Chapter 73: Code World

Chapter 73: Chapter 73: Code World

"Appear, endlessly cruel Mountain Ghost."

Felix stared at the Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting, his eyes burning with intensity. He, too, was filled with curiosity about the legendary Mountain Ghost.

Before becoming a player, he had thought the legends of the Mountain Ghost were nothing more than folktales.

But after becoming a player, and especially after learning some of the world’s secrets, he no longer believed that.

According to some secret information he’d obtained, there were players who could summon ghosts.

This was the inspiration behind his plan to use the Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting.

BUZZ!

The Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting had been a simple ink-wash landscape, but the moment 500 Dream gems merged with it, its surface began to undulate, sending out waves of ripples.

Within the painting, the Mist shrouding the Mountain Ghost began to dissipate. It seemed the terrifying creature was about to reveal its true form.

He looked on expectantly, only to see a bizarre, distorted world.

It was as if the Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting had formed its own space, blurring and distorting his vision.

BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!

Despite being a two-dimensional surface, the Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting twisted and struggled, as if the Mountain Ghost inside was about to shatter some unseen barrier and climb out of the painting.

Finally, all the ink that formed the Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting dissolved and reformed. The Mountain Ghost and its retinue were gone, leaving only a single, ferocious ghostly claw the size of a small mountain.

POP!

Felix thought he heard something tear. Then, a single joint of the Mountain Ghost’s finger broke through the painting’s two-dimensional confines, appearing before him with terrifying reality.

Gradually, the ghostly claw grew more solid, more real.

An inexplicable panic suddenly welled up in Felix’s heart.

...

What Felix didn’t know was that the moment he began summoning the Mountain Ghost, the entire Dream Duel Arena had begun to ripple with instability.

To be more precise, the Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting was transmitting its own fluctuations into the Dream Duel Arena, causing a conflict between the two.

But the conflict wasn’t violent. Through some mediating force, the two were striving to harmonize.

By the time the Mountain Ghost’s fingertip manifested, the vibrational frequencies of the Dream Duel Arena and the Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting had finally synchronized, as if two different planes of existence had connected.

Chen Qi witnessed the entire process, even sensing the specific details of the frequency overlap.

Of course, it wasn’t that he was spying on Felix. It was because the Dream Duel Arena had, at this point, become his turf.

’Tsk, tsk. Brother Felix, aren’t you playing a little dirty?’

’Even if my math sucks, I can still add numbers under 1000.’

’You’re actually using cheats!’

Originally, Chen Qi had been enjoying the sight of the Steel Warrior hammering the Dark Giant—a scene straight out of his childhood fantasies.

His dream was coming true, and he was completely engrossed in the sight.

Unfortunately, Felix had to go and ruin the fun, severely disrupting the game’s order.

In that case, it was time to put an end to this.

Although Chen Qi didn’t know what the hell Felix was summoning, he could tell it was extremely dangerous.

If he managed to summon it completely, it would be a huge pain, even if it didn’t mean his own complete defeat.

’It ends now!’

"Freeze!"

Chen Qi’s golden wings vibrated, and in the next instant, endless Sleep Text code radiated out, illuminating the entire Dream Duel Arena.

The golden light was so brilliant that the entire Dream Duel Arena began to fade in its radiance, revealing the reality hidden beneath the Dream’s colors.

What lay beneath were countless lines of purple, flickering Sleep Text code. The very skeleton of the Dream Duel Arena was built entirely from game data.

In essence, this arena was just a mass of Dream, bound by the rules of the game.

Except this Dream was immeasurably vast and complex, created by linking the dreams of millions of people throughout Chaotic City.

Chen Qi, of course, couldn’t take control of a million people’s dreams. But hacking into the game’s code to seize partial command of this Dreamscape? That, he could do.

And he had Felix to thank for it more than anyone.

An artist’s mind works in mysterious ways. It was just a string of code, but Felix insisted on giving it an artistic flair.

If that were all, it wouldn’t have been a major issue.

But perhaps driven by his artistic sensibilities, Felix had taken it upon himself to "improve" dozens of sections of the code!

Compared to the millions upon millions of lines of code that made up Chaotic City, this seemed insignificant.

But a small leak can sink a great ship, and Felix had personally dug dozens of gaping holes.

Chen Qi had noticed this problem while collecting the graffiti. At first, he’d thought it was a trap. How could the designer of such a massive game make such a low-level mistake?

But after meeting Felix, Chen Qi confirmed the truth in an instant.

The guy was a blockhead who didn’t understand the first thing about virtual games.

He couldn’t even make a decent copy, yet he insisted on making unnecessary "improvements."

...

Chen Qi strode slowly through the world of flickering code.

If one could see the entire Dream Duel Arena, they would find that everything within it had been paused.

Whether it was the Mechanical Warriors still scavenging for Dream gems or the Dark Giant being brutally pummeled, their movements were frozen in time.

The flow of time within the Dream Duel Arena was completely frozen.

Chen Qi could move normally only because players were a special case.

They entered this place with their Spirituality and Consciousness, which were not inherently part of the Dream Duel Arena.

...

"What’s happening?"

"What on earth happened? Why did the game pause?"

As an independent player, Felix had naturally noticed the anomaly in the Dream Duel Arena as well.

Of course, he knew the truth of the Dream Duel Arena—that it was just a game world constructed from code.

But besides the Game Monarch, who else could possibly control the game?

Even he only had a small measure of administrative rights and a few special code snippets.

Pausing the entire game—not even Felix could do something like that.

With the game paused, some mysterious connection was severed, and the ghostly claw that had appeared in the arena vanished.

The Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting returned to its original state, looking like nothing more than an unremarkable piece of art.

"Is this depicting the legend of the man-eating Mountain Ghost?"

At some point, Chen Qi had appeared beside Felix and was now curiously admiring the Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting.

As someone who grew up in the Lanyu Kingdom, Chen Qi naturally knew the legends of the Mountain Ghost.

He used to think it was just folklore, but the grand spectacle Felix put on today seemed to prove the legends might not be false after all.

"How did you do it?"

Terror and hatred warred on Felix’s face, but his expression was dominated by disbelief and bitter resentment.

He had already realized his fate—one that was utterly unchangeable.

"I think it’s better you don’t know the answer. Otherwise, I’m afraid you won’t be able to rest in peace."

Chen Qi’s tone was placid. He was a man who always settled his scores.

But who says you can’t be graceful about it?

"You... you..."

Felix was so angry he was trembling, practically steaming at the ears.

"Fine, fine, fine! Just give me a quick death!"

"Lord Game Monarch will avenge me."

In the end, Felix’s fear morphed into hatred, and he glared at Chen Qi with pure malice.

Chen Qi maintained a friendly demeanor, completely unbothered by the offense.

"I’ll ask you one last question. Answer it, and I’ll send you on your way."

"The Game Monarch you speak of, did he really upload himself into the King’s Game?"

Although he had already guessed the truth, Chen Qi still wanted to hear the answer from Felix.

All this time, the only thing players could interact with were Cards. But what about the game itself?

What was it, really?

The vast majority of players never stopped to think about it—or rather, they weren’t qualified to.

But Chen Qi felt he should. It paid to be prepared.

"You... you figured out the Game Monarch’s true nature?"

"It seems I deserved to lose!"

"But don’t get too pleased with yourself. The game is about to enter its reshuffling phase, and you won’t live much longer either."

The realization that he was simply going to die a little sooner than Chen Qi seemed to comfort him.

The next instant, he suffered the death of a thousand cuts and burst into a firework of light.

Chen Qi’s Spirituality skyrocketed once more, and he even gained a bit of artistic talent.