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After Saving The Universe A Thousand Times: Chapter 25
Chapter 25: Mirage 2
Are these gods really so idle? One after another, they insist on squeezing into the instance?
In the guest room of the inn, Dong Jin recalled Lei Ming’s overly exaggerated combat instincts when they first met and immediately gave up the idea of a physical confrontation. Resigned, he closed the live stream interface on his phone and began searching for specific information about this individual.
As soon as he typed “black and gold-haired monster on Mirage Island” into the search bar, a half-body photo of Lei Ming, gazing down with lowered brows directly at the camera, appeared on the screen.
At the top of the photo’s comment section was a detailed explanation provided by a certain netizen:
[This non-human in the picture is handsome, right? I happened to run into him outside the Water Opera House on Mirage Island. Later, I asked around and found out he’s the island master, Xite.
Is someone hosting a ‘No Heartbeat’ challenge there recently? I hope none of the streamers get deceived by his looks because his temper is very bad. My advice: the farther you stay from him, the better.
Don’t naively believe that nonsense about humans and monsters living in harmony—otherwise, you won’t even know how you ended up dead.]
When Dong Jin clicked on the netizen’s profile, intending to ask for more details, he found the account had already been marked as “deactivated,” and the post about Lei Ming had turned into a message reading “blocked for infringing on personal privacy.”
When coincidences pile up like this, it stops being a coincidence.
Dong Jin surmised this must be one of those setups where “only the first discoverer can see certain information.” Once he finished reading, the entire page disappeared.
Realizing he couldn’t gather more information about Lei Ming online, Dong Jin turned his attention to researching the tsunami.
Perhaps due to the resurgence of spiritual energy causing too many disasters worldwide, there wasn’t much concern online about this so-called cataclysmic tsunami that was about to destroy the island. Instead, people were more interested in the potential sparks between streamers and between streamers and monsters on the island.
In the end, Dong Jin only managed to catch a brief mention of “a tsunami will hit in ten days” buried in the corner of a local news report. Respectfully, he decided to drop the subject.
Previously, he thought the first 1,000 trial-takers on Calamity Star were chaotic enough. But this island—this was what you’d call a true realm of rampant monsters. With that in mind, he casually clicked into a few streamers’ live streams to take a look.
In this world plagued by tsunamis and monsters, and where even decent food was scarce, humans were struggling to survive. Yet both streamers and their audiences were still laughing and joking, making all kinds of comments about the non-human residents of the island.
Was the atmosphere of this world really that harmonious? Or was it just that he, someone always inclined toward conspiracy theories, simply didn’t fit in here?
Reflecting on whether he was being overly cynical, Dong Jin finally reopened his own live stream. After doing so, he glanced at the time in the top-right corner of his phone.
He had arrived at Mirage Island at 9 a.m., and it was now past 11 a.m. after dealing with everything. It was time to head out for lunch.
And while he was lowering his eyes, thinking about lunch, the instance viewers who had been staring at the black screen in the live stream finally seized the opportunity to vent their grievances like crazy:
【What an absolutely divine face! Even so, you can’t slack off like this!]
【Out of 1,000 streamers, you’re the only one holed up in your room until now. Don’t think that staying indoors means you won’t be tempted. Don’t be stupid. If you keep this up, you’ll be judged as playing passively and become the first to be eliminated.]
【Sweetheart, you really can’t stay cooped up anymore. Take us to see that stunning hottie you ran into earlier! It’s my first time seeing such a handsome monster, and I’m dying to know what his original form is… Even if you can’t feel tempted by him because of the challenge, it’s fine if he feels tempted by you! If any human or monster has a significant emotional fluctuation toward you, you’ll also gain some popularity points~】
As the instance viewers rapidly flooded the chat, the viewers from the first and second universes outside the instance were also spamming their comments at the same time.
【Stream within a stream, this instance is like a matryoshka doll. By the way, can some kind soul confirm: was the person Dong Jin ran into at the beginning actually Lei Ming? Has the ultimate workhorse decided to let his debts pile up and sneak into the instance to play?】
【Didn’t you check the commentary booth earlier? That was indeed Lei Ming, but he didn’t sneak in. He reported Kai, got Kai to take over his job, and then entered the instance openly to play. How to describe this move… Only Lei Ming in the Supreme Universe could pull off something like this.】
【Honestly, I’d rather watch Kai than Lei Ming lazing around as a commentator. Kai’s got such an eye for things! From the very start of the instance, he’s been glued to Dong Jin’s live stream. Just for his taste, calling him an artist wouldn’t be an overstatement, right?】
【An artist? Clearly, you haven’t seen Kai when he goes wild. He’s always been a god of revelry who acts on whims… Just wait, Lei Ming pulling this stunt won’t sit well with Kai. Isn’t Dong Jin living on the same floor as Lei Ming? Before long, you might catch the aftermath of their showdown in Dong Jin’s live stream.】
At this moment, Dong Jin, who was being watched simultaneously by both groups of viewers, was casually walking toward the downstairs kitchen with a selfie stick in hand.
Although he wasn’t sure about other inns, in this three-story standalone villa where he was currently staying, the ratio of monsters, trial-takers, and ordinary humans seemed to be 1:1:3.
Before entering the kitchen, Dong Jin glanced at some humanoid monsters passing by. Judging by their stats, their combat power was undoubtedly higher than that of ordinary humans, but not so high that they could emerge unscathed from a tsunami.
The 1,000 streamers here were risking their lives for things like money and fame, but what about these monsters? Why were they staying? Were they unwilling to leave the island’s environment and planning to leave only on the last day?
As the oddities continued piling up, Dong Jin, who had been quiet all morning, decided it was time to stir things up.
It was lunchtime, but this inn only provided raw ingredients without offering any meal services.
So, apart from the streamers who had gone early to the island’s central restaurant, the rest of the streamers and monsters staying at the inn were eating fast food. And not just any fast food—Dong Jin couldn’t understand it but was utterly shocked by how unappetizing and hard to swallow it was.
In this situation, Dong Jin reluctantly gave up the idea of using Stargazy Pie 1 to provoke emotional fluctuations in those around him—because, judging by the standard of fast food here, that thing might just suit their tastes.
In the end, Dong Jin chose a piece of tofu and began preparing another dish equally capable of stirring people up.
Of course, this time he wasn’t aiming to stimulate everyone psychologically but to deliver an overwhelming impact on their senses of sight, smell, and taste.
Ten minutes later, amidst the roaring and sizzling of oil and aroma, the dominant spiciness of pickled peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and dried chili peppers instantly spread throughout the first floor and even began invading the neighboring inn.
Under the faint and ambiguous gazes around him, Dong Jin carried the freshly made mapo tofu to the dining table and sat down alone.
As it turned out, the culinary shock he brought to this food desert-like instance world was highly effective. At this moment, the heart rate fluctuation chart displayed on his wristwatch clearly proved how his cooking had impacted those around him.
Even Lei Ming—known as Xite in this instance—who had just returned from outside, cast an inscrutable look in his direction.
【What the hell is this all about ah? I came here to watch a romance stream, and yet this guy with such a face ends up using food to provoke emotional fluctuations?! And the worst part is, even through the screen, that dish is making me so hungry, ughhh!】
In that instant, with the surge of comments, the popularity of Dong Jin’s live stream in the instance skyrocketed once again.
While eating, Dong Jin realized that emotional fluctuations other than love were also recognized, and even the emotional waves of viewers outside the instance seemed to contribute to his popularity. This discovery made his already awakened mischief-making instincts stir even more.
Love? How boring. Compared to flirting back and forth, he was much better at sowing discord.
Who said that when the heart races to the extreme out of anger, it couldn’t count as a different form of “being moved”?
Moreover, if this island used popularity to exchange for money and transportation tickets, would the reverse also be true?
If he earned a large sum of money first, could he exchange it for popularity? Even if the organizers didn’t allow exchanges, as long as he openly stated in his live stream how much money he was offering for how much time, wouldn’t that still push his popularity to the top?
At this moment, Dong Jin’s logical genius fully kicked in, and he even began contemplating how to implement these ideas. Just then, a chubby young man who looked about twenty years old ran over and sat across from him, asking:
“Are you done eating? If so, can I have a taste of that dish?”
Glancing at the information bar above the chubby man’s head and confirming that he was a humanoid monster, Dong Jin originally intended to refuse and stir up some resentment. However, he suddenly changed his mind.
The next second, he scooped half a bowl of the leftover dish from the kitchen pot and pushed it in front of the other man.
As he noticed the instant emotional fluctuation caused by the spiciness of the dish as the man ate, Dong Jin lowered his gaze thoughtfully.
Spiciness, after all, is a form of pain.
Dong Jin never overestimated the moral boundaries of trial-takers. Once others discovered that the emotional fluctuations caused by pain still fell within the range of heart rate monitoring, this so-called “No Heartbeat Challenge” would inevitably evolve into a survival challenge.
Because there would definitely be trial-takers who would overtly or covertly resort to violence, attempting to clear the challenge by force.
“I’m called Piggy. What dish is this? It’s just so, so, so delicious! Can you be my chef? Name your salary, as high as you want!” On the other side of the dining table, the chubby man who had been completely won over by Dong Jin’s cooking was rambling on endlessly.
Dong Jin calmly accepted all of Piggy’s compliments.
After all, his cooking skills really were that good.
With the aid of the Eye of Truth, the best methods for handling ingredients, precise control over cooking temperatures, and the exact timing for adding seasonings were laid out before him in a way that was simple and intuitive. So, even though he rarely cooked, whenever he did, the results were guaranteed to be top-tier.
As skilled as he was at cooking, he was equally lacking in money. Still, Dong Jin had absolutely no interest in becoming this guy’s personal chef.
So at this moment, he lazily and nonchalantly refused, saying, “I’m very expensive.”
The moment he uttered the word “expensive,” Lei Ming, who was on the stairs and about to go upstairs, suddenly turned to glance at him. Keenly aware of the other’s gaze, Dong Jin looked back at him, puzzled.
What now? Bankrupted and amnesiac, but still gets PTSD from the word “expensive”?
Luckily, Lei Ming couldn’t hear the ridicule in Dong Jin’s heart; otherwise, he definitely wouldn’t have turned back upstairs so easily.
Meanwhile, the chubby man, who was fully focused on eating, didn’t give up. “Don’t refuse so quickly! We can negotiate about the money. I even plan to host a banquet to show off your skills to all my companions…”
Completely unaware of the billions Dong Jin had scammed out of others in a dream instance, Xiao Pangzi 2 continued his efforts to persuade him.
Dong Jin, who had been uninterested moments ago, became slightly intrigued by the latter half of Piggy’s words. That’s because the instant he used food to provoke a strong emotional fluctuation in Piggy, a new side quest suddenly appeared on his game panel.
[Side Quest 2: Hunt Monsters (cumulative count).]Judging from the timing of this quest’s appearance, could it be that only by provoking monsters to a certain degree of emotional fluctuation would trial-takers qualify to kill them? Moreover, the more monsters killed within the instance, the higher the final instance rating would be.
Motivated by this quest and his theory, Dong Jin didn’t refuse Piggy again. Instead, he casually accepted the meal money that Piggy tactfully handed over and said: “I’ll give it some serious thought.”
Then he grabbed the backpack he had brought down from upstairs and, without hesitation, headed out to explore the island.
Trial-takers participating in the No Heartbeat Challenge started with zero funds, so they had to get creative to reach the island’s center.
Having earned his travel expenses with just half a bowl of mapo tofu, Dong Jin unapologetically hailed a car, saving time and effort by having the driver take him on a circuit around the island.
When the car was halfway along its route, Dong Jin spotted a massive, uniquely designed building on the water from afar.
If he wasn’t mistaken, that must be the Water Opera house mentioned in online comments.
With that in mind, Dong Jin struck up a conversation with the driver: “Is there a performance at the Water Opera house today?”
The driver, eager to please his big-spending passenger, enthusiastically replied, “Our island’s opera house usually opens every two days. You’re just a bit unlucky today; it’s not open. But there’s a performance scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, something about a story involving gods and a tsunami, or so I’ve heard.”
“Are you a tourist who just arrived on the island and want to visit the theater? Then I’d advise you not to waste your time. Tickets to this theater are always distributed internally and never sold to the public. Tourists simply can’t get in.”
Hearing this, Dong Jin glanced at the still-open livestream on his phone. The audience comments echoed the driver’s statement, suggesting that gaining access to the theater was indeed a challenge.
But it was only the first day of the instance. Unhurried, Dong Jin had no intention of investigating immediately. Instead, he finished visiting a few more of the island’s iconic landmarks before asking the driver to take him back to the inn.
After spending the entire afternoon exploring, Dong Jin didn’t find any particularly useful clues from the landmarks. However, he did witness a trial-taker attempting to kill a monster outright—only to have the monster remain completely unharmed.
It seemed his earlier speculation was correct.
Only when a monster’s emotional fluctuation reached a certain threshold would players qualify to attack them.
This was likely a lesson learned by the Supreme Universe’s cosmic will from the previous round of trials. It realized it couldn’t allow trial-takers to attack without restrictions anymore. Otherwise, no matter the trial, it would eventually devolve into a bloodbath, with people bulldozing through it by sheer force.
Not being particularly combat-oriented himself, Dong Jin wasn’t bothered by this restriction.
If anything, it was probably a bigger headache for the last instance’s MVP, who ranked third and relied on assassination to speed-run trials. As for the player who ranked fourth—a charm-based player—they were likely thriving under these new rules.
Mulling over the current state of the other MVPs, Dong Jin joined Piggy for dinner. He casually whipped up two extra-spicy Sichuan dishes, finished eating quickly, and returned upstairs.
This time, from the moment he came back to when he went upstairs, Dong Jin didn’t encounter Lei Ming. Even as he passed the tightly shut door of Lei Ming’s room, he didn’t hear the slightest sound from within.
Dong Jin, who knew Lei Ming’s true identity, didn’t believe the god’s role in this instance would be anything ordinary.
The Water Opera house was the only place on the island that required crossing a river to reach. Yet, despite the theater being closed today, Lei Ming had returned at noon with traces of water on his ankle. This suggested that both the opera house and Lei Ming were likely harboring some kind of secret.
So, as night deepened, Dong Jin finished creating several dummy accounts online, pocketed his phone, and nimbly climbed out the window.
Moving between inns, he carefully tallied the number of monsters and trial-takers in each, all while hoping to stumble upon Lei Ming and uncover a key clue about this instance.
Perhaps because luck had long since abandoned him, Dong Jin wandered through the increasingly damp night for hours, yet found no trace of Lei Ming.
It wasn’t until he was half-asleep, resting against a pillow in his room, that the abnormal sound of crashing waves in the storm jolted him awake. Almost instinctively, Dong Jin got up and walked to the window.
The inn he stayed in faced the sea directly, and his room offered a perfect view of the ocean.
But the sight that greeted him tonight was far from a tranquil sea. Instead, it was a storm, wildly raging and churning the waters.
Or rather, it was a storm-like monster, disrupting the ocean without restraint.
Through the distant ocean night and the raging storm, Dong Jin stared intently at the calm, pitch-black figure standing motionlessly on the sea. Surrounding this figure were schools of sharks, their sharp dorsal fins gliding stealthily through the water.
As time passed and the storm intensified, the sharks were torn apart one after another, their searing blood staining the dark ocean a deep crimson under the night sky.
Even from a great distance, when Lei Ming glanced his way once more, Dong Jin, who had instinctively ducked to the side of the window, could almost feel the chilling, damp, and pervasive scent of blood emanating from him.
The darkness of the night couldn’t obscure Dong Jin’s vision. He had clearly caught a glimpse of the inhuman black scales on Lei Ming’s hand and his increasingly obscure dark-gold pupils.
The precarious edge of sanity, the blatant madness, and the wild, eerie pheromones radiating from Lei Ming all screamed an undeniable truth: this was a monster through and through.
If power could be considered a form of beauty, then in this moment, Lei Ming was stunningly, devastatingly beautiful.
For a fleeting instant, Dong Jin couldn’t distinguish whether he trembled because of the murderous intent directed his way or because he felt the overwhelming primal tension of nature’s survival-of-the-fittest.
But this was clearly not the time for distraction.
Snapping back to reality, Dong Jin’s first thought was: What did Lei Ming do to provoke these sharks?
His second thought quickly followed: In the lead-up to a massive tsunami, would there really be so many sharks surfacing just to cause trouble?
The livestream audience outside the instance couldn’t answer his second question, but they already had an answer to the first.
【I’m dying of laughter. These sharks are obviously acting strange. Now think about Kai’s chaos-inducing godhead—let me boldly conclude: this is definitely Kai’s revenge! Who’s with me? Who’s against?!】
【No one’s going to argue with you. Kai was manipulating those sharks right in front of us from the commentary booth. Speaking of which, when Dong Jin was watching Lei Ming get bitten by the sharks just now, did Lei Ming notice him? With Lei Ming in this killing frenzy, isn’t Dong Jin about to be doomed?】
【Jin Ge! My Jin Ge! Why is it that whenever the gods fight, you always end up suffering?】
Some in the livestream chat were gleefully watching the drama unfold, while others were genuinely worried for him.
Meanwhile, Dong Jin, the poor soul locked onto by Lei Ming’s murderous intent for being awake in the middle of the night, was already contemplating whether he should make a run for it.
TN:
Stargazy Pie
Merry Christmas everyone!!🎊🎄🧑🏾🎄
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