1: Since I can't pay the rent, I have no choice but to trick all of humanity into working for me.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The shabby security door groaned as if it were about to give up the ghost at any moment.

Dust fell in showers, making one's throat itch.

"Su Mu! Don't hide in there pretending to be dead! I know you're home!"

A sharp, high-pitched female voice pierced through the door like a rusty saw cutting through wood: "You owe two months' rent and still want to squat here? You look decent enough, but you're just a broke loser!"

Inside the door.

Su Mu leaned against the cold wall, clutching two crumpled red banknotes tightly in his hand.

This was all he owned.

Two hundred yuan.

In this land-scarce, gold-expensive Hailan City, it wasn't even enough for a decent hotpot meal.

"Auntie Wang, give me a few more days. I just found a job, and I'll pay you as soon as I get my salary..." Su Mu spoke through the door, his tone tinged with flattery and helplessness.

"Cut the crap!"

Auntie Wang outside clearly wasn't buying it; her spittle seemed to spray onto the door: "Three days! Three days at most! If you don't pay up, I'll throw your bedding out onto the street! Don't blame me for being heartless then!"

The sound of high heels on the concrete floor gradually faded away.

Tap, tap, tap.

Each step felt like it was stomping on Su Mu's heart.

Whew—

Su Mu slid down the wall and sat on the floor, looking at this less-than-ten-square-meter basement.

Damp, dark, with a patch of unknown moss growing in the corner.

This was the collapse of adulthood.

No hysterics, just the helplessness of not having money to pay rent.

"Do I really have to deliver takeout?"

Su Mu let out a bitter laugh.

Company layoffs, landlord debt collection.

This damn life.

Just as he was about to take out his phone to see if he could sell his three-year-old secondhand laptop on Xianyu to scrape by,

Bzzz—!

A strange buzzing sound exploded deep in his mind without warning.

Not tinnitus.

More like some high-dimensional signal forcibly squeezing into a low-dimensional container.

Intense pain instantly struck, as if someone were stirring his brains with a red-hot iron rod.

"Hiss—"

Su Mu clutched his head, curling up like a boiled shrimp.

But the pain came and went quickly.

In its place was a cold, mechanical voice with a grand, textured quality:

[Detecting intense host mental fluctuations...]

[Spark·Dimensional War Hub, officially activated.]

[Current authority: LV1.]

[Linked to Plane 0: Wasteland.]

Su Mu's eyes snapped open.

The basement before him vanished.

In its place was a holographic projection-like image floating in the Void Realm.

It was a gray world.

The sky was covered in thick leaden clouds, not a ray of sunlight in sight.

The earth was cracked, the dark red soil as if soaked in blood.

Fierce winds swept radioactive dust, howling through the ruins of a city.

In the center of the image, a group of ragged, skin-festering humanoid creatures were frantically devouring an unidentified corpse.

Zombies.

Living, feeding Zombies.

"Ugh..."

Su Mu's stomach churned, and he almost vomited his breakfast.

But the scene was too real.

Even the bloody strands hanging from the Zombies' mouths and the stench of decay carried by the wind were clearly perceptible.

[Host can consume energy to project their consciousness to this plane for exploration/conquest.]

The System's prompt sounded again.

Su Mu was stunned.

Transmigration?

Golden Finger?

But watching the Zombie in the image tear through sheet metal with its bare hands, Su Mu wisely shrank his neck.

What a joke.

With his office-worker, sub-healthy physique, was he going over there to deliver takeout to Zombies?

The kind without packaging, ready to eat.

"System, is there any newbie gift pack? Like a Dragon-Slaying Sword? Or an Iron Man suit?" Su Mu tentatively asked.

[None.]

[Insufficient energy to materialize matter. Only supports digitized consciousness transmission.]

The System's reply was cold and merciless.

Su Mu slumped back onto the floor, his eyes vacant.

Given a Golden Finger, only for it to be a useless ornament?

No, even a death sentence.

"Digitized consciousness..."

Su Mu muttered to himself, his fingers unconsciously tapping the floor.

Suddenly.

His movements stopped.

His eyes went from vacant to focused, finally bursting with a startling brilliance.

"Digitized consciousness... isn't that just VR?"

"Reshaping bodies... isn't that just creating accounts?"

"Killing monsters to plunder energy... isn't that just grinding levels?"

A crazy idea grew wildly in his mind like weeds.

Since he didn't dare to risk his life,

Why not let others do it?

In this world, there was a kind of person.

They weren't afraid of death or exhaustion.

For a virtual achievement, they could grind for three days and nights straight.

For a rare item, they were willing to run the same dungeon ten thousand times.

Even to become stronger in this virtual world, they were willing to spend loads of money!

Players.

The terrifying existence known as the "fourth calamity."

"If I package this otherworld as a '100% real virtual game'..."

Su Mu licked his dry lips, his heart pounding violently.

"They kill monsters for me, I take the lion's share, and give them a little data trash as rewards."

"They mine Ore for me, I sell it to the System for money, and get rich in real life!"

"Even if they die, they just lose levels, and I only need to spend a little energy to revive them."

What kind of otherworld was this?

This was clearly a private minefield gifted to him by the heavens!

And the billions of people on Earth were the perfect, self-sufficient, unpaid, even reverse-paying—

Ideal miners!

"Let's do it!"

Su Mu jumped up from the floor, the despondency in his eyes completely gone.

The timid starve, the bold feast.

Since he was about to be kicked out by the landlord anyway, he might as well take a gamble!

He quickly opened the old laptop.

[System, I want to create a game website and login client.]

[Requires energy consumption.]

"What do I have now?"

[Initial gifted energy: 100 points. Enough for 5 consciousnesses to perform initial projection.]

"Enough!"

Su Mu's hands flew across the keyboard, using the black-tech interface built into [Spark] to directly hack into an unknown small server.

No money for promotion?

Then use pop-ups!

The lowest, most virus-like, impossible-to-close pop-ups!

Ten minutes later.

A shockingly crude webpage was born.

The background was a screenshot of the Wasteland, with large, intimidating black Songti font:

[Want to understand the meaning of life? Want to truly... live?]

Su Mu looked at it, thought it was too cliché, and deleted it.

[Come fight me if you're a real bro!]

Too tacky, deleted.

Finally.

He typed a few highly provocative lines in the input box:

[100% virtual reality.]

[A groundbreaking masterpiece surpassing 'Ready Player One.']

[No recharge options, no VIP privileges here.]

[Start with just your underwear, gear is all loot-based!]

[Closed beta slots limited, only 5 available! Click to play!]

Looking at this page full of "Macau's first online casino" style, Su Mu nodded in satisfaction.

Even if it looked like a scam.

As long as one person clicked... as long as one person experienced that realistic sensation... this lie would become truth.

"Publish."

Su Mu pressed the Enter key... Hailan City, late at night.

In a smoke-filled, shady internet cafe.

Li Qiang threw his cement-dust-covered work gloves on the table and slumped into the greasy sofa chair.

"Boss, a cup of instant noodles, with a sausage!"

He was a construction worker.

Literally a brick carrier.

During the day, he worked like a dead dog on the construction site; only during these few hours at night, in the virtual game world, could he regain a bit of human dignity.

"Damn, lost again."

Looking at the grayed-out avatar on the screen, Li Qiang cursed and quit a certain MOBA game.

Teammates too weak, too many AFK players.

Boring.

Just as he was about to shut down and sleep,

A small ad suddenly popped up in the lower right corner of the screen.

No flashy pictures of beautiful women, no eye-blinding effects.

Just a gloomy, oppressive Wasteland image and those few lines of large text.

[100% virtual reality?]

Li Qiang sneered and was about to click the red X.

"Trying to fool ghosts. These browser game ads are getting more shameless, 100% virtual reality? Why don't you just fly to the sky?"

The mouse moved to the close button.

But he stopped.

As if possessed, his gaze fell on the line [Start with just your underwear, gear is all loot-based!].

As a veteran broke player, he had a natural craving for such "fair" wording.

"It doesn't cost anything anyway..."

Li Qiang muttered, his fingers trembling slightly.

A hint of curiosity about the unknown, and an escape from real life.

"Fine, I'll play along today."

"If you dare scam me, if it's one of those fake, garbage browser games, I'll track you down online and curse you to death, you damn developer!"

Click.

The left mouse button pressed.

The next second.

The noisy chatter in the internet cafe, the clacking of keyboards, the shouts of "help" from the next table... all vanished instantly.

The whole world seemed to have been muted.

The computer screen before Li Qiang suddenly turned pitch black and deep, like a black hole devouring light, instantly pulling his consciousness into it.

The world spun.

Weightlessness enveloped his entire body.

Just as Li Qiang thought he was about to die from sudden cardiac arrest, a line of blood-red text, like a brand, appeared on his retina.

Accompanied by a cold, mocking, yet seductive voice whispering in his ear:

"Welcome to, the Void Realm."

"Dear player, are you ready... to face Hell?"