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[Congratulations! You've steadfastly resisted the "love" that only cost 50 Eerie Coins, successfully preserved your Yang energy, and gained +10 Survival Experience.]
Under the streetlights, in front of a row of roller shutter doors decorated in pink, Chen Luren seriously rejected each scantily clad girl before mercilessly walking out of the alley. Come to think of it, for quite a while now, Chen had acted like a horndog searching for street corner love, wandering this area late at night. However, no matter how the girls in skimpy outfits called out to him, or even offered him red envelopes out of lust for his "good looks," Chen refused to "take the bait." It wasn't that he begrudged the 50 yuan activity fee, but rather... he valued his purity. As for why he still came here every night despite his self-restraint, it all started when he was chosen by a game called Horror World.
Chen Luren... 18 years old... a freshman at Longquan University.
He has a sunny and handsome face, stands at 1.85 meters, and just like all you handsome readers, he's definitely a member of the heartthrob league.
However, despite such superior physical conditions, he was a veteran homebody. On weekdays, apart from school, he would stay at home researching anime and savoring various novels.
But ever since being reminded by a eerie voice half a month ago that he had been chosen, the trajectory of his life has changed.
Just like many novels in the eerie game genre.
When he was first chosen, Chen Luren was extremely nervous.
After all, he was a homebody with a strong will to live. To put it nicely, he was cautious; to put it bluntly... he was a total coward.
So unlike the protagonists in novels who think they're chosen ones and rush forward recklessly,
he directly took several days off and stayed home to study the game thoroughly.
It wasn't until Chen Luren realized that being chosen by the eerie world seemed to have no impact on him that his courage grew.
The "Foot Bath Street" was the first eerie dungeon he encountered.
But... it wasn't quite what he expected.
Just like when he was "searching for 50-yuan street corner love" before,
the eerie world would display corresponding prompt messages.
However, Chen Luren noticed these messages were completely out of sync with reality.
In reality, it was clearly a street of foot bath and massage parlors. But the eerie prompts described it as a eerie massage parlor. As long as Chen Luren resisted the temptation of the masseuse ghosts, he could gain corresponding survival experience. That's exactly why—after repeatedly confirming there was no danger—he'd sneak out every night after his family fell asleep. He called it... exploiting a bug to grind experience. Rejecting the "50-yuan love" from real-world masseuses translated in the eerie world as resisting ghostly seduction, granting him survival points. In Chen Luren's eyes, this was a total bug—or maybe just how his golden finger was meant to work. .......
It was already midnight when he got home.
To avoid waking his parents and little sister, Chen Luren washed up quietly before tiptoeing back to his bedroom. Then, he eagerly opened the personal template that came with his selection.
Eerie Player: Chen Luren Mental
State: Dusty+
Survival Experience: 100
Prompt: You have faced eeriness directly and accumulated enough survival experience. You can consume experience to wipe the dust from your mind, which will help you understand the essence of this world.
Seeing the personal info list, Chen Luren's face lit up with excitement. He was chosen half a month ago. It took him three full days to confirm there was no danger. Two days later, he discovered that Foot Bath Street was an eerie dungeon. Thus... for the next ten days, he grinded experience there daily. Ten days later, he'd exactly accumulated 100 survival points. Just like in an online game, Chen Luren now met the requirements to level up.
Taking a deep breath, he immediately clicked to upgrade his mental state.
[100 Survival Experience consumed. You successfully wiped the dust from your mind and removed the Dusty state.]
[Current Mental Tier: Rank 1.] As the prompt tones rang out, Chen Luren suddenly felt something strange. It seemed like everything around him had a hidden side. Take the bed he was sitting on, for example. The mattress was soft, and the sheets carried a faint fragrance. But through his mind, Chen Luren smelled something like old, rotten wood. It felt as if he wasn't sitting on a bed, but a coffin. Yes, that was the illusion. Right now, he felt like he had just sat up from a coffin. ???? "What the hell? Why do I feel this way?" Chen Luren was completely confused. But just as he was filled with questions, a series of prompts rang in his ears. [Through your mind, you've gained a new understanding of this world.] [That's right—it is an old, decaying coffin.] [Lie on it daily, and you'll gain corresponding Survival Experience.] With these prompts, Chen Luren's hair stood on end.
"After wiping my mind and leveling up, why do I feel closer to the eerie stuff?"
"For fuck's sake, this isn't the result I wanted!" Chen Luren blurted out.
But besides the coffin, he soon noticed other creepy things. Take the photo frame on his nightstand, for example. It held a group photo of him with his parents and sister. Yet the moment he picked it up, he sensed it was a mourning portrait.
Yes—this came from his mental perception, while his eyes still saw a normal family photo. The only relief was that the mourning portrait in his mind only showed himself, not his parents or sister.
It seemed that after his mind upgraded, Chen Luren gained a strange second perspective. That's when he remembered his personal info template—there must be updates after the mental level-up.
Eerie Player: Chen Luren
Mental State: Rank 1
Companion Eerie Item: Old Coffin
(It retains a strong trace of your aura. In danger, you can return to the coffin through this aura. Note: Your current mental tier allows only one use every three days, consuming 100 Survival Experience each time.)
Eerie Compendium: None
Survival Experience: 0
Prompt: With Rank 1 Mind, you can glimpse the world's other side more clearly. When facing danger, you'll develop intuition... but remember—don't get cocky. You're still weak. Whoosh.
"Thank god, at least I can use the coffin," Chen Luren muttered.
To him, the coffin (bed) was like a 'Hearthstone' or recall scroll in games. For someone who specialized in playing it safe, this was even more valuable than attack skills. After all, when danger struck, survival came first. Besides, the Eerie World game and reality still felt like separate channels. Chen Luren hadn't noticed any signs of the two worlds merging. Which meant... he could keep exploiting bugs to grind experience.