glimmers.
How to describe it?
He couldn’t see clearly, yet he could sense the presence of trees. Not fresh and comforting, but gloomy and stifling.
A curtain of black shrouded everything. The Divine Temple abandoned, pillars toppled, weeds running wild, and howling wind tearing through the crevices, flinging dust into his face. That brooding, surging black was the master of this Secluded Forest.
In the darkened view, ghostly light glimmered now and then, an underworld air that would not be dispelled, as if countless stars had fallen from the sky and been inlaid into this deep, shadowed forest.
A landscape utterly unlike Asimi Village.
Had he been abandoned? Wusu “thought”.
What does “abandoned” mean?
Thoughts that had never once surfaced before came flooding into Wusu’s little head, far too many to sort out.
Then he would simply not think about it.
Wusu sat down atop the pillar, the soles of his white, tender feet smudged with dirt and dry grass. Hugging his knees, he curled himself into a tiny ball, like some harmless, docile cub.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were light? A thought popped up.
So dark. Another popped up.
If Wusu had had a dialogue box above his head, little bubbles would have been rising one after another.
Translucent. Crystal-clear.
【Positioning…】
【Land of the Fallen God… Secluded… the forsaken god…]
Something like a teleportation array quietly surfaced on the ruined ground, and with a plop-plop, like dumplings dropped into a pot, five figures suddenly burrowed up out of the earth.
Travelers, Wusu “thought”.
The Travelers of Asimi Village, the ones who appeared in an endless stream, died in an endless stream, and revived in an endless stream. The ones who brought Asimi Village its liveliness and its life.
I like these Travelers.
And what is “like”?
Wusu puffed out his cheeks and “thought” about it.
“Where the hell is this? I can’t see a thing!”
A slender elf in silver-white battle armor; behind the pointed ears and the handsome face came a rough, gravelly voice.
“This game is always so damn realistic… Gah, I’m freezing my ass off!”
The shirtless orc warrior shivered, cowering behind the elf to dodge the wind.
“Both of you, shut it. Listen for anything…”
The dwarf and the human muttered, huddling together. Clearly women, both of them, yet even tougher customers than that shivering pair of elf and orc.
The four of them clustered around a tall, strikingly handsome man, a head of fiery red hair loose down his back, a trench coat thrown carelessly over his bare chest. He bore the cold far better than the orc warrior did.
He was a Descendant of the Fire Dragon.
What lively Travelers.
The little dumpling Wusu kept watching them, expressionless, silently “thinking” it in wonder.
“Torches aren’t permitted. Says ‘not permitted’? Oh, screw this! What are we supposed to do, play blind?!” The handsome elf brandished a rough torch that did absolutely nothing, seething.
It wasn’t quite pitch black, but players were still human at the end of the day, and this half-blind environment was miserable all the same.
“So what exactly happened? Why are we here?” The dwarf bombshell carried a hammer over her shoulder, standing her petite, shapely frame behind the big orc, and kicked the obstructing warrior away with one foot. “You’re too tall. You’re blocking the light.”
“Wait, look. Isn’t there an NPC over there?”
The Secluded Forest did still carry a trace of forest air about it, and the elf player’s racial bonus gave him just enough of an edge. It was the handsome elf who spotted Wusu with uncanny keenness.
“Told you this place couldn’t be totally empty.” The orc warrior said breezily, paying no mind to the boot print on his shin, and came lumbering toward Wusu with his giant axe in hand.
“Hey there, little buddy. Why’s it so dark here? Aren’t you scared, sitting up there?”
The elf, the dwarf, the dragonborn, and the human just watched. They were used to letting the orc take the lead with NPCs in uncertain situations like this, trusting his naturally overflowing warmth and simple honesty. Huge as he looked, he somehow always made people feel safe.
Wusu had curled himself into a dumpling on top of the pillar. A two-meter-tall orc craning his neck still couldn’t make out the NPC’s face, which said plenty about how tall the broken pillar was.
The orc’s voice was big and loud, but he looked like the dependable sort.
“I want…” Wusu’s voice came out muffled, hard to catch.
“Light.”
【Legendary Quest “??”: Prelude: Please help ??? obtain a light source!】
The Continent of Divine Silence was a game put out by a company called Otherworld Company. Within half a month of launch, it had swept the globe, drawing nearly everyone who loved games into this fully immersive world. After all, the game’s setting was a dazzling, vast, and eerie otherworld.
Three years after launch, the endless stream of players had spread into every last corner of the Continent of Divine Silence.
The game’s biggest selling point was its unique, sky-high freedom.
No main storyline. No forced quests. No restraints. Every quest was passively triggered. Maybe the broken rock you picked up held a thousand-year-old treasure inside; maybe the vagrant you rescued on the roadside was secretly a noble’s descendant… Everything unfolded as naturally as it would in real life, never repeating a reaction, never giving a canned answer.
Short of those vanishingly rare quest triggers, you could hardly tell it was a game at all. Players had complained about this before. Otherworld Company never responded.
Don’t like it? You’re free to quit.
Three years on, the game was still bursting with life.
As the famous player “Jobs” once put it, the Continent of Divine Silence was real enough to draw anyone in.
Yes. Real enough to be a second life.
Deep in the Secluded Forest, the rundown temple.
“This is all Mina’s fault, she was out of her mind.” The orc griped at the dwarf bombshell, giant axe in hand, grumbling that he’d said at the time they shouldn’t have saved that wandering bard. And sure enough, that bedraggled pretty boy had turned out to be a complete ingrate; right after they saved him, he did who-knows-what and dumped them all here.
“Complete the quest first.” The party’s only human player was a warlock of few words. She looked up at the NPC who hadn’t stirred an inch. “We finally got a quest, and a legendary-tier one at that. Are you telling me you want to throw it away?”
Sure, they’d been played by that wandering bard NPC, but the quest was real. The quest trigger system of the Continent of Divine Silence was wildly random, with no fixed patterns, and its freedom ran so deep you could open a shop, take an apprenticeship, study, read books… any playstyle you could imagine was possible in the Continent of Divine Silence.
Given all that, triggering a quest at all was already lucky. If they botched it and the quest ended, they’d never forgive themselves.
Hugo ruffled his wild fiery-red hair, his tall frame faintly wreathed in red light. “This place gives me a bad feeling. Everyone stay sharp.”
The elf player muttered, “Every lighting tool is unusable. How are we supposed to find the light that NPC wants?”
Hugo gazed thoughtfully into the blackness of his field of view. Those scattered glimmers were faint, but not untraceable.
The little dumpling Wusu watched the Travelers split up in twos and threes, apparently searching for the “light” he wanted.
But Wusu didn’t know why he wanted “light.”
Probably because light is pretty?
He tilted his head, watching the Travelers’ figures fade into the broken ruins.
Wusu “thought” hard about it. He wanted to help.
“Help” means wanting to do something for someone, right?
Wusu fretted expressionlessly for a while, then stretched out and poked his white, tender feet over the edge, intending to jump down from the pillar top.
The orc nearest to Wusu happened to glance up and, watching the NPC about to kill himself, started howling in terror, “Aaaaah! Hugo! The NPC’s gonna off himself! It’s over, it’s over, the quest is toast!”
Here was where the Continent of Divine Silence screwed you over: every NPC inside was non-respawning. If a quest NPC died, all the quest progress leading up to that point went down the drain, and the chain could never be reopened!
Splat.
However fast the dragonborn’s reflexes were, casting a spell still took a few seconds after hearing the orc’s shout, and Wusu had already faceplanted.
Ah… he fell down.
The moment that thought surfaced in Wusu’s little head, every player present heard a ding notification.
【Oops! Wusu gave the Divine Temple a great big kiss. The temple, which has slept for tens of thousands of years, felt delight and intends to awaken.】
【Temple Awakening Progress: 1】
【Updating…】
【Legendary Quest “Divine Temple Revival”: Prelude: Please help Wusu obtain a light source!】
