18: Chapter 18 A Small Character (Part 1)

My name is "Ye Wang." I used to be an amateur free-fighting enthusiast. My job was decent enough—not the best, but certainly not the worst—earning 8,000 yuan a month in a third-tier city. Life was good.

Well, that was before I injured someone during an amateur match.

In a small city like ours, everyone else who plays this sport is either filthy rich or well-connected.

I injured the son of a big shot. At the time, I was very attentive, helping to rush him to the hospital and running errands for him. But later, the doctor told me the patient I brought in might have suffered kidney damage, which could affect his ability to have children in the future.

I nervously handed him over to his family and sincerely and earnestly confessed my mistake. His family was very magnanimous, saying that sports matches always involve bumps and bruises, and told me not to take it to heart.

But what awaited me was the loss of my job. My girlfriend of many years, whom I was preparing to marry, broke up with me and immediately threw herself into the arms of the young master I had injured. My parents were threatened and beaten, and ended up in the hospital.

My world felt like it had collapsed in an instant...

When I returned from visiting my parents at the hospital, I was on the verge of a breakdown.

I started searching online for ways to leave this world. I was so stupid back then. I really thought leaving might have been for the best.

But I had underestimated my own endurance. While I was browsing, a website popped up called— "Paradise Lost".

"Have you lost your happiness? Have you lost your will to live? Come, click here. Let us help you regain your confidence in life!" "Do you wish to enter Paradise Lost?"

I chose—Yes!

[Host's mental state detected as extremely unstable. In the interest of the host's safety, you are being transported to the novice Lv0 instance, "Train to Busan." Please prepare yourself mentally. Good luck!]

"What FUK??"

I had seen that movie. I remembered the little girl didn't get shot in the end, so I naturally assumed she was safe. But my version seemed to be a bootleg story; the little girl was shot by a sniper, though the rest of us didn't die...

From the time I returned from that instance to when I came back to the real world and got my parents settled, I kept thinking that nothing in life could ever break me again, because I think I've already gone crazy, hahaha.

But I know I must live! Only then can I have the chance to change everything I want to change! Besides, I also need teammates I can entrust my back to; only then can I achieve my goal.

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My name is "Firing Pin." I was originally a miner. I had a three-year-old chubby daughter and a virtuous wife at home.

As well as my nagging but kind and gentle elderly mother and father.

My job was low-skilled: digging rocks with a pneumatic pick (pneumatic rock drill). Occasionally, I would drill holes into the rock face, and then let the educated ones put in the specialized blasting materials to blow up the mountain and quarry the stone.

Back then, I was a physics genius with failing grades in theory but perfect practical skills. In my spare time, I would secretly watch how they set the explosives and how to place the detonators most effectively. After a while, I became a semi-pro blasting expert.

The rain that day was torrential; I will never forget it for the rest of my life. In the span of 10 minutes, it went from bright sunshine to pitch black—and that's not an exaggeration, it was truly that dark. Raindrops the size of soybeans fell like they were free, as if the sky itself had sprung a leak.

I was just congratulating myself that the blast holes (the holes for the explosives) had been drilled before the rain started when the blasting engineer found me and asked me to go up to the cliff face to install the explosives. I flatly refused, as there were specialized people for that job. But in the end, I couldn't resist the temptation of money and went up.

It started off smoothly, but later, while I was installing them, my foot slipped. Fortunately, I caught hold of the rock face. The explosives I brought up seemed to shift a little, but overall remained stable. After hastily dealing with it, I rappelled down to the bottom of the cliff using the safety rope. I don't know if their operation went wrong, but before I had even left the danger zone, the blasting began. Countless rock fragments of all sizes poured down. Then, everything went black.

"Did I die?"

When I woke up, I was lying in the plaza of the "Paradise Lost" server, dazed. From just trying to scrape by at first, to later finding a suitable job and taking up my blasting trade again, I lived like a walking corpse without any goals for a year.

During this year, I learned a few things. They are called Adventurers, capable of entering instances to fight and returning to the real world for vacations. Others, who look a bit dull, are called NPCs; they follow the rules and do things in a completely rigid, by-the-book manner.

Someone like me is called a Server—an Adventurer who can't return to the real world and doesn't want to go on adventures in the instances. Suddenly, one day while drinking at the tavern, someone said that through adventuring, you can resurrect the dead.

From that day on, I started clearing instances and accumulating rewards, because I missed them so much—my parents, my wife. I wanted to see my chubby baby one more time, even if I had to give everything for it! So, for anyone or anything that blocks my path, there is only one outcome: they get blown to the sky by me. Having died once, what is there to fear?

---

My name is "Mountain God" because I have been blessed by the mountains, so I want to use my mortal body to spread the mercy of the Mountain God.

I have a small business that earns me two or three hundred thousand a year—not the best, but not the worst. When a person no longer has a survival crisis, they pursue other things. Some pursue beauty, some pursue fame and fortune, and I pursue excitement.

I started trying many outdoor sports and eventually discovered that what I truly loved was mountaineering. So, when business wasn't busy, I would invite three or five like-minded friends to challenge some established or unexplored routes.

Mountaineering is one of the world's top ten most dangerous outdoor sports, but it's not as dangerous as free solo climbing, yet harder than wilderness survival. Because I caught a bad cold on the eve of our summit attempt, I was left behind to guard the camp after taking some medicine and feeling slightly better. There were five of us. After we all prayed for blessings at a centuries-old tree on the mountainside, the other four checked their gear and went up the mountain to prepare for the summit.

There was no horror story where a landslide happened before they reached the summit and I had to make a choice about whether three of them died or just one returned, but a landslide did indeed occur due to the heavy rain.

I was unfortunately swept away. But just as the mud was about to bury me, I was caught by a fallen tree, which slowed my speed, and I struggled out of the mud.

During the struggle, I seemed to have grabbed something. When I climbed to higher ground to check, I found it was the lucky charm we had hung on the tree branch when we prayed for blessings.

Inside were four big characters: "Peace and Happiness!"

At the time, they laughed at me for being too childish. Later, when we all got together after escaping danger, and I told them about this, the room went silent.

Since then, my body seemed to have undergone some strange little changes. I felt that the hardness of my muscles was becoming absurd. Later, one day while I was online at home, a webpage popped up called "Paradise Lost." It read, "Do you want to explore the secret of your changes? Do you want to spread the mercy of the Mountain God? Come to Paradise Lost."

And so, I became the "Mountain God" in this paradise. Although kindness has become a luxury in this paradise space, the Mountain God will still protect the brave and kind, and give them a helping hand.

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My name is Loran. I am a botany professor at a university in a second-tier city. Just as you might imagine, my family is perfect, happy, and harmonious. My husband is a middle manager at a company. My daughter is well-behaved and obedient, and she excels in both her studies and life, which makes me proud. Her name is—Xiaoya.

But because she inherited my excellent genes and her father's temperament, from elementary school on, my daughter gradually started being singled out by her classmates because of her outstanding appearance. Yes, just as you thought, she started to be isolated and bullied.

A colleague who taught high school once told me that there are two types of girls in a class who are most easily bullied: those from poor families and those who are pretty. Unfortunately, my daughter happened to be the latter.

At first, I angrily went to the teachers and the school to reason with them. Because I am a peer, they listened to what I had to say with some seriousness, but the other party's parents were very powerful. My daughter faced even more severe retaliation.

I chose to report it to the police station. But the police officers couldn't protect her 24 hours a day. My daughter also became increasingly withdrawn. She started drinking, skipping school, and hanging out with less-than-respectable kids from society. Although this wasn't good news, she at least had friends. Her father and I didn't strongly oppose it.

Until—she and her friends were severely beaten up by a group of social drifters hired by the girl who had been bullying her for a long time, all because they stood up for her. One of the girls was harmed, and two of the boys were seriously injured.

When my daughter's father and I arrived at the hospital, we saw her crying alone in a corner. We paid all the medical expenses. Afterward, the guardians of the other children arrived—some were grandfathers, some were uncles, some were aunts. They were all left-behind children.

My last memory of those children was the victimized girl pointing at Xiaoya and asking: "Why wasn't it you who got hurt? Why? Just because you have your mom and dad by your side?"

Since then, Xiaoya began to sink into depression, living in a daze day after day. We found an old classmate and, through a school donation, sent her to a very mediocre university.

Later, that playmate of hers, due to deep psychological trauma, jumped off a city highway bridge several dozen meters high and passed away on the spot. At Xiaoya's pleading, I took her to attend the funeral.

The day after we returned home, my daughter disappeared. I searched the entire city, every street and alley, but there was absolutely no news. I was nearly driven mad.

Months flashed by, and there was still no news of Xiaoya, until I obtained a strange vine seed. It seemed able to send me messages; if I fed it with the flesh and blood of corpses, it could lead me to Xiaoya. I might have gone insane. I started feeding this vine, and while feeding it, I also awakened nature-type magic. I struggled to survive through the instances.

Until I met her in the under one person instance—Mia. A young girl who looked exactly like my daughter. I don't know if she is Xiaoya, but I cannot lose her again. So I hid a seed on her; I will meet her again in the next instance. Definitely! Is heaven giving me another chance? Although I know she definitely isn't Xiaoya...