Chapter 1 The Beginning

Li Ang was sitting in his own living room.

"Hello, System? System? Are you there?"

Silence. There was no response.

"Main God Space? System Spirit? Old Grandpa in the ring? Mastermind?"

No matter how Li Ang shouted, the narration that had just introduced him didn't appear.

At this moment, Li Ang was wearing a yellow sanitation uniform, a hat and mask, two pairs of rubber gloves on his hands, and black non-slip rain boots on his feet.

Next to the rain boots was a beige plastic bucket, containing a mop and rag, and half a bucket of bloody water—blood that still had the fur and bones of the strange cat floating in it.

After killing the human-faced cat, Li Ang immediately ran home to get this set of equipment specially used for destroying evidence, and then ran downstairs, pretending to be a sanitation worker cleaning the scene—luckily, this community was built early, there were no surveillance cameras in the corridor, and not many people were moving around.

Li Ang pondered for a long time, and slapped an almond-colored glass bead the size of a thumb on the table.

Name: Strange Eyeball

Type: Wearable

Quality: Rare

Effect: Identify illusions, create illusions. The effectiveness, range, and duration of the illusion are determined by the wearer's mental strength.

Equipment Condition: Wearer possesses an eye socket structure in their physiological anatomy.

Note: When the end of numbers is reached, change occurs. That which alters according to form is called transformation, is called illusion.

This hard glass bead was the strange cat's right eye. When Li Ang looked at the bead, lines of text floated in his vision, describing the eyeball.

"Da Ga Hao, I'm Zha Zha Hui. This is a brand new version you've never played before. First recharge is only one cent, start with 999 damage per hit, Divine Gear explodes randomly, equipment recycling is instant, and you can easily waste tens of thousands on recycling."

Li Ang ridiculed the advertising slogans of Tanwan Lan Yue, and muttered softly, "Has this world really become a game..."

If the world was a globally-shared virtual online game, then Li Ang must be a non-Kryptonian, non-Europan player starting with hell difficulty.

He lost his parents at a young age, grew up in an orphanage from the age of seven, left the orphanage at the age of sixteen to enter society, and is now working part-time while continuing his studies.

Generally speaking, children in orphanages without physical disabilities or serious illnesses are given priority for adoption. The reasons why Li Ang has become a "slow-moving product" for so many years are twofold.

First, he was a bit old when he arrived at the orphanage, precocious and mindful; second, Li Ang had broad ideas, an active mind, and full of initiative, so happy that he was... a little strange.

From a young age, Li Ang showed his logical reasoning ability far beyond others.

The orphanage had a collection of books donated by all walks of life. Li Ang, who liked to read, after reading *Grimm's Fairy Tales*, accurately deduced that Snow White's fate was so ill-fated because there were too many villains around her.

After reading the story of Sima Guang smashing the jar, the clever Li Ang thought that he could bring firewood and burn it under the jar. When the water dried up, the child in the jar would naturally be out of danger, and the water jar could be saved, killing two birds with one stone.

The orphanage sometimes organized movie screenings. After watching the classic film *The Last Emperor*, the witty Li Ang deduced from a genetic point of view that the son of a eunuch should also be a eunuch.

When the TV station came to the orphanage for an interview, the reporter asked the children what their wishes were.

The other children hoped to be adopted soon or receive gifts such as rag dolls and toy racing cars.

But Li Ang, during the live broadcast on TV, said that his wish was that the orphanage could accept thirty or forty more pairs of twin orphans so that he could play a real-life Lianliankan game.

As for things like "shouting at a broken electric fan 'Not turning is not Chinese'", "calling on everyone to wear two pairs of underwear in winter to keep warm", "not taking off socks when washing feet to save time washing socks", and "taking the teacher who came for a home visit to the garbage dump and saying: the house is too messy, please sit anywhere", are all minor things.

Schizophrenic patients have broad ideas, and mentally retarded children have a lot of fun. Li Ang, who was extremely intelligent, left a deep impression on the parents who came to adopt children, standing squarely in the center of the boundary between genius and madman.

As the saying goes, genius is on the left and madman is on the right. Even Li Ang, who had to split his buttocks to reduce the sound of his farts, stood squarely in the center of the boundary between genius and madman. When sending him away from the orphanage, the director judged that Li Ang would either appear on TV as a successful person in the future, or appear on legal programs as a heinous criminal.

However, when the anomaly invaded reality, the director's expectations may be shattered.

"According to the 'game narration' I heard just now, the cat that killed Old Lady Zhang also belongs to a player. Combining this with the various urban legends circulating recently, it can be assumed that this real game has been going on for some time,"

"How is this game played? How do players communicate with the system? Do you need to complete tasks to get rewards? What are the contents of the tasks? Monster farming, treasure hunting?"

"And during this time, how many people or animals have become players? Are official or third-party organizations aware of this?"

"If so, then according to the information that 'players are qualified to contact and obtain extraordinary power' and 'non-players who kill players can obtain player qualifications', some organizations may have already begun to look for players among ordinary people with premeditation..."

A sense of crisis struck, but the possibly existing "System Spirit" still didn't appear.

"Let's wait and see."

Li Ang's face was gloomy as he pondered for a long time, picked up the glass bead, and brought it to his face.

This glass bead can be said to be the only loot he obtained from the strange cat.

"...The wearer needs to have an eye socket structure in their physiological anatomy..."

As soon as the almond-colored eyeball from the strange cat touched Li Ang's eyelashes, it produced an invisible suction force. With a "poof" sound, the glass eyeball slowly "embedded" into Li Ang's eye socket at a strange angle.

"Damn, so suddenly?"

Li Ang was taken aback, but the intense discomfort he had imagined did not appear.

He hurriedly picked up a mirror. Everything in the mirror was normal, except that his left eye had turned into an almond-colored vertical pupil like a cat's.

Resembling the nearly extinct kill-Matt (a gaudy subculture in China).

"The retina of mammals has rod cells and cone cells. The former is sensitive to brightness but has no color vision and is responsible for night vision, while the latter can perceive both light intensity and distinguish colors.

"The ratio of rod cells to cone cells in humans is 4:1, while in cats it is 25:1, which means that cats have stronger night vision and weaker ability to distinguish colors.

"From a color vision point of view, my left eye cannot distinguish only blue, green, yellow, and purple like a cat, but from the point of view of light intensity, my vision in dim environments has greatly improved."

Li Ang calmly assessed the current situation, "More data information about this eyeball requires corresponding instruments to be tested. According to the item description, it should also have the function of creating illusions..."

Li Ang closed his eyes and concentrated, and began to imagine in his mind, trying to use illusion to reconstruct the spatial structure of the living room, achieving the ghost wall effect he had just seen.

In the dark, strands of mental power slowly flowed away.

After a long time, Li Ang opened his eyes with some exhaustion. The living room was still the same living room, but the air had slight ripples.

"I still can't build the structure of the ghost wall, is it because my mental strength is not strong enough?"

Li Ang was slightly disappointed, and held his breath and concentrated again, visualizing some simpler things.

Forks, spoons, pots and pans, textbooks and chairs, alarm clocks, televisions, refrigerators, sewing machines...

In a few minutes, the living room was filled with all kinds of small objects. A layer of imperceptible light smoke floated on the surface of these objects. If you looked closely, they were somewhat distorted, but it was definitely no problem to fool people from a distance.

"Conjuring snakes from an empty pot, drawing wine from an empty cup, it seems that I am also a Qigong master, a magic boy?"