Lin Xinjiu is dead.
Although Jiang Yan never felt particularly positively or negatively about Lin Xinjiu, anyone would be thoughtful upon hearing that someone who was supposed to be a teammate died a week before the mission.
Jiang Yan shared the news in the group chat.
Lin Xinjiu’s avatar still sat among the group members, but it would never light up again.
Only seconds after Jiang Yan sent the message, Shen Xiaoxiao popped up.
She replied in shock with a long string of question marks.
“Jiang Yan-jie, you’re not joking, are you??”
She knew Jiang Yan wasn’t the type to joke about such things, but upon seeing the message, she instinctively felt it couldn’t be true.
How could death come so suddenly?
Weren’t they supposed to participate in the fifth round together?
She had never liked Lin Xinjiu, but after all, they had completed three missions together. She’d even been thinking lately about trying to become closer to Lin Xinjiu—maybe invite him to a meal or get a gift. How could it end like this…
Jiang Yan replied crisply, “Dead.”
“The Supernatural Administration Bureau just aired his death footage in the main hall.”
The death footage of every psychic, save for those that are excessively bloody or cruel, will be broadcast by the Bureau.
The Bureau requires psychics to stream live during missions. While the livestream has many uses, at its core, it was designed to record every psychic’s death.
Psychics do get substantial monetary rewards for their work, but those are earned.
Their lives should be recorded, and so should their deaths.
After the reply, Shen Xiaoxiao was silent for a long time. After a while, Shen Huanhuan spoke in the chat, “Xiaoxiao’s not feeling well. She’s run to her room to cry.”
Jiang Yan: “Hm?”
“I thought she didn’t like Lin Xinjiu.”
Shen Huanhuan: “We… never had a psychic we’re familiar with die before during missions.”
Yu Renwan also chimed in, “Same here.”
“Of those who’ve died in the Bureau so far, at most I’ve only seen them, never even spoken…”
So all those were distant people.
Lin Xinjiu was close.
Jiang Yan paused for a moment, then sent another message to the group:
“Let’s leave tonight be. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”
*
So the planned team meeting was pushed back a day.
Time passed quickly. Evening came soon enough, and, by coincidence, just as Jiang Yan arrived at the café entrance, she received a message from He Qingyuan.
“The location for the fifth round has been set. If you’re free, drop by the Bureau in the next couple of days.”
“I’m always available.”
It was time for a briefing.
Jiang Yan entered the café, finding the other three already waiting in a private room.
She sat down. “He Qingyuan wants us to talk with him. When are you all free?”
“No time like the present,” Shen Huanhuan replied softly, “How about today?”
No one objected, so after dinner, their meeting location moved to the Bureau.
Though it was night, the Bureau was brightly lit.
A crowd of psychics stood at the front desk, flipping through the list of current missions, selecting tasks that suited them.
Shen Huanhuan explained, “Many psychics work part-time. They have day jobs and can only accept missions at night.”
“So there are far more people here at night than in the daytime.”
After speaking, she grabbed a bouquet from a basket in the corner and laid it before the giant screen.
It was for Lin Xinjiu.
The cotton mill Lin Xinjiu went to this time had been underestimated by the Bureau—it was, in fact, a real semi-energy field.
A true semi-energy field.
Not only had the ghost concealed the cotton mill as a regular mission site, but it had also mutated, gaining the power of reproduction. It could control the strength of the supernatural entities it spawned.
The third ghost it created held two-thirds of its spiritual energy. Lin Xinjiu, with no runes at hand, had no chance of escaping.
Because Lin Xinjiu had nearly single-handedly dealt with this semi-energy field, when he died, his livestream briefly ascended into the top hundred.
A crowd of psychics now gathered before the giant screen.
Lin Xinjiu’s distinctive mission style and his ruthless approach toward spirits had earned him a dedicated following—mostly psychics with deep personal vendettas against supernatural entities.
Death is an everyday occurrence in the Bureau.
Thus, their faces were not particularly mournful; they simply had quiet conversations.
“You know, I never expected the kid to push Song Zheng out of the way. I really underestimated him.”
“Hahaha, aren’t we all guilty of that? I thought of something funny today—do you think Lin Xinjiu will be forced to stay on after his seventh day?”
“Lin Xinjiu: I have become the very spirit I hate most.”
“Hahahaha, you’re so savage!”
“Hey, didn’t he start taking missions when he was just a little kid? Barely taller than the counter stone slab.”
“No kidding. Not many join the Bureau that young.”
Despite their ruthless ways and fierce air, at times like this, they were just ordinary people, chatting about ordinary things.
Jiang Yan looked away, opened her phone, and let He Qingyuan know the group had arrived.
He Qingyuan soon emerged.
He led them toward the conference hall.
“Thank you for coming.”
Shen Xiaoxiao shook her head. “Not at all, not at all. I heard the fifth round’s location is decided. Where are we going, Abbot He?”
The previous four times had never been like this. Usually, Jiang Yuqing would brief them on the bus, often less than half an hour before the mission started.
But this time there was more than a week remaining…
The twins exchanged a look; Yu Renwan bowed her head, Jiang Yan strolled forward leisurely.
They already had their suspicions.
He Qingyuan’s answer confirmed them.
“It’s an energy field.”
“The reason for the delay in announcing the fifth round’s location was because the higher-ups kept debating. This afternoon marked the third meeting before it was finalized.”
The mood grew quiet.
Speculations were never equal to reality. Lately, the mortality rate for psychics in energy fields had been painfully obvious, but with the explosive growth of energy fields in Huaguo, every psychic was expected to do their part to contain them—sooner or later.
After a long silence, Shen Huanhuan said, “We’ll do our best.”
He Qingyuan smiled, shaking his head kindly. “Don’t worry yourselves too much.”
“Eight of you will enter the energy field. The opposing team’s captain is ranked forty-seventh on the official leaderboard, and there’s also a skilled healer.”
“Yu Renwan, for certain reasons, saw her rank increase drastically. She’ll enter the top hundred soon, and then Jiang Yan…”
He Qingyuan paused before continuing, “She has never taken a solo mission, so her ranking is unclear.”
“But by now, you all know very well where she belongs.”
Shen Huanhuan nodded solemnly.
“Don’t sell yourselves short,” He Qingyuan said, looking at the twins, “Your master will be in touch soon, and remember, the cardinal rule for surviving the energy field is simple: think carefully.”
“No matter how strong, anyone can fall inside. No matter how weak, anyone can come out.”
“You’re only sixteen, and already outstanding.”
The twins’ talents were limited, but Shen Huanhuan was always gentle and steady, well-read, never afraid in the face of anything.
Shen Xiaoxiao’s progress was clear to all; she’d gone from being so scared of ghost walls that her legs turned to jelly, to crouching with Shen Huanhuan on the ceiling or hiding in trees, observing suspiciously controlled medical staff.
At the time, everyone thought Baishan Sanatorium was a semi-energy field, and anyone could be a ghost, yet for the sake of clues, they willingly risked themselves.
The conference hall was just ahead.
He Qingyuan said no more. He swiped his ID, opened the door, and flicked on the lights overhead.
“Find yourselves a seat.”
The hall was arranged for a round-table meeting. Jiang Yan sat at the foremost seat, Yu Renwan and the twins quickly following.
He Qingyuan opened the computer, started the projection, and explained the purpose of their meeting:
“You probably guessed—I’m here to introduce you to the energy field.”
“The forms of an energy field are ever-changing; you must know what you’re entering.”
“But truth be told, despite fighting energy fields for years, our knowledge barely scratches a quarter—or at most a third—of the truth. We still need more information, and for that, more experiences from psychics like you.”
He sighed, then clicked a video file.
A somewhat oppressive tone sounded.
A crisp, immersive presentation appeared before their eyes.
As Jiang Yan had already learned, each energy field forms because of “a certain spirit”—having lingered too long without being dealt with, it absorbs enough turbid qi until saturated, and eventually begins to emit turbid qi in return.
When the concentration of turbid qi it expels grows too high, it starts to mutate the surrounding space, becoming master of that domain—gaining control and forming an internal “game ground.”
Such a microcosm may be a real physical space, or one of its own invention.
Take Baishan Sanatorium, for instance.
If it had truly been a semi-energy field back then, and if there had been a spirit behind it, then when it evolved into a full energy field, the ghost would become the true master of Baishan Sanatorium, and then, according to its inner “game ground” mechanics, would start drawing in people from the surrounding region.
Besides voluntary patients, it could snatch passersby or villagers from a one-kilometer—maybe even three-kilometer—radius. As its power grew, so would the range of its predations.
Such energy fields have an innate disadvantage—
[The psychics know their origin is Baishan Sanatorium.]
This disadvantage drastically lowers the field’s difficulty.
The psychics can investigate the entire history, learn about everyone who died there, deduce who the ghost behind the scenes is, and even estimate the operation of the “game ground” within.
By contrast, fully-created (original) energy fields are twice as hard.
They don’t arise from any known space.
Not spirits of patients dead in a hospital, turning that hospital into their field, nor someone dying in an elevator and turning it into their field.
They are unknown quantities.
One dies somewhere but refuses to claim that place as their domain. They have their own designs, crafting a field entirely unique.
It is built in the void, shrouded in fog, impenetrable to any device—could be a building, a train, a zoo, anything, everything.
Precisely because of this blank slate, psychics enter with zero intelligence—everything must be pieced together as they go. Such fields are many times harder both in terms of time required and complexity of puzzles.
Still, since there are puzzles, no matter how difficult, there must always be a solution.
With that in mind, Jiang Yan raised her hand and asked, “How do we find the answer inside?”
This was exactly what He Qingyuan was about to address.
The introductory video finished. He Qingyuan closed it and looked at the group:
“Simple. Survive.”
“Magnetic fields inside the energy field are highly unstable. Phones can’t reach the outside world. Even special livestream devices often cut out. Thus, there are almost no complete videos. More importantly, every energy field has different mechanics—experience in one is useless in another, so I won’t show you old videos.”
“But there’s one thing you must know.”
He Qingyuan said slowly, “As long as you play the game step by step, fighting to survive, the answer will always emerge.”
Jiang Yan frowned. “What do you mean?”
He Qingyuan explained:
“Energy fields, too, are restricted.”
“Though they form their own microcosms, they are still within greater time and space—merely small boxes within a larger sphere. So they must follow the sphere’s rules. They cannot design unwinnable games—every one contains a path to survival, and after each mini-game, they must provide crucial clues.”
“These clues might be entirely accurate, or somewhat obscured, but never completely wrong.”
“If the clue is precise, just play the game and gather them. If it’s mixed or hidden, think your hardest, find contradictions, and deduce the truth.”
“Finally—”
He Qingyuan shut the computer and stood. “Team competition is not sabotage, but cooperation-based rivalry: a contest to see who solves the puzzle and rescues the most people—apparently ordinary people still struggling to survive after being taken in.”
“Best of luck to you all.”
*
When Jiang Yan got home, Mu Wang was idly decorating a potted flower.
As the third-ranked psychic in Huaguo’s official ranking, Mu Wang couldn’t possibly avoid being involved. Of two recently resolved energy fields, one was spearheaded by his team.
Still, though forced to act as captain by his rank, due to his personality, he’d always refuse the title at the outset, vanish stealthily into obscure corners, and leave teammates with no idea where he’d gone.
No one had expected the number three to be like this.
The vice captain, once a die-hard fan, was forced by anger to pick up the captain’s banner—lost his fan filter in a day, turned anti-fan, and railed against Mu Wang’s lack of team spirit, vowing to report him. But Mu Wang reappeared two days later.
The whole farce was comical.
The small team was still huddled around cursing their soulless ex-captain, saying he was good for nothing but looks, when the soulless but beautiful Mu Wang turned up behind them without a sound. He listened for a moment before quietly handing them a bundle of clues.
—”You cursed me a total of twenty-three times over the past two days. Very bad.”
—”But thank you for calling me pretty. All thanks to sister’s great taste.”
After showing off for a moment, Mu Wang sleepily slumped over the table, leaving his teammates torn between laughter and wanting to punch themselves.
How tired he must have been to doze like that—had he not slept in two nights?
And to know the exact number of curses, he hadn’t really disappeared; he’d been quietly protecting them from the shadows.
What did this mean?
It meant he was training them!
At times, silence speaks louder than words.
Purely socially anxious Mu Wang sneezed in his sleep.
Mu Wang was nearly indestructible. After being struck dead by lightning, a withered branch of his was watered with corpse oil by Jiang Yan for three hundred years; the peach wood turned, and he became a jiangshi.
He never feels fatigue or pain. His hunger and sleepiness are mere habits—he can survive just fine without food or sleep. Even falling from heights, being impaled, nothing can kill him. Unless his entire body is reduced to powder in a flash, he cannot die.
His innate talent: “What He Says Becomes True.”
Whenever he activates his power, everyone must speak to him truthfully.
Even the ghosts in an energy field cannot lie to him.
So he’s like a bulldozer inside an energy field—secrets meant to stay hidden are easily blurted out by NPC-like entities.
But Mu Wang’s shortcomings are obvious, too. Having been struck by lightning, he’s become rather slow-thinking, and all work requiring analytical thought is a struggle.
In solo missions before, he used to wrack his brain; now, in a team, he just delivers clues cheerfully to his teammates and listens passively to their problem-solving.
Jiang Yan is fully aware of this, so she never hopes for intel from him.
But Mu Wang wants to be useful.
“Don’t sweat the details. Think about why the game’s designed that way, and then pay attention to clues…”
Mu Wang trailed along after Jiang Yan, nagging.
Jiang Yan turned to him, amused, “Did you come up with that yourself?”
Mu Wang: “…”
Mu Wang, unwilling, mumbled, “…Someone else.”
Jiang Yan smiled, rubbing Mu Wang’s soft black hair. “Don’t worry.”
*
The fifth round’s time soon arrived.
Jiang Yuqing contacted the team a day in advance, setting the rendezvous at 7:30 p.m. at a bus stop on the outskirts of Jiangcheng.
When Jiang Yan arrived, Jiang Yuqing was already there, along with Yu Renwan and three strangers.
As soon as Yu Renwan saw Jiang Yan, she hurried over, “Jiang Jiang, you’re here.”
“Yes.”
Jiang Yan nodded casually, eyeing the other team.
Their leader was a woman in her thirties, with exaggerated silver tassel earrings, dark blue dyed hair, and a black cat tattoo on the back of her neck. She chewed an unlit cigarette, head bowed in thought.
Noticing Jiang Yan’s gaze, she looked up and met it, then smiled amicably.
“Lan Lin,” she introduced, “I know you all—the Bureau finally put out a show, and I follow it whenever I can.”
“These are Yi Liang and Zhang Du, two shy male college students,” she gestured to them, “and there’s another girl, Mint Candy, who’ll be here shortly.”
Yu Renwan asked, “Mint Candy? Is that her nickname?”
“No, it’s her real name. Her mom liked peppermint candies—her daughter suffered for it.” Lan Lin laughed.
Yu Renwan laughed too.
Jiang Yan’s lips curled up.
She had a good first impression of Lan Lin.
A natural at creating atmosphere.
Given her ease introducing everyone, the four clearly knew one another and likely had teamed up for some time.
A taxi stopped at the bus stop and out bounded a petite girl, who darted over to Lan Lin, exclaiming, “Lan-jie! Missed you these two weeks!”
After hugging her, Mint Candy pulled out a handful of ice-blue candies and handed them out. “Take care of me this time, too!”
Jiang Yan accepted a candy and thanked her.
So much like Shen Xiaoxiao…
That very moment, a luxury car pulled up before her.
Shen Xiaoxiao poked her head out the window, “Jiang Yan-jie!!”
“Hey, everyone’s arrived—are we late?”
Jiang Yuqing: “No, right on time.”
“Great, great.” Shen Xiaoxiao jumped out, Shen Huanhuan following.
Jiang Yan’s gaze lingered on Shen Huanhuan, then narrowed slightly.
Shen Huanhuan’s right eye was covered with a white eye patch, as if injured.
“What happened?” she asked.
Shen Huanhuan replied, “Nothing, just a prop.”
“I’ve recovered, really—it’s just to keep from scaring anyone.”
Shen Xiaoxiao broke in, “It hurt so much! Master dug out my sister’s right eye, put in a new one, couldn’t use anesthesia, so much—”
Shen Huanhuan quickly cut her off, “You talk too much.”
Jiang Yan frowned, “Why go to such lengths?”
Shen Huanhuan smiled, “To be stronger.”
“The Living Eye can distinguish people from ghosts. Hopefully, it’ll help.”
Jiang Yan was silent.
The flaw in her own ability was now addressed by Shen Huanhuan.
After a moment, she nodded, “Thank you. It’ll be very helpful.”
Ghosts in energy fields sometimes have physical form; normal potions are useless in separating human from ghost. Worse, to her perception, people can look even more abnormal than the ghosts themselves. This had always been a headache.
Shen Huanhuan had solved a pressing issue.
With everyone present, Jiang Yuqing clapped her hands to get their attention.
Instant silence fell.
Jiang Yuqing exhaled, choosing her words carefully:
“You’ve probably heard—a wave of disappearances has struck the outskirts of Jiangcheng this month. Surveillance shows every missing person vanished at exactly eight p.m. in the fields outside the city’s edge. But since the detectors didn’t register any anomaly, the Bureau believes there’s an energy field here with a cloaking function.”
“The Bureau made detailed records and pressed the Public Security Bureau for an investigation. So far, twenty-eight people are missing without a single body found. They can’t all be alive, so whether dead or not, the Bureau believes they’re still in the energy field, being…reused.”
“So after entering, if someone asks you for help, first confirm if they’re human or ghost, understand?”
Everyone nodded.
Jiang Yuqing hesitated a long while, then looked around, “There’s really nothing more to say.”
“No one knows what’s inside, or what the game is. If it weren’t for most psychics being dispatched elsewhere, you are the two top-ranked teams remaining in Jiangcheng. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be so dangerous for you.”
“It’s ten minutes to eight. Once you’re ready, go.”
According to surveillance, the field grabs whoever enters the back meadows at 8 p.m. sharp. At present, the area is cordoned off with yellow tape.
Only the chirr of insects all around.
The hot, humid summer night felt suffocating. After bidding farewell to Jiang Yuqing, the eight headed for the meadow.
Jiang Yan paused mid-stride, rubbing her shoulder.
Shen Huanhuan noticed and asked in a low voice, “Bug bite?”
Jiang Yan shook her head, “Rain got me.”
Shen Huanhuan frowned, “Rain? There’s no rain.”
“It’s nothing.” Jiang Yan kept walking.
At 7:57, the group reached the field.
Two minutes later, all felt an indescribable chill—the kind that crept from the top of the scalp into the bones, oozing down fragile necks and into their veins.
Time was almost up.
Meeting each other’s eyes, they took a deep breath together. Suddenly, a glaring light flashed in their faces—two men and a woman appeared, waving flashlights as they emerged from another patch of meadow.
“I told you Uncle Wang’s disappearance was odd! What are these people doing out here in the middle of the night? Is this some cult?”
“Hey—” one frowned, brushing his clothes, waving a photo at them. “Seen this guy?”
“I’m on the phone with the cops. Explain yourselves or you’re all going downtown!”
Lan Lin snapped, “Did you not see the police cordon?”
“Get out of here at once!”
She strode quickly toward them.
Lan Lin tried to drive them away, but the meadow was too vast. They were stuck by fate, appearing here exactly now; there was no way out.
And so it was.
Lan Lin had only taken two steps when the time reached eight o’clock. Her vision abruptly went dark, viscous, unfathomable black fog swallowing everything.
…
The outer city fields were empty in the deep night. Only a single photo drifted silently down into the grass.