110: Chapter 110 The Last Gift

Yes, we're home.

In this brand-new home, won by their own hands and those of their comrades-in-arms.

Outlaw Zhang San's voice wasn't loud, yet it was like a stabilizing pillar, anchoring the turbulent hearts of every survivor.

The morning light grew warmer, gilding the ruins with a fuzzy golden edge and dispelling the last traces of cold lingering from the long night.

The survivors gathered in small groups—players, local cultivators, and mortals alike. Supporting one another, they struggled to crawl out of the quagmire known as "Despair."

In the air, that grand and compassionate gaze originating from the World Will was slowly fading away.

Like a Game Master who had finished the final settings and was preparing to log out of the server's backend, handing this rebooted world entirely back to its users.

However, in the final instant before that will fell completely silent, it performed one last act—the most subversive of all.

There was no announcement, no shaking of heaven and earth.

It happened silently, like a spring rain, permeating every corner of this world and the deepest recesses of every living soul.

Skillful Hands Mending was the first to notice something was wrong.

She had just finished comforting a local girl who had lost her parents in the war and was about to stand up to inventory the survivors' remaining supplies when the light screen before her eyes flickered without warning.

It was an extremely subtle stutter, like a data stream overload, lasting less than a thousandth of a second.

As a first-generation player, she was intimately familiar with the system that had accompanied her throughout her entire adventuring career; this sensation was unprecedented.

"Zhang San..." she instinctively looked toward Outlaw Zhang San nearby. "My system... something seems wrong."

Outlaw Zhang San frowned; he had also felt that fleeting anomaly.

He was about to say something when a different sight suddenly caught the corner of his eye.

He saw Grandpa Li, the old family blacksmith who had loyally guarded the logistics supplies since the war began, staring fixedly at the air in front of him with an expression as if he'd seen a ghost.

The old man's body was trembling violently. On his weathered face, a look of extreme bewilderment first appeared, which then transformed into a fear that reached his very marrow.

He reached out with hands covered in calluses and burn scars, waving them frantically before him as if trying to drive away some invisible nightmare.

"E-evil spirit! What the hell is this! Get away! Get away from me!"

The old man's terrified screams were like a stone thrown into a newly calmed lake, triggering a chain reaction.

"My god! What is this?"

"Immortal Master! Help! Something... something's wrong with my eyes!"

"Don't touch me! I'm not crazy! You... you see it too, right?"

Panic spread like a plague among all the surviving local beings.

Some collapsed to the ground, some fled in all directions, and others, like Grandpa Li, struck out and cursed at the empty air before them, looking like they'd gone mad.

Only the players stood their ground, their faces filled with the same bewilderment Grandpa Li had initially shown.

Outlaw Zhang San's pupils instantly constricted into dangerous pinpricks.

Ignoring the panicked mortals, he flickered and appeared directly in front of Grandpa Li, asking in a low voice, "Grandpa Li, don't be afraid! What do you see?"

"Im-Immortal Master..." Seeing him, Grandpa Li grasped at him like a lifeline, his trembling finger pointing in front of his nose. "A... a box! A glowing blue box! There are... there are words on it!"

A blue... light box?

Outlaw Zhang San's heart skipped a beat.

He looked in the direction Grandpa Li was pointing; there was nothing there.

But he knew something had to be there.

"What does it say?" His voice turned dry.

"It says... it says 'Name: Li Tie', and... 'Identity: Lu Family Blacksmith', 'Cultivation: None', 'Status: Old and Frail, Internal Injuries'..." Grandpa Li recited, almost in tears. "Immortal Master, am I about to die? Is this a death warrant sent by King Yama?"

Boom—!

These simple words were like a billion bolts of heavenly thunder exploding simultaneously in Outlaw Zhang San's mind.

He froze in place like a weathered stone statue.

A Status Panel.

A Status Panel that only players should have!

He whipped his head around to look at the chaotic crowd of local beings as a conjecture that made his scalp tingle and his soul tremble surged wildly in his mind.

He rushed to another screaming survivor, a side-branch cultivator of the Chen Family. This cultivator's cultivation wasn't high—only the second level of Qi Condensation—and he was currently staring at the void in terror.

"What do you see!" Zhang San asked sharply.

"A... a quest! It says... it says for me to repair the defensive array to the west, and the reward... the reward is '20 contribution points' and '3 Low-grade Spirit Stones'! This is a devil's contract! I can't sign it!" the cultivator roared incoherently.

Quest Log... Contribution System...

Outlaw Zhang San felt as if he'd been struck by lightning. He stumbled back two steps and was caught just in time by Skillful Hands Mending, who had rushed over.

"Zhang San, you..."

"I understand..." Zhang San's lips trembled, his eyes a mixture of shock, ecstasy, absurdity, and supreme awe. "I understand everything now..."

He looked up, one last time, toward the sky that was now completely silent, with no trace of will remaining. His voice was raspy, as if he were announcing the birth of a new era to all the surviving players, or perhaps to himself:

"The Ancestor... he's gone."

"He packaged this world, along with us, into one final gift."

"A gift... for every living being in this world."

Skillful Hands Mending followed his gaze, watching the local beings transition from terror and bewilderment to curiosity and experimentation under the players' explanations, until sparks of hope began to ignite. She finally understood the weight of this "gift."

The little girl who had lost her parents in the war was timidly extending a small finger, lightly tapping the void.

The next second, a brand-new prompt popped up before her eyes.

【Novice Quest: Collect ten pieces of clean firewood.】

【Quest Reward: A steaming hot bun.】

The girl was stunned.

Then, for the first time, light rekindled in her eyes, which had been dim and lifeless.

It wasn't a cultivator's longing for the Great Dao, nor a hero's pursuit of great deeds.

It was simply a hungry child's yearning for a bun.

Yet, it was the most primitive and powerful motivation in the world.

Outlaw Zhang San looked around.

He saw the Chen Family cultivator he had questioned earlier. After hesitating for a long time, the man finally gritted his teeth, accepted the quest to repair the array, and hobbled toward the west.

He saw more survivors calming down as they realized this so-called "death warrant" seemed to bear no ill will. Instead, it clearly guided them on "what to do" and "what they could get."

A brand-new, unprecedented order was quietly being established atop these ruins in a brutal yet efficient manner.

There was no longer a need for administrators to shout or for superiors to set rules.

Everyone became their own quest executor.

Cultivation no longer relied on illusory spiritual roots, nor was it monopolized by aristocratic families and sects.

The path to longevity was, for the first time, presented so clearly and fairly before every living being.

As long as you were willing to do it.

As long as you... were stubborn enough.

"He turned the whole world..." Outlaw Zhang San murmured, completing his unfinished sentence from earlier with a hint of a sob and a trace of a smile, "...into our 'Novice Village'."

And we, the surviving first-generation players, are the only living... walkthroughs in this Novice Village.

In a corner unnoticed by anyone, Grandpa Li, the loyal old blacksmith, finally stopped trembling after listening to a young player's patient explanation.

His cloudy old eyes stared intently at the light screen before him that only he could see.

On it, at some point, a brand-new quest had refreshed.

【Family Daily Quest: Forge a new agricultural hoe (0/1)】

【Quest Description: Everything is waiting to be rebuilt, and spring plowing is approaching. Forge a survival tool for the surviving mortals.】

【Quest Reward: contribution points +2, slight increase in Physique.】

Physique... slight increase?

Grandpa Li's heart gave a violent thud.

His body, riddled with internal injuries from years of labor and long since overburdened—did he really... still have a chance?

He looked at the words "spring plowing is approaching" in the quest description, then at the little girl in the distance who had started walking again after receiving the "collect firewood" quest.

Something long-lost, called "value," returned to his withered body.

He was no longer that old useless waste who could only watch the Immortal Masters fight helplessly during the war.

He was a blacksmith.

The world needed him.

The old man took a deep breath and extended his hand—the incredibly rough yet incredibly steady hand that had been tempered by fire and steel all his life.

Using all his strength, he pressed down heavily and solemnly on the [Accept Quest] option.

As if opening a brand-new era.