"This guy…" Liu Yang—Fang Yuren in this world—narrowed his eyes at the message sent by the protagonist of this story. So he's already figured out I'm trying to poach his teammates. Smart… but not smart enough to know why.
A notification blinked.
You gifted a donation: ×1 Kill Essence Coin.
A new message appeared.
(Player 16704) Liang Xiu:
Before I hand her over—tell me exactly what you want with her.
(Player 17805) Fang Yuren:
Why don't you ask her yourself? Like I said—tell her I'm Brother Zhang Rui. She'll know who I am. If not, then I wasted my Kill Essence, and you can go on your way.
(Player 16704) Liang Xiu:
Fine, I'll tell her it's you. But first—how did you get your fingers on this coin? If it does what you claim, then I'd like to know if I can get more.
Liang Xiu closed the panel and looked across the table at Bai Lian.
She was humming to herself innocently, poking blueberries and arranging them as though she were at a tea party instead of trapped in the Tower.
"Hey," he said casually. "Someone's looking for you."
She perked up. "Oh? Really? Who?"
He glanced at the panel. "A guy named… Zhang Rui."
The blueberry slipped from her fingers and hit the table with a soft, hollow sound.
Her smile froze. Her body went still—unnaturally still. For a long, quiet second, no one breathed.
"...Who did you say?" she whispered.
"Zhang Rui," he repeated.
Her pupils trembled. Her lips parted as though she were about to speak—but no words came. Her hands began to shake.
That reaction… Liang Xiu frowned. So the message was real after all.
She remembered that name.
She wished she didn't—but she did.
Sixteen years ago, before the Tower, before the chains in the sky, before the trial, there was a girl named Bai Lian who had been locked inside a children's mental health hospital.
She had been labeled with everything they could think of:
Severe hallucinatory disorder
Dissociative identity instability
Learning disorders
Sensory delusions
Compulsive self-harm
Multiple personality episodes
Danger to self and others
She was twelve years old.
In that place, time moved differently. Days blurred into one another—group therapy, medication trays, padded walls. The staff spoke softly, as if she were made of glass. Some kids screamed all day. Others stared at walls. Some talked to people that weren't there.
Bai Lian stayed silent.
She didn't trust people. People lied. They pretended to care. They smiled, then abandoned you when you needed them most.
She had long given up on talking—
—until she met him.
A boy with messy hair, eyes too soft for a place like that, and a smile that didn't belong inside a hospital.
Zhang Rui.
He talked to everyone. He helped the kids who couldn't tie their shoes. He made the staff laugh. He shared snacks even though food wasn't allowed. He made paper cranes and taped them to the ceiling because he said dreams should fly.
Bai Lian hated him.
She hated how bright he was. She hated how easy he made everything look. She hated that he didn't cry, didn't scream, and didn't break.
But one day, she asked him.
"How can you smile like that? All of us were abandoned. None of us are normal. So why can you act like everything is okay?"
She hadn't meant to cry when she said it, but the words came out broken—wet and ugly.
Zhang Rui just sat beside her, quiet for once. He didn't try to comfort her. He didn't hand her tissues. He just waited until her tears slowed.
Then he said:
"You don't want to be like me, Bai Lian." "I'm not happy. I'm terrified. I talk to people because I don't want to be alone with my thoughts."
"Every night, I hear voices in my head. They tell me to give up—that I belong in the dark. They say they can take away my pain… and the pain of everyone I love."
"I listened to them once."
"I just wanted my family to be happy."
"But they lied."
"They killed them all."
"Tore them apart."
"And then they laughed."
"They told me my family would never suffer again—because dead people can't feel pain."
"I told the police. I told the doctors. Nobody believed me."
"The voices only go quiet when I make people smile. When I make people happy, they can't reach me. So I'm going to make friends—everyone in the world if I have to. And I want you to do the same."
"If I can't make you happy, then find someone who can. If one friend isn't enough, make two. If two aren't enough, make ten."
"Keep going until the whole world is your friend."
"Then none of us will be alone."
That was the first day Bai Lian smiled since entering the hospital.
The next day—
Zhang Rui was found dead in the bathroom.
The walls and floors were covered in spiraling red symbols—glyphs carved in blood.
—
Present Day.
Bai Lian didn't blink. Her breath hitched. Zhang Rui? No—no, I heard wrong. A tremor ran beneath her skin.
Her fingers twitched once, scraping her nails over the claw-mark scars on her arm until faint red lines appeared. Her pupils shrank, trembling as if trying to retreat into her skull.
"…Who?" she asked again, voice hollow.
Liang Xiu frowned. "Zhang Rui."
"He said he's your brother or something—"
"Stop." Her voice cracked like dry bone. A laugh slipped out—sharp, jagged, and wrong. "No. No, stop it. That's not funny. Who—who sent you that name? You're messing with me, right? Zhang Rui is dead."
She stood up abruptly, knocking her chair over as her hands clutched her head. Her breathing grew ragged—too shallow, too fast—like she was drowning on air.
"He shouldn't exist anymore," she whispered, eyes widening. "Zhang Rui is DEAD!"
The pavilion table shook as trays and cups rattled.
Liang Xiu lifted both hands calmly. "I'm just repeating what I was told. That's what he said—Zhang Rui. If this is—"
"I watched them carry his body away!" Bai Lian shouted, eyes wild. "The walls were covered—covered in blood—runes everywhere—he carved them with his nails—he…" Her voice collapsed to a tormented whisper. "Don't say his name again…"
A tremor ran down her spine. Her vision blurred as something eclipsed the present, dragging her violently backward into memory. Back into that hospital. Back into that nightmare.
She clutched at her head again, nails digging into her scalp, fighting voices only she could hear.
The chat on Liang Xiu's stream flickered as thousands of players, having flooded in after seeing his name on the rankings, began to comment.
(Player 12568) Yue Ci: What the hell is going on?
Jing Xue: She's losing it!!
Bing Qing: What is this garden??
Xiulan: They have food—is this what you get when we get out of the Tutorial Cave??
Mo Li: Why do I feel cold watching this…?
(Player 17805) Fang Yuren: Gifted a donation: ×1 Kill Essence Coin
(Player 17805) Fang Yuren: Show her your panel. That'll allow me to talk with her about what's going on.
Liang Xiu looked at Liu Yang's message carefully, studying it.
"Hey, Bai Lian," he said softly, "that person claiming to be your brother said you should read the screen. Maybe you should hear him out."
Bai Lian froze mid-breath.
She wanted to tell him no, but he turned his screen toward her. There, Liu Yang had typed:
(Player 17805) Fang Yuren: You're right, Bai Lian, I should be dead. Yet here I am, and I don't understand it myself. I shouldn't be here either. I shouldn't have known a person named Zhang Rui existed in the first place.
He continued.
Fang Yuren: Honestly, there's a lot that's happened, and I wouldn't even know where to start.
Her trembling slowed—not calm, but drawn in by him, pulled by the weight written in his words.
"Zhang Rui…?" She reached out, grabbing the video feed. Her grip tightened along the screen's blue edges.
Fang Yuren: I won't ask you to believe me, because I don't fully believe it myself. I wanted to think it was a dream—a broken piece of my imagination, something stitched together by madness. But then…
I saw you. In the Tower rankings. On the live feeds. And I thought—if you are real… then maybe I'm not going insane after all.
Bai Lian stared, hands still trembling, eyes caught between fear and desperate hope.
Fang Yuren saw her expression turn from disbelief to a shallow acceptance. "This is going better than I thought," he mused far away from the group of misfits. He stood up while typing.
Fang Yuren: Because at least two people in this universe know the name Zhang Rui.
He stopped over to the bronze bridge railing. The cold lake drifted with the scent of blood, his eyes glimmering.
Silence fell heavy while he waited for Bai Lian to take the bait.
And then, painfully, she spoke.
"… Who are you?"
He smiled.
"Someone who remembers that little girl who kept scratching her arms because she swore something was crawling under her skin. Someone who remembers the girl who said she hated crying—because it proved she was still alive."
Her breath shattered like broken glass.
"I wanted to pretend it wasn't real," he continued, speaking out loud with his fingertips still tapping away, "but I couldn't. Not when I saw you. Not when I remembered what I said—about voices whispering in the dark… about making the whole world smile, because if I ever stopped moving—stopped talking—I'd be pulled into something worse."
Her voice came out as a whimper.
"H-How do you know that…?"
"Isn't that clear? It's because I heard those voices personally."
Her legs gave out. She fell to her knees.
"Zhang Rui… Is it really you?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he opened the Block & Security settings. First, he ended his own broadcast, then deleted it entirely before enabling the block feature on everyone—including Fang Yuren's family.
Then he made one last change—
(Player 17805) Zhang Rui: The one and only…